Joe, I think you are referring to what some people refer to as integration. Integration in this context respects difference and builds people who are culturally competent (primarily) in the mainstream culture while still maintaining their own identity and culture as they see fit.

Assimilation on the other hand is where Indigenous people, and people from ethnic minorities, are encouraged or forced to embrace the mainstream culture - forgoing their own. That is, for Indigenous Australians assimilation means being absorbed into the mainstream culture and rejecting their own. Assimilation was one of the foundations of the stolen generations and forced displacement of peoples. Of course Indigenous Australians could only ever hope to be conditionally accepted into mainstream culture regardless of how 'white' they acted, thought or looked.

Thanks Aka,good to hear from you:

I'm not so sure that 'assimilation', even as you define it, actually happened. Yes, something like integration, as you define it, certainly did, and probably that was how the policy of assimilation was shaped by the people themselves, into 'integration'.

In other words, 'assimilation' as perceived by policy-makers could never succeed, but as soon as people had opportunities and at least some formal equality, then they co-opted 'assimilation' and re-forged it into 'integration'. Does that make sense ?

And, as you so rightly say, ' .... Indigenous Australians could only ever hope to be conditionally accepted into mainstream culture regardless of how 'white' they acted, thought or looked.'

Which sort of means that any policy of assimilation never had a hope of flying - the Indigenous people took it further, to 'integration', and the whites didn't want much of it either. Even now, many older whites look down their snouts at inter-marriage. Even now, even on the Left, many whites are more comfortable with the notion of Blackfellas somewhere else, out in the sticks, not in their street, and certainly not getting too friendly with their daughters.

By the way, I do get a bit angry when people make the easy assumption that 'white culture' includes all the conveniences of modern life, as if it was some sort of monopoly that other people have to get bloody permission to use. Indigenous people have been in at the beginning of modernity as much as whites: when the first railway in Australia was opened in 1850 or so, in one photograph, there's a local Aboriginal guy sitting on the cow-catcher. The local people were probably involved in building the railway, after all.

I take the view that whatever Indigenous people do, in the city or country, is part of Indigenous culture, part of their contemporary identity, end of story. Whites don't have the monopoly on anything, and I suspect sometimes that the 'assimilation narrative' is a way of shutting Indigenous people out of modern life. Not that it's worked !

Joe

Australia is a great Country you are free to do just about anything. Anyone can do what they are capable of doing if they apply themselves. Sure it maybe harder for some people the path harder but it can still be walked no matter where you come from. I speaking as a lefty here when I say in the end Government can only do so much, Government should only provide a safety net. At some point we have to do it ourselves. It's very easy to blame government and white man in general for the current plight of indigenous poeple. People don't need handouts they need to help themselves.

To the Author Mr Ward how about in your next OLO spot you outline what these remote indigenous groups could do to help themselves.

Cornonacob,

You're spot-on, people have far more opportunities than they are often led to believe. As I tried to point out in

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=11383

Indigenous people, primarily in the cities, have seized on higher education and there are currently (2009 figures) record commencements (4832) and enrolments (10465). I anticipate that 2010 data will show record graduations as well.

To put those numbers into perspective, we need to remember that there are about 8,000 Indigenous people in young-adult age-groups. So the equivalent of 60 % of an age-group commences university study each year - about a thousand in post-graduate courses, another thousand in bridging courses, perhaps a few hundred transferring from one course to another - so around a quarter of an age-group commences university study for the first time in a degree-level course.

The upshot is that about one in every nine Indigenous adults is a university graduate, a total of more than 26,000. Too many to form an elite, you might agree, and enough to demonstrate the huge possibilities of university education for Indigenous people.

That won't change into the future: there could easily be fifty thousand graduates, professionals contributing to the economy, by 2020, one in every six or seven adults. With a major birth-rate boom reaching tertiary age just now, there could be a hundred thousand graduates by 2034-2035, only twenty five years away, perhaps one in every four adults.

That will surely be part of 'Closing the Gap' :)

Yes, these developments are evidence of the development of a definite class structure in Indigenous society, with people in remote settlements dangerously left out, on the wrong side of the Gap. Right or wrong, like it or not, that's the reality.

So, do we keep the Gap open, or do we try to find ways to close it ? And is self-determination part of the solution, or part of the problem - as it has been put into practice ?

Joe

To the Author Mr Ward how about in your next OLO spot you outline what these remote indigenous groups could do to help themselves.
cornonacob,
I go along with that. In addition I'd like to see a list of EPA don'ts which deny remote communities to go about a reasonable daily life. For example why deny an indigenous community to create anchorages or bridges or just some facilities without having a clueless bureaucrat two thousand kilometres away to say yay or nay. Imagine if a canal development in the south were denied ? Oh boy, but we can do it on remote communities. Just not possible with a three-legged gerrymander. The amputated leg being the indigenous north. By all means throw tens of millions of dollars at consultants & useless constructions but dare not to provide anything practical.

The opportunities presented throught university and other education come with certain strings attached. Sadly, I would never recommend that an Indigenous Australian does post grad studies, even a phd, if they are wanting secure employment, or recognition of their endeavours.

While Joe regularly points out that there are a growing number of uni graduates and it is to be celebrated, however what the statistics do not show is that university education is a pillar of assimilationist policy. Universities teach Western theory and ideology. As a result, regardless of the educational achievement of Indigenous Australians, the tendency is to only employ Indigenous people who have learned to think white. This is evident in the disertations of many Indigenous PhD graduates where they have had to adopt the Western centric need to position Indigenous people as the other - writing as though they are 'white' and their own mob is the others.

The reality of education for Indigenous Australians is that they either have to embrace mainstream culture and knowledge and the subjugation of their own, or accept short term token jobs where the academic qualifications they have attained are continually under suspicion of not being 'real'. Assimilation in education is endemic and is really, 'it is either the white way or the wrong way'.