[contd]

Meanwhile, more than 26,000 Indigenous people have graduated from universities, 90 % in the last twenty years. Nobody forced them. I wonder if Pilger tells his gulls that: the figure is not hard to calculate.

Some 80,000 Indigenous people have either been to university, 10,000 are still there, 26,000 have graduated. Supposedly, 70,000 Indigenous people are currently in TAFE courses. So that's half of the adult population. Where could that be matched - Norway ? Canada ?

The great majority of Indigenous people in Australia live in towns and cities, and they are not going to go back to the bush: get used to it, Pilger. No more apartheid for them ! No more exclusion ! No more 'helpless victims' !

And meanwhile, in the idyllic conditions which the Pilgers would rave about in their ignorance, out in the remote communities - where apartheid is alive and thriving - life is desperate, miserable and full of fear and deprivation. Alice Springs is the murder capital of the world, and the deaths are almost all Aboriginal. Yes/no ?

Due to absolutely crap diets and little exercise, Aboriginal people in the NT have the highest diabetes rate in the world. Coca-Cola used to boast that the people in the NT were the highest consumers of its crap anywhere in the world. All self-inflicted. There are more dialysis machines in Alice Springs (population: 20,000) than in Sydney (population: 4 million), so I've heard. But you won't here that from little Johnny.

Stay in Britain, Pilger: pander to people's gullibility there and you'll do okay.

Bully, the birthers in the US won't believe, ever, that Obama was born in the US, no matter what. That birth certificate is a forgery, they'll say. So it is with prejudiced people, who have already made up their minds long ago. Nothing will change them.

Joe

One further point of interest (to me, anyway) is the statement that there are 90 indigenous peoples of the world, and that Aboriginal Australians have the lowest life expectancy of all of these groups.

Besides the obvious but frivolous claims (i.e. surely Germans who can trace their ancestry to the various tribes who squabbled with the Romans can consider themselves 'indigenous'), I can't work out where this number comes from. Papua New Guinea contains more than 90 distinct groups; are they all grouped together under the hood of 'Melanesian'?

The life expectancy for Aboriginal Australian males is 59.4 (http://www.aihw.gov.au/indigenous-life-expectancy/). Not sure about the reliability of the source, but the Kalahari Bushmen have a life expectancy of 45-50 (http://www.kalahari-meerkats.com/fileadmin/files/guides/Bushmen_light.pdf). Are they no longer indigenous? Again, I can't vouch for the source, but the Samburu of Kenya apparently have a life expectancy of 49 (http://www.icrossinternational.org/downloads/tba_training_samburu_district.pdf).

I don't doubt that Pilger's source identifies only 90 indigenous peoples; nor do I doubt that the Australian Aborigines have the lowest life expectancy of those 90 groups. I do, however, question the validity of that source and wonder if it has a political agenda. Unless Mr Pilger drops by and identifies his source, we may never be able to make that judgement for ourselves.

Loudmouth:
"When and where ? One example. And 'beyond' ? The seventies ? When and where ? One example."
You can't argue "n!gger-hunts" (interesting that the n-word is designated a "profanity" [how times have changed] but that it was ok for Pilger) just stopped dead, or treat anecdotal evidence as impermissible if you like, though granted Pilger isn't inhibited by a want of direct evidence. But I've married into the bush twice, and I don't think some of the racists I've met would have any qualms with such sport if it was permitted today. Let's not forget too that running "undesirables" out of town isn't a long way from n!gger hunts. And in a country where Indians, Asians, Moslems and gays are regularly abused and bashed, I doubt aborigines are spared.
In your next part you deny the saga of the stolen generation even happened! You mean to say it was all a beat-up? I don’t doubt there are legitimate rationalisations one could assert, but neither do I doubt these are predicated on racism of one form and another, that is benign, well-meaning, or similar degrees of malignant racism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolen_Generations
I remember my grandmother once swearing she wasn’t a racist because she spoke to a little black girl at a railway station just as though she was no different from her.

As for your rationalisations of life expectancy, prison populations etc., certainly it’s a matter of lifestyle, but my implicit question above was, and still is, “why” do aborigine’s so disproportionately indulge unhealthy and anti-social lifestyles? And this isn’t just in the bush! Despite the positive spin you put on indigenous education and assimilation into the mainstream, aboriginals in the bush “and” in the cities remain disproportionally an outlaw class, both reviled and rebellious.

...cont.

I think, if I read you right, your trying to encourage the growth of self-respect, empowerment and success among aborigines, as opposed to finding excuses for self-destructive indigenous behaviour, a la Pearson, and this seems the right kind of affirmative policy. But it doesn’t address the malady; the real problem is not generated by the aborigines, it’s generated by a racist white culture (its historical insecurities derived from its incongruousl antipodean location) in which aboriginals are, whether its spoken or unspoken, designated the lowest of the low. They are quite aware of how they are popularly perceived and many, if not all, unconsciously see themselves in the same dark light, or are inhibited at best in their self-fulfilment. At its worst their self-loathing is reminiscent of Freud’s notion of the “death drive”—indeed the whole culture is more or less afflicted by this compulsion imo; though it is more “inflicted” upon them by common perception, including their own.
We live in a competitive culture where the men in particular measure their stature by their material success. “Failed” (materially unsuccessful) white males are prone to various forms of self-destructive behaviour and anti-social assertiveness; how much more self-annihilating then for an aboriginal who perceives himself a failure in his very being? And supposing he can overcome that, he then must compete on a drastically one-sided playing field that will in most instances patronise him while keeping him down, again positively reinforcing his already precarious self-image.

...cont.

Sure things are sweet in universities, and even in later careers for successful graduates—in terms of their insecurities as well as qualifications. But that’s about it for aborigines: high or low; self-transcendence or self-destruction; there is very little equal-opportunity for aboriginals among middle Australia and the off-white-to-blue-collar working classes—the most racist of the lot! Those who do find a place in a white world still have to deal with their repressed demons, and the daily reminders that they’re tolerated rather than included. Well good on those who manage to keep pulling it off day after day; I can’t imagine how hard it must be to overcome against such odds. But as far as I’m concerned aboriginals still live under ideological apartheid. Australian flags dot suburbia, where I live, and flap self-contentedly, uncontestedly! The aboriginal flag, like her people, is an outlaw and God help anyone who flies one!
Pilger is dead right to spell-out the evils perpetrated under Australian colonial rule! And national apologies don’t help if they’re just words. Many many Australians scoff at these apologies and remain perfectly smug in their disgusting bigotry.
By all means urge aborigines to help themselves, to pull themselves up by their boot-straps--despite the fact that the cards are stacked against them! But don’t deny the abuse that’s been inflicted, or the psychological abuse and masochism the victims are still forced to nurse. By doing that you exonerate the abusers and give us moderns nothing to reflect upon and nothing to genuinely regret or apologise for. Perhaps more importantly, by denying or rationalising the actions of the abusers, what do you leave the victims of racism but: "there’s no one to blame but ourselves" :-((