Well expressed Joe. I agree.

It is just so sad that political correctness has already destroyed the chances of many young people by consigning them to remain in toxic situations simply because policy decrees they must be kept within their 'culture'. Things have to change so that children trapped in dysfunctional situations are given the chance to receive a half decent education along with adequate nutrition and other care. If the parents or extended family can't or won't provide then those kids really need to be given to someone else - regardless of race or creed if insufficient indigenous carers, who will give them a stable secure long term home.

Thanks, Jennifer. I'm not so sure that it's a matter of political correctness, insidious as that may be. If anything, so it appears to me, Indigenous people are very fragmented, leaderless, and with very different historical and geographical backgrounds, and so are at least as likely to think for themselves, and to make their own choices over identity.

But to cautiously agree partly with one of your earlier observations, this current generation (born, say, after 1985) may be far more likely to wear their Aboriginal identity much more lightly, for a number of reasons:

* they are much more likely than before to have a non-Aboriginal parent, and have both parents working, not to mention growing up in an urban environment;

* they are much more likely to have predominantly non-Aboriginal friends, mates, lovers, by virtue of being a 4 % minority;

* they are much more likely to be going right through secondary school and on to university;

* most significantly, they would have far less knowledge of, and exposure to, the discrimination and poverty that ruled the lives of their parents and grandparents.

So, as you suggest, they may develop a sense of identity which is similar to yours. On the other hand, in my experience, Aboriginal graduates tend to become more, not less, aware, of their Aboriginal identity after they graduate, more confident of it, and perhaps to pass it more consciously and explicitly onto their children.

As well, don't forget that many non-Aboriginal people who marry into the Aboriginal community (that's how it seems) become very committed to the Aboriginal side of issues (I don't mean scams like the Hindmarsh Island Bridge and others) and are a sort of de facto addition to the Aboriginal population. You'd be amazed how many that adds up to.

So it can get pretty complicated :)

Joe

Dear Divine Ms_n,

Ah, sorry, I read 'political correctness' and went off.

Yes, you are right about toxic environments for some Aboriginal children - there's those two populations again ! I'll always be on the Left, I think, but I'm appalled at what pseudo-Left policies have done to people in remote areas, and how brainless and ham-fisted policy-makers have been about welfare policies in general: surely, the aim should be to get people off welfare as quickly as possible by providing pathways through training and education, and relocation assistance, to get back into work ? Thankfully, Aboriginal people themselves, to a large extent, have circumvented those policies and gone on to higher study and professional careers, no thanks to the Left who would consign them back to the settlements, learning their dead languages and trying to resurrect their long-gone cultural practices, in the modern world.

Another angle: if it had been your great-grandmother who was Chinese, and her husband had shot through, leaving her to raise a handful of daughters, who each in turn married whitefellas, who each in turn shot through, it may be that a sense of Chinese identity would have been much stronger, more keenly felt, with your grandmother and mother being much more aware of who they WEREN'T, i.e. they weren't considered to be pure-white. In a racist society, after all, one must be pure-white in order to be white.

I look forward to the day when people feel free and easy enough to claim any number of ancestries, as long as there is no financial benefit in it. I'm happy to claim Irish and Scottish ancestry, and perhaps others as well - even English (northern, of course). That's probably how our descendants will view their own ancestors, as Australia becomes an ethnically richer country and inter-marriage increases rapidly, over the next couple of generations. I look forward to younger generations developing identities which are not forged/forced by inequality, discrimination and racism, but are borne lightly, with ease and pride.

Cheers, Jennifer,

Joe

Loudmouth "I look forward to the day when people feel free and easy enough to claim any number of ancestries, as long as there is no financial benefit in it."

That is what I bitch about. The so called aboriginals who live hereabouts generally are no worse off than the working class whites, but they do get a financial benefit if they wish to attend classes at the local TAFE. The whites have to pay fees which the aboriginals do not.

David

"I'm not so sure that it's a matter of political correctness, insidious as that may be. If anything, so it appears to me, Indigenous people are very fragmented, leaderless, and with very different historical and geographical backgrounds, and so are at least as likely to think for themselves, and to make their own choices over identity."

Of course you are correct about historical and geographical backgrounds. My direct experience is restricted to Qld. 200 years ago if a SE Qld aborigine was transported to the top end and left there he would unlikely speak the same language as the locals. Also no guarantee he'd be treated in a friendly fashion. Forced close habitation of different tribal groups remains a source of conflict in some areas today. The one advantage - with few exceptions they speak a common language.

BTW I'm not "Jennifer" whoever she or he may be. Barking up the wrong tree "Joe"

David,

Yes, I do look forward to the day.

Divine Ms_n, Sorry, I wonder who Jennifer is then .... I'm still Joe, though :)

In the 'settled' parts of Australia, the invasion/settlement was so fast - fifty years in parts of NSW, five and ten years in most of SA - occupation was so total and the economic, political and technological influences of the arrivals so comprehensive, that traditional cultural practices soon became unfeasible and, in any case, supplanted or abandonned and replaced very rapidly. The last full speaker of Ngarrindjeri, around the lower Murray and Lakes, was born barely forty years after 'settlement', the last men initiated ten years earlier, and even then in a very abbreviated ceremony.

Yes, you're right about speaking a common language, and that language, for good or ill, was and is English. The Protector down here was reporting as early as 1845 ('settlement' commencing in 1836-1837) that Aboriginal people from different groups already tended to speak to each other in English, with much increased mobility across much greater spaces, using introduced forms of travel, horse, ship and, within another ten years, rail.

To get back to Sara's point, having different Census forms endangers the integrity of any data collected, and makes analysis that much more difficult, and really isn't necessary in 2011. Personnel could have been trained up to guide people through the standard form, to maintain that data integrity. There seems to be a never-ending desire to treat people as fundamentally and forever different on the one hand, and any data collected concerning them to be of no real consequence or value. I hope that this discriminatory practice won't be implemented in the next Census.

Joe