Remote communities rarely viable to economic standard as enjoyed in most major communities and cities.

Reasonable living standard are possible.

To raise living standards where do the monies come from ?

Building a house, or a business needs loans, funds very hard to get without leases !

Corporate Land Trust managers refuse to issue leases on reasonable and rational terms, to those seeking them.

Refusal is to maintain dominance by leaderships to apply extortionate pressures on those within communities who try.

Communities fail - or is it refuse, to look to themselves to raise their own funds towards these improvements...

To help communities need apply efforts to investigate then publish why numerous attempts to develop or maintain enterprises in these communities fail.

Or have you noticed so many similar problems ?

People desiring to improve things get to work, try to improve things.

As progress commences, extortion starts, demands to share benefits achieved from others efforts, ignoring payments distributed for costs like wages, rents, and others.

Most 'concerned Australians' remain ignorant concerning realities of "community life".

Much ignorance a product of the "permit" approach.

Same "permit" approach denies "Traditional Owners" their right to have their own family, friends, or tradespersons visit them in their homes.

For these rights must obtain leases from corporate Land Trusts... corporate Land Trusts which refuse to issue them.

"But if we give them leases we give them enforceable rights and responsibilities..."

Residents within what purported "their homes" still denied otherwise basic rights to obtain protection through AVO/DVO's these denied as lacking leases with right refuse others to access "their home" so protect selves and acquired property.


This blatant racist travesty is maintained by Canberra.

Legal aid is refused where it challenges this travesty.

Indigenour is a term favored by those supporting, promoting and practicing, racism, apartheid, actions which deny equality of opportunity.

Equality of opportunity, does not require identical results.

Equality of opportunity does demand effort.

polpak .. is there anything stopping you from physically leaving and going somewhere else?

Lot's of people have to leave where they prefer to reside, and live somewhere, where it is not optimum, to earn an income.

Many people sacrifice a lot of relocate, leaving friends and family, all manner of connections and may even have to start again with very little.

Why is it someone else's fault? (Canberra) That some people can't seem to take responsibility for their own happiness and survival.

If you leave the system you find isn't working for you, then when enough people leave, it collapses - it seems the reason it works, is dependence on it in the first place. That dependence seems to be based on entitlement, many feel entitled to share of whatever, or a part of whatever.

If you had nothing to be entitled to, could you move on?

The author's solution, as many before it, is another forum, how novel .. except, it's all been done before, usually somewhere else, staying in nice hotels or a resort. Then having follow up meetings and conferences before a complaint or two to the government or the UN, pick whichever suits the agenda best.

"The Rev Dr Djiniyini Gondarra OAM and other Elders from the Northern Territory have called for a Prescribed-Communities Representative Forum to be established to work with the government in all future planning.

What a good idea." yum, yum, yum .. for the participants, yes of course.

All this does is keep the old system going, nothing changes, and it keeps privilege and power in the hands of a few who don't want any change as that undermines their positions.

So all future planning will basically just recycle what works for the planners, never for the community. Yes, make sure the "right people" are involved, and it will always be Canberra's fault, and nothing changes.

Yes, the voices of Aboriginal people should be heard. But again in this piece the author, to support her position, resorts to quotes from the same few more powerful persons who are already privileged with access to media space. Others, not heard remain annonymous. Too often it's forgotten that those Aboriginal people with most to tell are likely to be least visible and not sought out for their views and experiences. Uncomfortable truths are unwelcome. Perhaps non-Aboriginal people who enjoy generous benefits from working in Aboriginal organisations, or as academics, might hold a mirror to themselves and face responsibility for their own part in perpetuating second-rate services and squandering money intended for Aboriginal benefit.

It is very worrying that Indigenous affairs 'flashes into the headlines' all too briefly, and is gone again, undiscussed. Given the two Indigenous populations, one working and the other bogged in lifelong welfare, one would have thought that Indigenous affairs desperately requires protracted debate of complex issues, rather than being swept under the carpet yet again.

Here it is well after 5.30 pm and only three other people have contributed to this thread all day. People - all too few - shout at each other across the Gap without coming to grips with some of the most crucial issues. For example, after forty years of 'self-determination', and 'community' consultation, who asks: are these part of the solution, or are they part - or all - of the problem ?

The author implicitly criticises the view that remote settlements, and out-stations, are economically unviable. Well, are any viable ? Anywhere in Australia ? After forty bl00dy years ? She implies that remote 'communities' are healthy places for Aboriginal women and children. Then why is the hospitalisation rate for women, and the suicide rates for children, so much higher - twenty, thirty, forty times higher - than they are for working Aboriginal people, and for other Australians ?

She also claims that '... the policy of concentrating Aboriginal Peoples in large settlements [is] a failure.' And has the policy of dispersing Aboriginal people (or encouraging their dispersal) to utterly unviable out-stations been successful ? I would suggest that neither policy has worked.

What might work ? Given the appallingly low educational and work-ready skills of most adults, skills which appear to be actually declining, maybe nothing will work, except the slow bleeding of desperate and more enterprising people to towns where they can get menial jobs, which can at least give them a toe-hold on the economy, a base from which to send their kids to decent schools, and a distant promise that - if not in this generation than in the next, or the next - they can drag themselves out of welfare dependence.

Good luck with that.

[contd]

[contd]

That might be the best than anyone can expect, if people have minimal skills, if their children are 'learning' to follow in their footsteps, and if policy (and bureaucrats, Black and white) seem determined to make people ever more dependent. That's the legacy of Dr Coombs, championned by Dr Altman: short, miserable, unhealthy lives of violence, degradation and desperation.

Meanwhile, predominantly in the south, and in urban areas where most Aboriginal people live, more than 26,000 Indigenous people have graduated from universities and moved into professional careers. By 2020, there could be fifty thousand such graduates. Every year since 2005, university commencement numbers have risen - by an average of 6-7 % p.a. - and every year now, roughly 35-40 % of the median age-group commences university study. That's called mass tertiary education. And even with a third of the entire Indigenous population locked in welfare-dependence, it's the other two-thirds who have achieved that.

Few Indigenous graduates will go to communities, or stay there for long. They have mostly been born in cities, and they will stay in the cities. They did not cause the problems in remote settlements, and should feel absolutely no obligation to devote their lives to fixing them up: really, that is ultimately up to the people there themselves. Otherwise, what on earth does self-determination mean ?

But will that happen in remote settlements ? Clearly, no. In my view, after half a lifetime dedicated to the ideals of self-determination (like a fool), I suspect now that 'communities' will wither away. Good or bad, like it or not, the future will belong to individual working Indigenous people, individually making their own way in Australia's open society, coming together as they wish with other Indigenous people, marrying people who they associate with, fashioning what it means to be Indigenous/Aboriginal as they go.

Let's be clear: on the whole, working Aboriginal people, mostly 'southern' or urban, usually with professional or trades skills, have similar health and other indices as other Australians. So aggregating data for all Aboriginal people confounds any sensible description of the 'Gap'.

Joe

loudmouth, the "apology" was probably the worst thing that could have happened, for years the belief was built up that it would somehow help, that it was the epitome of acts necessary to repair a raft of imagined wrongs.

In reality though, it was just a political tool of the ALP and the left to beat up on the Howard government and conservatives, so obsessed by idealism they were, and after it was delivered by PM Rudd, with the appropriate theater and humiliation of Brendon Nelson, do you think conservatives should pursue it?

The apology and the way it was done, with maximum effect to win the daily news cycle, the holy grail and enduring obsession of the ALP, disconnected more than half the population in a single moment, but the media LOVED IT!

The left believe it's over, nothing more needs doing, the conservatives were humiliated, the left and aboriginal activists turned their backs on them, nothing symbolizes their rejection of the conservatives like that did.

The required set piece was delivered, so now what .. what do you mean that didn't fix it, but the act, the idealism, the humiliation .. you mean there's more? Why? What?

So, there you have it, the left took over, accused the conservatives of failure, and delivered the much lauded apology .. and it was good. For everyone but the actual people who live in poverty and squalor at the mercy of all the do-gooders and finger waggers, who will discuss this .. at the next forum, meeting, conference, community gathering, hotel resort .. trough.

If the aborigines cling to populism and idealists, they will get what they have now .. nothing, and nothing changes as Amicus says.

Jenni,

Aboriginal people who enjoy generous benefits from working in Aboriginal organisations,
or as academics, “most certainly will not” hold a mirror to themselves
and face responsibility for their own part in perpetuating second-rate services
and squandering money intended for Aboriginal benefit.

And indeed why should they !?

They are victims too !

Arthur Bell. For more info www.whitc.info

Sorry Michelle, but those of us who have worked in country and city Aboriginal Communities know that having representative Aboriginal people speaking for all other Aboriginals as to how things should be done, hasn't worked up until now.

The problem is that there are so many different groups of Aboriginal people, including tribal groups and family groups, that one person or group is not welcome to speak for another, as a general rule.

Even when a whole Aboriginal community 'agrees' to help build new houses for their own people in that community, there is never any surprise when the houses are soon trashed.
The blame is always placed on '...that other family'.

The only way out of poverty and welfare dependence is widespread, modern education of the new generation of kids.

Many of the Aboriginal academics and political leaders of this country were either members of the Stolen Generation, or the children of those people.
Rightly or wrongly, these people were given an education, and then used that knowledge to try to help their own people.

But there aren't enough of these people to really make a difference.
I believe that if we ensure today's Aboriginal kids (and children of other poor socio-economic groups) are given the good education their parents mostly never got.

Dare I say it... even if it means having those kids attend boarding school during school terms, if they are too far away from regular schools... and sometimes, even if they aren't.

Professor Jon Altman among others referenced in this article are hardly the kind you infer jenni. Do you know his material. Have you read some of the submissions for The Native Title Reform Bill. Actually, do you even know what you are talking about. Sorry, you may be well meaning but the point is that we do need everyone to discuss this issue.

http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/committee/legcon_ctte/native_title_three/submissions.htm

OLO authors can do no more than put some material out there. You can see with only eight responses to this topic be it written well or not there is a distinct lack of interest in discussing the issues Indigenous people are facing.

Don’t abandon Aboriginal homelands - Sign Petition. "Right now the government is stripping funds for essential services from traditional Aboriginal homelands. This will effectively force families into larger towns and cities like Alice Springs." In fact you could even say Indigenous basic rights to essential services are being peddled and underwritten in Mining deals, at the cost of the greater picture or an accumulative equity in the profit margin, issues that Jon Altman and many others are scrutinising.

http://www.amnesty.org.au/indigenous-rights/dontabandonhomelands/?

Having worked in Indigenous Communities, I cant tell you how complex the issues are at ground levels. The 30 year Development experiment must end. As someone said on face book the other day, 'if Indigenous people didn't have welfare, most white people wouldn't have jobs'. I tell you the "gap" is not about distance. I stand by most of what John Altman has written over the years in particular, alongside Amnesty, Human Rights and many of the Indigenous leaders who tread a fine line between speaking out on the one hand and not being stonewalled on the other. Ask Marcia Langton for example.

http://www.kooriweb.org/foley/resources/pdfs/131.pdf

Read her essay linked abov: "The resource curse" from a few years ago and then write to her yourself and ask what she thinks about the Kimberley Land Councils position today or, in the Pilbara for example.

https://www.facebook.com/Jedamann?sk=photos

For a basic visual treatment go look round the photo's and comments on the FB page links above.

http://www.miacat.com/

miacat, is it lack of interest or just not wanting to be attacked and abused?

I'm waiting for the usual aboriginal industry bullies to arrive accusing everyone of racism, and that everyone should just pipe down unless you sing the industry songs.

I'm very sorry for the current generation of kids who , because of the industry prejudices, cannot get access to technology or a decent view of the world. They have to be kept in the settlements so as to feed the industry of wise nodding heads, who will all have another meeting to discuss this terrible turn of events, caused by the government.

People lose interest when they see that it doesn't matter what is done, there is no progress.

The catch cry is that the government must do something .. well they do, constantly.

now we need the people to do something, without being showered with money too, because that hasn't worked either.

As abhorrent as it may be to some people, I think they have to try something different, and get out of the isolated settlements, and join mainstream Australia, regardless of the loss of culture .. whatever that is.

Perhaps when we see the aboriginal people changing, for the better, we'll take up interest again, but at the moment, after the apology and all the rest, what's the point?

The remote communities are an out of sight solution, it will do nothing for integration. The preservation of culture has nothing to do with isolation. It certainly keeps a distance away from grog. The hardest part of integration is tribalism. If one clan can't understand the other, how can they integrate, and that includes the white clan. White people have given the indig far too much, things that they never asked for, in the way of disease, grog, so it is our problem, and so far we have failed.

“You seldom listen to me, and when you do you don't hear, and when you do hear you hear wrong, and even when you hear right you change it so fast that it's never the same”. - Marjorie Kellogg

There are people who have interest in keeping the situation of the Australian Aborigine as prostrate as it is.

Restoring to them their dignity would put into question the very Constitution of this country and, before it, the various organizations that claim huge amounts from the State and the people of Australia, only to add more bureaucratic chains to the Aborigines’ neck, in the name of ‘Charity’.

Now even American business sharks, who never spared a thought for the Aborigine of their country, have scented that there is money to be made here. Last May they held a money making ceremony at the State Library of Victoria. www.yalary.org is their address, had you a heart for their hunger.

What we are all missing here is the bigger picture. Be it the human sciences, geo-sciences or geographical arguments in "population". On recent Population distribution reports alone, there is a need for decentralised growth in communities. The problem with the above comments that believe Indigenous people all ought to migrant to the cities is unconvincing.

Many small communities networking their needs and community enterprise options is a more solid outcome for social and economic cohesive Sustain-Ability, then over-crowded urban scenarios that are unsuitable for many, especially those who resist the choice.

What I identify with is indeed "industry prejudices, cannot get access to technology or a decent view of the world". That is a planning and access issue. The core of the battle.

Everything in Development at present be it through the Millennium Development Goals,

http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/

The many Sustain-Ablity socioeconomic pathways to world change forums advocate a need to change what we are doing and how we are doing it. This is about a "political will to Act", not one that carries on as we always have with ideas that are not working as a "whole".

Strengthening communities, be they Indigenous or non-Indigenous is what we are looking at. Indigenous people have so much to offer to tourism and services alone.

http://www.kooriweb.org/foley/resources/pdfs/131.pdf

As Marcia Langton has said, "The mineral sector should not be regarded as the backbone of the economy; instead it should be viewed as a bonus with which to accelerate economic growth and healthy structural change."

Australia is at a critical turning point in its own history. The longer it fails to opt for short-term resource market options the harder it will become for future generations to pick up the pieces in a market that is proving unsustainably for many.

I encourage you not to give up. To face the bull by the horns and say it how it really is.

http://www.miacat.com/

Consider time and money$ wasted abusing the A* term.

Pre-67 we aimed to STOP, to extinguish the ability for government to continue abusing the A* term, stop them continuing to qualify our rights, our responsibilities and our opportunities - all otherwise available when such racist approaches removed.

Government still busy defending their earlier wrongs, whilst maintain same approach.

Opposition still busy complaining about Governments actions, with hypocritical claims by flavor changes can provide cures to correct damages from their shared earlier wrongs.

Nobody requires help just for being A* !

Indeed is ongoing insult to many who do succeed - despite government assistance.

Anyone who satisfies standard assessments entitled to assistance.

Why package same as A* assistance, other than to promote racism ?

Families living in these communities continue to be denied their right to live as families, their rights to have family, friends and tradespeople visit them.

Media still obstructed from accessing communities, to contain the spread of what does happen.

Where else do visits by one to another at home require community (phone box meeting?) permissions ?

This is the policy of racism,, by racists with same old excuse "we are trying to help you..."

Communities only need new signs: "Arbeit Macht Frei"

Chaos within communities known and foreseeable consequences from same pathway to chaos previously constructed and maintained by government.

Vocal support from those implementing these policies, following government edicts, following party lines, whether done through blind obedience, more cynical personal ambitions, or plain old ignorance, matters little when same pathways chosen.

Seek to Liberate communities ?

Then demand valid leases, these will give community residents same responsibility, same accountability, over their own futures as enjoyed in the rest of Australia.

Oh ! You do not support valid leases, because they give people rights and responsibilities...

Suzeonline,

Thanks. I was a bit taken aback by many aspects of your statement that:

'Many of the Aboriginal academics and political leaders of this country were either members of the Stolen Generation, or the children of those people.

'Rightly or wrongly, these people were given an education, and then used that knowledge to try to help their own people.'

If by 'Stolen Generation', you mean 'children/babies taken into care', I'm not so sure that it is accurate. Certainly not here at the universities in Adelaide.

What do you mean, that 'rightly or wrongly, these people were given an education' ? That's an astounding thing to write: 'these people' weren't 'given' an education any more than other academics, on the one hand, and on the other hand, why 'wrongly' ? How can it be wrong for Indigenous people to study to the highest levels ? Perhaps you didn't mean that how it sounds ;)

Then: ' ... then used that knowledge to try to help their own people.' Why should they ? Did they cause the problems that welfare-dependent people have ? If not, why should they cop the responsibility for catering with those problems ?

Back in the early forties, in the context of a war-time labour shortage, it occurred to some authorities at missions and government settlements, that some of the Aboriginal kids there were pretty bright, so those kids were sent off to teachers' college or nursing schools, in order to be trained and brought back, to spend their entire working lives stuck back on the missions and settlements. So the first nurses and teachers graduated from about 1944 onwards. But surely we have gone past the thinking that Aboriginal kids will be 'given' an education only on condition that they go back and spend their lives in remote settlements ?

Thankfully, those days are in fact long gone, and the great majority of Indigenous university graduates will make their own way in the work-force, working 'for their people' if they wish, but like everybody else, pleasing themselves where and for whom they work :)

I don't want a reset relationship with aborigines, in fact I don't want any relationship with them, other than the few living in my district. We get on fine thank you.

I don't want to force them into anything, or help them into anything, probably the same thing actually.

Even more, I don't want to pay for the things they do, or don't do.

I'm perfectly happy to leave them alone, my only requirement of them is that they pay themselves, for what they want. But even more, I most definitely do not want to give another cent to gooders to go out & force their wishes & solutions upon them.

I think it is probable that the majority of aborigines would prefer all do gooders would get to hell out of their lives. They would probably not mind if the do gooders left their nice vehicles behind when they left.

Yes Loudmouth, looking back at my fast-fired-back post, it doesn't sound that good!

What I meant to say was that many of those Aboriginals who were removed from their families as children, by often misguided government policies of the day , did get a good education and were able to use it to become Judges, Lawyers, Political leaders etc.
I found that if I met some Aboriginal families who were as proactive as any other family in Australia at making sure their kids went to school at least, they invariably told me that they, or their ancestors were part of the 'Stolen Generation', or had been taught in Mission schools.

They were then able to speak out, or be role models, for their own people, even if they didn't work directly with Aboriginal people.

I was trying to make the point that a good education when they are kids now, might go a long way to helping the next generation to be as much likely to be in a good job as adults as any other group in Australia.

I am not saying that being taken from their families back then was a great idea at all, but merely saying that education certainly helped some of them.

I don't think there is any other answer to the current dilemma at all.
Education is the answer...

Thanks, Suze, I apologise for my abruptness: I was trying to squeeze my comments into 350 words and sacrificed etiquette for expression :)

Up through the sixties, Indigenous people were still living mostly in pretty dire poverty, poverty which we wouldn't recognise now - real poverty, not squalor. As well, there was still no single mother's benefit, that came in in about 1971 ?

So yes, there were many families which were destitute at various times, with large families, and single mothers had no means to support a young family, so of course - just as with Whites, and on a greater scale - many Indigenous babies and kids were put int ocare, usually for short periods, but of course, for some children if they were adopted, then until they reached 18.

I'm sceptical about any deliberate policy of 'stealing' the children: the destitution of large families, and no financial support for single mothers - i.e. neglect by the state, rather than any deliberate plot - probably explains why the great majority of children affected were taken into care. Policy by neglect, not by evil calculation.

I'm puzzled why you equate 'Stolen Generation' with being taught in Mission schools. By definition, as far as I know, being taught in Mission schools meant that children, with their families, were living on Missions (and/or government settlements, also colloquially known as 'Missions'). Living on missions, children would have been immersed in family and community life, and surrounded by whatever cultural practices were still around.

Actually, as an atheist, I have greater respect for missionaries and Mission schooling, the more I learn. Of course, they were Bible-bashers, but who else was going out there to devote their lives to working with Aboriginal people ? The Left ? The unions ? I don't think so. Taplin was at Point McLeay for twenty years and died there. Gribble was at Yarrabah for sixty years. The Strehlows were at Hermannsburg for fifty-odd years. Not just in 8-hour-a-day, 5-days a week jobs, but around the clock, 24/7. Wonderful people.

[TBC]

[contd.]

Suze,

Yes, education is one of the major keys - I'm very circumspect about naming anything as the Silver Bullet, the One Great Panacea. But so much flows from getting a good education, for Black or White. Probably the vast majority of Indigenous home-owners battled to get a good education, I'd put money on it.

And really, is anything at all working in remote settlements ? Anything ? Surely on the odd settlement, here or there ? Or can the history of southern people, leaving missions and settlements after the War and up through the sixties, working their guts out on whatever paid for their subsistence, be roughly replicated by people in remote areas ?

Or is it already too late, too difficult, for most of them ? No, that's too horrible to contemplate. Surely there must be pathways to employment, and alternatives to lifelong welfare and degradation.

Joe

Actually Loudmouth, I met Aboriginal people who were 'stolen' from their original families and lands, but were never adopted out or sent into service on stations or other white houses.

They ended up in what they called 'mission houses' (at least here in WA anyway), where they were cared for by Nuns.

These kids usually had an education of sorts, as opposed to those 'facilities' where the boys were cared for by Brothers, where they were used mainly as free labour.

I too despair of ever finding an answer to the current deplorable state of many Aboriginal communities in both our Northern communities and in the Southern Cities as well

Thanks Suze, that clears that up. 'Church homes' rather than 'mission houses ?

It was common practice in the fifties and beyond - since the 1860s really - at some mission stations here in SA for people to go out to work during the week, while the missionaries looked after the children in dormitories and at schools on the mission. At the weekends, the families were re-united. That is, the kids were virtually surrounded by other Aboriginal people, during school, after school and at night, and on weekends. Usually, on mission stations, missionaries were outnumbered by fifty to one or more.

So on those stations, children were, by definition, not taken away to anywhere else - in fact, they could spend most of their childhood years entirely immersed in an environment of siblings, cousins, uncles, aunties and grannies.

It's noteworthy that the first secondary school graduates, and later the first tertiary graduates, tended to come from missions rather than government settlements. I think the missionaries tended to have a far more down-to-earth and day-to-day and realistic approach to Aboriginal people and their futures than government employees did. Of course, this is at least now forty or fifty years in the past.

But this is now, not then. The great majority of the Indigenous population is now urban, perhaps a majority is living in or close to metropolitan areas. A minority of such 'Southern' people are in similar situations, in lifelong welfare, to most of the people in remote communities. However, in their case, they are far more likely to be in contact with working Aboriginal people, relations and in-laws, and to at least know of Aboriginal university students and graduates. They can't pretend that they are oblivious, or that such opportunities are too distant: their relations have seized those opportunities, why can't they ?

Yes, the miracle ingredient: effort !

Joe

Well Loudmouth, I would imagine there are apathetic people in all ethnic groups.

Aboriginal people are human, just like the rest of us.
Some will make an effort to improve themselves, and some won't.

The fact of rampant racism by employers when selecting new employees for jobs could be behind some of the apathy among Aboriginal people.

Hi Suze,

Yes, you're right: effort, some do it, some don't. I suspect - as a total cynic - that the reports of Aboriginal people starving in the APY Lands here in SA is another example of people calculating that it might pay off not to help themselves, to rely on the state now to feed them, when - as the Minister here has pointed out - they could easily re-open vegetable gardens. After all, the dastardly missionaries busted themselves to set up successful vegetable gardens, fruit orchards, chook yards, small herds of milking cows for milk, and flocks of sheep for meat, on almost every mission in Australia.

With more modern equipment, why can't it be done now ? Modern equipment ? Christ, a few forks and shovels, a few packets of seeds, connect up a few hoses and bingo ! Fertiliser from those sewage ponds on almost every 'community' could be treated and dug in. Even with a small rotary hoe, a 'community' could get a basic garden started with less than five thousand dollars, it's not bl00dy rocket science. Ah yes, the miracle ingredient.....

Somebody should tackle this issue of whether or not Aboriginal people in remote communities are actually 'in poverty'. Squalor, yes but maybe poverty, no. People in remote areas receive standard welfare payments, and correct me if I'm wrong, but they also receive the various remote-area allowances: the education allowance can be as much as $ 24,000 per year. And do people also get mining royalties or not ? As well as national parks royalties ? And pay low rents ? Have I got all that wrong ?

Thirty years or so ago,

[TBC]

[contd]

Suze,

.... I was doing research into the development of self-determination at a community where we had lived for some years.

As an afterthought, I did an income study, something totally unethical, you couldn't possibly do it these days. I was appalled to find that the median weekly income there was equal to the Australian median income.

I went over and over the figures (I didn't count some UB, do-gooder donations of clothing, 'black' economic inputs, etc.) but there it was. As well, rents were about a quarter of what would have been paid 'outside'. So effectively, the community as a whole was on something like 20 % better than median average income.

It was very traumatic, totally rocking my whole ideological framework. I thought of drowning myself, which you may think was not a bad idea. I applied for a taxi licence, but eventually mustered the courage to come back and try to understand what it all meant. I heard similar accounts of income equity in other parts of SA, including the APY lands, as it happens, as well as in Adelaide itself.

Forty-odd years ago, the wonderful policy scientist Aaron Wildavsky (he who invented the term 'Speaking Truth to Power') did an income study in Israel, examining the relation between income and people's spending behaviour. He found people on low incomes who could still save, and people who couldn't. He found people on high incomes who could save, and people who couldn't. Merely because people can't (?) afford to feed their kids, does not necessarily mean that there isn't money slopping around for more important things like gambling and grog.

Perhaps other totally unethical (and possibly illegal) income studies should be carried out in a number of remote 'communities' to get a better idea of whether or not 'communities' are in poverty, or in squalor ?

Hey, I'm retired, i can write such things :)

Joe Lane

Easy enough to start vegetable gardens in communities.

Problem is without valid leases from your corporate land trust for your garden land you have NO ability to stop others coming in and taking your garden produce.

Living in houses without leases makes it hard to retain acquired assets for same reason.

Without valid leases from our corporate landowning "Trust" we have NO ability to exclude others...

Without a valid lease from our corporate landowning "Trust" we have no right to our own visitors - family, friends, tradespeople !

This is a product of Parliament(s).

Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) is the corporate owner/titleholder for 103,000 square kilometres under the South Australian 1981 Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Land Rights Act.

Various corporate "Land Trust" entities became owners by title shuffling under the Commonwealth's Aboriginal Land Rights Act (Northern Territory) Act 1976.

These acts allows these corporate "Land Trust"s to grant leases.

Exists NO requirement for them to issue leases.

Result is our corporate "Land Trust"'s amongst Australia's wealthiest and largest landlords with almost ALL their tenants living in dwellings/houses constructed and maintained using public funds, whilst almost ALL tenants denied valid leases because "...giving them leases gives them rights..."

Rarely do either APY or ALR(NT) corporate landowners issue valid leases, not even to "Traditional Owners", indeed they rarely issues leases to anyone - except governments !

This main reason development FAILS.

With leases people CAN develop themselves - despite our Taliban.

University statistics for 2010 enrolments have just been published today by DEEWR, 2 Sept 2011.

They show a rise of 12.5 % in Indigenous commencements (to 4,297), and 8.7 % in total Indigenous enrolments (to 10,012), in award-level courses.

Since 2005 and the demise of enrolments in Aboriginal-focussed courses, annual Indigenous commencements in award-level courses have risen by 43 %, and enrolments overall by 32 %.

There are about 8,000 Indigenous people in the median age-group, i.e. 26-year-olds. So the equivalent of more than an entire age-group is enrolled at any one time at universities.

While many on the pseudo-Left may be lamenting this sad state of affairs, the decline of culture, etc., I'm pretty sure that Indigenous students won't be :)

Joe

Oh dear, fools rush in, don't they ? I made an elementary adding mistake - commencements in 2010 in all award-level courses were 4,197 (equivalent to about half of the median age-group), a rise of 9.84 %. At that rate, commencement numbers will double by 2018.

Still pretty respectable :)

No Joe, I don't wish you had drowned yourself... far quicker to use a gun! No, not really :)

Yes, I had been aware that many Aboriginal people are on the same incomes as many other Australians, and that the main problems are,
how to manage their money, and how to keep it for themselves and not give it away to any family member or close friend who asks for it.

It is very frustrating and is easy to wonder WHY they can't manage financially like many other ethnic groups, as a whole.

I think though that they are no different to any other family that have brought their kids up in a certain way for many generations, and are used to not saving money, not working for money and using what money they do have for the wrong items.

Again, it is only education in all these matters that will help drag them out of the poverty and despair that pervades their communities.
Throwing money at them doesn't work...