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]