This is the first I've heard of this and I'm really appalled. Surely this is the the most vulnerable group in the country. Like the article says it is critical to gain an accurate snapshot of blood profiles, nutrition levels and renal function. How can the government be serious about closing the gap if it ignores this chance to obtain information? Maybe this information, if it was gathered, would be proof that health clinics are needed in these communities. Maybe there's more to this than I realise but it stinks.

Amanda,

Yes, health clinincs but also dietitians and recreation officers - if self-determination means anything at all, surely it means that people have to take responsibility, to take responsibility for their own PREVENTATIVE health as much as possible, and certainly for their kids' health as much as possible. Better food choices, more exercise - this might do wonders to the health of Indigenous people in remote communities.

Better food - but it's so expensive, you may say. Yes, for anybody, Black or White, out in the sticks. Back in the mission days, the missionaries had the sense to grow much of the food for the community - vegetable gardens, fruit orchards, chook yards for eggs and chickens, a few cows for milk, a flock of sheep for meat. Noel Pearson says that suggestions like vegetable gardens are rubbish, and he may be right, but what does that say about the amount of effort that he knows people are willing to put in ? Or about the willingness by councils to have the gumption to negotiate some form of leasing of land, obviously to Aboriginal enterprises ?

'Expensive' is relative and you may say that people are living in poverty, Amanda. I wonder: standard welfare payments plus mining royalties plus remote area allowances for education etc., plus (if a community has leased out a national park) a share of the park's income for each family - and all for little or no effort. Maybe somebody with courage (obviously not an academic: this would be the end of their career) could stay in a community until they knew it intimately, and then carry out a thorough income survey. Of course, they would then probably have to migrate. But I think we all would be surprised at the outcome.

Of course, only in George Orwell's horror-world of double-speak, lifelong welfare and total dependence on outsiders, would be called 'self-determination'. Aren't you glad we don't live in such a world ........

Joe

It may well be that the decision to exclude indigenous children from blood and urine testing is related to the problem of non–response. It is all very well to say that the ABS should select & stratify samples properly but this has nothing whatever to do with non–response. If the latter is 30% or more then the results are very suspect, mainly because the decision of the child or guardian to have or not have the test done is not a random one. Therefore results are biased in an unknown way. It is far far better and safer to have no data, than data that is non–representative and liable to produce wrong generalisations.

Andrew, a good article, obviously you know what you are talking about. Is this going to exclude all kids claiming aboriginality, or just those aboriginals in the sticks. There needs to be a distinction. In a previous post by Loudmouth who probably knows as much about aboriginals as the rest of the OLO posters put together, he pointed out that the lives of the urban uneducated whites was about equal to the urban uneducated aboriginals and the educated aboriginals were equal to the educated whites.

Joe, you left out the income from running the many cattle stations in the outback, although this took a hit with the ban on the live export fiasco.

Gorufus, better to have a somewhat skewed sample, than no sample at all.

David

Yes sorry, David, it should be remembered that there ARE enterprises operating successfully on Aboriginal land, land which has been leased out by community councils and Indigenous land-holders.

Strange: councils don't seem to have much trouble working out lease arrangements with cattle and mining enterprises and, down here in SA, share farmers. But it seems that to work out the terms with a local group of Indigenous people, of a lease of land for a vegetable garden/chook yard/orchard, is just too complex. [By the way, if you think that remote communities don't have enough water for vegetable gardens, check out a community at random on Google Maps: a mile or so out of town, you will see sewage ponds, ergo flush toilets, ergo running water. Plus a mountain of fertiliser if chemically treated properly. Go on, pick the most remote community you can think of :) ]

And of course let's not forget that all of this relates to only a small minority of Indigenous people, the vast majority of whom are living - mostly successfully - in towns and cities.

You have a point, that a thorough health survey, one which was differentiated by regions and towns and suburbs, would tell us a great deal about the dramatically different health conditions of the remote, vis-a-vis the urban, and non-working vis-a-vis working, populations. Thank you :)

Joe

Every non indigenous person who lives in Australia should be made to know that the Aboriginal people could not easily adapt to the European mode of life as the Europeans could not espouse theirs.

Every one knows that we ‘of the superior race’, should have paused at least to observe their needs.

We disregarded their humanity and now, to their plight; the civilized among us believe that the Aboriginal problem is a matter for the politicians, the charitable among us give whatever alms he/she can and the majority of us go to a great length to avoid thinking about the whole affair.

Conversely the politician goes on counting numbers for seats, the business shark gets the money donated by the charitable people plus grants from cunning politicians and in the privacy of his ‘Not-for-profit enterprise’ lives in tax free opulence.

The machine is well oiled and calls for no attention from anybody, the least from the media.

Laudmouth,

Where from came the condition of dependency?

Gorufus,

Response, to which you refer is, normally, due to religious belief. In this instance it does not seem it does

Thanks Skeptic, you ask: "Where from came the condition of dependency?"

One part of the answer might be: superficially rational calculation. Please let me explain. An old missionary friend of mine was telling me that, on the day that people at his mission discovered that the ycould get welfare payments for being unemployed, they stopped working on the gardens and orchards, and with the chooks and sheep - didn't even turn off the taps.

Perhaps people in very remote areas honestly have no idea of how people 'outside' earn their livings. They may think that 'we' all get money and houses and cars, given to us by Canberra. It's not that it all just drops out of the sky, or off a tree, but that maybe the elders know the magic of how to induce the whitefellas to pay them forever, perhaps in recognition of their land-ownership, I don't know. But the upshot is that people in remote communities may think - quite reasonably, from one point of view - that self-determination means more power, and more power means that they do less, others do more and more for them.

So now it will be, in the APY lands, that the government (or the Red Cross) will feed their kids, while they gamble or sit under a tree. After all, they get paid to send their kids to school (or not) where somebody else looks after them, paid to go to funerals, paid not to work, to have kids, to get old, to get sick - what a strange but wonderful world it must be to have all this done for them.

I remember once on a community where I worked: a nurse was appointed, and the council wanted her to wash old people's feet, as a standard part of her job. When my wife was running the kindergarten there, some women wanted her to look after the kids 24/7. People take advantage when and where they can, Black or White.

To answer your question, maybe people SEEK dependence if it means getting looked after and doing less and less.

Loudmouth et al, the dependence thing doesn't only happen in Aboriginal communities, it also happens to whites as well. I will give an example. The aged mother of a friend of mine lived close to her son. In his "wisdom" he decided that he would do her shopping for her and do all the running around that she had previously done for herself. After a time, she became so dependent on him that she became virtually housebound. It wasn't until her daughter decided to intervene, that Mum started to get out again, which improved her health and general well being.

David

Exactly, David ! As I wrote: "People take advantage when and where they can, Black or White.... To answer your question, maybe people SEEK dependence if it means getting looked after and doing less and less."

Yes, it's a consequence of being put, or being allowed to settle, into a position of dependency. But for Aboriginal people, the tragedy is that it means far shorter lives, far more sickness, more violence as an outcome of sh!t-boring days, day after day, more abuse, and generally a loss of a sense of humanity. Shorter lives ? I'll bet there are 'communities' where the average life expectancy is in the thirties, where very few people live past forty, where violent death is the norm, where many if not most kids have lost at least one parent, and where most of the kids have been abused.

And a decent health survey would pick most of this up - and force authorities to search for answers. So why should they want an incomplete health survey ?

Meanwhile, in the cities, more than twenty six thousand Indigenous people - one in every seven or eight adults - has graduated from university. Most are working. Most are home-owners, living relatively secure, productive and comfortable lives, as a reward for the efforts and faith that they have put into their education and training.

And if they can do it, ......

Joe

Sounds like a classic case of pathological altruism leading to bad outcomes for the "victims".

The problem with the health of our Indigenous Australians is that before white man stepped in on our Aboriginal ways of life, our indigenous folk used to (in typical nomadic style) live on Bush Tucker, not once until recently (30 years or so), was cancer an affliction to these people. Unfortunately, the do-gooders stepped in and gave these good people drinking rights, and in my humble view, started the demise of the health of our indigenous people. I spent many years in Kalgoorlie, where there were more than a few different tribal folk. The problem, in my view, is lack of education, not just schooling for the kids (which, by the by doesn't always work), but the lack of hygiene, the petrol and paint sniffing, an awful consumption of alcohol (which is being banned in some areas North West of Western Australia) and a diet of Kentucky and other take-away foods. Unless the Tertiary trained leaders can step in and devise a way to educate, train, and provide regular clinics via the RFDS service, then I fear that there will be an end to some, if not all aboriginal folk.I have quite a few Aboriginal friends, all of whom are well educated, employed in excellent jobs, and doing well for themselves. The government seems to only see the City dwelling folk who have had a good education be way of either being adopted or because their natural parents see the importance of it all. Those who live in settlements often have leaders who are highly educated. Most of the problems stem from Alcohol, drugs, lack of education but more importantly, absolutely nothing to keep them occupied. This may seem like a blanket statement, it is not, but enforce school attendance and let these kids and older folk realise the importance of schooling as well as working.
NSB

Skeptic - What is an "Aboriginal"?

Short answer: "Impossible to define due to enormous complexity of degrees of cross breeding, cross culturalism and adaption to contempory Australian lifestyles"

If "Aboriginals" were to be awarded the status of "ordinary australians" the situation outlined by the author of the article would cease to occur. While the oft times insane pandering to "culture" over commonsense, decency and law (not confined to the Native peoples I might add) continues, so will discrimination of this type.

This is the way it works now: If truth is likely to be unpalatable then it's best to do nothing and prevent investigation if possible. Does anyone believe conditions which prompted the 'Intervention' were an overnight development quickly acted upon? Or that knowledge of what was going on and worsening over at least a decade was non-existant?

And if any nasty truth does find the light then there are still the 'defenders' to play the PC card and claim that facts attributed to a group based on racial background are inherently RACIST and illegal. As a society we have made our beds and are only now realising how poor some of the choices of material and design as we try to lay in them.

Joe (Loudmouth) for Minister - Aboriginal Affairs (while it lasts)

But remember, Ms Bird, that the entire Aboriginal population in the North - outside of the cities - makes up barely twenty per cent of the entire Aboriginal population. There are almost as many Aboriginal people in Sydney as in the entire NT, and in Adelaide as in the Kimberley.

As well, the great majority in the 'south' (east and south-east coast, around Darwin, the south-west), the 'settled' areas, have been well and truly in touch with Western society for up to 200 years and are pretty much a part of it. Around the lower Murray lakes, for example, by 1870, there were twenty taverns, twenty churches, a dozen schools, the Overland Telegraph, fifty paddle-steamers on the lakes, main roads, a train-line to Adelaide and a few thousand small farmers, as well as a handful of pastoralists. By 1870 down this way, most men would have spent their working lives shearing, on farms, or on the whaling ships. The last speaker of the full language was born around 1880 and the last men were initiated at about the same time.

We learn from our immediate everday environment, and so did Aboriginal people in the nineteenth century, not just from some attenuated culture passed down by people who are no longer on their clan-land.

And those city-based people who have seized opportunities to get a good education were rarely 'adopted' (yes, it happened, but not often). Far more often, they battled to be able to move from settlement to small town, and from small town to the city, and from there to learn the long way about opportunities, with nobody in earlier generations to give them any advice. So no, they haven't had it handed to them on a plate.

This is the first generation of young Aboriginal people who MAY have parents who finished secondary school. Some of them may even have parents who are graduates. Most have parents who did not finish secondary school, primary school in many cases.

So please give them a break.

[TBC]

I don't think it was a good idea for ABS to leave out indigenous children in this supposedly national health survey. Children are considered indigenous if their parents say they are...whether that be because they actually have Aboriginal ancestors, or simply because they believe they are part of that ethnic group.

"The ABS statistician in charge of the health survey, Paul Jelfs, says indigenous children were excluded because there were doubts enough would actually participate in the medical testing.
“Any poor response rates would affect the quality of data in the long run,” Dr Jelfs told AAP.
“If you don’t get that high quality of information right you’re wasting your time.
“Of course cost comes into but it’s not the main determinant.”"
http://tracker.org.au/2011/09/national-health-survey-a-cop-out-wyatt/

If, as suggested above, the statistics for the health survey of these kids was left out because of possible non-compliance, then they have surely forgotten that it is 'voluntary' to take part in the survey anyway.
If someone refused to take part, then surely another can be found.
It is a fair comment that you are probably less likely to get the consent of tribal Aboriginals living in Northern or central Australian Aboriginal Communities for tests on their kids, or that they would reliably return the urine containers etc, but the same could be said about other ethnic minority groups in Australia.

I doubt you will get the right numbers of Aboriginal participants in such a random survey to really show a marked difference between the ethnic groups health problems anyway.
It would be far better to have two surveys going, one with Indigenous, and one with non-Indigenous groups, and then compare the difference.

In that context, Divine Ms_n, you're right - 'culture' is often so second-hand, more likely to be learnt from books, a thing rather than a living process, it has to be said. So it is concerning that, because of some wrong-headed notion of cultural innateness and unchangeability, people actually pull back on their actual rights, in the idiotic belief that 'equal' means 'same as', so 'equal rights' are assimilationist; and that therefore they should have 'their own' this and that - as if some people are actually afraid of full, equal rights.

Case in point: a cousin who seems to take for granted that, if one is Aboriginal, one must use only the Aboriginal Medical Service - as if an Aboriginal person is not allowed, 'yet', to consult a mainstream doctor. When she moved to a more distant suburb, she thought that she still had to travel to the nearest Aboriginal Medical Service.

Good God ! Did I just use the word 'mainstream' !?

Well yes, and all Aboriginal people are entitled, like anybody else, to use mainstream services. It's THEIR mainstream too. Spread the word.

Frankly, in my view, whatever Aboriginal people do is Aboriginal: any novel feature is thereby brought within the sphere of what it means to be Aboriginal. On the whole, Aboriginal people will remain Aboriginal in their own minds, no matter what other people think - after all, the great majoritry of their relations are Aboriginal, their ancestors and grave-yards are Aboriginal - and on that basis, assimilation was never going to work in the sense of 'obliteration, submergence, indistinguishability'.

Except perhaps for some of the elite, who see their role as that of sheep-dog keeping the sheep in line, while the boss sits on the verandah. Yeah, right, that's ever going to happen again.

Joe

Loudmouth,
I am aware of the problems with Aboriginals, I agree with most of what you say. People do need (especially in government), to drop this ridiculous so called Political Correctness, and start calling things as they are. Boy, half the teenage kids in this country would like to go to a school such as enjoyed by young Aboriginal kids who can can focus on football, things have to be earned in this life, it is about time that people in authority spoke their minds, instead of dillydallying behind political correctness. We would all fall over backwards if we knew how much funding has been wasted over the years. Most of us have learned over the years that the harder you work, the luckier you become.
All kids should be trained to aspire for anything better than what they enjoy at the present.
NSB

HI ANDREW,
I AM ONLY A HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT SO PLEASE EXCUSE MY IN EXPERIENCE IN WRITING THESE TYPES OF TEXTS. I'D LIKE TO START OFF BY THANKING YOU FOR THE WELL-WRITTEN AND INFORMATIVE ARTICLE. I FOUND MANY OF THE FACTS YOU PROVIDED QUITE INTERESTING AND, WELL, SHOCKING. BEING AN ABORGINE MYSELF, I WAS APPALLED TO HEAR OF THIS AND BRINGS ME TO BELIEVE THE TIME OF WHICH ABORIGINES AND THE BLACKS WERE MISTREATED IS NOT ENTIRELY OVER AND THERE IS STILL SOME SLIGHT DISCRIMINATION, DESPITE THE REASSURING YET, SOMEWHAT, OFFENSIVE GUARANTEES. I BELEIVE THIS SORT OF TREATMENT IS UNNECESSARY AND EXACTLY WHAT WE MOVED ON FROM MANY YEARS AGO.
BRANDON

Hi BJ98,

Thank you for your heartfelt message to us all. Yes, there is still plenty of discimination, plenty of low expetations, but take heart from the fact that Aboriginal people are succeeding at the highest levels of education and going on to professional employment in the fields that they have chosen. By the end of next year, around thirty thousand will have graduated from universities - that's enough to fill plenty of football grounds, isn't it :) And the best is yet to come.

Yes, there is still discrimination, people are still held back if they have graduated in 'non-traditional' fields, as if they shouldn't be there, but are rapidly promoted if they stick to the 'traditional' fields. Make what you like of that, but have the courage to push on with what you really want to do - and keep pushing. And remember that you will come across just as many Black b@stards as whites in your quest for equity in employment.

Forgive me, but today is the third anniversay of the passing of my wife, my joy, my mate. We had forty two years together, she was Ngarrindjeri, born at Point McLeay Mission on the lower lakes of the Murray. She was shafted by alpha male Aboriginal 'leaders' in spite of a life of dedication to the Aboriginal cause. We made the first Aboriginal flags together back in the early seventies, and were devoted to Aboriginal opportunities in university education, while these scum were swanning around poncing as 'leaders', but her aspiration was to see as many Aboriginal people as possible working as professionals in the fields of their choice, and her dreams are coming true. By 2020, there could easily be fifty thousand Aboriginal graduates, and professional people working out there in the community, contributing to the general community.

{TBC}

[cont.]

BJ98,

You will come across some wonderful people if you go on to university and on to professional employment, but you will also come across your fair share of utter bast@rds, Black and white. That's life, and we all have to push on regardless of what those mongrels throw at us and however much they get in our way. The future can be very bright for young Aboriginal people, just take everything you hear with a grain of salt, there are some real shonks out there. I wish you all the very best in your studies and in your career.

Joe

BJ98,
I am a student journalist and would like to know more about your opinion on this issue. Is there any way I can contact you?