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}