on and on with pathetic example!
diver dan,
yep, too many people still think two wrongs make a right. Very stupid indeed !

Diver Dan says

'We simply need to cease further destruction and damage and, at the least, listen to their voice.

Which voice is that? The professional aboriginal industry that contin ues to extract millions to promote propaganda or

the self loving, white hating element that are a law to themselves or

the communities racked by child abuse, drug abuse and chronic lack of motivation or

Sensible aboriginals such as Noel Pearson who is despised by all who refuse to accept any responsibility for action.

We have been listening for 50 years. Unfortunately the voices of the academics that feed the victim mentality, the lack of responsibility and the bad whitey dogma have only added greatly to the problem.

Individual,

I can't quite figure you out. You say you live and work in remote communities and have some direct knowledge of and iterrraction with indigenous people, yet you make no suggestion as to what the problems are and how these might best be resolved. Also, Diver Dan made some quite detailed suggestions, to which you barely made a response (6.15am today, 2 Feb). Puzzling.

I think Diver's comments deserve consideration. (Though I have a problem with the 'sovereignty' issue.)

LEEMAA also offered some valuable insights, and I would be greatly interested in her views on the failures of the Intervention, and alternative suggestions. (We are so much in the dark, having to rely on material in the media - hence our 'outside' assumptions are likely to be unsound.)

My personal view is that indigenous culture is being lost, and serious attempts need to be made to save and salvage this from total loss. To me this represents one of the most pressing objectives of reconciliation. I believe we have a responsibility to make means available for indigenous culture to be a living culture, co-existing with Western culture where appropriate, but not being overwhelmed by demands for westernisation. Integration or assimilation for remote communities and individuals should be by choice alone - and should also not be 'pressured' one way or the other by 'urban' populations.

Hence, my proposition would be that as far as possible services in rural communities be developed as community activities/businesses - food, petrol, health, education, housing construction, farming, market gardening, and other enterprise suitable to the particular 'local' environment. This will take time, money and assistance. I say, if the community wants it they should have it, and it can be a means to generate employment and to eventually dispense with unemployment benefits.

Though I believe English must be the primary language in schools, a way should be found to foster the retention of culture, including language, in the curriculum. Outside school it will have to be up to the Elders to pass on the broader culture to the young. (None of whiteys business.)

Saltpetre,
I have put forward my ideas of making things better in that many posts I've lost count.
Same goes for the problems which are the wide-eyed-open mouthed do-gooders in the cities. People who don't live in the communities, have no intention of spending time in communities & have no interest in communities. They only use communities as stepping stones for their careers in a mainly incompetent public service. Their only real concern is their superannuation.
Just look up the history of users.

I am sorry to say that Those in denial have to come to the realization, that' in most cases, it's a lost cause.

I think these indigenous people have to be given a choice, to either become Australians, or go back to hunting and gathering.

We simply can not continue to throw good money after bad, as our 'good money fund' is running on empty.

Hi Saltpetre,

Individual's right, he's been working in Indigenous communities for years, and been writing about them and their issues for a long time. No offence but your last posting could have been written forty years ago, when so many of us had that rosy, romantic approach, full of hope and high expectations. Experience has been a hard but valuable teacher.

In a letter in today's paper, Patrick McAuley suggests that land in Indigenous communities should be leasable (to Indigenous people, of course) for housing and enterprises, and that if enterprises can be initiated, then young Indigenous people can be offered apprenticeships with them and gain trade skills in order to get off lifelong welfare.

But the key problem is that, in order to stay on welfare, one must be totally skill-less - as soon as you have some sort of skills, there is the danger that you might be expected to work.

Community councils know this and go into bat for the lifelong unemployed, in order to keep them in the condition to which they have happily become accustomed. So community councils know that people running viable enterprises are a threat to their power-base (byt exercising their expertise), and that enterprises may quite possibly provide employment if Centrelink recognised it as such, and demanded that young people seek work in them. So the last thing some councils, and many people, in communities want is enterprises, and therefore leases over community lands.

[TBC]