So just what is Rainier's cure for the Aboriginal problem?
Joe,
firstly, he can't propose one because he'd have to call himself racist. Secondly, he'll never concede that not all racism is non-indigenous only.

Thanks Individual, I always defer to your obvious commitment and richer experience in Indigenous communities. Stay strong :)

Perhaps what is needed, as a foundation for any solutions to any 'Aboriginal problems', must involve Aboriginal effort, the realisation that Aboriginal people must be responsible for the DOING, not just for the proposing - they themselves must be at the forefront of the application of any problem resolution.

They must be the doers in their own lives - surely self-determination means 'doing it', wearing the responsibility ? That control, or 'sovereignty', or whatever word one likes to use for 'responsibility', if people want any sort of power, then they cop the effort that goes with it. It's their baby, they carry it.

Ultimately, in my view, self-determination - away, away down the track - means that people, on the whole, have their own trained people carrying out all the functions of community life, service provision and governance.

A corollary of that is that, in a healthy and self-determining community, there would be almost no people whatsoever who are dependent except pensioners, invalids, children and mothers looking after kids - that everybody else has skills of one sort or another and is working. Of course, if everybody is working, then there would be very little need for social workers, or Centrelink workers. As people's health improved, there would be less need for health workers, nurses, etc., etc.

But the bottom line is that if people can gain skills and work, they should do so. Why should somebody else carry them ? A community with few actual workers is a very unhealthy community - a pathological 'community'. A community where pretty much everyone who can, works, is more likely to be a healthy community.

But this might take a huge change in people's mind-sets, from an expectation of dependence and leisure, tied to outside financial support, service provision and expertise - to an expectation that whoever can put the effort in, does so or buggers off.

Is that likely to happen soon ?

Joe

Joe,
your joke cracks me up.
Like anyone would believe that Indigenous people are the only ones not working, leading productive lives (in your opinion).
Absolutely hilarious.

Do you also find it funny that of all Anthony's supporters, none of them identify as Indigenous, because I do.

I like your sense of humour.

>>I look at the run up to WW2 objectively so it's impossible for me to come to the same conclusions as you do.<<

So in other words: the Warsaw ghetto was just fine and dandy. Dude: that's messed up.

>>it stands to reason that I'd have an alternative viewpoint<<

Yes it does: because you are one sick puppy who is under-endowed with conscience.

>>Auschwitz sits alongside Gulag, the Warsaw Ghetto sits alongside the misery of the Kolhozy.<<

Because it's not immoral if somebody else did it first. Dude: that's messed up.

>>Then again the basic anti Racist position is "Two wrongs DO make a right" as long as White children are on the receiving end of the violence.<<

Hoist with his own petard.

Cheers,

Tony

Straw man, Aka.

I'll repeat: some eighty thousand Indigenous people have been enrolled at university over the past twenty years or so.

And I'll add: another hundred thousand have been enrolled, for many years, in TAFE/VET courses over the same period, sometimes the same courses for years at a time.

That's a majority of the roughly 300,000 Indigenous adults.

The great majority of the welfare-dependent population and other parasites are non-Indigenous.

There: it's on the record.

Now, what were you saying, Aka ?

In my view, nobody who is able-bodied should be getting carried by the taxpayer: if they are temporarily unemployed, they shoud be assisted to either find employment, or be assisted to enrol in a course which will most likely get them back into employment. i.e., 'most likely'.

Aboriginal communities need skilled people. Those skilled people should ideally be Aboriginal people from that community.

Aboriginal people are not halfwits. They can gain skills, especially those skills that their communities need. I'm not saying it might be easy or quick, but it can be done and, if communities are to survive, it must be done.

[Come to think of it, why hasn't it been done already ?]

Will some Aboriginal people who gain skills leave their communities and go to the towns and cities where opportunities are more plentiful ? Yes.

Is it their right to do so ? Yes.

Could that threaten the viability of some communities. Maybe.

Should people be denied any sort of education or training just so that they might not be able to leave the communities, just so those communities can sort of survive ? No.

What come first, the rights of people or the viability of communities ? The rights of people. Aboriginal people.

So, are education and community, to an extent, at odds with each other ? Yes, possibly.

Do I give a toss ? No, not really: I'll support individuals' rights to a decent life any day.

Cheers,

Joe

Loudmoth/Joe, I don't for a momment wish to dictate what anyone writes, thats up to them, but I do stand by my point that Dillon does deny racism agency, an agency and influence that is much more than simply denying someone to "cry in their beer", an analogy that I find very superficial and thus catorgorising any defiance to racism as being an 'emotional' reaction, which is what many white racists (in my experience) love to use in minimising any complaint or accusation of racism. "You've got a chip on your shoulder" "We are all just human beings, I'm not racist but... go cry in your beer. Walk a mile in our shoes Joe Loudmouth.

** And your celebratory statistics on higher education access and participation only confirm the rise and rise of a middle class strata of Aboriginal people, many of them recent identifiers, many of them with no inclination whatsoever to plow their skills back into the grassroots where its badly needed, many of them adopting the same elitist / assimilationist stance as Dr Dillon. Its easy for those at the top of the mountain to look down and provide comment on the splendor, not so easy for those at the bottom to look up.