Continued from previous post:

We have on a number of occasions refused to confirm their requests for confirmation of Aboriginality, checks and balances are there & we often point out that fraud is a legal matter that can be prosecuted if need be.

Hence the reason why constitutional recognition would provide an overarching legal framework that allows us as first nations people to once & for all time, self determine ourselves in the first instance, & then to others.

Other readers of this post from me to Joe - should also note the total absence of this history in Dr Dillon's article. Dillon brushes off criticism by declaring that the history of white privilege & racist policy and law has no bearing on contemporary circumstances. He is totally at odds with the knowledge and perspectives of the majority of scholars in the field of Indigenous studies, and knows it

Dr Coconut wrote: “And you still think you know my father better than I do. Dad and I had a good chuckle over you recently. Both of us feel sorry for you! Let me repeat, I am in no denial that racism exists. But the point remains, that people have a choice how they will respond to racism. For some, they are totally unaffected by it. For others who moan & groan, it becomes an excuse for all their misery and they end up seeing racism around every corner."

I don't purport to know your father better than you, but he would agree with me that police racial profiling exists in the rank & file of the Qld police force. My personal response to institutional and personal racism over the years is something I am very proud of, it has not overcome me, but there are others in our community who cannot protect themselves by wearing a police uniform or have the ability or resources to combat it as well as you and I can Dr Dillon. But instead of acknowledging this you prefer to throw us all in one pot and pathologize us as having a victim mentality. Once again this is just lazy thinking and it’s clear your ulterior motive is just a self serving gameof a coconut.

That your father served as policeman during the most sickening and volatile period of Bjelke Peterson era, especially in terms of police relations with Aboriginal people & communities did not go unnoticed by those of us fighting the good fight.I don't recall seeing you as part of any community organisation during this period? It would have been easier for a son of a policemen to hide? mmm?

There are people that need to be defended against your pseudo intellectual BS & disconnected perspective from the realities of everyday life for the most disadvantaged. You're lack of intellectual maturity in discussing this practically or theoretically is here for all to see. No need for me to unpack it & reveal it to you. One day it will return and haunt you.

Rainier,

It's quite unfair of you to accuse Dr Dillon of not writing about something which was not the subject of his article, but which very well be the subject of another controversial thread entirely. And it really is reprehensible of you to insult him in such a cowardly way.

Yes of course, we would all be aware of how complex the issue of identity, of identifying, can be - from young people who are not as committed as the older generation, to Whites who want to claim Aboriginality on the flimsiest of grounds, or none at all, to other Aboriginal people who are quite comfortable with a multiple identity, who are, say, Maltese and Aboriginal, or Fijian and Aboriginal, or PNG and Aboriginal, etc., etc.

As I understand it, Dr Dillon is writing about racism and its effects, but also how it cannot, should not, be allowed to drag people down, to condemn them to the powerless position of 'victim' - that people can rise above, and prevail over, any such pressures, which are surely there, no doubt about it.

So it is quite pointless for you, Rainier, to attack him for what he has not intended to write about: that's material for another article. Stick to the topic, my friend :)

And frankly, I have very little faith in the knowledge, beliefs or competence of very many Indigenous academics in the field of Indigenous Studies. Very few of those that I know of have any Indigenous Studies background, and I know of only one who has a degree in the field and is also working in the field. Are they relying on their 'innate knowledge', what they were born with ? i.e. nothing ? Christ, how racist is THAT ? It's a field ripe for blow-hards and big-talkers, bigshots who know that non-Indigenous students cannot answer back. Not all are like that, of course, but enough.

Cheers, Joe

Hi Rainier,

You whinge that:

"Note: (We are the only people in Australia that must provide proof of legal ethnicity & hence the reason for explaining the long legal history of this legalised racism in my previous post.)"

Too clever, Rainier. We are all free to call ourselves whatever we like - the problem comes when you then demand some sort of benefits be available for those who claim a certain identity. Claim all you like, just don't expect that when you put your hand out, nobody will question your right to that identity, and therefore those benefits.

I know that some people tried this during the Hindmarsh Islander 'Secret Women's Business' scam - that people's religious beliefs were under attack. No. Why it was up for questioning (not attack) was because, on the one hand, it was going to cause a great deal of financial disruption to some developers (and in fact the Brown state government), and, on the other hand, would, if true, force the complete re-writing of Ngarrindjeri cultural history. People and governments had every right to question its authenticity when so much was at stake.

White people can call themselves whatever they like. Just don't expect, if substantial benefits are on-tap, that your claim won't be investigated.

On that subject, I do recall that at the time of Mabo and the Native Title legislation, I said to somebody that a comprehensive Register would have to be set up, to record whoever wanted to be involved in a land-claim, and that thorough family trees would have to be constructed, to locate every Indigenous person in relation to everyone else.

Here in SA, to give credit where it is due, Doreen Kartinyeri put together a dozen family trees totalling about three thousand pages in a dozen volumes, often going right back to before 1800.

Using those, it was not difficult to discover, for example, that most of the 'proponent' women in the Hindmarsh Island scam, if one went far enough back in their genealogies, had a non-Ngarrindjeri maternal ancestor - mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, and therefore

[TBC]

[contd.]

would never have been told anything about 'secret business', even if it were true.

People don't realise how much data there is around on Aboriginal people - missionary reports, superintendent reports, birth, death, marriage and school registers, police records, Protectors' records. From all that, it isn't difficult to construct family trees, right down to the present. And from there, to rule people in or out - who is, and who is not, eligible for benefits.

Non-Aboriginal people are trying it on all the time: it's a simple matter for a genuine person (and please don't weep on my shoulder about the 'Stolen Generation') to be verified or not. In my limited experience, whenever I asked a person who they were related to, I could locate that person within seconds, as related to someone or other, no problem. When someone hedged, and hummed and ha'd, I knew I was in the presence of a non-Indigenous liar. They usually picked some very distant place, like Tasmania or WA, thinking it was impossible to check, but hey, there are Aboriginal organisations all over Australia, with phone numbers.

So in the case of Dallas Scott, in yesterday's Australian Magazine, how hard would it have been (even presuming he didn't have a birth certificate which would have recorded his mother and father), for him to be asked to produce a family tree, something which would slot him in to existing databases of family trees ? Christ, it's not rocket science.

Oh, I see, they haven't thought of starting to use that procedure yet in Victoria ? Or anywhere ? If they had, this guy would have been on half a dozen family trees, the Scotts and the Carters for a start. Christ, he must have relations galore all over eastern Victoria and south coast NSW. Bloody absurd.

Here's another story, from the brilliant Caroline Overington, on a similar theme - it just shows how ridiculous this all can become:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/court-sees-an-aborgine-with-white-parents/story-fn59niix-1226219436990

Cheers,

Joe

To loudmouth:

1) Dr Dillon has criticized anyone who uses the descriptions racism when describing &“believing that the over-representation in prisons by Aboriginal people is due to police targeting Aboriginal people.”
2) He then made a supporting statement (once again in total absence of any evidence) that
“There could well be some rogue coppers out there, &it is certainly the case that judges &juries are human, &therefore subjective.” This is clearly his own opinion (unsupported by evidence) but in response to AKA &my challenges to his assertion he wants us to provide hard evidence. We can only direct him to read the many reports surrounding deaths in custody, the royal commission &hundreds of other evidence based research that often conclude that institutional or personal racism was a mitigating factor in these cases. His refusal to cite them or even acknowledge their existence is not a valid defence of his original assertions. He simply refuses to acknowledge them as being credible examples. Why?
3) Dr Dillon denigrates activists (whom he refuses to name) who believe Andrew Bolt is racist because the courts concluded that he was. From my understanding many people were labelling Bolt a racist without any reference to the courts findings &well before it was even litigated. Once again, he defends Bolt without any reference to the case or the Judges findings. Why?
4) Dr Dillon then goes on to state” I am not denying that there is racism in Australia, but there is a danger that every inequality between Aboriginal &non-Aboriginal Australians will be seen as the result of racism.” Once again, by passive insinuation, he implicates everyone that protests inequality as believing that its primary cause is racism. But he does not provide examples of whom &where this has occurred for which he can then test his thesis. Why not?

TBc