For Aka. “I do note that you fire up at any opinion that differs from yours and display a very negative and rather nasty style of retaliating.”
Actually, I fire up when people misrepresent me the way you are doing with this quote. I also fire up when people use pathetic logic like “It must be true because a lot of people claim it to be true.” And I fire up when people leave many questions unanswered, as you have done. Opinions that differ from mine are fine.

With regard to suggesting that you are Rainier, you may not be, but given the racist comments ‘each of you’ make, there is the strong possibility that you are one and the same.

“This saddens me as I hoped that, from reading some of your earlier work, you would learn more and become less judgmental and more inclusive and understanding.”
Sorry to disappoint you, but will not accept racist opinions, slander, misrepresentation, etc. when discussing such important topics.

I hope that you will one day you will either be able to engage in honest discussion/debate, or simply admit that you lack evidence to justify your claims.

I just spent a weekend of singing with my Sing Australia group up in country SA, and went out to an Aboriginal settlement, a 'community', XXXX, where we lived in the seventies. Back then, it ran sheep and wheat, and had 90 acres of grapes, stone fruit, citrus, lucerne, etc.

In the late seventies, the council was having trouble with the dogs getting into the sheep, so of course, they got rid of the sheep. Thirty years ago, on the pretext that there was a glut of one variety of red-wine grapes, the council there ripped out everything (except the citrus, which a family of Torres Strait islanders from forty km away used to pick each year) and put in three hundred acres of almonds, with a loan from the old Aboriginal Development Corporation (later, I'm sure, converted to a grant).

(Of course, it could have done both - kept all the previous production going AND put in almonds, it owns eight thousand acres of land after all - in fact it could have gradually paid for putting in the almonds with the income from the other production. But that's all water under the bridge now).

Back then, the population there was around 120. Yesterday, I saw two people there, and it looked like maybe three houses, and maybe only one - out of about thirty - were occupied. I hadn't been there for fifteen years, and quite a few houses had been built there since then, but they were all abandoned, derelict.

One house were we used to stay while we were fruit-picking in the early eighties - it was new back then - was gone, just a bare block overgrown with weeds and a couple of young trees. The cemetery and the football oval looked well cared-for.

But the three hundred acres of almonds were dead, a vast graveyard of trees, with a few trees struggling to survive, and it looked like they had not been looked after - great banks of weeds, saltbush, bluebush - for about five years.

So much for self-determination.

[TBC]

[contd]

I saw one white fella driving in as I was driving out. He probably does the cemetery and football oval.

I'm glad that my wife didn't see it - her pre-school had been demolished, our one-bedroom flat was gone too.

I have a suspicion what might have happened - about five years ago - and it may involve the closing of the CDEP scheme:

* I think that, on many communities, some bright spark passed the word along that when the CDEP program at their community was to be closed, that everybody should get a pay-out for the years 'served', 'long service leave', back-pay, superannuation, etc., and that the resultant debt - at another community, YYYY, it amounted to a million dollars - should be set against the farm, or whatever enterprise they were supposed to be running. So DEEWR would pick up the total debt, as the funder of projects and final guarantor of debt.

And I think that DEEWR people said, 'Okay, you b@stards, two can play this dirty game, so we'll take back what you have got us into debt for.' So they took their million dollars' worth of plant, equipment, Pivots, new dairy, etc. at YYYY and - probably because they had been paying for the water for the almonds at XXXX - told the council that they wouldn't do that any more. So the XXXX council decided not to pay for water, and didn't water the almonds ever again, so they promptly died.

So, if that is a common story across the thousands of Aboriginal communities, there must be billions upon billions of housing stock, roads, power-lines, water reticulation and sewerage systems, Telstra phone-boxes, schools, clinics, council offices, mechanics' workshops, airfields, etc. etc., lying vacant across Australia, or certainly massively under-used.

But the cemeteries are probably neat and well-cared-for. And the foopball ovals too. Gotta have foopball.

[TBC]

[contd]

Meanwhile, the population at XXXX moved off once the CDEP program had been closed and are now scattered in towns across eastern SA. The population at XXXX is probably now down to single figures, maybe one family. My wife would have been devastated: we were both very dedicated to the notion of self-determination, of building communities' economic capacity, providing a basis for the use of a wide range of skills, and for employment, not to mention community income. All down the bloody drain now.

But many on the pseudo-left would somehow defend the council there and go on about what terrible things happened to their great-grandmothers. That approach is what's called a non sequitur.

What seems to be horribly possible these days is an end of 'community' - at least, in the sense of remote or isolated settlements. That's hard to come to grips with.

But on the other hand, it highlights the glaring reality that it is up to people, as individuals, one by one, to make their own decisions - to be self-determining - to get a decent education, get into employment, look after their kids, to stand up and join Australian society.

And I think that the great majority of Indigenous people are doing just that, even if they still keep talking about 'community' and 'culture' and 'spirituality' etc, and articulating their identity that way.

Joe

Anthony,
I tire of your lack of evidence to justify your claims. You attack me and refuse to consider the peer reviewed literature I have put forward. You reject these by merely asserting that all are wrong and you are right. I have provided evidence that you dismiss offhandedly. Hardly and academic attitude.

That a person can refuse to let negative experiences like racism put them on a negative path is a point I agree with you on - to a degree. Sometimes a person's negative life experiences accumulate and can become unmanageable, either temporarily or chronically. However, your stance of refuting peoples' experience of racism and its affect on their lives remains merely your belief - you arrogantly dismiss people's difficulties.

You have not provided any substantiated reference to support your assertions. You chuck a tantrum and address anything other than substantiating your stance. Where is the literature to support your view? Personal assertions do not make for a legitimate academic argument, it is more akin to a bar-room big-noting session, or a primary school spat.

Having attained a PhD, you should know you have provided no evidence supporting your argument. This article is merely and opinion piece, a personal rant. Your refusal to provide evidence underlines your closed mind and lack of academic rigour. It is outrageous that you suggest the references I posted are not legitimate.

Back up your argument with legitimate empirical evidence, and then I will begin to take you seriously. At the moment you are behaving like a privileged child, with a juvenile half formed opinion.

Finally, you have not answered my question on what other pseudonyms you use on posts. Why is that?

Hi Aka,

I was wondering how you would turn Anthony's praise for Indigenous people who resist being victimised, who fight for their place in the sun, as you have done - into some sort of defeat. But you have managed it.

And it puzzles me why some Indigenous people, who have risen above whatever policy and history could throw at them, attack others who try to exhort their own people to do the same.

ALL indigenous people should have the opportunities to resist being treated as victims, by Left or Right, and to build prosperous and comfortable lives for themselves, that's their right. So the task is to broaden those opportunities, to every community and location, to all Indigenous people.

So why do some Indigenous people, who are doing okay themselves, seem to want to sugar-coat the situation for so many of their own people and find excuses for why Indigenous people should drop in a heap, cry into their beer and stay on lifelong welfare ?

Who is the enemy ? Who encourages so many Indigenous people to buckle and give up, to stay on welfare and give up the fight ?

Who provides that comforting arm around the shoulders, to give so many people the excuses they 'need' not to struggle, not to try to rise above their victimisation ?

Who make their livings from keeping Indigenous people in a victimised condition ?

Then Anthony comes along and says that people don't have to put up with being victimised. And who 'growls' at him ? Who tries to sink the boot into him ? Who attacks him in the most despicable ways wit hall manner of personal insults ?

So who is the enemy of Indigenous people, Aka ? Looked in a mirror lately ?

Think about it.

Cheers,

Joe