Thanks for an informative article Joe. I think the key point you made is 'one graduate in every three city-based adults, versus barely one graduate in every twenty remote-based adults '.

I have worked with and befriended full blood indigenous people in the Kimberlies for 18 months - on the 'Red Scheme' in Broome in 1976, in agriculture in Kununurra in the same year and in a remote community at Noonkanbah in 2003.

I grew to respect them, mainly for their down to earth, simple honest ways and love of their country. They are quite different and have quite different priorities than urban mixed blood aborigines. I think the educational aspirations and needs of these two groups, both university and technical, should be addressed and assessed separately.

I don't think its a good thing to have all Aborigines 'assimilated' into the White way of life and values. Their traditional values and semi- settled way of life on the remote communities, on their beloved 'country' should be encouraged to continue. For those who want to stay in this lifestyle, assistance should focus on helping them to make a more healthy and viable lifestyle out there.

PS I have a young friend (who still calls me 'uncle'), who is 1/4 Aboriginal blood and I am proud to say she was recently employed by the Federal Government as a lawyer. She is a very competent urban professional(more successful than I ever was). But she has quite quite different priorities to her full blood distant cousins in bush communities.

Clearly, we need to bite the bullet and get more kids into city based high schools, even if that means housing their immediate families as well, while they attend school, and maybe, even later uni!
And something that could be gradually withdrawn as kids become more self reliant young adults.
These kids need to learn that, their familiar family homes will always be home-base, but they also can walk tall in the westernized world.
And having made a resounding success, able to go back and contribute to their own communities, be it with advanced medical care, to further reduce the life expectancy gap, or provide long needed, superior teaching and far better local high schools; or, superior legal advice, that gives the community an edge over the mining industry; or even enables them to mine their own minerals, using the latest mining advances and able to bring in the necessary, finance, due to promising prospecting results?
Or those who may want to use their backyard as some sort of dump, while keeping most of the possibly massive profits for themselves, when what should prevail, is unfettered information flows, and genuine economic partnerships?
Better education, invariably leads to improved economic outcomes for the student; and given enough of them, for whole communities!
Well done and more of the same please!
Rhrosty.

Dear Joe,

I'd also like to add my Thanks for your informative
article. Most of us have so much to learn about our
Indigenous people. I watched "Q and A," last night.
(Monday 4th August 2014). The entire panel was made up
of Indigenous people - and there were many in the
audience with questions as well. It was the best
"Q and A," ever. I learned so much. I actually teared
up in the end. It should have been compulsory viewing
for every Australian.

Roses1:
If you are not part of the solution, then you may well be part of the problem!?
There is not a white way or a black way, just a right way!
And if urban blacks have different priorities, is it because or the reverse racism, too many, or their parents/Grandparents suffered in their formative years, but particularly those who didn't have a dad, to protect them, from traditional, different or wrong color bullying?
Which in too many communities is still alive and well Roses1.
And then we wonder, why urban blacks have different or more personal priorities?
If nobody took them, maybe someone or something drove them away, and forced them to assume a different communal urban black identity?
Fortunately, more and more, so called full bloods are getting a westernized education, and then coming back to traditional communities, to share their new skills and knowledge, and indeed as required, combine it with traditional skills.
People can walk in two communities, unless jealous power hungry control freaks, try to prevent it, or give new meaning to traditional law, so they can retain that control, and or continue, with their humbug or patently punishable perversions.
As one elder might have said, if we do not control and end child sexual abuse, as high as 50% in some remote communities, when will we? When they again take the kids away?
Get on board or get out of the way!
Rhrosty.

Isn't it amazing how 45 minutes of Q&A can offer so much insight, more insight than living for 35 years amongst indigenous people. Wow !

There is not a white way or a black way, just a right way!
Yes, Rhrosty but unfortunately the right way doesn't as yet pay as much as the other two.
You must remember that white & near white bureau rats are making very good money as long as this is not solved. What would many of the academics do if suddenly there were no need for more hare-brained schemes ?
No, mate can't have that !

Certainly Noel Pearson was a breath of fresh air last night as the Captains pick really followed the path of her captain (political dogma). Noel seemed to be the only one to realise that indigeneous people need to integrate if they are going to benefit in the future. The others who are living high on the gravy train just wanted to trash the train not realising how they have become so privileged. Mr Wyatt and the tribal elders did quite well. If Nova was to give rulership back to her people as a woman she would more than likely be required to remain silent and let the elders speak. An inconvenient truth. It does seem like it is the women who are speaking to men like Twiggy that seem to be making some progress with issues.

Thanks Rhosty & Individual,

I'm uneasy about racialising this issue - if people have Indigenous ancestry, then they can call themselves what they like, including Indigenous.

And one thing that surprised me in transcribing thousands of pages of old documents from the nineteenth century, was the fact that Indigenous people seemed to have a hell of a lot more agency than I would have thought - to a very large extent, they made their own decisions, they moved where they liked, fished and hunted and worked as they liked, learnt another language (English) to communicate with each other across groups, hit the grog when they felt like it, smoked their heads off, and generally - as much as anybody else - made their own way, in both traditional and the 'new' society.

I'm not even so sure that there was a population decline, at least in South Australia. I've been looking for any signs that Indigenous workers got lower wages, but I haven't found any evidence of that. I don't think any children were ever taken away improperly, only orphans and foundlings, which the state had a duty to are for.

Why do we prefer to believe that whites were, and (Roses?) still are, all-powerful and Indigenous people were utterly powerless, to be pushed around at will ? It simply wasn't so. I'm certainly not saying that they weren't exploited, but perhaps no more than white workers. In fact, pastoralists seemed to prefer to keep Indigenous workers nearby even in the off-season, while white workers were told to push off and come back when the work kicked in again. For whites, pastoral labour was seasonal and uncertain, but for local Indigenous people, it tended to be an add-on to the ration system, enabling them tov stay on their own lands.

Yes, that surprised me too.

[YBC]

TBC. Oy.

To get back to higher ed: in the cities, certainly Indigenous people with a non-Indigenous parent (and maybe three out of four non-Indigenous grandparents) may be becoming distant, and may distance themselves, from their grand-parents' communities; they may becoming much paler; the 'degree' of Indigeneity may be thinning out. The time will have to come when it will become ridiculous, on biological or 'cultural' grounds, for people to claim Indigeneity - to have Indigenous ancestry, yes, just as I would claim Scottish, Welsh, Irish and even English ancestry, but not to expect anything for it.

Oops, we're starting to get into Bolt territory :)

But everybody has to do something with their lives, including aiming at high levels of trades and professional skills, so as long as people who call themselves Indigenous, or of Indigenous descent or ancestry, have those goals, that's fine with me. They too have the right to make their own decisions.

Joe

Loudmouth,
There is a history written by genuine historians & there is a history written by academics.
Then there is a history written by bureaucrats & a history written by working people although the latter is only publicised in the odd journal.
I found that in my own experienced history certain events have changed in order to comply with and/or grease the career paths of the yes brigade, yes in order to stay & progress in nice public service positions. Those very pale are used by even more pale & white career bureaucrats as pretend success stories & put on pedestals which of course clears the way up the ladder for those who put them there. All this is costing the taxpayers of Australia an absolute fortune, a fortune that hasn't shown any progress yet could provide for huge progress if it weren't wasted on the Peter Principle bureaucrats.
Why Governments don't act & change these rorts is beyond my understanding. In Qld I really believed Premier Newman when he said his Government would weed out these wastes. Well, when will this start ?
Indigenous university student success is amalgamated in that system.

"Indigenous participation at universities is booming now, but it stagnated between 1995 and 2005".

In my opinion the article exaggerates the apparent boom of recent decades in Indigenous university student numbers. In reality, much of the apparent increase is due to measurement issues affecting the Indigenous population. Indeed university student numbers for the general population have themselves been growing for decades.

Our measured Indigenous population was recorded as rising from 116000 in 1971 to 548400 in 2011. Most of the rise was due either to (a) some individuals of mixed descent changing their identification status from non-Indigenous to Indigenous or (b) the rapidly growing trend for mixed marriages involving one Indigenous and one non-Indigenous partner (now accounting for more than half of marriages involving an Indigenous person) with about 90 per cent of the children of such mixed marriages being identified as Indigenous. Changes in Census procedures were another influence.

The bottom line is that most of the measured growth in the Indigenous population has been at the advantaged urban end of the spectrum (where university participation is higher) rather than in disadvantaged and remote areas.

The typical university student is aged about 20 years. Thus the claimed stagnation in Indigenous university participation between 1995 and 2005 involves those born between 1975 and 1985. As it happens, the recorded Indigenous population grew by 38.8 per cent between 1971 and 1976 but declined by 0.6 per cent in the 1981 Census before rising again by a massive 42.4 per cent in the 1986 census. The figures reflect measurement issues. Consequently, I would not read too much into measured Indigenous participation changes around this period.

Overall, time series comparisons (including for "Closing the Gap") for our Indigenous population are problematic because of the changing structure of that population. Effectively the more disadvantaged "traditional communities" of remote and rural Australia are becoming swamped in numerical terms by rapidly growing urban Indigenous populations.

Hi Individual,

Yes, that may be happening in some cases, no names, but surely not in 36,000 cases.

On the one hand, a thousand Indigenous 'communities' need skilled people, in all manner of trades and professions: plumbers, mechanics, electricians, and teachers, nurses, accountants - there are five thousand Indigenous organisations, why isn't there a call for five thousand accountants ? - but I'm betting that most of these vital positions are taken up by non-Indigenous people.

Yet Indigenous skilled people have to work somewhere. And surely, for genuine self-determination, if ever it came over the horizon, i.e. something like self-reliance, then communities should have their own skilled people ?

On the other hand, yes, I don't think the Indigenous elites want too many skilled people, it mucks up the image of their being the Only and Glorious Few, the Brilliant Cohort, the Mighty Thousand or whatever, to whom all blessings should flow. No, there are 36,000 or so Indigenous graduates and maybe many thousand vital tradespeople.

I recall an Indigenous academic's reaction when I said, back in about 1996, that there seemed to be around five thousand graduates, and another five hundred graduating each year. His face fell and he said, "But they can't keep coming out at that rate, can they ?" Well, yes. 1,859 last year.

So you are probably right that bureaucrats don't want to be pushed out by skilled Indigenous people. And if too many people go off dependence, what will happen to the bureaucrats' jobs anyway, not that seems likely yet ? And Indigenous elites are not known for championing the creation of more and more Indigenous graduates, to bite at their heels.

[TBC]

[continued]

As well, we all know of people who are employed not really to do anything, just to be 'Indigenous', like what they used to call in the US, cigar-store Indians. One young bloke I knew was employed as a ranger, to stand outside the headquarters and be 'the Aboriginal'. He wasn't remotely qualified but looked 'very Aboriginal'.

And how many people have we had to 'work' with who never seemed to ever do anything, just swan around, go outside and smoke, sit in the tea-room and drink coffee, but never seemed to have any duties ? How many jobs are there out there for 'liaison officers', engagement officers, community something officers, who spend their time visiting relatives, car and phone thrown in ? Cigar-store Indians, indeed.

But maybe all these jobs are now taken up ? There's no room in any of those systems for more Indigenous graduates ? Not that they necessarily expect it, they're now gaining strictly mainstream expertise, they may be much more likely to want strictly mainstream jobs ? I live in hope.

Sorry, Bren, I'll respond to your interesting comments tomorrow, my four posts are up :)

Joe

Joe, one explanation for the increase in numbers may well lay within the latest census figures. The latest figures showed a 50% increase in the number of people identifying as indigenous over the previous increase. So those numbers would flow on to enrolments in schools. As I have said previously, those indigenous people may well have already been going to post secondary schools, but not identifying as indigenous. Whatever the reason, I'm happy to see the improvement although I would be a lot happier if it translated to improved figures for remote students.
As far as indigenous people doing their own thing, well I have to agree with that. Despite the misinformation given out by some, I have personal knowledge of movements by indigenous people around the country back at least 90 years ago. My father in law and his brother travelled from far North QLD, through NT and into the Kimberley looking for work. The brother ended up in the NT, one of the first Aboriginal people to hold a pastoral lease, on a large cattle station, in the 50s, and went on to become, at the time, the richest Aboriginal person in Australia.
My husband travelled around W.A. and the NT, working his way from place to place, at a time before he had citizenship.
My brother in law, before he had citizenship rights, bought a block of land in Broome and built a house for his family. He was a qualified carpenter and worked as a ship builder on pearling luggers for 40 years.
These are just a few examples, personal experiences of mine. There are many, many other examples of obviously Aboriginal people getting on and doing their own thing long before the existence of any culturally appropriate agencies and departments. And they did it alone, without any government assistance.

I have to say this again, and I am glad to see that Loudmouth is on the same page. Perhaps it is time we stopped being politically correct and redfined who is classified as indigenous. I have two Irish grandfathers, but I don't classify myself as being Irish. A significant percentage of these Aboriginal graduates couldn't give a stuff about what is happening to those still in the tribal areas.

Sooner, rather than later, those still in the tribal areas are going to have to learn to live as the white man does. I used to live at Batchelor in the N.T. It was a nice tidy little town when it was occupied by the white mine workers from Rum Jungle. Now that it is occupied by Aboriginals it is becoming a wasteland. It surely isn't difficult to learn to be tidy.

David

Apologies to all. I meant to write, grandfather in law, not father in law. Old age is such a disappointment!

but surely not in 36,000 cases.
Loudmouth,
Well, it wouldn't surprise me though if it was the case in 30,000 cases. In my area the situation is thus; An indigenous gets a position, then an outside pen pusher is employed to cover for the former & then a third, a bureaucrat is employed to cover up the fact of the situation on the two former. Then, the indigenous is praised for doing a great job.
The local paper is full of reports of such success stories with certificates & awards handed out faster than they can print them. So, I'd say 30,000 is probably a fairly realistic figure.

Individual, my experience in the health sector with respect indigenous qualifications versus ability has not been a positive one. The training and employment of Indigenous health workers has been one of the areas, along with education, that has failed miserably.
I have worked with health workers who were barely literate, in any language. They had very basic training at an Indigenous facility then released upon the community, with no hands on experience in a standard health setting, like a hospital, and given powers way beyond their abilities.
Patients are frequently misdiagnosed, symptoms not recorded, drugs administered, including antibiotics and all by someone with absolutely no knowledge of anatomy or physiology and the inability to read medical text books or drug information sheets.
The white nurses in the communities keep the clinics running and people alive, in the main part. Even after 30 years of health workers in communities, the clinics still totally depend on white staff to maintain the health of the residents.
Initially, the intention was to have health workers heavily involved in health education and preventative medicine but this has been an abject failure and in most cases, not all, but most, the health workers act as liaison officers for the nurses. At an exorbitant rate of pay.
One incident I tell people about. I had to phone a remote clinic to see if they had received an important fax. The Indigenous woman who answered the phone stated " fax, I don't know nothing about faxes. I'm the manager here. I'll get you one of the nurses."
It has always been my stance that health workers should receive the same training as registered nurses if they are to be put in such important positions. The same goes for teachers.

Hi Bren,

Thanks for your opinion about that period of 'stagnation'. A few facts:

Until 2000-2005, the great majority of Indigenous students were Special-Entry students, usually mature-aged. Their average (median) age at commencement was around thirty. So students coming onto study in, say, the 1980s, could have been born in the forties or earlier: I worked with a couple of students, later graduates, who were born in the mid-thirties. In the 1990s, it was not uncommon for many students to have been born in the 1950s. 'Median' means a wide spread, Bren.

So even in the early 2000s, many students, particularly mature-aged students in Indigenous-focussed diploma courses, would have been born in the 1960s or early seventies.

The median commencement age of Australian students generally is higher than you might think – around 24. With the rapid rise in the numbers of Indigrenous students finishing Year 12, the median age of commencing Indigenous students has probably come down now to 26 or even 25. But let's say 24. This suggests that the median Indigenous student commencing study in 2013 was born in the late eighties, 1988, just as the boom (which can be easily seen in the Census figures for each age-group) was getting going. 'Median' means that there were as many Indigenous commencers born before 1988 and after it.

As school-leavers come to predominate commencements, the median age will go down, and the 'median year of birth' will more rapidly come forward. If the median age by 2020 falls to twenty years, then the median birth-year for commencers will be 1999 or 2000, and the birth-boom will have well and truly have hit university age.

Graduates tend to be older than commencers, by at least the length of their courses, so that birth-boom won't affect graduate numbers fully until around 2022-2023. The decade after that will seem relatively massive numbers of graduates.

Yes, there was some re-identification – I suspect that it tends to happen under Labor, and the opposite under the Coalition – as well as better enumeration of Indigenous people. As well,

[TBC]

[continued]

instances of outright fraud, of non-Indigenous people enrolling as Indigenous with their eye on the main game of seeking employment in Indigenous-oriented positions, occurs, but probably below 5 %. Some of those are doing very well, by the way.

G'day Big Nana,

How to boost those numbers in outer suburbs, rural towns and in remote communities, and amongst men in particular in all those settings ? Of course, they are very different settings, with different problems, so different tactics.

I've always maintained that the Indigenous support programs at universities had a major role to play there, to develop interactive programs with kids in schools in those areas to enthuse them about careers (we used to try to work with kids from Year 6 upwards, long before they got to de-motivating secondary school), and build up an on-going relationship, by email, with as many kids as possible about their changing ideas about careers, from the outset right through to university or trades enrolment, and on to employment - constantly reiterative process, if it is to work right.

If efforts like these are not made, constantly and consistently, that Gap will never Close. There are already (at least) two distinct populations across Australia, one working and often qualified as tradespeople or professionals, and the other welfare-dependent, often illiterate, with no family experience of work. It will be up to the second of these to catch up, but they will have to run bloody fast, if it's ever going to happen. The later it starts, the more difficult it will be, but it will have to happen.

Of course, this raises the question: does everybody want the Gap to Close ? Is too much riding on keeping it Open ?

Cheers and all the best for your beautiful families,

Joe

Is too much riding on keeping it Open ?
Loudmouth,
There is absolutely no question that this is the case. The difficulty lies in the fact that it is form both sides. If the Gap were suddely closed the whole indigenous thing would be gone & with it all the special programs & funding & other privileges. On the non-indigenous sides the many schemes with handsome funding would dry up also. Imagine all the guilt industry collapsing because suddenly all people are equal. Naw, there is big money in keeping the Gap just wide enough.

Joe, in all societies there is a gap between achievers and non achievers. I can't think of any country in the world that doesn't have any issues with generational poverty. In my lifetime I have seen so many changes in the Kimberley. On the one hand we have a large proportion of indigenous people buying their own homes, starting small businesses, working as professionals. On the other, a whole section of the community now into their third generation of welfare dependency combined with alcohol/drug addiction.
However, this is also true for non indigenous people. It is just a matter of degree. The percentage of indigenous people with social problems is greater on a per capita level. The question to be asked is, do we address these problems differently based on race or do we treat all disadvantaged children equally, based on need.
I favour the latter because when indigenous children become aware that they are treated differently to their white peers, they begin to see themselves as victims, not individuals with the ability to learn and change and advance.
All children in these dysfunctional homes need a lot of support and encouragement to step outside their circumstances and grow. Their race is irrelevant.

Hi Individual,

I'd reverse that proportion of dodgy figures: maybe six thousand out of 36,000 might be Johnny-come-latelies, and outright frauds. Still, 30,000 ain't bad :)

I think the scenario that you paint is more likely to happen with the hordes of completely-unqualified personnel that Big Nanna talks about - health workers, legal aid workers, education workers, 'liaison officers', 'engagement officers', 'inclusion officers', 'rangers', people with big names in the eyes of senior bureaucrats (Black and white) but utterly useless. I long for the day when they can be moved aside and replaced by competent and qualified Indigenous staff.

Big Nanna,

The idiocy of appointing completely unqualified people, in the name of 'self-determination' and 'community, to crucial positions, has surely done immense harm, perhaps contributing to deaths and the shielding of domestic violence and abuse.

Yes, I'm only too aware of that shielding of incompetents, even in academia. The converse has been the harassing and hounding of Indigenous staff who actually do want to get something done – how can incompetent Indigenous staff and conniving non-Indigenous staff keep their jobs unless they can get rid of competent and dedicated Indigenous staff, who may have different views from their own ? If they were honest, they would admit that they take for granted that 'It doesn't really matter, does it, it's only Blackfellas'.

Individual and Big Nana,

Thank you so much for your last contributions, they are both spot-on -we're getting somewhere !

On 'Closing the Gap', is it possible that many people oppose it because they think it will lead to assimilation - in other words, they can conceive of the remote predicament only in terms of either-or - closing the gap will make Indigenous people the same as non-Indigenous people which is, in their minds, assimilation ? That Indigenous people can't remain Indigenous if they are as well-off, comfortable and as likely to be contributing to the national benefit - i.e. as, to cite Noel Pearson, Aboriginal Australians ?

Joe

in all societies there is a gap between achievers and non achievers.
Big Nana,
Yes & I believe so it should be however having said that I do think that no-one should be labelled a non-achiever if factors beyond their control i.e. incompetent bureaucrats ruining their opportunites etc. are the cause.
In the case of australian indigenous most Australians are bending ar$e over backwards but this is taken for granted & even demanded as a birth right. The lack of incentive is in 90% of cases the cause of non-achieving & defended by cries of discrimination. How do I know that ? Good & decent Indigenous people tell me.
Only the indigenous themselves can make that one big step from welfare to a career by adopting a sense of responsibility not only to their people but to all, especially those who are & have been paying enormous rent to reside in this country. Correct me if I am wrong but I can't think of any other people on this planet so well looked after as the indigenous of this country. I know many who know this & appreciate it but far too many don't.

Just a final quick word. All of these figures of increased Indigenous graduates has not translated into qualified workers in country centres and remote communities. White people are still doing all the essential jobs apart from a few health and education professionals in towns.
It seems that despite all the claims to the contrary, urban Indigenous do not relate to their bush countrymen.

.....What is the explanation behind the explosion of indigenous attendance at university?

Perhaps it's the threat of loosing one benefits, or at least having them quarantined. Or perhaps it's the incentives given to certain minority groups in this country.

I would be interested to find out the cost associated with educating an indigenous student through uni as opposed to a Anglo Australian.

It would also be interesting to see what costs the student bared. But I guess that would be flying the racist flag.

[continued]

Is it possible that many people privately believe that the Gap can't/shouldn't close because that would be to admit that situations can improve, and that is anathema to some people: while whites are here, nothing can ever be positive, we can't ever acknowledge improvement or progress. To admit improvement is to surrender. Pity about the 36,000 then.

Nana, yes, human beings do seem to differentiate into two categories, one taking up effort-related opportunities and putting their backs into it, the other seeking comfort-related opportunities and looking for the soft option. Some put in, some take out. Some families have a culture of doing for themselves, some a culture of parasiting on others, there's no easier or less painful way to put it. I'm not saying that some people are lazy, just that they may honestly believe that skiving is their right.

Individual,

"Only the indigenous themselves can make that one big step from welfare to a career by adopting a sense of responsibility not only to their people but to all .... "

Yes, that's what I've always thought was meant by 'self-determination', that people would strive to gain the skills to be able to do it all for themselves, to build their own economic bases, to run their own businesses and organisations - and for all of that, any group on Earth would need a vast range of skilled people.

But maybe it's too late to expect urban people to abandon their communities to go and work in rural and remote situations - that may only be changing the agents of continued dependence a little, and in any case urban people have as much right to live and work wherever they like as anybody else. The old neo-colonial aim was to train up a handful of Indigenous skilled people and then confine them to Indigenous settlements throughout their careers. They don't have to, and on the whole, they won't. Remote and rural change will be ultimately up to remote and rural people: their country, their responsibility. They can't put a guilt trip on urban people.

Cheers,

Joe

Big Nana
"It seems that despite all the claims to the contrary, urban Indigenous do not relate to their bush countrymen."

That is exactly what I said in a previous post.
But why should they, who in their right mind would want to go back to living in a squalid tribal area when they can live in a nice clean city environment. Not too many people are so altruistic, black or white.

Having said that, the same thing applies to a large number of overseas students from countries such as India. How many Indian doctors who graduate here want to go back to India to practice. I suspect, not too many.

The world would be a much better place if all that could be changed, but I am not holding my breath.

David

when they can live in a nice clean city environment.
VK3AUU,
You nor anyone else would belive me if I told you how many indigenous I have in remote area after they arrived loaded to the brim with idealism but then got too disillusioned by the lack of city glitter & before one knew what was happening they vanished again. Go into any Government building & I bet you all I have that the offices where indigenous are you find the lowest of all air conditioning settings. Your glasses fogg up the moment you leave the office.

Hi Individual,

And probably a high proportion of those supernumeraries were not actually qualified in any way except that they have graduated in 'looking Aboriginal'. Indigenous graduates in, say, teaching and nursing, tend to be out there in the classrooms or in some health -care setting.

We conveniently forget that, pre-European, Indigenous groups were cut off from each other by mutual hostility and hate, they deliberately spoke barely a word of their neighbours' languages, went to war at the drop of a hat over slights and suspected slights and each others' women, and generally spent a pleasant fifty thousand years utterly disunited.

Not just 'tribe' from 'tribe' but within 'tribes' as well: in my wife's 'tribe', Ngarrindjeri, the various dialect groups, Ramindjeri, Tangane, Jaralde, etc., regularly used to meet to spear each other in the eye or kneecap or hip, steal each others' women, carry out a wide range of fascinating forms of magic spells to destroy each other. No love lost there, nor much unity either.

When we were making the Flags back in the early seventies, we hoped against hope that groups would use the Flag to come together under, and of course, that happened to an extent. But I recall a huge brawl at the main Aboriginal hotel here in Adelaide in late 1972, between the two main southern 'Missions', people bashing and kicking and cursing each other from the two different places, and the men were pretty bad too. And so many of them related. Maybe, I thought, Aboriginal people find it easier to fracture than to come together.

And those were the good days.

So disunity has been a major problem, and if one population seeks to go one way, and another in another direction, that's how it will probably be. The opportunities have been there, it's up to people to seize them.

Thirty thousand people can't be all that wrong :)

Joe

mutual hostility and hate,
Loudmouth,
You touched on something I'd forgotten to draw attention to. Believe me I get no joy out of stating such things, I only hope that the more some facts become known the more chance we have on narrowing that Gap which is what I'd like to see as part of living together.
It is astounding how much dislike there is towards people from New Guinea or even some of the Indian migrants, much more so than is directed at Anglo Saxons.
I have formed the view that white people are simply seen as a necessary evil but the others are just plain disliked for no other reason that they're making many indigenous jealous because of their industriousness.
Only real education can see to that trend to vane. Education such as we have now since the Goaf has done more harm & has put up more hurdles for indigenous Australians than any other system in this country's history.
A non-military national service for every citizen for two years would achieve more harmony than any university education. It would bring people together rather than keep treating them as separate groups. When you speak with indigenous Australians who participate in the Army reserves etc. you don't get the feeling you're talking to a different Australian unlike when you converse with a Uni educated indigenous.

Joe, the divisions are still there today. I see local jobs in Indigenous organisations now asking for applicants of a certain descent. Not just Indigenous applicants encouraged now, it's down to actually which tribes are preferred. And the generational feuds still go on. Here in Broome a few months ago the police had to ban all take away alcohol sales for a night because of massive on going violence between two warring factions.
The back lash from the greater population was an education in itself! I hadn't realised how many people couldn't exist without alcohol for one night.
And Individual, I agree about the dislike of other races. In Darwin there a quite a few African nurses these days. Blacker than black. And the Indigenous patients don't like them. I was quite surprised by that when it first became apparent. I still am not sure why. Is it embarrassment that certain black people are very proficient and well qualified? Or is it simply a tribal instinct to hate someone who looks like they belong to another tribe

Hi Individual and Big nana,

I wish it wasn't so, but it is, and has been. I wonder, if there was some constitutional recognition of 'culture and language', if that situation would actually get much worse, not better.

Correct me please if I'm speaking out of my backside, but what does Senator Peris' 'the world's oldest culture' mean ? All humans have had 'culture' long before we all came out of Africa. Does she mean the world's most unchanging culture ? Culture which stifles innovation, sharing ideas, learning from each other ? Stagnant culture ?

The rest of the world had the good fortune (even the Native Americans originally) to be living on a huge land-mass, Asia-Europe-Africa, a dozen Australias, with (painfully slowly but eventually) innovations, such as pastoralism and agriculture, refining metals for more efficacious tools, and exchange of religious and philosophical ideas - as well as interminable and brutal wars - which slowly created the societies of today.

Apart from the last few hundred years, Australia has been cut off, even from Papua-New Guinea, for more than ten thousand years now, so any flow of ideas within Australia would have been only between groups in Australia, when and if they could ever come together to exchange half the population, women, and treat each other peaceably. Human innovations have been spread painfully slowly at the best of times - it took us hundreds of thousands of years after the discovery of fire, to use it for cooking. Probably women 'invented' that. And agriculture arose in only a half-a-dozen places - including Papua-New-Guinea - and only in the last ten thousand years. Probably women invented that too. And looking after animals as well. And probably taming dogs.

Now we're all in the modern world, a world swirling with ideas in comparison. What's the good of praising un-change ?

Cheers,

Joe

loudmouth,
all this is highly interesting especially when we hear the terms rich & diverse culture. All the ignorant & more often than not artificial put-on fawning re this diversity is doing a severe disservice to the genuine indigenous who get caught up in expectations of diversity. Why does no-one ever ask the real indigenous what they would like to see ? I feel sorry for them because they just don't get a say as the pretend indigenous override them everytime, very much like academics do to normal society.

Individual,

I suppose every 'culture' is rich and diverse, but some may be based on the intricate weaving of a body of knowledge which is necessarily incomplete on the one hand, and is bound to be skewed in favour of one group or other in those societies, usually the men, usually the older men - that's how 'culture' tends to work. Thinking about my Scottish and Irish tribal forebears, 'rich and diverse' doesn't mean they weren't also brutal and violent.

You and Big Nana would know far more than me about it, but from the little I've experienced and read about, it seems that not only were the cultural practices of neighbouring groups distinctly different, but WITHIN 'tribes', clans within 'tribes', families within clans, cultural practices could be quite different - different naming practices for example.

This makes sense, since land use and claims for ownership were/are family-based or maybe clan-based, but rarely 'tribe'-based - you can correct me on this. If this is so, then any talk about 'nation' has to take into account, not a few hundred 'tribes', but tens of thousands of extended-families, descent groups, if 'nation' means traditional control of who could hunt or gather or fish on whose land. So tens of thousands of 'nations'.

Of course the word was used very loosely a few hundred years ago, often to mean just families. But this is no :)

Joe

Joe, re land usage, I can only comment on what has always happened in the Kimberley. Here, land is separated into areas, with certain clans belonging to each area. Within that area, then comes the family allocation. For example, my husband was allocated 200 acres by the elders, in the location of that clan, more specifically at the place his mother was born. My sons and nephews are all building little weekend dongas on that 200 acres. Neighbours with claims on each side are other members of that clan.
The clans collectively are known generally by a tribal name and speak the same language, although the clans actually consider themselves as separate tribes and have their own tribal name.
Just within the Broome area are at least 12 main tribes, with further subdivision into what we would call clans. The tribes all speak totally different languages, a fact that is always overlooked by those who try to say that the tribes were on good terms and violence between them didn't exist. Tribes with good relationships usually have share a common language or at least are able to communicate.
Ownership of land has become the most divisive issue up here.. You probably heard about the huge James Price Point gas hub that almost started a war between environmentalist and people wanting development. The biggest problem arose when the two tribes with claims on the area were on opposite sides of the debate and we had people who had never set foot on the land getting a vote on it's usage. Aboriginal people who are the descendants of original inhabitants, but raised elsewhere, are now claiming the right to be involved in land issues. It gets extremely nasty and violent at times.
All the locals are wanting individual leases so they can have some guarantee of permanence with whatever project they are already doing, or wanting to do on their recognized areas but the Land Council has got the grip of death on the land and is refusing to support the issue. God knows where it will all end up.

Joe, regarding the "nation" issue. You are correct in that each little clan, which was just a few families, had hunting and fishing rights over certain areas. Many years ago, one of the old female elders, who was a relative of my husbands, told the story of how a young boy, early teens probably, was padding a raft across across a bay, when he lost his paddle. His raft was pushed by the tide onto land belonging to a neighbouring clan. The law was inflexible. Because he went on someone else's land without their consent he had to be killed. And so he was. I was even shown his burial place.
This idea of negotiating with nations is bizarre. Obviously the people proposing it have no idea of the real situation or the original culture.

Big Nana,
In my area the term clan is a misnomer because just about every family calls themselves a clan. A small assembly of some 10 families call themselves a Nation with Statesmen etc. & just like in other Nations the Statesmen are kept by the taxpayer.

Thanks Individual,

Whatever name people use or used, the gist is that there traditionally were many tens of thousands of 'groups' controlling land-use over specific stretches of land across Australia. Often, as I understand it, people might leave part of their land for months or years, or even decades, particularly during droughts.

But still, the 'group', by whatever name, held the land-use rights to that land. Some areas seemed to be shared - down here in SA, parts of the Gawler Ranges, for example, and perhaps no particular 'group' claimed it outright.

But any drive to recognise 'nations' might have to contend with tens of thousands of groups, often disputing boundaries and historic entitlements. A lawyers' life-time banquet !

But back to topic: why is there so little enthusiasm for demonstrable Indigenous success in higher education ? Why are the elites so silent ? Why is the non-Indigenous 'Left' so silent ? Does the whole concept of Indigenous success go so much against their 'knowledges' ? Would they be more comfortable with a tiny handful, while the rest are denied full education ?

Joe

Joe, a handful of educated elites have been acting as spokesmen for indigenous matters for several decades now. The thought of being reduced to one amongst many is probably not a comfortable one. They may as well get used to it, because, as you say, the numbers are increasing rapidly and even worse, up here we have a young generation of very dark skinned kids getting educated and in the eyes of the general community, they are the ones with credibility, especially those from remote areas.
One of my grandsons attended a small, independant college in Darwin and one of the students, who would have finished year 12 last year, was a lovely, full blood girl who was an incredibly good speaker. I would love for her to go on into some leadership role and I only hope she would get a better response from the indigenous elite than Bess Price has had.
Unfortunately, educated and very obviously aboriginal people tend to get a poor reception from their own. Whether it is because they are seen as a threat to the status quo, or because they tend to be conservative I don't know.

Hi Big Nana,

Fantastic ! I certainly wish them well. Charles Darwin Uni has tripled its enrolments since 20067, with Batchelor closing down - I hope that those students are enrolling in full-degree courses, not in those useless (no offense to anybody) diploma courses.

But of course, students from the north, and from remote areas, should be able to enrol in any course in Australia. I recall driving a group of Alice Springs students around Adelaide in about 1997, including one lovely girl who wanted to study Marine Science at Launceston - I hope she made it. But I'm sure there would be some dumb-arse 'counsellors' who would purse their lips and shake their heads sorrowfully and say, "Sorry, dear, there won't be a need for that in Alice Springs, why not do hairdressing instead ?" God save us from 'counsellors'.

Another young girl in a career-workshop in Broken Hill was passionate about becoming a rainforest manager. I hope that she never told that to a 'counsellor'. I would die happy to find out that she is now doing precisely what she wanted to do.

Was it Eileen Joyce, the world-famous pianist, who was born in a tent out from Kalgoorlie ? And the wonderful operetta singer, June Bronhill, who was raised in Broken Hill (hence the name) ? Location is not destiny :)

But certainly university student programs should be unstinting in publicising university study opportunities in the most remote communities. When I was at Salisbury campus, I would spend, I'd say, a full two months each year either putting together information packages or going out to schools. One year, Maria and I spent our mid-year break driving up around Brewarrina and Bourke and Wilcannia, talking with kids about their career opportunities. And another year, down to Ivanhoe. ['Where the hell's Ivanhoe ?' Yeah, we bought the bumper sticker.]

But that won't happen as long as the elites' tacit slogan is "We've made it, Pull up the Ladder." "Veniti sumus, scalam retractate."

Joe

Loudmouth, "why is there so little enthusiasm for demonstrable Indigenous success in higher education ? Why are the elites so silent ? Why is the non-Indigenous 'Left' so silent ? Does the whole concept of Indigenous success go so much against their 'knowledges'?"

Not something the 'fact checking' ABC is interested in. Not useful to the Progressives' agenda.

OTB,

The recent review of Indigenous higher education used data no later than 2005, when the down-turn had been going for five years or so - and before the substantial rise in numbers and performance. There are probably twice as many Indigenous students enrolled this year (we won't know until July next year) as in 2005.

Individual,

The low-hanging fruit has always been the easiest to pick, in the cities and amongst working people. Now might be the time for the real work to start:

Much of the funding for Indigenous student support at universities should urgently go towards very active and ongoing liaison between universities' Indigenous student support staff, and remote, rural and outer suburban populations (most likely through schools), in order to publicise, select, and recruit prospective students from those areas, followed up by rigorous preparation of any prospective students, immediately before their courses start - followed up by intensive on-campus support.

As well, something similar should be put in place at TAFE Colleges - for Indigenous students in genuine courses, leading either directly to trades or to preparation for such courses, or for entry into university. There surely is enormous scope for all manner of trades training, either on-site or in conjunction with TAFE Colleges ?

One hears stories about a plumber being flown out to a remote community to change a tap washer. What the hell has been going on all these years ? Indigenous enrolments at TAFE Colleges have been enormous year after year for twenty years or more now - and what is there to show for it ? Thirty six thousand tradespeople ? I don't think so.

I'm sure not all communities are bereft of tradespeople, that some people there have got off their elbows and learnt valuable skills for the benefit of their communities. It would be great to get some figures on this.

Joe

Joe, in my experience, people in remote communities who have any get up and go, have got up and gone! What is left are the severely dysfunctional and disadvantaged. One of my sons, who now has his own business, spent a few years supervising construction of new housing in a couple of remote communities. He nearly imploded with frustration. Despite paying high wages, men had to be dragged out of bed to get to work on time, frequently didn't return to work after lunch and often went missing altogether for a few days after pay day.
Multiple courses have been run in every community, on just about every skill you can think of. From basic mechanics, to truck driving, basic plumbing, baking, screen printing, horticulture, welding, fencing, grader driving etc. you name it, it has been done.
However, none of these courses have resulted in any type of self sufficiency in the communities and once the instructors have left, everyone goes back to the apathetic, directionless lives they had before the course started.

Hi Big Nana,

I have to go tree-planting this morning down next to Kuitpo Forest, it's about seven degrees with a fine drizzle already. What larks !

I remember picking up a load of hay up on the community, five thousand bales, with a group of young blokes, in near-century temperatures, took us about five days. After awhile, I noticed one young bloke who never seemed to touch a bale all day, every day. He always managed to be at the back of the queue at the top of the elevator. So yes, there are people who are bone-lazy. But I wonder if most people in remote communities are not lazy, they honestly believe they shouldn't have to do anything. They don't see white people actually working hard all that often, so they may perceive that everything comes to whites free too, houses, cars, 'jobs'.

In the early records here in SA, you can sort of identify the workers, those who seize opportunities, who apply for land leases or go out hunting and fishing, who are never on the bite, while others are forever asking for more this or that, free travel passes, getting into trouble over grog or beating their women, or being 'sent back to their own districts' from the city. Or being expelled from missions :)

I don't know if that sort of differentiation happened in traditional times: those who provided and those who preferred to sit around the camp, waiting for the providers. Is it something to do with a hunter-gatherer ethic, that effort and work are simply not perceived, even though they obviously have to happen. Magic is what brings the goods, not effort, in this viewpoint. In good times, when the magic seems to work, you eat to the full; in bad times, when somebody else's magic is working against you or your group, everybody starves, and little kids and old people die. In good times, you take; in bad times, nobody does, population crashes.

Maybe these past forty years have been a time of sorting out the opportunity-seekers from the comfort-seekers ?

Joe

Joe, I don't think it is a racial issue at all. It is a human issue. Every race contains people who dont contribute and are constantly on the look out for the easy way out. And I can't see any hunter gatherer society supporting anyone who didn't pull their weight. Babies and the frail aged were abandoned when times were tough so I should imagine any malingerer would be given short shift.
The problem that arises in remote communities is that the people with initiative have gone and the remainder are kept unmotivated by easy welfare and government grants to maintain infrastructure. In the wider society welfare dependant people live in public housing enclaves, basically out of sight and mind and rarely do we have conversations about the multi generational apathy in these families.
The cost of maintaining these remote communities and the unlikely prospect of them ever becoming viable is an issue that people are reluctant to face.The constant call for "proper" jobs, better educational and health facilities is a distraction from the fact that unless they can establish large projects like mining or agriculture, there is no employment future for them and the health and educational facilities are better than what is available to white families living in the bush.
My personal belief is, that if people want to continue to live in these remote communities they firstly have to accept that they cannot have the facilities offered in larger towns, and secondly, they need to adopt the communal farming method used in Asia, in small villages. I think it was Malaysia that developed a model that could be used everywhere. A method that had people growing their own veggies, someone farming a few pigs for sale, someone else breeding chickens, goats were another source of income. There is a baker, a hairdresser , a mechanic etc. Personal income was low but people were healthy and engaged in work.

Hi Big Nana,

Most communities have running water - on Google Earth, you can see sewage ponds a mile or so away from a community, so there is running water. So why not vegetable gardens and orchards ? A thousand dollars would be enough for a start. Of course, somebody would have to have the sense to negotiate for a lease of the land needed, so that those who work are not countered by those who just take.

No, it's certainly not a 'racial' thing, but I'm wondering if it's 'cultural' ? Even so, across Australia, a very sizable portion of the Indigenous population is chronically 'out of sight' and raising their kids to expect welfare-dependent lives. Should that continue ? I don't think so - after all, that's the Gap that everybody talks about and so many people in 'jobs' are maintaining. I don't think that should continue. So what to do about it ?

Certainly, every effort should be made by universities' Indigenous support programs - and their TAFE equivalents, if such exist - to continually publicise courses for trades and professions in rural and remote populations, and in outer suburbs, to establish a presence amongst school-kids and young adults , to enthuse them if possible with the notion of a career, of pulling their weight. I don't know why TAFE colleges aren't getting much more into preparation programs - I don't mean those pissy Certificate I and II courses, but genuine courses - so that young people are aware of all the pathways into trades or further study.

One implication of the Forrest Review is the notion of putting in place a relatively seamless process from pre-school to primary to secondary to trades and higher study, for Indigenous people no matter where they are. Yes, it's going to be a very difficult and long-term process but thirty six thousand graduates (admittedly from the easier population) show what can be done.

Or do we wash our hands of it ? Should the Gap never be Closed ?

Cheers,

Joe

Joe and Big Nanna.
You both know what you are talking about.
Nothing is going to change while the "Cargo Cult" approach exists. They need a "work for the dole" program even more than their white equivalents. Their payments should also be quarantined so that they can only spend their money on necessities, not booze and tobacco.
There is absolutely no reason why any community could not be self sufficient. We have been mollycodling these indolent b3stards for too long.

David

Hi David,

Maybe you're right. If any sort of 'work for the dole' program was re-introduced - and there have been programs like that for more than fifty years now - they would have to be managed and supervised by complete outsiders, people with absolutely no links whatever to the 'communities' the participants are from. Work would have to be genuine, not 'home duties', not 'mowing uncle's lawn', perhaps one-off day-jobs in the outside economy, say chipping weeds at a local golf club, or odd-job assistance for a local council.

The organisers of such programs would have to be prepared to work like buggery, flat-out lining up odd-jobs and short-term employment.

Why not community-based ? Some Indigenous administrators have a true genius for subverting potentially valuable programs and turning them into yet another pseudo-work program. Some people have spent thirty years or more on such pseudo-programs and really, what good has it done them ? A life of always scrounging, skiving, dodging - what the hell is the good is that ? Not surprisingly, skivers don't have long lives, unless they can get into administration, or academia.

Oops, I may have breached Section 18C. So sue me.

Joe

Joe, to hell with 18C. What you just said is true. It is about time political correctness went out the window and someone with some guys introduced these people to what a day's work really consists of. On a trip up to the Top End a few years ago we called in at Woomers and I wondered why it wasn't being used to accomodate people. Then we called in at Batchelor where I used to live in the sixties when it was a mining town. It used to be a tidy town. Now it looks like nobody cares because actually, nobody does care. That would be a good place to start a project to get people of their bums. When I was there, Jack English had a vegetable farm up the road. There is no shortage of water and good soil. If the people of Lake Cargellico in NSW can make a go of a vinyard and a winery, it can be done anywhere.

David

Hi David,

Maybe there is some sort of informational misunderstanding going on ? As a very experienced friend has pointed out to me, many Aboriginal people in remote settlements assume that if white people have provided something, say housing or vehicles, it is their responsibility to maintain it. Packaging is seen as a white fellas' invention, so it is up to white fellas to keep communities clean of rubbish. White fellas' crap-food, such as Coke or fast-foods, will not have health effects on Aboriginal people, only on white fellas, so if Aboriginal people get unhealthy from it, it's up to white fellas to fix them up.

The key aspect is that Aboriginal people are not responsible for anything which in any way comes from white fellas. That they may benefit from something is neither here nor there.

So, if this is so, how to change people's misunderstandings ? How to get across that, in this world, nothing comes from nothing, everything has to be worked for, Black or white, nobody is owed anything merely by being ?

Of course, colonialism has provided a rich vein of rationales for how things got the way they are now. I couldn't possibly comment on whether people in remote settlements have copped more from colonialism than people in the cities, more apartheid maybe, if that's what is meant by 'colonialism' but I would have thought that 'southern' people, especially 'southern' urban people, might have had at least their share of colonialism. Even those 36,000 graduates :)

And if so, then many, many of them have done something about it, so it seems. I suspect that this has been the case from the very earliest days - some grabbed opportunities, some sat around and waited for more cargo.

The world moves on, it doesn't stop and come back to pick up the pieces.

Joe

It doesn't take long for the same old ideological talk fest about the so called Indigenous 'problem'. Here's how I see it. Western paradigms cannot hold up under the weight of Indigenous epistemology. This is the problem. It is a fact. There, I said it! I am not pretending to be the 'authoritative' voice on Indigenous people but from where I stand, my ways of knowing, and understanding come through interconnected familial relationships I have with metaphysical and natural knowledge entities: my epistemology. To state the obvious, western ways of knowing is compartmentalised into four major abstract "pillars" of knowledge: critical theory, positivist and post positivist, feminist, and constructivist-interpretivist. Basically, the imposition of these or combination of these means that fitting square pegs into round holes becomes the dominant lens through which a field of view can be seen as the only right and white way to privilege knowledge production through linear processing. I am not the first to write about this, many Indigenous scholars have been emerging here in Australia and overseas, are doing this, writing about our research philosophy. Here in Australia, Indigenous scholars such as; Arbon, Rigney, Gaeia, Moreton-Robinson, West, Fredericks, and Nakata are the vanguard of this emerging renaissance of postgraduate which I am one making my meaning contributions. Read their interpretations of Indigenous philosophy and maybe some of what i am writing about here will make sense.

Numnul
" Here's how I see it. Western paradigms cannot hold up under the weight of Indigenous epistemology."
I think you have got the horse by the tail. The real truth is that " Indigenous paradigms cannot hold up under the weight of Western epistemology."
Until your people get this into their brains they will be forever in the stone age.

David

David, shift your brain out of phrenology mode. There you go, does that feel better now?