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