.....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.