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