This issue of fortune is too important than to be used as a political attack on ownership, as the article hints.

Should year-4 students feel either victims or losers because they are not in year-6? Or should perhaps year-6 students feel victims or losers because they have two years less to live than those of year-4?

This question seems ridiculous only because we assume that it is the same student who once is in year-4 which then moves on to year-5 and year-6.

But what makes it the same student? both their body and their mind are constantly changing: body cells are all totally replaced within 7 years, just as old memories are forgotten or distorted and new memories are formed. Hence, if those who identify the student with their body or with their mind were consistent, then 4th-grade kids should be jealous at 6th-grade kids and vice-versa.

Without a spiritual perspective, that there is more to life than fortune, that the fortune we have now consists precisely of those tools that we require for the particular class we are currently in; and without the recognition of the operation of karma, or the results of one's action, beyond the grave, everyone should be jealous at everyone else for one thing or another - and no one is to find contentment. Further, without the spiritual dimension, we are all losers anyway because then we are destined to die and cannot take with us any of our current the wealth or deeds.

Most of this nonsense is just rubbish!
Nobody chooses to be born poor, or in a post code generational poverty trap.
No one chooses to be gang raped, albeit, some very simple trusting folk were. So whats the answer?
Carry a gun and assume personal responsibility for our own safety, given no amount of law enforcement guarantees it!?
Yes sure there are poor decisions and drama queens playing the victim, when all else fails?
But who are the real victims then, those playing the martyr, or those taken in by it?
For mine this just underlines the need for true equality of opportunity, and equality in so called starting points, or education and health.
Sure, lets introduce means testing to ensure the system is not rorted.
And then having given everyone an equal fair start, let them assume responsibility for outcomes, which would then be down to them, rather than serendipity, or being born into advantage.
The cream will always rise to the top!
No it won't if it's been homogenized by the cruel grind that is endemic poverty.
It's no mistake that the man with the highest IQ in the country, found himself limited to carrying garbage cans!
Maybe that's all he wanted? Yeah sure!
Victims come and go, some are real, others are just cursing their fate. And that is I'm sure, down to Karma.
Even so, a good guiltless starting point, must be treating all else as you would be treated, if in their shoes; rather than exploiting or scapegoating them; or using them as an excuse for inaction!?
Inasmuch as you do unto the least among you, you also do unto me. (JC)
Rhrosty.

God don't we get some twaddle on here.

My father spent 2 years during the depression clearing scrub, for 10 shillings & keep a week, & a tent to live in.

He was just married, with a pregnant wife, when WW11 started. He came out of the air force at 40, with a cheap demob suite, & 26 pounds, just enough to get to Townsville, where he'd landed a job.

He retired to a nice home by the water, & a little boat to go fishing. Yep he worked for it.

I played football & ran miles barefoot like many others, because our parents could not afford boots & running shoes.

In my country town school with only 12 in 5Th year, 6 of us did science honors lunchtime & after school, as the school could not offer physics. We therefor needed honors to earn the points to get the university scholarship we wanted. Mine was from General Motors.

The science master who gave those afterschool classes taught us we could do anything we wanted, if we wanted it enough. Most country schools still have such masters.

I flew the best fighters Australia had, drove the best formula 1 racing cars of my day, & sailed the Pacific in my own yacht, because I wanted to enough to get off my ass, earn the money, & do it.

I have no time for cry babies who sit on their fattening ass, & bleat it's someone elses fault.

Get a life.

Yep Hasbeen, it is as always, all about you.
>Most country schools still have such masters<
I beg to differ, and kids these days are lucky to leave with enough numeracy to get a job, let alone an honors Graduation and or a scholarship.
My science teacher was eventually jailed for pedophilia! And just between you and me, none of his students earned carer or scholarship assisting honors! And don't tell me how sorry you are for that, because, the truth be known, you just don't give a rats!
You fail to understand the role sheer unadorned luck played in your outcomes, including a stable home and a dad who took his responsibilities seriously.
Plus a science master truly dedicated to his students and school, and all it seems, taken for granted or your due!? No shoes the least of your worries!
You were the very opposite of a victim, but rather the favorite of very partial serendipity.
40% of today's kids don't have a stay at home dad, providing support, encouragement and protection!
So just forget the usual blame the victim mentality, that's par for the course horse manure for you, which just doesn't assist anyone, not even the older I am the better I were types, just like you come across as.
Take away a stable home life, a responsible dad and a dedicated science teacher; and things for you could have been very different!
And you, self satisfied smugness personified, knows it!
Rhrosty.

Seems like a reasonable enough argument to me.
Henry Giroux has been making the same argument(s) for quite some time now.
His work could best be summarized in the title of one of his books Zombie Politics. See the interview with Bill Moyers on Raw Story via Henry's website.

Great response from Rhrosty.

Thank you for the kind words Rhrosty, misery will always find a friend, & failure an excuse. Yes I did very well, but I did not cost a single taxpayer a single extra penny, than those who did not.

Yes we have some problems with the education system taken over by lefty feminists, trying to bring everything down to their own level, but rather than bitch, you have to fight.

My eldest daughter, & about 10 of her mates wanted an OP 2 or better, in a school where the only teacher who could even do year 12 math C & physics was a union delegate, & often absent on union work.

However a very good biology teacher, & a great headmaster helped organise a study group, with 3 of them attending coaching at QUT on Saturdays, & 2 others the only math C coaching session anyone could find anywhere, on the Gold Coast on Wednesday nights. They then shared the results

Yes it helps if parents care enough, & know enough to see what is needed. A couple of these kids parents did not, but with the groups help, both made the physiotherapy courses they wanted.

I have no sympathy for those kids not prepared to put in the work to beat the system. Some people are meant to be ditch diggers, & IQ has nothing to do with it.

Well said, Hasbeen.

There's just something about the mad left personality that revels in victimhood. They even compete with each other prove how much of a victim they are. It seems having a pedo as a teacher is the new black in victimhood. Did you give give a rats?

I'll be honest. I didn't.

I went to Catholic schools with brothers. If that stuff went on I never heard anything about it. I feel a bit ripped off. The way people carry on about it, maybe I just wasn't good looking enough!

Anyway, there are people who have real problems in life. People who lose a partner or child to cancer, kids who lose both parents to car accidents, or men who lose everything to an ex-wife who decides to 'move on'.

As that darling of the Left, Malcolm Fraser, once said, life wasn't meant to be easy.

I don't think Andee spends a lot of time among dumb people or has lived on a public housing estate, unfortunately not everyone is bright and capable of managing their own affairs properly.
Ye it's true there used to be more menial jobs to keep the chickenheads out of trouble, those jobs still exist but the cleaning and pot washing posts are held by engineering and accounting students from India and the Phillipines, presumably because they do a better job and require less supervision than some low IQ mutt from the outer suburbs.

This is powerful prose that economically captures the neoliberal nightmare so many people don't realise they're in.
The only problem is that rejecting the "loser" line is easier said than done. We are social animals and draw our very sense of legitimacy from our peers. The vast majority is so integrated and unquestioning of 'the way we live now', that nothing else is even imaginable. The 'loser' is in a tough spot indeed; it's hard to rationalise a radical stance when the tide of society runs against you. No matter how strong your convictions, real confidence is garnered either by popular or institutional approval. Until 'losers' band together in sizeable numbers, they'll continue to feel the stigma of being eccentrics and pariahs.
Thus my own dismal conclusion that progressivism, beyond tokenism, is doomed to fail. A society can only change radically by violence, as Marx foresaw, or by generational collapse, wherafter the new generation is finally free of the old illusions. The sad thing is that after the collapse they'll be precious little to build a new order with.

The whole quote goes, life wasn't mean't to be easy, it was meant to be delightful!
I spent most of my formative years in orphanages and foster homes.
And I had to fight my own battles, which started we me at 6, fighting a 15 year old and winning; and picked for countryside footy representative honors at 9.
Most of those homes were in the country, and required a very long walk to school in bare feet on gravel roads, and in the dead of winter. "Undernourished" I developed chilblains on both feet, which made the ordeal even more so.
Did I bitch or complain, even when "asked" to pick spuds or man a commercial polisher aged just 7?
No, as usual I stuck my head down and got on as best I could, even though sharing text books with a kid with myopia, and his head always in the way of those important words!
A pedophile science teacher never touched me, albeit, gave me six of the best every day he taught me.
Even so, unbowed and unbroken, I found science a very interesting subject.
The army gave me a chance and I studied medicine, and flew through my final exams, where I averaged 98%, as my passing mark, which broke a previously unassailable 70 year record.
So no, like most of my contemporaneous underprivileged, I did the best with what I was given and might I add, with absolutely no help from the taxpayer, or very much basic christian charity.
Everyone has an opinion, but particularly those who have never ever really done it tough, but were given every possible advantage, and judging from their comments, want to save privilege, or even just a fair go, for those who need neither.
There's nothing wrong with my work ethic, or that of a very smart guy running his heart out day in day out behind a garbage truck.
Who knows what he or I might have achieved, even given Hasbeen's very modest but success inducing start.
Were that we all could have had just that much!
Rhrosty.

Rhrosty, that's bloody luxury:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo

Rhosty: "There's nothing wrong with my work ethic"

But what is your work ethic? Why did you, a smart lad, knuckle under? Based on what, have you continued to support a system that's so patently unfair (not to mention exploitative and destructive). The Protestant work ethic, wretched as it was, is no more, so why do you kowtow?

Squeers; self esteem is what gives any of us the ability to raise our head and or say no; that's just not fair!
And earning my own money and or leading from the front; and by example, gave me mine!
Or just being able to walk a mile or two in another mans shoes, or not ask of others what I wouldn't want for, or couldn't do myself, is another!
Kowtow?
Me?
Never!
I have as many other will tell you, my own views, and even at times very unpopular in some quarters; courage of conviction; and bow to no man; be they fiend or foe!
Moreover, I own my own behavior, rather than try to blame-shift my responsibilities on to others!
Even so, I believe I'm inherently fair, and opened minded enough, to be persuaded by logic's rites; and or, irrefutable evidence to the contrary, to change my mind or long held view!
Which is hardly what one can say for any of the locked and bolted mindset, ideologues posting here!
And they know who they are!
Rhrosty.

As it happens, I've been thinking over the past few months about the damage that has been done in convincing some groups of people that they are victims, powerless in a hostile world. Nobody is. Nobody. But how debilitating that philosophy has been, how it rips the guts out of otherwise able people.

In that sense, well-meaning people, especially on the Left, have helped to disempower people, for example Indigenous people: how often does one hear some whingy, glib, brainless statement that "Nothing's changed in Indigenous affairs", when of course it has. Nothing's stayed the same, more like.

For example, between 1970 and 1990, perhaps fifteen thousand Indigenous people enrolled at universities across Australia. But since 1990, the number has been closer to one hundred thousand: yes, one in every two or three women, one in our or five men. Fifteen thousand are in the system at the moment, and nearly forty thousand have graduated. Indigenous graduates are as likely as non-Indigenous graduates to find work. Nobody has to be a victim.

I've been doing a lot of transcribing of old documents in relation to Aboriginal policy, especially to do with the nineteenth century, and I've been struck by a suspicion that populations didn't decline all that much, if at all - and certainly not compared to population fluctuations during droughts in pre-colonial times. Also, families hung together far more effectively, with far fewer children ever having to be taken into care than I had assumed before.

In the nineteenth century, Aboriginal children did well in Mission schools, notably in arithmetic. [And yes, of course they were allowed to speak their languages. Christ, there's some rubbish around.] At Ramahyuck in Victoria, for example, every child, year after year, progressed successfully from one class to the next, when on the State average, barely half did so. Children at Pt McLeay Mission in SA regularly beat kids from other local school in academic competitions before 1908 or so, including in technical drawing.

[TBC]

[continued]

Half of the Northern Territory is now under Aboriginal control, and 84 % of its coastline. In remote areas, households are supposed to get annual mining royalties, cattle agistment fees, national parks royalties, so poverty is hardly an issue there - squalor maybe but not poverty. Standard housing is available now in remote - and not-so-remote - communities as never before.

Whether Aboriginal people as a whole have EVER been victims, I'm beginning to have doubts. They certainly aren't victims now. No kid should have to suicide in the belief that he is powerless, a victim. Although one suspects kiddy-fiddling in cases like that, and by a close relative - again, a situation from which that poor kid thought there was no escape. i.e. learned helplessness.

But nobody has to be a victim. In that sense, the Forrest Review has got it right - find the jobs, then find the people for the jobs; train them up if necessary, but have the jobs ready.

Joe
www.firstsources.info

loudmouth: “between 1970 and 1990, perhaps fifteen thousand Indigenous people enrolled at universities across Australia. But since 1990, the number has been closer to one hundred thousand: yes, one in every two or three women, one in our or five men”

Why not list your sources, loudmouth? According to the ABS: "In 2011, one in twenty Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander 15-24 year olds were studying at [higher education] level.” These inequitable figures are exacerbated by lower completion rates: “Indigenous students have an overall completion rate of less than 50 per cent, compared to 72 per cent among non-Indigenous Australian domestic students.”

http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Lookup/4102.0Main+Features20July+2013#p10
http://www.acer.edu.au/files/AUSSE_Research_Briefing_Vol10.pdf

PS to everyone on this thread, highly recommend (thanks to Lillian) Charles Ferguson’s meticulously documented doco and book ‘Inside Job’ re the recent massive heist of the common good by the one percent

"Half of the Northern Territory is now under Aboriginal control, and 84 % of its coastline. In remote areas, households are supposed to get annual mining royalties, cattle agistment fees, national parks royalties, so poverty is hardly an issue there - squalor maybe but not poverty. Standard housing is available now in remote - and not-so-remote - communities as never before."

That may be so, Loudmouth, although watching a program on SBS recently tracking the work of a Scottish doctor in Kununurra, one could be forgiven for thinking that some things have stayed the same.

She said she was familiar with Rheumatic Fever, but had never seen it in Scotland where it was something that used to strike before the advent of penicillin...but there's plenty of it in the indigenous population in Australia. One heart specialist commented that the incidence of Rheumatic Fever per head of indigenous population in some parts of Australia would be worse than in the poorest parts of Africa.

And that's only 'one" of the health problems facing indigenous people in "first world" Australia.

And as for housing, the doctor was attempting to help the woman featured who had Rheumatic Fever with more appropriate housing for herself and her family - and an elderly indigenous woman, the recipient of the Order of Australia, who was now sick and homeless....it goes on)

And what can you possibly mean by "squalor maybe but not poverty"?

Rhosty. Your childhood sounds much like my father’s and good on you for prospering, though it was a different world then, during the 30 year golden economic period that started after WW2. I got my first sh!t job in 1975, aged 14, when the Trente Glorieuses, an absolute anomaly in capitalist history, had concluded. Your generation actually had a dream run, with jobs and trades aplenty and a fraction of the beaurocracy (fostering your illusions of freedom), which possibly explains your support for a system which evolves so deftly in response to ‘indignation’ (symonymous with Stringer’s ‘resentment’).
According to the author’s of ‘The New Spirit of Capitalism’, the post-Fordist/post-industrial era of capitalism seduces the modern worker with his/her own credentials, contriving a ‘career path’—even for garbologists and the like—and a fatuous sense of accomplishment, which encourages the credulously-exalted worker to be diligent and police him/herself. It’s the ultimate in cost-effective supervision—a superegoic version of Bentham/Foucault’s panopticon. Even supposing we’re happy to be patronised like this, there aren’t enough ‘careers’ to go around—bu

though enough to maintain hegemony is all the system needs. Solace is taken in that case from the orgiastic nature of consumerism itself, whereby economic growth even feeds off the idle, and even the destitute can get obese—a positive feedback loop for low self-esteem and mental illness generally, arguably products of the ‘loser’ syndrome.

But even putting all this to one side, Rhosty, and I’ve barely scratched the surface, you’re missing the point and actually illustrating Andee Jones’ to a t—if you care to read the article again. Your self-esteem is a social construct (all is vanity)—the social spin with which you anoint yourself—and the difference between your hubris and Keating’s is sincerity (Keating likes to parody himself, like Whitlam. And though he may have thought success was easy in the lucky country, I’m sure he wasn’t taken in by its quality. Sadly, Labor’s leaders are all pragmatists since Whitlam; neoliberal apologists.)
Good for you if this rotten, destructive system affords you self-esteem, but I’m not so easily taken in.

Squeers:

“Your self-esteem is a social construct (all is vanity)—the social spin with which you anoint yourself—“

What is a social construct? Rhosty’s self-esteem is just an opinion he has about himself. Can’t we have opinions about ourselves? Isn’t your opinion about self-esteem just a social construct too?

It’s not vanity to have an opinion about yourself. People can have a very balanced opinion of their own strengths and weaknesses. I would say anyone who is not able to make an honest appraisal of themselves is lacking in self-knowledge and maturity. Everyone has such an opinion whether they express it or not. You can determine from the way they behave that they have a grasp of reality in regard to themselves that is realistic or not. Some people have a terrible opinion of themselves and others have an over-inflated opinion but most have a realistic sense of themselves.

A person can seem like a victim in the words of the author but actually be quite content with their lot because they have enough self-esteem to know what they can change and what they can’t. If they can change things they give what energy they have to set about doing so. If they cannot change it then they accept it without letting it impact on their self-esteem. If you cannot change certain aspects of society then you do not beat yourself up about it. If you have done what you can then you should be at peace with yourself and this does not mean you are a victim

imho,

I get my figures from the Commonwealth Education Department, whatever it's called this year. I don't know where the hell the ABS gets its figures from, but they are ludicrous.

In 2011, according to that Ed. Dept., 11,807 Indigenous people were enrolled at universities. In the 2011 Census, 46,455 Indigenous people were aged from 20 to 24, roughly the five-year span at which Indigenous people start university. The equivalent of one in every four.

Poirot,

Thanks for sticking close to topic. Yes, some easily preventable health conditions are rife in Aboriginal settlements. Diabetes, kidney failure, obesity rates are amongst the highest in the world, and are ailments that are unknown in the Third world. Deaths from alcohol and drugs are also at levels unknown in the Third World. And yes, rheumatic fever, another disease of neglect, usually of children, is higher than anything known in the Third World.

Aboriginal people do not suffer from Third World ailments, like starvation (although I know of one kid who officially died of starvation, in 1955). Aboriginal people die early from diseases related to sh!t diet (fast foods, Coke), total lack of exercise, and excessive use of tobacco, grog and drugs. Let's be honest. And whose responsibility for all that is, eventually ? Who is supposed to do something about it ? They are. The ball is in their court. Everything else is just marking time.

'Squalor maybe but not poverty'. What it says. Don't confuse the two. In a typical Bangla Deshi village, you won't see any rubbish, but plenty of poverty. Clean, but not flash. Aboriginal settlements ? All the detritus of plenty: fast food cartons,, pre-loved Kimbies, old TVs and fridges, car bodies. That's squalor, not poverty.

I hope this has been useful.

Joe

Loudmouth: “I get my figures from the Commonwealth Education Department, whatever it's called this year. I don't know where the hell the ABS gets its figures from, but they are ludicrous. In 2011, according to that Ed. Dept., 11,807 Indigenous people were enrolled at universities. In the 2011 Census, 46,455 Indigenous people were aged from 20 to 24, roughly the five-year span at which Indigenous people start university. The equivalent of one in every four.”

Loudmouth, the problem with your formulation is in your assuming such a narrow age range (20-24); many higher-education students are much younger than 20. To avoid publishing figures based on mistaken assumptions, I suggest it’s better to at least start with the census figures (see ref below) and work from there.

In addition, how does your guesstimated figure of one in four make any sense when compared with the actual figure for non-Indigenous Australians (one in five)?

To make fact-checking even more difficult, the pertinent documents on your website (which I tried downloading from two different computers) come up as ‘corrupted’.

REF: ABN 2011 census ‘In 2011, one in twenty Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander 15-24 year olds were studying at [higher education] level compared with one in five non-Indigenous students the same age.’
http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Lookup/4102.0Main+Features20July+2013#p1

imho,

If you thought about it for a bit, a five-year age-range, 20-24, is not at all narrow. The usual course at university runs for three or four years. Every year there is another cohort of new students.

We could partly solve this dilemma by just looking at commencements, and arbitrarily choosing, for comparison, let's say, the number of 20-year-olds. I.e., assuming that, for comparison purposes, all Indigenous commencing university under-grad students are 20 years old.

How does that work out ? In 2013, there were 4,242 Indigenous under-graduate commencements. In that year, according to the ABS, there were 11,344 (roughly) Indigenous people aged 20. As a rough equivalent, you can do the maths :)

My point is that if one looks around, Indigenous or not, there are plenty of opportunities. Nobody is holding Indigenous people back, except perhaps their own 'leaders'. Plenty of people are coping with adversity, and the worst thing anybody else can do is to 'persuade' them that there is nothing they can do, it's all so awful, the system, capitalism, whites, whatever, so why bother trying ?

You keep trying. You never, never believe that bullsh!t that anybody is just so powerless. That is the worst possible advice anybody could ever give, and you wonder sometimes if people who give it, often from a position of comfort, are just playing the filthiest game.

Joe

Joe, you are totally correct. Plenty of squalor but not much poverty. A few years ago, indigenous families on Groote Island had one of the highest household incomes in Australia. Over $100,000 per year but the people lived in squalor and kids were malnourished. How did that occur? Well, mining royalties were payed out in lump sums. For a couple of weeks people lived like millionaire, bought numerous toyotas, motorbikes for their kids, chartered planes to Darwin to spend time at the casino.
A few weeks later they were broke and back living on Centrelink income.
Even in communities that don't receive royalties, the issue of income needs to be put into perspective. Yes, food at local stores is expensive, but rents are cheap, water is free and electricity frequently subsidised. Medications and medical supplies are provided free from the local clinic. In addition people have access to sea food and bush tucker, which frequently provides a large proportion of their diet, especially if money has been spent on alcohol and gambling.
3rd world diseases are common, simply because of very poor hygiene. I spent 30 years as a paediatric nurse in the top end and Kimberley and have repeatedly stated that many of the chronic diseases that started in childhood could have been prevented by the simple practise of having a daily shower.
And as you say, fast foods, cigarettes, alcohol and little exercise just add to the problem.
They may consider themselves victims but they are victims of their own choices.

phanto,
my 'all is vanity' was an allusion to Ecclesiastes, which could be translated, 'all is construct'.

Self esteem is an important form of affirmation that seems vital to our well-being. It's more than just an opinion. But whence does it spring?
For those who believe in an immortal soul this seems like a cinch; there's some kind of discriminating essence.
But even if we grant such delightful hubris, we still can't dismiss the fact that our 'selves' are 'embedded' in 'forms of life,' and that we use the cultural/idealistic resources of these 'discourse communities' in a double edged way. These resources give us the words to give compelling 'form' to constructs like self/self-esteem, but at the same time they 'construct what we're conceiving'. The self-reflexive evidence indicates that there is no timeless, true or essential self abiding behind our complex ways of doing, acting and talking. Our selves are no more real than our personae here. Selves are contingent on their cultural resources and not universally prior. One can extrapolate from this what nonsense individualism is; it's a delicious irony that even this is a 'collectivist' construct (rofl).
Self-esteem is indeed vital, not because it's a construct, but because human's respond positively and are nurtured by its cultivation. The challenge is to qualitatively interrogate the source of self-esteem.

According to Maslow there is a fundamental form of self-esteem which merely demands respect, the respect of others so as to cultivate self-respect, and this, as I've argued before Joe, is in my opinion what ails aboriginal culture; centuries of being perceived as the lowest of the low.
What does the 'squalor' indicate if not a disabling want of self-respect? Failing that, how do you account for it? Are they just primitive? Slovenly by nature?
You think precisely as neoliberalism dictates, you blame individuals, with no concession given for just how debilitating a want of basic respect/self-respect can be. all aboriginals have to do is pick themselves up?
At least Rhosty presumably wasn't stigmatised from the outset. He only had to overcome adversity. His self-esteem at least had a healthy root.

Squeers,

"According to Maslow there is a fundamental form of self-esteem which merely demands respect, the respect of others so as to cultivate self-respect, and this, as I've argued before Joe, is in my opinion what ails aboriginal culture; centuries of being perceived as the lowest of the low.
What does the 'squalor' indicate if not a disabling want of self-respect? Failing that, how do you account for it? Are they just primitive? Slovenly by nature?
You think precisely as neoliberalism dictates, you blame individuals, with no concession given for just how debilitating a want of basic respect/self-respect can be. all aboriginals have to do is pick themselves up?
At least Rhosty presumably wasn't stigmatised from the outset. He only had to overcome adversity. His self-esteem at least had a healthy root."

You've hit the nail squarely on the head.

The kind of dysfunction evident in the squalor associated with indigenous outcomes in some remote communities must derive from a dark place where self-respect and hope are absent.

Sit down money had destroyed more aboriginals than anything else but Whitlam. Between these 2 a hundred years of progress was thrown away.

Squeers:

Isn’t an immortal soul simply a construct? How can you talk of something as if it exists when there is no proof of its existence? What is the point of talking about things which you cannot prove and no one has been able to prove since the dawn of time?

Are you not just living in an imaginary world of your own construction and expecting that it will make sense to other human beings? Why would you want to do this? What is wrong with the world as it is that cannot be fixed by practical application?

People who retreat into imaginary worlds are a burden to society. There is so much work to be done to create a more just and peaceful society but all the capacities and gifts that such people have are being wasted as they luxuriate in their own private little ‘constructed’ world.

“The challenge is to qualitatively interrogate the source of self-esteem.”

Why? Self-esteem has no ‘source’. As I said it is simply a person’s opinion about themselves. Self-esteem is not something you can manufacture nor is it determined by sources outside the person. You can be up to your ears in squalor, poverty, and ill-health and be imprisoned by tyrants but self-esteem is dependent on none of those things. It is the conviction that despite anything that may be visited upon you by circumstance or the behaviour of others you remain always and everywhere a worthwhile and valuable human being. No one can take that away from you and no one can give it to you. It is a birthright to hold the opinion that you have as much value in society as everyone else.

Self-esteem and self-respect are fundamentally the same thing. They are both a sense of conviction(which is an opinion) that no matter what anyone says or does to me I remain as valuable as the day I was born.

Hi Squeers,

I've always loved Abraham Maslow's work. His sister Ruth married Oscar Lewis - what discussions they must have had.

You were asking, "What does the 'squalor' indicate if not a disabling want of self-respect? Failing that, how do you account for it?"

There could be a host of reasons, none of them to do with anything innate or to do with the direct effects of colonialism, but more to do with a misperception of how the outside world works:

* a hunter-gatherer ethic easily morphs into a version of 'cargo cult', that everything will drop out of the sky if you (or the old fellas) know the 'secrets'.

* when people visit local towns, they may not see anybody picking up rubbish or keeping their yards and gardens clean and beautiful, so it may be assumed that the 'government' does all that for whitefellas - so why not for Blackfellas as well ?

* packaging and cars are all whitefellas' creations, so it's up to them to come and clean up any rubbish created as well.

* if people are on their own country, they tell whitefellas what to do, such as picking up the rubbish and keeping their place clean, but they don't.

* people may be completely oblivious to the presence of rubbish.

I lived on an Aboriginal community for four years and worked as a labourer, one task being to pick up the garbage twice weekly. Like a lot of whitefellas on Aboriginal communities, I didn't want to look like a parasite on Aboriginal people, so I used to do it myself even though there were supposed to be two other blokes as well, but sometimes they didn't turn up to work. So I used to hitch up the trailer, drive around and pick up all the garbage, take it out to the tip, come back, wash the trailer out and put it back, all before 10 o'clock. Last I heard, ten years ago before the village was abandoned, two blokes did that job full-time.

Well, you asked :)

Joe

I think you miss one point Joe. It is the only thing that stops me being disgusted at the squalor some aboriginals chose to live in.

It is the fact that they were nomadic, even if in a strict territory. As such they never had any reason to clean up anywhere. By the time a living area was soiled, they were ready to, & did move on. Nature cleaned the area for them by the time they came back.

There are still plenty of "bush kanaks" living close enough to towns in New Guinea to have the same problem as aboriginals, but they don't. They are villagers, & keep their villages spotless, sweeping the common areas daily, as they did before any white man appeared.

I think this is deeply ingrained, & will take a few more decades, & perhaps the loss of sit down money to improve

Thanks Has Been,

You could be right, but I'm mindful of the simple fact that the proportion of Aboriginal people in remote settlements has been declining for forty years now. As in the 'south', where the vast majority of the 38,000 or so university graduates are based, it's possible that, even in those remote settlements, anybody with any get-up-and-go has got up and gone long ago.

In wife's wife community, that happened - as it did across all of the settled areas of Australia - in the late forties and fifties, when about two-thirds of the population left the settlement and found work in country towns, and ultimately for many, in the city. The third of the population who remained had somewhat of a casual attitude tov work, to effort, to schooling. It tended to be their kids who were put into care, usually for barely a year or less.

So possibly the populations remaining in remote settlements have more than their fair share of men with a 'casual' approach to effort. On top of other disadvantages such as total lack of an economic base, remoteness, the crime of pseudo-bilingual education and the fading away of English as a lingua franca over the past forty years, the enthusiastic adoption of the welfare system over the same time and its relation to the grog and drug culture, I feel dreadfully sorry for the kids and the women in those ghastly sh!tholes.

Are those women and kids victims ? Of course, but does that mean that nothing can be done ? Of course not. I wouldn't mind betting that if the Forrest Review recommendations are taken up in relation to moving people into work away from those places, it will be women who will be doing it.

Interesting: I was talking to an old bloke who used to work across the north putting in airfields and setting up air traffic control centres - he reckoned that huge herds of cattle could easily be supported there, IF the men ever wanted to get off their backsides. Victims ? Nah.

Joe

phanto,
I'm at pains to be as clear as I can be yet you still manage to completely misunderstand what I say.

Joe,
I've got no answer for that, I'm not an anthropologist, but I'll give it some thought. In the meantime I just know how I would feel if I had the prejudiced, superior and judgemental eyes of suspicious westerners always on me.

Hi Squeers,

What makes you think those attitudes haven't been felt much keenly by Indigenous people in settled areas, in the 'south', in the cities ? If anything, the remote settlements are insulated from that, yet it's in those settled areas that the vast majority of Indigenous graduates have been living in, side by side with non-Indigenous people. It's in the 'south' where people have seized opportunities and spat in the whitefella's eye.

If anything, people in remote settlements are oblivious to whatever whitefellas are supposed to think of them. Of course, the decline in a lingua franca, in this case English, has been devastating in driving a wedge between what amounts to the two Indigenous populations by denying the opportunity of people in the 'north' to ever read newspapers or follow the news on TV, to understand the outside world. But that barrier has greatly hampered the chances of the next generations from those settlements. The Gap may not Close.

Yes, of course, there is a welfare-oriented population in the 'south', in outer suburbs and country towns. But they always have the example of their opportunity-seeking cousins, English is usually their first language and they know how to operate in the city. They don't have to be victims, although such a stance keeps the welfare flowing - and also keeps the next generation that much more powerless to exercise any agency.

Joe

Joe, Hasbeen, Big Nana,
“There could be a host of reasons [for squalor], none of them to do with anything innate or to do with the direct effects of colonialism, but more to do with a misperception of how the outside world works.”
“They may consider themselves victims but they are victims of their own choices.”

Your comments suggest that you have fallen hook, line, and sinker for the Reagan-Thatcherite spin that victims (of structural cuts to education, health, and employment, etc) are powerless. That is the total opposite of what the article and Stringer are saying.

Stringer is saying that people who are the victims of such cuts by the one percent can use their legitimate resentment about being treated as if they are expendable to stand up and demand their rights. But until they see that they have been made victims by the system, they don’t see any reason to stand up. Rather, the hooked-in go on about being better—harder working, more stoic, etc—than those who have been harder hit.

The one percent would fall over if we stopped buying their spin and stopped buying their spam. Why do you think the one percent tries to keep us all in a Murdoch-and-spam-fed stupor?

And Joe, you have not answered my questions about the inaccurate information you have published. According to the ABN 2011 census, ‘In 2011, one in twenty Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander 15-24 year olds were studying at [higher education] level compared with one in five non-Indigenous students the same age.’ One in TWENTY.

http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Lookup/4102.0Main+Features20July+2013#p10

Why do you hold to your completely inaccurate figure of one in four? And, given that the figure is one in five for whitefellas, how do you expect anyone to believe that the figure for Indigenous people is higher? What would you call it when someone continues to publish inaccurate information in the face of contrary evidence?

Hi Imhho,

" victims (of structural cuts to education, health, and employment, etc) are powerless." Hell no, absolutely not. Why on earth do you suggest that ?

I've given you the actual figures for Indigenous under-graduate commencements in 2013, and the ABS figures for Indigenous people turning 20 in 2013, as rough equivalents. Those are the figures. You can quibble about exact ages all you like, but it is clear that roughly 35 % of each group of young indigenous people, as they pass 20, will be enrolling at university. That's how it is. Why do you want there to be only one in twenty, 5 % ?

Where does the ABS get its figures from ? I don't know, but they certainly aren't using Comm. Ed. Department figures which can be found at https://education.gov.au/student-data

I suspect they are using figures provided by useless Indigenous education 'leaders' who have their own agenda, to play down Indigenous involvement at universities, in order to pump up their own preciousness as the Only Successful Graduates, the Tiny but Valuable Few, the Mighty Cohort. But thirty eight thousand are not a 'Few'. The fact remains that in 2013, 5,231 Indigenous people commenced study at universities, including post-graduates, 11,344 turned 20, and the number of graduates was 1,859.

Do the maths: if 1859 Indigenous people graduated, then the equivalent of 16.4 % of that age-group graduated. One in six. The equivalent of, since most graduates were well over 20. If you want to use smaller age-groups to compare with, be my guest, it works against your assumptions :)

My point is that Indigenous people have little reason to think of themselves as victims in 2014. More than one hundred thousand - that would be one in six, all told - have at some time been to university since 1980. That's probably a lot better than Italy, Spain, perhaps France. Certainly it's a lot better than anywhere in non-Western countries except perhaps South Korea, Singapore and Japan.

Just trying to help you out of your mind-set :)

Joe
www.firstsources.info

Joe:
This is what I posted: “the Reagan-Thatcherite spin that victims (of structural cuts to education, health, and employment, etc) are powerless."
This is what you quoted me as posting: “victims (of structural cuts to education, health, and employment, etc) are powerless.”

Enough said: misquotes/doublespeak, miscalculations, misinformation.

Imho,

Not really: I quoted your quote, and in the same spirit.

A bit if a diversion from topic: you're not Poirot on another computer, are you ?

Curses ! There's goes one out of four posts. Devilishly cunning, Poirot !

Joe
www.firstsources.info

I'm coming in late to this thread, but just to get back to the original topic of victimhood and neoliberalism ...

Neoliberals are just as adept at playing the victim.

Only they like to see themselves as victims of big government, high taxes, central banks, gun control lobbies, the welfare state, feminists, terrorists, asylum seekers and faraway regimes that want to nuke them for no reason other than 'not liking freedom'.

Neoliberals (who are just the latest version of an age-old system that benefits the ‘strong’ minority at the expense of the ‘weak’ majority) fancy themselves as energetic, get-up-and-go ‘doers’ continually victimised by the slothful, the stupid and the parasitic.

You gotta feel sorry for these Darwinian overachievers and silver-spooners, at whose feet the unworthy masses do not genuflect fast enough or often enough.

Joe

I haven't checked your links re Indigenous tertiary education. However, from experience, I've found that these statistics do not distinguish between 'assimilated' indigenous people whose gene pool is more European than Aboriginal, and Aboriginal people who are still immersed in their tribal cultural and genetic traditions.

By way of example, I have a niece and nephew who are one-eighth Maori and another nephew who is one-sixteenth Maori. Because they always tick the box regarding indigenous ancestry, their situation is always absorbed into the statistical 'indigenous' database.

Like most articles that idealise equality, it's never made clear what this equal society will look like, or even how it will be achieved. In fact, no where in history can anyone point to this equal society - we see plenty of death where it's been tried, but no actual example of it.

Equality will never exist because it doesn't take into account the different talents and levels of determination of individuals.

Killarney,

Indigenous people would find your comment quite racist and ignorant. But I suppose anything will do to deny Indigenous achievement, and its implications, in order to maintain a vain belief in perpetual Indigenous victimhood.

So how would you propose differentiating people in the racist way that you infer ? A colour card ? Should intending students have to provide a family tree, to eliminate those with non-Indigenous parentage ? Ban inter-marriage ?

Amazing: it used to the far right who were opposed to inter-marriage, and strove to keep Indigenous people out of Australian society. Today, the overwhelming majority of Indigenous people live in urban areas, indeed metropolitan areas - would you want to declare such people no longer Indigenous ? After all, they don't hunt or fish or gather food - is that your definition of 'Indigenous' ? i.e. people who are to be forever outside of, and/or powerless in, Australian society ?

Didn't work back then, and it won't work now.

So the Left has taken over the mantle of racists ? Interesting times.

Aristocrat: “Equality will never exist because it doesn't take into account the different talents and levels of determination of individuals.”

Well spotted Ari. The one percent complains that the plebs want equality of talent, IQ, height, litres of Bollinger, etc, etc. Really? Try imagining equality of treatment under the law of the land; try imagining equality of access to good education, healthcare, and legal protection; try imagining equality of opportunity for every child to maximise their potential. You’re correct that no one has achieved it, not that it isn’t possible, but because the born-to-rule prefer that you didn’t. Fools? Or knaves? There’s a reason the one percent is known affectionately as the kleptocracy.

Kleptocracy: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1zx56p_inside-job-full-movie-hd_shortfilms
Universal Declaration of Human Rights: http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/

Killarny: Even setting aside the issue you rightly point out, Joe’s figures are based on ignoring the fact that people under 20 attend university. He doesn’t include this younger group in his calculations; hence his results look better than the ABS census figures.

IMBO,

Indigenous students commence study at universities, like anybody else, at all ages: my daughter started at 16. But in order to make any sort of assessment, one has to compare commencements against some arbitrary age-cohort, 20-year-olds, 17-year-olds, 25-year-olds, whatever. Of course it's a rough estimate, but it's the ball-park figure that counts, not the fiddly, 'exact' proportion of actual commencements against the full range of actual age-groups.

And the ball-park figure for Indigenous commencements, at under-graduate level, is around 33-37 %. More precisely, and again estimating, a proportion of those commencers are transferring from one degree to another, or coming back to study, or commencing a second degree. Maybe 5 % of the total are in this category. So between 28 % and 32 %, give or take, of a chosen group, say the 20-year-olds, are hypothetically commencing university study for the first time. Say a round figure of 40 %. Two thirds women, one third men. So about 40 % of Indigenous women commence university study each year now, and about 20 % of all Indigenous men. Roughly. Do you want the actual figures ?

I hope this is useful.

Joe

Didn't think it would be long before Loudmouth stated playing games in lieu of substance.

Who's "IMBO", Loudmouth?

....

And regarding:

"Poirot,

Thanks for sticking close to topic...."

Yes, we all know Loudmouth lurvs to call for "back to topic" - that is unless he's flouting it himself such as here:

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=16753&page=1

Where, on the subject of global warming, he reacted to another poster and waxed lyrical and totally off topic on indigenous issues for pages.

I hope this has been helpful.

Hi Wounded Swan,

Off-topic and ad hominem as usual :)

You know very well that Squeers floated that red herring on a thread about climate change, which had to be answered. So that's a bit disingenuous of you.

This topic concerns the concepts of 'victim' and victimisation' and their misuse. Do you have anything to write about those topics ? Or should we all - oh look, a dying swan ! Bring on Nureef and dame Margot.

Joe

imho "The one percent complains that the plebs want equality of talent, IQ, height, litres of Bollinger, etc, etc. Really? Try imagining equality of treatment under the law of the land; try imagining equality of access to good education, healthcare, and legal protection; try imagining equality of opportunity for every child to maximise their potential."

Well, in Australia, and most Western countries, equality of opportunity has already been achieved. Are you talking about 3rd world countries?

It would have been good if the author made the meaning of equality clearer.

Killarney "Neoliberals are just as adept at playing the victim."

For once, I agree with you. Many conservatives, or those claiming to be conservatives, have embraced the 'victimhood' approach that "progressives" have mastered over the last few decades. Conservatives should never play the victim. Never. Conservatives should stick to being proud and thankful that they have inherited Western traditions, and continue to argue why they are good.

Loudmouth

‘Indigenous people would find your comment quite racist and ignorant.’

Well, if they did, it would reveal them to be pretty racist and ignorant themselves. I would hope they can see that I was referring to flawed data-gathering methods that tend to distort indigenous statistics – often at indigenous expense.

Excuse me. I’m off to lunch with Andrew Bolt …

Aristocrat

‘Conservatives should stick to being proud and thankful that they have inherited Western traditions, and continue to argue why they are good.’

Why do you assume that lefties are not proud and thankful that they have inherited Western traditions?

If you read leftist websites and publications, there is a wealth of pride and gratitude regarding the centuries of struggle by the ordinary people of the West to achieve the freedoms, rights and working conditions enjoyed by most Western populations today – all of which are now under severe threat.

Very few (indeed, none) of those rights were bestowed on us by the great warmongers, imperialists, laissez-faire capitalists and feudal barons of the past, so revered in all our Western history texts. Those rights had to be fought for – and that is our most precious of Western traditions.

Killarney,

You write of: " .... flawed data-gathering methods that tend to distort indigenous statistics .... "

What I think you are alluding to has been an issue ever since the earliest days of the colonies. It may also go to the heart of what Indigenous people perceive, in a multitude of ways, what it means to be Indigenous.

Yes, there has been a tiny number of Johnny-come-latelies and phonies, but that particular 'flaw' in data-gathering is not anywhere near large enough to alter the ball-park figure.

CORRECTION: Above I wrote:

" .... So between 28 % and 32 %, give or take, of a chosen group, say the 20-year-olds, are hypothetically commencing university study for the first time. Say a round figure of 40 %. Two thirds women, one third men. So about 40 % of Indigenous women commence university study each year now, and about 20 % of all Indigenous men."

Sorry, I meant "a round figure of 30 %". i.e. that roughly 30 % of young Indigenous adults will at some time enrol at university, overwhelmingly in a mainstream, on-campus course at degree-level.

However you cut it, Killarney, what will be the impact of a quarter of young Indigenous women, and an eighth of young Indigenous men, have on the Indigenous scene ? What input will they have into the debate, once they get on their professional feet, and how soon can they - forty thousand, soon fifty thousand, rhen sixty thousand - displace the useless elite currently dominating Indigenous affairs ?

Thank you for provoking these questions.

Jo

Killarney,

Here's another feature of Indigenous higher education achievement that you might want to think over, and marvel at.

Actually, Indigenous students still tend to be slightly older than the Australian average when they commence university study. Their median age - the 'middle' student, with just as many younger as older - is around 24 or 25 (in reality, the median Australian student commences study at a higher age than usually thought, around 22). So Indigenous students graduate at a median age of around 27 or 28.

If we use the 24-year-olds as a sort of surrogate, or equivalent, group, that changes the picture slightly: in 2014, such an age-group was born in 1990, right at the beginning of the huge birth-rate increase: according to the 2011 ABS Census, 9,979 Indigenous people turned 24 in 2014. In 2014, according to Ed. Dept. figures, 4,115 Indigenous people commenced university study in that year, the equivalent of 41% of the 24-year-old age-group.

Subtracting second-degree, transfer and returning-student commencements, of 5-6 %, this suggests that the equivalent of about 35 % of the 24-YOAG commenced study this year, two-to-one females, or about 46 % of 24-YOAG women, and 23 % male.

But this might move you: up to 1990, about 3,600 Indigenous people had graduated from tertiary courses. By the end of this year, about thirty eight thousand have graduated. So in the generation between, 24 years, more than thirty four thousand Indigenous people have graduated from tertiary courses, overwhelmingly mainstream, degree-level, on-campus.

ALL indigenous adults over 27 numbered about 250,000 in 2014. So graduates numbered about one in every seven adults. Roughly one in every five Indigenous women are graduates, one in every ten. In the cities, perhaps one in every four Indigenous women are graduates. Sounds amazing, doesn't it ? And it's not over yet.

But in remote areas, perhaps one in every hundred Indigenous men are graduates.

What impact will this glaring - and growing - difference have on Indigenous society as a whole in the next few decades ?

[TBC]

[Continued]

Killarney,

Another unsettling fact for you: even back in 1996, according to Birrell (2000), almost half of all Indigenous adults were marrying non-Indigenous partners. Yes, you've guessed it, the great majority of urban Indigenous women were inter-marrying.

Inter-marriage is nothing new, of course: most of my wife's siblings and at least half of her cousins inter-married, some marriages going back to the fifties. Again, inter-marriage is very low in remote areas, but in the cities is around 80-90 %, for both men and women.

So this touches on your 'colour-card' concept of Aboriginality: most young Indigenous people now have been born and bred in the cities, and commonly with one non-Indigenous parent, often three out of four non-Indigenous grandparents. But Indigeneity being more social than strictly biological, the great majority of those young people have no trouble as honestly and forthrightly counting themselves as Indigenous.

Of course, that may change as Indigenous people move up the social scale, from a welfare- to a work-orientation, from the working-class into the middle class. In another generation, say by 2038, there could be at least 120,000 Indigenous graduates, one in every three adults, overwhelmingly urban - and inter-marrying.

And certainly none of them, victims.

I hope this gives you something to think about :)

Joe
www.firstsources.info

Jo

I didn't really want to get drawn into this debate. I was just making a comment about statistical distortion - not race.

Your methodology is a bit like an actor's age - highly elastic. However, if indigenous people are getting more 'white' and 'middle class' and the divide between urban and remote-area indigenous people is widening, then of course that will have all kinds of effects in the future - just as it's had in the past.

I don't think you've given me much 'to think about', other than what I already know. Historically, all colonially dispossessed people go through an almost identical pattern of some choosing assimilation (or having it chosen for them) and others remaining close to what's left of their ancestral and cultural way of life. The latter group, being cut off from the mainstream colonial culture and economy, pays the heaviest price.

Hi Killarney,

I don't think I'm distorting anything: the stats are there, once you've checked them out you either provisionally accept them or deny them. Nothing all that elastic about it at all. It's your call.

As for assimilation, as you call it, on the one hand pretty much all Aboriginal people have been happy to grab onto Toyotas, fridges, TVs, the latest IPod, as much as the next person, and on the other hand my inclination, after fifty years, is to agree with them: why shouldn't they if they wish ?

Question for you: should Aboriginal people have ........ choice ?

Nobody is ever going to go back to, day after day, collecting grass seed and pounding it into a flour, then making it into a damper on a stick fire. Human societies have developed more economical ways of earning a living, from agriculture, to industrial activities and beyond. Nobody has to die in droughts as people did pre-colonial. Children don't have to be knocked on the head, nor old women.

All humans are entitled to the benefits of modern production, science, medicine, opportunities, including all Aboriginal people. They're not just some helpless bunch for anthropologists to seal off from the rest of the world and study, much as (I suspect) they would like. Everybody is entitled to hold up all the baubles of modern society and say yea or nay. Everybody is entitled to aspire to a McMansion.

And, Killarney, everybody is entitled to a Soy Latte Guatemalan Espresso whenever they like.

Joe

'Nobody is ever going to go back to, day after day, collecting grass seed and pounding it into a flour, then making it into a damper on a stick fire.'

Oh, I don't know. Day-to-day scrounging and hunting is the way we lived for about 99% of human history and it's the lifestyle we physically and emotionally evolved from.

What anthropologists have found is that virtually all hunter-gatherer societies fiercely resist being forced, either overtly or covertly, into a sedentary farming/industrial/urbanised society. They finally capitulate only after the colonising society has made it impossible for them to continue their hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

What anthropologists have also found, almost universally, is that hunter-gatherer societies only need to work a fraction of the weekly hours that supposed advanced societies do. Rather than the civilisation myth of life in those societies being 'nasty, brutish and short', those people actually spent much of their time engaged, not in work, but in spiritual pursuits, emotional bonding, personal grooming, art and craft etc. Analysis of skeletons from the Paleolithic period found that people of that time were much healthier than their Neolithic descendants. On this basis, they more than likely lived happy, 'unbrutish', long lives .

Certainly, people who only know life in a farming/industrial/urbanised society would probably find the hunter-gatherer lifestyle too much to bear. However, if they ever had to, I'm sure they would make the adjustment and possibly even feel better for having done so.

As for today's indigenous people wanting to aspire to all the things that non-indigenous people do, I've got no problem with that at all. That's entirely their choice.

Hi Killarney,

Thanks for that complete rubbish, and quite irrelevant rubbish at that. But I think I can see where you are coming from: that Aboriginal people shouldn't live in modern society, but should return to a life hunting lizards and collecting scanty grass seed. Not going to happen, mate.

And that Aboriginal people who have moved to towns are not really Aboriginal ? Cities are really only for whites ? Perhaps you could tell that to the next Aboriginal bloke you meet :)

As you say, hunting, gathering, fishing and scrounging - and starving when food supplies failed - was "the way we lived for about 99% of human history". Yes indeed, my Scottish forebears were getting around covered in blue mud only a couple of thousand years ago. But my Scottish contemporary cousins live in modern society, speaking incomprehensibly to each other quite comfortably, warming their homes in winter, wearing warm clothes - barely any blue mud in sight - and earning their livings in a modern economy.

So it may help your cause if you could find any people in the world, including the Scots, who have returned to a hunting and gathering - or scrounging, as you all it - lifestyle, society, economy and political structure, freely, of their own volition. Good luck !

From my rudimentary studies, it appears that, from the earliest days, Aboriginal people, from their own viewpoint, managed their relationship with the new European society, technology and economy, coming and going as they felt like, working for farmers and pastoralists for a while then going off of their own free will whenever the mood suited. In the 'south', once Aboriginal people got a handle on this new society and its attractions, mainly grog and tobacco, from very early on, people were involved in harvesting, shearing, mustering, even in the whaling industry (one whale-boat out of Encounter Bay was crewed entirely by Aboriginal men).

In fact, the Protector here in SA provided Aboriginal people with perhaps a hundred 15-ft boats and fishing gear on all the major waterways, to

[TBC]

enable them to more efficiently utilise their resources, by switching from a hunter-technology to a, well, more efficient hunter-technology, with lines, hooks and nets rather than spears.

One time, the Protector, Edward Hamilton - he was Protector for 35 years, six or seven days a week, day in and day out, that would give him a pretty thorough knowledge of Aboriginal people during the Transformation - sends 50 lbs of netting twine down for the blokes at Goolwa, as usual, but gets a message that they each want their own twine, and he complains that Aboriginal people have little concept of working together, they are so individualist. He ignores the request.

As for your Sahlins' notion that everywhere, Aboriginal people lived a life of plenty, engaging in food gathering for barely one or two hours a day, I think he was on something when he wrote that. Try gathering a kilo of grass seed, Killarney: see how long it takes, and multiply it by the number in your family. Then spend time grinding it into a rough flour, gathering sticks for a fire, finding water, and baking a damper out of it. Sahlins, being a male-(i.e. 'culture')-oriented male, overlooked the fact that in traditional society, Aboriginal women collected by far the bulk of the food consumed.

People seize opportunities as individuals. They aren't stupid, and neither do they march to some hidden Leftist drum of resistance and cultural conservatism. Nowadays, Aboriginal people can see for themselves what is involved in modern society - after all, they are part of it - the great majority of Indigenous people alive today have been born and raised in modern, urban environments - and take its facets for granted as much as anybody else - and make their choices accordingly, like anybody else.

When you can perceive Aboriginal people as being people like you, raised in urban environments just like you, schooling and working, inter-marrying - and all the while remaining Indigenous, as they perceive it - then you can start understanding Indigenous people as people. Like you and me :)

Joe

Gees Joe,
you'r getting a bit cocky and sententious, as though you've had a victory. You've given me something to think about, something to consider apropos the stance I've been taking, but I don't find your position compelling. I'm just constrained by time (I still work full time), which means I can't deal with the problem adequately. But it's on the back-burner.
There's also the outing you've been exposed to by Andee; you've yet to explain the discrepancy between between official stats and your own. But then everything you've said is full of holes and it seems to me driven more by ideology than insight.

"People seize opportunities as individuals. They aren't stupid, and neither do they march to some hidden Leftist drum of resistance and cultural conservatism. Nowadays, Aboriginal people can see for themselves what is involved in modern society - after all, they are part of it - the great majority of Indigenous people alive today have been born and raised in modern, urban environments - and take its facets for granted as much as anybody else - and make their choices accordingly, like anybody else."

Since most aboriginals are now cosmopolitan, how do you account for their still commonly living in squalor in the burbs?
And what 'facts' do they take for granted? Their own despised condition?

Hi Squeers,

Welcome back. Who's Andee ? Do you mean imho ? Perhaps you have the wrong thread.

As for the stats, they're freely available on:

https://education.gov.au/student-data

Ah, it IS called the Department of Education, this year.

Yes, you may say, not all the stats that I use are on that web-site. Yes, indeed. Some of the stats that I've been collecting for twenty-odd years are now hard to get. So sue me.

Imho could easily have checked the ABS Census 2011 table of 'highest educational attainment achieved' or whatever it's called: she would have found evidence there of (back in 2011, i.e. graduate numbers up to the end of 2010) of around 29,000 Indigenous graduates. Add a couple of thousand at universities each year, and another thousand or so at TAFE Colleges (i.e. full degree graduates), give or take, each year since 2010: at least 38,000 by the end of this year.

So how many ways do you want find out about 38,000 Indigenous university-level graduates ? Rough figures from random universities help.

Why do you and imho WANT few graduates ? What the hell agenda does it serve to be comforted by the thought that very few Indigenous people have ever succeeded at tertiary study ? WHY do you WANT to believe that ? Does it make you feel better ?

Aboriginal people are, on the whole, not victims. Yes, sure, kids in remote communities are, but what are the causes of that ? What can be done about that ? Who might serve as their role-models, and what pathways can be broadened to smooth their way from the hells they're living in to their rightful futures ?

How can the remnant forces of Indigenous victimhood be eliminated ? Any ideas ?

Joe

Joe

‘Thanks for that complete rubbish, and quite irrelevant rubbish at that.’

You’re welcome.

I went off topic because I was thoroughly bored with your repetitious and long-winded posts to me about a subject I kept telling you I didn’t want to talk about in the first place.

Sorry, Killarney,

The topic is "Playing the victims". I raised the issue of Indigenous higher education successes to refute the notion that all Indigenous people are victims (and that ultimately, none have to be). You disputed my figures. I provided a basis for my figures.

I think the ABS took its figures from a Review of Indigenous higher education, which used very questionable figures, and even then, only up to about 2005. The figures I use are from the official Education Department site [ https://education.gov.au/student-data ] which are current up to the end of last year. 2014 figures will come out in July next year.

You can ignore them if you wish, and stay content in your prejudices. You come to the paddock with your bat and ball, demand that other kids play cricket, it's your bat so you go in first, you're bowled first ball, so you grab the ball and bat and storm off, cricket is such a silly game anyway, nyah nyah.

But sooner or later, there will be fifty thousand Indigenous university graduates out there, and a bit later (say around 2032) one hundred thousand graduates, a quarter or a third of all adults. You can't stop that. But you're free to plug up your ears and shut your eyes real tight :)

Joe