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.