"Education is the only hope for the Aboriginal children in the future.

Posted by Suseonline, Wednesday, 22 April 2015 12:00:28 AM"

Very true. But they will not be educated to a sufficient level if they are kept in living museums outback. Non-aborigines, educated in cities and towns (at least what passes for being educated today) are well behind the 8 all already because of few job opportunities. Young aboriginal people should have the same chances. The economy will need them in time.

Families should not be split, so the only solution is to close down the camps, and give the kids a go where the resources are.

Hi ttbn,

Nobody is going to be evicted from 'communities'. No 'communities' will be 'closed down, but services to tiny populations may be cut back. People will always be living in larger 'communities', pensioners, etc., who don't work. As long as there are pensioners, there will be communities'. 'Closing communities down' is a blatant furphy.

Which brings up the obvious: it's not so much, first-up, trying to get kids to school, but first-up, getting people into work, so that children realise that, one day, they too will have to work and so they might as well get some basic skills.

The problem is how to get the able-bodied adults into work: how to do that if they, too, have absolutely no skills, if they are illiterate, innumerate and can't read signs in English ?

Clearly, there will never be any enterprises at remote 'communities', even if they are bigger than ten or twenty people: fifty years of trying has surely taught governments that much. People in 'communities' don't even want to start up vegetable gardens or orchards or chook-yards: if you want something, just go and buy it. Why produce it when you can buy it ?

So that option has died. 'Communities' won't ever be the sites of work. So what then ? Clearly able-bodied people will have to go to where the work is, unless we all agree that entire populations should be allowed to never work while the rest of us pay for them. Hardly likely, although perhaps we could attach a question to that effect to the 'Recognition' question at the next Referendum ?

So, should people work ? Should able-bodied people look for work ? If they have no skills, shouldn't programs be put in place that require them to get skills ? No BS TAFE courses, but genuine courses ?

And along Forrest's guidelines, able-bodied people should be doing courses for jobs that actually are there. Every able-bodied person in Australia should have the option of working, training for work, or dossing on the streets. Their choice.

Joe

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Dear Is Mise,

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« They didn't (live in perfect harmony with their natural environment), they kept setting fire to it and gradually altered it to what it was in the early 19th century. Burning the countryside was not living in harmony with it, it was farming by fire. »
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Thank you for the precision. As you suggest, it seems that recent research on the subject provides some evidence of impact on climate change due to Aboriginal burning practices. A geophysical research paper published in 2011 has this to say :

« Aboriginal vegetation burning practices and their role in the Australian environment remains a central theme of Australian environmental history. Previous studies have identified a decline in the Australian summer monsoon during the late Quaternary and attributed it to land surface-atmosphere feedbacks, related to Aboriginal burning practices. Here we undertake a comprehensive, ensemble model evaluation of the effects of a decrease in vegetation cover over the summer monsoon region of northern Australia. Our results show that the climate response, while relatively muted during the full monsoon, was significant for the pre-monsoon season (austral spring), with decreases in precipitation, higher surface and ground temperatures, and enhanced atmospheric stability.

Our model results lead us to conclude that Aboriginal vegetation burning practices, while significantly affecting pre-monsoon events, did not have a major impact on the late Quaternary summer monsoon of northern Australia. Our conclusions further prompt a fuller evaluation of the significance of Aboriginal burning practices for the Australian environment. » :

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/doi/10.1029/2011GL047774/full

While there is evidence of impact on the environment, current state of the art geophysical research apparently does not allow us to conclude that it was a major impact.

It has, however, been clearly demonstrated that by burning forests in north-western Australia, Aboriginals altered the local climate. They effectively extended the dry season and delayed the start of the monsoon season.

Also, Is Mise, while I understand that some Aboriginal tribes did do some farming, in their large majority, they were hunter-gatherers. They burned the bush to renew and reinvigorate grasslands for hunting purposes.

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Dear Joe,

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« Check out my website: www.firstsources.info - you will find about twelve thousand pages of hard-to-find documents there … I won't go into my association with Indigenous people or Indigenous affairs yet again, except to say that it now covers fifty years. You learn a lot in fifty years. Best of luck on your long journey ! »
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Thanks, Joe. I already checked-out your website. It appears to contain a wealth of information.

Even if I had the time, I doubt that I could sift through, in just a few hours, what took you fifty years to collect.

I’ve put it in my favourites for future reference.

In the meantime, I should still be interested to know what you had in mind when you commented on my original post to John (the author) [page 2 of this thread]: “Hi Banjo, Some slight exaggerations there, but I suppose hyperbole is easier than evidence.”

Any help you can provide to straighten-out the facts would be appreciated.

Regards,

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Hi Banjo,

I think you've answered your own query. Put the time in, my boy, and you may learn something.

As for Aboriginal people having an impact on the environment, they're not unique in modifying it: everybody, everybody, modified their environments, everywhere in the world and usually not for the better.

Pastoralists over-grazed areas and turned them into tree-less landscapes.

Agriculturalists over-extended their areas under cultivation and increased their populations in the good times, only to suffer devastating crashes in the bad times: the Maya, Spain, the Saharan groups, the Khmer Empire.

Everywhere people cut down forests as if they were inexhaustible or would magically re-grow.

Humans learn, usually the hard way, how to manage their environments. Aboriginal people have been no different [what ?! no different?! NO.] Everybody has over-used and buggered up their environments until they learn otherwise, the hard way.

Don't believe every myth you hear :)

Joe

OK, Joe. I said "camps" not communities. But, it would probably be too cruel to shift the old folks who have no chance of fitting in anywhere else now.

But the camps are no place for kids and young people in the 21st century.

The people remaining of Australia's aboriginal background are not the 'first Australians'. Apart from the fact that the entity 'Australia' did not exist until the Brits came, they are DESCENDANTS of the first people (if we are to accept that nobody lived on the continent before them).

I am a descendant of a mixture of Anglo/Saxon/Celts, who undoubtedly lived in conditions similar to the ones our aborigines lived in at the time.

I don't live the way of my ancestors. So why should any other people living in Australia in 2015 be languishing in the Stone Age? Because people like Nugget Coombes and Gough Whitlam, even in the 20th century, still cherised the nonsense of the 'noble savage'. They even set up their own little artificial dream by providing welfare to keep it going - not a lot different from the original settlers who supplied the natives with rations, which ended the noble savage quick smart.

So, in my opinion, the way to go is - no school/work, no dole (they are changing the rules for the greater community, so let's be consistent. If necessary, bring the kids to centres where tertiary education is available. Then, and this will sound bad but it isn', do everthing legal and humane to prevent them from returning to the camps. If they go back, they will stay.

Something like 40% of aboriginal Australians have moved into the mainstream of their own volition: perfect mentors for the youngsters getting a chance. It has been done on a small scale through cooperation of mothers and state schools. Leave the men out of it for the time being.