Sorry, Joe. You're a unique and interesting character and very knowledgeable when it comes to indigenous history. Being somewhat interested in the topic, I appreciate your knowledge - even if I suspect a little bias here and there. But to lump you in with disgusting and purely politically motivated freaks like those on the Right was uncalled for and below the belt, and I unreservedly apologise.

HI AJ,

Thank you for your gracious response. Yes, I'm probably a bit biased, but biased both ways in that I think Indigenous people have exercised far more ingenuity and craft than they have been given credit for.

For example, it's clear from the documents in the nineteenth century that, at least here in SA, Aboriginal peopl3 came and went as they pleased. As they pleased. People may not put that construction on it now, but that certainly seems to have been how it was. People were given boats, modern fishing gear, guns, etc., so they must have been able to exploit their environments far more efficiently than they ever had before. Of course, there may have been an ulterior motive giving people boats and fishing gear and guns, namely that they didn't need so much in the way of rations. But surely that was a win-win ?

And certainly the one-man missionary didn't have time, muscle or - it seems - any inclination to try to 'herd people onto his mission', quite the reverse. He hums and has about taking orphan children, or one family that had been playing up in Adelaide.

The different superintendents over the years to 1900 occasionally ordered people off the place - including David Unaipon, the bloke on the $50 note, for attempted sexual abuse: being a smart-arse, Unaipon camped just outside the boundary of the mission from where he could 'nyah nyah! ' to his heart's content. A couple, busily engaged in adultery, were threatened with expulsion, but left anyway for Goolwa, the woman leaving behind her six kids for the poor husband to care for, and somehow find work at the same time: my wife's great-grandfather, originally from Albany, from the Camfield's school.

Sceptical rather than be biased, AJ. "An Old Left sceptic" - sounds good to me :)

Cheers,

Joe

I'm surprised that nobody has started a thread about the QUT debacle.

Indigenous support centres have played a vital part, really an essential part, in boosting Indigenous student numbers at universities. At many universities, there had been almost no Indigenous students at all before such centres were set up. At first they consisted of just a staff member (perhaps part-time) and office, then as numbers increased, a common room where students could relax and socialise, and then perhaps a work room.

Nowadays, there are some fifteen thousand Indigenous students, perhaps sixteen this year, across the forty-odd universities, and a hundred-odd campuses, across Australia. Some universities, such as Newcastle and Charles Sturt, are enrolling more than eight hundred students. That's an amazing difference from the early eighties.

For some years I was involved at the Indigenous student support centre at Salisbury campus of the SACAE/then the Uni of Sa, a program called PAIS. We built the program up from eight to forty students, across a wide range of mainstream fields of study, as well as a one-year Bridging Course to prepare students for the Conservation and Park Management degree.

I don't recall having any trouble with allowing non-Indigenous friends of our students to use the spaces and equipment - we had three or four old Amstrad computers (does anybody remember them?). As it happened, our students were just as likely to use the mainstream facilities anyway, as they were fully entitled to. In fact, it provide opportunities for better liaison and to firm up friendships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students, which is what we always wanted.

In fact, we were lucky that our Centre was smack-bang in the middle of the campus, next to the student bar. On other campuses, staff had to fight against senior management for the Centres NOT to be parked out on the edge of a campus. Or even over the road, in one case.

On the face of it, and with the amazing benefits of hindsight, perhaps this situation at QUT could have been handled more constructively from the outset.

Joe