Oh another white people bad, black people good, anything that goes wrong is whitey fault. With friends like you John it's no wonder that many aboriginal groups are not forging ahead.

John take your blinkers off and see the reality of the situation, until you do the only people your convince a few doctors wives on the north shore

As usual a shiite stirring spray, that adroitly avoids the real problem.

And pedophilia in record numbers routinely glossed over by an excuse makers, are a central part of the problem and the probable reason ten year old kids are taking their own lives.

I live next adjacent to many older homes lined with asbestos. However, nobody is claiming it is white Australia's problem.

In south africa the black population is slowly getting their act together and in spite of the widely reported official corruption and tribal nepotism. And doesn't that have a familiar ring?

John simply ignores all the inconvenient facts, like the number of black elitists hands have to be greased to get anything built on tribal land?

The recent cyclone that ripped through Fiji, saw hundreds of ethnic Fijians getting up off their backsides and taking to the ruins of their homes, with hammers and saws, to begin rebuilding, with just what they could salvage.

Whereas our ethnic communities try, with the help of self serving political activists like a WHITE expatriate John, to make white australia responsible for everything.

Even so there are green shoots of self help emerging in some places, where bush tucker and market garden enterprises are flourishing.

After the war there was mass migration to this place and tales of immigrants who lived in tin shanties with dirt floors. And where the water had to be hand carried from a nearby waterhole and tucker cooked over open fires.

However, the difference was whole families who lived on the smell of it and worked as one for the common cause until everyone had homes and self supporting businesses!

All happening while black communities (where violence is seen as entertainment) drunk themselves into the usual stupor, or got busy buggering boys; or raping babies? And trying to pass it of as secret men's business, all while fighting over who was in charge.

Ably assisted by diabolically disingenuous, manifestly mendacious political activists, who allow these folk to blame white others, all while refusing to own their own behavior.
Rhrosty.

Bilger is fortunate in having a huge gullible audience on a small island, where people couldn't possibly even conceive of the problems of servicing piss-ant 'communities' across vast distances like in the NT.

Then there are the bald-faced lies: people at Utopia, like elsewhere, get standard welfare payments, available at ATMs on most 'communities'. Not to mention a share of mining and conservation royalties. Perhaps Utopia now has too few people to warrant a store - if you need, say, 250 people shopping exclusively with you, what storekeeper would keep open with, say, fewer than 200, (therefore constant losses), OR if the publicly-provided Toyotas (and free petrol) take people back and forth to Alice Springs where they do most of their weekly shopping, using a local shop only for its fast food component and top-up needs.

'Starving' ? In the Evidence to the 1860 SA Select Committee 'on the Aborigines', the Committee chairman, John Baker, tried to browbeat the missionary at Point McLeay, George Taplin, over an incident which his foreman had supposedly witnessed. Baker was head of the Legislative Council, had a lease on the property next door to the Mission, and was constantly trying to close down the Mission. His foreman had reported to him about three elderly people starving, whom he had supplied with flour. Baker tried to grill Taplin about it, edging towards an accusation of neglect. Taplin laughed and remarked that they always got rations and, further, that somebody had, on the very morning of the 'incident', supplied those 'starving people' with a bush turkey, 20 kg worth. In other words, the foreman was conned, the 'starving people' had put on a very convincing act.

So perhaps the nicest thing one could say about Bilger in this instance is that he also was conned. But, his defenders would say, aren't Aboriginal people primitive, child-like, incapable of tricking a sophisticated white bloke like Bilger ? Doesn't sound like it.

Joe

Yes Joe, somehow Pilger forgets to mention all the Centrelink money going to the residents of Utupia. Or the millions of hectares of hunting land they have available to obtain their traditional food.
He also forgets to mention the AVO taken against Rosalie Kunoth Monks by prominent members of the Utopia community who say she and her family are not welcome there, and do not represent the community.
The fact is, that many people living in remote areas are better off than those living in the city because they have the ability to augment their food supply with traditional food. This, plus the lack of rent for housing and free water, more than compensates for the higher cost of store food

"supplied those 'starving people' with a bush turkey, 20 kg worth"

Make that plural, Brush Turkeys (say ten of). They (bustards) have a smaller frame.

Many commentators, urban indigenous too, confuse the larger framed Bush Stone-Curlews and other birds with Brush Turkeys, but again it would be plural to make up 20kg.

Along with other country children including indigenous, we caught, shot and cooked most things edible.

Only a minor point.

Loudmouth(Joe), "Then there are the bald-faced lies: people at Utopia, like elsewhere, get standard welfare payments, available at ATMs on most 'communities'. Not to mention a share of mining and conservation royalties. Perhaps Utopia now has too few people to warrant a store - if you need, say, 250 people shopping exclusively with you, what storekeeper would keep open with, say, fewer than 200, (therefore constant losses), OR if the publicly-provided Toyotas (and free petrol) take people back and forth to Alice Springs where they do most of their weekly shopping, using a local shop only for its fast food component and top-up needs"

Very true, but it is NOT the 'Black Armband" history that is taught in schools and is promoted by the $1.3billion pa taxpayer-funded ABC.

And as always a seemingly anti reconciliation and anti recognition John seeks to divide folks with his blatant BS and blame shifting!?

Perhaps stir up enough general hate to kill the R+R referendum stone cold dead in the water?

I mean what other purpose could this extreme left wing activist and Assange apologist, have for all the par for the course shiite stirring?

The dirty little secret may be the completely calloused and indifferent drug runners, who just pose as (the most unlikely) sympathetic activists as credible cover?

And who would look at such a person, their crew and camera men, even though it seems to be the longest doco in recorded history?

What are you making John, a never ending year long mini series called Utopia?

How much coke or heroin could be packed into the bowels of a fake camera, a couple of Kgs perhaps?

And ferried in past the very noses of the (responsible) police?

Perhaps we need a few drug sniffing dogs to expose some of the methods, some communities are using to smuggle in hard drugs and brain destroying ice?
Rhrosty.

OTB,

Yeah, bush turkeys, I always get the two mixed up :)

My very limited understanding of Utopia is that barely fifty people live there, maybe only thirty, predominantly old people.

Therefore no shops.

Therefore people need vehicles to go to and from Ti Tree 150 km away, or more likely, Alice Springs, 300 km away.

Therefore old people need people with vehicles to drive them to and from Alice Springs.

Therefore old people who are starving are likely not to have any younger relatives who are willing to drive them to and from Alice Springs.

I suppose that back in the UK, Bilger's gullibles would find it impossible to imagine tiny populations of thirty to fifty people 100 miles apart, spending half their time on the road to the nearest town. It would be like imagining the whole of, say, Wales having fewer than ten hamlets of thirty people each, and everybody doing their shopping in Shrewsbury.

If people could get themselves organised, for a weekly fee, someone with a large vehicle could drive into Alice Springs and pick up a load of groceries for each pensioner back on Utopia. Maybe for the other scattered 'communities further along the same road as well - like a mobile grocery shop. It would need to have a refrigerated unit, etc. But surely someone has costed this sort of project ? Maybe the total population who would make use of such a service is far too small to make it worthwhile ?

There are costs in living in tiny 'communities' a long way from anything, shops, hospital, admin offices, pubs, the casino. People make choices, and so bear the consequences of their choices.

Joe

I'm for small remote communities to wither through withdrawal of services to the point decisions are are made by inhabitants to live on the land (together with welfare money),or, to live in towns and cities (with welfare money). How ridiculous to expect equality of services and outcomes for young people locked into the stone-age situation of their ancestors by their parents decisions.

Nobody is owed anything not earned or defended, history tells us so, but some believe the laws of nature should opposed whatever the cost. The black-armband is gaining grip but the notion that whites have ruined a utopia that pre-existed him for tens of thousands of years needs fair questioning. European man is but one of waves of immigration to this continent and, if you only own that which you have the power to defend, China-man may ultimately displace him (watch the South China Sea).

From https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/history-wars/2002/06/the-extinction-of-the-australian-pygmies/ :

"..... there had been several waves of Aboriginal migrants, each of whom had violently dispossessed the other. Rather than a story of aggressive white imperialists disrupting an arcadian Aboriginal people living in harmony with one another and their environment, the long term history of Australian habitation would have resembled more that of humanity at large where the stronger have pushed aside the weaker, irrespective of the colour of either side. Hence, instead of a simple moral tale of goodies and baddies, the history of this continent would have reflected more the hard reality of the human condition everywhere."

Settlement, invasion, call it what you will, nature takes its course.

H Luciferase,

We have to thoroughly understand that nobody, nobody, nobody is living a traditional life in Australia now. Nobody. The odd weekend trip, yes, by four-wheel-drive and rifle. Three-quarters of the Indigenous population lives in the cities and large towns, and have done for a couple of generations.

Perhaps eight to ten per cent live in 'remote' areas, 50,000, but usually within shopping distance of towns. Nobody makes their living by hunting or gathering - nobody would be that stupid. Probably, if someone had the courage to do actual research, they would find that half of the 'remote' population had been into town in the last month, and pretty much all had been into town in the last six months.

Meanwhile, all Indigenous people have the same access to the same welfare payments as other Australians. As well, Indigenous people have relatively cheap rents, as well as access to pretty substantial mining royalties, and conservation park royalties, amounting to tens of thousands of dollars per household. Indigenous people, consciously or not, are IN Australian society, albeit at its remote fringes, and in it forever.

Of the urban population, say four hundred thousand, of whom perhaps 250,000 are adults, forty thousand have graduated from universities. One in six or seven. Probably around the rate for Europe as a whole. Twice as many women as men. Around 22 % of a surrogate age-group, say 25 years old, of university students graduate each year, rising by 8-10 % per year. Fifty thousand in total by 2020. One hundred thousand in total by 2030-2032, or one in four adults. Top that, Britain.

Cheers,

Joe

Hi Luciferase,

Currently there are supposed to be thousands of 'communities' across Australia. But under that easy heading - 'communities' - the vast majority are (or more likely, were) single-dwelling or two-dwelling 'hamlets'. 'Were' ? Yes, I suspect that the great majority are deserted, or maybe lived at for a few days each year at most.

There are probably only a couple of hundred 'communities' with more than a hundred inhabitants, most of whom have been to town in the past fortnight, and almost all in the past six months, usually many times. Nobody lives by hunting and gathering. Nobody, except for the odd couple of days, by 4-WD and rifle, to relieve the boredom and/or tensions of remote settlement life, and if they can get the petrol.

There is a very incisive article in this weekend's Australian by Nicolas Rothwell, which should be compulsory reading for any dreamer of myths about 'community' or 'self-determination'. He unavoidably points to the probably-unsolvable questions:

* what do Aboriginal people in remote communities want which is at all achievable in the world of 2016 ?

* what do they have to eventually face up to, given that they are not living at all traditional lives, even if they still perceive the world (of 2016) through traditional-oriented lenses ?

* what has been tried (again and again) and failed (again and again) and therefore should be put on the back-burner, to be replaced by .... what, in the context of those first two questions ?

* where the hell do we go from here ?

Nicolas' article is well worth reading a few times over. I might frame it, and learn it off by heart.

Joe

I strongly recommend everyone interested in understanding Aboriginal issues to read "Blind Moses: Aranda man of high degree and Christian evangelist" by Peter Latz. It tells the true story of the first Aboriginal preacher at the Hermansberg mission in central Australia in the 1880s. By reading it, you will understand that the genocide that John Pilger talks of is of one Aboriginal group against another and why the Christian religion was so readily adopted by the Dreamtime people of central Australia.

Most of what Pilger writes is simply not true. His is the black armband view of Indigenous-Exdigenous relations over the past 230 years, meaning that it is excessive dark, pessimistic and highly exaggerated. A direct response to his many vacuous and distorted claims is just not warranted.

If they're starving out there we should get them some food and whatever else they are in desperate need of.
- KRudd didn't have a problem sending millions to Africa when they were starving and those people weren't even Australians.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-07-13/rudd-announces-money-for-afican-drought-victims/2793932
I guess he was butt-licking for a job at the UN.
How sad for everyone, except the Africans...
I guess they will pay for it if and when he gets the job.

Anyhow is it really all that hard for the army to drop supplies out of the back of a damn plane?
They can do it for the Kurds why cant they do it for Australians?
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-08-31/australian-planes-drop-humanitarian-aid-into-iraq/5708636

The government are so inconsistent that its really easy to make them look like stupid hypocrites, but hey don't blame me for pointing it out.
I didn't do it, and I didn't write the articles.

Your always moaning about them Loudmouth..
Why are you so angry?
Did one impregnate your daughter or mug you or something?
Why are you so against them?
What did they ever do to you?

John Pilger does talk up a storm about all the awful things "white Australia" is doing which prevents "Aboriginal Australia" from coping. Invading Australia is not one of them - we didn't do that. Others did, and they are all long dead. Our offence, according to the industry for which Mr Pilger speaks, was to be born here. Like every Aborigine.

What is lacking in Mr Pilger's periodic lectures is some well-thought-out proposals for just what he and others like him reckon "white Australia" should be doing so that Aborigines can cope with life. To give the industry's proposals credibility, it might also include some prescription of what Aborigines should be doing in order to cope.

If the industry is really dinkum, following their prescriptions should mean an end to their complaining. For good.

Pilger is a one trick pony. The repetitive conspiracy theory bilge would have dried up years ago were it not for the left-leaning and lazy ABC.

ABC managing director Mark Scott has freely volunteered that the ABC and SBS duplicate each other and waste millions of taxpayers money.

well said, EmperorJulian. My younger brother is something of an apologist for all things Aboriginal so, when I challenged him to come up with some concrete actions that should be taken to address Aboriginal disadvantage, he told me to read the 17 pages of recommendations of this report:

http://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.inquirysaac.nt.gov.au%2Fpdf%2Fbipacsa_final_report.pdf&h=PAQG_KGNJ

I hope you can open it. It's the "Report of the Northern Territory Board of Inquiry into the Protection of Aboriginal Children from Sexual Abuse 2007" and I hope to study it over coming days, as should John Pilger.

The provision of services, including health, education and shelter to wherever aborigines decide to call home is not helping them assimilate into modern civilization.

As you say, Loudmouth, "nobody, nobody, nobody is living a traditional life in Australia now", so there is a logical limit to how remote a "remote community" should be supported from centres providing health, education, and shelter. Aborigines should not get to decide this, only be consulted in decision making.

On the provision of shelter, it can not be expected that gov't should house every remotely situated person for free (or peppercorn rent) when it is not the case in major, mixed population settings. All we are doing is providing half-way housing between traditional life and modern civilization from which there seems no escape, as decades of experience shows.

Aborigines must come to towns and these must be firmly run for the greater good, so that problems are minimized, while finding their feet without free meals based on race. The towns are the staging point for the urbanization and full integration of aborigines and their thriving into wider, multicultural Australia.

Where land rights are won, it is the responsibility of aborigines to make a living from that land that they devise for themselves, and without any right to lock its minerals away, as applies to any other landholder. The developing creative practice of making them custodians of their own land, as rangers with uniforms, vehicles and salaries, will not bring them autonomy but further dependence.

What has to be done will be painful for aborigines, but if it is not we will see what Pilger sees into perpetuity. What he sees we can all agree with, but not with what he infers about us from it.

I agree with your last comments, Luciferase, but, where you write "Where land rights are won, it is the responsibility of aborigines to make a living from that land that they devise for themselves", the point needs to be made that native title is inalienable title which means that the owners of that title are unable to sell it or do other income-earning things with the land that you or I could do if we owned title to a parcel of land. In time, I believe Aboriginal people around Australia will push for native title land to be changed to normal freehold title that can be sold, bought, subdivided, etc, like all other privately owned land.

On that one, Bernie, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aboriginal_land_rights_in_Australia#cite_note-wtd-1 :-

"A successful land rights claim usually results in a special grant of freehold title or perpetual lease. A title document for the land is issued. The title is normally held by a community or an organisation, not by individuals. There are usually some restrictions on selling, and dealing with, land that has been granted in a land rights claim. Normally, the land will be passed down to future generations in a way that recognises the community’s traditional connection to that country."

The "dealing with" bit would not be so prescriptive as to stop owners form profiting from their asset, one would think. If it did, the situation could be remedied. I'm am restricted on land use of my property and can vary this with application to the appropriate authorities. The same would presumably apply to native title

Hi Bernie,

New computer :( Fifth-time lucky with this post :)

Moses Tjalkabota's book, the first in an Aboriginal language, is on

http://www.aboriginalculture.org/index.html

and also on my website www.firstsources.info, on the 'Twenty-First Century' Page. Well-worth a good look.

As for deaths in custody, it was reported today that 27 % of all prisoners in custody are Indigenous, but only about (from memory) 17 % of deaths in custody are Indigenous. It's safer to be Indigenous in jail than for non-Indigenous prisoners make up 73 % of prisoners but 83 % of deaths. And as anybody knows, deaths OUTSIDE OF custody are much higher for Indigenous people, suicides especially. I wonder when anybody will talk about that.

Hi AC,

Indigenous people in remote 'communities' get standard welfare payments, as well as mining and conservation royalties. But you and Bilger raise the serious issue that, even though ATMs would be available in larger 'communities', in very small ones like Utopia, population Around fifty on a good day, and with no local shop, old ladies specially would find it very hard to get to a shop if nobody wanted to drive them.

As for your observations that I am

" .... always moaning about them Loudmouth.
Why are you so angry?
Did one impregnate your daughter or mug you or something?
Why are you so against them?
What did they ever do to you?"

my kids are Indigenous, my wife of 43 years was Indigenous, like a fool I was dedicated to Indigenous affairs for the best part of 55 years. But I didn't think that I actually moaned. And angry ? Probably. Pissed off ? Yes, of course. Would I do it all again ? Probably not. Mugged ? No, my sister was, but no biggie, she took it in her stride.

Back to topic ?

Joe

Hi Luciferase,

You're right to suggest that " .... all we are doing is providing half-way housing between traditional life and modern civilization from which there seems no escape, as decades of experience shows."

I typed up the verbatim discussions at the string of Conferences of National Welfare Ministers and Officers from 1961 to 1968 (around 2000 pages, all on my web-site, colour-coded by State for easy reference) and it is clear from the dialogues that participants, having encouraged people to come into missions and settlements like Yuendumu, didn't quite know what to do next: they touch lightly on the issue of training for employment, in situ, then, as if realising there will always be bugger-all employment out in the sticks, move quickly on to other issues.

I'm not suggesting that they deliberately practised apartheid, just that the options of apartheid and assimilation seemed equally impractical and unattractive. But apartheid is what the people have been stuck with.

As you add,

'Aborigines must come to towns and these must be firmly run for the greater good, so that problems are minimized, while finding their feet without free meals based on race. The towns are the staging point for the urbanization and full integration of aborigines and their thriving into wider, multicultural Australia.'

Yes, integration into a far more multi-culti society than fifty years ago. But 'down south', people have been doing that for two hundred years. 80 % of Indigenous people, perhaps 90 % 'down south', live in cities and large towns. Nearly forty thousand, one in every eight or nine adults, have graduated from universities.

And, perhaps to Bilger's surprise, the great majority have health/crime/education rates similar to those of other Australians. They're getting on with business.

Cheers,

Joe

"Apartheid" is a good description, albeit not intended. Your points about urban aborigines, and what is done for them beyond mainstream welfare and education is where Pilger should look for his next story.

Today's news on earning income from native titled land: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-19/adam-giles-call-to-support-uluru-climb-eiffel-comparison/7339976

Native land is not just for looking at. It is a capital asset that should be and is being utilized, giving aborigines an option other than urbanization http://www.ilc.gov.au/

Hi Luciferase,

I suppose the essential requirement for healthy, permanent but remote 'communities', is some form of economic activity - endogenous activity, economic activity, not just appointing an army of outside professionals and calling it 'employment'. Local employment which generates product or income on-site. If that is impossible, then yes, we are supporting Apartheid. Talk of 'culture' is just putting dirty bandages on festering sores, as GB Shaw would say.

What's the answer ? I don't know, except that nothing seems to be currently working for the great majority - not just the cliques - of the able-bodied populations.

Perhaps to support those who want to move and work in neighbouring towns - that might give the next generation a chance. Perhaps it would need very supportive training for work, very intelligently applied TAFE courses - not the usual run of make-work courses but REAL courses in training, with thorough literacy and numeracy courses as a basis.

Assimilation ? Not necessarily. But certainly, surely, we must support moves against the continuing Apartheid which is destroying lone generation after another since the sixties.

Cheers,

Joe

Hi again Luciferase,

You noted that " .... urban aborigines, and what is done for them beyond mainstream welfare and education is where Pilger should look for his next story."

Yes, that's so, but he won't: the great majority of urban working Indigenous people don't ask for much assistance, or any at all, and that's how it's been for many generations now.

It's striking how that dichotomy between working and shirking populations, Menzies' 'lifters' and 'leaners', strivers and skivers, has been evident for a very long time: in the Protector's Letters throughout the nineteenth century in South Australia [on my web-site: www.firstsources.info], there are people constantly asking for free travel passes, more rations, more blankets, assistance to go here and there; while there are many other people who ask for nothing along those lines, but for assistance in taking out a land lease, or funds for fencing wire or another draught horse or a 15-ft canoe or a rifle, or some building materials. One bloke asked for funds for an organ (and got them).

The exodus from missions after the war to infrastructure projects down this way stripped them of capable, hard-working people and at the one mission that I have school, birth, death and marriage records for, lo and behold - the 1950s was the decade with the highest infant mortality and the highest number of kids taken temporarily into care, i.e. the 'Stolen Generation'. I knew most of those kids and, despite having much affection for many of them, I have to say that not too many ever morphed into working people, but have remained skivers to the end.

Perhaps working or shirking is a result of family culture, in a sociological sense ? Certainly, some ancestors could look with pride on dozens of descendants who have become university graduates, while others could look at dozens each generation in and out of jail, and not a single university graduate. In fact, in another settlement, now defunct, everybody was on CDEP - non-work for the dole - and apparently, no-one has even finished secondary school. Some correlation there.

Joe

As others have pointed out, there is a culture of bludging and facilitating bludging, but specific to Pilger there is also an endless cacophony of whining that "white Australia" is supposedly responsible for a gap between its living conditions and those of "indigenous Australia" [1].

If Aboriginal Australians want to contribute to closing the gap, then they can keep incarceration rates down by not committing crimes, they can try looking after their houses and co-operating with educational and nursing services and refraining from boozing and gambling and petrol and glue sniffing and engaging in tribal brawls and beating up their partners. That is, give up on the sort of behaviour that disadvantages everyone, Aboriginal or not, who indulges in it.

The main contribution non-Aboriginal Australians can make is fund individual Aborigines on a basis of equality with individual non-Aborigines, and crack down hard on any racist discrimination on the specific basis of ancestry (hard enough to actually put a stop to it, maybe starting with officialdom and in particular police).

As for the whining industry, let them put up (i.e. specify the measures they advocate based on what should be DONE not what the outcome should be) or shut up.

[1] The term "indigenous" used loosely, ignoring the fact that everyone born in Australia is indigenous)

Hi Jules,

I'll probably lose even more friends by suggesting that the isolation of Indigenous Australians from other societies before, say, 1500, was a dreadful tragedy. And within Australia, by far the most isolated groups were those in the Western Deserts. Somebody wrote that, for some people in those tragic circumstances, they may meet only a dozen other people in their entire lives.

Given that, inevitably, all Indigenous people would be thrust into contact with other people sooner or later, a major disadvantaging factor for Australian Indigenous people was that, even for hunting-gathering people, they were almost unique in that they didn't produce: they foraged and consumed. This is a good summary:

file:///C:/Users/joela/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/INetCache/IE/ZGYLBFMC/2001%20Winterhalder%20Panter-Brick.pdf

So the concepts of working to produce, and of producing at least partly for exchange, were largely foreign, except for what might be called symbolic or political trade between groups, for stone or ochre or hard-wood for spears and digging sticks, gathered mainly for the maintenance of good relations between groups. Instead, [and even though effort obviously went into hunting and gathering] this was not perceived as involving systematic work or effort.

Of course, many people would have found the concept of effort easy to grasp once they observed exchange relations between non-Indigenous people, or between themselves and Macassans over trepang and sandalwood. But self-sufficient groups by definition don't exchange: one doesn't exchange within one's family group, one shares.

But post-contact by whatever name, groups living close to towns, and over some years, would have become familiar with a 'European' economy, of exchange, of money, and of work. The Protector reported after barely eight years of 'contact' in Adelaide that Aboriginal people were often so mobile that when they met in town, they spoke to each other not in their mutually unintelligible languages, but in English.

In fact, I suspect that, in accordance with sociolinguistic practices, when they spoke to a fellow-countryman about 'modern' issues such as employment, money, grog, tobacco, horses, sheep, the harvest, boots, hats, etc., they spoke in English, the language of that 'modern' economy.

There's always more to learn .....

Joe

Loudy,

You need to provide an online link.

Re EJ's "As for the whining industry, let them put up....or shut up."

How about taking the full suite of gov't services to wherever aborigines want them including health, education, free public housing, free electricity, telephony and internet, free garbage gathering and disposal. Add in in free food, cooks, cleaners and house renovators, cars, petrol, mechanics, TVs and other mod cons and guns and shovels for traditional hunting and gathering. Throw in welfare benefits, childcare and native title and that should nearly do it.

Then invite Pilger for his approval.

HiLuciferase,

That article is "The Behavioral Ecology of Hunter-Gatherers" by Bruce Winterhalder (2001) - I apologise for the size of the URL:

http://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0ahUKEwj-teL7mJ_MAhVQ4WMKHUgBA0EQFggbMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fanthropology.ucdavis.edu%2Fpeople%2Fbwinterh%2Fsite%2Fpublications%2F2001WinterhalderPanterBrickVol.pdf&usg=AFQjCNGYIKmGJu1BZfxxs1U3wR8giJbvpQ&bvm=bv.119967911,d.dGo

As for your proposals, I certainly support the rights of Indigenous Australians to whatever benefits other Australians enjoy, and I always will. But I'm not enthusiastic in supporting extra benefits for anybody without very good reason.

Just to clear up yet another Bilgerian misconception: poverty. I did a study back in 1982 of the incomes of residents in a community, house by house: we had lived there a decade earlier. I found that the average income at that community - then, let alone now - was equal to the Australian median. And taking very low rents into account, people there were better off by about 20 %. So I learnt that appearances can be deceiving: squalor is not poverty.

I was talking to a relative who had just moved into a new house with a big back-yard. She grumbled about how infrequently the bloke came to mow it.

Do you think that even your proposals would satisfy some people ? Don't kid yourself :)

Cheers,

Joe

It's incumbent on those who yipe about the gap and "aboriginal disadvantage" to make, and stand by, a statement of what should be DONE, and by whom, about the disadvantages they complain about. Not outcomes but actual policies.

Hi Jules,

Is there a rock-solid - and racist - assumption that Aboriginal people can't do anything for themselves ? That whatever is done to improve their situation, it's up to non-Aboriginal people ? Why ? Able-bodied people aren't, or shouldn't be, useless. Have people got so used to having everything just drop out of the sky ? And more and more of it, all they have to do is ask, and if that doesn't work, complain ?

So how to get across that they are not entitled to that free ride. Nobody is. If they have resources, then able-bodied people should be making use of them, sustainably of course. Are fruit and vegetables expensive in remote settlements ? Then grow the bloody things - almost all settlements have running water.

Meanwhile, 'down south', Aboriginal people, to a large extent, work for their money and get on with their lives. Working Aboriginal people have roughly the same life expectancy as other Australians, and almost the same rate of home ownership and university participation.

Is that 'assimilation' ? Is that what people want ? If so, then I'm all for it.

Cheers,

Joe

"squalor is not poverty"
Hear, hear.

There's a guy who drives an old rusty Bongo van around my suburb. Hair a mess, jeans ripped and frayed, toes out the end of his Dunlop Volleys.

Turns out he owns half the suburb.

Assimilation might be an effective way of defeating racism, but I'd hesitate to suggest any social engineerinhg programme. My beef is with the whiners who forget that everyone born in Australia is indigenous and lecture "white" Australians about the gap without committing to any suggestions of what should be done, and by whom, to close it.

Hi Jules,

'Assimilation' has had a varied past. Whites have tended to use the passive version - ' to be 'assimilated' - but Aboriginal people have used - and lived - the active version - to exercise the same rights as other people have. When Aboriginal leaders like William Cooper used the term in the thirties, I think they meant 'equal rights in every way', which sounds pretty good to me.

When State governments were crafting their Aborigines Acts around 1940, they had to deal with the problem that, if people moved away from 'Missions', (which they could do anyway), they no longer had rights to the benefits of living on the 'Mission' such as rations, low or no rent, various forms of assistance: in other words, they couldn't double-dip. I guess you can't have it both ways, always.

For a long time, I thought that the rather desultory push for 'assimilation' by governments was countered by clauses in their various Acts which made it an offense for white men to consort with Aboriginal women - I took this to mean that any form of inter-marriage was banned - that actual policy was in the direction of segregation.

But no: from examples ever since the forties, it is clear that governments were opposed to casual liaisons, and more than happy, about actual inter-marriage. Even in the fifties, many, if not most, marriages - and long-term de facto relationships - of urbanising Aboriginal people were with non-Aboriginal people, usually working-class, and very often non-Anglo: Poles, Greeks, Italians, Maltese, Fijian Indians, Chinese, 'Malays', i.e. Indonesians.

In other words, as long as people conducted themselves in an approved manner, they could do what they liked, live and work where they liked, and marry who they liked.

In other words, people have always exercised whatever rights they had and usually more besides, 'pushing the envelope'. The one thing you can say about Aboriginal people is that they have almost never been passive, puppets, or even victims. They have been active agents in their own lives. Wonderful. May they continue to be so.

Joe

In the 1980s, a book on the history of Busselton was published. The town was originally called Vasse and was settled by Europeans in 1832. The book included details of the 'white' families which also had 'black' offspring, including the Bussell family after whom the town was renamed. Some of these old families were shocked to discover they had Aboriginal relatives but those relatives had for the most part been happily living for decades in the community as ordinary citizens, being neither critical of their white ancestors nor praising of their black ancestors. The book was an eye opener for me as it showed how many people of Aboriginal descent I knew. After the book's publication, nothing changed in the way community members interacted with each other - life went on as normal.

Hi Bernie,

Rebe Taylor wrote something similar - "Unearthed: Aboriginal Tasmanians Of Kangaroo Island" - about many of the Aboriginal families on Kangaroo Island, their land leases, inter-marriage with non-Aboriginal neighbours, etc. I'll bet that many towns right across Australia could have similar histories written about them, if Aboriginal researchers committed themselves to it.

Now that would be Indigenous research that we could all get something out of.

Cheers,

Joe