[continued]

There are simple and clear reasons [well, clear, ex post facto] why Indigenous higher education numbers have risen as they’ve done: After the War, with the multitude of infrastructure programs driving the economy: dams, reservoirs, water supply, electrification, railways, roads, there was plenty of work for Aboriginal people looking for it and many did, moving from settlements and small towns to larger towns, eventually to the cities, where their kids could get a fuller education. But that took a generation or more to bed in.

Support programs at universities from 1978 or so massively boosted Indigenous higher ed numbers, and from about the year 2000, the numbers of Indigenous kids finishing Year 12 has quadrupled and the numbers of those going onto uni has doubled.

Yes, it takes some time to reach mass higher education, 40-45 % of an age-group, but it was inevitable sooner or later. Of course, now, the vast majority of Indigenous uni students are from the cities, enrolling in mainstream, degree-level and post-graduate courses. The poor buggers ‘over the line’, may have missed out and that mediating and educating social force, work, is more remote now than it was fifty years ago.

Incidentally, my grand-dad claimed to have served under Banjo Paterson, in Palestine in the Second Remounts, looking after and breaking in both horses and camels. Supposedly, they came to blows once. My grand-dad also told me that I was born under a cabbage, so his word is suspect: I was at an age of curiosity about girls, and that put me back a couple of years.

Cheers,

Joe

“Yooooooo Hooooo!, [LEGO]. Where arrrrrrrre Youuuuuuuu?

Damn.

That is the seventh time [LEGO] locked horns with me on racism, and the [seventh] time he has done the runner.” (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=15856#275017)

Sorry, LEGO. But I just couldn’t resist doing the victory dance you usually do. Or perhaps this next one is better..?

“Bye bye [LEGO]. Don't bother crossing swords with me again until you have done your homework and have a bit of a clue what you are talking about. Of course, if you did just that instead of just parroting [racist] slogans, you wouldn't need me to [straighten] you out.” (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=148#17718)

--

Joe,

I’m sorry if I offended you. What I simply cannot understand, however, is why you allow toxic pigs like LEGO to go around claiming that your late wife was “dumb”, or that any level of intelligence that she possessed was only because she had “a dose of white genes injected into [her] mother[‘]s womb.” (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=4490#43534)

You recently accused me of racism because I compared the objection to interracial marriage with the objection to same-sex marriage, and yet you’re fine with LEGO slagging off at your late wife’s people the way he does. Something's not right there. It’s utterly baffling to me, and just goes to show how important political alliances are to people if they're willing to let a politically ally get away with the most absurd and offensive remarks towards a deceased beloved one who is no longer around to defend their people, so long as the offensive remarks com from someone with whom one is politically aligned.

Unreal!

Hi AJ,

I don't think you offended me, I'm not that wussy :) I don't take much notice of LEGO either when he goes off into the 'race' wilderness. Boringly irrelevant, especially since, as you point out, there are so many confounding factors around 'race'. How many times do you think I've gone through all that in my lifetime ? Too ridiculous to respond to.

My concern with your comment was the inappropriateness of comparing inter-racial marriages - which have always been legal (at least, in South Australia), since they are, after all, unions of a man and woman - with homosexual marriages - which are not.

Until the massive increase in inter-marriage rates involving Aboriginal people, more or less the only relations they would have interacted with closely would have been other Aboriginal people. The joke used to be, "Hold a family re-union: invite your white relations.' That would have got hollow laughs.

Certainly, my wife didn't know any of her white relations, most of them long-gone. But of course, even as the only Aboriginal kid in her class, she would have known all of her schoolmates at Yankalilla Area School well: they all held a reunion a couple of years before she left us. In a sense, that was her community, a sort of arm's-length community, after leaving the settlement at three years old. Of course, their 'house' hosted scores of Aboriginal relations from the mission over the years.

But thanks for your concern.

Cheers,

Joe

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Dear Loudmouth,

.

You wrote :

« 2. If you had moved to France with a one-year-old child, by the time he/she was ten, my bet is that he/she would speak perfect French and be fully integrated into both your value system AND the local French one. He/she wouldn't have to wait fifty thousand years. So it has been with Indigenous people: you learn from what you see around you »

That’s true, but I didn’t. The example you indicate is incomparable to the 50 000-year leap into the future that the aboriginal peoples have had to make since British colonisation in 1788. It was not just a question of learning a new language or adjusting from an Australian life style to a French life style.

A better comparison would be to try to imagine that you are a sort of “Rip Van Winkle” and you wander up the mountain as he did in the famous story and drank some Dutch gin and fell asleep, not just for 20 years as “Rip Van Winkle” did, but for 50 000 years. On waking up you find that Australia has been invaded by people from another planet. They speak a strange language. They do not wear clothes. Their skin changes to accommodate climatic conditions. They have no need for houses or buildings. There are no towns, cities or parks and gardens. No bicycles, motorbikes, cars, buses, trains or aeroplanes. They move by telepathy from one point to another in a flash. There are no schools. No books. No television. No cinema. They plug into a computer programme and learn everything they need to know in an instant. Etc., etc., …

I’m afraid my imagination is a bit weak. It will probably be vastly different from that in 50 000 years’ time – inimaginable ! – but I hope you get the message.

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(Continued ...)

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(Continued ...)

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Wouldn’t you feel thrown off balance, destabilised, lost, disoriented, insecure, with nowhere to turn, not knowing what to do, or how to earn your living ? Wouldn’t you feel that you had lost your bearings, completely useless in this new environment ? Perhaps if you had a one-year-old child (to come back to your example) he might fare a little better than you do – but, unfortunately, his father would not be able to guide and assist him as fathers usually do.

There is no way you could bridge that gap of 50 000 years that separated you from a future for which you had no preparation whatsoever and which you could not understand.

You would be of no use to yourself nor to anyone else – just a burden on society – a hopeless bludger for the rest of your life.

Sad, isn't it ? Perhaps society might be kind to you and treat you with respect and dignity and not discriminate against you, treat you as some inferior species and take your country away from you without any form of compensation, or even say "thank you".

That would be nice, wouldn't it ?

.

Hi Rodney,

Yes, but what I wrote and what you wrote are quite compatible: I readily agree that it would be difficult for anyone over the age of, say, ten, dropped into a totally different world - difficult but not impossible - to become familiar enough with that new world. But under that age, to an increasing degree at a younger age, that world would be simply the one in which one was growing up, and not much more difficult to operate in than for anybody else. We all learn from what we see around us.

From the earliest, this has not been a problem for many 'southern' aboriginal people, who see a changing world around them, and often the ONLY world they know. People may be told about legends, relationships, names, etc., but as these become less relevant to their daily world, they get politely put on the back-burner. So people down this way have long ago forgotten the names of their clans (Talkundjeriorn, Turiorn, Manangka, Piltindjeri, etc.) and, ironically, are unaware that their current European surnames accurately reflect those origins. As well, few people could connect clan to country, the cornerstone of Ngarrindjeri culture.

So, no, it doesn't take fifty thousand years, it takes no longer for many people than it does for white kids.

BUT of course, of course, of course, if people are living remote from towns, if they never see people actually working and producing anything, if everything seems to just drop out of the sky, houses, cars, ATMs, fast food, then of course there would a sort of arrested development in people's perceptions of how anything actually works. Of course, there would still be a respect for the old men and their magic which can make whitefellas give it all to them: smart old fellas, those elders. So there is absolutely no perception of the need for work - and therefore, for kids, for any need for education.

And since whitefellas' role is seen as doing more and more for people,

[TBC]