Rodney,

My God, you come up with rubbish, some of it quite racist, if unintended to be so. Your last comment for example.

What do I mean by "doing best" ? Living longer, living more satisfying lives, raising their kids in better comfort and with better prospects and - horrors ! - getting a better education.

In your world, circa 1950, Aboriginal kids - let me guess - are supposed to confine themselves to learning about hunting and gathering, maybe that idiotic kangaroo dance, a bit of dot painting - they're so good at art, aren't they ? - and of course sport. They're REALLY good at sport.

Amazing. Is this how the Left thinks these days, in the same-old, same-old ways that the conservatives used to think ?

No. Get something straight: EVERYBODY in the world is entitled to live, to have the comforts, that you and I take for granted. No, they don't have to stay in their oh-so-colourful native costumes, performing their quaint dances for the tourists. And they won't. Get used to it.

I confidently look forward to the day when the great majority of Aboriginal people have the same opportunities, and use them, as non-Aboriginal people, when they can be judged on the content of their character, not just on the colour of their skin, or their adherence to out-moded cultural practices, as if they were some sort of exotic fauna: a leopard can't change his spots - that seems to be your logic.

Appalling.

Joe

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Dear Joe,

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Thank you for those details on Indigenous land tenure in South Australia. It’s a real patchwork on the national level. Every state and territory has its own system.

You ask :

« What do I mean by "doing best" ? »

And you reply .

« Living longer, living more satisfying lives, raising their kids in better comfort and with better prospects and - horrors ! - getting a better education »

Those are clearly aspirations of non-Indigenous peoples the world over - which people like you and I subscribe to without the slightest hesitation. It is clear that many of our Aboriginal compatriots do too. But it is just as clear that there are also many who do not. As I observed in my previous post :

« Whether they “are doing best” or not (compared to those living in remote communities) depends on the way you look at it. Some may consider that they have become “corrupted” by British culture and no longer live in harmony with their natural environment »

While I have no difficulty understanding the circumstances that determine your own and (I Imagine) your children’s aspirations for the Aboriginal peoples, I personally, do not feel authorised to judge what is best for them and what is not. It is evident from the copious literature and public declarations on the subject that self-determination is one of the major demands, if not the major demand, of a large number of Aboriginal leaders and others.

Perhaps I should also explain that, as it happens, I, personally, place a particularly high value on freedom which, by the way, is why I try to make up my own mind on most things, and respect the right of others to do the same – hopefully, after careful and honest (unbiased) consideration of all available evidence, of course.

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Hi Rodney,

You really do need to come back for a year or two, to soak up what has been, and is currently, going on. God knows what damage French philosophers have done indirectly to the perception of Australia's Indigenous people. It's not all Levi-Strauss and Baudrillard, you know.

Then again, perhaps you're right: perhaps a quarter of the Indigenous population want to die before the age of ten; perhaps many of the rest, mainly women, want to be beaten to death with a brick or star-picket before they reach forty. Perhaps kids out on the streets at three in the morning are avid astronomers, not just kids terrified of going home and being rooted by their uncles. After all, it's all 'culture', isn't it, not for us to interfere in ?

One thing I've been impressed with over fifty years, at least down here in the 'South', is that Aboriginal people are their own agents. They don't dance to anybody or anything else's tune, not whites, not 'culture', not 'community'. Right or wrong, they make their own minds up what to do. Sheep, they're not, and never will be. They do NOT move according to some Foucauldian pendulum of post-modernist predictability.

Sorry, I have this illusion that Aboriginal people are entitled to the same rights and opportunities and fortunes as anybody else, even white people, EVEN British ! I know that may be shocking, but that's just me. Sorry, again.

What people in remote 'communities' face are enormous obstacles in being able to exercise any such rights, partly because of 'culture', partly because of policy, partly of course because of distance, social and economic environment.

The question is: should the next generation of children there be sacrificed, yet again, on the Coombsian altar of bankrupt 'self-determination' and garbled 'culture' ?

Joe

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Dear Joe,

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You ask :

« … should the next generation of children there be sacrificed, yet again, on the Coombsian altar of bankrupt 'self-determination' and garbled 'culture' ? »
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I’m afraid, that’s not for us decide – apart, of course, for parents like yourself, who decide to raise their children in Western culture.

Regrettably, it's highly likely, that the quarter of Indigenous population (in remote or very remote areas) who do not wish to adopt or, who are unable to adopt our Western culture, are embarked on a slippery slope to extinction - highly likely, but not certain. Not only are they intelligent, but also the most resilient people in the world.

British colonisation dropped in on them like an atom bomb on Hiroshima and almost wiped them out – but they managed to survive. Perhaps they still have the resources to keep going.

Please tell me if I’m wrong, Joe, but I can’t imagine that they managed to survive for the past 100 000 years living as they do today. Am I not right in thinking that British colonisation destabilised them and wreaked havoc in their traditional life style and social order ? Or have they always, as you indicate:

“… wanted to die before the age of ten … many of the rest, mainly women, wanted to be beaten to death with a brick or star-picket before they reach forty … kids out on the streets at three in the morning … terrified of going home and being rooted by their uncles” ?

Is it, as you suggest, “… all 'culture' … not for us to interfere in” ? If so, whose ‘culture’ is it ? If it’s theirs, haven’t we (and the British) already “interfered in” it ? And wasn’t it that “interference” that broke down the barriers that maintained social order in Aboriginal tribal culture for 100 000 years prior to colonisation ?

Like you, I consider “that Aboriginal people are entitled to the same rights and opportunities and fortunes as anybody else”, but, like them, I might prefer my own.

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Hi Rodney,

When I asked " .... You ask :

« … should the next generation of children there be sacrificed, yet again, on the Coombsian altar of bankrupt 'self-determination' and garbled 'culture' ? »

you reply, quite correctly, that " .... I’m afraid, that’s not for us decide .... "

Yes, indeed, it is up to the Indigenous people concerned themselves. They have made choices, they will keep making choices - but whether they make choices which extricate them from the grievous problems which have developed and festered over the past fifty years, is also their choice. But I anticipate that their choices will be 'more of the same, please'.

I'm inclined to partly agree with you that

" .... Regrettably, it's highly likely, that the quarter of Indigenous population (in remote or very remote areas) who do not wish to adopt or, who are unable to adopt our Western culture, are embarked on a slippery slope to extinction .... "

BUT I would contend that they HAVE adopted many facets of 'our' Western culture: a welfare system, ATMs, housing, Toyotas, a multitude of well-paying non-jobs in non-performing organisations, backed up by hordes of outside social workers and bureaucrats to keep the whole system running.

Of course, one can attribute all this to the mis-match between colonisation and Western society, and traditional society, particularly since the War when the last settlements and missions were set up, in the remotest areas where there was never going to be private employment - and administrators knew this even then (one can see that in the transcripts of Conferences through the fifties and sixties: see my web-site - www.firstsources.info - Conferences page).

If anything, any program of 'assimilation' in those regions was, from the word go, barely token,

[TBC]

[continued]

token, focussing on people's welfare and needs, rather than on any attempt to move people towards a philosophy of reward-for-effort, i.e. work (i.e. in areas where there was never going to be any): consideration of any of that was postponed into the distant future.

So the traditional perception that bounty came ultimately from the magic wielded by the old men was easily extended to include all of the trappings of the outside world - clever men, those old fellas. The bottom line is that then, and now, people honestly didn't think they ever had to do anything in order to accrue all of the benefits of the outside world. This is fortified by a belief that white fellas get all of those benefits anyway, including free houses and cars, and probably someone wiping their kids' arses as well.

So I think that most people in remote areas are more or less oblivious to the mis-conceptions, the predicaments that they are trapped in, and which somehow they have to get themselves out of. Otherwise, yes, as you suggest, those 'communities' may be on a death spiral.

Meanwhile, in the 'South', where traditional culture is 150-200 years in the past, where even the most fundamental aspects of 'culture' are, to be brutally honest, forgotten - first put on the back-burner, then a memory, then an account of a memory, as each generation grew up and passed away - people have got on with living in an environment of very different opportunities and possibilities.

Inevitably, as with our own ancestors, they have moved to more promising environments, to the cities. Their young people, and now kids straight from Year 12, have gone onto university and into employment (sometimes a problematic process). But they are taking care of business themselves, making their own decisions - because they can, within constraints. And good on them.

Cheers,

Joe