Hi Babette,

There are many myths about 'southern' Aboriginal people, who have generally been integrating into a modern economy and society for upwards of two hundred years, while contemporaneously, traditional knowledge has been put on the back-burner.

One could draw a rough line across Australia to differentiate such groups from others who have not been able to do so as easily, or at all. Very roughly, that line would also distinguish pastoral country, particularly cattle-raising, from the Rest. Clearly, the great majority of Aboriginal people have thus made the historical leap, although very few, especially leaders, would admit it.

South Australia was colonised from, say the beginning of 1837. An early Governor, George Grey, was enthusiastic about recording local languages and, in Eyre's vocabulary of the mid-Murray (Ngangaruku country), published in 1845, the Protector notes that, due to the much-enhanced mobility of Aboriginal people, when Aboriginal people meet, especially if they are from different groups, they speak English, the language after all of horses and harvests, money, hats and boots, grog and tobacco. Of course, countrymen speak to each other in their own languages when speaking about 'traditional' issues such as fishing and hunting and ceremony and family. But even countrymen speak in English about 'English' things.

Ironically, meanwhile, missionaries were learning the local languages in order to teach children in them. But of course, the families of those children also were pretty mobile, so in spite of the missionaries' intentions, their classes soon became quite mixed, with all children able to speak English - perhaps from as early as the 1840s. Certainly that was Taplin's experience at Pt McLeay in the early 1860s, that the children were already from various backgrounds and could speak English, often as their first language.

Of course, in more isolated areas, such as east of Lake Eyre,

[TBC]

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the Lutheran missionaries, learnt and taught in the local language, Diyari - in fact, right up until the missions were closed there during the First World War. They never taught in English - but in Diyari and German.

In the 1930s, the Presbyterians who set up Ernabella in the North-West, taught in Pitjantjatjara right up until the seventies. Schooling is still in Pitjantjatjara there. But of course, SA's North-West is over that 'line', well inside cattle country.

The vast majority of Indigenous university graduates can trace their ancestry back to southern mission stations, but also to hard-working (and mixed-ancestry) ancestors who integrated into the modern economy early. Of the forty thousand graduates (so far), extremely few could claim to have grown up over that 'line' in pastoral country, except of course in towns like Alice Springs or Katherine or Broome.

Have people 'over the line' missed the boat ? Have they been condemned by a history of limited contact with the outside world, to stay 'outside' ? Helped along by a solid dose of Coombsian policy of self-determination, which was probably doomed from the outset, and which has driven people further up the wrong path, compounding sixty thousand years of isolation from the rest of humanity ?

Cheers,

Joe

Thank you, Babette, for your thoughtful contribution on how best to help indigenous Australians. This is a far more constructive and beneficial approach than all the political blather about grievances and treaties.

Babette

Your suggestions are excellent - and are made more powerful by your Indian background.

Some related points from other sources about the need to recognise the limitations of traditional cultures in the modern world are on my web-site - see http://cpds.apana.org.au/Teams/Articles/aboriginal_advancement.htm#Obstacles

"....acknowlege.....that we live we live in a world made in England".

This is the best advice yet, not just for the few Australians left with some indigenous heritage, but for all Australians, particularly the Marxist spoilers and manipulators who prefer totalitarianism to the freedoms delivered to us by our enlightened forefathers of Anglo-Saxon origin.

the truth is that the Judeo Christian ethic made this nation great. Secularism/Islam is sending it back to the days of Sodom and Gomorrah.