Hi EJ,

Yes, I always thought, in my naivety, that 'self-determination' meant, first and foremost, ECONOMIC self-determination, building up an economic base, building up the skills needed to completely staff a community. It didn't mean, I thought, relying forever on other people. It certainly didn't mean living on welfare for life, when potential economic resources where all around.

As well, there seemed to be a lot of negatives associated with life-long welfare: boredom, for on thing. A complete absence of goals, except to keep doing nothing. That 'goal' seems to sap the will from one generation and the next, and the next. It's not as if people continued to forage, to hunt and fish and gather, and used the features of the outside world, like money, as a supplement to their traditional life. Let's be honest - they abandoned their traditional lie, but didn't take up the necessary challenges entailed in changing over to a non-traditional life. A bit of hunting here and there became what other people might call 'a weekend' or a 'holiday'.

It's not as if people are in poverty either (except maybe the kids): I wish someone would do a thorough income study of a remote community, because I think they would find that weekly income there is not much different from, say, a weekly income in Sydney's western suburbs or Adelaide's northern suburbs: the only difference might be the complete absence of effort needed to get it. Frankly, if this is roughly correct, there is something racist about it: an assumption, as Noel Pearson has maintained, of the 'soft expectations of racism', an assumption that people didn't have to, or couldn't, be expected to do what other people elsewhere took for granted that they had to do.

Meanwhile in the cities,

[TBC]

[continued]

Meanwhile in the cities, where Indigenous people have experienced, if anything, far more colonialism than people in remote communities, they get on with life. People work, their kids go to school and university - and probably at similar rates to other Australians in those outer suburbs. Indigenous women commence university, for example, at slightly better rates than NON-Indigenous Australian men. More than forty thousand Indigenous people have graduated from universities, and another ten thousand may graduate before 2019.

That's where the 'Gap' is. Urban people are making the effort, so it's primarily up to Indigenous people in rural and remote areas to 'Close' it. How is the problem, and it will take a qualitative shift in perceptions of the world and its requirements to do it, even to make a start.

If they don't, then they may disappear from history, with little trace. It's as crucial as that.

Cheers,

Joe

They won't disappear from history, not when they are accorded the respect as individuals - and not as homogenised "communities" or, at worst, tribes - that most of us can take for granted. Tribal structures may be lost, but that happens everywhere in the world with no loss to individual people. If tribal traditions are worth retaining they'll attract enough individuals to keep them alive.

Hi EJ,

Yes, you're right. We respect individuals if they meet their existential respo0nsibilities, if they do what they can to contribute to their own welfare when they can. It's more difficult to respect anybody who seems to skive and loaf and dodge responsibilities.

When we lived in a community for a few short years, it struck me that people there had developed what you might call a 'third culture': not traditional in any observable, concrete way, and although accessing all the benefits of the outside world, not being a part of that either. And parents passed that 'third culture' down to their children, and so on, generation after generation.

Time passes, and the pre-school kids that my wife taught there are now grandparents, if they are still alive. As far as I can tell, even though that community was surrounded by farming and fruit-block towns, almost nobody from the community has finished secondary school in that time: the 'third culture' is alive and reproducing.

So, no, I'm sorry, I don't have much confidence that those sorts of communities will survive: in fact, that particular community has indeed withered away, from around 150 people fifty years ago to only a couple of families now. And I'm told that a great many 'homelands' (why does so much jargon about Indigenous communities have a South African-Apartheid ring to it ?) or out-stations, are now, if not abandoned, hardly ever occupied.

Meanwhile in the cities, those forty or forty five thousand university graduates represent one in every seven adults, one in every five adult women. Something's working.

Cheers,

Joe

Exist structural problems created by Commonwealth, also state or territory governments.

Ongoing refusal by Commonwealth to resolve these structural problems makes it extremely hard to motivate people in communities to work towards longer term improvements and benefits.

Enthusiasm for gardens can be found, as can enthusiasm to do other things, however it remains hard to have a garden, hard to try your hand at business.

Others help themselves to crops pre-harvest, others demand service be provided for free, this makes every effort hard to develop without property rights without reasonable leases.

Many residents in these communities still lack conventional tenancy leases for homes they live in, this diminishes accountability and responsibility.

The relevant corporate land trusts expect to be regularly paid money for use of the land for public housing, while they refuse to provide tenancy rights.

Leases for commercial ventures far more difficult to obtain.

Where are the reports of land value in these communities, where reports of lease incomes such values can be calculated from ?

Without reasonable data, without reasonable leases, it is closer to extortion upon anyone trying to make conventional use of land.

.

Good points, Polpak,

Yes, why aren't the Indigenous hot-shots in 'leadership' positions working harder to make it possible for community councils to lease land for enterprises run (I mean, REALLY run) by Indigenous people, worked by Indigenous people, for the ultimate benefit of Indigenous people (i.e. for Indigenous residents to pay market prices for goods produced), such as something as elementary as a bloody vegetable garden. It would probably have to be a mile or so out of town, to 'encourage' people to pay for the produce they consume.

Almost all remote communities have running water, flush toilets; and therefore sewage ponds, with usually one or more drying out; that effluent can be treated and used to fertilise ground which, perhaps a year or two later, can be used to grow vegetables and fruit orchards. That's how they do it in many countries.

In the old Mission days, fruit and vegetables was sold at standard city market prices. At Pt McLeay, in addition to the gardens and orchards, the Superintendent (in about 1896) asked his agent in town to send out cherries: the people were sick of oranges, he said. To be sold in the Mission store at city market prices.

So why not now, in 2017 ?

[Mind you, I remember older community members complaining about how they used to have a big fruit orchard: but nobody remembered to water the trees after the community control was installed in 1973.

One thing, Polpak: at least in SA, land is valued on its sale value. All land vested in Aboriginal communities is not saleable, so it has no rateable value - in SA, Aboriginal communities do not pay rates on their land. The dairy farms and wheat farms and fruit blocks next door do. So there's a bonus right at the outset for any enterprise. So why not enterprises like vegetable gardens, orchards, chook yards for eggs and meat, dairy cows, a flock of sheep for meat, in remote communities ?

I think we know the answer.

Cheers,

Joe