Joe,

David Roberts work was published in 1998. And no, I
certainly don't expect people to remember everything
verbatim that they may have read. Regarding the
explanations concerning self- determination and the
problems involved, these were given on pages 259 - 260
in his book. My response to your suggestions and
explanations about which you've complained was taken
from the book and given by a man with whose work you
claim to be familiar.

I also thought that finally I might get through to you
with facts. God also knows why I thought that as well.

I do take a great deal of notice of people's experiences.
Including their consistent past and current behaviour and actions. There's enough
genuine people around so one can sift through the sheep
from the goats.

And not only in the "Holy Written Word,"as you put it.
But in documented evidence, articles, films, oral histories,
so much to choose from these days - Verifiable material
that professional researchers willing to look are able to
find.

People who are willing to be voices - not just echoes.

I see no point in continuing these conversations with you.
I'm sure there's enough "kindred spirits" on this forum
who'll be delighted to talk with you.
I'm not one of them.

Shoddy Minister, you are both correct and incorrect, and you can stop wondering. Yes a HUGE error, nah! I would truthfully say an error of gargantuan proportions to use your when one should use you're. In fact if I had known my meagre little spiel was to be read by the forums most exalted poster, and master of everything, English included, I would have used you are, please, please, forgive me.

BTW SM; good to see the 'Tea Lady' has popped into your 21st floor office location, and left a cuppa so you can enjoy another one hour tea break from "work", and tat tat useless forum posts on your company supplied computer.

BTW; my post was derisive, you cannot tell?

mhaze, you said; "Aboriginal are approximately 15 times more likely to end up in custody than non-aboriginals." Is that because they are inherently bad people, or are there some other factors in play. If we could quadruple the number of Aboriginals in custody, better still lock them all up, and at the same time keep the deaths at say a reasonable 10 or 20 a year, then the Indigenous population would have nothing to whinge about.

Foxy,

Well, it was first a paper in the Kaurna Journal of Higher Education in 1994. I didn't know he had enlarged it into an entire book :). Was it a sort of second edition to Bill Edwards' earlier Introduction to Aboriginal Studies ?

My point about self-determination was that, surely, there is and was at least an element of independence in whatever the hell self-determination means ? i.e. that the people themselves make choices, decisions, without someone leaning over their shoulder ? And that if those decisions turn out to create problems, or not work at all, that they would have the onus of fixing them up, revising their decisions, trying again - all on their own ?

Or are you proposing some for of guided delegation of responsibilities, moving slowly away from paternalist government policies towards genuine independence of policy-making ? Yes, I'd concede that that might have been more effective.

In a sense, once self-determination has been genuinely put in place, then the people themselves make all the decisions and are pretty much on their own - no more training wheels, or parental hand gently in the back. Personally, I would have supported a phased approach, looking back, with government personnel exercising a sort of hands-off surveillance unless an expensive problem was imminent. That might have happened in many places, but probably needed to be repeated.

All water under the bridge now :(

Joe

My great-grand-mother was as fair and caucasian as can be as a young girl but became darkly tanned and weather-beaten as an older woman.

A male member of my family tree at the level of my sons took a photo of my great-grandmother as a mature woman to an aboriginal elder who vouched for her being of aboriginal descent (Torres Strait).

That family member used this to gain an indigenous scholarship at UNSW and now works as a lawyer for aboriginal justice. I'm more aboriginal than he is, which is not at all, and it shows what a scam the whole process is. Then again, maybe I and my sons are proof aborigines can rise above oppression if they dont know where they came from.

Paul asks

"Aboriginal are approximately 15 times more likely to end up in custody than non-aboriginals." Is that because they are inherently bad people, or are there some other factors in play."

Well actually, its because they have a larger portion of that demographic who exhibit anti-social and illegal activity. Not all of them, just a portion.

I'm guessing that this is Paul's way of accepting that Big Nana was right when she pointed out that blacks in custody have a better outcome than the general custodial population.

To Paul1405

I made a typo and should have typed NRMA. You probably figured that out yourself but it gave you some mileage to do a misdirection and you ran with it.

Please note, calling white people "white trash" is a racist term, you racist. Could you imaging me calling black people on OLO "nigggers" or "black trash"? Peter Young would have me permanently off the board in seconds. But as usual, racism towards white peopke is so routine that "smart" people like yourself can not even recognise that you are doing it.

But thank you, it is because of the contradictions and double standards of people like yourself which made me think twice. This is exactly why I stopped being an anti racist and loked at the whole question of race and dysfunction objectively.

Go onto youtube right now and look up how "Zimbabwe", once the "bread basket of Africa" is now a "basket case", and all the blacks are starving to death. This stupidity of black African people always blaming white people for their own inability to govern themselves has reached the hights of idiocy. Now they are demanding that US Police Forces be "defunded".

Acatuallty, it is not a bad idea. Since the most dangerous and crime prone areas of the USA are by far the black and Hispanic areas, then directing all police resources into white and Asian areas would save a lot of police lives. The black and Hispanic areas would degenerate into something resembling an aboriginal encampment after the arrival of a truckload of grog.

Africans in the USA murder their spouses 8 times the rate of non Africans and "no police" would see all of those dumb African/American women protestors very quickly demanding that the police come and save them from their crazy drug addled spouses. By then they will shout that no police in their areas is caused by white racism, and loonies like yourself will support them without even thinking about it., You lefty loonies know that everything that ever goes wrong with black people is always the white guys fault.