Dear Saltpetre,

From small acorns some mighty oaks do indeed grow. Thank You for
putting things so beautifully. Again it is a question of our
level of perception.

Regarding the Mia Mia Aboriginal Gallery - the Gallery operated by
the Aboriginal Development Fund displayed artwork, conducted
education programs for thousands of students and was a local tourist
attraction.

Centers like these help bridge the gap of understanding between
Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. With the Center hosting
two or three school groups a week hundreds of thousands of
children have been educated through the center's education programs.

Most people I know like learning about other cultures and people.
That's why we have languages, history, and geography, being
taught in our school. That's why people travel - to broaden
their outlooks. Different experiences are part of life. That's
how we learn and grow.

And here we had this wonderful Gallery that was closed - even
though it was very successful and did a great job.

My point was that for many Indigenous people that sort of
behaviour against them is the norm. Our governments talk a great
deal about "closing the gap". But sometimes their actions do
not match their words.

Foxy,

Good0. But for many Indigenous people, all of that it utterly irrelevant.

When are you going to realise that Indigenous people are in the same world as you and me ? That they have been raised with much the same influences as you and me ?

If you cut an Indigenous person, will they not bleed ? If you tickle them, will they not laugh ?

Joe

Loudmouth, you may not particularly like me, and you would not be alone, BUT, I had to step out of the shadows for a moment to say that I have followed you or your comments from the beginning and found that you have proven your worth and status on here as one of the, very few, well informed with the and about the black fella's.
I am not sucking up, but I thought someone should give you a word of acknowledgement and appreciation for all the hard work you did in researching and collating your fifteen thousand page essay or work on indigenous people in the early years.
So you can imagine my annoyance at having to watch while the mis-informed have attempted to disprove, question or doubt your version of events.
Personalities aside, when your right, YOUR RIGHT!

Thanks, Altrav. Whoops, there goes all my lefty cred :(

I'm a great follower of Oscar Lewis, the Marxist anthropologist (1912-1971), brother-in-law to Abraham Maslow, and his (I think mis-named) Culture of Poverty explanation. I'd prefer Culture of Marginality or Marginalisation. For thirty years, he studied out-groups, what we might today call the under-class or lifelong welfare-class, in Cuba, Puerto Rico (La Vida) and Mexico (Five Families).

He thought that Castro's socialist system in Cuba might help to incorporate and integrate those groups into an inclusive Cuba, and did a huge research study there from 1968. But he found that it was far more resistant to change, so Castro stopped the project and threw him out and he died a year later.

Noel Pearson has proposed a full-employment model - stay with me, it's connected :). If Lewis was alive now, he would probably point out that the marginal groups, who have devised a multitude of ways to avoid work, and therefore the skills required, especially in modern economies, may actually be further behind the play now than fifty or sixty years ago, when there was plenty of unskilled work if people wanted to do it.

But the problems are that (1) there isn't so much of it now (fruit-picking ?); and (2) people may not want to do it. And most importantly, they have found ways to circumvent the need for work AND still survive (get on a bus to or from a welfare-oriented suburb and listen to the phone conversations about money, how to get it, who owes who, who's chasing it, when the rent's due).

In the process, the need for education is also circumvented - and therefore, given the cultural reproduction role of the family (or at least the mother), they bugger up their kids' chances in the next generation.

[TBC]

I think you are on to something there Joe. I once thought that the cause of the black plight was because they were of lower intelligence. I see now that description may not apply at all or perhaps I might have been right all along and it is the Hybrid vigor of the brains of those gray black university graduates who are advising them that is helping to devise all their work less money making strategies. Either way, it would seem that any strategies that the government might devise to close the gap will be futile.
Economics in general works in a similar fashion. When the government introduce new laws to plug loopholes in the tax system, smart accountants devise work arounds to defeat them.
In either case, the government is on a hiding to nothing.

David

Hi Joe,

My post was about the closing down of a successful and
fully functioning Aboriginal Art Gallery that gave
Aboriginal artists a chance to sell their works and to
teach their culture to anyone interested. And, believe
me, many were. The Gallery was successful.

I merely questioned its unexplained closure by Parks
Victoria. It shall be interesting to see what happens to
the Veneto Club (Italian), which stands here in Melbourne
in the path of the proposed North-South Link that the
government is building. Will it be demolished? It is a
popular spot for the Italian community and has many members.
We'll have to wait and see I guess.

In any case, regarding the Mia Mia Gallery and seeing as you
chose to paraphrase Shakespeare I shall leave you with a
quote from the same play:

The Quality of Mercy

"The quality of mercy is not strain'd
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It bleseseth him that gives, and him that takes.
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown.
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty..."