Maracas, thanx for the insight into that 'register' I was not aware of it, and your post fills in some gaps.
It seems the past few posts at least have been from those who have some experience with Aboriginal people, and the issues of past disadvantage hinder present equality... yes, but with reservation. Even that comment is definitely from a 'white' perspective... seeing aboriginals in terms of 'wages for work done' kind of thing. The far greater disadvantage is the overwhelming cultural imperialism by us, which is at the core of the problem. Imagine if you thought you know how the comsos works, only to find that a swarm of others come along and if not actually show that view to be invalid, at least demonstrate that they can be powerful without any reference to it. I think this alone would be enough to spiritually and psychologically disadvantage anyone, including us.

Kalali, I appreciated your rather warm and sypathetic mention of the issue of religion. Some abuses of the past, were indeed through ignorance, but bear in mind, some things 'called' abuses by liberal media types are not quite that :) The classic example for me is that of the government anthropologist Tom Richardson who absolutely hated the missionaries in Borneo, for 'tampering with local culture' and he crucified 'us' in anything he wrote, but when u speak with the elders of the tribes he visited, one finds that the thing he missed the most was the sexual permissiveness and drunken rice wine party lifestyle. Sometimes reports of 'abuse' have other motives at their root.
Having said that, various Christian traditions have had various approaches to indigenous issues and the gospel in regard to these.
I wanted to keep hold of many traditional chants in Borneo, but some of the elders didn't want this because they were remeniscent of the 'spirits' who they feared for so long. It would be more possible to re-capture some of that culture without the satanic/demonic overtones, with the younger gen.

what happened in borneo was not necessarily the same as what happened in australia to its aboriginal people. however i will say that i know of traditional aboriginal people who wholesomly embrace christ and god and acknowledge god as the giver of the dreamtime to aboriginal people.

the peoples of new guinea did not suffer the same extremities as the aboriginal peoples of australia given that they still retain by and large their culture, language and land, a contrasting difference to that of australian aboriginal peoples.

perhaps the one people who can best assimilate their experience with that of the aboriginal people here in australia is those of america and canada. for those in america at least they got some kind of treaty, and for those in canada at least they got some of constitutional remedy. i am yet to see the remedy for australian aboriginal people that is adequate to either of the aforementioned.

even the peoples of the torres strait do not exemplify the damage caused by colonialism, their land was not as worthy as aboriginal land in terms of agricultural and colonial value. i find it very ironic that aboriginal australia is indebited to a tsi man with regard to land rights/native title.

Kalalli, your post is appreciated.
I think there is more than just some kind of treaty needed. There is a deep rooted psychological condition which needs to be tapped into and dealt with in my feeling. It would have to be through traditional leadership of course, and the tribal elders, but I think this needs to be addressed more than a treaty. That could come later or subsequently. Treaties are a western idea more than an aboriginal one, but that itself would be an issue that an athropologist would examine "How did competing aboriginal tribes resolve differences" that would be a starting point.
Keep up the good work.

This article is so sad, so very sad because Gavin cares about Aboriginal culture and what is so sad for people like Gavin is that very few of the rest of us care. One can have fun and engage in a riot of political incorrectness but ATSIC as a target is just too easy and well why bother.

I just don't care about aboriginal culture, not in a malicious racist sense, but in the same way that I don't care about football or cricket--I find those issues boring. Aboriginal dancing and playing the didgeridoo, boring in the extreme--I would rather watch formula 1 and on a scale to measure boredom, formula 1 comes pretty close to being the most incredibly boring spectacle devised by man.

I do not wish Aborigines any harm and I do try to remember that it is Uluru, but unless I make the effort Ayers Rock always pops up first. And I just know that if I had taken the trouble to go to the Rock, I would climb it no matter how many elders had died recently. It must be my fault but I feel totally apathetic and bored by the whole thing about Aboriginal culture, but obviously and here is the paradox, I am not too bored to write a post about how bored I am with the issue—so maybe, Gavin, there is a glimmer of hope for you!

I must confess I still feel vaguely disquieted when issues of child poverty are raised on sixty minutes, but like all pictures of poverty, I do what most Australians do and turn to another channel. I do feel sort of a slight embarrassment as an Australian about Black Deaths in custody and the number of Aboriginal women being killed by their men, but overall I rather wish that the problem would go away.

If I am representative of main-stream opinion and I suspect that I am, then Gavin has every right to worry because Aboriginal culture is probably going to disappear because most of just aren’t interested and John Howard knows this.

jbi, your comments to me represent the extent of institutional racism that is thriving and which is deeply embedded in australian society to the point where its bred ignorance that is dressed up as boredom about issues.

Paulish, your post puzzled me. What was the point that you were struggling to make? I'm only asking because two of the illustrations you used "the way people repeatedly say 'I wonder what aboriginal [sic] people would think about it' and that it is seems to be the 'territory of concerned white people'" were present in my earlier post. They seemed at the time to be a reasonable question followed by a reasonable observation (incidentally, my Aboriginal was capitalized), undeserving of your somewhat scathing response. Please, as they say, explain.

And Boaz, I think you might be on somewhat shaky ground, introducing religion into the mix here. After all, Charles Brooke was the nephew of James, and it was James who opened up Sarawak to the Christian missionaries in the first place. The fact that "... God had other plans" in 1936 looks a little like revisionism, given that he had been in the country for nearly ninety years by then. Out of politeness I will not mention the impact of early Australian missionaries on Aboriginal life. I expect they will eventually get around to plan B as well.

Kallali, how exactly do you equate apathy - especially JB1's exquisitely fashioned and acutely observed apathy - with institutionalized racism? I suspect you do so because you infer guilt from inaction, which is always a handy weapon for those with a banner and a cause. "If you're not with me then you are against me!" But in doing so you miss the precision of his observation, and which has I believe a very strong chance of being accurate, that there are many who think as he does, and that our canny little PM is very well aware of this when making policy.