Dear Stephen

Thank you for your timely article. Ever since you posted it I have been waiting for someone to comment. I guess they are too busy with the Muslim/Christian debate?

I can only offer praise to yourself and the Aboriginal women who you commend!

I have deep respect for Aboriginal people - regardless of academia. I love watching "Message Stick".

I have had the privilege of knowing Jack Beetson extremely well. When I was a psychiatric nursing teacher at Rozelle Hospital in Sydney in the 80s - Jack tried to get a job as a Nurses' Aid. He was knocked back! What a joke. Jack and I last saw each other in 1987. What a credible man. Which reminds me, I must get in touch with him again.

I have also had the privilege of writing a Mental Health Program for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students - and I was even more fortunate to teach the curriculum to around 25 primary health care students at a TAFE residential school. They taught me more than I ever taught them!

I think it is great that you are pushing the barrow for Aboriginal women - what strength they have. I wish more people could open their eyes and hearts to see these womens' contributions to our society. Perhaps you could get some of them [the women named in your article - and others] to write for On-Line Opiniion? That could really bring the rednecks out of the wood work as well as serve as a wonderful platform for demonstrating the accomplishments of Aboriginal women - against all the odds they have faced since this country's Anglo inception.

I note that you are at USQ. I taught Mental Health Nursing at USQ in 1995.

Well mate, I have no criticisms or debate to offer so I guess you are speaking to a person who has nothing but respect for Aboriginal people and Aboriginal culture. I wish it was mandatory curricula in primary schools!

Cheers
Kay

I'd add a few others: Professor Marcia Langton (University of Melbourne author, anthropologist, social commentator and Chair of the Cape York Institute; Tania Major (who at 23 was the youngest regioal ATSIC councillor and is current Youth leader at Cape York Institute); singer Christine Anu....

Every socially functioning Indigenous woman deserves to be congratulated -just to have survived and remained resilient in the face of unfathomable socio-economic disadvantages imposed on her and her family throughout a history of and ongoing racism and inequity.

The likes of Tanya Major are a sharp rebuttal to any 'racist' who might think Aboriginal people don't 'have what it takes' to make it in intellectual persuits.

The one major lesson I learned while serving as a missionary in Borneo, (on the race/cultural level) was that the tribal people have EXACTLY the same mix of 'bright, ordinary,dull' among them as any other race including ours.

I was inspired by some of the examples of sharpness, intelligence, brilliance that I observed.

If only we can communicate this to them, and for those who wish to persue an academic or business career, there is absolutely NOTHING of a racial nature stopping them.

In fact, the potential for networking among their own cultural groups is very strong. (as anyone who has contracted a concreting job to an Italian will know :)

So, ON-YA Tanya and others

Many of our own cultural idiosyncracies had their local equivalents, and it didn't take long for me to feel 'at home' among them.

Hi, just discovered you had quoted my book - Massacres to Mining - stephen, thank you -
I am still busy writing and researching on human rights issues although at the moment on an old boat off the west coast of Britain...
see my work at www.vaccines.plus.com - with buttons linking to aboriginal work... all about to be expanded as our film, co produced with Robert Bropho, is soon to be available online.... it won a nomination as one of the 4 best Australian documentaries... and is called Munda Nyuringu...
please email if you want a copy jan@janineroberts.plus.com

Janine Roberts