Dear Editor,this is a subject,that I really do not want to comment on,as there are far too many Idiots around Australia,that I have met,when I came to Australia,when talking of the real Australians,it surprised me to hear so much crap,about them the koori people,I decided to find out for myself,in Ballart,Melbourne,Sydney,and other country towns,and found the koori people different to what told about them,to me they are included among the best of humanity that I met in my life.

Justice James Spigelman has said that millions of Australians have an Aboriginal ancestor.Yet Australia still is one of the most racist country in the world

Amel,

Which countries do you think are less racist than Australia?

Regards,
Terje.

P.S. A well written and thought provoking article.

Bugger, I have to agree with Terje,

Good article, but it is noticeable that you reached no conclusion regarding the validity of the JLC's identification of themselves.

Perhaps it is time for Indigenous people in Australia to stop stereotyping themselves and others.

That being said I have many friends, from mainly remote and disadvantaged communities, who I would trust before the majority of the supposedly more trustworthy European derived populations of towns and cities.

However, I did notice a hesitation at the first introduction, to treat 'white' australians the same as they treat other indigenous persons that they are meeting for the first time. I do realise that this is partially attributable to conditioning and experience, but it is somewhat off-putting.

But, the most refreshing aspect of these friendships (once developed) is the ability to treat people how they deserve to be treated, irrespective of whatever colour, race, religion, or whathaveyou they may be. This is the direction to go, I personally do not care if you are black, white or brindle - treat me and mine well and I will do the same.

I once heard David Gulpalil say that “the white mans tucker has spoilt me as a black fella” (or words to that effect). He was lamenting the loss or inclination to live as a true aborigine. Those comments made me think about the issues of what an aborigine is and when does someone start or stop being one?

How many true aborigines are left now? I mean the ones that can live as the pre white fella blacks did. There is a great deal of racial mixing now and this must be having a dilution effect on the aborigine as an identity. When you look at the history of humans races, they have come and gone, blended and evolved, mixed and segregated, but none have survived with the same physical looks and culture over the last 200,000 years. The Australian white is derived from a various blending of races, having developed a culture of adoption, cooption and integration of desirable characteristics and rejection of worthless or undesirable characters. To that end they are found in a perfusion of physical looks and cultural idiosyncrasies. They are spread over many continents globally with a very long history of this happening (some 100,000 years). Are the many nations of Australian aborigines going to eventually vanish through the natural human processes of blending and evolution that comes from the release of cultural and genetic isolation?

Being able to tell an aborigine must inevitably get harder as each generation goes by, as each small part of their particular culture is lost and replaced with something else. As their particular combination of genes is changed and replaced.

How will we know when the Australian aboriginal nations are no longer a race or a distinct culture? It is inevitable that aborigines will loose their culture from what it was some 300 years ago, as white Australian culture is different from what it was that same 300 years ago.

How do we deal with the unstoppable drive of cultural and genetic evolution that will see a time when we won’t be able to see any differences any more?

Which countries do you think are less racist than Australia?

United States,France,Canada.......

How can you even ask a question like that. Remember......the white Australia policy.

anti multiculturalism = Australia