Two very overworked words in the Australian lexicon lately have been "racism", "culture". Both have been used in a manipulative fashion to pursue political correctness and to kill common sense. Time to put all that rot in the past where it belongs and take a look at an Australia where one people obey and respect one set of laws that have nothing to do with religion, dreamtime or 'multi culture' .
It has everything to do with being law abiding and being good Australian citizens.

Kroeber and Kluckhohn. That's going back a bit. Kerr cleverly segments divides culture into (a)ideology, (b)society and (c) technology. Ideology is very hard to change, technologies are readily transferred between societies, and, societies will change in the medium term. It seems the aboriginal clans have adopted a ideological-like response to a societal circumstance. The Britons adjusted to the Vikings and Romans. The Chinese to the Mongols and Manchus etc.

It is questionable that aborignal culture is 40-60 thousand years old. There was a big up-swing in artworks about three thousand years ago. Moreover, recently, DNA testing suggests that there are 4-5 "separate"meta-groups of aboriginal Australians, arriving between 60,000 to 15,000 years ago. The clans travelled along the "wider" beaches of South East Asia, when sea levels were lower. So,3-4 aboriginal meta-groups are not "orginal", but late-comers like the Europeans. Of course, all this doen't help with reconciliation

Aussie - Race and Culture.

There are many "races" throughout the world. Sometimes, they extend over the borders of Countries, yet each is still a race, of which the people of that race have a right to be proud.
For Countries, each will over time, develop a unique "culture", yet the population will quite likely be a mix of races, or descendants of mixed races.
Where Countries are divided by trying to sustain more than one "Culture", then there is the prospect of unrest and all that can come from that.
Australia in 2006 consists of people and descendants from many races. That is the way it is.
Each person can and ought to be proud of their own race and 'old' culture (if I may put it that way). That is their Ancestory and history.
For the good of all Australians, and to go forward, Australia now needs to work hard to further develop it's own Culture, with elements drawn from each race and inherited remnants of cultures from all over the world.
Let us go forward, the rest of our lives start today. Cheers all.

Leigh says: "If some people are left out of the mainstream because of 'culture' or having a different outlook, that's their problem. They all have the opportunity to do something about it if they wish to."

Leigh you say "that's their probem" so the "problem" is that of exclusion from the mainstream if you are different. Thanks for admitting the truth about your ideal society. A society that for you must see itself as culturally superior as a whole and bans or makes it difficult for outsiders to be accepted - even the Indigenous peoples whose lands are occuppied.

Welcome to white-middle and upper-class conservative, updemselves-snobbery. Goodbye egaltarianism and a fair go.

Of course, the irony here is that the Indigenous are the only sovereign Austalians. The mythical mainstream are mostly the illegal immigrants. Until Australians work something out with the various Indigenous peoples, the rest of us adopt a culture that has as mores immorallity, unethical behaviour and live in country where every step we take is trespass. A further injusticeis that Indigenous folk are the least powerful in their own country. A bit like the Russian peasants after the revolution.

Try and look at it from an objective human view. Drop all your ideology and learning and pretend you are from elsewhere-where "thou shalt not steal" is taken as an absolute. No ifs or buts, just that is the law and that is that - no rationalisng, no racism, no unconcsious motives, no propaganda, no party political positions - just straight up honesty. That is the truth of the matter.

Welcome to Hauptrichtung uber wir alles klein Volk in Australia.

Please note that I speak as a white Australian supposed lefty dogooder. I know its not trendy but hey someones gotta do it.

I have no mandate to speak for Indigenous people and my posts are my opinion.

Gotta go - sprint cars are on TV. Sorry if post messy. Gotta go. Bye.

Funny that with all this talk about culture no-one has mentioned art. The indigenous arts industry now turns over $200 million per year. Modern indigenous art started in Papunya, a fly-blown dump in the Western Desert. This desert art probably repesents the most significant art movement in Australia in the last century, rivalled only by the 1940s moderns such as Drysdale/Tucker/Nolan/Boyd or the Heidelberg School. Papunya was also the birthplace of the Warumpi Band. I'd suggest that those of you who are so happy to denegrate Aboriginal culture really need to open your eyes.

Indigenous health is shockingly bad, a national disgrace in my opinion, with alcoholism, substance abuse, high rates of infant and maternal mortality, diabetes and heart disease. But things as basic as town swimming pools http://www.mydr.com.au/default.asp?article=4062 have been shown to make a big difference to health. Clean drinking water and proper sanitation for all remote communities would be a decent start. I think we need a bit less hand-wringing and judgementalism. Who cares if Aboriginal culture IS or IS NOT the "oldest living culture"? It is a comforting myth, just like the myth of Gallipoli.

Part One

The WA district of Dalwallinu formerly a mixture of farming, as well as pastoral and mining leases as it ran further east, had experience of original native tribespeople similar to other wheatbelt districts adjoining the climate line where rainfall is too light to practice agriculture.

But as one who has spent most of his life in such a district as a wheat and sheep farmer, employing shearers, including halfcastes whose runs included both farm and station, could claim that he has had a bit to do with aborigines, especially as Paynes Find, 75 miles east of wubin and before around 1955 and still in the Dalwallinu district, habitated a mixture of both Yamadgee to the north and Wongi to the east moving towards Kalgoorlie.

The change in citizen status for Australian aborigines which came about in the early 1970s was sorely needed to prove Australia as a true democracy at least. But previously as the natives on stations were mainly working for their tucker, besides buildings to camp in, and handouts according to what the staion-owner or farmer believed how much they were contributing to the business.

But when award wages came in for natives, the hiring of Aborigines became less popular, as was the mental attitude of the natives themselves. The result has been in pastoral country, for the more educated natives and their sympathetic white backers, mostly left wing Labor, and certain more egalitarian conservatives, to take over pastoral leases and run them as a business.

But most have pretty well proven failures, because most Aborigines similar to some white people are not capable of running a business, yet can still be reasonable workers under what has to be unfortunately, a white boss.