One needs to take responsibility to ones self to educate themselves on an area before making assessment on it, and this applies to something so foreign to our nature and way of life like the aboringinal way of life and values. I for one will keep my mouth shut as I do not have enough understanding to make any justified comments but say this;

Having worked in Alice Springs as a doctor and flew with the Flying Doctors into remote aboringinal communities, the first thing that strikes you is that they have little value for consumerism.. they literally possess little more than their clothes on their backs and have no need for all things we strive to have.

Secondly, they cannot bear being in a confined space like a house, and which we take for granted. The houses built for them by the government were neglected and they slept outside. Having done the same in the desert, in a swag though, I totally understand this one. Nothing more beautiful than the desert night sky. Put them in a prison and they have a high rate of suicide.

Thirdly, their connection to the land is truly a amazing attribute and admired. They see themselves as part of the land, remove them from it and you take their will to live with it. Its almost a spiritual connection that we struggle to understand but so natural and child like to them. And most importantly they wear their emotions on their sleeves and the pain in their eyes are so easy to see, they cant seem to hide it or suppress it like we can.

I understand the governments struggle to find the right approach with them and we should as they are truly becoming extinct..taking with them something we could learn so much from.

Sam

Rancitas,
While you may have used the plural when talking of Aboriginal culture/people.The general practice is to use the singular, & my comment related to that practice.

Any early unity & resistance of the Aboriginal people(s) -where it existed- was localized & centered on tribal identity. The “unity’ that we have today did not come about as a result of any spontaneous, internal force(s) but was nurtured & fabricated by leftist ' intellectuals' .

White “atrocities’ was just one of many divisive, poisonous slanders employed by the left to justify their stand, & was closely followed by ‘Land rights’ ‘Aboriginal deaths in custody’ ‘The stolen generation’ .

In promoting the concept of an Aboriginal nation the leftists have selected those traits/practices from the dominant Aboriginal groups & elevated them as representative of all Aborigines. Thus helping to sideline or extinguish lesser Aboriginal cultures. (The very thing they accuse their opponents of).

You paint a very rosy picture of the Aboriginals:
“Indigenous people …seemed to be able to sort out their differences without total war”'
Though I note you left yourself an out by using the qualifier 'total'.
We know that the 'indigenous people' of North America waged merciless & large-scale war against each other. As did the 'indigenous people' of the Pacific (esp. in New Zealand & Hawaii). As did the 'indigenous peoples' of Africa. And I suggest the same is true of the Aborigines. Though their generally lower population density may have assuaged the intensity somewhat & their limited record keeping has assuaged our knowledge of it.

You missed my point about 1984. My contention was that the policies introduced to ‘better’ Aboriginal conditions have 1984 characteristics. Newspeak & doublethink i.e. 'discrimination is bad' –but 'positive discrimination is good'.

how pathetic that australians are incapable of understanding that aboriginal people, much like any other mult-cultural people, live a two-world perspective that encompasses the broader/general societal values as well as their own cultural values.

and how pathetic that australians are generally more capable of accepting this two-world perspective when it comes to other immigrants like themselves but not for aboriginal people whose connection to this land does not need repeating by me.

and finally bushbred, you bring to mind an old whitefella who attended an aboriginal community meeting and got up to speak about aboriginal issues and started it off by saying i worked with these abos in ..... patronising old fool.

I started to read these posts with optimism, but that soon soured.

I am not interested in 'ownership' of the land - it seems silly to even consider who (or what?) was 'first'.

The 'aboriginal problem' as I see it is simply that there is a very easily identifiable group of people who do not have anything remotely like equal access to the opportunities available to most Australians. And even then, it isn't necessarily a problem - it only becomes a problem if members of the group want access to those opportunities.

I don't want to mandate how any other Australian, of whatever colour or creed, should live. I do want to ensure that, when other Australians interact with me, we do so within a common set of 'laws' (whether they be written or unwritten). And I do want all of us to have equitable access to the benefits of our broad society.

Just how we do that perplexes me, but I would like to work with others to try to improve the situation.

Boaz' latest pious effort / surmon to me proclaimed: "Your problem (dare I say it) is that you think you have a mortgage on your own situation to the point where even when someone supports many of your contentions, or is supportive of Indigenous rights (as far as can be accomodated within the framework of the country) you bite them on the bum as if they are some kind of intruder...."

*I have hundreds of non-Indigenous friends and supporters of Indigenous Rights. That I retain the right not to include someone like yourself is very understandable to them and inherently logical me.

It goes without saying that having people with nothing to do but sit around and drink themselves silly is a recipe for disaster for them and their entire communities.

Clearly [as a previous writer has suggested] they need some form of useful employment, alongside proper education opportunities for the children, and adequate health services.

Easy to say, and would they accept the jobs if they were available? Things can't be allowed to stay as they are, and deteriorate further. I once heard a speaker at a conference back in the 70's say that the Aboriginal people must either join the 20th Century or go back to a nomadic existence.

I think the former is the only practical way. It's impossible to" unscramble an egg". For the sake of the unfortunate women and children especially, let's hope that the Governments will realise that something other than just throwing money at the problem needs to be done.