Rainier wrote
"Can you provide me with anthropolgical and historically researched proof of how this was demonstrated please? Heresay is no enough in the courts. This means naming your family members, your religion, your customs and traditions and connections to land going back at least 50 generations. I can't wait to read this epic piece of research you purport to be able to demonstrate."

I suggest you run that past the Maoris and see how far you get. How long have they been in New Zealand? According to their criteria, in another 500 years, we will all be able to classify ourselves as indigenous.

If some aboriginal communities can get on with their lives, why can't the rest of them make an effort. It isn't because we haven't spent enough money on them. We keep hearing lame excuses.

VK3AUU, considering we took their land, killed their men, raped their women and children and ripped their culture from them, a little more sensitivity wouldn't go astray!!

Some indigenous communties function well, and some don't as you have pointed out. What you fail to acknowledge is that some 'white' communties also function well and some don't. To comment on an issue that is not purely demonstrated by the Indigenous community and imply that it is a singular issue associated with that racial creed, is an example of your ill-education of Aboriginal issues and your ignorance to the historical implications from the imposition of the 'british' culture on a well developed population that survived for 80,000 years without our help!!

We put money into the Aboriginal community and as you have said 'we have put enough in', money does not solve any issues rising from a loss of identity, culture and way of life. The government set up little 'missions' for Aboriginal communities, isolated from cities and towns and gives each member their share of the unemployment benefits. What they conveniently manage to forget is the infrastructure needed to encourage these individuals to work for their money and the provisions to establish a community in which the money is crculated throughout and can function properly without the assistance of non - indigenous individuals.

The 'British' and 'Aboriginal' way of life have stemmed from vastly different cultures, and to expect the Aboriginal community to have adapted to an imposed culture in such a small amount of time is the basis of the racial division amongst many Australians.
The Aboriginal culture, up until the colonisation of the british, had formed over 80,000 years. Likewise, the rise of the British empire only 400 years ago is the basis of the culture we now see as the 'dominant' one in Australia.

The answer to fixing the problem is not the racial division between the two cultures, but a holistic integration and appreciateion of the elements of each which can advance the 'Australian' culture in the 21st century.

My hope is ,given a few more stumbling years, that there will be no "us" and "them". But dividing this land into parts is not going to bring us into being one people.
All it is going to do is rile those who have worked and paid for their land, probably frustrate the Aborigine who will be limited in what he/she can do and make the lawyers really really wealthy .
This stupidity will go on for years because as soon as one tribe gets an amount of land title, another tribe will put in their claim and so on and on until there is no more land to claim then will come the counter claims and arguments that will see a great deal of unpleasantness and the only ones who will profit are the lawyers and the tax paying public will be footing the bills for ever. Amen