Boazy: "WHITE SUPREMACY IS NOT BAD..... necessarily"

Sieg Heil! More grist for the KKK mill, eh Boazy?

" 'Supremacy' does NOT signify 'superiority' in a qualitiative sense."

Bulldust. Look it up in a dictionary.

Col Rouge: "resisting Assimilation is one certain way of ensuring cultural extinction"

More bulldust. The only reason that Indigenous people in Australia retain recognisable cultures is that they have managed to resist assimilation. I think you're confusing 'assimilation' with 'acculturation'.

sharkbrain: "Territorial dominance by the strongest is the law of nature on this planet".

Yup. Might is right. Humans are no different to other animals.

You must lead a very fearful life, constantly defending your territory against predators.

How interesting again the predominately NON-INDIGENOUS voices are here. Those that need to be heard are more often than not silenced by the loud self righteous debates of those with limited understanding of the real issues at hand.

To suggest that Indigenous Australians have less of a legitimate stake in reclaiming ancestral lands because of a european concept of time and progress speaks volumes of those making the claim. To ask that a 1000 generations of connection to the land should be set aside in order to appease those that would continue to force their standards on Indigenous communities. The age old concept of blaming the victim, insisting that Indigenous communities are their own worst enemies or that they are the power brokers that enslave their own communities stinks of the eurocentric view that created modern day Australia.

Years of cutbacks, neglect and broken promises have created the situations that are prevalent in SOME Indigenous communities. The high rate of suicides, a biased justice system that sees a blackman jailed in Fitzroy Crossing for a minor offence that would see a whiteman in Perth be fined for.

The discussions reflect the unbalanced, biased and self righteous policies. Perhaps if we applied Howards Great Plan to the rest of the Non-Indigenous population we might actually see more of a balanced discussion.

The sooner that Aboriginal Australians are given a decent education and thus have the chance to decide wheather they wish to live a tribal or semi-tribal existence or if they wish to have the same lifestyle as the rest of the citizenry the better.

Once educated they will vote with their feet and move into the general society as so many have done already.

Education is the answer to all the problems including those caused by the few in our socety who want to keep some Aboriginals in an anthropological time capsule for study or profit.

What surprises me, is that the likes of Col and Boaz seem to be still dragging their knuckles on the ground defending their territory .

Surely they can see, that at least in theory, that their bloodlines and history should have advanced them to the point they feel secure enough to say, that they and their families can happily live in a society where some people are different.

Damn , I just heard someone saying, "Fat Chance ! "

Billie, you post sounds both probable and depressing. Are these funds you speak of those apparently rorted by Brough according to recent newspaper reports (twice)?
As mentioned elsewhere this blog, Billie's account is rendered even more plausible by the cretinous and deliberate studied neglect from the Coalition forces since the rude shock of Wik and Mabo, particularly after gaining government in '96. As for attacks on the broadsheet press and media for these being pro-indigene, let's not forget that Fairfax ran a vilification campaign against ATSIC and ABC Lateline was responsible for the nasty rubbish that gave Brough his excuse and his opportunity, as to the NT.

Well Sharkbrain, I'm not David bloody Attenborough in space looking down at an ant farm of humans taking notes and measuring cause and effect.

I'm here on the ground dealing as much as I'm able to with the real world and trying to understand why people like you have the privilege to sit on the sidelines and give gratuitous commentary -- without any engagement or evidence based knowledge.

I can only assume (once again) that having an unquestionable opinion on Aboriginal people and affairs is a ubiquitous cultural heritage right of white Australian citizenship. Terra Nullius (prior to the Mabo ruling) did not mean we the Aboriginal people were invisible to white Australians. Indeed quite the contrary. We are very much central to the temporal and economic definitions of what white Australians say they are NOT and ARE (simultaneously) speaking.

1. You are not black. (refers to no: 5)
2. You are not in poverty (because you worked so hard and we didn’t)
3. You don’t get flogged by coppers (well, not for being white)
4. You are not inherently criminal (but reserve the right to refer to your convict heritage when it suites you)
5. You are not ‘primitive’ (refers to no:1)

But you ‘modern’ like our ‘exotic culture’
Love our ‘Cathy’ because she won some gold medals for white Australia national pride.
You love to Profit from our Art because this makes you feel ‘cultured and worldly’
And our land on which you walk was stolen fair and square without any compensation because we aren’t considered to be human being with the same common law rights as you or others.

Now does that cover it all? Probably doesn’t but it’s a start.

Therein ends lecture 1 in Aboriginal Studies 101.