"we need to give tangible evidence that we value their [indigenous] cultures as much as we value our own." - In title article

Reply: I suspect most Aussies do; but as a tradition not as functional enterprise in the twenty-first century. The era of the white Australian Coo-ee march loyalty to Britain and Empire; after Churchill wanting Curtin to abandon to save the home Isle and GB [hmm... Is it really G anymore?] entering the Common Market [1957?]; has gone. The diggers of WWI are different in many ways than Australians today, yet we still manage to hold them in highest respect.

Other Australians are asking that indigenous people to do what they have decade-by-decade themselves, adapt to their era.

Gecko,

Shows a typical soft-left approach to this issue. Slag off the messenger. Well unfortunately for you gecko, people like Noel Pearson actually tend to agree with Hughes.

Finally people are pushing through the momentous obstruction that Political Correctness has become. You obviously aren’t aware of the fact that most children in remote aboriginal communities are being taught by local people without much by way of teaching qualifications. And children are, and have been for a long time, been taught in a so called “culturally sensitive” manner. That is one of the reasons that literacy and numeracy are so poor in those areas compared to “whitefellas”.

I have nothing against the inclusion of Aboriginal culture in the curriculum. But “culturally sensitive mathematics” is a ridiculous notion.

You say “A simple thing like agreeing on a national treaty would go a long way to bringing closure to the negative history that clogs our current debate.”

How much closer did the apology to the stolen generations get us? Did it improve health or education or anything else in remote communities. NO it did not.

The left has long placed its trust in the primacy of meaningless symbolic acts at the expense of taking a hard look at solving the problems confronting aboriginal Australia. All it has done is perpetuate the misery of the disadvantaged.

It’s now time now for radical departure from the failed methods of the soft left and the grievance industry. We need to focus on methods of improving the lives of aboriginal children before we lose another generation to alcoholism and passive welfare. The black armband gang have had their day in the sun and its time for them to crawl back under the rocks they came from.

It's nice to hear from the armchair experts, isn't it? What bothers me, however, is their utter failure to recognise that what they're advocating is precisely what we as a society have been trying to do for more than 40 years and failing dismally. And no, Mattofact, I emphatically did not advocate abandoning Western-style education. The failure lies in the system not setting a goal for remote area Aboriginal kids of reaching mainstream year 6 standard when they leave year 6, then in not properly planning how to do it and finally in making sure it can deliver. You and others might sniff at the idea that culture needs to be part of school business, but it's what Aboriginal parents what and it's what the NT curriculum says it can deliver. The subtext of Jan Ferguson's piece was that whitefella education won't work unless we recognise the context in which we're trying to promote it and act on that recognition.

CHALLENGE.....

Has anyone done a study of the life expectancy among CHRISTIAN aboriginals?

I would bet, if I were a gambling person, that the L.E. of such Indigenous people far exceeds the current 'average'.

WHY? simple.. because the reasons for short life expectancy are also connected to low self esteem, drunkenness, drug taking, petrol sniffing.. but all of those connect back to the sense of futility and emptiness of a people who see their culture and 'dreaming' has been sidelined and made of no account by White Australians.

If you take away the cultural soul of a person WITHOUT replacing it with something else.. you have the situation that Jesus described here.

"When the evil spirit goes out of a man, it goes looking for a new home, finding none, it comes back to the original person, and..finding the home empty, tidy and clean, brings 7 more demons..and the last state of that man is worse than the first"

Sure..it sounds a little 'out there'.... but there is a lot of wisdom in it, whether or not you believe in demons.

People need HOPE...and a sense of meaning.. direction.. to feel valued, to feel truly free.

Paul says to the Galatian Christians "For freedom Christ has set us free" and how true that is!

The ravages of a Western diet, not to mention tobacco, grog, kava and so on, strike non-christian and christian Aboriginal people alike. Despite the Biblical 'evidence' Boaz uses to support his assertion, there is no evidence that professing the faith means better health. Aboriginal people generally had a much healthier diet and way of life before the advent of the Flag and the Bible. Consequently they didn't suffer obesity, heart disease, diabetes, lung and other cancers to the same damaging extent they do today.

Ngapaki,

Life expectancy 2000 years ago was less than 50. No wonder they didn't suffer from old people's diseases. Neither did anyone in Europe or Africa.