Stephan,
It is up to Aboriginal Leadership to get together ,work out their differences and not waste time and intellectual effort in sniping at each other over emphasis with symbols and "practical reconciliation ".

Howard and the National Partyencouraged dissension anywhere he could gain political advantage.

Other Australians who have something to lose if Indigenous Australians get a fairer share of our social and economic cake will encourage division .Others ,enjoying watching Aboriginal Leadership stumble will continue say I told you so .

Aboriginal women must demand more from their men for their familys' sake but at the same time ensure they support them fully in their quest for full political recognisation and respect as Australia's original illegally dispossesed owners .

If this means the formation of a new representative body then the sooner the better it's formed and hopefully fully supported by the Government and the Opposition .

While Gordon, Mundine and Pearson are sick of seeing the worst of Aboriginal life in their favourite papers, they will fail to do their duty as Indigenous leaders with a big public profile, if they don't use their power to help unify Aboriginal thought and action to make positive progress in symbolic and social aspects of their lives .

It is hoped that the best of Aboriginal leadership will see that sections of white society don't want them to work out their problems and refuse to be baited by media releases that exploit different but not irreconcialable positions on the important policy priorities ahead .

Thank you for giving all Australians some important insight on the Conference.

I'll buy into this with my usual 'rant'

ONE Nation, ONE race, ONE culture.

No..I don't mean 'white' for each of those 'ONEs'

I mean a blended Australia with ETHNICITY DOES NOT MATTER!

and ethnicity consciousness is a virtual synonym for "RACISM".

The ONLY reason one would refer to one's self as a 'ENGLISH' Australian, or a CHINESE Australian or LEBANESE Australian or an ABORIGINAL Australian is.. because we are 'proud' of our ethnicity, if we are proud of it.. it means by default that we are NOT proud of others,or.. that we regard ourselves as 'superior' to them....
which of course is...

*RACISM*

The ONLY thing we should be conisering is 'HUMAN-ness' and once we realize we are all just human with varying differences of no great significance, we can then work toward a better and unified Australia.

Perhaps the first step toward this is for our population to embrace Christ en-masse.. who inspired Paul to say:

<<28There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for you are all one in Christ Jesus.>>

So, clearly, Christ is the answer to 'racism' and intolerance based on racial differences.

Sorry Stephen.... but "Aboriginal" representation is the same to me as 'CHINESE' representation, 'LEBANESE' representation, 'TURKISH' representation, 'IRISH' represtentation and any other ethnic tag anyone wishes to attach to it.

Why can you blokes not just say 'We are AUSSIES' ? Hmmmmm? The shock of having no racism or intolerance might to too much for those who define their lives and careers on it :)

BOAZ,

I agree that that a representative body for Indigenous persons is racist when there's no representative bodies for other ethnic groups and minorities.

This article really was a laugh, because it was so illogical. This guy claims his views were silenced, simply because others voiced their disagreement at the Summit and in the newspapers. In other words, he believed his rights to expression were denied, simply because others chose to exercise theirs.

This is a typical left-wing error: the language of the need for consensus is a fundamentally dangerous one, because it implies that everyone has to agree with each other. Usually, the people using this rhetoric want others to agree with them. Problem is that others should always have the right to disagree, and Stephen Hagan appears to struggle grasping this idea.

Hagan claims that the Summit "was about big ticket items", but he doesn't provide any evidence for this assertion. If that was his interpretation, it obviously wasn't shared by Warren Mundine, who obviously got very bored of the same old talk about another body to fly Aborigines business class to 5-star hotels giving lectures in universities. As Wesley Aird said:

"We need to stop people getting pissed and beating each other up. How is that going to happen in Canberra?". "If I was sleeping in the park tonight or in a party house in Aurukun or Yuendumu, I couldn't give a stuff (about a new body)."

Too true. If we really care about indigenous disadvantage, we don't focus on spending money on the Indigenous elite and dream about treaties when life expectancy is so low and physical and sexual abuse
so rampant in many remote communities.

Stephen,

I am sure you are genuine in your beliefs and I also hope indigenous peoples receive a better deal. That said, if you care so much about human rights why not write a paper on street kids or living in Housing Commission society? Why this one track?

My understanding is you have a business studies background and are not an anthropoligist. I am of Scotish descent but would feel myself in anyway presenting Celtic Folk Lore to the Public Domain. My university certainly would not.

I have studied a little on treaties and still maintain, as in earlier posts, if one were to go back to 1600, the "trational" treaty would have a life-line running through totem animals, the Land and the reconciling people. They, the parties to the treaty, would not seek money for the Land, because, to them, humans would have been the Land.

The above said, every-help should be given "all" people in need, as we are a wealthly country, and it is the right thing to do. But social welfare apartied is unjust.

insightfull but unimaginative
'the-debate-that-raged between-media-savvy-Indigenous-leaders '

it is well known the media favours a few who support the adjenda of the news paper owners [read elite landed gentry],those former at-sic or current lands council 'members' are the case in point ,the failed colonisation adgenda of past govt policy that favours a select few family groupings ,who are allowed to speak on behalf of all the others [who get the treatment , while their empowerd coconut masters live like landed gentry

'who-continue-to-spitefully-attack' ,to gain controle over the crumbs doled out by their exploiters [take the murry basin that rakes in 80 billion a year in wealth ,with less than 2 billion [actually less than 500 million]doled out mainly to the elites coconuts.

Take matildahouse ,nu-gun-on-a-wall and her outcast mob from the waraderie nation ,out cast in the pre-histry yet the face favoured as the representative in welcoming to country ,
who has done her best in shutting out all the other 520 nations from the embassy forum ,in serving the neo con master howard [she was offered two million to rebuild the embassy [if she could shut it down]

WHICH 'one-since-then-is-the-urgent need-to-reinstate-a-national-representative body.[what so you can lose your claim to country?]
so govt can at whim shut it down to steal the at-sic silver [read research and resources yet again]

Sovereignity is the only thing that will work, working via comunity voting by the whole tribe [not some sold out figure head ,coconut] we have this lie [the elephant in the room of colonisation ,the indigenous didnt go anywhere [pay the rent]

Each local austrailian council makes its peace with its sovereign nation [who become like an attourny general, figure head] but each council is charged with protecting soverein AB-origonal heritage and culture [taught in schools if need be.

Sovereignity cant be 'granted' by the white colonisers it is inherant
it has been stolen and subverted ,lets face up to the truth , greed has ssstuffed up much of the best of this sovereign land

What the invaders couldnt do with poisen and isolation it did by medical malfeasance [we have old people who are afreaid to go to hospitals because everyone whop went there dies[its no coincidence that only 22 AB-origonal men out of every 100 will die pre retirment [ie reach age of 65] [plus only 33 per every 100 for woman]

That one in five dies before the age of 5 years of age [which when narrowed down further means out back closer to one in 8]the favouring of paternalistic leadership has made brutes and bullies out of the favoured sex [thus the problems we all have been told]

That 2/3 rds of the prison population in jails for drug offeses and petty crime is also family selective ,that they havnt been able top sort out their own problem's is by govt favouritism ,empoweing the wrong type [coconuts]that work on the might is right for the colonising master ,
Tribal loyalty is everything ,you elect one family their family gets it all, first ,you cant put white rules over this black and white issue ,the same thinking cant bring new solutions, we can have adopt an elder [or adopt a tribe, where a nation has been made extinct we can yet make things fair ,by offereing real help [not dependance] but first we must help them help each other
you cant set a person free , but you can allow it to occur naturally, stop destroying that you cant con-trol or fear

Stephen,

You make some excellent comments I think and some more doubtful ones:

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23757179-12332,00.html

Yes there is an aboriginal industry and that should be curtailed. Same in the US with Black ministers, with Rolex watches {CNN, Glenn Beck], saying badly they all treated. Oprah is and Bill Crosby have been immersely successful in a country one hundred times more racust than Oz. Good on them.

I am an academic too. I am working on the concept of horizontal altruism. Australians are [rednecks aside] welcoming to new-Australians, and, help them settle in. We are "A Weird Mob", but we are very open and egalitarian. Culturally traits such as familialism are more self-centred and tribal. This true of major civilizations such as the Chou dynasty.

I once asked in an olo foruem. What are three things White Australia needs to do and three Indigenous Australia need to do to put things right. It could have been addresed you; I forget. The reply was for things Whites had to do; and, aborigonal Australia, no reply. Latter, to me represents a form of homoestatic centricism.

In Oz, aboriginals [and farmers] are treated different. The many Italians that live my Inner-City Sydney street fly "Australian: flags. The want to belong. And no-one is going to stop them going down to a community hall and chatting about their tradions from the Old Country". Australia is enriched by immigration.

But Aboriginals [and Farmers] seek apartheid presumely for economic reasons. The farmers get a away with it; indigenous people don't. Assimilation does mean being today's Australian, rather it means contributing to becoming Australia's future.

There are many needy people in Australia, and all these peolpe, aboriginals need our support. But there are two sides to a conversation. Both must give and take.

You make some good points oliver
i would like to add some observations in the 10 years i have tried to help the ab-origonals

The top down trickle down theory dosnt work
the bottum down trickle up theory dont work[because they dont have a choice on where to spend their money]

what i see as the 'cure' is to make the outstations into a kind of monopoly game [that mirrors real life]

To get paid they need to do their civic duty [ie vote every two weeks, [much along the line as a series on tv where 'children ran a town]
Each fortnight the people must vote [to get thier income]; on who runs the store , or who gets teaching ,or who gets paid to do this or do that , with special awards and recognitions [ie real empowerement and social recognition]

Sort of like putting the whole community into fast forward, setting up a course say to cut hair ,[perhaps 5 enter the course and the best two get to run the buisness ,for a set term ,paying token fax tax/rent that goes back to the community [the comunity runs on its own 'play money'[legal only in its district.

Where the whole tribe gets together and builds a house [like the barn raisings of days gone by [just one tradesman guiding the community [workers] who then vote on who gets the house.

We need to remember that aborigonal way is hands on [words are nothing that relates if it isnt made reality
[i have with satisfaction seen how they can so quickly learn [hands on] very few are at the stage of being able to learn from a book [yet]

IMmagration is fine but we need to raise skills levels locally [in the past your trible name would reflect your skill [baker , hunter , farmer , councelor, lawyer ,nurse , docter, dentist , it is time to put our efforts into skills like the days of old ,
not force our neo dumbed down education on those deemed ignorant [but only equals in waiting]

Thanks under one god. O.

Stephan,

Even you rarely participate in discussion. You post or state want conferenve you have attended but don't treat olo as a forum cum seminar. There is too little interstaction. Why not write less articales and engage properly in few artickes. I am sure you depth to your opinions.

I notice you have business studies background and I don't recall you ever citing an anthopologist. I am Scottish/Norman French by descent, yet, I would not feel trained to comment on Celtic folk law or much about the Vikings [the one's annexed Norse-Mandy].

I put the questions again. What are three things Anglo-Aussies can do to help the aboriginal community forge Australia's future. What are three things Indigen-Aussies must do to reach reconcilation and then push our country forward, collectively? Pleaes don't answer question one and ignore question two. Harmony requires at least partners.

Your ancestors would no have recognized "ownship" of the Land. They would held humans -Black and White- are the Land. That is why treaties in North America have Life Lines following through toteem animals the mand and reconciling peoples. It is not a financial deal. Financila deals are inconsistent with indigenous tradition.

That said, aboriginal peole do need suppor in many instance, but that is a separatre issue.

"Until we have a representative body, with a mandate from Indigenous voters to speak on our behalf, the government will continue to laugh at our fractured unelected leadership as viewed farcically in the national media - and play wedge politics at their convenience".

Yeah Yeah Yeah, this is all code for pick me, pick me. its so blantant it makes me weak.

It's a pity we can't breathalyse would-be contributors, otherwise Oliver and One Under God would be barred for life. I feel ashamed at the crap that some white fellas come up with, implicitly dictating to Indigenous people what they should and shouldn't do. Why can't non-Indigenous people just say that they support Indigenous people in the full exercise of their rights under Australian law, to do what they damn-well like - to live in the bush (10 %) or in the towns and cities (90 %) and to work where they like and to study what they like and marry who they like, i.e. equal rights ?

Thank you, Stephen, I apologise for my idiot-homeboys, obviously some white fellas can't hold their liquor. I am fully in support of what you have written, don't let anyone, Black or White, turn you around. But good luck at Koori Mail, I think you are going to need it.

Joe
Adelaide

Joe & Steve,

I am not drunk animist treaties will try and recocile the parties as part of the Land. We are the Land. Don't you see? It is not owned? Ownership of Land on goes back to the formation of City-States in Sumer, about 6,000 years ago. Do all anthrologitss and historians need to breath tested? Paying compensation to aboriginals is an insult to their culture. Ownership is not valid concept; whites and blacks ARE the Land.

However, paying support to "all" Australians needing help, is just. Even if it costs billions of dollars.

Besides, the aboriginals would not have won wars against the Russians, Germans or Japanese, as the white invaders did. Other West Europeans were not even game to try.

I am all for helping aborigines et al., but we don't need to distort their culture, nor do we wish build a bastardised hybrid.

We don't want Welfare Apartied nor a minority industries, as in the US, where the African Americans and the Hispanics are in opposition.

I am against people twisting history and re-writing values; not against helping people nor suggesting one group superior. For example, it is rarely recognized that the biggest traders in the slave trade where black African chiefs. Brazil had ten times as many slaves [including white slaves] working on sugar planations than the Confederate states had Afican American slaves working on cotton planations.

Poverty, under-classes and slavery are wrong, but we don't need apartheid nor changes to ancient traditions to address these matters. We need money and the willingness of all parties to co-operate.

Cheers,

O.

"Why can't non-Indigenous people just say that they support Indigenous people in the full exercise of their rights under Australian law, to do what they damn-well like - to live in the bush (10 %) or in the towns and cities (90 %) and to work where they like and to study what they like and marry who they like, i.e. equal rights?" - Joe

Yes, they, and, all Australian, should exercise their rights, all their rights; but saying aborigines "owned" the land say circa 1,500 CE, is a nonsense in their own culture. They, we humans, ARE the Land. Don't you understand? Can't you comprehend the concept.

For an indigenous Australian to say, we respect our traditions and we own our land is a contradiction. One needs to say we own the Land, at the expense of tradition; or, we respect our traditions and whites and blacks need to reconcile their differences with life-lines which bind life to the land.

Stephan, forget the Boston Consulting Group Matrix, your true field of study, look at a sixteenth century treaty acceptible to animists.

Equal rights, Joe? Yes. Absolutely, yes. Equal means equal.

WE are a part of the land [like your arm is a part of your body], its a fact ,that land cant be taken anywhere ,but it can be poluted ,it can be covered over with cobncrete and tar

We can pretend that we own it [but it owns us]

we destroy the land [or the air or the water at the cost of our own survival]

When white fella come there was 25 million AB-origonal's on this land yet the white fella he say this is ''terra nullious'' [empty land] but it isnt now , just as it wasnt then.

We all know terror nulious was a lie

[one needs only look as far as cpt-Aurther-Phillips instructions dated 25-april-1787;
read page 14

....''You are to endeavour,
by every possable means

to open an intercourse with the savages-[struck-out]-Natives,

and to conciliate their affections ,enjoing ALL our subjects to livein amity AND kindness WITH them.

[thus not over them?]

And if ANY of OUR subjects shall wantomly destroy them

OR give them ANY unnessesary interuption in the exersize of their several occupations.

It is OUR will and pleasure that YOU do cause such offenders to be brought to punishment ,ACCORDING to the degree of offense''.....

So this is from your king of britan,

what is just ?

[a punishment that is 'according to the degree of offense] to murder , rape ,poisening dispossession, immprisonment ,fraud , deception

and numerous other acts of colenisation forced upon this nations indigenous first peoples?

Lets just say the karma needs balancing

[not by force ,or punitive justice ,or by feeding them western disease producing food replacements ] dead food from cans loaded with salt and suger and transfats

but to help preserve that which was stolen,
from innocents ,

.. something that must be better than our current and past health medicine , laws and justice /imprisonment systems .

,that kill thousands of australians every year

[yet stil gets covered over by our 'madia and 'pub'lick servants]

but now more of the invaders than the invaded
[sic]

Agree, ''terra nullious'' was nonsense. To say it was "owned" is equal nonsense from the perspective of an aboriginal living in 1600. The traditional concept would have been spiritual and the Western political/corporate.

To pay for Land is an insult to traditional culture. To help people in need is moral and universal. We must not insult aborigorial culture with something as crass as money for the Land. We, black and white, reconcile WITH the Land, of which, we are apart. The social issues are social issues, and, here is where monies are directed.

C. 1788: The aboriginal population was probably, 300,000. One million max.

The problem is the same; what does Alexander after Darius is defeated. Yet, Alexander had the benefit of some likeness in the societies.

Oliver,

You're lucky that this is only on-line, otherwise, with your racist comment about 'bastardised hybrids', I would reach through the airwaves and rip your racist face off. My wife and kids are, as you call them, 'bastardised hybrids', and if they knew where you lived, you would be done for. Fecking racist tord.

Loadmouth,

By hybrid, I meant one does not acculturate aboriginal traditional culture with Western values. The concept of the ownership of land goes back to the Middle-East, c. 6,000 BP, when priesthoods administered land, after the old animist traditions became obsolete.

I said ingenious people should stay true their own culture, as it was, and, to not contaminate ancient values, with today's Western values.

Where money is needed help aboriginals, it should be given; But money should not be associated with the Land, which is a spirital, not a financial entity.

Actually, no one owns the Land in Australia: It belongs to the Crown. We hold Estate.

I am at loss as how you read your family into what I said. I think you need a new set of glasses.

"Where money is needed help aboriginals, it should be given; But money should not be associated with the Land, which is a spiritual, not a financial entity.

Loadmouth, I have had the night to think about it. Selling-out one's spiruality for a price, isn't really that different than the Catholic Church of old selling indulgences.

Aboriginal traditional values are important and should be preserved, not flushed away.

If any disadvantaged person needs a hand-up so be it. Money should forth coming to address the need, not the race.

Want to see real racism, watch the Hispanics vote against Obama, an Africa American, in Florida, in the US elections. Here, we have factions of racists competing to be the major minority group to leverage financial advantage.

Loudmouth,

“Black Hawk cast his eyes upon cornfields”

“which the Sauks have . . . cultivated for so many winters that our memory cannot go back to them. . . . They [white men] are now running their plows through our graveyards, turning up the bones and ashes of our sacred dead, whose spirits are calling to us from the land of dreams for vengeance on the despoilers. Will the descendants of Nanamakee and our other illustrious dead stand idly by and suffer this sacrilege to be continued?” (Vanderwerth,, p.89 in Johansen)

-What we have here is a spiritual not a financial obscenity regarding the North American aboriginals, The Black Hawk. What is required is Atonement not Compensation.

Historically, native Americans own words:

“What is this you call property? It cannot be the earth. For the land is our mother, nourishing all her children . . . birds, fish, and all men. The woods, the streams, everything on it belongs to everybody and is for the use of all. How can one man say it belongs to him only? (Waters, p. 28)"

-Note the qualification “everyone”, Black and White. Humans are children of “Mother Earth”, which is, Loudmouth, not something to bought and sold.

“As he [a Native American] described why the Lakotas have declined offers to sell the Black Hills, Black Elk returned to the same theme:

“The Wasi'chus [whites] went to some of the chiefs alone and got them to put their marks on the treaty. Maybe some of them did this when they were crazy from drinking the minne wakan [whiskey] the Wasi'chus gave them. But only crazy or very foolish men would sell their Mother Earth. (Black Elk, Black Elk Speaks, p,135)”

[Shapers of the Great Debate on Native Americans-Land, Spirit: Johansen, 2000.]

Loadmouth & Stephen, Deloria mentions the concept of "equitable occupancy", rather than “terra nullius” [nonsense] or compensation [sacrilege]. I think a treaty binding Whites and Blacks with Mother Earth would suit the Bill. Have you actually studied aboriginality? I’m Scottish and know little about the Celts compared to a non-Celtic anthropologist.

Loadmouth,

Loudmouth for one who wants to jump through the screen and attack me you are suddenly quiet. Youu obviously have no knowledge of traditional aboriginality.

Stephen,

What do you think of the concept of "equitable occupancy"? It would seem to address the nonsense of "terra nullius" and not commit the sacrilege of paying for the Land [Our Mother Earth].

Don't tell you a Sells, who just "posts and runs".

oliver [your post rates as number two in a search for the name ]

http://fair-use.org/benjamin-tucker/instead-of-a-book/land-occupancy-and-its-conditions

I think it points out a few cons in the concept ,like do we pay more rent for prime sites [to who?] who decides who is allowed to use which 'prime land' who the swamp, what about spoilage [polution] , or squatering but not using to the greater good and those holding a legal [paid up or debt laden but defacto] title now.

Its a difficult thing ,no one owns the land [this is a trueism] ,but by the same token land security and best use is a must ,but better and sustainable and responsable land use must figure in there some where.

As it is govt is controlled by an intrenched beurocratic elite , who have little clue appart from running the two party demon-autocracy to serve their own.

Indigenous have the same trible loyalties as do the elite who now control it all ,we all have the obligation to look after our own [it must be a nature/nurture reflex]

What is best [what is fair?]
http://www.kidsngrins.com/2008/05/09/lease-agreements

I used to have ideas ,but in time it was revealed its not so much a indiginous [indiginous means sans culture] problem but a class problem [we have all lost our culture], as well an expectation and equity problem [ALL LAND BELONGS TO GOD][we are all children of the one god]

Its the have it all versis the have nots]

http://www.metrokc.gov/auditor/1993/certpro.htm

Under old aboigonal way NO_ONE was allowed to take more than half a resourse [thus all ways half of some thing was left for the next person ,a good rule but how to apply it?]

As the poor child from imigrant stock well know the oppression of the AB-origonal ,is the same oppression served upon the worlds poor

[Just as some aborigonal have become elivated into a quasi middle class
[but far and wide the many remain below [even ] the oppressed neo [new] people to these indigenant lands.

http://www.facsia.gov.au/Guides_Acts/ssg/ssguide-4/ssguide-4.6/ssguide-4.6.3/ssguide-4.6.3.50.html

Stephen,

This venue is not a Bulletin Board it is Forum. You are meant to partipate. Same goes for Peter Sellick. Your views are worthy, so share them, in discussion, not merely as broadcasts.

I thought you would be intersted in want the Native Americans has to say about Land.

Loudmouth,

You've gone quiet give I am a Humanist not a racist. I am intrested in aboriginals rights to the extent of protecting ancient rites again contemporary aboriginals defacing these true rites, with distorted rights.

Cheers,

Oly.

Stephen,

Sorry about the earlier mispelling of your name -just noticed it.

I fins it amazing that you guys ignore you traditional values for mony. Money is a issue. See the historical quotes from the North American ingenous peoples. I think they are very insight for and relevant to Aboriginal Australians. Tradition needs to be separated from Government help. Both stand-alone.

With regards to preliterate cultures there has been very interesting studies conducted by anthopologists on the importance of ancestors to maintain continuity in the absence of written histories. Seven cultures across the worls have been studied, including Australian.

If you and Loudmouth are disinterested in your own culture and want just money, forget about the anthrpologists, read Warren Buffett.