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.