> the denial of the “developmental gap” between Indigenous peoples and European societies

the mob who washed up on Australia's shores and spent the next two centuries embarked on a futile attempt to eliminate the locals certainly exhibited extreme social development issues, that's for sure, and have been in denial ever since.

> Being hunter-gatherer and horticulturalist, these societies ... were and still are also based on kinship-based reciprocity.

not in Australia, where kinship-based reciprocacy occurs within a framework of women's business and men's business,

kinship-based reciprocacy becomes skewed when socially challenged communities in which the men boss over the women prohibit equitable organisational behaviour.

> First Nations need to accelerate their cultural evolution into modernity.

what pretentious nonsense. the problem for First Nations peoples is the introduced not their own kind.

it's the introduced peoples who need to accelerate their cultural evolution into modernity by mandating equity in governance with provision for women's and men's legislatures.

superior material culture is no advantage in the hands of the socially naive.

I haven't read this book yet but I'm a bit wary of stark oppositional poles like “critical eye rather than a bleeding heart” and "the problems afflicting First Nations are more cultural than political".

In my experience, either/ors are often shallow and ultimately unhelpful. Critical analysis divorced from empathetic sensitivity can be barren. Likewise a 'purely' political analysis without taking account of culture can miss important contextual considerations.

For example, I wonder how the authors deal with the relationship between culture and politics in the case of residential schooling or internment of Indigenous Canadians?

The opening paragraph and its subsequent elaboration are ludicrous--a straw man used to avoid discussion of serious issues; a concatenation of points all rejected on the basis of the distortions introduced into some. This is ideology in practice.

Um Whistler, I think the pretentious nonsense is coming from your pen - especially the notion of "governance with provision for women's and men's legislatures". It's ludicrous to say the least.

We have to get away from the doom-and-gloom mind-set, even though it has served many people in the Industry so well, and will do so for a long time yet. Instead, let's think of a very broad spectrum of Australian Indigenous situations, from the most horrific and remote, to the most positive. And of course, the same in Canada.

Positive, what positive, you ask ??!?? For instance, there are now (after barely twenty years) nearly twenty four thousand Indigenous university graduates - one in every twelve Indigenous adults. In 2007, a thousand Indigenous women graduated across Australia (actually 1,068) while the median graduate age-group contained only three thousand Indigenous women across Australia, urban and remote. Notionally then, one in three women graduated, and this will continue, and improve, in the lead-up to 2020, by which time there will be 50,000 Indigenous graduates. Is that success ? or is it somehow 'bad' ? If it's 'bad', then let's not gammon about Closing the Gap - if university graduations are 'bad', then the Gap is 'good' - schadenfreude 'Leftists' and the Industry cannot have it both ways.

Incidentally, a record 9,370 Indigenous people were enrolled in the latest year of data, 2007. Since 1990, more than sixty thousand Indigenous people have been enrolled at universities, one in five Indigenous adults. Not all Indigenous people want to sit on their arses in the dirt and whinge about the past. Many acknowledge the past, realise that it IS the past, pick themselves up and get on with life in a wicked world.

1."a concatenation of points all rejected on the basis of the distortions introduced into some."
2."Critical analysis divorced from empathetic sensitivity can be barren. Likewise a 'purely' political analysis without taking account of culture can miss important contextual considerations."
Please explain.
Blair Bartholomew

Reading Joseph Quesnel's book review got me
interested until I read, and I quote:

"The book is big on critique, but short on
ways to improve..."

I now don't think I'll bother with it.
It smacks of a "publish or perish" academic
tendency - which the authors have indulged in.

Anyone can criticize anything - but how about
offering a solution to the problems? Now that
would indeed have been an achievement!

A very interesting essay. It’s a bleak premise that indigenous societies need to ditch their kinship ties as there is little place for kinship in modern society. (I know there was more to what he was saying, but that’s about it.)

So-called advanced societies gradually cast off their kinship ties, but unfortunately, they fail to tame their tribal instincts. So all we end up with is a lot of advanced societies trying to gain even more advantage over other advanced societies, while being pulled apart by tribal tensions from within.

Pre-modern societies largely kept their tribal instincts under control (although tribal skirmishes were common, advanced warfare was all but non-existent) by maintaining strong extended family ties and more flexible tribal boundaries. Also, as Whistler noted above, they maintained a strong framework of women’s and men’s business – another unfortunate casualty of advanced societies, whereby women’s business just got absorbed into men’s business.

Indigenous peoples of the world are now creating their own worldwide networks – e.g. the International Indigenous Forum – to address the common social, cultural, political and economic issues they all face – which no doubt, are pretty much the same.

If indigenous tribes manage to gain in strength and as the advanced world social order weakens further, there’s a chance we could all join up somewhere in the middle.

The Kinship issue in governance is not an Indigenous issue. George W Bush followed his fathers footsteps into America's presidency, the Kennedys also followed kinship rules.
In Australia, Downer is 3rd generation pollie, Beasly 2nd gen, ...
That is just to name a few off the top of my head.
This article and the book it reviews is made up on myths and legends associated with the rightness of the European based capitalist system that has delivered so much inequity in the world, not to mention the current economic crises.
Its about time the colonials 'hardened up' and took some responsibility for their meanspirited greed and nastiness.
Lets face it, corruption and bribery is used to describe what , in non european countries and their colonies, is known as standard business practices (like the AWB-Iraq scandal) in Western controlled countries.

I think I could make this statement a little clearer (tiredness has affected my thinking perhaps). "Lets face it, corruption and bribery is used to describe what , in non european countries and their colonies, is known as standard business practices (like the AWB-Iraq scandal) in Western controlled countries."
What I meant to say was that in non-Western controlled countries corruption and bribery is condemed by western countries. Whereas in Western controlled countries like Australia, these same practices are accepted as standard business practices like in the Australian Wheat Board scandal.

OK so "The book is big on critique, but short on ways to improve..."

Reality is almost all - even social groups, reluctant to accept any changes need to be made until they accept criticism.

Where criticism is rejected change is slower.

The first tactic in rejecting criticism is to reject critical comment because the speaker is different, not a member of the group being criticised.

Look for criticism of 'Dances with Dependency' by "Aboriginal" author Calvin Helin, may see betray your people/tribe/culture...

Conservatism could be rejection of need for change, if only radicalism was not so opposed to deviant thinking

'Dances with Dependency: Out of Poverty Through Self-Reliance' doesn't solve the problem that the prohibition of women's and men's business is the cause of social dysfunction for both the indigenous and introduced.

Absent a framework of women's and men's business, all indigenous self-reliance does is mirror the inequity of the introduced.

The solution is to eliminate social dysfunction altogether with provision for governance comprising agreement between women's and men's legislatures in both introduced and indigenous communities.

Dear Whistler
"Absent a framework of women's and men's business, all indigenous self-reliance does is mirror the inequity of the introduced.
The solution is to eliminate social dysfunction altogether with provision for governance comprising agreement between women's and men's legislatures in both introduced and indigenous communities."
This is is getting sillier everyday.
Blair Bartholomew

Blairbar,

Yes, it's similar to a reactionary theory of Arendt Lijphart called 'consociationalism', which he tried to get applied in Apartheid South Africa (and elsewhere, Belgium and Palestine, for example), in which the different ethnic groups would each have their 'own' legislatures, vote for their 'own' representatives, and thereby maintain an unust system.

It also has similarities to the feudal system in Ottoman Turkey called milet, or milayet, whereby each subject 'group' in the Empire would be supervised by its own elites, under its own rules.

There's not much new under the sun. But Whistler's notions are about as loopy as it gets. So far. How on Earth he or she imagines that such backward ideas are Left-wing beats me.

women and men are not ethnic groups, they comprise ethnic groups.
neither is government by agreement between women's and men's legislatures supervision by elites.
moreover, neither, in my view, would an overwhelming majority of Australians consider the provision of equity in the form of smart government at a Referndum, silly, loopy or otherwise objectionable.

For God's sake, Whistler, don't you understand that anything which divides the people is eventually bound to favour rule by agreement betweent 'their' elites ?

women and men don't divide the people, they comprise the people, the distinction is inclusive.

democracy reconciles elites, smart democracy reconciles women's and men's elites.

religious pluralism in the feudal system of Ottoman Turkey was neither smart, inclusive nor democratic.

Australia's dumb democracy mandates men as elite with women under perpetual male supervision.

Aboriginal, Indigenous, Native, Aryan, Jewish, Arab, groups are busy, why not Celts, Nazis, Neanderthals...

All around our world people from various sub-groups are busily creating their own worldwide networks to address issues they purport to commonly face.

BTW issues are pretty much the same, past losses - real and/or imagined.

The UN defines "racial discrimination" as relating to “any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin”.

However then for political expediency the UN went of and produced all their BUTs.

These BUTs are where core definition of racism is NOT to apply, where exemptions to granted, so that governments, organisations, and individuals, all around the world can redefine their definitions of racism so as to exempt, to ignore, all those actions they seek do which conflicts with the original and widely supported definition.

Discriminate by race, to compensate for past racial discrimination ? ? ?

Simple solution is dump all the exemptions.

Compensate for past injustice, does not require permit the crimes to continue.

.