When I was the chairman of the Abscol policy committee in 1964 I personally knew the only two indigenous university graduates. So real progress has been made and it should be trumpeted from the hills to get the message to Aborigines that "you can do it". However, how often to we see good news about Aborigines in the media.

For example, I lived on Groote Eylandt for years. The locals are an interesting and enterprising people with a long history of positive acheivements. Yet the only news we ever see about Groote are negative stories about the jailing rate - Hardly the stuff to inspire a young person to strive for a better life.

The other message Aborigines receive all the time is that only somone else has the power to solve their problems. The reality is that they and only they have the power to solve the underlying problems affecting their health and happiness. The media should be giving space tos tories about communities suceeeding, not those claiming that problems would go away if someone from outside the community provided yet more help.

blairbar and David (VK3AUU),
I suggest you learn some history. It is not that long ago when Indigenous Australians were categorised by percentage of 'blood' with official policies aiming to breed out the colour and breed a 'servant class'. This was probably in your lifetime.

The odd thing was, although people were classed by skin colour there was never a point when people with Indigenous heritage were ever able to achieve 'whiteness' - always not quite white.

So why would you think that all of a sudden just because you say so, people should not be 'allowed' to be Indigenous unless they have a certain quanutm of blood.

blairbar, your children are indigenous. Do you think they do not share the experiences of so many other Indigenous people, racism, simply because you are 'white'?

Put simply, it is none of your business.

This is great, a big good on you to the Aboriginal people.

"just because you say so, people should not be 'allowed' to be Indigenous unless they have a certain quanutm of blood."
Dear Aka, where did I say anything of the sort? You are saying that a child with any Indigenous genes should be classified as Indigenous. I am quite relaxed about how my children, and other children with shared indigenous and non-indigenous genes classify themselves. Yes it is their business, not yours or mine.

Thank you for all of these comments: it's fascinating where discussion goes on a topic like this. I'll try to respond:

VK3AUU and Blairbar - yes, it is up to people how they classify themselves, not you or me or any government body. Indigenous people have had a gutful of that. (Thank you, Aka) My late wife had to leave school in the mid-sixties, as the eldest of ten kids, and work as an unpaid servant on a sheep station. Luckily, she escaped and went to the city. She wasn't particularly dark, but by definition at the time, she was Aboriginal, and that's how it stayed. It would never have even occurred to her to think of herself as anything else, and that's also how our kids consider themselves. Yes, it's their business alone.

Just Dulcie (You're too modest!) - you're spot-on ! That has been the point about student support programs - to prepare (until universities refused to fund this, except for piddly two-week courses)and then provide social and collegial support for Indigenous students in all sorts of courses, most certainly not just in narrowly Indigenous-focussed courses, and to be mentors and colleagues, equals, clarifying and facilitating.

More below.....

rmg1859@yahoo.com.au

Joe

Stezza - of course you have a point. But Indigenous student support attempts to redress long-term and fundamental political inequalities that white working-class people (such as you and me) have never copped. I'm a Bankstown boy, but I always knew that university study was a possibility for me, or at least teachers' college or nursing school. That's still getting through to Indigenous people, after generations of completely rubbish education, if any at all, and constant messages that they either couldn't (through genetic incapability) or shouldn't (nowadays also from the so-called Left raising the boogeyman of assimilation) ever attempt to get above a certain level. Give people a break, at least for a generation or two, to catch up on what they have been denied.

John D - thank you, yes, there are currently close to 24,000 graduates and this will exceed 25,000 by the end of the year - one in every ten adults aged 20-59, one in every seven women. Enrolments and graduations are at re cord levels. Indigenous women are participating at unis at a better rate than non-Indigenous men. Non-Indigenous men. Yes, what people can do should be trumpeted to the skies, instead of the down-in-the-mouth doom-and-gloom stuff from the elites and in the pathetic Bradley Review.

What Indigenous people are going to achieve in the next decade in tertiary education will amaze even the most sceptical. And of course, it's not for nothing - people move into professional careers, provide role models for other Indigenous people, intermarry if they wish (yes, in a hundred years, our descendants will have Indigenous ancestry, as well as Vietnamese, Afghan, Sudanese ancestry - won't it be a fascinating world ?).

So there are solutions (of course they will be very difficult to implement, but they are there) to most if not all problems. But Indigenous people are certainly on the way to implementing them.

rmg1859@yahoo.com.au

Joe Lane