Aboringines are primitive people in a modern world. They lived here for thousands of years and never progressed. While the rest of the world slowly moved ahead they invented virtually nothing. When europeans arived they were still in the stone age. They hunted down and killed all the megafauna from this continent so that today we stand alone as being the only continent to lack megafauna. What was their life expectancy then? what is it now? Yet we for some reason are still blamed. what is their rate of violent crime? yet we are still to blame. what is their rate of child abuse? yet we are still to blame. They are allowed too get away with anything they want. 20 Aboringines recently killed a white Australian man with a cricket bat and it went virtually unreported in the Australian media. See the truth.

Ozzie,
Aborigines lived here for tens of thousands of years and if left alone, there's no reason that they couldn't have survived in the same way for tens of thousands more.
It was more than a primitive stone-age culture with it's own laws and complex social structures. Every other major civilization during that period rose and fell, despite comparative technical advances.
Despite longer lifespans, we actually work longer hours than during medieval times and effectively have less leisure time.

We've only been here for hundreds of years and also hunted animals to extinction, dried up rivers and trashed our own environment. Living in harmony with the environment is something we are yet to learn.

Despite believing they know everything about Aboriginal history, most Australians can easily name about a dozen American Indian tribes but of the 240 plus Aboriginal tribes, can only name a few. All they know is the negative outcome of failed assimilation policies.

Indigenous populations in many other countries have suffered the same fate.

I don't expect that they would completely adapt to our culture any more than we could adapt to theirs.

Wobbles,

I'm not sure where to start. To begin with, there are now close twenty four thousand Indigenous university graduates, twenty five thousand by the end of this year, and around ten thousand currently studying. Indigenous women participate in tertiary education at a higher level than non-Indigenous men. And they would pretty much all consider themselves Indigenous. 'Adapt' ? Yes, they can.

Your comments are a hundred years out of date.

Joe

Ozzie & Wobbles, judging by my personal experiences I'd say you're both spot-on with your comments.

Let's face it Kellie Tranter, Not many city dwellers want the original inhabitants ( aboriginals ) living next door to them as they fear for their loss of property values, family and really its just to much hard work. And these fears are backed up with local and state planning laws in frustrating anyone who dares to make an application outside the square to supply a mix, including affordable housing. Anywhere, but not in our backyards, lump them together with the homeless, altogether somewhere else, out of sight out of mind. Even new emigrants are an exotic, except the original inhabitants. And then you have people like Noel Pearson trying to produce vibrant communities not in our backyards, being denied and frustrated by labors green left who dare not consider that "they", the educated aboriginals could lead their people and build communities without their permission.

Kellie says: “I am not so presumptuous as to assume comparability of their circumstances or attitudes”

Aw, but, why limit yourself like that Kellie, when you have shown presumptuousness in so many other areas of the article.

And done it so well! —let me count the ways.

1) You have presumed that “the… symbolism… and the plight of the American Indians [had] been lost on” the guide because s/he “lamented” the destruction of the church –could s/he not just possibly have been cognizant , sympathetic even, to the various Indian peoples causes but also wanted to preserve non-Indian icons!

2) You repeatedly presumed “ American Indians”: are one monolith group.

3) You repeatedly presumed that Australian “ Indigenous people” are one monolithic group, have the same generic feelings towards issues, have a common experience of wider society.

4) You have presumed an “ empty white-Australian cultural wardrobe” ( apparently only non-white cultures are worthy of your sensitivities)

5) You have presumed the existence of racism: underdevelopment is (your) evidence of racism . Might not there be other causes?

6) Your have presumed that only whites are capable of racism.

Kellie you are full of it… presumptuousness, that is!
If this article is an example how you THINK ( “it got me thinking ”), it makes me wonder what they are teaching at Law School, these days?