"If something isn’t done soon (although already too late for some) the remainder also will lose their uniqueness and culture." perhaps a zoo would suit you? /sarc.

How do we help people as they demand and as we want, by keeping them in some kind of stasis? if you really want stasis, then we surely cannot have them watching TV, drinking alcohol or eating modern food - or do you want a bit of this culture, a bit of that food suppy and some medical technology on the side?

The "culture" is all but dead, and a good thing too, a lot of it was about how to survive in a harsh country that had little opportunity for farming until foreign foods were introduced.

It was not a fun way to live and I fully understand anyone wanting to abandon it at the first opportunity to modernise and grow.

Let's remember and document the "good bits" of their culture, sure, but to demand someone live that way, no thanks.

"Australia should be proud of those who live here" what? So we should have a special pride in a certain racial group? So do you suggest a hierarchy? Now that's racist.

We're happy for all Australians to live and prosper here equally, without resorting to condescending claptrap and paternal attitudes like this.

Funny thing about equal rights, you're freer to make choices and do what you damn-well like, and one thing Aboriginal people are not doing any more than anyone else is hunting and gathering. Most of them are getting on with business, they don't want to live in cultural zoos, or re-enactment villages.

Three-quarters of the Aboriginal population now live in metropolitan and urban areas, and what they call inner and outer regional areas, with only a quarter living in remote (Mt Isa, Alice Springs) and very remote areas. About 2 % live part-time in very remote out-stations.

25,000 Aboriginal people have graduated from universities, 99 % in the last thirty years. Fifty thousand by 2020. One hundred thousand, one in every five adults, by 2034.

In the cities, 90 % of working Aboriginal people inter-marry and 90 % or more of those families raise their children as Aboriginal.

Only a completely callous person would consider that, out in the most remote areas, the violence and abuse and squalor and waste were somehow part of a 'traditional life'. Or somebody from the pseudo-Left.

Sorry, Don, but Aboriginal people/Indigenous people/Nungas/Nyoongars or Koories will call themselves whatever they like, and not get all that hot and bothered about what somebody else calls them, unless it's obviously insulting. It's their call. Funny thing about equal rights.

Joe Lane

"Australia should be proud of those who live here".
I think most level headed Australians "are" proud of "all" those who live, work and call OZ home.

The sooner people get over this ‘race’ nonsense, the better off we’ll all be.

Don Allan couldn’t resist referring to people – whose “arrows” are meant to hit – as “racists”. It is one of life’s great mysteries as to why people who fall foul of people like Mr. Allan (simply because they don’t agree with him/them) are dubbed as racists. The word has been used, abused and misused for so long now, that it has no effect on any of its targets. Those who are genuine racists don’t care, and those who are not racists, but who are still called racists, no longer feel obliged to defend themselves from bigots, and no longer care either.

Yet Mr. Allan is determined that he will bring all those ‘nasty’ people to heel: “…I hope that when I release my arrows my aim is good and that they find their mark among racists because every arrow has a message that none of them will like.”

Mr. Allan, who claims no qualifications that would do the trick, is out to change the world.

Well, Mr. Allan, I am not proud of our aboriginals. I am a third generation white Australian of Scot, English and German descent who couldn’t care less about his ancestry; I live in the here and now. So, please do not expect me to be proud of anyone else’s background. I couldn’t care less if a Stone Age (unpractised by few, if any, indigenous people) dies out like all other backward or corrupt groups in the past - including white ones – that failed to make the transition to modernity throughout the ages.

And, if, under my lily-white skin there is a touch of black, I don’t care about that either. The world and its people have enough troubles they cannot solve now without concerning themselves with thousands or millions of years ago. It just does not matter, and it certainly will not make any difference to what people think about other people not like them.

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As for aborigine with a capital ‘A’, that is just a quirk of Australian dictionary writers. All indigenous people of any country are aboriginal with a small ‘a’.

If you want to show respect, show a little to the descendants of the original people who are out in the general community living and working like other Australians; not those who live where education and jobs are not available, but ‘sit-down’ money is. Respect Noel Pearson and what he is trying to do for the descendants of Australian aborigines.

Your “arrows”, Mr. Allan, are handicapping young Australians who have as much right to a decent life as anyone else, while still keeping in mind their heritage if they wish to

Shooting these particular arrows might impress people who share Mr Allan's politics, but they won't create any more converts. In fact, baiting these elements of society will only harden their views.