Pat the Bogan, "It does however, irk me that aspirations seem to more favour rap music and backwards baseball hats."

Which is nonetheless a very encouraging sign of a new found confidence. An even better sign would be a growing diaspora to other countries. It is tons better than living in a 'reserve'.

Well the "reserves", by which I assume you mean "Aboriginal communities", are a part of the negative images we see in the media. A more pointed question would be "Are these images and descriptions accurate?". Things like alcohol restrictions in communities, a good idea but not well thought out.

The real ratbags and troublemakers just hang around the nearest town where they can buy grog, then start hassling people and committing crimes, and then the media has to report all these crimes without appearing racist.

We have a long way to go yet, a few speeches and apologies might be a starting point, which we have now completed. The next step, and in my opinion the only step that will make any real difference, is to raise education standards. Unfortunately, it is much easier to dumb down the carriculum and base academic results on attendance alone

Problem Pat is that this is the ONLY news story we ever see about Aboriginal people beyond the ABC and SBS; crime-related, drug-related, poverty-related.

It's not entirely unlike how some media persistently portrayed Australians as kaki-clad desert survivalists with boomerangs and zero manners- or the fact that on the TV a good many of the shows about British people show snobbish upper-class invalids with zero knowledge of the world outside their tea room. How profoundly accurate are these stereotypes.

Now imagine carrying that over to Aborigines, only the portrayals are limited to either;
1- A bunch of black guys dancing around fire with sticks
2- A bunch of black guys up to no good.

How many people SUBconsciously acknowledge this as not being the whole picture, or necessarily even a majority case?

That the media only reports poverty/crime/alcohol issues...

"The media" is a mighty big animal. It might be a sensationalist ACA or TT beat-up, or a well made 4 corners type of program. Might be a redneck tabloid newspaper out in the boonies or the Nations best respected newspaper. My point is that the media is not controlled by any single entity, they compete actively to get right down to the nitty-gritty, well ok they dont all have that much integrity... But the thing is, maybe they seem to all say the same kinds of things because that is how it is. More ecotourism ventures etc. on shows like Living Black might make those writing the funding submission feel all warm inside, but the reality is that the place is littered with ecotourism ventures gathering dust. The genuine stuff, like the fact that rock art in Arnhem land is a living work of art being added to all the time does not get much airtime, because of cultural considerations (men or women cant see this or that, kind of thing) and because they dont want people thieving stuff to sell.

We have to get right away from the noble savage myth, life is extremely tough in the communities and it might be reasonably expected that people coming from the communities are used to living a tough life

A fair point about media Pat but my point is that most often Aboriginal people appear in media (again, outside ABC and SBS due to their culture and current affairs programs being more 'service' based than 'marketing' based) overwhelmingly in the two categories, related to a likely lack of interest in any events surrounding Aboriginal persons save for crime, scandals, folklore cultural production or sports- things that make a juicier story or more eye catching.

It's not so much a 'single entity' as the fact that all these entities have a similar approach to picking stories and catching the audience's interest- and this approach is part of the problem.

yes, but removing the ABC and SBS from the equation means it is no longer representative of the media as a whole. My point would be leave them in and they will report much the same things. Might it be better to try and address these things, rather than stifle the way they are reported?

If one were to suggest the folks could perhaps do a little more for themselves, that would be called racist and blaming them for their own misfortune. When the media shows a camp with burnt car wrecks and rubbish all over the place, regardless of whether they get mining royalties or not, a lot of people think exactly that. Maybe they should show an Aboriginal community where there is civic pride and genuine opportunities to change this widely held perception, if such a place exists.

It is going to get worse before it gets better, thanks to previous policies and actions. The fact is many of these places there is nothing to do except getting wasted and sitting around feeling sorry for themselves. Many of us have had only negative dealings with Aboriginal folks, and that sadly makes it worse. An Aboriginal person approaching me will mostly be ignored, and thats sad because they might be just asking the time or something. Experience has taught me it mostly goes- Cigarettes? money? racist c!