I have found the article mentioned above too late to add a new comment. But I would like to leave my point of view about the article.

Yes, good education strengthens the skill to fit into mainstream society as well as to maintain the own identity at the same time. I would even say that well educated people will integrate some parts of the world of the newcomers in order to ensure the own survival. No minorial group can afford to ignore the world of mainstream society.

Without the skills learnt from Romans and Greeks the European peoples would have never had success and better lives. But in the case of peoples neighbouring the Roman Empire, this had not led to loosing the own identity. This had rather strengthened the culture of those peoples. And until today, many peoples around the world have taken over the Roman script in order to strengthen the own language.

The crime of European settlers has consisted in forcing their way of life upon indigenous peoples by force. The Romans did rather not act like that. They were faced with a foreign and modern way of life without letting indigenous peoples the chance to become used to the new world in their own pace. Surely, indigenous peoples would have taken over some skills of the Europeans by their own will without force and would have integrated them into the own world.

It is naive to think of "peoples of nature" who do not and should not change anything while they are surrounded by a completely different community. But expecting indigenous peoples to give up their own identity and discarding one´s own culture is wrong either.

The Jews are the perfect modern example of fitting into mainstream society and maintaining a strong sense of identity without a homeland. Why can´t the Aboriginal people of Australia do so either? In the long run homelands are of great use as places to develope the own culture with little pressure from foreign cultures. This again can have strengthening influence on the identity of those tribal members in the diaspora.

Only one problem Occidental, it was people like you, bleeding hearts, that stopped the slow transition for aboriginals, with too much city BS.

An accommodation had developed in grazing areas, where the grazier supported the whole tribe on the property, & paid some of the men a small amount to do some work. Most of these men did not do too much, or work anywhere near full time. The people were growing slowly into western culture.

IT was the aboriginal industry who forced full time work, & pay on both parties. The tribal support system could not be justified, or funded in this new model, & failed.

The bleeding hearts got lots of high paying jobs in the aboriginal industry, & the aboriginals lost their independent existence.

Well done. What do you want to stuff up now?

Aboriginal people adopted European skills early and often excelled at them. Sometimes they did it so well that it backfired. Just one example: Poonindie was a 19C Aboriginal mission in SA which was a successful farming enterprise, so successful that white farmers complained that the Aborigines had been given the best land (obviously Aborigines could not be any good at farming.) The Aborigines were kicked off and the land subdivided for whites.

This is well documented: See
Poonindie : the rise and destruction of an Aboriginal agricultural community / Peggy Brock and Doreen Kartinyeri
http://www.poonindie.com/poonindie/history.htm

Nothing to do with bleeding hearts. Just common 19th century racism which didn't stop in the 20C or indeed the 21C. This happens a few times (or more) and the logical reaction from Aborigines? Why bother. The results are being played out today across Australia.

Hi Cossomby,

I'm not sure that what you finally conclude from your correct description of Poonindie is accurate - especially in the settled areas of South Australia, Aboriginal people have to a large extent got down to business - they have certainly 'bothered' - and adapted quickly to the dominant, and very dominating, situation.

Since the war, i.e. in two generations, most Aboriginal people south of Port Augusta have moved away from settlements and missions to towns and cities. In the last thirty years, i.e. in the last generation, Aboriginal people have halved the difference in home-ownership, around sixteen hundred have graduated from universities (i.e. one in every nine adults in the state, one in every seven in the towns), and in many other ways joined the open society. Most still know just where their country is, and pass that on to their city-born children, but prefer to base themselves in the urban areas.

What is remarkable across Australia is that the Aboriginal people in the 'north', who DID NOT lose their land, and are supposed to be CLOSEST to their traditional culture (even though they don't live in anything like the traditional way) have the worst indices: the poorest health and education, highest levels of violence and child abuse, etc. - and, one suspects, the poorest prospects for happy and fulfilling lives of anybody in Australia, if not the world.

Could it be that separation, segregation, exclusion and bogus 'self-determination' have held 'northern' Aboriginal people back for forty years ?

And how long will it take to undo the terrible damage that forty years of failed policy have caused ?

Is that even a realistic question ? Is it already too late ?

Joe

Dear OccidentalChristian,

Education is the key for us all. I find that the more I delve deeper into any topic the more I realise how little I actually know. This especially applies to the history of our Indigenous people. We were taught a different history in our schools of Indigenous-settler relationships. It was only when I began reading books like those by Henry Reynolds, "Why weren't We Told," that I began to understand a few things. However, I've still got a long way to go before I can comment intelligently on the topic. Thanks for this Thread though. Hopefully I shall learn something from people's posts here.

The examples mentioned above show well that most Aboriginal people are not savages or "people of nature" who cannot or do not want to take over new skills and views on life. In many cases, some European settlers simply searched for reasons to justify their crimes and egocentric wants. It is not the European derived skills and ideas that have harmed the Aboriginal people, but the pure racism of some Europeans and European leaders.

The crimes have happened without doubt. But nevertheless, self-esteem comes out of that what has been achieved by the own will and efforts. Paternalistic practices will change few in indigenous peoples around the world. And the settlers cannot be blamed alone and in eternity for the crimes of the anchestors.This does not mean that the gouvernments today should not help them.

Look at the Jews. After having suffered of the holocaust, they have build a florishing country called Israel. From the end of the 19th century, they have taken action to defend themselves from ethnocide and gain back their own country.

There are examples today that such actions are most successful that are set up by the Aboriginal people themselves.

By the way, it were the skills and tactics learnt as Roman legionarian by which Herman the Cheruskian had gained the victory over the Romans. By such, the unlimited growing of the Roman's power was stopped. This is an useful lesson for the indigenous peoples in the world. Such can only be achieved by good education.