QL, you know nothing. Please try to learn something.

In the 'south', Aboriginal people have battled for three or four generations to seize opportunities, usually in towns and cities, and to a large extent they have succeeded. I don't have any doubt that the successes of the last thirty years will be repeated, in spades, in the next thirty. Even if fools like you don't get out of the way.

No, it's not all beer and skittles, but the efforts of so many Aboriginal people are paying off. They haven't necessarily been ground down, and oppression hasn't won. Those efforts will prevail, in spite of 'friends' offering shoulders to cry on, QL.

When first I went down to my wife's community with her, back in the sixties, her grandfather had just baked an apricot tart. He gave me a huge portion (it was delicious) and when I finished it, he gave me another one. Then he talked me into another portion, and I eventually, I think, ate most of it. A wonderful old man, he used to be a gun shearer, a real battler, always looking on the bright side. When he retired (he was a WW I veteran, 48th Battalion, so he used to march every year in the Anzac Day march) a very staunch Ngarrindjeri man, he used to mow the main community lawn every week with one of those old push-mowers.

Initiative, effort, resilience - these were the qualities way back then of so many Aboriginal people, QL. Why think that they no longer exist ?

{TBC}

[cont.]

QL,

People aren't necessarily ground down by 'fate' or destiny, or even history: they often stand up and spit in its eye, QL. They laugh and joke and give history a good boot up the @rse, and get on with life.

My lovely wife did that all of her life, she didn't let anything stop her. She didn't know she was supposed to be a victim, and that her role was to cop it while whites got on with being prosperous 'walruses and carpenters'. She worked for 25 years at a university and in her last weeks, even when she was very ill, she put together a terrific article about higher education and professional careers as drivers of the future. She was always completely positive about Aboriginal futures and I think she was spot-on: what she hoped and predicted is coming about.

Don't write people off, don't ever devalue them, don't ever take their sense of agency away from them: that's the worst thing you can ever do. They have a job to do, which nobody else can do, and they're doing it. Are you listening, QL ?

By the way: I am missing website versions of Aboriginal councils and some remote towns in Aboriginal languages. I have found only the website of the Hermannsburg community to have a version in its local indigenous language.

As with public signs, this is a way to show the distinct identity to the outside as well as reminding the own people of the own language beside giving information to the reader.

Dear Joe,

Once again Thanks for your posts. And I agree - a modern society contains a wide spectrum of opinions, occupations, lifestyles, and social groups. To understand many features of Australian society we must pay particular attention to the values and interests of those who exercise power - and primarily in the past according to the history books - these were people who were white, middle-aged, Protestant, wealthy, male, and of Anglo-Saxon background.

Until recently, many Aboriginal aid schemes were run by "whites" who adopted a paternal attitude to Aborigines. And therein lies the problem. Aboriginal's did not control their own lives. In recent years - legal aid, land rights, education, and health care for Aborigines have become the important issues for government Aboriginal Affairs departments.

Progress is being made very slowly in the Aborigines' fight for the chance to survive in today's Australia and although much still needs to be done, perhaps the outlook is more hopeful now than it has been in the past. We can only hope so. Many things appear to have changed. Much has been achieved. Tolerance and understanding have broadened out and hopefully bigotry is in retreat. But the racist past still weighs heavily on the present and might still destroy any hope of reconciliation in this generation. I guess we've all got to work to see that this doesn't happen.

Dear QL,

I can't bite my bum - can you bite yours? Or kiss your elbow?
Try it and let me know if you succeed. I can play the zither - does that count? :-)

Hi Lexi,

You're mostly right, about overcoming racism etc. But I would argue that Indigenous achievements in higher education - where significantly, people are acting on their own agency, not relying on someone else to do something for them - are happening very quickly. Indigenous graduate numbers seem to double every twelve years or so, and I really do think they will double again in the next twelve years, and again in the twelve or fifteen years after that: fifty thousand by 2020, a hundred thousand by 2034-2035. And that will mean a big chunk of the entire Indigenous adult population, one in six or seven by 2020, one in four or five by 2034.

See if you can get hold of a book called 'Rights, Wrongs and Remedies' by Amy Wax: she is very hot on overcoming the history of injustice against African-Americans in the US, but points out that their own agency is the key to it all, that programs which 'do' things for people may be necessary (and maybe not) but not programs which take away people's sense of agency. Enabling programs, not just service programs, are what is vital.

Which is why higher education has been such a success story here for Indigenous people - nobody can do it for you, you have to pick yourself up and do it yourself. And once you've graduated, nobody can take it away from you.

Yes, there's a long way to go - 2.2 % of all Australian adults are Indigenous, but only 1.6 % of DOMESTIC university commencements, and 1.3 % of DOMESTIC enrolments, are Indigenous. But on the other hand, in terms of enrolments, Indigenous women are participating at about the same rate as Australian women were generally in 1997-1998. The men are commencing at about the same rate as other Australian men were in about 1990, so a bit more work.

But we have come a long way since we were counting every individual graduate - there is an average of four graduates every day now, and that will rise rapidly in the next ten years.

Dear Joe,

Thanks for the book reference. I'll try to get a hold of it as it sounds interesting. And Thanks also for the good news regarding Indigenous graduates.

I certainly can identify with doing things for yourself. I didn't quite appreciate the full value of an education(despite my dad's life-long emphasis on its importance - and that this was the only way to achieve anything in Australia as he saw it)
until I pursued a career in librarianship starting off firstly as a library-technician and then getting my qualifications as a librarian while working full time (and raising a family). I couldn't have done it without the support of my husband and family - but "Oh what a glorious feeling!" on my Graduation-Day - when my youngest child yelled out in the auditorium, "That's My Mum!" as I walked up to get my degree amid the laughter and applause that followed.

If things keep on getting better for our First People, it can only be good for us all. I would like to see the teaching of their culture and languages at schools by their own teachers. How are children supposed to have a good sense of self esteem and pride in who they are if they don't learn about their culture at school? They need role models and a good self-image.