Thanks Belly, Granny has some interesting stories, e.g.:

http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/indigenous-aussie-is-ambassador-to-denmark-20130401-2h2sp.html

and a story about SA having the highest rate of Indigenous Year 12 finishers, about 70 % of the relevant age-group, or about 500 students. That's a phenomenal improvement on fifteen years ago when barely 75 were completing Year 12 annually.

But one interesting aspect of that change: it coincided with a massive increase in the birth-rate (around 50 % in ten years): since about 2003, I have been trying to track the changes, to see if the rapid increase in Year 12 finishers was related to being born into families of working people, often intermarried working people - which in turn, perhaps at one generation removed, was likely to be associated with people moving to, and growing up in, urban environments.

i.e. due to the move to the cities in the fifties and sixties, younger people being accustomed to urban life and the influences of working people around them, moving into employment themselves when they finished school. usually around Year 10, and often marrying people in the same social circles, and thereby providing role models for their own children in turn, who are much more likely to go right through Year 12 and on to uni, twenty or twenty five years later.

In other words, a three-generation process. If people from remote communities are to follow more or less in that process, then they have three generations to look forward to, fifty years or so. I don't think there are too many short-cuts, but the longer they put it off, the longer it will all take.

[tbc]

[cnt.]

Another point: given that a young person is usually counted, and count themselves, as Indigenous, if they have one parent who is Indigenous, then inter-marriage has been one way to massively kick up the birth-rate, without having to have large families.

In the cities, on the whole, working Indigenous people make up barely 1 % of working people, so the vast majority of people they work with and associate with will be non-Indigenous.

Ergo, inter-marriage.

Ergo, increase in the birth-rate (from about 1982).

Ergo, eighteen-odd years later, increase in the Year 12 finishing rate (after 2000), and, it seems, two or three years later, rapid rise in the number of Indigenous commencers at uni, and IN STANDARD COURSES, not Indigenous-oriented courses. Degree-level commencements in standard courses have risen around 60 % since 2005-2006.

There you go, Producer, is there enough in all that to debate ?

Cheers,

Joe

Joe, Loudmouth I could put a brighter side on the rising birth rate.
It would however avoid the truth.
Driven by 6the * infamous Baby bonus*
Just as it is true in white under class/poor community, Aboriginal birthrates are rising.
So too, in both groups,is Children in Foster care rising, dramatically and in near equal numbers.
Folk sorry truth is worth supporting always, *More White than First Nation*
Are after minimal training, and questionable links to community, fostering for cash not love.
History yet to be written will hold us to account for this.

Hi Belly, thanks for your thoughtful words.

Yes, there certainly does seem to be two increasingly-distinct, Indigenous populations, or modal populations -

* one major population, rapidly growing, with working parents, usually inter-married, children with role models going on to Year 12 and university, rarely in trouble with the police, usually in reasonable health, amongst whom fostering-out of children is almost unknown, and who are not even known to social workers, a mutual situation,

and

* another population, perhaps growing - as you suggest - because of the Baby Bonus - but with few in employment, parochial and insular, poorly educated if at all, geographically segregated, into the various addictions, with relatively poor health (esp. poor diet and exercise), often in trouble with police and social workers, a high degree of fostering, utterly dependent on the state for their survival, and raising their children the same way.

One population has shown the way - find employment and the rest may follow - and the other major modal population is resisting as much as possible.

So where are the 'leaders' in all that, apart from Noel Pearson and Warren Mundine ? On the side of the workers ? or of the skivers ?

Hard to say these days.

Joe

Very well put Joe/Loudmouth seems Urban based are doing the best, we I think agree there are big differences.
Urban, Small country towns, and mission dwellers.
And that northern Australia has its own, and different problems.
No joy in telling it like it is, but near to me mission, feeding some to country town living, is in real trouble.
I see children who can not read and their parents could not either.
I think education must become a hard love must.
And that without it we are kidding our selves in looking for leaders from these places.
A self destructive theme of not having the will or confidence to find a way out must be fought by sides.

Hi Belly,

Maybe, like any population, there is a lot of self-selection and movement from rural to urban that might account for much of that differentiation, at least in the population in the 'settled' areas - that the people on the missions with get-up-and-go get up and go (and a long time ago), while those who prefer a more laid-back life, stay behind; or move only to the nearest big town; or if they have to, to the outlying suburbs of a city. And back again to 'communities' an towns. And back again o the outer suburbs.

Looking back at the history of movement from one community over the past sixty five years, it is pretty clear that the get-up-and-goers don't go back. So the potential talent in 'communities' was largely drained a long time ago, and has trickled away ever since.

The children - and grandchildren - of one population have (relatively) raced away, got into work, gone to uni, and done pretty well. The children and grandchildren of the 'other' population have tended to reproduce their parents' more casual (let's put it that way) culture, and have strikingly different education, employment and health statistics as a consequence.

People make choices, since they actually aren't sheep or puppets. And they, and their children, have to live with the consequences of those choices, some of which, with hindsight, look to be pretty stupid ones.

That's humans for you :)

Joe