This was written in 1966 - how much have things improved
today?
Lexi,
How can you expect answers to bad questions & this is one. If you had even the slightest of slight inkling you would ask why things haven't changed enough despite huge amounts of effort, good will & even more money being thrown at a problem & mentality that can not be solved & improved by others.

nothing can ever change while the industry plays the victim card. This is the easiest way to keep the dollars flowing. The totally unbalanced academics view will continue to be justifcation to allow the woman bashing, the violence, the child abuse to continue and to blame people most of who were not around 50 years ago let alone 200.

Hi Lexi,

I think that may have been written by the legendary Frank Hardy, when he was up with the Gurindji at Wattie Creek. Stirring times !

A lot of water has flown under a multitude of bridges since then.

Different ball game these days.

Cheers,

Joe

I thought Lexi wrote that.

Here I am thinking to myself "What a great writer that Lexi is. He deserves more credit."

Must have plenty of time on his hands to spend copying that out.

I am forced to admit what the thread has proved.
As well as left wing do gooder,s, the very right/unintelligent bigotry has an impact.
I too think it was the great Frank Hardy that wrote that.
We have seen great improvements from then, Withlams actions and the Redfern speech from Paul.
But still people live in shanty,s and die early .
I again want to highlight, just how would we be today if this was our birth place, not the location, the ever pressing povity and lack of education.
Every time one from this back ground climbs out, say Lionel Rose, we claim them as our own.
But bring to our attention the truth, we have failed, and watch the statements of what clearly is a bigotry, start to flow.
If Hardy was still alive I like to think he would return to the UN theme asking Australia this question.
*Do you intend to ever fix this problem, or are you deliberately stalling progress*.

Belly,

Poverty ? No. Squalor ? Yes. We lived in a 'community' during the seventies and I went back later to do some research on the economic development of the place (8.000 acres, unlimited water licence), and as an afterthought, with a good friend from there, did an income study (totally unethical, wouldn't be allowed these days). We found that the average (median) income of that 'community' was equal to the Australian median income. This is back in 1982.

In fact, taking into account extremely low rents back then, the people in that 'community' were some 10-20 % better off than the average (median) Australian.

Certainly, Aboriginal 'communities' often look as if they are in poverty. But Bangla Desh is poverty - and the poorest villages there are clean, bare as buggery but clean. Wrecked cars all over the place is not poverty - it's the capacity to buy a lot of cars and wreck them.

While we are on the topic of vegetable gardens - back in the Mission days, the missionaries in almost all Aboriginal Missions had gardens and orchards and chook yards and a handful of cows for milk. I suspect now that they also did by far the bulk of the work. When people heard they could get onto welfare, everywhere they walked off, not even turning the taps off.

It must have been hard work to hunt and gather, but the ethic that people perceived as forming the foundation of their society was not work, but magic, ritual, ceremony, spells. Of course, in the early days of contact, some people grasped the notion of a work ethic quickly, particularly young people, but it must have been a pretty fragile plant.

Joe