Belly,
You said, "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"

Fair crack of the whip. Hardy may ask that, but can you tell me what has not been tried? Labor governments simply threw money at the matter. There was a form of almost self government with ATSIC, which failed. The Libs were shocked by the abuse of children report and found a lot of opposition to remedy that. People like Pearson have tried various enterprises with only limited success. Nearly everyone says education is the key but how to get school attendance?

It is not for the want of trying, fresh practical ideas would be welcome, I am sure. We have to keep trying to find things that work. I understand there is a community near Newcastle that went from the highest rate of child abuse to the lowest. Now to try and replicate that would be my starting point.

Dear Belly,

Not sure who really wrote the earlier plea
that I cited, it was signed by
"Davis Daniels, Secretary, N.T. Aboriginal Rights Council."

Here's another excerpt on Aborigines taken from the
same text, "The Changing Australians: A social history."
Written in 1977.

"True, the government has spent more money and energy
on Aborigines in the past five years than in the
previous fifty ... One Aborigine - Neville Bonner -
is now a member of the federal parliament... Sir Douglas
Nicholls - an Aborigine - was installed as the new
Governor of South Australia; he is the only Aborigine
to ever receive this honour.

Many are consigned to ghettos in the city suburbs, where
they live midst wall-to-wall poverty in crumbling,
rat-infested terrace houses. Or they live listless lives
on the outskirts of country towns, banished to "humpies"
or ramshackle shelters made of cardboard, bark and tin ...

Some work as stockmen or gardeners, but two-thirds are
unemployed...Even though families receive pension cheques
and unemployments insurance payments, 70 per cent of the
town's Aboriginal children are truant because they do not
have enough to eat and lack the energy to go to school ...

Why, then do they come to Alice Springs? "For the dole, grog,
and protection of white man," say the cynical townspeople.
Some whites insist that there was no problem in Alice Springs
before the Aborigines got their rights. "It's the do-gooders
from the south and the blow-ins coming to make a fast buck
who stir up all the trouble," says the Chief of Detectives...
"Formerly we had only 28 coppers, now we have 76. But the
real worry is not the Aborigines. It is that whites will
take the law into their own hands.

Perhaps only in Alice Springs could one of the world's
most sophisticated electronic installations stand plumb in
the centre of one of the world's most primitive societies."

Many things have changed since then. Much has been achieved.
Tolerance and understanding have broadened out.
But the past still weighs heavily on the present.
Hopefully we will continue to find answers through
education.

Its a weird world.

The Pakistani girl that was shot by the Taliban for promoting the right of girls to get an education, is off to the UN for a speech.

Here we have schools and teachers available and we cannot get aboriginal kids to attend and their parents don't seem to care.

Maybe if we removed the schools they would then want them.

Banjo,

I think there is such a sense of hopelessness with so many. Somehow, we need to ensure they can reclaim their dignity, and ensure their position in our society. And we certainly need to value their culture and languages.

Their successes should be heralded. So many of the white community see only the grimmer side.

Noel Pearson is absolutely correct.

A woman who had lived in aboriginal communities (quite a long time and returning often) learning and recording their languages, observed that our methods of teaching children would not be suitable for indigenous children. She was very specific as how to teach them successfully.

She was advisor to some committee, but as usual, nothing was done.

Loudmouth well yes, and yes to Danielle too.
Let us look, or try to, at what I am saying.
Even newly built housing in *missions* soon becomes shanty,s.
Culture, what is a culture, if not the habitual ways folk live and react to each other?
In my lifetime I see a culture we helped to create.
Police cars used late at night as taxys for drunks.
To get them home and out of trouble.
Here Banjo, is what I mean, a sense of entitlement born and breed in to community.
That sponsors failure.
I think if jobs accountable jobs, are the way we help, not free hand outs, if we commit to education that as is the case with our own kids must take place.
If we try new ways not forever sponsoring old tried failures.
Banjo tough love is true love.
As for my wish in that post, Hardy,s words or not he a true lefty, knew the truth, we have failed.
IF we saw an investigation in to our actions, some with out difficulty, could put a case we, without that tough love, are not truly trying.