Dear Danelle,

I understand your point but forgive me but I think it is idealistic.

When I lived in Darwin as a youngster I kicked around with Aboriginal kids in primary school with nary a thought. Not that there weren't some divisions, if you had an issue with an aboriginal kid then you had to face the lot, your mates included who quickly went shoulder to shoulder with their mob. For me to be ten years older and joining in racial taunts toward an aboriginal footballer illustrates that adult society and its poisons awaits every youth. Some will be fortunate enough, or strong enough, or educated enough to dance around the snares that are set. Others will succumb.

It is impossible to set aside how badly the media has treated the young Collingwood supporter. Her actions should have been a catalyst to further a continuing conversation about unconscious racism and how pervasive it is but the focus on her should have been dropped after day one. To have her still appearing in the media a week later, well after Eddie's slip, was horrendous.

But I do think there will have been a strong and positive message about recognising what is a racial taunt to our youth. They will of course be listening to their parents, and judging by some of the ill-informed and racist contributions here will have their work cut out avoiding that particular snare, yet I am optimistic that many of them will have digested the events and become better educated on what constitutes acceptable behaviour.

My earlier point stands. I feel Australians of all ages, but particularly our young, are far more in tune with issues of racial vilification pertaining to African Americans than they are about those involving our own indigenous citizens. That sorely needs to change. Then perhaps we will find ourselves in a situation better reflecting the world it seems we both want for our children.

Csteel, this is the first & only post from you that, in years of Forum, I have totally agreed with & has lost it's usual belligerent form. Well done.

Maybe Danielle has shown you the way into the light.

csteele, the Aboriginal bush communities are dying. They're killing themselves off.

http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/violence-against-aboriginal-women-80-times-worse/story-e6frfkp9-1226661209335

They'd rather do that than have anything to do with us.

Doesn't that tell you something?

Antiseptic,

'Anything' ? Do you mean apart from regular life-long welfare payments, mining royalties, cheap housing and services which were unavailable for their first fifty thousand years ? Lucky country, all right.

Meanwhile, in the cities ..........

Joe

Loudmouth,

If they'd been in a similar miserable state all those years before "we" arrived - there wouldn't have been anyone left when we got here.

For Aboriginals in the bush, it's been a complete disaster.

Hi Poirot,

You might be onto something there. Life was extremely harsh across the country, most of the time, for most of those fifty thousand years, except for a few lucky groups living in river valleys.

Over the last year or more, I've been working on the correspondence of the Protector down here in SA, covering the years between 1840 and 1906, and, from the experience of drought after drought, it struck me that pre-contact Aboriginal populations must have been periodically devastated - the animals would have quickly shot through looking for feed and water, leaving the people without either. Old people must have died quickly in every major drought. Very young children too, since their mothers' milk would have dried up. Twins - forget it.

So the total overall population must have fluctuated between half a million at the best of times down to a hundred thousand at the worst of times. So, if anything, the ration system down here must have saved many, many lives, particularly the elderly and the very young. That came as a surprise.

During the drought in the late twenties in Central Australia, the Rev. E.E. Kramer ventured out across central Australia, looking for water sources and 'natural' food, as necessary components of a proposed central Australian reserve. He did not see a single kangaroo, apart from some carcasses, and saw only one emu (or maybe the other way around). He came across an Aboriginal man's body in a cave, who he concluded had died of thirst and hunger. So he recommended against a closed reserve: people had to be able to move out of it to find food and water. He was no green-horn, he knew the country. And it's a bloody hard country.

So yes, you're right, population may have stagnated for tens of thousands of years. It must have been no fun being out of touch with the rest of the world.

Joe