individual,

It makes me wonder why the people who criticise academic institutions and practices would trumpet indigenous participation in them as some sort of milestone or measuring stick for indigenous development and indigenous advancement.

(I'm not saying that you do that - just that I've noticed that some here do)

Poirot,
The only time I trumpet indigenous achievement is when I see achievement due to indigenous ingenuity & effort.
Placing some indigenous on a pedestal for one's own agenda is not achieving anything, in fact it's a down-right tragedy that costs us too much in every which way. The worst offenders are Academia & bureaucracy & they go hand in hand.
I have seen it too many times when some white bureaucrat uses an indigenous to pave the career path for them until they get their Super. The most despicable I have witnessed were in the Health System.
These "achievements" are then plastered onto glossy paper & become "History" in our times.
I recall talking to a Main Roads foreman who found some Cave paintings many years ago. In comparing his photos from the early 50's with high grade photos of recent it is astonishing to see how many more cave paintings are in the same picture area now.
Some of these became thousands of years old in a matter of decades.

Thanks for those kicks up the @rse, Poirot :)

A little learning is a dangerous thing, dearie. Indigenous politics can be very complex and very dirty. Let me try to explain - this may take my four postings for the day:

Over the past forty years, Indigenous students were able to enrol at universities without standard entry requirements in two ways _

* enrol in a specially-adapted, lower-level Aboriginal-focussed course, and move out into Aboriginal-focussed careers; OR

* participate in a one-term or -semester preparation course and then enrol in stgandard courses of their choice, at first usually teaching courses, then nursing and eventually all mainstream courses.

Staff teaching Aboriginal Studies of course favoured the first model. My wife and I worked for many years in programs of the second type.

Funds came from Canberra for student support - the Ab Studies people always took their 'share' even though they didn't actually run any support programs.

Early on, it became clear that, to Ab Studies staff, Aborigines were objects of study, and to support programs, they were the subjects in their own lives and careers.A sort of undeclared civil war has ensued ever since which teaching has won, for the time being.

Support programs which did not have any major Ab. Studies component -because such courses were not offered at their particular campus - were down-graded and staff 'let go', in the interest of more 'radical' policies.

In the late nineties, as the numbers of Indigenous staff built up at universities, the decision was made to phase out sub-degree courses and to switch over to focussing on teaching Aboriginal Culgture etc. to non-Indigenous students. It was seen, after all, as a step up for Indigenous staff to move on from working with blacks to working with whites: an Aboriginal academic may start in student support but aquickly move into 'higher' levels working with non-Aboriginal students.

[TBC]

[continued]

From about 2002-2005, suppot programs were woundcdown, destroyed and their funding merged in with that for the treaching of Aboriginal Culture etc. to non-Indigenous students.

Coincidentally, out there in the Indigenous population, a massive rise in the birth-rate - and of children of working parents, not welfare parents - was occurring, mainly through inte-marriage. From about 1999, Year 12 numbers started to rise rapidly. So by 2005, just when Indigenous enrolments in Indigenous-focussed courses were being decimated, indigenou enrolments in mainstream courses started to rise rapidly. Between 2006 and 2011, commencements in degree-level courses rose by about 60 %.

Since Indigenous STAFF at universities are concentrated in, and concentrating on, the teaching of Ab Culture etc to non-Indigenous students, and Indigenous STUDENTS at universities are enrolled mainly in mainstream courses, the twain seldom meet these days. Hallelujah.

But the upshot is that the vast bulk of the Indigenous student population - these days, likely to be standard-ntry students - will be trying to go on to mainstream employment, once they graduate. The Indigenous-oriented positions are already taken up.

Higher education is a vehicle for class mobility. What we are witnessing is the rapid development of an Indigenous class structure, which usually means the betrayal of the 'lower' classes by the rapidly-rising 'upper' classes.

The great majority of Indigenous students go into the system as the children of working-class, and lower-middle-class parents, and potentially can come out the other end a few notches higher on the SES. Their destinies may be quite different from those of the current elites.

[TBC]

[continued]

I know that a meeting was held during this past week of highly qualified Aboriginal graduates who are having great trouble finding and keeping work.

It seems that, thanks to the elites who have so much control over Indigenous employment and policy, an Aboriginal person or graduate can never be anything else than Aboriginal, not a person. They must want to work in the Aboriginal arena or they can go to buggery. But many Indigenous graduates want to be people, working with other people, and to use their expertise as if - gasp ! - they were actually qualified people.

We've got a hell of a long way to go before we can claim not be racist country, thanks to the self-serving dealings of the Indigenous elites.

I hope this helps.

Cheers :)

Joe

"Thanks for those kicks up the @rse, Poirot."

My pleasure, Joe.

...........

(Btw, posters get eight post per day on the general threads)