Hi Poirot,

Do you ever actually read what people write, or do you just look to make smart-@rse comments, for your own ego ?

Anyway, to get back to topic: one problem with Aboriginal organisations and government-funded programs and Aboriginal professional employment - I'm sure Individual would agree - is that such employment isgrared to MAINTAIN an elaborate welfare system, rather than to REDUCE it and assist people to move on to better life-paths. So the only jobs, often, are precisely those helper-role jobs, which people expect to have for life.

i.e. they expect that Aboriginal people - at least, their clients - to remain stewing on welfare for life. They don't expect to ever help to Close the Gap.

That's why, like Individual, I'm pinning my hopes on Indigenous graduates coming through mainstream courses, and not particularly interested in working in Aboriginal programs. Aboriginal teachers who want to be teachers. Aboriginal doctors who want to work throughout their lives as doctors.

Maria wrote an article back in 2007 and sent it off to Noel Pearson, and he used it in his essay "Radical Hope" just after she passed away. Her thesis was that the Inigenous population was differentiating very broadly into two populations, a work-oriented population and a welfare-oriented population. But that even within the working population there was a rapid class differentiation process going on, with an elite rapidly building up its power in Indigenous-focussed programs, and a rapidly growing population of working Indigenous people who were in, or seeking, mainstream employment, and that there were traces of a growing antagonism between what you might call the upper and lower segments of the working population.

[TBC]

[continued]

It's very likely, since social processes are working so rapidly, that those divisions have intensified since 2007. One problem may be that the Indigenous elites have, on the whole, shown themselves to be so bankrupt and bereft of any ideas about the Indigenous Predicament, and so clearly serving only their own interests. Larissa Behrendt's contemptuous remarks about Bess Price would be a good example of that.

Indigenous futures are extremely indeterminate - what may be going on in ten or twenty years is impossible to predict, except that it won't be just more or the same - by 2025, there could be sixty or seventy thousand Indigenous university graduates, two-thirds of them women, overwhelmingly with mainstream qualifications, demanding their rightful place in the sun. And their major adversaries, obstacles, enemies, will be the Indigenous elites.

Back to topic: 'evidence'-based research. I've been trying to observe what passes for Indigenous research at universities over the past fifteen years or so, and it strikes me that - in their devaluation of 'whitefella' methodologies, i.e. evidence, testing of hypotheses - that they don't seem to get past what would be the first chapter in any genuine thesis - the highly-selective literature review, the assertions of hypotheses, but they never seem to go beyond that, on to what counts in the real world as genuine 'research'.

So we have little more than feel-good assertions, usually based on the notion of Indigenous superiority in every way, and white evil and ignorance in every way. But not real research.

Maybe that will come in the next few years too :)



Joe

Thanks for that Joe, it is much as I expected, but is much clearer now.

I'm afraid many of these aboriginal graduates of main stream courses are likely to find suitable employment in their area of training quite hard to find, just as their European fellow students are finding.

I would hate to be advising kids as to what area of study they should invest 4 years of their lives today. My & I think most peoples crystal balls are becoming more heavily clouded by the day. Trying to predict what area of study is likely to be useful in 15 or 20 years is today like throwing darts at a dart board.

Finding better ways of harvesting hydrocarbons would be a good one, if you have the math, but whether running a supermarket, farm or steel mill will prove a good choice is anyone's guess.

Health care could be a good one, if governments are still paying for it, which is by no means certain, & I think even the bureaucracy is by no means a safe choice today.

I do believe any bet made on continuing high levels of government funding in any area is likely to be a loosing one.

With any luck we might by then, be more interested in some ones ability than their colour, all though that is only a small part of aboriginality. Fortunately I have always preferred the look of a good dark suntan, to the pasty European appearance.

I mentioned in a recent post to you, Joe, that I think it's pointless to engage you in any depth on the issues we usually discuss.

You lull people into a false sense of security, when sometimes you wax lyrical on subjects.

As I mentioned, you come out all decked out for debate like an honourable opponent like a professional boxer....but it's not long before you start biting and scratching and pulling hair.

So I'll read what you are saying, but I would be stupid to try and engage you on its content.

Thanks, Hasbeen,

Yeah, the future is going to be very difficult for young people, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, 'old' Australians and 'new' Australians, Black and white and everything in between.

In fact, I have hopes that the social and ethnic boundaries between those groupings will become blurred over the next generation or two. Our grand-kids and great-grand-kids are going to be beautifully mixed - as Darwin wrote, they will inherit the strongest, 'fittest', most beautiful, of all of their ancestors' biological characteristics and cultural practices.

Towards a coffee-coloured world ! Yay !

Jo

Poirot,

Ah ! So it IS all about you ?

I stand corrected :)

Joe

PS. Curses ! I've wasted a posting. What devilish cunning, Poirot !