I watched "Q and A" on the ABC Monday evening - 9th June 2014.
It was a panel of the "Elders." And was riveting viewing.
One of the most emotional moments came when Rosalie Kunoth-Monks
(Star of the film "Jedda) spoke about John Pilger's film "Utopia," Racism in Australia, and the NT Intervention.
The impact was quite dramatic.
Here is a link from that evening:

http://www.tvtonight.com.au/2014/06/qas-compelling-speech-dont-call-me-a-problem.html

I would be interested to read the views of others who
watched the program.

Thank you Foxy, it was a moving clip.

I haven't watched this as I wouldn't allow a TV in my home, so your bringing it here makes me proud of this woman. This should teach nationalists that they don't own this continent, nobody does.

I am sad though that she goes by the name "Rosalie", obviously a Western name.

Dear Yuyutsu,

Thank You for watching the clip and your comments.

It was a most unusual "Q and A," program.
The panel featured Jane Goodall (Primatologist), Betty
Churcher (Art Educator), Peter Coleman (Conservative Intellectual),
Stuart Rees (Founder of the Sydney Peace Prize), and last
but definitely not least Arrente - Alyawarra Elder
Rosalie Kunoth-Monks.

As you saw when a question came from the audience about
the apparent whiteness of Australia, despite the strong
multicultural mix of our nation - Tony Jones threw to
Kunoth-Monks for a response.

It had quite an impact on me. I guess like many people,
I admit that I simply don't understand fully
the complexity of the problems
that our First Nation people have to deal with on a daily
basis. So, hearing things first hand had quite an effect on me.

You people..LOL.

You know, I have a culture. I am a cultured person. (Speaking Australian) I’m talking another language. And my language is alive. I am not something that fell out of the sky for the pleasure of somebody putting another culture into this cultured being. John shows in his many rambling monologues what is an ongoing denial of me. I am not an Anglo Saxon or, indeed, European. I am White, Australian, First Nations person, a sovereign person from this country. (Speaking Australian) This is the country I came out from. I didn’t come from overseas. I came from here. My language, in spite of totalitarian humanism trying to penetrate into my brain by assimilationists – I am alive, I am here and now – and I speak my language. I practise my cultural essence of me. Don’t try and suppress me and don’t call me a problem. I am not the problem. I have never left my country nor have I ceded any part of it. Nobody has entered into a treaty or talked to me about who I am. I am White, a male elder from this country. Please remember that. I am not the problem

So Jay Of Melbourne how would you feel if someone came and destroyed your culture and language and way of life and called you a problem?

I am always amused when someone refers to walking around nude, throwing rocks & sticks at things, trying desperately to get something to eat, as a culture.

What a anthropological joke.

MKK, Do you mean settler culture, the culture to which Rosalie Kunoth Monks and I both belong via our German forebears?
There's only one history of Australian culture, all that separates us is regional differences in customs and dialect I feel exactly the same way Rosalie does, my re writing of her speech isn't parody.
It's progressives like you and Yuyutsu and Foxy who are the problem, I'm from one of the first nations,the Whites, I'm not the problem.

Dear Jay,

<<It's progressives like you and Yuyutsu and Foxy who are the problem>>

I fail to understand, have I missed something?

According to dictionary.com:

pro·gres·sive, adjective:

1. favouring or advocating progress, change, improvement, or reform, as opposed to wishing to maintain things as they are, especially in political matters.

2. making progress toward better conditions; employing or advocating more enlightened or liberal ideas, new or experimental methods, etc.

3. characterized by such progress, or by continuous improvement.

4. of or pertaining to any of the Progressive parties in politics.

5. going forward or onward; passing successively from one member of a series to the next; proceeding step by step.

Accordingly, I should think that supporting someone of an ancient primitive culture, their dignity, autonomy and freedom to continue living without interference as their ancestors lived for thousands of years, would rather be considered regressive (an attribute which I would have nothing to be ashamed of), so this is a complete surprise to me: I was never called that before, so can you or anyone else please explain what "progressive" means?

Thank you.

Foxy not having seen the show I'm missing the context for the problem part of her comments. In part words that apply to most of us regarding our sovereign humanity.

I pretty much agree with Jay's rewrite of her comments, I am a sovereign human being and quite frankly pretty tired of people suggesting I by my whiteness (and the origins of my ancestors) are the problem.

In regard to culture, the culture I live in now is very different to the one I grew up in (about 100 km by road from where I now live). Australia has changed and will continue to to change, some good, some bad. I'm progressive enough to prefer that to stagnation or clinging to the bad for the sake of some historical or imagined remberance of culture.

R0bert

Dear Jay, I just want to say that I will not be quoting dictionary definitions.
I understand what you're saying, but can you answer this: why do all those responding to you repudiate the idea that another advanced culture would have come across this land and altered the sainted indigenous lifestyle?
Do you think it's an evil thing to have been the first there?

"Pilger’s polemic fails Australia and Aborigines"
An informative article in the Alice Springs News. See here,
http://www.alicespringsnews.com.au/2014/01/27/pilgers-polemic-wide-of-the-mark-on-australia-and-aborigines/

mikk,
may i suggest you look up the definition of culture & existence & evolution?
I deal with all three on an hourly basis & I gurantee you I know a thing or two after 40 years in this environment.

Rosalie Kunoth-Monks, has never been a problem. and she was right to say so, nor have Aboriginal people ever been a problem for themselves. From the day Europeans arrived on this continent, Aboriginals have been a "problem" for Europeans, and Europeans have been a "problem" for Aboriginal people, just as it has been wherever European colonisation has taken place. Europeans of the past wherever they went, failed to recognise the value of indigenous culture. In fact they always seen their own culture as being the natural superior one, that should be adopted by all. For those that could not, or would not adapt,and for those that would resist colonisations the alternative was their extermination in one way or another.
The struggle of indigenous people the world over has been well documented, and it continues today. Society needs firstly to recognise that many injustices have been, and continue to be, perpetrated against indigenous people, who ever they be, just as it was in the past. Injustice today takes a different form than it once did, but injustice it is never the less, and one of those injustices is the failure to recognise the value of indigenous culture. Some bigoted persons will claim that indigenous people had nothing worthwhile in the form of a culture, certainly nothing worth preserving. This could not be further from the truth, in fact indigenous culture is of such high value that it should be preserved at all cost.
It is true we all live in a modern world, and it is necessary to adapt to twenty first century modernism. it would be foolish to think otherwise. Even whilst embracing modernism there is no reason to think that to do so requires indigenous people to jettison their traditions of language and culture, the two can happily coexist

Paul,
Racing ahead again? As always the Lefties finish our sentences for us and write their own epilogue to our every post on race.
I'm pointing out that there's a settler culture with blood ties, Rosalie's grandfather was a German settler,the man from whom I get my surname came from Wales in 1847 and married a German girl in Adelaide.
I know Lefties don't think logically but Rosalie and I are related to some degree,the fact that she learned to speak two of her ancestral languages and I only speak one is a small point of difference.

Stanley of Sligo,
Well that's what happens in a multi-racial society, when we talk about first nations the starting point is 1788, the nation is a contrivance of the northern hemisphere, in fact many European societies were not even united into nations until the mid 19th century. Just as there's no White people in an all White nation the concept of an Alyawarra nation developed within multi racial Australia, not in parallel to it.
Do you understand what I'm saying? For the same reason that there were no White nationalists in Sweden before mass third world immigration when there were no Whites here there were no Alyawarra, APY or any other "Nations", only free sovereign people, ...heck, I understand where Rosalie is coming from even if the Lefties don't.

Hasbeen,

"I am always amused when someone refers to walking around nude, throwing rocks & sticks at things, trying desperately to get something to eat, as a culture."

And where do you think we all started, then. Our origins as hunter gatherers were steeped in "culture" which evolved over time.

I'll add that every Aboriginal dialect was/is as sophisticated as English...there are no stone-age "unsophisticated languages"....of course you wouldn't dream that could be true.

On the contrary, I am always amused when those with closed minds come onto 21st century forums, strutting around displaying their naked anthropological ignorance, throwing rhetorical rocks and stones, trying desperately to get someone to bite.

Jay, that is nice. I am not underscoring your rights as an Australian. You and I, and Rosalie are all Australians of some ancestry There is no need for any of us to apologies for who we are. Some should apologise for what they think, but that is a different matter. When Kevin Rudd delivered his now famous apology speech, I recall him apologising to Aboriginal people, not for the arrival of Europeans, or even their colonisation of the continent. However, Rudd did appoligise for what has transpired for Aboriginal people in general, and pacifically to the 'stolen generation', all as a consequence of Europeans arrival and subsequent colonisation. Serious mistakes were made, we can not change the past, but we can learn from that past, and make for a better tomorrow.

I appreciate all of your comments.

Watching "Q and A," and listening to Rosalie Kunoth-Monks
made me realise that there were aspects of Australian
life that I knew little about. But I can see that
there is a complex
web of social relations, habits, customs and beliefs
that both bounds white and black together and yet holds
them far apart. There seems to be a history at work, a
powerful all-important history which presses heavily on
the present.

As Kunoth Monks told the audience:

"I've lived for over 70 years under a regime and a system
that not only destroys my culture, but also me as a
person."

When asked by Tony Jones whether or not things had improved
for her people Kunoth-Monks answered:

"Nothing at all. It doesn't matter if the government changes.
A White Australia Policy is alive and well in Australia and
it usually experiments on blacks in the Northern Territory
becaue we are not a state."

"Come live with me some time. Live my life and I'll show you."

Perhaps that's something we all need to do.

Dear Foxy,

I knew the reference before I opened the thread. It was indeed a powerful episode.

I also knew that there would very quickly be a one of our esteemed middle age white males posting some version of 'what about me' in response and JOM fitted that bill very nicely.

I remember my German father-in-law being quite incensed about the question at our local hospital asking if he was Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. When I asked why he replied 'Why are they getting special treatment and seen to first while the rest of us have to wait?'.

I had a chance to later ask about the 'question' of an Aboriginal liaison officer whom I knew quite well and had seen at the hospital quite frequently. He informed me that once a person identifies as indigenous then his role was to see them and assist them if needed as quite a number of his community found a visit to the hospital quite daunting and often delayed or neglected treatment.

I asked did this mean they were pushed to the head of the queue? His reply was 'of course not', what it meant was those who were timid, struggling with a different culture, without strong communication skills, and who might otherwise have difficulty making staff aware of the urgency of their issue gained their rightful place in the queue.

I'm afraid there will be more like JOM who will come here to give their versions of 'what about me' but I do want thank you for the empathy of others, not only of the oppressed and disadvantaged, you constantly exhibit on this forum.

Bless you.

Met a lot of anthropologists have you Poirot?

Known some of the people they have fantasized about too I should imagine?

If you are naive enough to believe the garbage most of the more recent members of the "discipline" you are living in a fools paradise.

"Come live with me some time. Live my life and I'll show you."
Foxy,
I do & if only I could get the same privileges, alas, I have to work & pay for everything.

Dear SteeleRedux,

Thank You for your kind words and your comments.

I wish that I could write about some personal
experience with our First Nation people - but
like many Australians - I have none to speak of.
All I can do is try to educate myself on these
issues. Do the research and try to learn - and
hopefully with that understanding will follow.

From what I am reading - I gather that much has
changed over the decades, but much also remains the
same. I am concerned about the health of our native
people. Their access to hospitals and doctors in
remote areas. The following link may be of interest:

http://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/health/hospitals-doctors-health-aboriginal-people

Paul, well it's nice that we agree on some things.
Steele,
You've misread my posts but no matter.
What I would say to you is that I definitely don't want to be treated the way Aboriginal men are treated by the state and it's institutions, I can't believe that anyone of any race would be satisfied with the dubious "privileges" doled out to Aboriginals much less be jealous of them.
The way ethnic Whites view Aboriginals is not important but the way the Anglo elites view both groups is, the kick gets harder as it goes down the line, the further the living standards of the ethnic Whites slip the less likely it is that "closing the gap" will be effective.
Since the turn of the 19th century ethnic Whites and Aboriginals have lived under the same system in the same spaces ruled by the same Anglo elites,like it or not our futures, like our past are bound together. The sooner my co ethnics accept the fact that they are never going to be beneficiaries of "Skin Privilege", that in the eyes of many in the elite castes we are lesser people even than Aboriginals the better things will be for everyone.
Until Whites start thinking and acting like a distinctive ethnic community living among many others under a foreign ruling caste and trying to arrest the fall in our own living standards conditions will continue to stagnate for the first nations.
If things are bad or wrong in the world you can only rely on Whites to fix them, take us out of the fight and it's curtains for civilisation on this continent.

take us out of the fight and it's curtains for civilisation on this continent.
JoM,
Sadly, far,far too many will not see this undeniable fact, a fact so in the face of everyone that it is just about invisible. I live that live & I don't blame the indigeous nor the Whites in general, I blame the asexual leftist do-gooder brigade which syphons most of the funding to the indigenous. The distgusting practice is then blamed on all who are white & not academic.

On August 1, 1944, the Polish nation commemorated the
fiftieth anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising in which
200,000 Poles were killed by German Nazis and 500,000
more were transported to concentration camps.

During this commemoration, German President Roman Herzog
made an extraordinary apology to the Polish people.

"Today, I bow down before the fighters of the Warsaw
Uprising as before all Polish victims of the war," he
said. I ask for forgiveness for what has been done to you
by Germans...It fills us Germans with shame that the
name of our country and people will forever be associated with
pain and suffering which was inflicted on Poland a
million times. We mourn the dead of the Warsaw Uprising and
all people who lost their lives in World War II."

Polish President Lech Walesa had invited the German President
to take part in commemorative ceremonies as an "act of healing."
He said, "We do not give absolution to the murderers in
Warsaw, but we do not pass those feelings upon the German
nation...Blood and hatred are a curse of the twentieth
century, may they disappear in the past along with it."

While Australians have been a blessing on so many, we must
not ignore our violations where they have occurred.
The history of our Indigenous people is so morally outrageous
as to make the fact that some people are still in denial
unbelievable. A strange psychological phenomenon occurs when
a truth is so big, so obvious, that it becomes to some,
in some perverse way, almost easy to resist.

Beneath every political wound is a personal one, and
personal wounds must be addressed on a personal level.
Other means can treat our wounds, but only a spiritual
experience can heal them.

Forgiveness heals our souls by washing us clean of the past.
and delivering us to an unsoiled present.

I remember how joyous and proud I felt when the then PM -
Kevin Rudd, made our apology to the Indigenous People.
It was a step in the right direction.

cont'd ...

I forgot to add that we should learn from the
mistakes that we've made - and try to do better
in the present and the future. The expansion of this
country was accomplished at thecost of decimation to
our Indigenous population. Listening to Elders like
Arrente-Alyawarra Elder Rosalie Kunoth-Monks, we
just may learn how to proceed with doing the right
thing by her people because obviously what's been done
thus far hasn't worked too well.

It was a step in the right direction.
Foxy,
Those of us who know better say that Brendan Nelson's reply to that was much better in every way. It was more down to earth, more realistic & above all more, in fact way more sincere.
The hangers-on leftie brigade however did not allow this to be seen in that light because integrity goes against the grain of the left & its syphoning the guilt industry mentality.

Foxy, well put.
Colonisation is a traumatic process, the colonisation of this continent was particularly nasty in certain areas, we can be saddened and ashamed by things which happened in the past but we're not guilty of those crimes and we don't need to atone for them.
That's my beef with "reconciliation", there's nothing to reconcile between two parties who bear no collective responsibilities, the very idea of collective responsibility should be erased from the dialogue between White and Indigenous, it's just as poisonous to race relations coming from a do-gooder as it is from the pen of a bigot.

Making a formal apology to our Indigenous people was
what we needed to do in order to morally resurrect
as a nation. In our hearts, White Australia needed
to make an amend to the First Nation people at least
as much as they needed to hear it. Admitting when
we have been wrong is not a sign of weakness, but one of
strength. In situations where the people responsible for
the perpetration of violence or violation are not
alive anymore, it should be that much easier for us to
sincerely express regret, ask for forgiveness, and allow
us to reconcile with the people of this land.

I realise that many people think that we have done
enough to repay Indigenous people for the ravages of
racism. The truth is that we have done far too little,
for we had never apologised until recently. We had in
the past never fully publicly acknowledged the evil that was
done to our First Nation people as evil.

A sincere apology went toward restoring a genuine moral order,
for it realigned basic energies with truth. Many people
registered the need for forgiveness while underestimating the
importance of an apology. To ask someone to forgive you
without actually apologising is bogus and callous and
patronizing. But we finally managed to do the right thing.

The 'formal apology' was little more than the latest play in an ongoing game of ideological one-upmanship between political elites. It bleeds Judeo-Christian notions of ethics. If Kev really had their best interests at heart, he'd have shouted those folks a slab each. Because my advice to everyone being stifled in this hopelessly stacked system -- a system that, as has been pointed out, stifles White Australians as much as it does the indigenous folk -- is to drink heavily.

the abused kids and especially young girls promised to uncles will be glad that some parts of the culture is outlawed. Marvelous how the indigeneous still want all the benefits of civilised culture but are taught to hate and despise the people who built houses, hospitals etc. Their life expectancy is now much higher due to those 'horrid' whities. Imagine the Chinese, Japanese or even Dutch had beaten Britian to the colonisation process. An inconvenient truth.

In his famous Redfern speech in 1992, former
PM Paul Keating said:

"It was we who brought the diseases. The alcohol.
We committed the murders. We took the children
from their mothers. And now, it is time to clean
up the mess we have made. The government has a
duty to protect future generations of Indigenous
people... We must continue working towards
reconciliation. We need to make Indigenous disadvantage
history. We must not give up. "

Foxy
Ah, Paul Cheating. I remember him well.
He said that while wearing an exxy Italian suit and loafers. I assume.
But that aside, I love the "we". Meanwhile, his hero Jack Lang once wrote: "White Australia must not be regarded as a mere political shibboleth. It was Australia's Magna Carta. Without that policy, this country would have been lost long ere this. It would have been engulfed in an Asian tidal wave."

Dear individual,

More than happy for you to say you to say you personally thought Brendan Nelson's speech was better but don't try and claim you know better because your startlingly wilful ignorance about most things does not afford you either the right nor the luxury especially where the Apology was concerned. You actually know Jack mate.

I mingled with the thousands of our indigenous citizens who made their way to our nation's capital from all areas of this land to be part of that day. I stayed with many of those families who were at the local caravan park. I recall having to go to the site manager to ask for a plug for the sink for our cabin, he had stripped them along with all the irons etc because 'You know who we have staying here'.

You did not.

I lined up with my family in front of parliament house not really expecting to get in and more than happy if we didn't to watch it instead with the thousands gathered on the grass out the front.

You did not.

We were among the last to be seated in the Great Hall. Of those gathered in that room my estimate at least a third were identifiably indigenous and while there was a sense of anticipation I remember a real concern even fear about what was to unfold. That washed away once Rudd started speaking and the joy and relief on the formally fearful faces was one of the most amazing transformations I have ever seen.

You weren't there.

Cont..

Cont..

That joy and goodwill was extended to the beginning of Nelson's speech with fresh applause greeting his initial words. This quickly became dismay and anger once the import of his later lines became apparent. I remember an indigenous woman in front of me standing and turning her back on him with tears in her eyes and yet still apologising to me for obscuring my view. But Nelson's words could not take away the happiness that returned almost immediately after he had finished. It was a highly emotional event for those many indigenous families present on that day and it meant a very great deal to them.

But you wouldn't know that because you weren't there.

Yet there were so many other Australians who weren't there either but they got how important the day was, so why can't you.

The only possible conclusion is that you choose to remain willfully ignorant with your empathy and compassion strictured and bereft.

You sir have my pity.

individual & runner,

"Those of us who know better say that Brendan Nelson's reply to that was much better in every way. It was more down to earth, more realistic & above all more, in fact way more sincere.
The hangers-on leftie brigade however did not allow this to be seen in that light because integrity goes against the grain of the left & its syphoning the guilt industry mentality."

"the abused kids and especially young girls promised to uncles will be glad that some parts of the culture is outlawed. Marvelous how the indigeneous still want all the benefits of civilised culture but are taught to hate and despise the people who built houses, hospitals etc. Their life expectancy is now much higher due to those 'horrid' whities. Imagine the Chinese, Japanese or even Dutch had beaten Britian to the colonisation process. An inconvenient truth."

Just once, it would be rewarding to see either of you convey some humanity or cultural humility... instead of the usual barren desert of soul.

.....

SteeleRedux,

Thank you.....

SteeleReedux,
Which communities might we have seen you working in over the years, communities which would not exist if it weren't for the good will of the rednecks etc. Then there are Communities which have been destroyed by the good will of academic bureaucrats such as those who marched to be seen & make themselves feel warm'n fozzy.
I put it to you that you're the one who knows Jack.
Do you have any inkling whatsoever what goes on out there ? Doesn't sound like it.
Inifgenous land & its people have been exploited by the likes of yourself, people who think they're doing good by being seen at protest marches. Behind the scenes though everyone grabs as much as they can from the funds designed to aid indigenous communities. Bostering their own superannuation has always been the goal, not the success of indigenous communities.

Besides that from a couple of the 'Usual Suspects' who are instantly recognisable by their outpourings of venom and bile, the posts have been informative and constructive. I divide the issue into 3 sections,
The past, the present and the future.
As a society, and as a nation it is important for Australia to understand what happened in the past, what the situation is at present, and what steps can be taken for the future. If we deny the past, and are judgmental about the present, then the chances for many Aboriginal people to secure a decent future are negligible. We are not going to get total bipartisan agreement on any of those things, but we must do our best. The well documented wounds of the past needed to be recognised, and the Rudd apology was an important step to achieving reconciliation between Australia the nation, and its indigenous people.
At present many Aboriginal people continue to suffer from marginalisation, poor self esteem, lack of opportunity, and all the other consequential effects of being disadvantaged.
The difficulty for the future is how does Australia overcome the problems of the present and allow Aboriginal people to obtain equality in every regard within Australian society, whilst maintaining their culture and traditions as a people. The most important participants in the future of Aboriginal people are Aboriginal people themselves, but they can not achieve a worthwhile future along, it requires the assistance of a great many people both Aboriginal and Non-Aboriginal.
If I have learned but one thing from my Maori partner, and her indigenous people, they are not the future and they are not (so)important, the tamariki (children) and what happens to them in the future is what is important.

Please stop calling aboriginal people the "first Australians". We don't know much about Australia's history before 1788, but it is quite possible that Australia was inhabited by another people when the first aborigines arrived. In addition, first Maoris definitely invaded New Zealand.

I don't say this out of malice, I just wish that this part of Australian history was better understood.

their outpourings of venom
Paul1405,
Why is it that you can be so shallow & call decades of personal experience, knowledge & insight, outpourings of venom. I put it to you that your posts on this subject are outpourings of extreme ignorance, blindness & utter shallowness.
I challenge you to work for three years in an indigenous community governed by Labor supporting bureaucrats & then come back & express your views. I guarantee you'd be doing 180's all round.
There is an immeasurable difference between what the leftie bureaucrats tell you in the Media & to what's really going on. If you cared to find out you'd be too ashamed to call yourself a leftie. That's another guarantee.

Dear SteeleRedux,

I want to add my Thanks for your last post
and for sharing your experience concerning the
apology with us. It was a momentous moment for
so many people. The historian, Henry Reynolds,
pointed out the observation that many Australians
felt that they had been poorly served by their
teachers and by the nation's historians. They
weren't told the truth about the past and felt they
were denied information,, interpretation, and
understanding.

However it is now possible to explore the past by
means of large numbers of books, articles, films,
novels, songs and paintings. Many voices have now
filled out the space once claimed as the "Great
Australian Silence."

But as Henry Reynolds tell us we can know a great
deal about the history of Indigenous-Settler relations.
But knowing brings burdens which can be shirked by
those living in ignorance. With knowledge the question is
no longer what we know but what we are not to do, and
that is a much harder matter to deal with. As Reynolds
says - it will continue to perplex us for many years to
come.

Dear Poirot,

As always your input is greatly appreciated.

Well Indi,

As a long time resident of inner Sydney which has one of the largest Aboriginal communities in Australia, I do indeed have personal knowledge of Aboriginal people and their lives, in fact I have some Aboriginal blood myself, stemming from relatives on my mothers side, which is neither here nor there in this discussion. Some of those inner city Aboriginals are friends to both myself and my partner, we were recently invited to a 21st for the daughter of one of those friends. Many of the bands we like to see are well attended by Islanders, Maori's, a few Aboriginals and us "Europeans". My partner has a great interest in all indigenous cultures and has done much to learn first hand about the indigenous cultures that exists around the Pacific including Australia. We spend a lot of time traveling and find many indigenous people have similar issues, the greatest issue for many has been their dispossession from the land.
I am no more an expert on this matter than you are.

Dear Paul,

The historian Henry Reynolds has made several
observations that are worth noting. He points
out that the educational standards of the
young people are far higher than those of their
parents who grew up on remote settlements or
cattle stations. They have had longer and better
schooling. Hundreds of Indigenous students from
all over North Queensland have passed successfully
through university and colleges. Many local
Indigenous organisations - schools, medical and
legal services, a media company and radio station,
housing cooperatives, cultural societies - have
sprung up in the last generations. Some have failed
amid accusations of incompetence and mismanagement, but
others have been highly successful and have provided
invaluable experience in leadership and administration.

Young Aborigines and Islanders often say that nothing
has changed over the last several decades. That things
are as bad as ever. However, Reynolds points out that
this undersells both the achievements of their own
community and the policies pursued by local, state and
national goivernments. Their impatience and
frustration is in itself a sign of change. They are far
less resigned and submissive than their parents'
generation. They know no deference. They are self-confident,
assured, and politically aware, and won't be pushed
around or patronised by anyone.

Reynolds can remember political meetings he attended over
thirty years ago where not a single Indigenous person
could be persuaded to stand up and speak in public.

Nowadays articulate and forceful orators abound. They know all
the ways in which to command an audience. It is the tentative,
anxious Whites today who are now uncertain about speaking
and afraid of giving offence. And that is n good thing - as
we saw on the "Q and A," program on Monday night.
There is hope in the future.

Foxy,

Thanks for that, if only you could meet my partners niece in NZ. Well educated, very good job, articulate, knowledgeable, cultured, you name it she has got it, and a really beautiful person to boot, with no malice, no anger towards anyone. I have had long discussions of a political nature with her and she knows what she is talking about when it comes to her own peoples situation. I told her to run for parliament as a member of The Maori Party, she said no, too many other things she can do at the moment, besides she is only in her 20's. She loves it when aunty comes over, a great time for them both, a time to "catch up" speak language, niece learns much from aunty, about Maori customs, history and protocols etc. We'll be over there in about a weeks time. Niece is very much like aunty, but better educated. If you knew my partners story from her childhood you would expect her to hate the European, but just the opposite has no bitterness what so ever. I don't think I could be that way, under the circumstances.

I agree with Yuyutsu, nobody owns this country - the country owns us - but in terms of the first living creatures here in what many now call Australia, these were the native wildlife of Australia - and there homes were the natural environment - which was impacted upon with all human settlement

Where do I get this background from: being vegetarian - I don't like any person thinking Australia is there country - when it isn't. Go to: http://panique.com.au/trishansoz/animals/australia-animals.html and see why.

Utopia sends a message that many Aboriginal people are not doing well in Australia. I know this is false - as I have two Aboriginal nephews and other relatives from them - and I am of Australian, German, British, Scottish and French backgrounds - Anglo Saxon - there is no such country.

One nephew I have is living in a remote part of the Northern Territory and works as a Park Ranger. So many people seem to get only negative publicity in the media - from "make and sell" documentaries, authors or those who write newspaper articles. These people are paid - and no they are not charities - with some exceptions.

I was appalled with as the documentary, as it was not progressive, it did not highlight the issues facing ALL people living in outback areas of Australia and this documentary was simply a tool to make one person feel better - and push their one sided case. I know this I was selected to go on a study tour about five years ago to outback areas of South Australia - and saw many of the problems people face.

I saw a Documentary at the Adelaide Film Festival - titled "Peace One Day". The director attended the event, and got standing applause from all in the audience - http://www.peaceoneday.org/

@Foxy, Thursday, 12 June 2014 4:43:21 PM

It is disgusting and outrageous that you draw a specious parallel between 'the Warsaw Uprising in which 200,000 Poles were killed by German Nazis and 500,000 more were transported to concentration camps' and Australia's treatment of aboriginals.

@NathanJ, Friday, 13 June 2014 12:54:10 PM

You are right, 'Uptopia' is appalling. It is dishonest, especially for what it leaves out - which indirectly trashes the good work and good intentions of many, many people.

I have done a lot of travel around Australia and to remote areas and can confirm your observations.

What was it that the voters of Australia decided in 1967?

Is Mise,

1967?

There was a massive release of dung beetles.

Unfortunately though the dung beetles do not seem to be present in sufficient numbers to consume the dung produced by Pilger and the whining Left - or at least by the 'Progressive' leftists who claim to be Left and are an embarrassment to those old Lefties who must be turning in their graves.

The following link gives a critique of John Pilger's
film - "Utopia" by an Indigenous person.
It makes for interesting reading:

http://theconversation.com/review-pilgers-utopia-shows-us-aboriginal-australia-in-2014-21905

Regarding the apology - I was not equating atrocities
committed in Poland to those committed in Australia.
And to suggest that is absurd. What I was doing was -
merely trying to show the importance and symbolic relevance
an apology had and what it meant to the victims.
The emphasis was on the
apology.

Peter Costello tells us in his Memoirs
when writing about when John Howard opened the Reconciliation
Convention in Melbourne on 26 May 1997:

"...the audience wanted an acknowledgement that they
had been wronged by Government policy. Since the leaders
who had instituted and administered the policy were all long
out of office or long dead they wanted the people who could
speak in the name of the Government to acknowledge this past
wrong and apologise for it."

"The whole issue was symbolic... but a lot of politics is
symbolic...Jeff Kennett in
Victoria, Dean Brown in South Australia and Tony Rundle
in Tasmania all apologised to Aboriginal people on behalf
of their Governments. They dealt with the issue and moved
on... the federal Government symbolically lost. It was unable
to either resolve the issue or move beyond it."

"An apology was eventually given. It was one of the first
acts of the new Labor-Government elected in 2007.
... By getting the symbolism
right the previous Government could have saved a lot of
energy for the policies that would have delivered better
education or better health to Aborigines or lift Aboriginal
children out of poverty."

cont'd ...

Ooops - (he,he,he) I made a typo in the link I cited
in my previous post regarding John Pilger's
film "Utopia."

Here is the correct link:

http://theconversation.com/review-pilgers-utopia-shows-us-aboriginal-australia-in-2014-21965

the aboriginal woman was right that she was not the problem. I doubt as a woman she would of had any voice if still in the traditonal setting. The real problem is with the leftist history revisionist who ignore every evil in aboriginal culture and highlight and distort every 'evil ' done by the settlers. Pilger and his co horts are pathetic.

Foxy, "I was not equating atrocities committed in Poland to those committed in Australia."

Yes you were.

Why else would you go top the lengths you did to draw that dreadful, disgusting parallel?

In so doing you also diminish the dreadful atrocities committed by the Nazis.

many Australians
felt that they had been poorly served by their
teachers and by the nation's historians.
Foxy,
Although I agree with this I simply can't believe Reynolds said that. Was that said at a time when the guilt industry stocks were at their highest ?

Paul1405,
You have your experiences in suburbia & I have mine in the Bush, obviously totally different.

Dear Individual,

I am so glad that you asked about the statement
made by the historian Henry Reynolds and that you
are interested in the circumstances under which
that statement (and others) were made.

It came from the book that Henry Reynolds wrote,
"Why Weren't We told?: A personal search for the
truth about our history." I bought the book
whilst on a trip to Canberra. And I highly
recommend that you try to get hold of a copy.
It makes for interesting reading.

Here's just a snippet taken from it:

"Historian Henry Reynolds has found himself being asked
these questions by many people, over many years, in
all parts of Australia. The acclaimed, "Why Weren't We told?"
is a frank account of his personal journey towards the
realisation that he, like generations of Australians,
grew up with a distorted and idealised version of the past.
From the author's unforgettable encounter in a North
Queensland jail with injustice towards Aboriginal children,
to his friendship with Eddie Mabo, to his shattering of
the myths about our "peaceful" history, this bestselling
book will shock, move and intrigue. "Why Weren't We Told?"
is crucial reading on the most important debate in
Australia as we enter the twenty-first century."

Dear Is Mise,

Thank You for your question - "What was it that
the voters of Australia decided in 1967?"

The following link may help:

http://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/history/australian-1967-referendum

Dear individual,

What on earth is this?

“I challenge you to work for three years in an indigenous community governed by Labor supporting bureaucrats & then come back & express your views. I guarantee you'd be doing 180's all round. There is an immeasurable difference between what the leftie bureaucrats tell you in the Media & to what's really going on. If you cared to find out you'd be too ashamed to call yourself a leftie. That's another guarantee.”

Rubbish. You would have gone into that community with right wing views and, quite possibly through being in a subordinate position to a “leftie”, came out with all your prejudices intact and confirmed. Others would have gone in with quite different views and come out with quite different perspectives.

But what has this got to do with Nelson's speech? He felt he had to pander to the likes of you and thus might have diminished the day if it were not for the power of the occasion and the words of Kevin Rudd. Even he apologised later for parts of it. I walked past Wilson Tuckey that day on the upper balcony looking over those gathered in the foyer of the Parliament House. Hands on hips with an aggressive sneering attitude. He represented people like you but in the end you are a tiny minority.

Dear OTB,

Foxy most certainly did not intend to equate the Nazi's actions with the actions of early Australian settlers but then you know that, you really are far more concerned with getting under her skin than any imagined offence.

But I will make the connection loud and clear. The Aboriginal people as a race and a cultures suffered more devastation in relative terms from white settlement than the Jewish race and cultures did under the Holocaust.

To harbour any illusion that the opposite is true is a denial of facts.

Steele,
Your last statement is not only misleading it's immoral.
Jews were not an "oppressed" group in Germany before 1933 they were in many respects one of the most powerful, what's more they had no rightful historical claim to those positions of influence and actually did much to undermine and wreck the German nation. The moves made against them by the Nazis were in the context of their eliminating a powerful rival in the drive to dominate Europe with a new Aryan aristocracy, Hitler most definitely did not see Jews as materially or intellectually inferior to Aryans, it was all to do with race and "blood".
Indigenous Australian society was unintentionally destroyed by diseases which caused a collapse in their birthrate, no children equals no future, no future equals despair. There was no plan to remove them from the continent, they were not considered rivals in any sense of the word and they were portrayed by the media as inferior and backward. "White Settlement" didn't cause the collapse of Aboriginal societies, Typhus, Influenza and Measles aren't "White dieseases" and at the time of colonisation there were oral histories recorded of previous epidemics among Aboriginals.
Whatever the Nazis did to the Jews from 1941-44 was done in the name of Aryan only Lebensraum in Eastern Europe, what was going on in Australia in the 19th century had nothing to do with race in that sense, what's more the most drastic of the negative impacts upon indigenous people were unintentional and largely unforseeable.

The stolen generation was in fact an act of genocide, today many of us have come to realise what a most shameful chapter in Australia's history it was. When I first heard of it I believed it was merely an "isolated" incident in our history, basically something that happened in WA back in the 1930's, may be the movie 'Rabbit Proof Fence' conveyed that notion to some extent. Nothing could be future from the truth, it was the forced removal of Aboriginal children by the authorities on a massive scale all over Australia from late 1800's to the 1970's. it purpose was in the belief Aboriginal children would be "better off" with white families or in institutions, and that eventual through breeding the Aboriginal race would simply disappear.
The Rudd apology was a most important act in both the recognition of what had happened and in the process of healing. It was not an apology for something that had happened in Captain Cook's time, but for something that was happening in my lifetime and certainly in our parents life time.

http://www.nsdc.org.au/stolen-generations/history-of-the-stolen-generations/the-history-of-the-stolen-generations

Paul,
There's no such thing as genocide and there were no "stolen" generations:
http://www.stolengenerations.info/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=54&Itemid=50
I know, I know, the mind of the Leftist is wired so it fills in the blanks and reads between the lines so you may think you've seen evidence of stolen generations just like you think you've seen evidence of gas chambers at Auschwitz because you've seen some fictional movies, read some fictional books and listened to interviews with people who have been proven to be lying or exaggerating.
No evidence means no evidence, it doesn't mean "cover up", it doesn't mean "whitewash" it means that claims of children being "stolen" on a supposedly genocidal scale cannot be verified.

Actually, evidence exists.

As historians Henry Reynolds (and others) point out -
"It is now possible to explore the past by means
of primary sources - large numbers of books, archival
material, articles, and so on." The information is
available at all National and State libraries for those
who don't wish to live in ignorance. There is much
documented material available. The evidence is
overwhelming.

Peter Costello tells us in his Memoirs -

"The Report, "Bringing Them Home," was published in 1997.
It tells harrowing stories of children taken from
their families. It is hard to imagine the trauma this
would cause a young chi8ld. It would scar them for life.
The report gave people who had been hurt or damaged
by their experiences the opportunity to tell their
stories. It helped the wider community understand what
they had been through."

Obviously not everyone is capable of understanding.

I wonder what reports there are on the half cast kids who the aboriginals themselves would not accept, reports on the affect of girls given to young uncles, the affects of tribal warfare etc etc. Just opening your eyes today speaks a thousand more words than 'history ' written to fit a narrative.

cont'd ...

The American prosecutors at Nuremberg decided the
best evidence against Nazi war criminals was the
record left by the Nazi German state itself.
This historical evidence was presented at Nuremberg
and can be found in libraries and museums around
the world.

Dear runner,

Thank You for your question, your interest and concern
regarding crimes committed against innocent children.
As many of us know - it took the courage of the
Crown Prosecutor for Central Australia, Nanette Rogers,
to break this silence in 2006. This led to an
investigation into sexual abuse and violence in the
Northern Territory. The results were released in June 2007
in a report called, "Little Children Are Sacred."
You should be able to get hold of a copy through your
local or state library.

Among my Aboriginal acquaintances are many who are very thankful that they were removed from the influence of their families and tribes.
Being raised in mainstream culture gave them the opportunity to realize their potential and to get a useful education, most are University Graduates and have gone on to successful careers.

May I suggest the following as informative reading,

Montagu, A. 1964. "Man's Most Dangerous Myth - the fallacy of race", (4th Edn.). The World Publishing Company, Cleveland.

also, his "Coming Into Being Among the Australian Aboriginies".

Foxy,
"Stolen generations" is nothing more than a Communist talking point:
http://www.stolengenerations.info/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=64&Itemid=19
If you believe that the Nuremberg trials were fair and unbiased or that millions of people were gassed to death with diesel exhaust and pesticide there's nothing I can do to help you because you're choosing to believe Stalinist propaganda instead of using your brain and looking at the world as it really is.
Foxy,Rhrosty do you trust Stalin's propaganda on all other matters?
Why are you making Stalinist propaganda the central point of your argument?
What REALLY happened to the Jews in Eastern Europe from 41-44 and what REALLY happened to Aboriginals during colonisation cannot be compared to one another and using the loaded term "Genocide" to describe the latter case is nothing short of the most vile racial slur against my ethnic group.

@Foxy, Saturday, 14 June 2014 11:30:55 AM

You continue to draw a parallel with the atrocities carried out by Nazi war criminals, while shamelessly denying that you do so.

As well, you cherry-pick to support your lunar Far Left mantras, while citing the 'Little Children' report as though it supports your rotten fabrications to disrespect Australians, past and present.

You have been wasting your time and that of others with your very jaundiced opinions of your fellow Aussies for a very long time on this forum and doubtless elsewhere as well. What is also evident is that many patient and well-meaning posters on this forum have gone to considerable lengths to query your way-out beliefs. Your awful opinions of Australians and the posts that challenge your rigid opinions and set you straight are in the hundreds, probably thousands by now, but who would bother to count?

To repeat, it is an absolute disgrace that you distort available facts to suit your negative stereotyping of Australians and go to the extent of diminishing the Holocaust.

Dear Is Mise,

Thank You for your book references.
I shall look into them.

Historian Henry Reynolds, (who I've cited earlier)
does tell us that "the educational standards of the
young people are far higher than those of their parents
who grew up on remote settlements or cattle stations.
They have had longer and better schooling. Hundreds of
Indigenous students from all over North Queensland
have passed successfully through universities and colleges..."

As Reynolds points out, "Many things have changed since
1965. Much has been achieved. Tolerance and understanding
have broadened out. Bigotry is in retreat. But the
racist past still weighs heavily on the present and might
yet destroy any hope of reconciliation in this generation.
Black arm-band history is often distressing, but it does
enable us to know and understand the incubus which burden
us all."

Dear Jay,

The evidence used at Nuremberg came from the German State
and their records were meticulous.

Foxy,
On October 18, 1945, the opening session of the Nuremberg Trial (also known as the International Military Tribunal) began and on November 20, the indictments were read. Though 24 men stood accused, only 21 were at the trial. (Robert Ley had committed suicide before the trial began; Gustav Krupp was considered too frail to stand trial; and Martin Bormann was missing but tried in absentia.)

Each of the accused were charged with one or more of the following:

Count I: Conspiracy to Wage Aggressive War
Count II: Crimes Against Peace
Count III: War Crimes
Count IV: Crimes Against Humanity

Crimes against humanity were defined as:
"Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated".

The Western allies had a paper trail for all charges except "extermination" because they did not discover any alleged "extermination" centres, all of the documentation of people being poisoned with common insecticide or diesel exhaust come from evidence supplied by the Soviet Union.
All of the charges except mass killings by gassing have some basis in fact, nobody would say otherwise but since you and Rhrosty insist on conflating the crimes of Nazism with the settlement of Australia I'm honour bound to point out that you're wrong, moreover someone who knowingly promotes an idea which is wrong is a liar.
So Foxy, I'm asking you to stop lying and stop using Stalinist propaganda to back your lies, it's immoral.

Foxy,

You neglect to mention that the Pilger view of things (it isn't history or fact is it?!) has received - to put it very kindly - very mixed reactions from Aborigines themselves. For example, Warren Mundine, Chair of the Indigenous Advisory Council, has criticised aspects of the John Pilger documentary, Utopia. Mr Mundine said that Australia "is no more racist than anywhere else" and some of the film’s themes are no more than "baseless conspiracy theories".

In all of your Googling you didn't find anything like that of course, which says heaps about where you are coming from. Then you draw a parallel with the atrocities carried out by Nazi war criminals, while shamelessly denying that you do so.

You, your guru Pilger and others of your Far Left ilk have no solutions. Worse, you are part of the problem because you apparently serve your own secondary agenda, otherwise you would recognise the major work done over decades by the many indigenous and others, that has achieved and is achieving very positive results.

Jay, you say <<there were no "stolen" generations>> and go on to link to the Keith Windschuttle, commentary as the proof. Mr Windschuttle draws a rather long bow, firstly citing the film 'The Rabbit Proof Fence' as being the "most influential outlet" for proving the claim that there were stolen generations, that claim in itself is rather questionable. To debunk the claims of stolen generations, Windschuttle calls into question the films portrayal of 'Molly, Gracie and Daisy' be referring to "reporting" by an unnamed wife of a local pastoralist of Molly and Gracie as having sex with the white workers who maintained the rabbit-proof fence. If this reporting was true and if the films producers took artistic license with the truth, and they may well have, on that score and others in the film, that in itself does not disprove the claims of many others not associated with any hit movie that the stolen generations did in fact take place.
By innuendo, calling into question "evidence of gas chambers at Auschwitz" does nothing for you argument. A mass genocide often questioned, but who would take the "evidence" of fanatical ultra right lunatics, people who would also claim Hitler was a good blokey, not me.

Dear Jay,

The following link may help clarify things for you:

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007271

Now back to the topic ...

Here is a link giving a review of John Pilger's film -
"Utopia" by an Aboriginal man which is interesting.
It's one I cited earlier:

http://theconversation.com/review-pilgers-utopia-shows-us-aboriginal-australia-in-2014-21965

And this link is one that sums things up rather nicely:

http://www.news.com.au/national/rosalie-kunothmonks-inspires-with-her-speech-i-am-not-the-problem/story-fncynjr2-1226949124486

Dear Paul,

The following link on Mr Windshuttle may be
of interest:

http://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/F/Fabrication.htm

Jay,

There is doubt that Rudolph Hess was in fact one of the 21 that you mention.

Foxy,

It is reasonable that young Aborigines should model themselves on the very successful Rosalie Kunoth-Monks and Dr Marcus Waters. There are many others like them too and in all walks of modern life including sports.

You acknowledge their existence and clip quotes where it suits your own Far Left agenda, but of course your sad world view and ideology blind you to the opportunities that were made available to them and how, the personal choices that have got them where they are now, and their chosen lifestyles.

What do you say prevents others from doing the same?

....Wait a bit, many as in thousands are doing precisely that. They are taking up the opportunities that are out there and the choices are their own. No one is forcing anyone to do anything. How many have completed and are presently completing tertiary study for example? Any of their Aussie countrymen would say to them, "Good on you mate, go for it!".

You, Pilger and the Far Left are lost in a time warp. You are the problem. You need to change. First, open both eyes.

Thanks Foxy, yes one can certainly see a "trend" with Mr Windschuttle and the "evidence" he presents about Aboriginal people.
You know of course The Roman Empire never existed, its all a Leftest/Stalinist/Communist plot by Jews to lumber them with the crucifixion of Christ, just as they invented the Holocaust so they could paint Hitler as a bad fella. Those arch communist Joseph Starlin and Harry Truman conspired in 1945 to put good law abiding people like Hermann Goering on trial for war crimes they never committed during a war that never happened.
Talk about flat earth people, we have a couple of doozy's here.

Dear Paul,

We've certainly got a few humdingers I agree.

I've been doing more research on the topic of our
Indigenous people and there's heaps out there. But one thing
is becoming clear that those who live in towns or the
major metropolitan centres have been much more successful
in health, education and income than those in remote
communities.

Peter Costello in his memoirs points out that "You can hardly
fail to notice the very high proportion of Indigenous players
in the various football codes, especially the Australian
Football League(AFL). These talented footballers are highly
paid. Their success has given them great pride and set a
good example for young Indigenous people...The AFL has done a
great job in encouraging Indigenous players. These players
do not make the grade because of any special preference;
the clubs recruit them on the basis of talent. They are in a
highly competitive league that wants the most talented players.
It so happens that a disproportionate number are Indigenous."

Costello then points out that - "...Engaging the Indigenous
people in the economic mainstream, giving them the opportunity
to join it, educating them in a way that will help them
join it, are all fundamental to solving the problems of low
life expectancy, bad health and disadvantage generally.
There is a lot of goowill among Australians. With the right
leadership they will work towards that solution."

And talking about football here is a link on what a famous
player and Australian of The Year had to say about
John Pilger's film "Utopia." :-

http://www.racismnoway.com.au/teaching-resources/anti-racism-activities/focus/utopia-pilger.html

Well if nothing else we've demonstrated why there is this ill will toward and jealousy of Aboriginals and minorities in general among uneducated White people.
Uneducated doesn't mean stupid, White people can understand that all the academics, all politicians and journalists in this country, ie the people who are supposed to be the leadership group and who are supposed to be the stewards of the nation subscribe to a set of values which run directly counter to the interests of the majority.
The part they can't understand is how immigrants, Aboriginals and Gays are simply being cynically used by these educated castes so they naturally see Aboriginals as privileged when they're actually not.
How can you people call White settlement a "genocide" and say it was worse than the events in Europe during WW2 then expect such statements to further enhance understanding and co-operation between Aboriginals and Whites?
You're insincere, you're liars and you're attitudes are the biggest impediment to harmony and social cohesion.
The only reconciliation we need in this society is to reconcile the educated castes with reality, with the majority viewpoints and majority values, if they fail to adapt then we need to remove them from their positions altogether.

Dear Paul1405,

Ah you are a better man than I my friend. You have sought to deal with these three amigos with humour. I dip the brim to you good sir because I will admit to have mostly lost that capacity quite a ways back. You see all I can find in front of me is a holocaust denier, a virtual stalker who is a persistent bit of unpleasantness, and a zealot who appears to determinedly bring up sex with young girls in almost ever post he makes on this forum be it in regards to Muslims, Aboriginals or whomever. Really creepy stuff.

Just thinking of them as them right wing bigots is being totally disrespectful to those fine folk who proudly tout that label.

In fact individual where are you? Come on back son, in the light of day and after a decent ale you really ain't half bad. You certainly are not as nicked in the head as this lot, nor are you intent on creeping people out.

What is somewhat intriguing is the fact that these three actually try to lecture the rest of us about moral behaviour.

Now what were Julia's words...?

Pilger’s polemic fails Australia and Aborigines
"..The film cannot rightly be called ‘documentary’ or ‘journalism’ if those words are still to have any standards attached to them. It does not ask questions, other than ones Pilger thinks he knows the answers to and to which he can lead his interviewee. It does not seek out or fairly treat a single dissenting point of view. It does not recognise complexity. It has all the irksome smugness – and the sing-song voice to boot – of a man in a pulpit who is quite sure of being right.

Aboriginal Australians are represented overwhelmingly as victims, none more so than the residents of the Utopia homelands in the Northern Territory. We see only the worst of their humpies and shelters, and they are allowed to take on representative status, standing in for other remote communities at a time when there has been an unprecedented government effort, however flawed, in remote housing provision. The only Aboriginal resident of Utopia asked to speak is shamelessly led to give the answers Pilger wants.

We see none of the recent investment in the area – for example, the multi-million dollar middle school. We are told nothing of household incomes (Indigenous households in Utopia – average size 5.6 persons – have a median income of $749 per week, according to 2011 Census data). We hear a lot about ill health and the threats to health from a health professional, but get no enquiry into why many Aboriginal people have not adopted the domestic and personal hygiene practices required for living in houses (it’s a little more complicated than having the hardware perfectly set up). We also do not hear at all about the health research that showed people from the Utopia homelands to be doing rather better than their NT remote community peers, with, for example, an adult mortality rate from all causes consistently lower by about 40%. This kind of information would be far too confounding for Pilger’s victim model...."

An article worth reading. Here is the link,
http://www.alicespringsnews.com.au/2014/01/27/pilgers-polemic-wide-of-the-mark-on-australia-and-aborigines/

Thanks Foxy for the Peter Costello comments, Costello does a good job of stating the obvious, peering through the window and telling us of the good that he sees. be it through football, but good never the less. Costello then goes on to speak of "Engaging the Indigenous people in the economic mainstream, giving them the opportunity to join..." fine sentiments as well, and a most desirable ambition, to me the failure for some, seems to be that despite all the good intentions of the past, which have produced some spectacular successes, too many have fallen through the cracks. I am a firm believer in education as the key to the future success of people, I must add here how sometimes I am astounded at how well "educated" some people are, people who can't basically read and write. Adam Goodes, a fine Australian, and I was most interested to read the link you posted.

Jay, I can't agree with the cynical line that there are all these political and journalistic people out there who <<subscribe to a set of values which run directly counter to the interests of the majority.>>, there may well be some, but all, and what is exactly the interest of the majority. You refer to the "leadership group" in Australia, which incidentally is very much from the moderate right of politics. At times you vehemently attack the left on this. and other issues, but from the above you seem to be attacking the moderate right, politically I think you are, and I may well be dead wrong on this, from the ultra extreme right. Who is saying <<(Aboriginal) "genocide" was worse than the events in Europe during WW2>>?

cont'

cont'

SteeleRedux, I know where you are coming from and what you are saying about others is 100% correct. My advice is simply put forward your line of argument in the way you do, which is both accurate and forceful, remembering a strong attack is always the best defense. Then simply apply the 'armadillo' defense, if they can't get through they can hurt you, metaphorically speaking.

Beach, a nice read from Kieran FIinnane in the Alice Springs News, but that's all it is. Kieran, and by default you, are applying the 'plane crash' defense. Where a plane has crashed killing 247 passengers, Kieran and you then chime in with "This is wonderful
news, just wonderful, 3 people have survived unscathed." Highlighting the good in no way diminishes the bad. Nor is highlighting the good a legitimate reason to ignore the bad.

Steele,
World War Two wouldn't even be a part of this discussion if not for the attitudes of the Left, their whole argument here is built around Soviet propaganda.
Do you regard people like Stalin,Lavrenti Beria, Vassily Grossman and the like as credible sources of information?
The stories of twenty million people (yes twenty was the original soviet claim) being poisoned with insecticide and diesel exhaust are not true so we're left with the truth of the what the Nazis did.
They and their allies enslaved, deported, brutalised and maltreated millions of their captives and they murdered possibly hundreds of thousands of people, there were people working in those camps who were so depraved and corrupt that they were actually arrested and executed by the SS.
We know what happens in prison camps during wartime and we know the types of men and women who either gravitate to that field of work or who are assigned to such places. Remember this?
http://www.democratic-republicans.us/images/abu-ghraib-lyndie-english.jpg
Nothing like the Nazi Lebensraum projects occurred in Australia, White settlement bears no relationship to events under the Third Reich and to say otherwise is a disgusting and what's more counterproductive racial slur upon my ethnic group.
The opposite of "Racism" isn't "Anti Racism", it's honesty and integrity

"Why Weren't We told?
Foxy,
I have heard about that book & didn't get simply because it was written by Reynolds. Never mind,
Do the relevations include how much Reynolds made out of the guilt industry over the decades ? It'd be very interesting to the indigenous I magine.

Rubbish.
steelereedux,
Well, you might call the destructive manipulation of indigenous communities as rubbish, I dont !
What's Wilson the Turkey got to do with the sincerety of Nelson's speech ?

Some people understand & appreciate the difference between integrity & sincerety. Some are just led by their warm'n fozzy feeling of believing they're doing good by marching.
Meanwhile the Labor voting bureaucrats are systematically ruining all chances of indigenous communities to make progress.

Dear Individual,

What did Henry Reynolds get out of the books he's
written, you ask? Well I imagine his uncompromising approach
to unravelling our past must have given him tremendous
satisfaction as a teacher. Especially his contribution to
the Reconciliation debate by inspiring readers to actively
seek out knowledge and understanding about Indigenous history.

Reynolds was also the Winner of the 1999 Australian Human
Rights Award For The Arts. In addition to praising the work of
Henry Reynolds for its literary merit, the judges admitted the
author's skill in communicating his own uncomfortable feelings
as an awareness of past and present injustices occurred.
They felt that many Australians would relate to Henry Reynolds'
early experiences of not knowing enough about the past.
They felt, as I stated earlier that his work will contribute
greatly to the Reconciliation debate by inspiring readers to
actively seek out knowledge and understanding about
Indigeous history.

Of course as Reynolds has pointed out - knowing brings burdens
which can be shirked by those living in ignorance. With
knowledge the question is no longer what we know but what we
are not to do, and that is a much harder matter to deal
with. It will continue to perplex us for many years to come.

Foxy,
I'm aware of Reynolds but have out of principle not purchased any of his writings. He denounces everything the invaders did but he doesn't denounce his very own existence here being born & raised & having made a career paid for by taxpayers' money on indigenous land.
There are many guilty invaders in Australia & many of them aren't anglo-saxon but no mention is ever made of them just as there are many indigenous of less than pure character & no mention is made of them. No, it's only the whities who are so bad, in fact so bad that they've gone head over heals in making conditions better for everyone but hey, that's not good enough for the hangers-on academics, bureaucrats & mixed race, who are so absorbed in the tearing on old scabs & totally disregarding that it's the white rednecks who make their very existence without effort possible by wasting good money on the hangers-on.
In genuine historical circles Reynolds does command all that much respect.

I've just come across a chapter by Henry Reynolds
that I'd like to share:

"Having lived in provincial north Australia for more
than thirty years, I have never doubted that racism
continues to be a powerful ever-present force. I was
not at all surprised by the sudden emergence of the
One Nation party or by the level of support it
received. But what seems to be the most significant thing
about contemporary Australia is not that racism is still
endemic; but that it is not more apparent than it is,
given its importance in the past and the almost universal
commitment to a white Australia right up to the 1960s."

"In the past thirty years the country has changed far more
rapidly than might have been expected. I think the retreat
from the racist heritage is far more noteworthy than its
surviving manifestations. But this is a hard case to argue
with young people, who often combine a laudable rejection
of racism with a lack of sympathy for older Australians.
My students often ask how it was that people in the past
held such objectionable views, how they could be so
terrible. They have no understanding of just how pervasive
racial thought was a generation or two ago, how the
Second World War and the Holocaust maked an intellectual
watershed after which nothing would be the same again."

"And so they find it easy and natural to condemn those
older Australians who cling to ideas taught to them in far-
off days when they were young and which at the same time
were sanctioned by scholars, scientists and statesmen."

"Experience outside Australia also helps to sharpen the
perspective and season the judgement. It is obvious that
Indigenous and tribal peoples are badly treated in many
parts of the world. That in itself should never be
accepted as an excuse for what happens here. We must be
judged by standards we espouse and commitments we mouth.
But in many countries the leaders of minority groups are
silenced, imprisoned, tortured, murdered - or just ignored."

cont'd ...

Foxy,
That makes no sense at all.
How does forcing my ethnic group to take responsibility for this imagined "genocide" improve race relations?
Surely if it can be shown that no "genocide" occurred then that's better for everyone because anti Racists will have no atrocity porn with which to terrorise and traumatise upcoming generations of Aboriginal and White children.
From our perspective Anti Racism is the dividing wall in White/Indigenous relations, not race itself, it's anti racism and the values systems of the political and academic castes which cause resentment among Whites and because they always claim to speak for Aboriginals the ire of uneducated Whites is misdirected at Indigenous folk in general.
All the racial problems and misunderstandings in this country are the fault of the academic and political castes because they're spreading false information.What's more the solutions at the end of their problem/reaction/solution chain basically amount to blame, shame and prosecute, which only feeds racial animosity and conclusively demonstrates that Anti Racists have no interest in solving problems and are wholly invested in maintaining the status quo.

"Having lived in provincial north Australia for more
than thirty years, I have never doubted that racism
continues to be a powerful ever-present force.
Foxy,
I have & still reside in remote communities after 33 years & agree that racism is alive & well. However, in the communities it is the local population that harbours that dreadful mentality whilst the blue collar outsiders try their best to make things work but the local racism fostered by Labor bureaucrat ideaology & selfishness constantly thwarts that goodwill.

cont'd ...

"Indigenous Australians have achieved a prominence in
public life, a moral and discursive authority scarcely
matched anywhere. In a similar way Indigenous culture -
painting and design, literature, dance, drama - has a
prominence almost unrivalled elsewhere. That is a
tribute both to the leading figures of the Aboriginal
rennaissance and to Australian society as a whole,
which both welcomed and nurtured the upsurge of
creativity - although conscientious people continue to
worry about where appreciation ends and appropriation
begins."

"Discussion overseas soom makes it clear how important for
Australia the High Court's Mabo decision was. The word
Mabo has become known all over the world as a symbol of
the struggle of Indigenous people for land and justice.
I have heard the judgement praised by leading academics
in Canada, by prominent Indian leaders in the United
States, by Norway's Chief Justice, by the Chairman of
New Zealand's Waitangi Tribunal and by senior jurists in
South Africa. In Adelaide I met a delegation of young
Masai men and women from Kenya who had come to Australia
because they had heard of Mabo; they thought it would
help them in the struggle to retain control of their
traditional lands, which the government was granting to
others on the assumption that a nomadic lifestyle did not
establish true title to the soil."

"But assertion of terra nullius is not confined to Africa.
The Swedish courts have also determined that the Sami
people of the north have not acquired title to traditional
territory because reindeer borders could not be considered
to be in actual occuptation of the land. Like the Masai, the
Sami no doubt wish that the spirit of Mabo and Wik would
blow through their own courts."

There are many other aspects in Australia that attract
admiration (or concern) overseas. I would highly recommend
further research to anyone genuinely interested in these issues.
And, of course I also recommend the reading of the works of
Henry Reynolds - the blend of documentary evidence and
personal experience provides a powerful basis for his
arguments and makes for compelling reading.

Foxy,

That is a heck of a lot of broken record regurgitation.

You live somewhere in the distant past. It is a past you imagine to suit your own sense of entitlement and jaundiced world view of your fellow Australians. You, Pilger and the sad Trotskyist 'Watermelons' who cheer you on in your ignorance are the problems.

Here, get off your spreading rear and see for yourself the splendid people whose achievements none of you would recognise, or probably even know about. Look at the video on this site for a start, not as though you might take any advice from it of course, but for others who do not share your dismal and very wrong views,

http://caylus.org.au/news/
Scroll down to the video,
"Papunya Palya Lingku is a new video put together with the support of the Papunya community. This movie looks at some of the good things that have been happening in Papunya in recent years as a part of efforts to prevent youth substance misuse."

Honestly, how many years - it would be over a decade probably - have you been on OLO trotting out the same old ill-informed Trotskyist BS and doing your broken record to exasperate the well-meaning posters who tried to guide you out of your muddy swamp of ignorance? After all of those years you do not better than to draw a disgusting, wrong parallel between Nazi war crimes and the initiatives of Australian governments to recognise and assist Aboriginals.

Wow. Looks like we've got a troll attacking
on this site, and trying to derail meaningful
dialogue and control our conversation.

According to the web - trolls are mean, nasty
individuals who use online anonymity to
spread their own brand of hate, they try
to destroy reputations and generally spread lies.
They use internet anonymity to shed their veneer of
decency and show their ugly sides.
They distort comments thereby "justifying"
their actions.

We're more likely to win an argument with a tree, than with a
troll.

I suggest that this forum does not give them that power.
Lets simply continue on with the topic of this discussion.

If you are as concerned about indigenous and their welfare as you pretend to be and you are not about some secondary agenda, you would be most interested in the CAYLUS video and you would be moved to comment on it.

Here again,

http://caylus.org.au/news/
Scroll down to the video,
"Papunya Palya Lingku is a new video put together with the support of the Papunya community. This movie looks at some of the good things that have been happening in Papunya in recent years as a part of efforts to prevent youth substance misuse."

Foxy,
The slang term "Troll" doesn't refer to the figures in Germanic mythology who lived under bridges, it's origin is in the term "Trolling for suckers", trolling being a term associated with the sport of angling.
Nobody is trying to bait, bully or harass you here, you and your supporters have accused my entire ethnic group of Genocide and even worse than that suggested that our foundation as a nation on this continent was comparable to the Lebensraum project initiated by the Third Reich. If you and your confederates want to start an argument over world war two then expect a response, it's the most studied and hotly debated topic on the internet.
The charge of Genocide against my ethnic group is a lie because the very word itself is based on false premises and relies on Stalinist propaganda, there is no evidence that twenty million people were poisoned with commercial pesticides and diesel exhaust and there is no evidence of any such systematic extermination program in Australia.
When the manifold and well documented crimes of the Third Reich are laid out and shown in comparison to the events pertaining to indigenous Australians any assertions that they are somehow equivalent or even similar are shown to be the not only incorrect but malicious in their repetition over time.

Why do you think Israelis get so angry when Leftists accuse them of genocide or make snide remarks about "Nazis"? In fact go onto an Israeli Youtube channel or blog and start slinging your Leftist hash, then see what sort of a response you get.
Even disregarding the Stalinist propaganda the crimes of the Third Reich stand out as exceptional, a one off for the modern era if you will, what they were able to do with the teeming millions under their control had not been seen since the days of the Caesars or of the Mohammedan's sack of the classical world.

Dear Jay,

Kindly go back and re-read my posts
on this discussion. The accusations that you
are trying to make are totally unsupported by
what I've actually said.

What did Henry Reynolds get out of the books he's
written, you ask?
Foxy,
Well, apart from his satisfaction to have so many like yourself sucked in, I was referring to actual Dollars he made from Government funded projects & the very handsome Superannuation he & his leftie missus are now living on better than most people who made a living via genuine integrity.

Dear Individual,

With all due respect you have no way of knowing
anything about Mr Reynold's private life and income.
And you even aren't in a position to comment on his
work - not having read any thing the man has written.
Therefore your statements sound like those made by
a vacuous, unthinking person. They lack credibility.
No offence intended.

So Jay Of Melbourne how would you feel if someone came and destroyed your culture and language and way of life and called you a problem?
mikk,
you know this question is impossible to answer without instigating a stir of massive proportion. Can you please re-phrase that so that we can answer without causing more never ending feigned indignation ?

Historian Henry Reynolds tells us -

"Like practically all Australians of my generation I
found that at school, national history was
overwhelmingly about explorers. We read or were told
of the crossing of the Blue Mountains; we heard of the
noble Sturt and his voyage along the Murray, of Eyre's
epic journey across the Nullarbor and of the tragic fate
of Burke and Wills. We wrote projects and drew pictures
and charts. On national maps we marked the assorted
expeditions as they uncovered the mysteries of the inland.
In the back of my primary-school atlas was a series of maps
illustrating the progress of exploration. In the beginning
the map of the continent was black apart from a pinpoint
of yellow representing the settlement of Sydney Cove.
As the expeditions ventured forth by land and sea, the
area of yellow grew and the black contracted away into
the most remote corners of the continent."

"By these means we learnt that the explorers were the heroes
of our history. The achievements of each expedition were
always seen as those of the leader. I'm not sure we even
knew how many other people accompanied Sturt or Mitchell or
Oxley. We were told of of the faithful 'black boys' who
travelled with Eyre and who tried to save the hapless
Kennedy in the jungles of Cape York, but we had no idea
that Aborigines were the advisers, the consultants, whose
skill and knowledge made all the difference between success
and failure."

"Coming back to the history of exploration many years
later and reading systematically through all the
published accounts of expeditions, I saw the whole scene
with new eyes. I quickly appreciated that the often
nameless 'black boys' played a critical role in almost
every expedition and that this had been so from the very
beginning."

Enough has been said to show how grossly unfair it is
to say that Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders had
no part in the pioneering and development of Australia,
that the European settlers did it all themselves.
With knowledge - tolerance, and understanding
broadens out.

Foxy,
How watered down in a genetic sense can a person be before they should morally stop describing themselves as a member of a particular ethnic group.
Are you merely judging their ethnicity by their complexion, by their claims or are you actually taking their family tree into consideration ?
In case you're wondering why I'm asking, I'm asking because I see many who are lighter than me, have been in the area for a short time only yet they claim indigenous status on every Govt form. Then there are those whose roots are from New Caledonia or Samoa but they claim indigenous status. Then there are those who denounce their white tradesmen fathers & claim indigenous status. There are those of Malay or Chinese or Philipino or Indonesian background but they claim indigenous status.
Tell me Foxy how the community should view such people when claiming indigenous status yet those of european descent can not despite the fact that they can prove much longer residency in remote area.
I see people awarded some indigenous achievement when even their grand parents aren't indigeous but they're of the complexion of the indigenous.
Doesn't integrity account for anything anymore ?

Foxy,
That's...err.. a weird quote, are we seriously expected to believe that there were so called "educated" people who were unaware of the level of co-operation between Aboriginals and the early settlers and the friendships they formed while droving or exploring?
From the excerpts you've given us this Reynolds character remained plug ignorant until adulthood and was unaware of aspects of history that the rest of us learned as children. How could anyone be "amazed" to learn about Kennedy or Eyre and their "trackers", or for that matter the stories of Truganini, Aeneas Gunn and Eliza Fraser?
I don't know where most of you went to school but we were taught about Aboriginal culture and their place in colonial history. There were plenty of Aboriginal kids at both my primary and tech schools and there was never any teasing or "Racism", there were no special programs for them and in many cases I had no idea they were from an Aboriginal background until much later on, it just wasn't an issue.
As Morgan Freeman famously said when asked in an interview what we need to do to stop "Racism" he snapped back "Stop talking about it":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeixtYS-P3s

Foxy, as someone over 60 I can attest to what you say above as being the truth as to how Australian history was portrayed in our schools at least till the end of the 1960's. Australian history began in 1770 with Captain Cook. Oh yes, there were a few foreigners like Able Tasman who sailed by beforehand, but were too dumb to know what they were looking at. Until Albert Namatjira started painting those landscapes of his, there were only ever 2 Aboriginals of note on the Australian continent, Bennelong who hung around with Governor Phillip, and Jackey Jackey who was like an Australian Tonto, hung around with the Australian Lone Ranger Edmund Kennedy.

Paul 1405,
Ah, well you see I'm only a whipper snapper of forty six, I started school in 1973.
Your post explains a lot about your generation's attitudes toward race and how these things are suddenly "discovered" by people of a certain age. I've known nothing but multiculturalism my whole life, I have no memory of the old Australia and your post is something of a revelation in itself, I had no idea that things were as you've described.
That begs the question though, why should we listen to people your age talk about race? It doesn't seem like a good idea to trust our elders on these matters if you're still learning at sixty what we all understood at sixteen.

Jay, one is never too old to learn. and remember "Einstein plus an Idiot is smarter than Einstein on his own." So you can indeed learn from an idiot.
I am pleased to hear your knew it all at 16. I thought I knew it all at 16 to, but when I got to about 25 I realised I didn't, and when I got to about 46 I realised I didn't know it all at 25 either, and when I got to 60 I realised I did know it all at 46 as well. In fact I don't think I'll ever know it all. even if I live to be a 100.
One thing I have learned is never confuse Political Philosophy with History, they are two entirely different subjects. Some people have a bad habit of confusing the two. Especially when history might be inconvenient when it comes to their own political philosophy.

Paul, yeah I didn't start my "examined life" until about ten years ago, after we had the kids these social issues really took on a new dimension.
Hey a comrade and I want to look a bit deeper into this issue of who knew what and when, so to speak. I know it's along time ago but you wouldn't happen to recall the names of any of the textbooks you had at school? We want to look them up in the university or national library collections and compare them to the course materials used today so any keywords or fragments of titles would be a help.

Dear Individual,

The following link may help answer your question:

http://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/people/aboriginal-identity-who-is-aboriginal

Dear Paul,

Henry Reynolds talks about what people of his generation
were taught at primary school and of course you'd have
to read his work to get the full picture. It makes for
interesting reading. Still I wonder how much people today
really know about the contribution or the size of the
Indigenous labour force in those early pioneering days.
As Reynolds tells us "the labour was very cheap and the
workers could be co-erced with fist, boot, stockwhip and
revolver without fear of social opprobrium or legal action.
The gap between the productivity of black labour and the
return to the Indigenous worker was striking."

"In modern-day terms, Indigenous labour must have
contributed tens of millions od dollars to white bosses
and to the settler economy as a whole. One day someone
should attempt to estimate just how much that figure
might have been."

Reynolds tells us a great deal of the exploitation of
Aboriginal workers - especially in the pastoral industry.
he speaks about the fact that the industry owed a
profound debt to Aboriginal Australia which has never
been acquitted. This Reynolds feels is due to the fact
that many graziers either don't know or deny this history.
He recalls the deep sense of injustice he felt
when he first visited the Stockman's Hall of Fame at
Longreach, which for a long time scarcely mentioned
Aborigines. He says, "Even now there is no real
indication there of the critical role played by black
labour in the foundation and survival of the industry."

It was at the Hall of Fame that graziers from many parts of
Australia gathered in 1997 to demand that the Prime Minister
legislate to extinguish all Aboriginal rights over the land
held under pastoral leases. The cultural links between
Indigenous people and land had survived all the trauma of
colonisation - but what the graziers were asking would
sever these links with just one new law."

Dear Paul1405,

As a primary aged kid in the NT in the early 70s I spent nearly three years at a school where about a third of the students were indigenous. I certainly can't remember any racial tension only that if things ever came to blows then the Aboriginal kids stuck by each other. Some of them were obviously from families who were doing it tough but there were more than a few white kids in the same boat.

I also remember a clan/tribe who lived near the mangrove swamp around from us. Only some of those kids came to school but more than a few spent their time fishing, hunting and playing instead. I recall being envious wishing I could do the same.

The thing is it didn't matter how many indigenous mates you had in school you really didn't mix with them much outside those hours. The only time I did talk a mate into dropping in on the way back from school I could see he was terrified and likewise I knew I would have got a belting if I had gone to the camp he was from. The unspoken rules of that period seemed to emanate from the adults of both groups.

Dear Foxy,

We are on holidays at the moment and we recently called into an exhibition at the Ballarat Art Gallery titled For Auld Lang Syne. celebrating “the role played by Scots in development of the Australian nation from the First Fleet to Federation”. Having lots of Scottish ancestry I found it particularly interesting.

One of the points raised by the guide was the clearances of vast tracts of land of Aborigines particularly in Queensland. She noted that many of the Scots were complicit in the removal of so many of indigenous folk had been themselves victims of the 'Highland Clearances' where a shift from cropping by 'Crofters' to sheep saw thousands ripped from their lands.

“The clearances are particularly notorious as a result of the brutality of many evictions at short notice (year-by-year tenants had almost no protection under Scots law), and the abruptness of the change from the traditional clan system, in which reciprocal obligations between the population and their leaders were well-recognized. The cumulative effect of the Clearances devastated the cultural landscape of Scotland in a way that did not happen in other areas of Britain; the effect of the Clearances was to destroy much of the Gaelic culture. The Clearances resulted in significant emigration of Highlanders to the sea coast, the Scottish Lowlands, and further afield to North America and Australasia. In the early 21st century, more descendants of Highlanders are found in these diaspora destinations than in Scotland.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highland_Clearances

History is written by the victors, just as the history of WW2 was by and large written by the victorious side, the allies, the history of Australia has also been written by the victors, and who were the victors, that is plain to see, it was not the Aboriginals, that;s for sure.
It would be asking too much to expect the historical record to be nothing more that a bland account of events, people, places, times and dates etc, that would be asking far to much, it's far too important for that. History has to reflect our culture, our values, and who better to give that account than us, the victors. If history should contain inconvenient truths, then we can simply gloss over them, or modify them or simply ignore them. I think in regards to indigenous Australians there was a lot of that inconvenient truth and we did in fact gloss over it, or modify it, or simply ignore it. Those today who question the official account from the past, are seen as rabble rouses, and trouble makers, lefties no less! The war goes on.

Foxy,
I am aware of the situation re your link, I live it daily. It does come in very handy to claim something that can't be proven, like secret women's business or what I feel inside. I suppose the entitlements have a lot to do with it. I know that a 4% bank loan interest is much less preferable to say, 12 %. Free education too I'm sure would be knocked back in favour of paying for it. Legal aid paid for by the victim is also something that would not be accepted if it weren't legislated. The integrity is boundless.

Yes Steele, I've got Irish ancestry on my mother's side and yet there's no "clan memory" of the famines, the slave raids and the massacres.
This idea that successive generations re-live past trauma is deeply rooted in Judeo Christian mythology, in reality there's no such thing, no memories of slavery among the American Negroes or of the epidemics which devastated Aboriginal societies.

Paul,

The historical record of the Myall Creek massacre in NSW is there for all to see in recorded Australian history as is the subsequent trials and executions of some of the offenders, both white and black.

Do we owe other records of the mistreatment of Aboriginals to their written records?

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_of_Indigenous_Australians
for a reasonable list.

Dear Jay,

I'm glad to read that you and a friend are interested
in doing some more research on the subject.
Being from Melbourne a good place to start would be
the State Library of Victoria. They have a special
collection on Australian history. The following link
may help:

http://www.slv.vic.gov.au/our-collections/collection-strengths/australian-history

Dear Paul,

I admire your reasoning and your sense of humour.I'll
repeat what I've said so many times on this forum.
I certainly don't have the answers to the big questions in
life. I'm still on my own road to discovery. But everything
is relative; everything has its story; and everyone has
obstacles to overcome. They are our greatest teachers.
Each of us goes through transitions and transformations.
The important things is that we acknwledge them and learn from
them. That is the idea of this discussion. And I am grateful
for your (and others) contributions.

Dear SteeleRedux,

Thank You for your posts. You continue to broaden the
discussion for which I am grateful. I also love visiting
Ballarat. There's always something new to discover.
Be it checking out the additions to the Prime Minister's
walk, having lunch near the lake, or visiting the galleries.
I've still got the poster that I purchased from the
Ballarat Fine Art Gallery on the "Legendary Lindsays".
A painting by Norman Lindsay called the "Sphynx."
I had it framed and it hangs in my study. Talking about
ancestries - mine is a bit of a mix as well and it also
includes German as well as Scottish.

I am very pleased with the way this discussion has gone.
It has been a learning experience. Most of us want to
know about ourselves, why we do the things we do.
Sometimes the reasons are clear and well within sight, but
sometimes our own actions, let alone those of other
people are puzzling.
In the case of our Indigenous people - doing some research
has given me heaps to think about. But there's still more
to be done - which I intend to follow up.

Foxy,
Thanks but we're specifically interested in the titles of history textbooks which were used in schools in the 1940's and 50's, the purpose of the exercise is to see if there's something to this notion that older people who grew up in "White Australia" have a different understanding or interpretation of race to that of younger people who've only known multiculturalism.
My friend is presently studying for an arts degree and it ties in to some of the work he's doing, you'd think that the answers would be obvious but maybe that's not so since it seems to me that many White people my age and younger don't share the values espoused by the older folk.

From 1788 till very recent times the "official" history of Australia has been written by Europeans, it was only in the last 50 years that, that official history has been called into question. The text book version of Australian history as I read it, without realising it at the time, very much trumpeted the success of the European, it reflected society's protestant values of achievement through hard work etc. There was no place in that history for what were seen as under achievers, the Aboriginal people, they had failed in 40,000 years to "develop" Australia, something that had been achieved by the European in less than 200 years. We very much sung our own praises, and we certainly weren't going to let some unimportant facts about the indigenous "failures" interfere with our success.

Is Mise, you say "the Myall Creek massacre in NSW is there for all to see in recorded Australian history" and I don't say it never was, what I do say is, such events weren't rightly given any real importance when compared to say, the exploits Burke and Wills. In that way history was slanted to favor of the European. There never was any equality given to history as it pertained to the Aboriginal people.

Foxy, please don't be put off by some on here's personal comments about you, you said "The important things is that we acknwledge them and learn from them." I totally agree. Unfortunately some are far to content with that "official" history and see any attempt now by some to rectify the bias of the past and present a more balanced view, as an attack on them and their white race, and you can see that from some of the posts on this thread, it is no such thing.

Dear Jay,

I know that you're interested in texbooks - that's
precisely why I recommended the State Library of
Victoria's Australiana Collection - they would have
access to that material (I know I worked there as
a librarian) and all you have to do is tell the
librarians what you're after - and they have the
resources to give you the help you need.

Dear Paul,

Thanks for your advice (and concern). This as I said has been
a learning experience for me. I've learned that when the
older generations went to school, studying history involved
memorizing names of famous people and dates of famous events.
Kings and Queens, Scientists and Statesmen, Wars,
Revolutions, Explorations. But this is only part of the story.
If we really want to know about the past we need to know -
How people lived, What they thought about themselves and their
world, How they solved their problems, and much, much, more.
To do this it's necessary to study not only the "Superstars"
of the age, but the ordinary people, the men and women and
children, old people, and of course - minority groups.
In other words - social history, the study of society in the
past. This involves learning about and hunderstanding
how people lived and so it is not necessary to learn a lot of
names and dates, however we must be able to aske relevant
questions and listen, not only for the answers, but for the
silences. When we ask a question about the past and can't get
an answer, that too tells us something - it could mean that
what we have asked was not considered worth writing about
or that aspect of the past is considered no longer relevant
to us. In any case - watching Rosalie Kunoth Monks on
"Q and A," certainly opened a Pandora's box for me - and stirred
me out of my complacency. Which is not a bad thing - in my
opinion.

Jay
Absolutely right about that 'clan memory' stuff, and note, I nearly wrote 'clam memory'.
It's all bog Irish on my mum's side, and I never shudder at the sight of a potato, with a genetic memory kindling of the great tater famine. It all fades in the wash. Moreover, even though these ancestors of mine trod the peat of the old world with a pipe and a leprechaun under each arm, I'd feel like a total fraud rolling up on St Pat's day with a silly green hat and a shamrock pinned to my nose. In fact, Irish are very strange to me. We are Australian, not Poms or Paddies. I wish that message had got through about a hundred years ago.

This has been an interesting discussion,
robust at times, but well worth it.
I would like to Thank Everyone who's found
the time to contribute and give meaningful
dialogue and reasoned argument. I had no idea that
watching "Q and A," last Monday evening
would produce these great results. Thank You.

I'd like, in leaving this site to close with the
words of the famous poet, writer, and Indigenous
Elder, - Kath Walker:

"Though baptized and blessed and bibled,
We are still tabood and libelled.
You devout salvation sellers,
Make us equal not fringe dwellers."

See you on another discussion.

"...the purpose of the exercise is to see if there's something to this notion that older people who grew up in "White Australia" have a different understanding or interpretation of race to that of younger people who've only known multiculturalism." - Jay Of Melbourne

Jay, if there were biology classes for kindergarteners, we would learn that race is a population within a species that is distinct in some way. That would be our understanding, ergo there would be no need for interpretation. Now, with all the clamoring over a definitive definition of race, we could hopefully start with this basic little nugget of information.

The problem is, Jay, is that there aren't biology classes for kindergarteners. Here in 2014, with all the splendour of multiculturalism, we get to hear such wonderfully erroneous phrases such as 'the human race' sprouted out in such confidence that we tend to believe it; and there's that tacit admission that we won't dare question it.

What happened between "White Australia" to the present day? Race is a solid fact, should we not instead determine WHO changed the dialogue, and why? After all, you'll find that's what determines the public discourse (or lack of). After all, it seems to me the existance of the R1b haplogroup (as merely one example) will forever shut off the egalitarian doctrine.

"Though baptized and blessed and bibled,
We are still tabood and libelled.
You devout salvation sellers,
Make us equal not fringe dwellers."
Foxy,
You can't say not enough effort, good will & resources have gone towards countless attempts to solving that situation..

Napoleon,

The Human Race is a fact, the other races are not human, the canine for instance.

There are sub-divisions within the humans but as they can all breed with each other, although some shouldn't for safety/health reasons; the differences between the divisions is very small.

Paul,

Many/most of the massacres of Aboriginals by Aboriginals have been expunged from the records, particularly in Queensland, the murders of men, women and children by the "Native Mounted Police" were (by surviving accounts) rather horrific.
Fortunately or not, most of the Official reports were deliberately destroyed in later years.
It would seem that the "Native Police", who were recruited from tribal areas distinct from where they were to serve, had no concept of kinship with other tribes and killed accordingly.

Is Mise, Native police yes as you say, the truth you speak. I'll mention that tabu subject. as did some Jews actively assists the Nazi's in exterminating other Jews.

Foxy, good story in today's SMH 'Voices from the past: Aboriginal protests remembered'
The year 1938, 150th anniversary of White settlement, a very good photo of Aboriginal people protesting outside the Australian Hall in down town Sydney. Ester Carroll who was there and 3 at the time is still alive today. She recalls not the day itself but the era of that time and how Aboriginal people were very much under white control. Some did protest, but in the main Aboriginals were very much accepting of their second class status until very recent times

It is just so unfortunate that people will not change their mentality in the face of so much misery & suffering being caused by them. I see this exploit at any cost for as much as possible mentality every day of the week by both Labor bureaucrats & indigenous bureaucrats & contractors. Bureaucrats waste literally millions just so that they can be seen "doing something".
Meanwhile the standard in the communities get lower by the day & the Superannuation contributions by the bureaucrats go up & up.
Those indigenous bureaucrats are only a less violent copy of the native Police.
The one thing all have in common is the lack of understanding of the cocept of evolution. They all expect everything to happen somehow now. Give it a few decades & you'll see the change.

Is Mise,

Perhaps you'd like to consult any PCA chart of human racial groups.

Paul,

"Is Mise, Native police yes as you say, the truth you speak. I'll mention that tabu subject. as did some Jews actively assists the Nazi's in exterminating other Jews".

But there was a difference, the "Native Police" didn't face immediate/imminent death if they declined the generous offers of employment

Napoleon,

There seems to be many groupings for PCA, just which one did you mean?

I did find some reference to them on Stormfront but we should all know by now just how unreliable those whackos are when the word "race" is mentioned.

Horses and donkeys and zebras are of the genus 'equine' and can breed but the offspring are mules.
This does not happen within the human species, all offspring of human parents have the potential to be fertile and thus to breed fertile offspring.

The race Equs cannot breed with the race Felidae and sexual intercourse between them is highly unlikely although onesided gastronomic intercourse is common.

Basically, if members of a group can breed fertile offspring with members of another group then both groups are of the same race.
This was proven time and again in the USA during slave days when slave owners did a bit of add-on-investment by spreading their own genes among their movable property.

This does not happen within the human species
is Mise,
Are you sure ? Where then do the Lefties come from ? I'm certain they're a product of Labor & the Greens & some have advanced to asexual reproduction.

Is Mise, what you say "face immediate/imminent death if they declined the generous offers of employment" History does not actually support the assertion that the Nazi's had to hold a gun to some Jews head so they would act on their behalf. To quote from the following short article; "They were used by the Germans primarily for securing the deportation of other Jews to the concentration camps." "The Polish-Jewish historian and the Warsaw Ghetto archivist Emanuel Ringelblum has described the cruelty of the ghetto (Jewish) police as "at times greater than that of the Germans, the Ukrainians and the Latvians." Most believed that by cooperating with the Nazi's they themselves would escape the fate that they helped inflict on other Jews, but unfortunately for them, it wasn't the case.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Ghetto_Police

Paul,

Certainly there were such people within the Jewish communities but they cannot be compared to the "Native Police" in Queensland.
They were rather obviously primarily driven by fear whereas the "Native Police" were driven by the desire for a good job and entered into the killing of their fellow Aboriginals with qualmless gusto.

Did the NAZIS trust the Jewish police with very efficient firearms?

The Aboriginal police were well armed and used their weapons to good effect.

Did NAZIS Officers trust their well being to the Jewish police?

European Officers went bush with their Aboriginal police detachments and thus placed themselves at the mercy of people of a different culture who were as equally armed or better armed.

No comparison really.

Is Mise, I don't dispute what you say about the 'Native Police' in any war declared or undeclared, there are always collaborators, turncoats even mercenaries operating. The Romans made great use of mercenaries. I know during the Maori Wars in NZ some tribes, including my partners tribe, sided with the British. In all cases its done for a variety of reasons, not the least fear of the dominant power at the time, or simply for advantage of some sort. Depending on which side of the fence you sitting the 'Native Police' could be seen as good guys, or bad guys. Aboriginals are no different than any other people when comes to opposing your own people. There are always those ready, willing and able to help the enemy.
On of the most anti-aboriginals persons I ever come across, was an Aboriginal bloke who was very down on his own people, for drinking, for not working, all the regular reasons given. How does any of this relate to the topic, which in broad terms is about Aboriginal rights and welfare.

Foxy,

if the Labour governments that helped to give us Mabo and also Rudd’s “apology” were actually really serious, and I also include you and every other person who thinks they want to fix things,

why did the apology and Mabo specifically fall short of any concrete giving back [compensation] and rather camoflauges their true intent of indifference under weak, sparse and useless land reclaimations?
That is why hasn’t the average indigenous person in Redfern etc. been given some land? Which small section of the indigenous political elite [who mostly have no connection with on ground concerns in Ingigenous communities other than from the chair/office of the administrator of their government given sizable budget. Further I am quite sure that the majority of those indigenous leaders were either themselves children of the “stolen generation” or the direct descendants but specifically those who were adopted and raised by white middle class families [whereas most went to abuse dormatories like many British kids did also of same era.
I mention this detail as I think it is vital in the outcome of indigenous politics today. The leaders have been raised by a wealthier white class and specifically the families who thought they felt guilt and regret for past mistreatment of non-whites [likely by their ancestors directly and all their neighbours ancestors too – thus a reason they feel the ‘guilt’] since that mindset would have had an extremist religious type crazed drumming in of the same ideologies of the guilt and blame and how apparently ALL white people are completely responsible for the ills of ALL non-whites etc.

The extreme patronising and one-sided brainwashing has created “leftist” believing people who have some indigenous blood and thus can be proxied into being their puppet Aboriginal leadership

I am not against fixing indigenous problems (AS for ALL peoples) BUT IF the situation is not as I describe then why:

(a) didn’t the tribes of kooris get any of the “good” realestate like around Sydney harbour or in the wealthy suburbs of North Sydney?

(b) how can an average indigenous person in Redfern apply for some land repairations? Is it even possible?

(c) Why did the “Rudd apology” specifically exclude language which might be used legally to force mass compensation claims? Surely the ‘apology’ cannot have been sincere.

(d) why do middle class whites continue to patronise indigenous persons of all levels [even politcians] like the elder on Q & A last week, who a number of times was quite unfair and arrogant in [not her message] but in that she thought she could talk over others, talk much longer than host wanted [Tony Jones seemed to be terrified to bring her into line]; also to have another on the panel [white privelleged woman] tell the elder that she thinks indigenous art is the best quality and most unique art of all time when no-one should ever elevate any one group above others] and why wpuld the elder agree and ‘lap the fake patronising praise] up like crazy?

My point –

until everyone becomes serious, genuine and honest and to begin to see and treat all people [black or not] as existential equals laden with no assumptions that the native person is likely going to be less intelligent them whites, very child like and over sensitive then nought will be achieved.

I bet as a 100% certainty the very same wealthier whites of this forum [right and left] would be the first of all white classes to call the police if they saw a mildly shabby looking dark person walking down their home street.
These people [especially left] are terrified of dealing with them and it shows when they seem to be dancing on egg shells as if they think the non-white is crazy, irrational, dumb and violent like some mental retard.

How racist is this?

Sure, the lefties are the biggest racists of all.

Sure, the lefties are the biggest racists of all.
Lester1,
Not only that but the most stupid at that also. The white indigenous must have parties celebrating this stupidity.

'Usual Suspect' and you know who you are, my advice, look up the definition of a racists, then look in the mirror, and if you don't like what you see, then tear up your KKK membership card. Easy!