Daniel_21
I think we would all aspire to your first paragraph however I’m sure you are aware of the variables that influence the capacity for achieving this. It is easy to ignore that it was only 40 years ago that we allowed aboriginal people to vote. A long time to be considered a non-citizen! What is pervasive is that the stolen generation did happen and while many would insist on the ol 'chin up' and ‘get on with it’ it seems a tad optimistic if it is imagined for a second for us! I agree, we should say 'yes to accepting responsibility for *our* actions'.

There has been much wasted money. It was irresponsible distribution that seemed to be penance for our conscience rather than funded on initiatives that would have served to empower aboriginal people.

Integrating "Outback Aboriginals". Spending time in 'outback Australia' working and living among aboriginal people confirm many problems. However some of these communities function well and people are maintaining a lifestyle in 'outback Australia'. If it is sustainable, farmers too would like to able to stay on their land! The urban areas have just as many problems. Alcohol, no jobs, no home, no life.

What is 'westernising"? I'm sure they would like opportunities for a secure future - if the opportunities are there. Your comment 'if you take our dole, you take our ways’ seems like a ‘my way or the highway’ approach. It is actually their dole. What are our ways? Many people who are not aboriginal are on the dole - are they taking our ways?

Your references to Aboriginal law seem more like media propaganda. The law does not permit aboriginal women to be beaten and raped. Yes, there is rape and there are beatings, something that happens in all societies but it is not their law.

Culture is not static but it is hoped that aboriginal people can retain aspects of their culture while having the opportunities to create a sustainable life.

We often insist the victim should not act like a victim when he is continually being victimized!?

Now solutions!

I am not anti Aboriginal, not racist, not in any way.
I have friends and relatives who are Aboriginal, and as good as any one.
Time and again some among us look at the dreadful living conditions of SOME Aboriginals and take it for granted it must be the fault of the white man!
Looking at ramshackle houses without windows and doors ,not knowing they once not so long ago had been brand new.
Replacing other once new homes wrecked before their time even burnt down on purpose.
This morning walking in my nearest shopping center, but it could be 100 Australian rural towns, I will be insulted for be white.
Kids rushing by to shop lift will even claim my mum and dad did not wed.
Racism is evil in all its forms, and such racism in Aboriginal community's destroys those community's and getting a kid to school is hard but getting them to learn?
Hard love if that is what it takes and an understanding if All Australians are the same education and accountability are not a threat but a means to the end we all want , a better life for these people.
The fact is some great Aboriginal leaders have said just this, and those who look at this problem from a great distance without understanding harm these folk not help.

Rob513264,

Most of the convicts on the First Fleet were English, a considerable number were Irish but very few were Scots.
At least two were Negros and a small number were Italians.
There was a real racial mix. Just as there is now.

First chance they got many of the convicts became 'policemen' for the Establishment.

Posted by Is Mise, Saturday, 2 June 2007 6:14:55
"Most of the convicts on the First Fleet were English, a considerable number were Irish but very few were Scots. At least two were Negros and a small number were Italians.There was a real racial mix. Just as there is now."

I said it was an 'ideological division' but because such divisions have no visible mark I was hinting at them by racial descriptions which 'typically' apply to people with those values.

I am sure that the English who were unfairly press-ganged into penal servitude despised the system just as much as did other races who were caught up in it. My gggrandfather was deported to 8 years hard labour for the crime of 'stealing a gentleman's handkerchief'.

"First chance they got many of the convicts became 'policemen' for the Establishment."

That is why a whole stratum of our culture has a particular 'Kellyesque' hatred for the police - they are viewed as traitors. People who have not only forgotten their roots and but become mercenaries in the maintenance of the privilege of the elite.

The most economically disadvantaged people in australian society are single-parents, not aborigines. That is a fact, check it. I've seen a group of people, only half of them on the dole or single-parent pension, turn a block of weeds into veggie gardens and orchard and build themselves houses out of fallen timber and stones while up the road somewhere an aboriginal community is chaos and disaster.
Sit-down money became get blasted and steal-a-car money.

citizen why is it so many refuse to see the truth as you do?
I truly fear such blindness is keeping the children in such homes victims forever.
No child deserves such parents or such a life.
Is out fear of being racist a tool to keep these people down?