Poirot, Loudmouth and Foxy, I feel like I am stuck in the middle of this argument, given that I have seen it from both sides.
My stepsister married an Aboriginal man and had 2 sons with him. He was a non-drinker and a dancer with an Aboriginal Dance troupe, however, he treated her very badly and it all turned out very nasty.

I also worked in both rural and city based Aboriginal communities and WA rural and NT hospitals for years before I was burnt out and had to leave that sort of nursing behind for my own well-being.

Foxy, you say that many Aboriginals have very poor health outcomes, including trachoma, ear infections, diabetes and kidney disease. Yes they do, but not for want of health facilities and staff trying their hardest to make a difference.
Do you know how hard it is to urge them to want to seek help, or to stay, or let their children stay in health facilities until they are well?

I would go out chasing them around the countryside practically begging them to let me give them or their kids some vital medications, or wound dressings, or any other health interventions. Again and again, they bought back the same kids, in the same terrible condition as they were the time before.

It is soul-destroying, believe me.

The kids are bright and loving. If we can get them early and give them a good education, and keep them healthy, there may be a chance they will grow up and make a difference for their people, but if not, this problem will just go on and on...

Hi Poirot,

I don't know about waxing lyrical about how good people had it, I'm still working on that. That doesn't mean that terrible things weren't done, somewhere in the country, at some time. I suspect - but don't know enough about it - that Queensland might stand out as the State with more reactionary and more brutal policies, but I'm not there to go through the documents. That's somebody else's job.

Did people have it good, or at least better in, say, South Australia, after colonisation than they had 'had it' beforehand for fifty thousand years ? Women ? Old people ? Very young children ? Very tentatively, and at the risk of being lynched, I think they may have. Certainly conditions and opportunities are far better now than fifty years ago. And on balance, no matter how lousy they may have seemed, physical conditions then may have been better anything in those first fifty thousand years. Traditional life was hardly a bed of roses, and we don't do Aboriginal people any favours by pretending otherwise.

Policies were indeed different in other States, no two States (or the NT) had remarkably similar policies. Although I'm from NSW, it does seem that SA had by far the most enlightened policies, often decades, even generations, ahead of other States. I get the idea that Queensland didn't even have a ration system in the nineteenth century: during droughts, people would flood over the border into SA, to the chain of ration depots in the north-east, then go back in the good times. In SA, the Protector issued perhaps a hundred 15-ft boats, but in NSW, only a handful seemed to have been issued up until 1882. The Victorian ration system seemed far more haphazard than here in SA. And WA was just so vast.

It's strange how we've forgotten how recent so many social welfare provisions actually are: no single mothers' benefit before about 1972, few scholarships to university before the mid-sixties - but we tend to take for granted that what is around now, has always been around.

Joe

I'm not blaming any particular group, for the difficulties blacks have had since white settlement. All of us have created problems for them, of one sort or another, perhaps unintentionally - I know I have, purely out of ignorance.

Fact; for whatever reason, blacks cannot handle liquor. Once UTI, they often become belligerent, escalating to aggression and violence. Any person UTI, whatever their colour, once they become aggressive, they become very ugly indeed. Moreover, if they're black that 'ugliness' image seems to remain firmly inculcated in a witnesses mind. Once sober, if the poor bugger seeks work, his reputation generally precedes him, that of an aggressive drunk. This seems to be the standard pattern in most, small country towns in NSW, and similar in other States too I should think ?

I'm not suggesting the same doesn't apply to a white person, it does it's just that image for whatever reason, diminishes over time ?
Intermittent drunkenness of black youths often has terrible consequences - they become so depressed at this never ending cycle of no job, no money, no self respect, on to the cheap booze, they suicide. That's why when we used to lock up blacks, they were immediately placed on suicide watch ?

Black people should never be left 'one out' in a cell, they should always have another (preferably black) person with them.

Have NO DOUBT, it's us Whites 'collectively', and perhaps unintentionally, who've indelibly damaged for all time, the indigenous people of this great country. The real questing is, what now should we do about it ?

Dear Suse,

I can fully appreciate what you are saying based
on your experiences.

I am merely citing the evidence as I find it.

There are so many voices out there that all seem
to be saying the same thing - and it
does look like this complex issue with continue
to perplex us for many years to come.

Hi David,

My partner is a "Christian" believer in the Christian God, but she also holds to her own traditional gods as well. The concept is different in that the gods exists as a family with Rangi the Sky Father and Papatuna the Earth Mother at the head of the family. Its my understanding that there are many other gods and deities as well covering all kinds of situations. I know last Friday night, the God controlling the weather got a wake up call, and strangely he delivered on Saturday, cold but mostly fine.
On numerous occasions my partner has been called upon in Sydney to perform ceremonies for people, for example, a house cleansing for a couple who lost an infant to cot death, very important that a spritual is done by someone in a senior position and who knows the protocols. Interesting that at every formal gathering it is first necessary to recite a whakapapa (genealogy) right back to people who were living when Captain Cook was alive. "T" sees no conflict between the Christian God and the Maori gods, seems more the merrier, happy coexistence is the way to go. Unfortunately Christians couldn't see it that way.

Dear Paul1405,

My daughter also collects religions. On Sunday afternoon she goes to a Buddhist sangha. Buddhists do not have any gods. On Sunday morning she goes to the Unitarian church. Unitarians are not sure there is a god, but, if there is one, he/she/it is one. On Friday night she lights the candles for the Jewish sabbath.

Some Aboriginal people have also made a synthesis of Christian and Aboriginal belief. Some non-Aboriginal Christians have encouraged what they call Aboriginal spirituality. Other Christians call Aboriginal non-Christian rituals Satanic worship.

Durkheim in "The Elementary Forms of Religious Life" writes, "There are no religions that are false." He argues that religion arises in social life, and his book is a study of Aboriginal religion.