Hi Paul,

Thanks for some very thoughtful suggestions.

Yes, the British claimed sovereignty over, first eastern Australia, then all of it. Right or wrong, inevitable or not, in their eyes that gave them the right, and obligation, to extend British law over Australia, to its territory and to its inhabitants. But of course, as we know now, how does a colonial government extend rights and obligations to a population who live in a radically different way, and have radically different concepts of land holding and what we call now human rights ?

So: ultimately, the British forced colonial administrations to recognise traditional Aboriginal concepts of land use - see above, and Reynolds' and Dalziel's key article:

http://www.unswlawjournal.unsw.edu.au/sites/default/files/17_reynolds_1996.pdf

As well, knowing the impact of alcohol on traditional populations by that time, they banned the supply and sale of grog to Aboriginal people - pretty much across Australia until the 1960s.

At least here in SA, probably because they perceived local people as indigent, governors ordered the provision of rations to all Aboriginal people (later modified to those who couldn't work). But the combination of 'right to use land as traditionally' and 'rations for all' provoked a serious conflict: people abandoned their land (I'm sure, in their own minds, not forever) to live on rations.

I'm talking about a time when, across the world, welfare for indigents was pretty rudimentary, so this provision of rations was probably seen as quite progressive. It certainly took the burden of foraging off the shoulders of the able-bodied, if you think about it.

By 1900, all States had self-government, so their decision to retain control of Aboriginal affairs and not cede them to a new Federal government, was not something that any British government could do much about. So Aboriginal people couldn't vote in Federal elections unless they were already on the books for State elections - and States wouldn't extend the right to vote in State elections to Aboriginal 21-year-olds after Federation.

As welfare benefits were initiated at Federal level, the old-age pension, widow's pensions, and later child endowment, Aboriginal people were not included

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until much later, and not without political resistance. I suppose, legally, they were not regarded as Australians, but as subjects of the State they lived in.

As for legal cases of Aboriginal v. Aboriginal, there were great problems in allowing Aboriginal people to testify as witnesses - such as finding interpreters, being able to swear on the Bible, etc., and cases against some Aboriginal people had to be dropped, including that involving the murder of an entire family on Yorke Peninsula in the early 1860s.

Judges seemed to hand down very lenient sentences for Aboriginal-against-Aboriginal cases, such as the murder of wives, or what were deemed to be traditional killings. In the correspondence, there seems to have been a lot of to-and-fro involving the State Solicitor-General and Advocate-General, to get firm legal opinions.

I certainly agree that, just because there are very serious and urgent issues facing Indigenous people, that some of these other issues should be neglected. Of course not. It's a package. But having been around for some time, I don't have much time for symbolic 'issues' which won't amount to much except a huge amount of confusion and recriminations within the Aboriginal population, and produce trivial outcomes, if anything.

As for a Treaty, I think we a very long way down the track from a Waitangi-type agreement, and in very different foundational circumstances from those in New Zealand, and for very different purposes than those involving the iwi and hapu whose chiefs signed that Treaty.

Serious and urgent issues ? For example, the massive Gap which is ever-growing between the Indigenous populations oriented to either welfare or to work, mainly that between remote and rural populations and the working urban population (and there are serious differences in the trajectories within those populations). With catastrophic health and social problems in remote (and rural) populations on the one hand, and mainly an urban population with forty thousand university graduates on the other, and no 'leaders' with the wits to understand the significance of that Gap, I fear that the entire Indigenous population will

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fracture, fragment, with large sections, mainly in the cities, simply fading into the general population, over the next generation. And I don't think we have a generation to do something about all that.

To close that Gap, while urban, working populations are getting on with life beyond official surveillance, the ball will be in the court of the remote, rural and welfare-oriented populations - the very people who are least capable of doing anything whatever about it UNLESS somehow they can be persuaded that change can come about only through their own efforts - effort is the missing ingredient.

I would dearly love to see an ABC video shot of Aboriginal people in communities actually working, doing SOMETHING for themselves, instead of waiting for more and more to be done for them. As Chris Sarra says, government agencies should work WITH Aboriginal people, not doing things TO them - or, one could add, FOR them.

The old Community Development principle of 'not doing for people what they can do for themselves' seems to have been ignored for generations. I'm not saying people are lazy or too dopey - but a hunting-gathering ethic does seem to morph easily into a welfare ethic, where stuff drops out of the sky, maybe through the magic of the old men, but not through perceived effort.

Perceived effort seems to be a characteristic of agricultural and post-agricultural (and pre-academic/intellectual) societies. How to get cross that, out here in the real world, people actually do work for what they get, and pay tax besides, that nothing much is ever dropped in their laps, not houses, not cars, not no-work 'jobs' (except perhaps for many in the intellectual class - see above).

How to bring about that monumental shift in people's entire ethical universe - I fear that that may be far too difficult. So I fear for the unity, such as it is, of the Indigenous population, and the direction of the Aboriginal Cause, which I have been supporting (in my own weird way) for fifty years.

Cheers,

Joe
www.firstsources.info

Hi Joe,

Thanks for that, and I wholeheartedly agree, as they say you can't save a mans soul, until you save his body. Malcolm Turnbull in his 'Close the Gap' report, put up 5 indigenous figures which are shameful for all Australian's;

1 Infant mortality.
2 School retention.
3 Employment.
4 Jail,
5 Life expectancy,

But there is optimism that things are getting better. but the road is a hard one, and a long one, with much still to be done.

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/closing-the-gap-five-numbers-that-should-shame-australia-20160210-gmqlbl.html

Dear Paul1405,

One doesn't need to be a sociologist to see through Turnbull's political machinations.

Why didn't he include provision of health services, provision of educational services and provision of economic opportunities on his list (which the lack of are things that his government should be ashamed about)?

He probably knows that all of the indigenous issues will eventually be buried when the new Sino-Australian nation is fully established and the only thing that matters is whether or not one is Chinese. And he and his cohorts are working for this end. Any one for a free Rolex?

Hi Pail,

With respect, you are not saying anything new. Nobody is. And this is part of the problem: that so many people, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, make a good living intoning solemnly how much needs to be done in bla bla.

But nobody ever dares to suggest that much of that work should, and can, be done by the people themselves. They make rubbish, they can clean it up: do they except a horde of Filipinas to come in and do it for them ? They can look after their own kids - why not ? They are as able as anybody to train to fix tap washers, unblock drains and toilets, etc. They're not useless and it appals me that. implicitly, in so much hand-wringing, that's the rock-solid assumption.

And what's happened to all that AFE training over the last thirty years - in the NT, thousands of Aboriginal people have been enrolled, year after year, in TAFE courses, pulling in Study Grant year after year. Either that or somebody's been fudging the figures.

Maybe I'm a complete simpleton but I've always thought that self-determination meant 'doing things for yourself and your community'. Cleaning up your own rubbish, fixing your own fence or gate or Hill's Hoist, mowing your own lawn.

As well, there seems to be an assumption in many remote communities that public funds will provide an endless supply of fridges, washing machines, TVs, etc. Does that happen out here in the real world ? Just let me know, and I'll be down at Centrelink ASAP.

Clearly, people in remote settlements have totally unrealistic understandings about the real world. And yet agencies are supposed to 'consult' with them. Consult with people who can't change a tap washer ? Clearly, bureaucrats in remote settlements have totally unrealistic understandings about the understandings of the people they are working with, and what should be expected of them as ordinary human beings an parents. And so the circus goes on.

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