Time is running out to hold a Referendum on Indigenous recognition by May 27 next year, fifteen months away. Clearly, is it up to Indigenous people themselves to decide – in the spirit of 'self-determination' – what should be put to the whole of Australia. Recent reports suggest that any constitutional recognition will simply not cut it: Indigenous people want far more than that.

Noel Pearson has proposed a sort of third House of Parliament, made up of selected Indigenous leaders and elders, to review all legislation for its effects on Indigenous people. Clearly that should be an option on the voting paper.

Many others are demanding the recognition of 'nations': by this, they seem to mean larger groupings than clans, which were traditionally the land-holding groups:. Traditionally, a number of clans were allied into dialect groups, and those dialect groups were loosely organised into one language group, or tribe. Sometimes clans and dialect groups have been mis-titled as 'tribes' in the past.

Others are asking for a treaty between Indigenous groups and an Australian government. Presumably this means an agreement with the designated leaders of either

(a) the entire Indigenous people as a whole; or

(b) individual tribes; or

(c) individual clans.

Others are suggesting that all of Australia should be recognised as belonging to Indigenous people only, and that Indigenous sovereignty over all of Australia be recognised. Presumably, this would involve an agreement between the Australian government and an Indigenous Provisional Government.

Forty-odd meetings are to be held around Australia for Indigenous people to clarify and articulate what they want in the coming Referendum. So this is how it might turn out on the ballot paper:

1. No change.

2. Mention of Indigenous people in the Preamble to the Constitution.

3. A strong clause of recognition of Indigenous people's culture etc.

4. A body of Indigenous Leaders and Elders.

5. Recognition of all Indigenous nations.

6. A treaty between Indigenous Australians and other Australians.

7. Recognition of Indigenous sovereignty over all of Australia.

How will you vote ?

This is a really great idea we should suggest it to the countries of Europe! Then the people that were there "First" own all the land and the recent arrivals don't. With all the other stuff but wait, would that be racist?

My proposal for the Referendum is to vote NO. The whole idea of 'recognition' epitomises the guilt-ridden weakness of the current crop of white, PC grovellers who would rather insult their forefathers who brought this continent out of the Stone Age, than upset a few no-hopers in the aboriginal industry.

The two paranoid response totally miss the point that recognition in the constitution will in effect put a line under the past. We recognise you once owned all the land, but that's it, you recognise you'll never get it all back. You could consider it a sop to shut Aborigines up. OK we've recognised you, get over it.

My choice would be a formal Treaty, as in New Zealand, Canada etc. And before I get jumped on, I realise it's not the 'solution' - there is no 'solution', just an on-going process. Do we need a referendum to develop a treaty? I don't think so, it could be done in a bi-partisan manner.

The Treaty would address a lot of the issues, outside the emotional issue of changing the constitution. Later, the Constitution could be amended to say something like 'The Uluru Treaty of 2020' is recognised as the basis of Australia's rapproachment between its first peoples and subsequent arrivals.'

Loudmouth, I would vote for recognition of the Indigenous peoples as a whole, but not for a separate Indigenous parliament as such. Can you imagine what a mess it would be if they had representatives from all Aboriginal groups in Australia?
The fights and arguments about who will represent every tribe, clan, area, group etc would be never-ending.

From what I have experienced, many of these people don't work too well with many of the other groups, due to historical and current differences. It seems to me that whoever the Indigenous elder or representative in Parliament has been in the past has always been derided as not being of the same 'family' and therefore not representing many of the Indigenous people at all.

As an example, our Community health nurses were the only ones allowed into several of our local Indigenous communities because they said they would prefer us 'whitey sisters' to the Aboriginal Medical service staff who apparently had too many members of rival families working there!

Ttbn, you and the other anti-multicultural tragics that haunt this forum can't really expect to be taken seriously on this subject by saying we can't have 'foreigners' here dictating how we live our lives (eg Muslims) when you can't see yourselves as foreigners to the Indigenous people.

Unless we recognise our first Australians as the original custodians of this land, and give them more say in our future direction, we are denying Australia's history.

No one can really explain the purpose of the change to the constitution. Everyone knows that the Indigeneous were here before the British. Why not recognise the English, the Italian, the Greeks, the Philipinos or are we going to enhance the apartheid attitude of the aboriginal industry.

If it happens, & it won't unless Ozzies are as stupid as the yanks, there will be a few hundred jobs, paying in the hundreds of thousands pa for some urban aboriginals, & it will mean sweet FA to all the rest.

A meeting was held last week, I think in Newcastle, with four hundred Indigenous people asked to consider changes to the Constitution. The assembly unanimously rejected 'constitutional recognition' and demanded the recognition of Indigenous sovereignty.

What might Indigenous sovereignty mean ? Sovereignty usually means political control, power, authority, and strictly doesn't have much todo otherwise with land tenure, although I suspect the two are not just confused but that what advocates might mean by sovereignty in this case is precisely 'recognition of ownership of all Australian land'.

As everybody knows, there wasn't just one unified body or authority called 'Aboriginal': with three or four hundred languages and tribes, differentiated into perhaps ten thousand land-holding and land-using clans across the country, each with around thirty people in the best of times - in a very real sense, there were ten thousand 'authorities' holding land.

So the question of 'nations' (i.e. clans), or negotiating a Treaty, or recognising ownership of all land, is: who would be the parties to such an arrangement ? Who would do the negotiating ? And would it be a sort of rhetorical or metaphorical 'ownership of all land', or actual, on-the-ground, taking possession ?

Just trying to unpack declarations that may have major effects on all of us. Whatever is decided, no worries, we've just got to get it past 24 million other people.

Joe

Why not ask the indigenous population if the want Recognition in the constitution ,or $5,000.
The cost of the stupid referendum is the same.
Please give every living Aboriginal $5,000.I am certain they will rather this than what the Green MPs want.
The indigenous community will not gain one cent from this stupid political stunt.

Whatever the decision, it will be based on British law as recognised as pertaining to Australia at the present time, how could those who don't recognise the current laws possibly accept a decision under those laws?

Would seem a bit hypocritical to me.

One problem is that most aborigines today have mixed with the European population, so many have mixed blood.

Also, aboriginals are to be praised for, unlike the British land-grabbers, they never entertained a grand notion of sovereignty over larger areas beyond where their tribe actually lived and sustained itself.

Yes, those who want indigenous sovereignty should have it, but rather than granting an automatic sovereignty over all of Australia, something that never reflected the aboriginal way of life and probably does not suit them, the Australian constitution should recognise the right of every group of people who so wishes, not just aboriginals, to secede and become sovereign on their own land.

If one's land is also subject to a native title, then in order to secede from Australia, an agreement must first be reached between its traditional and modern owners.

Hi Yuyutsu,

I want to give your proposals the attention they deserve.

....

....

....

Yeah, that should do it.

Joe

Yuyutsu, have you heard about our 'Prince Leonard' from Hutt River Province here in WA?
A loony toon from way back who lived the lifestyle you seem to think a lawless, non-government Australia should live.

Yeah right...

Dear Suse,

My point was about being ALLOWED to live like Prince Leonard (and in many other variations of life-style), rather than actually living like this.

The fact that groups of people MAY secede from Australia should keep the government in check regarding individual freedoms, which in turn will mean that people will not actually have a reason to secede.

Hi Yuyutsu,

Any state in its right mind - including the states of Australia - exerts the authority, by virtue of being sovereign over the land within its responsibility, to declare that it is the ultimate, underlying, 'owner' of all land. We hold the land from the state. We use the land on conditions that the state lays down. Like it or not, that's how it goes. There is no allodial land in Australia.

Prince Leonard of the Kingdom of Hutt River can hold his lease, as long as he pays his annual lease fees, and abides by the conditions that the WA Pastoral Board or whatever decides. Apart from that, he can call himself whatever he likes.

He also has to abide by whatever conditions the national government orders, like the rest of us.

When we 'own' land, no, we are using state land for specified purposes. We rent it from the stage. The state formally is the ultimate landowner, on behalf of the populace which it has responsibility for, including King Prince Duke Lord Leonard of the Ancient Kingdom of Hutt. The only 'absolute' owner is the state. Feudal as it may sound, that's how it is.

In return, the state is supposed to guarantee our security, allow all of its residents access to benefits and services, permit their free movement and guarantee their rights. That's what we elect our representatives to do, with all the imperfections of a democratic system. It's a package from which none of us can opt out, not even you.

Joe

Dear Joe,

First I need to correct your error: The only absolute, ultimate and underlying owner of all land and seas, heaven and earth - is God. While we can still opt out of the state, even out of all states, say by jumping off a bridge, no one can opt out from God even if we were to jump off a million bridges.

Now there is no need to lecture me about the existing situation, Feudal as you describe it and born of violence. At the end of the day, a state is nothing more than a bunch of people and there is nothing mystic about it. Why would you approve the violence of one group but not of another (say the "Islamic State" or the feudal lords of the dark middle-ages), is beyond me and seems to defy all logic.

A state could TRY to provide security, but it is bound to fail, if nothing else then due to the fact that we shall all die one day (or night or twilight). While it is possible for people to seek its limited protection and other services, that never happened. If that's a package, then we must be able to agree or disagree to it, yet no such offer was ever presented.

Hi Yuyutsu,

Okay, you got me there - states hold the land from God. We hold it, on precise conditions, from the state which we are living in and under its government. hat government has political sovereignty over the affairs of the state, including the operations of land tenure.

We elect parliamentary representatives, imperfect as that process may be. Our representatives come together in parliaments, state and federal. The majority in each of our parliaments chose governments. The governments are thereby acting in the name of the state, AND of the people who elected them and whom they are supposed to represent. End of.

Joe

Dear Joe,

You are confusing the internal processes of governance within an established group of people (in this particular case, representative democracy) - with the way that group relates to those outside.

So long as one does not belong to a given group (in this particular case, a state), then the internal processes of that group are irrelevant to them.

No group may force itself on others, including on the pretext that they have included them in their group - it takes two to tango, so if a person never consented to belong to a group, then they are not in that group and so group's internal mechanisms do not apply to them.

Now anyone can CLAIM that a land was bestowed on them by God, but was it and why?

Yuyutsu, no one can claim that any God 'gave' them some land because God only exists in people's imagination. Faith is real of course, and having faith is a personal issue that no one else can take away.
However, simply believing in a God does not make it true there is a God.

Aboriginals didn't believe in a god as such until some mad missionaries came to their communities to 'save' their souls. They succeeded in bringing killer viruses and bacteria with them from the 'Old Country' though.

Aboriginals managed to exist quite well for thousands of years without any one 'true' god at all. Isn't that a miracle...

Absolutely ridiculous. Political correctness and cow-towing gone completely stupid.

The point of the change to the constitution is to remove any reference to race and to recognise the original residents without granting special privileges. The last thing we need is to create a caste system.

Yuyutsu,

I think you're having us on; nobody could that bloody short-sighted and egocentric - unless you're a 14-year-old games nerd, determined to keep your mum out of your room. .

SM,

Hmmmm: to remove sections already in the Constitution which mention 'race', and then put something back in which recognises 'Indigeneity': what's a bit contradictory about this picture ?

I wonder sometimes if people can look forward more than one or two steps, if any 'brilliant initiative' is no more than a five-second, one-step, thought-bubble:

* on the one hand, to remove any reference to 'race' in the Constitution would surely make any specifically Indigenous-oriented program discriminatory and therefore to be denied funding ? That any welfare program, say, would have to justify itself in terms of general need, not Indigeneity per se ?

* but, on the other hand, to insert a clause about recognition of Indigeneity or Indigenous culture and/or languages, would introduce permanent discrimination in favour of one group over others ?

Perhaps there is something in being and old-fashioned conservative and asking, 'What difference would change make ? Would change necessarily be for the better ?'

Just wondering.

Joe

' Aboriginals didn't believe in a god as such until some mad missionaries came to their communities to 'save' their souls. They succeeded in bringing killer viruses and bacteria with them from the 'Old Country' though.'

showing your ignorance and Christaphobic nature again Susie. You obviously ignore aboriginal mythology.

btw have you any idea what life expectancy was prior to those wicked British arrived? That might require diverting from your dogma.

I can remember in the late 1960's when the Racial Discrimination Act was enacted in England. Interesting that many people pointed out that race was not mentioned in English Law until then. Since then we have had more and more law that has enriched lawyers but I do not think has done a lot for anyone else.
Perhaps someone can help me out and let me know all the benefits that followed on from "Racial" law?

Dear Suse,

You are bursting into an open door:

When I wrote that "anyone can CLAIM that a land was bestowed on them by God", I did not mean that such claims would be true. Nothing stops you for example from CLAIMING that you are queen Nefertiti, so what?

In the context of writing the above statement, Joe (Loudmouth) claimed that "states hold the land from God", so I replied telling him that God did NOT bestow the continent of Australia to the state of Australia. So far, instead of trying to substantiate his original claim, he wrote that I must be 14 years old. If his claim is true, then I joined this forum at the age of 3 - what a little genius I must have been!

<<Aboriginals managed to exist quite well for thousands of years without any one 'true' god at all. Isn't that a miracle...>>

Yes. The miracle as I see it, which makes them better than the "white-man", is that despite living here for about 70,000 years, they did not misuse the name of God in vain to claim some divine ownership over this whole continent.

Yuyutsu

God has nothing to do with it.
Armies determine who controls countries.

Whatever ethnicity the majority of soldiers are, then that's who controls
The country.

Let's deal with the present, the fact that we have 23million people here
Who all have to get along. With societal rule of law to keep the
Peace on our streets.
All are equal in the sense that they can go to school, then get a job,
And work decades to buy land and a home.
Nobody in modern Australia is just handed land and a home.
That is the modern equality for all.

The Aborigines need to accept this modern equality of opportunity
They can no longer siit around all day and expect someone else to
Support them and give them everything for free.

Nobody gets anything for free, they work for it.
That applies to every other ethnic group in modern Australia.
Except the Aborigines apparently.
I bet they run to the dentist, paid for by welfare when
They get an infected tooth.

That tooth would kill them without the White mans medicine.
They just use the Aborignal victim hood to gain everything they
Can for free. That's what it's really all about.

It's known as the Aboriginal industry.

Cherful, if someone said they would pay all your medical, grocery and household bills with no need to pay them back, I am sure you would agree.
So whose fault is it that there is a sense of entitlement with some Indigenous people?
It is perhaps the various governments?

If the government then said no, we won't be paying welfare payments to unemployed Indigenous people anymore, and they would have to go out and work, who would employ them? Anyone?

To be fair, they would have to extend this denial of welfare to ALL the unemployed.
I am not sure where their children would find food and shelter, given that none of these welfare problems were caused by the kids.
So where would they get what they need? By crime of course.

What do you think is the answer then?

Dear Cherful,

I appreciate your perfectly-legitimate wish to keep the peace on our streets.

However, the societal rule of law is not the only way to achieve this goal: it's just a lazy solution because that's how the problem of keeping-the-peace was handled in the West for the last several centuries.

But this specific solution is immoral.

I don't know how long it will take, but eventually, future generations will look at this "rule of law" in the same manner for example as we look back at slavery: once it was acceptable to do this and enslave other people, but not any more, once it was thought that society cannot survive without slaves, but that already changed. It is currently considered acceptable to force other people into your group without their consent and enforce your laws over them - but eventually everyone will recognise that this is wrong and wonder "how could our ancestors possibly done so?".

Sadly, as you say, armies determine who controls countries:
Do we need to maintain these Neanderthal standards?

As for aborigines, there is no reason why they should be different from anyone else: they should not be able to have the cake and eat it too, but they should at least be given that choice - and so should everyone else! Currently we are not given this choice - to be or not to be part of Australian society and its state (including both duties and privileges).

You state that "All are equal in the sense that they can go to school, then get a job", but what about those who do-not want to go to school and get a job? Also all (theoretically) may equally receive dental-treatments - but what about those who do not want to receive dental-treatments and are even prepared to die young as a result?

What you have is a sort of "equality" for all those who aspire to have your own particular life-style: but there's no equality or respect for those who are not interested in your particular life-style. The last thing you can call this is "fair".

My vote (and my family as well) will be a definite "NO"
Once you give then constitutional recognition you give them the right to charge you rent for what they see as their property, the whole of Australia including your home.
It is time we started stripping back what we give them especially social security.
A six bed 'Queenslander' home, fitted out with white goods and air conditioners overlooking the northern oceans for a weekly rent of around $50.
They cost $2,000,000 to build and we maintain them.

Hi Suse,

Last Thursday, you suggested: ".... I would vote for recognition of the Indigenous peoples as a whole .... "

But what does that mean ? 'Recognition' in the preamble or the body of the Constitution ? What impact might that have on the health or education of people in remote areas, apart from zip ? What is it that anybody has to recognise that might give anybody a reason to bother ?

More than forty years ago, my wife and I were making Aboriginal Flags, and I still get a buzz from seeing in in the city or at high schools or council chambers: it is, after all, an official Australian flag. I would have thought that that was a form of recognition, and of the unity of the Aboriginal Cause.

There are thousands of Indigenous organisations across the country, funded by various governments. There is a designated quota for positions in various public services. Indigenous Studies is taught in many schools, sometimes by Indigenous people who know a little of what they are talking about. There are Indigenous units at every university.

So what else might constitute 'recognition' ? Perhaps as you suggest,

"Unless we recognise our first Australians as the original custodians of this land, and give them more say in our future direction, we are denying Australia's history."

In SA, and probably other States, the right of Aboriginal people to use the land as they always had, was recognised from the outset (at least in SA: King George's Letters Patent, 1837, authorised the right to 'occupy or enjoy' the land). But I suspect that that right is very seldom used these days.

To ".... give them more say in our future direction ...." ? How ? Via Noel Pearson's suggestion ? Or via some other 'advisory' body, such as the NAAC, NACC, NAC, ADF, ATSIC, or the current bodies ? What has been the brilliantly successful history of such bodies to date ?

In any case, let's wait and see what those meetings of Indigenous people around the country come up with.

Cheers,

Joe

Is this racism ?

A friend was telling me that, one evening a few weeks back, after work while drinking with another friend, the topic got around to Indigenous affairs, and he asked how many Indigenous university graduates did hisfri3end think there ere, just a rough ball-park figure. His friend thought awhile and answered, "Oh, maybe fifty."

Correct answer: forty thousand, as at the end of 2015.

My friend later asked a lady friend how many he thought there were. She was surprised, and answered, "One: Charles Perkins."

Correct answer: forty thousand, as at the end of 2015.

These are just ordinary, good people. But how and why do they think there are so few ? A few years back, I asked a bloke the same question and he replied, "Fifty".

What is the image of Indigenous people that good, ordinary people have that absolutely screens out any sort of educational achievement ? None of them were at all overtly anti-Indigenous, by the way.

Am I reading too much into this ? Or is there a sort of very deep racism, not just amongst white people but, I suspect, amongst Indigenous people as well. Nobody is telling them otherwise.

The Indigenous elites don't seem to want anybody to know, or else they don't believe it gthems3elves: a recent 'Review of Indigenous Higher Education' used data which was 7 or 8 years out of date, they certainly could have used far more up-to-date data, but didn't, so that the impression given was of stagnation and even decline. Of course, it's possible that Indigenous elites can't read simple spread-sheets.

For the record, enrolments and graduations have doubled since 2005, their cut-off date. The period 1995=2005 was indeed one of stagnation, right up the elites' alley. But no, sorry, there aren't just one or fifty, but forty thousand Indigenous graduates, breathing down the necks of the elites, threatening their positions.

Fifty thousand by 2020.

A hundred thousand by 2032 or so.

And why should it stop ?

Joe

I will be voting NO, simply because we need to be one people -Australian -.

Our population is made up of many races but we are Australian first.

There is more than enough recorded history for anyone to see that aboriginals were here before the British colony. Maybe aboriginals can argue about who or which of their groups were here first, second, third and so on and what good will it do them.

I am a bit surprised to learn that the aboriginal flag is an official flag of Australia. When did we give approval for that? It should be abolished.

No it does not require a constitutional change to see that there were others here before British settlement. It is fortunate that the poms were strong enough to prevent others from claiming part as well. some other nations treated the 'original inhabitants' of their colonies far worse than the poms did.

Hi Banjo,

On balance, I'm not so sure that Indigenous people have lost out from being brought into contact with the rest of the world. I suspect that all the bad stories are either invented or exaggerated, sometimes massively, and that nobody dares to point out any benefits from that contact. I suppose the simple measure of all that is: how many people are throwing aside welfare benefits and going out bush to live traditional lives ? No Toyotas ? No houses ? No fast-foods ? None.

But I can't agree with you about the Flag: to me, it has always been a strong symbol of Aboriginal unity, at least one thing that might pull people together instead of the idiot feuding and bickering that dominates 'communities'. There's enough around already - and always has been - to fragment Indigenous people into regions, tribes. clans, families, etc., etc.

And also, we took it for granted that the Flag represented ALL Indigenous people, Aboriginal and Islander people, united. Then s0me ---- devised another flag for TSIs. Brilliant. I suppose there's no anticipating every idiot. Or perhaps the impulse for fragmentation runs too deep ?

Frankly, I would be happy to see the Aboriginal Flag up in the corner of a new Australian Flag. It may not get a single kid through school, or fix up a single diabetic, but it always makes me happy to see it. Such a strikingly beautiful flag !

So there's another Referendum option:

8. Inclusion of the Aboriginal Flag in the national flag.

Cheers,

Joe

Hi Banjo,

Speaking of fragmentation: Noel Pearson has understandably advocated the teaching of Aboriginal languages. Surely this can be done alongside the common language of Australia, i.e. English ? Many years ago, my kids used to go to Saturday-morning Greek classes at their local primary school. It certainly didn't do them any harm, and has made them many lifelong friends. So why not Saturday-morning classes in Aboriginal languages ? Taught free by volunteers, like the Greeks and Dutch and Vietnamese Saturday schools ?

But, whereas in New Zealand, there is more or less just one Maori language - and other Polynesian languages are often not that different - and therefore language is a unifying factor, there are many hundreds of Aboriginal languages here, so language will never be a unifying factor: nobody can learn hundreds of languages after all.

I'm certainly not saying that Aboriginal languages shouldn't be promoted locally, and taught to kids, but that we should be aware that it may have the unintended consequence of fragmenting Indigenous unity, even in small regions. And the Indigenous Cause, if you like to call it that, is desperately in need of factors which promote unity, not ever-more fragmentation.

Cheers,

Joe

Greek and Latin had uses, for understanding the roots of English and gaining a deeper appreciation of literature.

There is far too wastage in the curriculum as it is and political correctness is usually responsible.

Hi OTB,

I'm all for whatever strengthen the cohesion and unity of Indigenous people, provided the rationales and stories which do that are genuine and not fabricated, and provided that there will be genuine and substantive outcomes, not just more symbolic stuff, with a handful of people doing well out of yet another symbolic thought bubble.

I suppose that's why I'm on and on about the successes of Indigenous people at universities - forty thousand graduates, god that's an army ! That's something that the people themselves are doing, usually without any 'leader' being within cooee, something which strengthens a positive sense of unity and purpose, AND provides the foundation for genuine self-determination and empowerment. Which is probably why Indigenous 'leaders' in education are dead quiet about it, since it's something over which they have absolutely no control.

Fifty thousand graduates by 2020. Maybe a hundred thousand as early as 2030, only fourteen years away: that would mean about one graduate in every four adults, two-thirds of them women. I long for the day when TAFE/VET can do something similar for Indigenous people.

Apart from the Flag, and achievements in higher education, what else might unite Indigenous people in positive ways ? Surely any change to the Constitution would have to be in that spirit ?

Cheers,

Joe

Loudmouth (Joe), "I suppose that's why I'm on and on about the successes of Indigenous people at universities - forty thousand graduates, god that's an army!"

It is. It is not something that has ever been publicised on the 'fact finding' (LOL) ABC and SBS though. Yes, one would believe that it should be trumpeted with pride and optimism. Good news and facts are NOT welcome in the victim industry. There are too many middle class careers, indigenous too, depending on it.

There are risks in uniting people in victimhood and making them a society within a society. Continually repeating (and often inventing) a litany of wrongs and hurts against forebears builds resentments in the young. Worse, it builds an exasperation that no-one is ever listening and there is no possible way of influencing politics.

That is what drove the Hilton Hotel bomber, Evan Pederick, a sane intelligent young man from a comfortable background, who had a permanent job as a public servant and was a union delegate (or higher).

To take another example, Islam relies heavily on alleged discrimination to rationalise its demands, intransigence and violence.

The pressing need in Australia and the West generally is to define and promote a challenging, adventurous and meaningful life for youth that is a sexier alternative to the very negative self-defeating and sometimes downright rotten alternatives that are constantly being given so much airtime, even being promoted, in the media and by cynical SOBs with their own secondary gain in mind.

For starters, if only the taxpayer-funded national broadcaster could bring itself to consider what is good for Australia.

The Indigenous flags deliberately exclude not include and therein lies the root of the problem and is intended to maintain the future earning potential for all of those fleas on fleas on fleas that swing from the guvvy teat.

I am not for anything that promotes separateness of any group within Australia and very concerned where the intent is to cement and reinforce perpetual victimhood.

Hi OTB,

Yes, I'm certainly not interested in 'unity' around phony issues - that way lies disaster, in the long run.

I hope that as many graduates as possible can find employment in the mainstream, not in separate units or organisations, since their ethos are often frankly corrupt, in which people occupy positions which don't actually involve work. It seems, for example, that in many university academic environments, Indigenous staff (and non-Indigenous as well) spend a huge amount of time 'working at home'. For example, staff in student support units 'working at home'. How is that ? Or 'research', which never seems to get anywhere. And then there are all those conferences and overseas trips, doing incredibly important work. My wife estimated once that, at any time, around 1 % of the entire Indigenous adult population was overseas at conferences. And with absolutely nothing to show for it.

So I would very strongly advise any Indigenous graduates to have nothing to do with Indigenous units or organisations until they lift their game - which leaves the graduates with a very tough row to hoe, and nobody going into bat for them (to mix metaphors), and constant pressure on them to be shunted into Indigenous units throughout their careers. Hence see above. Very corrupting.

And so we get back to deep racism.

Cheers,

Joe

Hi again OTB,

But I would respectfully disagree with you over the importance of the Aboriginal Flag: provided unity is based on truth and integrity (a very big IF, admittedly), then I'm happy about stronger unity and cohesion amongst Indigenous people, and I've always thought that the Flag represented that sort of unity. I think it's a beautiful Flag.

God knows there are enough forces around to fragment the Indigenous population and, of course, many of them have been around for sixty thousand years. Paradoxically, colonial state administrations both cemented that fragmentation AND enabled people to move around far more than they ever had.

In the Protector's Letters here in SA, he complains about Queensland people coming over the border during droughts for rations, which weren't available in Queensland, and staying for some years. He doesn't mind feeding them but asks for some subsidy from the Queensland Chief Protector.

At the missions, from the earliest times until much later, people came and went as they pleased, and inevitably many people might hook up with a local and stay on a mission or settlement, who came from somewhere else far away: there are people in SA now with some Mission/Settlement connections who would be unaware that their ancestors came from Albany, or Townsville, or Broken Hill way, or Alice Springs or western Victoria, back in the late nineteenth century.

But fragmentation is the norm in Indigenous society, and enormous efforts are going to have to be made to overcome them - there is certainly no cause for smugness amongst the 'leaders'. The Gap between the two Indigenous populations, one oriented to work, the other to welfare, is growing - and rapidly. Since it's not the job of the working population to stop and 'go back', then it's the job of the welfare-population to get off its collective behind and do the moving. And the job of courageous 'leaders' to tell them so.

Joe