[continued]

But people like Maria and Stan Grant seem to be poles apart from the deluded Sovereigntists who very likely have never lived or worked in 'communities' and would therefore not have a clue how difficult - impossible perhaps - it is to get anything positive going there. It was hard forty years ago, and a damn sight harder today. Is there a single vegetable garden on any Aboriginal 'community' ? Yet people complain about the price of food. Well, grow the bloody stuff. No ? Why not, because there is actually plenty of money slopping around, thanks to the many money trees in Canberra ? So why work ? Why even get any education ? White fellas can do it all for us anyway.

Oh, we can't dig up the soil, that's out Mother Earth, some say. Utter bullshirt: how did/do women gather food ? What's their usual tool ? A digging stick. They dig out a whole tree to get at the marku. And in patriarchal societies like most of those in the 'North', they are not even on their own land but on their men's. And the men don't complain. Any more bullshirt excuses ?

Needless to say, Windschuttle is highly recommended, as an antidote to so much poisonous rubbish. Well worth fifty bucks.

Yes, in case you're wondering, I'm with Option One.

Joe

On the subject of Indigenous university participation, I checked out the relationship in the figures between bachelor-level graduations and post-graduate commencements. I was amazed to find that it was around 100 %: that, within a reasonable time, bachelor graduates re-enrol in post-graduate study. Perhaps not all, perhaps some PGs are onto their second or third new course.

But clearly, Indigenous students and graduates have tended overwhelmingly to be enrolled at degree-level or above, in mainstream courses. In fact, from the earliest records, the great majority of Indigenous university students have been enrolled at degree-level or above, and in mainstream courses. There was a burst of channelling Indigenous students into Indigenous-oriented courses between about 1985 and 2000 - a weird sort of Left-Apartheid - after which the sub-degree courses were wound down - but so few Indigenous students, as far as I can tell, ever enrolled in degree-level, Indigenous-oriented courses that, effectively by about 2005, they had become an endangered species, perhaps 2 % of all enrolments (but maybe 5 % of Master's-level enrolments). So much for the prattle about 'culture'.

The upshot is that, in spite of the efforts of the education elites to restrict Indigenous participation at universities, and to cultivate a small coterie of disciples through post-graduate study, to be absorbed into the loyalty structures which seem to dominate many university and other organisations, mainstream undergraduates will, within a short period, go on to enrol in post-graduate study, and - as Stan Grant says - do what they damn like. So, by 2020, of the fifty-odd thousand graduates, close to a quarter will be post-graduates.

I was thinking of starting up a web-site of 'good news stories from Indigenous Australia', because as well as in higher education, surely there must be positive stories out there, projects which are not just flash-in-the-pan but sustained (and replicable) ? Stories of Indigenous people working wonders ? Live in hope :)

Joe

Right I will be voting NO in the Referendum for Constitutional change re Recognition.

1/ Aborigines are already mentioned in the Constitution they are called Australians.
2/ Any treaty surely needed to have been made with the British, they Colonised Australia.

I would however vote YES to changes to the Constitution where Aborigines are specifically referred to as non-citizens or fauna, due to the ignorance and politics of the time.

Hi T800,

Where on earth do people get this idea about 'fauna' from ? Where is there any mention of Aboriginal people as fauna anywhere, let alone in the Constitution ? It's a furphy: from the outset, they were considered British subjects, like all other British subjects - and now that we are Australian citizens (since the 1948 Citizenship Act), Indigenous people are automatically Australian citizens.

In the earlier days in SA, if an Aboriginal prisoner was up in court, say for murder, but there wasn't an interpreter, he was let go. That's in accord with British justice. In case you're wondering, the last Aboriginal person executed (for murder) was hanged in eighteen sixty two; the last white fella was hanged in nineteen sixty four. 1862: 1964.

When white men got the vote here, so did Aboriginal men. when women got the vote in SA in 1895, so did Aboriginal women.

Where do these crazy ideas come from ? No offence, T800.

Cheers,

Joe

Sydney Morning Herald (May 23, 2007) – Linda Burney, an Aboriginal politician, repeats the claim during an interview with the Sydney Morning Herland. In the article she is quoted as saying, “It still staggers me that for the first 10 years of my life, I existed under the Flora and Fauna Act of NSW.” The SBS quote in the section above seems to be referring to this quote.

Been doing the rounds forever, there are parts of the Constitution that do need amending though... just cant quite remember what and where they are without reading the boring bloody thing again.

Hi T800,

When you find the offending sections in the Constitution, please let me know :)

Part of the confusion may be the way that Ministers, in all governments, may have mixed portfolios - Education and welfare (does that mean that education is only a welfare issue ?), transport and infrastructure (does that mean the minister is concerned only with roads ?), and famously in the McMahon government, a minister for the Arts, Environment and Aboriginal Affairs (Did that mean that Islanders were ignored ? Are Aborigines part of the environment ? Are Aboriginal issues all subsumed under 'Arts' ?)

Back in the nineteenth century, governments had far fewer ministers, five or six, so their responsibilities covered many disparate areas. They usually had the wits to keep them separate. In SA, the minister ('Secretary' or 'Commissioner') responsible for Aboriginal affairs was the Commissioner of Crown Lands and Immigration - did that mean that Aborigines were immigrants, or just part of 'Land' ? No, it meant that he had a range of responsibilities, including as well (from memory) settling Irish immigrant girls, issues concerning the Destitute, and probably the environment.

Could that be it ? Why some dumb-arse goes on about 'being part of the flora and fauna' ? Christ, a little learning certainly is a dangerous thing.

T800, if you ever come across something that seems absurd, it probably is: investigate, don't accept anybody's word for it, especially from someone who wants to make a huge grievance out of a tiny ant-hill.

Frankly, I've had respect for Burney for thirty years, but it's taken a huge dent over this foolishness.

Cheers,

Joe