Hi Nick,

Illogical ? Not really. There has always been tension between Indigenous Studies staff and Indigenous student support staff at universities in my experience, particularly over those students who are enrolled in mainstream courses, i.e. enrolled in non-Indigenous-focussed courses.

In my experience in student support, from around 1981, on and off, directly until 1996, and vicariously until 2005, Indigenous Studies people didn't think there was any need for student support: enrol Indigenous students in lower-level courses if they couldn't handle degree-level courses - and take the $ 5000 or so per student from Canberra and use it to employ more Indigenous Studies staff.

Now that so many universities have compulsory Indigenous Culture courses for all students, and thereby provide more funding, they can dispense entirely with Indigenous students. BUT something else has been happening since about 2000.

The very rapid growth in numbers of Indigenous students finishing Year 12 means that, on the one hand, those Indigenous students are much more likely to go on to mainstream courses at degree-level, and on the other hand, are far less likely to need student support, which they can get from the uni's mainstream services anyway.

So Indigenous student numbers have doubled since 2007. Annual graduate numbers have gone up around 2.5 times. Total graduate numbers at the end of last year were between 40 and 44,000. Overwhelmingly urban, as rural an remote populations were bound to be the ones to suffer from the neglect by Indigenous programs since 2000. So now, there is very, very clearly a sharp division between major urban, and rural/remote, populations in terms of university participation. I would estimate the differential to be 10 to 20 - i.e. ten to twenty times as many young urban people would be enrolling at universities for every one from rural and remote areas. THAT's a Gap.

I'm suggesting that the Indigenous elites, academics, are either oblivious, blind, or uninterested (or all three) in getting out and actively encouraging rural and remote people to start on the long path to university - and of course, trades. That Gap gets wider.

Joe

Hi Paul,

You trying to make me jealous or what ? You've succeeded. I probably won't be able to go to see my folks in Auckland this year; it seems none of them are talking to each other. Huh, families !

Haere ra !

Joe

Joe
It appears you agree with removing kids when it leads to education. That suggests the re-education camps of Stalin , Mao and Pol Pot.
Putin seems to be sniffing the breeze too with Russian values education which also blows in US and Oz.

My wife was and her friend continues to be a tutor for Aboriginal students in both mainstream and Indigenous courses , directed by the Uni's Indigenous centre. We suspect the local Indigenous primary school captures kids to compel indoctrination by nuns and slave drivers.

SteeleRedux, you continue to either misread or misunderstand my comments.
I stated that I knew nothing about dormitory conditions in places like Moore River but I knew about the conditions in Kimberley dormitories and you responded with a quote that is obviously related to the Moore River mission and not the Kimberley ones.
How do I know that? Because he talks about horrific physical conditions and lack of fresh food, especially fruit and veggies.
But in the Kimberley, all the missions were almost self sufficient in food. They had market gardens, orchards, piggeries, goats, chickens and their own bakeries. When I moved to the mission you could still see the remains of all the structures and all my inlaws spoke about how much food was produced and how well they had been fed compared to the current generation. As far as the buildings themselves, well, my husband and I and our four children actually had to live in the old boys dormitory for nearly a year whilst we were waiting for a,house to become available so I was well aquainted with its condition and yes, it was sturdy and functional with a whole separate abolition block next door, which we used to shower etc.
You appear to be unaware that white settlement has only really been in the Kimberley for 100 years. The mission my husbands mothers family grew up in was started in 1913 and the one my father inlaw grew up in, in one of the most remote areas of Australia,
started in 1910.
So when I arrived up here nearly 50 years ago, there were still people who remembered their first contact with whites and the stories I was told was first hand experience.

Nick,

There's never been a need to remove children anywhere in Australia in order for them to get an education. Parents are usually quite enthusiastic enough.

When Rev. George Taplin was appointed in 1859 to open up a Mission, the main purpose of which was to provide schooling, when word got around, one bloke walked twenty miles from Yankalilla (my wife's growing-up town) to Pt Elliott just to ask if he would be taking older students as well, i.e. adults. Taplin said (first page of his Journal: available on www.firstsources.info , Taplin and Pt McLeay page) that he would be happy to take anybody. And yes, later he did run night classes for adults.

It took him a year or so to find a site for a Mission, build a small cottage for his family (still there) and then a combined school/dormitory (still there). In the meantime, people congregated over the hill and waited impatiently for him to get the school going. So he set one up in a tent temporarily for the first six months until the school was ready.

Even then, people had an understanding of what education meant and wanted their kids to at least get literate. By 1870, Indigenous kids in that area (and young people too) were literate, while fewer than half of the white kids in the area were, since farming kids didn't have to go to school. So who was smarter ?

But your disparagement of education proves my point: there are people around who are distinctly unenthusiastic about the right of Indigenous people to get an education. The usual excuse is that they will lose their culture, but as Big Nana has pointed out again and again, the two are not necessarily contradictory.

Being paranoid, I suspect there are other reasons: that uneducated people are more manipulable, more at the mercy of the Industry, more touristy-photogenic, more charming in their natural environment, and a long, long way from inner-Sydney. What's your preference, Nick ?

Joe

Just to follow on from Big Nana's post, when SteeleRedux decries the variety and quality of food available in some remote areas, eg fruit and canned products, he also neglects to draw any comparison with the experience at the time of the mainstream population in cities, in country towns (especially on the fringes) and in the bush.

SteeleRedux could easily search old newspapers where there are plenty of stories and photos of the most restricted conditions, highly disadvantaged and poverty stricken when compared with the modern welfare State of course (or even back then), that applied to many if not most of the mainstream population at the time. All things considered, those in federal government care probably did very well compared with others. Take say the 1850s through to the years immediately after WW2, for instance. What about inner city 'burbs such as Collingwood in Melbourne? Check the newspapers photos that must be available in the NLA.

The great majority of Australian families had to look out for themselves, which necessitated growing own vegetables and raising poultry wherever possible. I would daresay that some here might remember very tight food and clothing budgets and painfully thin people in those years. People raided the dump to shop for bikes and for necessities for living such as bike parts for work and school transport.

I mentioned earlier that some people are Velcro for anything that might support the black armband view of history and Teflon for anything good done by those hated AngloSaxon 'whites'.