Where are we now, total embarrassment I would suggest, I mean, what else could you possibly pump billions upon billions into without any decent result.

Let's face It, pumping this money in the way we have certainly wouldn't pass the so called 'pub test' now would it ., 50 years on and still the victims. Unbelievable!

Aw, poor Hasbeen. Did you come here to stamp your feet instead after your ‘personal attacks’ line flopped on the other thread?

<<You'd best duck now. When they get hit with irrefutable facts, they come after the messenger, after all they have nothing else to argue with, but personal attacks.>>

Yes, why I’m sure Joe is just bracing himself for a barrage of personal attacks from Paul1405 after he had said the same thing, only in greater detail.

Hi Joe,

No need to be offensive with "Whinge about that if you like", we have discussed this issue many time, and I am well aware of the facts, and totally agree with what you posted. An opening post to start the debate, didn't hurt and it didn't dispute the facts, but as far as the referendum itself was concerned it was more or less tokenism rather than substance, and your facts clearly show that. Hassy as usual has nothing to offer in the way of positive comment, in Hassy's world 1967 is still a century away, 1867 was wonderful year, seems like yesterday, and for Hassy it was! Butch sees in his minds eye some perceived unfairness to the rest of Australia, most impotently to himself, the hard working Aussie butcher supporting the blood suckers of society! Butch detests what has been done for Aboriginal people, its so unfair, nothing new in that from Butch.

In 1967 the position of Aboriginal Australia was at a very low ebb, and the referendum in itself was a positive, but not a catalysts to drive the necessary, and inevitable, social change that Aboriginal Australia would be subjected to in the coming 50 years. At the time the whole world was changing, civil rights was gaining momentum in the US, Colonialism was mostly dead, the "white mans burden" had been lifted in Africa and India etc, and younger people were questioning the values of their parents and society in general, it was a time for change. Regardless of what the referendum did, or didn't do. social change in Australia was going to happen, and that included Aboriginal Australia.

As a Futurists I am more concerned with where we are going, more so than where we have been, although history is important, and something we can learn from.

On this thread the question should be; Where to next for Indigenous Australia? There are still issues to be dealt with, problems to be solved. Lets move on.

Hi Paul,

Of course, the Referendum was a positive, but not in the ways people believe now (or even then). Indigenous people were citizens already, like everybody else after the Citizenship Act of 1949. They had had the vote for many years.

But it cleared up a couple of anomalies and anachronisms in the Constitution. For example, it approved taking responsibility for Indigenous affairs out of the hands of the generally grateful States, and brought the anomaly of how to count Indigenous people in the Census up-to-date:

We forget that, up until at least 1950, there was still a general belief that, 'out there', there were still tens of thousands of 'tribal' Indigenous people. As it happened, these estimates were massive exaggerations. The inauguration of government settlements and a few Missions across the remaining parts of remote Australia revealed that the process of incorporation of Indigenous people within the structure of Australia had almost been completed. Hence the need to revise that part of the Constitution in the Referendum.

For decades, I've been puzzled by the different definitions of 'self-determination' used by Indigenous spokespeople. As a Marxist and then ex-Marxist, I took it for granted that it meant that people were at last able to do everything for themselves, genuinely run their own affairs, run their own communities and their economies, fixing up any social problems that arose from the collision between a foraging society and a Western society.

But no: it seems to have meant that 'we decide what and how much non-Indigenous Australia is supposed to do for us - and they should do more'. That seemed quite racist to me: that Indigenous people were too incapable of genuinely running ALL of their own affairs, including all of the social problems plaguing communities, that they didn't need whites to do it for them (in fact, I believed that would never work).

My wife and I made a huge banner saying "Black Control of All Black Affairs" for the 1973 NAIDOC marches, on this assumption. We learnt the hard way :( But we learnt and it's impossible to unlearn

Sorry rehctub, you are wrong on this one. WE don't need the aboriginals to blow our borrowed billions on.

Well not when we have education & Gonski. Universities teaching how to play better tiddlywinks, & the NDIS chucking them at the least deserving of our so called needy.

Our socialists can always find some thing to waste other peoples money on.

Pink bats anyone, they are free, Oh, & grab a few solar cells while your here, we have to get rid of the money we ripped off those rich check out chicks & cleaners.

Hi again Paul,

I have to chip you about your opening statement:

"May 27th marks fifty years since more than 90% of white Australians voted to give, at least in name, some semblance of equality to Indigenous Australians."

No, Indigenous people had the vote well and truly by then: it wasn't just 'white Australians' who voted. No, they had pretty much every feature of equality that any government could provide. What aspect of equality didn't they have ?

In fact, this is one of the problems with current demands: they have to go well beyond formal equality to mean anything now, a treaty, recognition of hundreds of nations (and probably drawing up a treaty with each one), sovereignty (whatever that's supposed to mean), a separate State, probably a separate country - we'll see after the Uluru Conference.

You correctly ask: "Where to next for Indigenous Australia? There are still issues to be dealt with, problems to be solved. Lets move on."

Yes, indeed: there are grave problems which everybody ignores, and which will not be amenable to any number of Treaties or separate statehood, etc. Frankly, I'm starting dimly to perceive a drastic contrast between 'Recognition' and genuine 'Reconciliation': one leads into the wilderness while the other, the much more difficult road now, leads towards an inclusive society with a significant Indigenous component.

I don't think there's much time to get it right. One section of the Indigenous population is happily dispersing into, and inter-marrying with, the general working population, the other is immured in remote and bankrupt 'communities', and the two populations are moving apart rapidly.

Joe