Dearest Foxy,

I'm sure that there are very many dedicated Indigenous people around the country, working like buggery to do the best they can in their respective roles. So when you suggest " .... what has been done thus far has not worked...." you may be a little wide of the mark. But perpaps only a little :)

But I think I can interpret what you meant. Yes, all of that sacrifice doesn't seem to be cutting down on all the negative indices. However, if I could quote a close relative who suggests, when I bemoan that inescapable fact, that, "Yes, just add the miracle ingredient: Indigenous effort." i.e. the effort of the entire 'community', not just of the handful of angels. Perhaps even parents acting like parents, men acting like real men, children going to school.

I didn't see much attention in the Uluru Statement to Indigenous effort. Perhaps, even if we don't see it on TV, it is so pervasive in every 'community' that nobody thought it needed putting in. Most certainly, nothing much will work without the Indigenous people themselves putting in effort. Perhaps the ABC and SBS need to change their film clips whenever there is an Indigenous story, of peopled dragging themselves around their 'communities', slowly, slowly, as if they had 20 kg of lead up their arses.

I used to anger my wife by suggesting, helpfully, that perhaps people in 'communities' could all be put on lifelong life-support systems, tubes in and out, perhaps a bit of physio - but with no grog or drugs or abuse or violence, so maybe people would be a lot happier, or at least safer.

Just trying to be helpful :)

Love,

Joe

Dear Joe,

As always, your advice is appreciated.

I enjoy doing research. It's an occupational
habit. Research offers the challenge of going
into unfamiliar worlds, often to find one's
assumptions shattered by the facts that one
discovers.

@ Ise Mise,

Quote: So far, the earliest finds of modern Homo sapiens skeletons come from Africa. They date to nearly 200,000 years ago on that continent. They appear in Southwest Asia around 100,000 years ago and elsewhere in the Old World by 60,000-40,000 years ago.

cont

In 2010 I traveled to NZ with my partner, and was invited to "sit in" on a land meeting between Maori leaders up North, and a prominent Maori politician, and his assistant, she took the minutes, they had made a special trip from Wellington, so it was an important occasion. I would have been happy for me to go to the pub for a couple of hours and leave it at that. I found the politician rather condescending and patronizing, more concerned with his own agenda than anything else. Saying how it should be, rather than listening to the wishes and concerns of his own people. At the end I was asked if I would like to say something, What I said to the politician was ")Name) you don't want to forget you are the representative of the people on this, and from what has been said today, there is a lot of concerns from many here on this issue, and you need to act decisively in their interest." He assured everybody that was what he intended to do. Did he? Later events indicated he did not, well not as much as he could have. He no longer represent the people. Things have a habit of catching up with those who don't do the right thing and want to serve self-interest.

p/s Talking after over tea and cakes, I think the young girl assistant would have made a better representative than the incumbent. She was well versed in the issues, and explained the problems faced in Wellington over Maori land claims, particularly with the intractable Nationals.

All nations exist because of colonisation and assimilation.

The notion that a less developed group of people who have been colonised, should not be encouraged to develop and join the more modern world, is a recent indulgence.

If the Romans, Normans, Angles, Saxons etc., had taken the same view, we would have still in Britain a few Britons living in their shelters as they did thousands of years ago.

Ridiculous.

Hi Rhross,

Yes, nobody teases out the costs and benefits of the 'Invasion': costs maybe, but benefits are somewhat overlooked.

I was daydreaming about writing a novel, entirely fictional of course, about what might have happened, and how it could have feasibly happened, if Australia had never been settled/invaded: it was to begin in 1759 with Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Geneva or wherever, assembling some of the best Enlightenment minds and future leaders, including a young revolutionary soon-to-be George III, a very young and randy soon-to-be Catherine the Great, Benjamin Franklin, Napoleon's father, a Japanese princeling, and various exiles. It was eventually to involve an enlightened Charles Raffles and required reformist British parliaments throughout the nineteenth century. Then it became too impossible to maintain any sort of sensible plot.

Does anybody really believe Australia could not have been 'settled' ? As well, does anybody working or who has ever worked in Indigenous affairs seriously believe that Indigenous people would want to have nothing do with the outside world and continue to live - economically, I'm saying - without any European/Australian benefits whatever ? No rations in hard times ? No services ? [After all, isn't that what people in remote 'communities' are demanding more of ? ] No Toyotas ?

People aren't completely silly - of course, they're rational enough to take what is available - it's probably a damn sight easier to make a damper out of a pound of flour (i.e. a loaf of bread) than to spend five or six hours gathering seed while lugging a child around, an hour grinding it, then baking it (the seed, not the child). And that's how it's been for two hundred years now in some parts.

So who wants to go back to that life ? What's stopping them now ? I don't notice any rush.

Joe