Wow, somebody finally gets it!

In a nutshell Joe. It's a cultural mindset and as long as they keep receiving enough to keep them relatively happy then they see no need to over exert themselves.
Why care for a house if they aren't forced to pay for damages they inflict. Moan long enough and the government will build you a new one. And while they are waiting they'll just move in with Aunty and overcrowd her house and she can't complain because it's not culturally acceptable to do so.
Why bother to wipe a child's nose, it will only be dirty again in 5 minutes and if he gets Trachoma from flies attracted to it, well, does it really matter in the long run? Someone will pay for the medical treatment and give him assistance.
For those with ambition they soon learn that to act differently to the herd brings scorn and derision so they either give up or leave.
I can remember when I was the bookkeeper in the community and had to train local girls in office procedure. They were under constant demand from relatives to loan them money from the cash we had on hand to pay wages ( this was before the days of internet banking). When they refused they were either accused of being unloyal or of stealing money from the office for themselves. Very few lasted more than a couple of weeks. The only one I had success with was a girl from a very different area who had married a local so had no skin ties in the community.
The only way I can see forward for this group is to let them suffer consequences of their decisions as a community and stop rescuing them when it goes pear shaped

Hi Big Nana,

Probably a bit of a side-track, but it's your fault: when my wife started running the pre-school on the settlement where we lived, she used to make sure the kids' noses were clean. She was chipped by the Van Leer Project supervisor who said it was natural for Aboriginal kids to have runny noses [Christ protect us from racists].

Not bloody likely, my wife (the eldest of ten kids, so she had experience) said to herself, and she make very sure at the beginning of every day that the kids gently blew their noses and kept them clean, to avoid burst eardrums and deafness. She provided each of the kids with handkerchiefs of their own.

And toothbrushes: they had to brush their teeth every day. She made all of it into a game. Actually the kids were very proud of it. God, they'd be pushing fifty now.

It's dispiriting to think of lessons that have to be learnt and re-learnt, over and over again - that there are still kids getting burst eardrums. Don't people learn anything ?

Joe

It is happening in the towns too.

We had a lovely young girl working for my wife at the local library in a small coastal city. She was a great kid, always well presented, happy & smiling. A smart good worker she was great with the people, & had started a library technician course.

I had no idea she was part aboriginal, until one night while waiting to pick my wife up after work, I saw the local "uncles" grab her & take her money.

My wife organised some strategies to make this harder for them, & we thought she was on her way up. Not so unfortunately. She had a baby, went onto welfare, & was a welfare dependent single mother of 3 by the time she was 22.

So much promise, wasted.

Welcome to the Club, Hasbeen :(

On another topic, I just re-discovered this:

In South Australia, in 1851, all pastoral leases were re-drawn to contain this clause, to make an implicit situation, explicit:

“And reserving to aboriginal inhabitants of the said State and their descendants during the continuance of this lease full and free right of egress and regress into upon and over the said lands and every part thereof and in and to the springs and surface waters therein and to make and erect and to take and use for food, birds and animals ferae naturae in such manner as they would have been entitled to if this lease had not been made.”

It's still more or less the law.

Oh, and this, from the 1936 Annual Report of the Aborigines' Friends' Association in SA:

Number of Aborigines in Australia

FROM THE DEPARTMENT of the Interior we have received the following information relating to the aboriginal population of the Commonwealth as at June 30th, 1935. These are the latest figures available:

Full-Blood Half-Caste Total
New South Wales 909 9,367 10,276
Victoria 48 582 630
Queensland 12,070 5,425 17,495
South Australia 1,741 2,047 3,788
Western Australia 22,188 4,254 26,442
Tasmania -- 263 263
Northern Territory 17,422 822 18,244
Australian Capital Territory 57 57

TOTAL 54,378 22,817 77,195

"After a careful enquiry into this subject, the Association considers that the total number of aborigines in Australia might be safely reckoned as 80,000, for there are large numbers of wandering natives in the Warburton, the Musgrave and Everard Ranges and in Arnhem Land which have not been included in the official list issued by the Government."

If you keep looking, you never know what you may find :)

Sorry, I should have used full stops or dashes to spread those figures for 1935-1936 out:

..................................................Full-Blood............................Half-Caste....................Total
New South Wales ...............................909....................................9,367.................10,276
Victoria...................................................48.......................................582......................630
Queensland ....................................12,070....................................5,425..................17,495
South Australia..................................1,741....................................2,047....................3,788
Western Australia............................22,188....................................4,254..................26,442
Tasmania.................................................--........................................263.......................263
Northern Territory............................17,422......................................822...................18,244
Australian Capital Territory...................--..........................................57..........................57

TOTAL.............................................54,378.................................22,817..................77,195

Although it is a product of its times, these comments on policy are interesting: from Mary Durack's 'The Rock and the Sand' 1969: pp.5-6 :

"Certain unpredictable tendencies, noted with some indulgence at the beginning of settlement, were to prove a mere prelude to the repertoire of contrariness on the programme of history. Benevolence would be found prone to result in thankless exploitation; forthright self-interest in loyal co-operation.

"Confidence in the natives' potential would court disillusionment; denial of their mental capacity invite surprising evidence [6] to the contrary. Expected to flourish under improved conditions the people would lie down and die; lamented as a dying race they would unaccountably revive.

"Encouraged into the new economy they would languish for loss of their tribal ways; given reserves they would be drawn to the amenities of civilisation; withheld citizenship and social benefits, the injustice of their situation would strike at the whiteman's self-esteem, but let them be granted equality in all material aspects and the whiteman would stand condemned by their spiritual deprivation and lack of incentive.

"Let Welfare Departments declare a policy of assimilation and the dark people would rediscover their pride of race; recognise their right to a separate identity and they would suspect a move towards segregation.

"Set up a Royal Commission and it would be found that there was no longer one dark race with specific problems but a mixture of races with many different problems and in many different stages of development; attempt to grade their needs according to colour and it would appear that the degenerate near-quite could be more dependent than the robust black."

Some fascinating insights, but I hope that we can agree that we have come some way in fifty years.