Dear Big Nana,

Thank You.

If you don't mind I am going to copy the post you've just given
me for future reference. It is excellent. It brings up
so many good points. Again - Thank You.

Hi Big Nana,

Indigenous home ownership or purchase rates have gone up to 38 % of all Indigenous households (in the last Census). Bearing in mind that people can't buy their homes on most Indigenous closed communities, this suggests that maybe 40-45 % of those who can, are.
buying their own homes.

My 'novel': it sort of fell at that first hurdle, that it was idiotic to imagine that Australia would have been left alone forever. Seven million square kilometres ? God knows what minerals ? No imperialist worth the name would have let it go. Even if the British Navy had deployed a thousand ships around the coast forever, plus another thousand to replenish them, it wouldn't have been difficult for the French or the Dutch or the Spanish to launch a concentrated naval assault on any point on the coast-line and pick off any British ship who came near them, one by one. After all, until Morse code and radio, ships had to within sight of reach other for any messages to be relayed from one ship to another.

And why should the British do that anyway ? Or any other power ? They were all too busy fighting wars all over Europe and trying to pick off each others' colonies. Would the British Treasury or even more so, the public) have supported the costs of a huge permanent fleet of ships, being all altruistic for no financial return ? Hardly.

So the awful truth, let's face it, is: the invasion/settlement of Australia was inevitable. The devastation wrought due to the mutual complete misunderstanding between Indigenous people and the British which was to last, in many parts, until today (and probably for another century) was therefore bound to happen. The intrusion/introduction of Western society, economy and culture was bound to happen - the good, the bad and the indifferent.

We live life forwards, but look at history backwards (Kierkegaard ?). What has been done can't be un-done. So hat to do about it all ?

[TBC]

[continued]

But what was probably also inevitable was the positive response - ultimately, especially after the War - of many Indigenous people to the opportunities of a new society, as you point out, Big Nana. Just as an aside, according to federal Education Department figures, more than 120,000 (one hundred and twenty thousand) Indigenous people have enrolled at universities since 1990. Another 120,000 will enrol by 2030. Indigenous people may have started behind the non-Indigenous working class (by twenty-odd years?) but they've already caught up. Now for the middle-class :)

Devastation, yes. Opportunities, yes. That's called 'life'. People can make choices now, which they couldn't, not just for 150 or so years after the invasion/settlement, but for 60,000 years before that. The opportunities are there now. As someone very dear to me remarked, "Yes, just add the miracle ingredient: effort."

Joe

Dear Joe (Loudmouth),

Things are beginning to make sense.

I'm finally starting to get it.

Dear Joe,

«according to federal Education Department figures, more than 120,000 (one hundred and twenty thousand) Indigenous people have enrolled at universities since 1990. Another 120,000 will enrol by 2030.»

Sadly they capitulated, understanding that they cannot have reasonable living standards without undergoing full Western brainwashing in the white-man's universities.

But haven't we all capitulated to the pressures of Western society?
Aren't we all its devastated victims just the same?
Leading a meaningless life just in order to make ends meet?
Why then should aboriginals be given special privileges?
Don't we all deserve to be free and left alone?

Hi Yuyutsu,

Why "sadly" ? Indigenous people have every right to access the modern world and to seize every opportunity that other Australians take for granted. Why do people think that Indigenous people in closed-off 'communities have some sort of idyllic life ? Especially the women and children, most people - MOST people - have ghastly lives, short lives, lives plagued with violence, abuse, ill-health and a sense of utter futility and pointlessness. And by default, 'raise' their kids to do the same all over again.

Of course, there are exceptions, of course many people, including men, strive every day to do the very best they can for their kids, as best they know how. But policy and the Indigenous industry seem determined to keep them in their place. The Industry is determined to keep as many Indigenous people as possible in a dependent state, illiterate, innumerate, unable to take up even the most elementary opportunities, in its idiotic striving to bring about Apartheid - of course by different names, and which they're barely aware of - a population which they can control.

But in the cities, many, many people do seize opportunities. Te=hey strive to make sure the their kids get a decent education, up to university level. And they are the people who will prevail, who will fight against the place which so many of us so easily assume is for them, right and natural against the 'racism of low expectations' which pervades so much of all of our attitudes and expectations for our Indigenous brothers and sisters.

Genuine reconciliation will come about, but there's a long way to go yet. We're all in this society, forever, and all of us have equal rights to seize every opportunity.

Joe