Dear Foxy,

'Self-determination' means that, to a large extent, the people solve their own problems. Parenting, for instance: what would you expect any government to do about that ?

Yes, people in remote 'communities' are vastly behind the eight-ball when it comes to catching up with the rest of the world - and that's if they wanted to. Yes, they may want to live in their own way, but with standard welfare payments forever and a multitude of government-provided services - such as housing, with AC if possible, Toyota parked out the front. Hardly a traditional life.

The world is ripping past them. Looking at the university experiences, in Australia, one could say that, back in 1950, only a small elite went to uni, to become doctors, lawyers, engineers, dentists and a few other sorts of professionals. The middle class cotton onto university study in the fifties; the working class in the sixties. Urban Indigenous people, from a background of rural life, choices and opportunities, really started on that path from about 1990. People from rural towns have not really taken that path. People in small, southern, 'communities' are missing the boat, although most have shifted into rural towns and the outer suburbs of cities.

So people in remote 'communities' are, if ever, some generations from beginning to grasp the purpose and value of education, even at Primary level. The world isn't stopping to pick them up, it roars on.

People make choices on the basis of how they understand their opportunities, and know about alternative pathways. I fear that, unless some pressure is put on parents - horrors ! - the next generation of children, and the next, and the next, won't get out of their predicament, ever. Very depressing, but that's how it seems to be.

What is disgusting is that the Black and white bureaucracies are protecting the people in those remote 'communities' to keep on as they are. They are the captives of the bureaucracy - just as the bureaucracy is, in a way, their captive: neither can change their life-careers. Apartheid, anyone ?

Love,

Joe

"What is disgusting is that the Black and white bureaucracies are protecting the people in those remote 'communities' to keep on as they are. They are the captives of the bureaucracy - just as the bureaucracy is, in a way, their captive: neither can change their life-careers. Apartheid, anyone ?"

The which ensures that the bureaucrats have a lifetime employment guarantee.

Dear Joe,

Bloody depressing from what you say.

So what needs to be done then?

Surely somewhere in that mix there must be indigenous
leaders that could lead the way? They can't all be
just a bunch of losers? Or are you saying we should
as a country just leave them to their own devices?

Foxy Quote "the gap between life expectancy, infant mortality, education and employment outcomes between our indigenous people and our non-indigenous people."

The majority of them want to do things the way they used to do it, infant mortality answered. The elderly people do the doctors job for birth.

Life expectancy easy drugs, alcoholism and chain smokers, = high likelihood you die earlier than others.

Education when they see the way a lot of there parents choose to live and know that really they don't need an education to be alcoholic or a druggy and there is very little short of taking them away from the parents the government can do what can you expect.
They need more successful aboriginals to go back to communities to show the younger ones what is possible.

Employment there are a multitude of programs for education and employment for Aboriginals also there are programs that give them preferential treatment for jobs.
Why work for 35 hours to get a little more money, buy more grog.
Very hard to get someone to work when they have been getting everything they wanted for doing nothing for the past 20 to 40 years and they saw there parent do exactly the same.

But I believe a self inflicted problem is they do not see or can't grasp the fact that a better lifestyle is available to them if they put in the effort.
Too many probably see what they have and are resigned to believe that is how it will always be, too many are also just too damn lazy, why do anything because whitey will give us more.

As for the rest appears Joe answered that appropriately.

Dear Foxy,

Noel Pearson is right that people have to step down from the (financial) pedestal of welfare and start on the road to work (via years of education), with the promise of barely any higher income than lifelong welfare (and royalties) provide.

Phillip spells it all out fairly well, although his suggestion, that "... they need more successful aboriginals to go back to communities to show the younger ones what is possible" has been tried many, many times, without much improvement - and the power structure in 'communities', the power of big frogs in little ponds, ensures that any well-meaning outsiders are pissed off ASAP. Too much of a challenge to local power structures.

People perceive what their best options are, on the basis of information which is understandable, and as they see it, profitable. What they don't understand is ignored. What constitutes too much work is ignored. So those options narrow down very quickly.

So, either people are left as they are, ruining the chances of future generations, OR some courageous government has to impose a mixture of carrots and sticks. Clearly, the first step is to get kids to school regularly, and for at least twelve years. So how to persuade parents of the value of doing that ?

Incentives, like feeding their kids for them, maybe showering them too, giving them clean clothes as well. Threats as well, such as deductions from their welfare payments if they don't send their kids to school regularly, for twelve years.

[TBC]

[continued]

Hmmm ....... is this achievable ? Way back in the dreadfully racist nineteenth century, missions would offer to take children into their school, provided it was for the whole week, Monday to Friday: the kids were fed, housed in separate dormitories, and sent off home on Friday afternoon. Parents could go out to work during the week and the family could be united on Friday night. As far as I can tell, this was a perfectly voluntary arrangement (how could it have possibly worked otherwise ?) But of course, it depended on parents being in work, on local farms, fruit blocks, government infrastructure projects, etc. The parents were positive examples their kids. None of these opportunities exist near remote 'communities' these days.

So what to do ? Certainly, people can't 'be left to their own devices' any more than they are now. Of course, no government can forcibly take children away too schools. So the determining factor is parents: what they do is crucial. Do they get off their arses, get their kids to school each day, or not ? Nobody can, or should, do it for them. You and I surely agree on that. So how to motivate the parents ? The million-dollar question.

Love,

Joe