ttbn,
>How many centuries have to pass before people with a smidgen of
>original inhabitants’ blood in their veins will cease to be 'indigenous’?

That's really the wrong question, for they may never cease to be indigenous, but it will eventually cease to be an issue.

Dear Aidan,

I certainly hope that you're right about it ceasing to be
an issue. Although, take the case of "migrants" -
no matter how hard some of them may think of themselves
as "Aussies," if they have more complicated names and
surnames they'll still be judged as "foreigners." Even
the ones who were born here. My husband was asked in
a public hospital "Do you need an interpreter?" (he's
got a foreign surname). To which he replied in perfect
English - "Why, doesn't the doctor speak English?"

Good to hear that Indigenous students are doing so well with University studies. Belly said "As in my view education is the best hope" could not agree more. Education brings enlightenment, and through enlightenment we get rid of fear and superstition. Education takes away ignorance, and that is a very good thing.

Yes, modern indigenous societies need well trained professionals.
Indy "where are all these well-doing (Indigenous) employed now?" Jut as you are so pleased to hear that Indigenous students are doing so well, I am sure your are just as pleased that over 200 are now medical doctors. I'm sure that must put you over the Moon. Don't have to be Einstein to know what you are trying to fish out.

My wife and (step)daughter are talking about getting their DNA done as a Xmas present, saying it cost only $79 and totally painless, you send away for the kit. Wants to know if they have any Huna Muna, or Hindu La La blood, quaint terms for Orientals and Indians.

communities need people with all manner of skills
Loudmouth,
Exactly, all this higher education is fine for medical specialists etc. but for day to day running of a community ordinary workers are needed. As there is no hype for odinary work people don't aspire to it hence the work not getting done.
People like Foxy are so caught up in the belief that higher education is simply the pinnacle. It can be & is for a very few but the majority are simply hanging in at some pointless public service desk & nothing gets done at great expense.
I have spent 40 years alongside educated people & all I can say that the number of useful ones were outnumbered 100-1 by the inept.
I renmote communities the menial jobs pay less than unemployment benefit so it is not hard for a thinking person to work out the situation. That's when outside contractors get imported a massive cost to the taxpayers.
I'm all in favour of as much education as possible but it must be appliable in daily life & it must result in services that people are prepared to pay for not simply on the public service payroll
with no accountability. In Qld Campbell Newman tried to sort this out by sacking the wrong people.

Hi Individual,

Yes, you're mostly right, but 'communities' (writing entirely hypothetically, assuming they'll keep existing) need teachers, nurses, accountants, specialists, agriculturalists, geologists, etc., as well as mechanics, electricians, carpenters, etc., etc., to survive and thrive. But not likely to happen.

I was just thinking about one 'community' where we lived for some years: back then, in the seventies, it had a population of around 150, and a broad economic base: grapes, lucerne, sheep, grain, stone fruit and citrus orchards. Bit by bit that base was dismantled, the grapes and stone fruit and lucerne ripped out and replaced by almonds. 8,000 acres and they had to rip out the 300 acres of productive activity and replace them with almonds, employing two blokes instead of twenty.

So the population withered away, and almost everybody was on welfare, CDEP. Told to wind up the CDEP program in about 2007, everybody was 'paid out' for holiday pay, superannuation, back pay, sick leave pay, etc., and the debt (maybe a couple of million) set against the farm. The government department which had to cover the debt, DEEWR, stopped funding the water for the almonds (and maybe took out the pump too) and the almonds all died. By 2012, the population was down to a couple of families, (only one household with dogs the last time I saw the place, back in 2012) with maybe a half-dozen people. Yes, everybody could have chipped in to keep the pump going, but no.

In the last Census, there were supposed to be 38 people there. Maybe many people who had left, still were recorded as being there, but no. It makes you wonder about how reliable the ABS Census figures are for remote communities generally. Another community, up in the Flinders, seems to be totally abandoned, although there are probably a couple of families, old people, still there.

But

[TBC]

[continued]

.... contribution for the common good is not a strong point of Aboriginal 'communities'. Neither is reciprocity, except of course within families and clans, and (by definition in a corrupt, patronage-oriented, rent-seeking society) between cronies. So it's likely that the populations in remote 'communities' is crashing. Others would know far more about the northern 'communities', but I suspect that people have abandoned out-stations ('homelands') to move to the larger communities - and are moving from there to local towns, and from there to the cities. In Adelaide already, I think there are many people not just from our North-West but from NT 'communities' as well.

But those poor buggers are so far behind where they need to be to tap into the environment that they're moving to. They tend to be illiterate, with poor English, poor knowledge of this new world round them. So they can't know the value of education, let alone how to get into employment, even if they were inclined to. Getting their kids through school might take another couple of generations, another fifty or sixty years at least (if at all), so another generation before their kids (and grand-kids) move into higher education (if at all). So the horrible reality, thanks to long-term policies of shielding 'communities' from education and employment, is that, at the earliest, those populations may be more or less indigent, and continually behind the play, until 2100 or later.

Meanwhile, 'southerners', with far higher levels of education and history of interaction with the mainstream population, will keep moving to the cities and, even those from rural towns, keep seizing opportunities in urban environments. Of course, many will try to stay on welfare and keep their kids from getting a decent education, and into employment.

So the majority of 'southerners' will eventually take up opportunities and find positive and productive roles in the mainstream. Some will keep flogging the grievance and separatist agenda since there will still be paid positions (I nearly wrote 'work'; oops) in the multitude of organisations. All of that up-the-wrong-creek stuff willstill be happening long after I'm gone.