yeah imagine leaving this communities of child abuse to self care. The intelligence of the left. Thank God for the likes of Bess Price who have the courage to stand up to the know it alls.

Foxy,

I've had many Aboriginal friends and unfortunately, I've outlived most of them and a lot of them were years younger than me.

Among my Indian friends who think that the British did a lot of good are ones who think that putting an end to Sati, where widows voluntarily killed themselves (or were drugged by the husband's relatives) was very good work.

The Brits also put the Thugs out of action and modified the worship of Kali so that murders, both ritual and opportunistic, were no longer considered necessary to appease the Goddess.

The relief of some widows from life as 3rd class citizens only came about under British rule.
The practice of making child brides, who were unfortunate enough to have their husbands die in childhood, live the rest of their lives as widows was stopped to some extent and they were saved from a life as household slaves.
However, there's a lot yet to be done, but the Brits, started things off.

India has some 46 million widows and their lot is not a happy one.
http://www.vagabomb.com/8-Absurd-Customs-Indian-Widows-Have-Faced-Through-the-Years/
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/the-town-of-10-000-widows-where-women-are-starting-to-rebel

Foxy, as Loudmouth has stated, most remote communities have had their own elected councils, supposing managing their affairs since the 70s. Also aboriginal legal aid and aboriginal health services have had elected aboriginal committees for decades. My husband was a JP and a member of the W.A. Aboriginal legal service executive committee for over 10 years, back in the 70s and 80s.
And if you wander around the North of Australia you will see that most of the flashiest new buildings belong to aboriginal corporations like land councils, health services etc.
Aboriginal people keep blaming lack of consultion for the lack of progress but if they were consulted anymore there wouldn’t be any time left to do anything

Big Nana,

Just a question - were the people running these
Aboriginal communities - these "elected" officials
white or Aboriginal? Is your husband Aboriginal?
Just curious how it works in remote communities.

Dear Foxy,

I think it's universal that members of Indigenous community councils have to be Indigenous. As I recall, non-Indigenous people living in communities couldn't vote and probably still can't. I certainly couldn't, but maybe that's because I was such a useless bastard. So Indigenous councils make their own decisions, using funds allocated mostly from Canberra. If they make stupid decisions, then they are surely responsible for rectifying those decisions. Yes, they may have a white clerk, or administrator, or business manager, but they make the decisions.

One obvious problem with all of that from the outset has been that the education level, particularly the mathematical level, of elected council members may not be all that flash. I recall one old lady asking me, when $ 120,000 was offered from Canberra to either build four houses (those were the days) or buy up the next-door property of four thousand acres, cleared, on water, etc., "$ 120,000. That's about $ 1200, isn't it ?" Zeros meaning nothing, a string of zeroes meant even less.

Oh, and no, they didn't buy up the next-door property, they knocked down some quite serviceable houses which I had been cleaning, and got four new ones. One with solar panels (in 1976), which lasted more than three months. That house was gone by 1996.

Love,

Joe

Mark Latham's idea as to how to determine aboriginality and therefore access to the myriad benefits being aboriginal brings, might resolve many disputes...

http://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/article/2019/03/11/one-nation-aboriginal-indigenous-dna

Not only would disputes over whether blonde, blue-eyed ABBAriginals were due benefits be objectively resolved but an end to the whole issue would be a mere 2 or 3 generations away by which time no one would be able to claim 25% aboriginality.