Foxy,

My comments on the creative spirits article:

Some of the characteristics of apartheid are:

Racial segregation. Groups are, or the entire population is, divided by skin colour. This can include separate designated areas to live, work or be (spatial segregation). Classifications might be used, such as White, Black and Coloured based on physical characteristics.

This applies in Australia. There are large areas locked off to Native title.

Less rights. The minority's political rights are reduced or removed completely.

In South Africa, the majority's political rights were reduced or removed such as is proposed by the Uhluru declaration

Opposition is suppressed. Regulations. Behaviour and communication of the minority group are regulated.

Here's where 18c come in.

Suppression. The government sets up elements to suppress aspects of the culture of the minority, for example in areas such as marriage, sexuality, jobs, wages or education.

Actually banning intermarriage works both ways.

Violence and destruction. The minority group experiences overt or covert violence or racism. Their property or lands are destroyed.

Again the majority was oppressed. statement above applies to the minority whites today.

Foxy & Paul,

My problem is that I find your comments half-baked, semi-informed, relying on second- and third-hand sources. I wish I didn't but there you go.

No, I don't think Creative Spirits is much better, it never gets into any subject deeply and it's basically uncritical of stances slanted a particular way.

There is far more going on, and far more complicated background stories than you seem to be aware of. Frankly, I don't know where to start any more.

Indigenous women in remote areas are 34 times more likely to suffer from (or to report) domestic violence than Australian women generally. Perhaps that means that they are 34 times more likely to be killed in DV situations ? I don't see you or Creative Spirits tackling that issue, except to come up with the half-witted notion that it's all due to colonisation and intergenerational trauma, the explanation du jour. What, more colonisation etc. than urban and southern people have experienced ?

More than the sixty thousand Indigenous university graduates have experienced ? One in every eight Indigenous adults is a university graduate; one in six women. In the cities, it's probably one in four women and one in eight men. According to press stories, of the eighty-odd Indigenous suicides so far this year, none of them have been university graduates. Perhaps you can explain that somehow, in terms of colonisation and intergenerational trauma.

Please try to learn, for god's sake, instead of swallowing someone else's pap.

Joe

PS Just one word of praise for Indigenous people's university participation would be positive ? No ? What, not separatist enough ? Not apartheid enough ?

I just got this from the Creative Spirits site.

" Origin of apartheid in Australia
In 1901 one of Australia's first acts as a nation was to introduce the so-called White Australia policy to exclude non-Europeans from Australia. Under the policy Melanesian slaves and their families were forcibly repatriated [1], severing centuries-old family and commercial links between Aboriginal Australians and Indonesia."

One wonders how the Melanesians came to be associated with Indonesians and how links had been 'centuries-old'.

The author/s is/are writing about 1901, recruitment from the Islands began in the 1860s.
http://www.qhatlas.com.au/content/sugar-slaves

In view of such sloppiness, I read no further.

Foxy & Paul,

If Apartheid is evil (as I 100 % believe it is/was), then separate development is most likely evil. Once upon a time, I thought it might be possible to set up a sort of network of autonomous Aboriginal communities with strong economies, maybe exchanging goods with each other- a sort of progressive Apartheid. Ah, Maoism ! No limits to its stupidities. Of course, that was a disastrous recipe for pure apartheid couched in terms of 'self-determination' out in the sticks. That eventually dawned on me in about 1976.

As Big Nana has tried to get through your heads, reality 'out there' is ghastly, Apartheid by another name. But on the other hand, as she tries to explain, most Indigenous people in the towns and cities are inter-marrying, which inherently means that couples are that much less likely to every go out , or return, to remote communities. They tend now to be born and bred urban.

I suspect you find that very disappointing - after all, cities belong to whites, the sticks belongs to Blacks. Civilization is white, tradition and culture is Black. Why aren't they content to stay in 'country' ? Ah, they've been brainwashed by assimilationism. Ty telling that to urban people.

The Indigenous population trend is towards the towns and cities. Indigenous success is vastly more likely in towns and cities. In 'communities', what is more likely is violence, abuse, neglect and early death. Yes, that's very difficult to square with colonisation and intergenerational trauma, but there you go.

But you put your finger on one reality: the choice for Indigenous people is between Apartheid (under the control of the Industry) or equality, integration, free choice and interacting (under their own individual control, i.e. self-determination). We all forget that, under South Africa's Apartheid policies, many people running their 'homelands' did very well: bureaucrats, functionaries, police and armed forces. They fought tooth and nail against equal rights, and for separatism.

And who fought for equality, and a rainbow society ? You've heard of Mandela ? Google him, Foxy.

So which side are you on?

Joe

Joe, it was you and Big Nanna who diverted the argument to the plight of the 12% of Aboriginal people living in remote communities. Your pompous condescending attitudes on the subject is pathetic. You might see yourself as some kind of self styled expert, well good for you! I suppose your "research" into the 5% of Aboriginals in SA makes you an expert on the other 95% as well, again good for you!

LOVE Paul1405.

Paul,

Do you believe that all Australian citizens should be treated as equals?