An article in today's Australian, page 29, is proposing a separate Indigenous University. At first I thought it was a reprint of an article from forty years ago, when I recall this idea was being discussed, but no, the author cites data from the last decade or so.

Then I thought that the author was some young kid with one of those perennial bright ideas. But no, he seems to be head of some organisation.

An amazingly ignorant man: he talks about setting up support programs at universities, when they have been around for nearly fifty years now: the Aboriginal Task force was set up in SA in 1973; James Cook and Mt Lawley campus set up standard teaching-course support programs in 1977; the SACAE in 1978; and pretty much all other universities by 1990.

Of course, this poor half-wit means a university with specifically Indigenous-focussed courses. But they have been withering away over the past twenty years, and now, perhaps fewer than 5 % of all of the twenty thousand Indigenous students in universities would be studying in such courses.

In fact, the vast majority of Indigenous students have shunned such courses: when an Arts degree in Aboriginal Studies was set up here in SA in 1984, it attracted two or three Indigenous students each year but after about 1990, only one a year, sometimes none at all. It was wound down in around 2010. In fact, there are now no specifically Indigenous-focussed courses in SA except the Anangu Teacher Education Program, set up in 1984 or so, and (unless it has been merged) an Ass. Dip. Music course at Adelaide University.

[TBC]

There's a difference between 'cultural' and 'technological' apart from the spelling of the word....but then a metal retard wouldn't know that....and to live 'XX,000 of years' in the manner as existed, clean air, pristine water, no pollution and a balanced ecology....must have been real hard on them.
Today it's called Utopia

Should Australians Celebrate Cook's Landing?.... why not?.... it wouldn't be the first time thievery was celebrated

[continued]

The article cites ludicrous figures, in the usual attempt to downplay Indigenous participation. It lumps ALL university students together, including the 30 % of overseas students, in order to minimise the proportion of Indigenous participation (which is well over 2 %) - and then uses the latest, also ludicrous figure, of eight hundred thousand Indigenous people across Australia to minimise that participation. [So the Indigenous population has doubled in the last 25 years, while the numbers of babies born, adjusted for Census inflation, has stayed much the same for a couple of decades ?]

Even using Census figures, close to half of all Indigenous young people are now commencing university studies: in 2017, 7,297 commenced award-level university study (Ed. Dept figures), compared to an average age-group population of 20-25 year-olds of about fourteen thousand, around half of all young people. The article claimed a far lower proportion, and went on about many families not even having a child who had reached secondary school. Meanwhile in Queensland, the Year 12 completion rate for Indigenous students is within cooee of the non-Indigenous rate - not bad, for a state with a large remote population. So perhaps you can see why I thought the article was a blast from the past.

Batchelor College has been going for close to forty years, specifically for Indigenous students, with specifically-Indigenous courses, but had only seventeen students in 2016 out of 17,400 across the country. Hardly a ringing endorsement of Indigenous support for Indigenous institutions.

I recall talking about starting up an Indigenous university back in 1981, using the closed-down Peterborough Area School in SA's upper Mid-North. The idea died in the arse pretty quick. But sometimes there's nothing new in brilliant ideas in Indigenous affairs, they come around every generation, and then die.

Joe

What a cheek, down on aboriginal welfare, good old Indy well and truly has his snout in that welfare trough. The same bloke said the last pension rise wouldn't get him another schooner down at gods waiting room. Some people!
Posted by Paul1405, Tuesday, 22 October 2019 7:45:01 PM

Paul1405,
Stop before you become known as the resident perjurer of OLO ! Where did I state "down on aboriginal welfare" or rather allude to that ?
Mustering a little integrity is not your forte, is it ?

Special Delivery,

"...but then a metal retard wouldn't know that..."
Metal retard?
Is that some kind of a robot?

I cannot believe it, here we are in the 21st century, and some are still clinging to outdated 19th century Protestant values and applying them to Aboriginal people. This XX,000 mystery number is between 40,000 and 60,000 years. Since speculation is the order of the day from the detractors on the forum, lets speculate where do they envisage Western Society will be in say 4,000 year from now? A long forgotten pile of dust in a nuclear wasteland.

Issy, were you not a part of the throng that attempted to instigate WWIII and the certainty of a world nuclear catastrophe, that was in Korea in the 1950's?