mhaze,

Clearly it is you who doesn't understand.

Albert Einstein also said:

"The measure of intelligence is the ability
to change."

And more importantly: -

"We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking
we used when we created them".

Take care.
Stay safe.

mhaze, I am totally with you. I lived in Alice among aboriginals in 1961, an saw the difference between the town dwellers and the camp dwellers. The town dwellers worked and owned their own homes, the camp dwellers scavenged the place for wood and tin. Each had different expectations. I spent time among the camp; building accommodation for aboriginal children being threatened of being removed from the camp.

To some reconciliation means removal of all non aboriginals from the land, unless you adopt their culture and language. that covers Foxy's first four points. Addressing disadvantage is a Bureaucratic view as they want fire and earth, not bricks and mortar. I've seen Brick and mortar dwellings provide by the Government have their timber doors removed for fire wood. The last three points indicate they want their own tribal laws recognised; and not live under Australian laws. They want their own Nation Statehood recognised above Australian, with Australian paying rent for being on their land. Then they are reconciled to their own fate.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/lanesainty/pay-the-rent-aboriginal-australia
Foxy's reconciliation.
1) Understanding country
2) Improving relationships
3) Valuing cultures
4) Sharing history
5) Addressing disadvantage
6) Custody level
7) Aboriginals controlling their own destiny
8) Formal documentation of the process

Josephus,

Down this way in SA, Aboriginal communities may well have unlimited water licence, We lived in one from the early seventies, when slf-determination was being recognised, a stretch of land totalling four thousand acres on the Murray.

Local blockies continue to make good livings from the soil, as diry farmers, and fruit-blocks/grapes/olives/almonds/stone fruit/citrus. Where we lived, the community had four thousand acres of good soil, no rates (since Aboriginal land has no marketable value, since it can't be sold), no repayments necessary, and free water. Within two or three years, the DAA had purchased another four thousand acres for the community.

Since the old Dept of Social Welfare had built up the economic base of that community before it handed over control, by the late seventies it had sheep, grain, lucerne, stone-fruit, citrus, and 40 hectares of grapes, employing about twenty men. All gone now.

Many communities have similar stories: thousands of acres of arable land; and in drier parts of Australia, that land is measured in square kilometres, even thousands of square kilometres. But it's hard to find any community using much of it.

So perhaps as an incentive, another demand can be added to that list:

* the right to make use of any land which the communities may control.

Oops, they already have that right, and have had it for nearly fifty years.

When people actually make use of those resources, I'll get interested in 'reconciliation'.

Joe

Foxy,

I prefer "A man with little knowledge takes a long time to tell you what little he knows" (Thomas Kuhn?)

Mr O,

I prefer:

"May all people here find inspiration and strength to build
a future of reconciliation, justice, peace for all the children
of this beloved land".

And -

"If there is to be reconciliation first there must be
TRUTH".

Dear Joe,

Ever heard of Aboriginal Land Councils?

You can learn more at:

http://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/self-determination/aboriginal-land-councils