40 years of poisionous welfare and trying to empower a seperate outcome has failed miserably. The situation was better when the missions were running things in the outback. It sad that we as a nation had to intervene again but the situation was dire. The only way things will get better is if we finally listen not to dodson but Noel Pearson. Aboriginal need to integrate into moder Australia.
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Society/Culture Deja vu 1967? Should Aboriginals be recognised in the Constitution?
- Thread starter Monniehawk
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Not necessarily.
Some communities do, they have no choice. But there are a significant amount of indigenous australians living close to traditional lives. These people have better health outcomes and better well being ratings. The data is there to show that integration/ assimilation is incredibly harmful for transitioning these people to a more "western" lifestyle.
And policy, just like most of the Australian public's ignorance on the matter, is shown in the one size fits all approach - which you have demonstrated in your paragraph.
We need two indigenous policy strategies - one for those communities which are for the most part self sufficient, and those that aren't and those peoples that have no future choice about whether they go back or come across.
The conservative agenda in this country amounts to cultural genocide, and the Labor agenda is so confused as to be incoherent.
I agree, Pat Dodson does not argue for customary law and self determination. He's quite vague on how he would like the constitution to be changed but it would be of the symbolic and meaningless variety. However, there are sure to be voices on the proposed committee that would argue for more separatist powers. And there is no way that would get voted in - Gillard would not even go to the polls with that.
You're confusing separatism with self-determination.
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The 40 years of 'poisonous welfare' was government (politically?) inspired. The indigenous people were victims of that mismanagement, not the perpetrators.
Government intervened in their own intervention, yielding the same catastrophic results. "Intervention" is totally at odds with involving the indigenous community because it is simply another imposition of values. More "interference" than "intervention", I would think!
And.... Is intervention the result of governments aspiring to Euro-centric opinion rather than embracing the indigenous opinion?
You seem to have confused your opinion with fact. Your opinion about Gillard/Greens may well reflect a popular (if somewhat acned) view, but it is still only opinion. The pessimistic statement that outcomes will be "symbolic" and "meaningless" is also a presumption which lacks any substantive evidence.
As for "spearing people....." ... well I'll let you live with that one.
Nah, it's only my opinion if an "acned" one lol. I don't claim facts, but you have not even offered a counter-argument.
I don't regard a symbolic and meaningless statement as pessimistic. I would regard it as unnecessary.
What I regard as pessimistic is state funded intellectuals encouraging people to cling to an identity of victim and the associated guilt that goes with it on the other side. The constitution needs to look forward not back. I want to see a vision of the future where all Australians are valued equally not a recognition of any particular group's special place.
Name these people.
Why can't it do both? Because right now it is certainly not the case constitutionally, or practically in the field.
Why are property rights different for Indigenous Australians, and non-Indigenous Australians?
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- #34
The counter-argument is that a document which defines us as a nation does so from a historical and cultural perspective. It is undeniable that the first inhabitants are a significant part of that history AND culture and their absence from the Constitution is anathema. Even so, that is not the sole crux of my argument: it is that - as you say - we need to look forward and that necessitates shedding any dross from the past which holds us back from emerging as a truly mature nation. The Apology was mature, symbolic and necessary. I don't see that it is an expression of guilt, but it certainly is one of regret. Still, the Apology is only part of moving forward (almost a pejorative, now!
).The Constitution is far from meaningless and is full of symbolism. So, for example, is Anzac Day. Each contributes to our notion of nationhood. Symbolism is important to the nation's psyche and identity. It is not meaningless (otherwise it could not be symbolism) and it is definitely necessary.
I also understand your cynicism. It is hard to maintain focus when the whole issue has been shrouded in posturing (from either side) and we have little to show for the money and effort. We have created two victims: us and them!
State-funded intellectuals are obviously the problem? My observations are that intellectuals present their findings and governments and bureaucrats concoct them into a politically digestible pie. The result is invariably a disappointing compromise that often bears no resemblance to the recommendations.
Ultimately though, I suspect it is those intellectuals who will determine our path.
evo
Let's hit the f*ken road!
sub·sume
/səbˈsum/ Show Spelled[suhb-soom] Show IPA
–verb (used with object), -sumed, -sum·ing.
1.
to consider or include (an idea, term, proposition, etc.) as part of a more comprehensive one.
2.
to bring (a case, instance, etc.) under a rule.
3.
to take up into a more inclusive classification.
The horror!!!!!
two points
1. Many in the aboriginal industry mainly living in southern cities have benn complicit and propagating the poisioness pill
2. Whilst many southern city lefties decry the intervention, including the group mentioned in point 1 many on the ground have supported it mainly women who are happy with the interventoin that tackles alcholism, violence, hopefully stopping most of the young girls having vd, no one being able to read write and speak English except for the elders old enough to have been lucky enough to been there when the missions were there.
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Urrrk! Maybe CONsumed? Misappropriation of the synonym 'contained'.
Qsaint:
1. Many in the aboriginal industry mainly living in southern cities have benn complicit and propagating the poisioness pill
2. Whilst many southern city lefties decry the intervention, including the group mentioned in point 1 many on the ground have supported it mainly women who are happy with the alcholism, violence, most of the young girls having vd, no one being able to read write and speak English except for the elders old enough to have been lucky enough to been there when the missions were there.
[/qoute]
Can't argue with that logic!!!
How does he know all these things?
(...and go get 'im Evo)
But we are actually talking about whether "the Aboriginals should be recognised in the Constitution", not debating sweeping statements about intervention, assimilation or prevalence of VD.
How is it unhelpful, detrimental or undesireable to recognise them?
From within the problem areas posted from a year ago printed in the Australian, it was never reproduced by fairfax of course, it should make uncomfortable readinng for those pushing the ideological solution.
I WAS born under a tree at a place called Yuendumu. My father was 10 when he first saw a white man. I speak Warlpiri and some of four other languages plus English.
We have had so many self-appointed people, black and white, who have decided to be our spokespeople, who know nothing about us and our issues.
They are the people who have been running the show all these years without ever asking us whether it's OK for them to do so. They are the people who want to keep us in the dark as if we are some sort of Stone Age people.
It took urgent measures by the federal government in 2007 to help our people, for them to recognise what was happening to them and do something for themselves before it was too late.
I am one of those people who embraced the government's move. To me it meant at last somebody was acknowledging there was a crisis that needed to be addressed. For a long time our people's lives have been in a state of crisis, spiralling downwards, rapidly, uncontrollably.
Start of sidebar. Skip to end of sidebar.
RELATED COVERAGE
More whitefellas 'but nothing gets done'
The Australian, 11 Oct 2010
Thai protesters 'ready to die'
The Australian, 17 May 2010
Address our real concerns
The Australian, 11 Dec 2009
Tribal war on native title
Adelaide Now, 19 Nov 2009
'One line for blacks in intervention'
The Australian, 7 Oct 2009
End of sidebar. Return to start of sidebar.
The protesters against this intervention seem to care only when whitefellas kill blackfellas. They don't care when our kids are killed by their own people or they commit suicide.
Three of my brothers drank themselves to death in the Alice Springs town camps. Two nieces, one 21, one 26, did the same.
My granddaughter was murdered in a town camp, stabbed by her ex-husband. The ambulance wouldn't go in there without a police escort because the drunks attack them when they go there to save a life. So she died waiting for them.
I could go on all day about the violence I have seen. Yet these protesters treat me like an enemy. They have told the world that I am a drunk and that I support the government only because it pays me to do work for them.
They have never given me a chance to talk at their rallies.
They bring white students and cranky Kooris and Murris up from down south who know nothing about us and who hate whitefellas. They look for local people who think like they do and try to keep the rest quiet and away from the media.
I know plenty of Aboriginal women here who want the intervention because they can feed their kids now.
The protesters treat them like enemies as well. They never support the old women who come in from the bush to protest against the grog.
They attacked the women at the women's centre at Yuendumu when they set up their own shop. They took the side of the violent men and the corrupt ones in our communities and refused to support the women worried about their kids or sick of being beaten up by drunks. They have never even tried to talk to us.
White people told us that they wanted to preserve our language, so now my people can't express themselves to the rest of the world and rely on white people to do it for them. I went to school before the bilingual program started, yet I speak Warlpiri and English better than our kids and our grandkids.
Our people need to be challenged. There needs to be an open and honest debate among ourselves. These protesters have done their best to stop that from happening, calling it "solidarity". With all the money the government has poured into our self-managed organisations and communities, everything has gotten worse.
Our organisations can put energy into campaigning against government policies and getting the UN to take notice of their views, but they don't stop our men from murdering our women, our kids from killing themselves. They don't keep our languages alive. All they can do is bleat for more money. We have the strength ourselves if we can only be honest for once. The intervention started this debate. That is the best thing about it. It has made us think for the first time about what's happened to us, where we are and where we want to go.
The Racial Discrimination Act has not protected our people from ourselves. Now we know that and can do something about it. Let's roll forward instead of backwards.
I was disgusted by the two meetings with you (the Rollback the Intervention group) that I attended in Alice Springs. All the talking was done by English speakers.
Almost all of the ones talking do not speak our languages. They had no interpreters so my people could tell you what they think. The announcements relating to the meetings were last minute, in English and hidden away in the classified ads that my people don't, and many can't, read.
I asked people to come and talk but they said: "Kurntangka" - shameful. Those people at the meetings do not make them feel welcome or confident; in fact they intimidate them.
My people, the ones with the problems that the intervention is designed to address, were deliberately excluded. They were lining up and down at the pub and the bottle shops as they do every day or sitting in filth in the camps worrying about their kids and waiting for the next round of grog-fuelled violence.
You were given a fairytale version of our culture by people who don't live by our law. That mob wants you to think that it is the government that causes all our problems. That is an outrageous lie.
The government gets it wrong because it consults with the wrong people. It gets it wrong because it cannot help people who won't, or don't know how to, help themselves. We want to be able to help ourselves.
We want leaders who will lead us out of our misery, not sit around whingeing about how hard their lives are when they have the jobs and the power. We want leaders who tell us that we are not victims who can't do a thing for ourselves but sit around dying while we wait for the government to get it right.
We want leaders who will convince our own mob to stop drinking, fighting and feuding, who will get our kids into school so we can produce our own professors of indigenous rights who can go to your country to listen to your people's stories.
Bess Nungarrayi Price is the chairwoman of the Northern Territory's Indigenous Affairs Advisory Council. This is a speech she prepared for a meeting of the Rollback the Intervention group.
I WAS born under a tree at a place called Yuendumu. My father was 10 when he first saw a white man. I speak Warlpiri and some of four other languages plus English.
We have had so many self-appointed people, black and white, who have decided to be our spokespeople, who know nothing about us and our issues.
They are the people who have been running the show all these years without ever asking us whether it's OK for them to do so. They are the people who want to keep us in the dark as if we are some sort of Stone Age people.
It took urgent measures by the federal government in 2007 to help our people, for them to recognise what was happening to them and do something for themselves before it was too late.
I am one of those people who embraced the government's move. To me it meant at last somebody was acknowledging there was a crisis that needed to be addressed. For a long time our people's lives have been in a state of crisis, spiralling downwards, rapidly, uncontrollably.
Start of sidebar. Skip to end of sidebar.
RELATED COVERAGE
More whitefellas 'but nothing gets done'
The Australian, 11 Oct 2010
Thai protesters 'ready to die'
The Australian, 17 May 2010
Address our real concerns
The Australian, 11 Dec 2009
Tribal war on native title
Adelaide Now, 19 Nov 2009
'One line for blacks in intervention'
The Australian, 7 Oct 2009
End of sidebar. Return to start of sidebar.
The protesters against this intervention seem to care only when whitefellas kill blackfellas. They don't care when our kids are killed by their own people or they commit suicide.
Three of my brothers drank themselves to death in the Alice Springs town camps. Two nieces, one 21, one 26, did the same.
My granddaughter was murdered in a town camp, stabbed by her ex-husband. The ambulance wouldn't go in there without a police escort because the drunks attack them when they go there to save a life. So she died waiting for them.
I could go on all day about the violence I have seen. Yet these protesters treat me like an enemy. They have told the world that I am a drunk and that I support the government only because it pays me to do work for them.
They have never given me a chance to talk at their rallies.
They bring white students and cranky Kooris and Murris up from down south who know nothing about us and who hate whitefellas. They look for local people who think like they do and try to keep the rest quiet and away from the media.
I know plenty of Aboriginal women here who want the intervention because they can feed their kids now.
The protesters treat them like enemies as well. They never support the old women who come in from the bush to protest against the grog.
They attacked the women at the women's centre at Yuendumu when they set up their own shop. They took the side of the violent men and the corrupt ones in our communities and refused to support the women worried about their kids or sick of being beaten up by drunks. They have never even tried to talk to us.
White people told us that they wanted to preserve our language, so now my people can't express themselves to the rest of the world and rely on white people to do it for them. I went to school before the bilingual program started, yet I speak Warlpiri and English better than our kids and our grandkids.
Our people need to be challenged. There needs to be an open and honest debate among ourselves. These protesters have done their best to stop that from happening, calling it "solidarity". With all the money the government has poured into our self-managed organisations and communities, everything has gotten worse.
Our organisations can put energy into campaigning against government policies and getting the UN to take notice of their views, but they don't stop our men from murdering our women, our kids from killing themselves. They don't keep our languages alive. All they can do is bleat for more money. We have the strength ourselves if we can only be honest for once. The intervention started this debate. That is the best thing about it. It has made us think for the first time about what's happened to us, where we are and where we want to go.
The Racial Discrimination Act has not protected our people from ourselves. Now we know that and can do something about it. Let's roll forward instead of backwards.
I was disgusted by the two meetings with you (the Rollback the Intervention group) that I attended in Alice Springs. All the talking was done by English speakers.
Almost all of the ones talking do not speak our languages. They had no interpreters so my people could tell you what they think. The announcements relating to the meetings were last minute, in English and hidden away in the classified ads that my people don't, and many can't, read.
I asked people to come and talk but they said: "Kurntangka" - shameful. Those people at the meetings do not make them feel welcome or confident; in fact they intimidate them.
My people, the ones with the problems that the intervention is designed to address, were deliberately excluded. They were lining up and down at the pub and the bottle shops as they do every day or sitting in filth in the camps worrying about their kids and waiting for the next round of grog-fuelled violence.
You were given a fairytale version of our culture by people who don't live by our law. That mob wants you to think that it is the government that causes all our problems. That is an outrageous lie.
The government gets it wrong because it consults with the wrong people. It gets it wrong because it cannot help people who won't, or don't know how to, help themselves. We want to be able to help ourselves.
We want leaders who will lead us out of our misery, not sit around whingeing about how hard their lives are when they have the jobs and the power. We want leaders who tell us that we are not victims who can't do a thing for ourselves but sit around dying while we wait for the government to get it right.
We want leaders who will convince our own mob to stop drinking, fighting and feuding, who will get our kids into school so we can produce our own professors of indigenous rights who can go to your country to listen to your people's stories.
Bess Nungarrayi Price is the chairwoman of the Northern Territory's Indigenous Affairs Advisory Council. This is a speech she prepared for a meeting of the Rollback the Intervention group.
Sorry, but that is plain wrong.
I'm probably involved in this "aboriginal industry" you talk about, and I sure as hell don't live in the south, nor do most in this "industry".
The most important indigenous research body, Menzies, has its indigenous headquarters in Darwin.
And the data suggests the intervention has been an outright failure. Alcohol abuse is just as high as it was, but petrol sniffing has skyrocketed. Violence is even more prevalent because of the increased movement of indigenous peoples between tribal areas. Homelessness has increased.
Education levels still haven't improved and there has just been a whole heap of data out that shows that forcing english on students without teaching indigenous languages concurrently trashes school attendance, and educational outcomes.
So either you get a clue, or keep posting trash like that which goes against all the research, and anyone with any idea will keep thinking you're a moron.
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Stirring stuff!
No doubt Betty had concerns she represents a valid viewpoint which neither of us pretend to fully understand. Many others including Pat Dodson have perspectives which only underlines the complexity of it all. The intervention, promising as it may have been, was not the success you seem to think, so that problem remains. Still, you seem to have the comfort of blaming the lefties, Fairfax, city dwellers and intellectuals for all the ills without actually examining the issues beyond the superficial. Some may also feel a little uneasy about the Murdoch press editorialising on the issue!
At a later stage myself and others (I am sure) would be interested in taking up your line of thought in another thread.
Back to the issue: I still fail to see how all this precludes the value of "recognising Aboriginals in our Constitution" - the topic of the OP.
My gut feeling is that recognition changes the exemplar. Their status must be enhanced by specific recognition in our Constitution. Thus, indigenous people become more of the subject than the object with the hope they could then state opinions with the authority and confidence that seems to be absent.
You rightly show concern for others speaking on their behalf. At the moment, most of that is done by the white sector, often adopting language that dimishes them, i.e. the "Aboriginal problem". The consequence of limited recognition is limited dialogue: threfore we end up making their decisions for them.
If we can avoid confusing "symbolism" with tokenism, "independence" with separatism and the politics of division by invoking left/right, black/white, urban/outback dichotomies, it might be helpful.
No doubt Betty had concerns she represents a valid viewpoint which neither of us pretend to fully understand. Many others including Pat Dodson have perspectives which only underlines the complexity of it all. The intervention, promising as it may have been, was not the success you seem to think, so that problem remains. Still, you seem to have the comfort of blaming the lefties, Fairfax, city dwellers and intellectuals for all the ills without actually examining the issues beyond the superficial. Some may also feel a little uneasy about the Murdoch press editorialising on the issue!
At a later stage myself and others (I am sure) would be interested in taking up your line of thought in another thread.
Back to the issue: I still fail to see how all this precludes the value of "recognising Aboriginals in our Constitution" - the topic of the OP.
My gut feeling is that recognition changes the exemplar. Their status must be enhanced by specific recognition in our Constitution. Thus, indigenous people become more of the subject than the object with the hope they could then state opinions with the authority and confidence that seems to be absent.
You rightly show concern for others speaking on their behalf. At the moment, most of that is done by the white sector, often adopting language that dimishes them, i.e. the "Aboriginal problem". The consequence of limited recognition is limited dialogue: threfore we end up making their decisions for them.
If we can avoid confusing "symbolism" with tokenism, "independence" with separatism and the politics of division by invoking left/right, black/white, urban/outback dichotomies, it might be helpful.
- Apr 1, 2008
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The language of defeatism.
No. Change the paradigm. Recognise the indigenous voices FIRST (traditional, urban and displaced), dialogue with them, then work for a common end.
And don't expect magic, simplistic solutions.
LOL.
No. It's a false dichotomy.
There are solutions for some of the problems. The problem is very little political will as good, well thought out and well researched indigenous policy is not popular amongst the public. Head kicking is seen by the conservatives on both sides of politics as a vote winning exercise.
Almost daily there are broken agreements from government institutions towards indigenous communities and it's shrugged off as "being ok". Well, no, it's not ok. Doing something half arsed and half thought out is acceptable. And it shouldn't be.
Classic example this week of an indigenous group signing over their land to have houses built. Turns out they've been lied to. They wont get those houses. If you'd signed over your property to a tradie who then didn't provide what he agreed to, and he said, "Nah, she's right mate!" You would be absolutely furious. Wouldn't happen in your suburb, in your city or in your state. But because it is an indigenous community, on indigenous land, no one gives a stuff.
It is state orchestrated theft. It's as simple as that. It is once again, disposession of land. Pure and simple.
And it's these actions that stop any kind of half way meeting point. It just wont happen so long as we **** communities over.
But there are good things being done. Two of us are going overseas to present a paper on a program we have which is about training indigenous teachers in place. I'll leave you with that.
Or stick to agreements FFS.
Chops the issue with your commnity is the same with qld wild rivers legislation because individuals can not harness the rights of property they can't develop their land and derive income. Now I know the rich farm land of northern qld is probably not the same as where you are talking about but the principle is the same. Where was the lawyer acting for the community? Government generally can not provide services well to anyone, and generally historically these communities are 100% dependent on them, which has to stop.
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