Hard News: Not such as to engender confidence
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apologies. victorian aboriginal population in 2001 was ~28k. here
and richard, there is nothing to trust about howard.
the man has no integrity whatsoever. the litany of lies leading up to several elections is proof of that.
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Slightly OT, but I had the privilege of meeting Charlie Perkins while working in tourism, as part of the tourism issues around the Sydney 2000 Olympics (he passed away just a few months later).
I've got to say, while he enjoyed a reputation as being a firebrand and political shit-stirrer, he really impressed me.
And what an amazing life! - first indigenous Australian to graduate from university, civil rights leader, political leader, and he even trialled for Everton and Liverpool - and turned down Manchester United! What a guy ....
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merc,
I met and talked with Michael Fay, he was a very nice man and a gracious host, but...
Careful of the, "they weren't interested in modern technology thing". It has been used in conjunction with the loss of technology theory (no bows and arrows), similar to the Aztec no wheel thing. The Australian Aboriginal culture is arguably the most seamless, streatching across 35,000 years; I guess they knew what they needed in order to survive. A liitle complex (meh) to go into here, suffice it to say, this Howard policy reminds me of Rangiriri, November 20, 1863.
Same tone, it's about relieving the people of their land for their own good because they wouldn't know what to do with it anyway, see what they've achieved thus far!
Tamihana would know exactly what Howard is up to. -
Ben and Che - one small point, Aboriginal people aren't all concentrated in desert or outback areas - there are lots of Aboriginal people living in the cities, including Melbourne; but they make up a larger percentage of the population, and are more visible, in rural areas. (Can't provide any figures off hand to back this up.) Also, Aboriginal people do not all look the way New Zealanders might expect them to look - many are relatively fair-skinned as a result of European or other ancestry, but still identify strongly as Aboriginal.
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merc,
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Howard's initiative is not humanitarian - it's part of an ongoing process of constantly chiseling at the vulnerable, even to the extent of plundering them of their culture. As an example of this mean-spiritedness, there's a group of particularly striking rock paintings in a national park in Victoria. A persistent local myth has it that they were created sometime in the late 19th century by a visiting 'French impressionist', as they're far too sophisticated to have been produced by blackfellas.
This kind of thing directly undermines aboriginal autonomy. The highly distinctive rock art of the Kimberley has become a tourist attraction in recent years. Most examples are on land held as long-term cattle leases. When the local aboriginal nation attempted to re-establish an economic base by running guided tours of THEIR heritage, local graziers took legal action, using a scholastically spurious account produced by a local crackpot as evidence that the Kimberley art was produced by a now-vanished people with Indonesian affiliations. Beef prices were down, tourism was suddenly lucrative. The vulnerable are plundered over and over again.
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the only work is in... you guessed it, mining and farming.
I'm wondering if mining and farming could provide enough employment in remote areas. I know mining doesn't provide many jobs.
Work creates wealth, and a sense of purpose, and of a better future. Which creates communities. Who set and enforce norms. By themselves.
I had a quick look at Noel Pearson's Cape York Institute conference goals and it seems mostly about restructuring welfare payments which is a bit depressing. Not much about creating industry and business. But that might just reflect the difficulty of doing that in the outback.
...it's about relieving the people of their land for their own good
or it could be about providing women and children with protection. A bit overlooked here is that in a large number of commiunities law and order have broken down and the powerless are paying the price. There are of course reasons why that's come about but the first thing to do re-esablish order. Then one can look at the long term solutions.
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I met and talked with Michael Fay, he was a very nice man and a gracious host, but...
Ah touche, I didn't mean it quite like that, but true, the devil sometimes wears the best clothes, no?
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Che, I'm aware that there are many Aboriginals in Victoria, but the fact I didn't see them is what I'm commenting on. I spent the first 2 years of my time there working the dairy industry, spending a great deal of time in the country, and same goes, no black fellas to be seen anywhere. Not on farms, not in small towns. Admittedly I didn't explore every mining town and desert dwelling, but my movements were at least across the entire fertile belt from state border to border.
Ewan, I didn't even see the fair skinned variety. So where the hell were they? If they're in the city, I'd expect on an average commute to see maybe 10 in the thousand people that might pass before my eyes. But nope...it was like they were hiding out.
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merc,
He was a pretty shocking dresser, but money and taste don't necessarily hunt in pairs.
"but the first thing to do re-esablish order"
After you have created dis-order... -
merc,
This movie is perhaps interesting for some, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Proposition
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Ben you are sooo wrong on this point:
"Such wholesale oppression didn't happen here, at least not nearly to the same scale."
Can I recommend popping along to your local marea and having a wee chat on the issue.
The Parihaka Peace Festival is worth the visit - get tired of the speakers (& we all do from time to time) then listen to the sounds.
The stories that are told are chilling. Have a wee look through our history - it wasn't a crime to kill maori - no-one was ever charged.
We have just rewritten history with a bit more gusto. -
Also, Aboriginal people do not all look the way New Zealanders might expect them to look - many are relatively fair-skinned as a result of European or other ancestry, but still identify strongly as Aboriginal.
this was pretty much my experience. i travelled a lot throughout victoria doing interviews with aboriginal people. many of them were as pale as me.
and i'm not interesting in any pissing contest on treatment of indigenous people by respective colonists. many parts of australian history are a complete disgrace. but for the grace of god (tm) it could just as well have happened here.
one word. raupatu.
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Cunnamulla - I was a long way through this movie before I realised that both of the young women who featured prominently were supposedly aboriginal.
Damned depressing film.
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Apropos Cunnamulla, here is director Dennis O'Rourke on that subject:
The light bulb for the film went on just before the beginning of the rise of Pauline Hanson. I thought that the whole idea of Hansonism and native title and "reconciliation" would loom larger in the film than it does. And because it doesn't, that doesn't mean that I don't place value on those issues, in a sense that this is just a film, a story, it's just one thing. I would like to say about Cunnamulla, as some of you that have read the press will already know, that Cunnamulla is a town where half the people say they are black and half say they are white. If you get my drift. Now Jack in the film, Jack's mother was aboriginal. Jack was born on the Warrego, on the creek, down at the river. His father was an Afghan. By every normal definition in Australia today, Jack is an aboriginal. Jack always said he talks about aboriginal people as "them". "Them black cunts" he says. The greatest line that never got in the film was when I was talking to Jack about the fact that the Kooma people had been granted a sheep property through the indigenous lands council and I said, "Isn't this great that they have been given this?" And Jack stares out the window for a while and he said, "Oh those black cunts, the only thing they know about sheep is how to eat the cunts", he says.
Now that sounds offensive if you are removed from Cunnamulla, if you are in Cunnamulla it is not offensive. It is just how it is. Now are we to censor how people speak, are we to censor how they think? I think not. I think that the way that the debates about these issues are so rarefied by us city elites that we sort of somehow miss it you know. People who know the family, as soon as they saw Cara, they would know that she was aboriginal. But, blonde hair? Maybe not, you know. So for most people that I have shown the film to, it is only when they see Cara with her mother that they realise she is an aboriginal girl. Marto is absolutely white if you want precise definitions. All the aboriginal families in Cunnamulla have Irish surnames like McKillop, Water and Cavanagh, you know. They are not aboriginal names.
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So james are you saying that the suburban oasis that Che describes as in: "the place is a complete disconnect from the reality of the deep desert" should dictate social norms to people that live in the desert 100 meters from that reality.
As others in this thread have pointed out better than me, viable export industries are hard to create in the outback. If it's an irrigated oasis that pulls in the punters, so be it.
What it is matters less than who owns it and who makes the money out of it.
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and i'm not interesting in any pissing contest on treatment of indigenous people by respective colonists. many parts of australian history are a complete disgrace. but for the grace of god (tm) it could just as well have happened here.
The experience here was different, even though the colonising power was the same.
Here's the fundamental reason for a different colonising experience: Maori had agriculture and domesticated animals.
There were no domesticable plant species in Australia, the nearest were in the Papuan highlands. The closest that the Austronesians got (I much prefer Jarred Diamond's name for indigenous Australians), to my knowledge, was a weir system where seasonal fish could be more easily caught. I'm not sure if Austronesians had domesticated animals, but the typical fauna (roos, emus, dingos), don't appear to be particularly suited.
As a result, it was no particular stretch to see that the local Maori village was essentially the same as a village in rural Europe. This lead to a high propensity for integration.
Because Austronesians lived differently, the propensity for recognition of their culture as being on the same spectrum as the colonisers was reduced.
What pisses me off is that the bastards who run Australia today should know better, and look what they do.
I predict that once we've gone post-colonial in Aotearoa (getting closer, but not there yet), then the next Big Project will be to enlighten our Pakeha Australians regarding the benefits of civilisation. I, for one, think we have a responsibility in that regard: whatever the benefits may be of the colonisation of Aotearoa, it could not have happened without a concomitant colonisation of Australia. That is, we're all beneficiaries, to some degree, of the wholesale dispossession, oppression and wholesale murder that occurred in the West Island.
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I'm wondering if mining and farming could provide enough employment in remote areas. I know mining doesn't provide many jobs.
I don't know how many jobs it provides, but the money must be pretty good. Couple of (early to mid-twenties) guys I play sports with are working over there in the middle of no where somewhere.
The money they're on is pretty good to them, but the company also flies them back home for a long weekend every fortnight - to Dunedin. They don't have any mining qualifications or anything past high school that I know of.
Relative to whatever small amount of welfare unemployed over there are on, I'm sure most people, aboriginal or otherwise, would snap it up.
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As others in this thread have pointed out better than me, viable export industries are hard to create in the outback. If it's an irrigated oasis that pulls in the punters, so be it.
What it is matters less than who owns it and who makes the money out of it.
And what is this"viable export industry" based around ? Encouraging tourists to trample on the mana of the local people by climbing all over their sacred mountain, Uluru.
Fucking awesome.
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Encouraging tourists to trample on the mana of the local people
Hmm, didn't express myself well enough then. No, I'm not trying to defend that particular practice. I was trying to respond to someone mispresenting me as saying that working there would be morally improving for the locals. All I claim is that paid work tends (many other things being equal) to make it easier to be happy, well-adjusted people.
We all know that ain't always true - miners aren't often lovely people either - but creating jobs, or creating the means for jobs (eg land) would be a much better policy than sending in the AFP if Howard actually wanted to improve the Aboriginal lot. Which he clearly doesn't.
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And what is this"viable export industry" based around ? Encouraging tourists to trample on the mana of the local people by climbing all over their sacred mountain, Uluru.
Fucking awesome.
To be fair, people all over the world make a dollar by controlling and charging access to their holy places.
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To be fair, people all over the world make a dollar by controlling and charging access to their holy places.
true. but, it doesn't cost anything to visit uluru. the local people have some kind of nominal traditional ownership, but it's mostly ceremonial.
there's also a big sign at the base of the rock that says,"this place is sacred, please don't climb it".
thousands take a picture of the sign, then climb the rock.
as for $$. i'm pretty sure there's no aboriginal money invested in yulara, or any of the tourist ventures surrounding the rock. i did see one aboriginal guide though.
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All I claim is that paid work tends (many other things being equal) to make it easier to be happy, well-adjusted people.
Can I broaden this a little bit and say income=choices ?
To be fair, people all over the world make a dollar by controlling and charging access to their holy places.
RB - I think you would agree that an important issue here, is giving respective cultures the choice to make what compromises they see as apporpriate.
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I saw The Proposition (at last) during the weekend.
I thought it was awful to be honest; gratuitious violence overdone, spoiling a plot with potential.
Shame, I rate Nick Cave as a musician.
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Work creates wealth, and a sense of purpose, and of a better future. Which creates communities. Who set and enforce norms. By themselves.
James, I agree with you too a point but, ultimately, it's more complicated than that.
Firstly, there's work and there's work. My own job maintains my current level of wealth and provides purpose etc. but there are plenty out there that don't (or do so only marginally).
Secondly, by all accounts, the lives of most indigenous Australians prior to colonisation were rich in social capital, bound by norms, and purposeful. This took place for the most part without anything resembling a formalised labour market.
Thirdly, there's cause and effect: work may generate wealth and purpose, but it's also much easier to get work if you are endowed with both in the first place.
With regards to the John Howard's chest beating intervention (which strikes me as a blend of Tampa and RAMSI) I thought that John Quiggin made some good points at Crooked Timber.
1. Alcohol is already officially banned in most of the effected communities.
2. X-rated pornography is banned in all the states and territories except ACT.
and
3. Given what just happened on Palm Island, flooding these communities with police might be problematic to say the least.As for alternative solutions, one that springs to mind is looking at what works in functional indigenous Australian communities (they do exist).
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