Discrimination against Aboriginal people

[sockstealingpoltergeist]

Written in 1998 yet still very relevent.:)




In the following, abridged from a longer article, JOHN TOMLINSON reveals the facts -- that indigenous Australians continue to suffer gross discrimination and the lowest living standards in the country.
In the aftermath of the High Court's Wik judgment, the prime minister's 10-point plan to extinguish native title on pastoral leases makes political sense only if indigenous Australians are conceived of as separate from and of lesser importance than other Australians.
Governments during the 1950s and 1960s maintained Aborigines as “natives” by institutionalising them on segregated reserves.
Aboriginal people who resided off reserves, and who were not assimilated into white society, were relegated to fringes of country towns and ghettos like Redfern and South Brisbane. They were assigned a welfare/charity role that encouraged their being pitied as “victims of their own inadequacies”. In rural areas the women were exploited sexually and the men utilised as seasonal workers. In both city and rural areas, they were marginalised.
Indigenous issues were perceived by the general public to be of little political importance until the period leading up to the 1967 referendum. This is the historical background that generates current perceptions of indigenous Australians.
Health


The life expectancy of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders is about 15-20 years lower than that of their non-indigenous counterparts in WA, SA and the NT. In most states and territories, their babies are two to three times more likely to be of low birth weight and about two to four times more likely to die at birth.
According to the National Health and Medical Research Council (1996), between 1988 and 1994, the gap between Aboriginal and total Australian mortality rates widened, especially for women. About 30% of maternal deaths occur in Aboriginal women and Torres Strait Island women, who constitute only about 3% of confinements.
Governments claim to be promoting dramatic solutions, yet Access Economics has shown that health expenditure on each indigenous person is lower than that provided for the non-indigenous population, and the level of underspending on indigenous health has stayed remarkably constant over the last 20 years. During the 1990s on Cape York, women were dying at a younger age than in 1979.
In 1979, the first recommendation of the report of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Aboriginal Health was that the highest priority be given and immediate action taken to provide clean and adequate water supplies to all Aboriginal communities. By 1996, an ABS survey estimated that 7% of rural indigenous households still did not have running water. There are at least 100 Aboriginal communities in remote Australia which do not have access to clean drinking water.
Indigenous Australians die younger and are more frequently sick, essentially because in many places they do not have access to clean running water, decent nutrition and adequate housing with safe sanitation systems. None of these essentials is beyond the capacity of Australian governments to provide. The failure to provide them can only be explained as institutional racism.
Last December, the Howard government promised several billion dollars in loan guarantees to assist the International Monetary Fund to prop up the economies of Indonesia, Thailand and South Korea.
On January 21, the day following the government's announcement that it had put aside an additional $300 million to provide insurance assistance to Australian exporters trading with South Korea, the federal health minister, Michael Wooldridge, was presented with a report commissioned by the Australian Medical Association and the Australian Pharmaceutical Manufactures Association. This stated that a prime cause of the appalling Aboriginal morbidity and mortality figures in rural Australia was limited access to and the high cost of fresh fruit and vegetables.
Wooldridge (at the time visiting rural areas of the NT) responded, “It is difficult for a commonwealth government to do much about fruit and vegetables in local stores”.
Incarceration


Aboriginal people are 27 times more likely than other Australians to be in police custody and 11 times more likely to be in prison. On October 17, 1996, Amnesty International's London Office published a condemnation of Australia's inordinate incarceration rates for Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders.
The Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (1991). It recommended many ways of keeping Aborigines out of custody in order to decrease the number of black deaths in custody. The most recent follow-up report (1996) establishes that Aborigines are being incarcerated at a greater rate now than in 1980-1989, and more Aborigines are dying in custody as a result.
Although Aborigines represent only 1.4% of the adult population, they accounted for more than 25% of all deaths in police and prison custody during the year to June 1996.
Police killings of Aborigines have a long lineage. Officially sanctioned police punitive raids did not end with the 60 to 100 Aborigines slaughtered in the Coniston massacre in 1928, but continued in the north of SA at least until the early 1940s. Police and settlers continued to kill and maim small groups of Aborigines in remote Australia until at least the early 1980s.
In cities, with the notable exception of incidents like the killing of David Gundy, the police content themselves with severe bashings of indigenous Australians. The police are the front line of social control: they selects individuals to be criminalised and, in large part, determine who will be jailed and killed. They are an essential element in political marginalisation of indigenous people.
In recent times, many Australian state and territory governments have adopted “law and order” policies -- such as “truth in sentencing” and mandatory jail sentences for minor offences -- that have led to a dramatic increase in the number of indigenous people in custody.
`Protection'


The system of having a “protector” of Aborigines never led to the consistent protection of indigenous interests.
From its beginnings in the early 18th century, the protection system too often led to dispersal and dispossession of the original inhabitants. Throughout much of rural and remote Australia, the protector of Aborigines was the local police officer.
So, even for those not confined to the government or church-controlled reserves, the state was omnipresent. The local protector controlled much of the lives of those indigenes not exempted from the status of ward.
Aboriginal workers who were paid had, by law, to pay into bank accounts held by their protectors a fixed percentage of their wages. In Queensland, money held in these accounts was transferred to a special Aboriginal welfare account. When this account was eventually wound up in the 1980s, there was a $30 million shortfall. None of the protectors have been charged.
This leakage of funds from Aborigines' bank accounts was part and parcel of their administration from the earliest days.
In the early 1960s, following dysentery epidemics on the reserves of western Cape York, the government said it had insufficient funds to upgrade the health clinics on the reserves, but did see its way clear to borrow from the Aboriginal Benefit Fund account $100,000 which it lent to the Redcliffe Hospital Board to build its city hospital. The absence of upgraded health facilities at places like Weipa and Mapoon was used by the Queensland government in its efforts between 1959 and 1962 to force Mapoon people from their land and facilitate Comalco's bauxite mining. The government claimed the absence of decent health facilities meant the Mapoon people were endangering their children's health.

[sockstealingpoltergeist]

Land rights and miners


At the 1983 election, the federal Labor Party set out five principles that were to underpin its national land rights policy, including inalienable freehold title, mining vetoes or else the power to set conditions, fair royalties, compensation and sacred site protection.
In 13 years of Labor administration, little progress was made towards implementing these promises. After two years of Liberal-National administration, the idea that such principles might underpin the government's approach to land rights is a receding pipedream.
In the wake of the High Court's Wik judgment, pastoralists and miners claimed that native title would bring economic development in Australia to a halt. This language is designed to weaken the bargaining power of the indigenous owners of this land in order that whatever “contribution” miners are forced to make to indigenous communities, in return for not obstructing mining, is a lesser amount than it would have been otherwise.
The dispossession of indigenous people to make way for mining companies has a long history. In the 1950s and '60s, 93% of land which had been officially reserved since the 19th century for the Aborigines of Mapoon, Aurukun and Weipa in Queensland was alienated. In 1962, the people of Mapoon were taken by boat from their land by armed police who burned their houses. They were deposited at Bamaga on the very tip of Cape York or at Weipa Mission.
Weipa people, a short distance south of Mapoon, had their 6000 square kilometres of reserve land decreased to 124 hectares in 1957, the rest converted into a mining lease for Comalco.
Three hundred kilometres to the west, a transnational conglomerate's subsidiary (Century Zinc) in 1997 beat into submission the Waanyi people. Murrandoo Yanner, coordinator of the Carpentaria Land Council, has been convicted twice for unlawful assembly, and faced continual harassment by mining company officials, police and other state government officers.
Century Zinc now has the go-ahead to mine, despite the fears of conservationists and indigenous people about ecological damage to dugong feeding and breeding areas in the Gulf of Carpentaria.
After the signing, the Queensland government proudly announced that, since the Aborigines had agreed to allow Century Zinc to mine their land, they could now be provided with the kind of social infrastructure that white Australia takes for granted.
The total project is estimated to be worth $9 billion. The mining company offered $60 million as compensation. Of this, $30 million is to be controlled by the Queensland government to develop social infrastructure.
Employment, infrastructure and development


In 1963, I visited Yarrabah, near Cairns. Housing, whilst basic, was nearly sufficient for all the residents. The Aborigines had run a sawmill and built most of the houses. But the mill closed, and by the time I returned 15 years later, there was a shortage of houses; the houses which were being built were fabricated largely by contractors.
This erosion of indigenous people's capacity to develop their own territory has been repeated many times.
Sometimes it takes the form of protectors stealing money from the personal accounts of indigenous people. In the NT, in the 1970s and '80s, it often took the form of the manager of the community store defrauding the community by overcharging or just absconding with the funds.
Sometimes indigenous people were displaced from employment, and therefore income, by an influx of European employees. At Maningrida, in the mid-1970s, this led to major Aboriginal unrest, which resulted in the community reclaiming their jobs and control.
Perhaps the most credible explanation of why many indigenous communities lost heart is presented in the documentary Lousy Little Sixpence (1997). This film points out that the NSW Aboriginal Welfare Board early this century removed the right of Aborigines to own and use land on reserves.
At Cumeroogunga Reserve, Aborigines had been granted land, and cleared and ploughed it, only to have the AWB sell it to white farmers. Events of this nature occurred all over Australia.
As well, there was insufficient investment in technological or social infrastructure in Aboriginal reserves to ensure they became productive.
The administrative skills of most people sent to manage reserves were not high. Aboriginal initiative was stifled. The reserves were welfarised, many run like British Poor Law work houses.
Disputation was treated as rebellion, and inordinately repressive powers were given to superintendents to jail people, remove people from a reserve and divide families. Anger, frustration, intimidation, depression, alcoholism and disputation became an everyday feature.
The mechanisms of control on reserves shared many common features with the repression carried out in other outposts of empire by the colonial authorities.
Widespread unemployment and failure to pay award wages to indigenous workers guaranteed that their communities remained impoverished and underdeveloped. When indigenous workers got seasonal jobs away from the reserve, they had to pay a fixed percentage of their money into the bank accounts held by the protector. Those who worked on the reserve were generally paid a training allowance, if they received anything other than rations.
In 1967, many workers on training allowances in the Top End of the NT were receiving less each week than a Darwin family living on welfare assistance. Many of these trainee workers were the sole breadwinner in their families.
Eventually training allowances were replaced by the Community Development Employment Program (CDEP), a work for the dole scheme that applied only to indigenous people. Each community was paid on an estimate of how many participants would be attracted to the CDEP in their area.
Some communities found that there were more people wanting to work than there were places. As a result, it was not uncommon for CDEP workers to receive less than they would have had they been in receipt of unemployment benefit. In other communities, people got slightly more than unemployment benefits.
Either way, when coupled with widespread unemployment, it meant that in many communities, more than 90% of the people who received any income survived on social security levels of income. This ensures underdevelopment because the communities do not generate sufficient economic activity to create award-rate jobs.
Prior to the 1960s, very few people of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent were paid social security. It was the late 1970s and early 1980s before Aboriginal people in many parts of remote Australia got anything like the same access to social security entitlements as other Australians.
Today, despite many examples of financially successful indigenous businesses -- usually in association with the people regaining some or all of their tribal land -- a disproportionate number of indigenous Australians live in poverty.
Perhaps indigenous poverty has been exacerbated by the failure of governments, developers and many other institutions to come to a determination of indigenous people's rights over land.
In Broome and Darwin, it is assumed that Aboriginal people's relationships to country are mere encumbrances on development, or that their silence on land-use matters indicates concordance with the views of the dominant public.
The minister for Aboriginal welfare in the NT told the federal parliament in 1952: “If any part of a native reserve has ceased to be necessary for the use and benefit of the natives, it may be severed from the reserve and, if mining should take place on the severed portion, royalties will be paid into a special fund to be applied to the welfare of the natives”.
Not much has changed 40 years later at the Lockhart River Aboriginal Reserve. An environmental impact statement lodged in the Queensland Mining Warden's Court by the company wanting to mine 200 million tonnes of the high grade silica in Shelburne Bay denied the Wuthathi people any current interest in the area on the basis that “a lack of physical presence in the area constitutes a dereliction of interest”. Many Wuthathi people lived less than 80 kilometres away and regularly accessed the area to gather “bush tucker”.
The `stolen generations'


White Australia attempted to complete the process of dispossession by taking indigenous children from their communities.
The prime minister refuses to apologise on behalf of the government for the actions of all Australian governments during the period of the stolen children because the present government, he says, was not responsible.
Against the recommendations of the Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families (1997), the Howard government has steadfastly opposed compensation to the children or their families, again on the grounds that this government was not responsible. As academic Adam Jamrozik commented, the Howard government was not responsible for the second world war either, but it continues to pay war pensions.
The real policy question is justice in the present, rather than guilt in relation to past activities.
This is not an endorsement of Pauline Hanson's call for “all Australians to be treated equally”. Rather, it is a demand that we are all treated equitably. Given the great disparity in wealth, income, health, housing, incarceration rates and age of death of indigenous and non-indigenous Australians, to treat indigenous and non-indigenous people equally would not be justice. The race war begun in 1788 continues.
Link here
http://www.greenleft.org.au/1998/324/20869

[Mummaholic]

Topical, relevant, excellent.

[rainbow road]

Good work SSP.

I think many people would be surprised to know that Australia is in the top 10 countries who have violated the UNs Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination - based upon their treatment of their indigenous peoples.

[misskittyfantastico]

:yelclap: Can I be pedantic? "Discrimination against Aborigines", would work, or Discrimination against the Aboriginal population/people"

[sockstealingpoltergeist]

I know TR it was written a decade ago, by a senior lecturer at QUT. Much has changed since then with regards to the way we address our Indigenous peoples, and in fact he taught me that Aboriginal peoples was the correct term. He is only human after all.;):laughing:
Oh and I am too. as I just realised you were reffering to my title, which I changed because his was incorrect and it would seem I have made a similer mistake, my bad.

Can a mod change the title for me? To Aboriginal people? Thanks.

[AwwDad]

although we have made a few baby steps we still have a long way to go.its amazing how not much has changed since that article was written.

[sockstealingpoltergeist]

I agree Awwwdad. We still have a long way to go.

[MrJones&Me]

We are really bad racists to our own people...

I am not aboriginal. but i do have sil & bil that are, hence my neices & nephews are.
But even before i knew them I studied it (the stolen generation) in high school (by choice, while everyone else did eating disorders & teen pregnancy) in social studies. from that moment on it really opened my eyes as to how badly some people here treat them.

Black americans have better living standards than our Aborigines.

Do people not realise they drink because they try to forget what 'white man' did in the 40's? (try telling a racist person that and it shuts them up-haha)
Do they actually KNOW what happened? rabbit proof fence was a little bit fluffy compared to what really happened.
and it made me SO angry when people were against us saying sorry! you can bet 99% of those people were howard supporters (thats what i found anyway when i asked, sorry if im wrong)

ive argued till im blue in the face and ignorant people just think im stupid.

BUT - if you live in WA, go to the Western Australian Museum, it has a very honest display of what happened. (i reccommend it. it made me cry a few times though, so if you have sensitive kids - be warned)

[Mummaholic]

Do they actually KNOW what happened? rabbit proof fence was a little bit fluffy compared to what really happened.

I wonder this myself. I think a lot of people *assume* they know what happened. Some people have told me 'all' that happened was europeans 'settled' Australia, didn't really harm anyone but a few 'troublesome' Indigenous Aussies (not their exact words IYKWIM), then basically failed to appreciate all the great stuff the White man was offering, got stuck into the drink and went on the dole. Apparently ungrateful, beligerent.

This is what people tell themselves

(a) to make themselves feel better about what ACTUALLY happened (and continues)
(b) because they are truly ignorant
(c) because they believe the lies told to them
(d) because they know a handful of Indigenous Aussies that drink and are on the dole, and therefore "know what THEY are like" :barf:

If people took some time to investigate the true, shameful events of Australian history in relation to the treatment of Indigenous Australians, and compared them to civil rights struggles in America for African Americans and the dispossession of Native Americans, they may be shocked and horrifed to learn it's possible to describe Australian events as just as bad if not WORSE. We all know the awful things that happened in America but many fail to acknowledge our own shameful, racist past.

Do people know that Indigenous Australians weren't even given true citizenship until a referendum in the SIXTIES???

Before that, Australia did let 'them' fight our wars for us though. And work jobs that they were never paid full wages for. And took their children away to 'civilise' them. And on and on.

In Brisbane, we have several 'Boundary Rds' but some may not know their past. Many may not realise that Indigenous Aussies were not allowed to be inside the area within the 'Boundary Rds' after dark for a very long time, since the 1800s.

[sockstealingpoltergeist]

Yes mummaholic, I feel many people are very misinformed about the real issues regarding Indigenous people.

[BigRedV]

Do people know that Indigenous Australians weren't even given true citizenship until a referendum in the SIXTIES???



I know *shakes head*

I don't know when the curriculum changed but I was in Year 6 in 1988 and still learnt about the first fleet and white "settlement" as opposed to invasion of Australia and terra nullius.

Now, as a teacher, we (well I do anyway) teach it from a much different perspective. We read the children books about the Stolen Generations. There's a book called "The Burnt Stick" and we read it every year to our classes and even though the story is fiction, we explain that it is based on real events. When I finish the story, the children can't believe that a child was taken away from their family because they had a white parent.

[Dreambeliever]

Fantastic article

If anything is going to change i think we really need to start by at least teaching our kids the true history of Australia. Lucky for me i had parents who believed in honesty not sugar coating things. I was also lucky to grow up in far north queesland and had some wonderful aboriginal and TI friends. Then i went to school...i ended up (at the age of 10) in an argument with my teacher over the 'facts' of Australian History. Most people are just not educated on the issues, therefore they just spout whatever rubbish their parents tell them about 'dole-bludging, alcoholic, black people'. It makes me physically ill to hear the rasist things coming out of peoples mouths.

**Lozzaaa - just read your post. im so glad things seem to be changing in our schools. they were still teaching the 'settlement' story when i was in yr 8 just eight years ago! think i'll have to look into getting that book for when my kids are older.

[KatiesMum]

although we have made a few baby steps we still have a long way to go.its amazing how not much has changed since that article was written.


:iagree:


Great article SSP. We have such a long way to go .... :(

[Mummaholic]

Thanks for posting, SSP.

Each piece of information might help someone understand better. "From little things big things come".

I love John Tomlinson, he is a very knowledgable man and is inspiring.

[MrJones&Me]

:iagree::iagree::iagree::iagree: with mummaholic...

It's sooooo refreshing to meet people who know the truth. Even in a social situation, and you hear people talk badly about what happened, i think to myself 'thank-god there are other people who know'.

Not just that, the aboriginal people are a proud people, with so much culture & so much to teach us too... they feel ashamed of what happened to them. all the women and children who were raped, boys beaten and they were pretty much treated as slaves.

Some were so lucky to get a family that respected them and treated them well, but this was a rare occurence.

The sad thing is that most of the 'white man' genuinely thought they were doing the right thing:(

[MrJones&Me]

Now, as a teacher, we (well I do anyway) teach it from a much different perspective. We read the children books about the Stolen Generations. There's a book called "The Burnt Stick" and we read it every year to our classes and even though the story is fiction, we explain that it is based on real events. When I finish the story, the children can't believe that a child was taken away from their family because they had a white parent.

This book is fantastic & i used it in my assignment at high school :)

[crazymuma]

We are really bad racists to our own people...

I am not aboriginal. but i do have sil & bil that are, hence my neices & nephews are.
But even before i knew them I studied it (the stolen generation) in high school (by choice, while everyone else did eating disorders & teen pregnancy) in social studies. from that moment on it really opened my eyes as to how badly some people here treat them.

Black americans have better living standards than our Aborigines.


So
Do people not realise they drink because they try to forget what 'white man' did in the 40's? (try telling a racist person that and it shuts them up-haha)
Do they actually KNOW what happened? rabbit proof fence was a little bit fluffy compared to what really happened.
and it made me SO angry when people were against us saying sorry! you can bet 99% of those people were howard supporters (thats what i found anyway when i asked, sorry if im wrong)

ive argued till im blue in the face and ignorant people just think im stupid.

BUT - if you live in WA, go to the Western Australian Museum, it has a very honest display of what happened. (i reccommend it. it made me cry a few times though, so if you have sensitive kids - be warned)


Sorry but this post really got to me

The part mentioned about why aboriginal people drink - sorry I know that it was a harmless comment but you make it sound like all aboriginal people drink non stop!!

Sorry but we all know that if you tell a child they are dumb eventually they will beleive you and live up to it - the same that if we continue to tell an aboriginal person they are a drunk they will live up to this expectation.

Yes I know there is a alcohol problem in alot of aboriginal communities - **** there is a drinking problem in most these days.
Seriously though there is big problems in these communities - they are lacking in so many ways - I would like to widen some peoples eyes and have them go and stay in a community for some time and see the harsh realities of life.

I think the major feeder of racism in this country is definelty ignorance.

Aboriginal history should be taught in schools. I find it sad that my aborginal children will have to hear of white history in school but will never hear the truth about their own ancestors (except at home)

And unfortunatley they will know the harsh reality - their grandmother was one of the stolen generation who still to this day has not found her family.

I would say that most people who are really racist against aboriginal people have never actually spent time with an aborginal family. They know most of what they know from reports on tv (always shown so nicely :rolleyes:) Drives me nuts that some people can have a run in with an aboriginal person then blame the entire community - sure don't see many people doing that after a run in with a white person.

I could ramble for hours on this topic but I wont as my words don't come out the way I want them to when written.

[MrJones&Me]

Sorry it didnt mean to come out like that.

I definately know they don't all drink. What i meant to say was:

Do people not realise that some aboriginal drink to forget their past? white people do this too. but, do the white people in australia realise that they are trying to forget the past that our ancestors forced them to have?

[MrJones&Me]

*sigh* i think im digging myself into a deeper hole.

I'll stop talking now. :)

[Bubmum]

I have said it before, and I will say it again..the major problems that the aboriginal communities face are "white people" only thinking they are acceptable human beings if they live their life exactly the same way that they do.
Diversity is never embraced, and it exposes the undercurrent of racism that is entrenched in Australia. I think they really need to include some more categories in Australian Of The Year. How about who found the tastiest meal in the middle of the desert? Supported the family through their hunting efforts? Unless you can put a price tag on it, those efforts are not appreciated.
I do not know how much they teach in schools nowaday? Have they rewritten the history books? Have people forgotten not just the stolen generation, but the aboriginal hunting grounds, the poisoned flour? All disgusting and shameful, and not at all the markings of a so called civilised society.

[Mummaholic]

I do not know how much they teach in schools nowaday? Have they rewritten the history books? Have people forgotten not just the stolen generation, but the aboriginal hunting grounds, the poisoned flour? All disgusting and shameful, and not at all the markings of a so called civilised society.

Not sure, but I studied

Indigenous Politics & Political Culture
Indigenous Australian Writing
Indigenous Culture

at uni and I found the units wonderful. Mostly we had lecturers who were Indigenous Aussies themselves or people that had many years of experience in the field.

I think much more should be taught in schools. We are neglecting too much of our own (Australian; Indigenous or otherwise) history and it is being lost.

[HollyHotLips]

I have said it before, and I will say it again..the major problems that the aboriginal communities face are "white people" only thinking they are acceptable human beings if they live their life exactly the same way that they do.
Diversity is never embraced, and it exposes the undercurrent of racism that is entrenched in Australia. I think they really need to include some more categories in Australian Of The Year. How about who found the tastiest meal in the middle of the desert? Supported the family through their hunting efforts? Unless you can put a price tag on it, those efforts are not appreciated.
I do not know how much they teach in schools nowaday? Have they rewritten the history books? Have people forgotten not just the stolen generation, but the aboriginal hunting grounds, the poisoned flour? All disgusting and shameful, and not at all the markings of a so called civilised society.

I dont see how the "white people" can ever win though..... we leave them alone to get on with it and get complained at for not pumping enough money into Aboriginal affairs. You try and help and people complain that there's too much interference, they dont like kids being taken away when they are clearly being abused yet what are you supposed to do? turn a blind eye becuase maybe it's their "culture"? (and yes, i realise not all Aboriginals do this just as they dont all drink!)

Yes, I agree that how they were treated by the settlers etc. is disgraceful, but unfortuantely that seems to have been the way of the world. Look at the US and what happened to the indigenous indians. Imagine if every time England was invaded (which happened several times) everyone still complained about it today? It's in the past, it's not the fault of anybody who is still alive today so move on.

[Annabella]

I dont see how the "white people" can ever win though..... we leave them alone to get on with it and get complained at for not pumping enough money into Aboriginal affairs. You try and help and people complain that there's too much interference, they dont like kids being taken away when they are clearly being abused yet what are you supposed to do? turn a blind eye becuase maybe it's their "culture"? (and yes, i realise not all Aboriginals do this just as they dont all drink!)

Yes, I agree that how they were treated by the settlers etc. is disgraceful, but unfortuantely that seems to have been the way of the world. Look at the US and what happened to the indigenous indians. Imagine if every time England was invaded (which happened several times) everyone still complained about it today? It's in the past, it's not the fault of anybody who is still alive today so move on.

Just coz its the 'way of the world' doesn't make it ok. Indigenous people all over the world suffer similar problems because of colonisation. To be honest I don't know anything about the history of England but I do know it wasn't in the past 250 years that they were invaded and re-invaded, and they have been the main actors in many invasions of other countries, so its completely different to the Australian situation.

I have said this before, most Aboriginal people don't hold White Australians 'responsible' for problems in the Aboriginal community today, its the act of invasion (by the English) and colonisation that is responsible, and there is no denying that this took place.I know I am not personally responsible for anything that happened 200 years ago, yet I still feel really sorry that it happened, and that its taken so so long for it to be acknowledged.

I agree with you tho, there is no easy solution, if children are being abused, they need to be protected, regardless of their background. However the money that goes into Indigenous affairs, the programs are often not particularly helpful as they don't have input from the Indigenous community. The intervention is a good example of this. Also just to clarify, I *hope* its not like this anymore but in the past, things that have been grounds for 'neglect' of Aboriginal kids is things such as having extended family staying at the house, and any out of date food being found in the pantry....

[sockstealingpoltergeist]

I dont see how the "white people" can ever win though..... we leave them alone to get on with it and get complained at for not pumping enough money into Aboriginal affairs. You try and help and people complain that there's too much interference, they dont like kids being taken away when they are clearly being abused yet what are you supposed to do? turn a blind eye becuase maybe it's their "culture"? (and yes, i realise not all Aboriginals do this just as they dont all drink!)

Yes, I agree that how they were treated by the settlers etc. is disgraceful, but unfortuantely that seems to have been the way of the world. Look at the US and what happened to the indigenous indians. Imagine if every time England was invaded (which happened several times) everyone still complained about it today? It's in the past, it's not the fault of anybody who is still alive today so move on.

Much of the discrimination still occurs. other stuff is very recent.

The solution is to not just bugger off and to leave Indigenous peoples alone. It is to listen to and work with Aboriginal peoples, doing what they feel is best.

It isn't pumping money, when all that is needed minimaly is for the same amount to be spent on infastructure, health, education and housing etc as the rest of Australia. These areas have been neglected for so long that the government is billions behind.

Moreover other Indigenous communities in places like Canada and new Zealand have managed to improve relationships and health etc with the Indigenous peoples through treaties, and real communication and self determination.

[Pippi Longstocking]

Also just to clarify, I *hope* its not like this anymore but in the past, things that have been grounds for 'neglect' of Aboriginal kids is things such as having extended family staying at the house, and any out of date food being found in the pantry....

Disgracefully, it is still occurring now.:( A mum had her two children taken from her - not for neglect, not for abuse, not for any other reason than her two toddlers were sharing a bedroom and were opposite genders. Only children of the same gender can share a bedroom donchaknow. (I do have a link somewhere but it's early and can't be bothered to look for it.) Other children have been taken for similar 'issues' - minor stuff that we have probably all been guilty of at some point but are fortunate in that we are protected by our caucasian privilege. My same-gendered children used to share a bedroom, omg! Take my children away!!1!!!!!

Aboriginal children are being ripped from their families for minor issues, despite our current understanding that it is almost always in the child's best interest to remain in the family unit. Unless the child is being severely abused, DoCS workers need to be working with the family to improve the situation rather than just taking the children away in a racist attempt to judge and punish rather than support and assist. :barf:

And those Aboriginal parents that do struggle with parenting - does anyone bother to stop and ask why, rather than just judge them as inferior and look down on them with derision? Many of these mums and dads were part of the original stolen generation - who taught them how to parent? What sort of childhood do you think they had? What events led to the current situation? People need t be able to take a step back and see the whole picture, not just the end result.

If something isn't done, we're going to see another stolen generation - right after our government promised that this would 'never never happen again'. :(