The news in Australia is relentlessly about the poor state of aboriginal communities.
Somebody with an acute observation is pointing out the root cause of this never ending problem.
It is obvious to me as it is obvious to Michael Myers that there is need for assimilation and letting go of the culture, beliefs and views of a stone age nomadic people. It's time we stopped glamorizing the idea of a "noble savage" and started a program of assimilation.
Every policy up till now has been a dismal failure. Why? Because of the assumption that aboriginal culture is sacred. This is what aborigines are telling us all the time, they don't want to lose their culture. Their culture is their identity, the land is their identity.
Nobody seems to see the problem. How can a nomadic culture be confined within a permanent settlement?
How can a culture survive if there is no need to live as a nomad and welfare payments take care of financial needs?
It's time the do gooders, the bleeding hearts, the romantics who have dominated aboriginal policy stepped aside.
It's time to abandon the false belief that there is a place for a separate culture with separate laws and separate values to the mainstream that can exist and thrive in a settlement in the desert.
10 comments:
The issue of accomadating/living with/making reparations to native cultures is a big one in any place where white Europeans settled inhabited lands: Australia, New Zealand, the US, Canada.
In Michigan, I did some travelling "up north," in heavily Indian areas, and once had a work appointment at an Indian Reservation.
It was an eye-opening experience. Most whites in the States can go their whole lives and never meet a Native American; it sounds like the equivalent is true in Australia, and I think it is a large part of the problem, even more than cultural assimilation.
You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.
Funny that an American has such strong views on the topic. Maybe he's taking a page out of our own book. The Native American communities in the U.S. have been an abysmal failure.
Maybe we can learn a thing or 3 if this 'assimilation' works out.
While I was visiting Australia a couple of years ago, someone likened the situation with the aborigines to the one with the Indians here in America. So the article could easily be applied to the North America as well...
Actually, I was just trying to point out that separtation can be as big a problem as assimilation, and that Colonial-era treatment of natives is a problem that still hasn't gone away...
I'm not familiar with the American Indian situation so I can't make comparisons.
In the past twenty years for example, there have been scandals relating to aboriginals ranging from petrol sniffing, alcohol abuse, the stolen generation (children taken away for adoption and a better chance in life), tribal law versus common law, poor health standards and short life expectancy, deaths in custody, trachoma disease in children, land rights legislation, police harassment and finally the straw that broke the camels back, child abuse that is rampant within aboriginal communities.
Alcoholism, poor health standards, and short life expectancy are all issues for Native Americans, also.
The issue of taking children away, to educate them into white society, and resulting in a "stolen generation," exists, too, but I do not know the extent.
There was a fascinating book about that, called Looking for Lost Bird, about this problem and the Navajo tribe of the Southwest.
And of course, there is also the US gov't's history of breaking Indian treaties.
Our positions are reversed, Lex. I know very little about Australian Aboriginals. It's just that what you wrote sounded much like the issues regarding Native Americans.
When I get a chance, I'll check the links in your above post.
Michael, your information is extremely interesting because of the parallels between Aborigines and Indians.
Like I said originally, I think its roots are in Colonial-Era policies in the old British Empire.
South Africa was different because the native blacks were at a higher technological level than the American Indians and Australian Aboriginals.
Michael, thanks for your theory but we must consider the New Zealand Maoris who have never been intimidated by British settlers and stood up for their culture and rights.
That's a good point. I guess every rule (treatment of natives by Brits in N. America and Aus.)would have an exception.
Post a Comment