Things are changing here with Welfare. Now they have to work for the dole or get cut off. We've had about 70 people cut off because of not turning up to work for the dole. One of our indigenious employees decided she didn't want to work anymore, so she resigned. She was back 3 days later asking for her job back. When she tried to get Centrelink payments they told her she will have to wait 8 weeks as she left a perfectly good job for no reason other than laziness. ( not that she turned up today). Prior to the change they immediately got dole payments when they left their jobs. The kids and young people here desperately need indigenious role models, but they are hard to find in the communities. Most of their days consist of eating junk food and hanging around. The school in the community tries to get kids with potential into boarding schools for high school in Melbourne, Adelaide, Darwin to expand their horizons. There are some really bright kids here considering how remote we are. On the upside for me being remote nearest JW is about 600ks away!
What do you think? Prison guards man-handle a young native Australian.
by fulltimestudent 20 Replies latest social current
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Leeca
Sorry everyone. My IPad doesn't seem to like doing paragraphs!
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zeb
FTS.
I knew ayoung woman who studied at university and was going to turn around all the 'injustices done' in the outback communities. Australians had a lot to answer for should be ashamed etc. Until she qualified and got her first posting and was slam dunked with the reality. She left being a social worker after that posting haveing been hit with another reality that her university course was void of reality. The tragedy here is that she never went back to that UNi and blasted the tituors who had so mislead her.
and saying "he held to kid down with all his weight" is dramatic but quite untrue. and, is a point being made here that that kid was Aboriginal? He is the palest indigenous i have ever seen if he is. I seriously doubt that footage is from the Northern territory.
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fulltimestudent
Interesting comments. Thanks everyone for some intelligent thoughts.
I posted the incident, as I wondered how it may develop, in comparison to the threads on young black Americans, and the current controversies in the USA that bear some similarities and many differences to the Aussie situation.
Many Indigenous Australians do 'make it' in contemporary Australian society. And, even in JW society. 'Uncle Bruce,' posted on XJW sites for a long time with some insightful thoughts. I've also heard of a family in Sydney's west. And others in various places. In northern Queensland there are many Torres Strait Islanders who are JWs (and probably some XJWs-grin) who come from the islands between Cape York peninsula and Papua, and are usually grouped, for administrative purposes, with Indigenous Australians.
zeb raised an interesting point, in his comment:
saying "he held to kid down with all his weight" is dramatic but quite untrue. and, is a point being made here that that kid was Aboriginal? He is the palest indigenous i have ever seen if he is. I seriously doubt that footage is from the Northern territory.
I see no reason to doubt the ABC's statement or the belief of the people in the report, that counts the boy as Indigenous. But your comment raises the question, just who counts as an Indigenous Australian? For the benefit of anyone not familiar with the issue, there's a heap of emotion in the question. Why? Well, imho, many people are upset at the fact that while Indigenous Australians form 3% of the population, about 6% of government expenditure goes to Indigenous Australians. Broken down, that is $43,449 per person in 2012-13 financial year (compared to an average of $20,900 per person for other Australians, in the same year). And yet, as those who complain about the expenditure, there are such poor results, and the destructive behaviour evident in the video is common.
So how is an Indigenous Australian identified. There have been a number of legal decisions on this, but the result is this:
The Australian Bureau of Statistics defines an Indigenous person as a person of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent who identifies as an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander and is accepted as such by the community in which he or she lives. There are three components to the definition: descent; self-identification; and community acceptance.
and, here are some words from Indigenous people themselves.
We are the Indigenous peoples of Australia — Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Aboriginal people are those whose traditional cultures and lands lie on the mainland and most of the islands, including Tasmania, Fraser Island, Palm Island, Mornington Island, Groote Eylandt, Bathurst and Melville Islands.
The Torres Strait Islands lie between the northern tip of Cape York in Queensland and the south-west coast of Papua New Guinea. The Torres Strait Islanders have many cultural similarities with the peoples of Papua New Guinea and the Pacific. ...
The term 'Aboriginal' has become one of the most disputed in the Australian language.The Commonwealth definition is social more than racial, in keeping with the change in Australian attitudes away from racialist thinking about other peoples. An Aboriginal person is defined as a person who is a descendent of an Indigenous inhabitant of Australia, identifies as an Aboriginal, and is recognised as Aboriginal by members of the community in which he or she lives. [The same three components, descent, self-identification and community acceptance, are used for Torres Strait Islanders.]
This definition is preferred by the vast majority of our people over the racial definitions of the assimilationist era. ...
Link (for the above): http://www.whatworks.edu.au/1_1_1.htm
How then, can a 'white' looking boy be counted as an Indigenous Australian? I can only generalise about the boy in this way. There must be very few fully 100% Indigenous Australians in Australia. In the 19th century it was common for young white settlers to have a bit of "black velvet" as they were growing up. And, its still common. The boy is likely the child of a 'mixed blood' (awful term) and a white looking male. The male could have 'gone missing' soon after conception and the boy in question then raised in an Indigenous community. He may, not yet, personally identify as Indigenous, but he likely will.
To be honest, I likely have some indigenous background (from the 19th C). I believe that at least one grandmother was part Indigenous.
So that's my explanation of how the boy can look white, and still be an Indigenous Australian.
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Leeca
Where i live we have both full blooded Aborigines and mixed blood Aborigines. They call white men who sleep with Aboriginal women 'Jocks'. They call the children produced 'milkies'. They are still accepted by the Community and considered Aboriginal by the full bloods. Some kids here have light brown skin and blonde hair. There have been people here who are whiter than me and claim they are Aboriginal. You only need a drop of Aboriginal blood to be considered Aboriginal. BTW there are some full blood Aboriginal men who have a white wife. The Community i live in is the most primative and backward of all the Communities. We have a lot here who have been in jail, most of them ( not all) are very nice, likable people. But unfortunately common sense is very lacking here, hence why some end up in jail.
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mana11
HI Leeca,, i lived in the outback many years, i miss it!... love remote places,
I have great respect for some Aborigines and the land
for this little guy,, he was sure to be high, smart ass human rights lawyers,, lol get that lawyer in the cell to handle the kid,,, watch her run!..
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mgmelkat
I am an aborigine, a "murri", I see the plight of our people, very sad that many are like this. I've lived in outback QLD most of my life and questioned why my own people live the way they do. Most of my aboriginal family have done very well for themselves. My generation, all my cousins, my brother and sister and myself, which I am proud to say, (all of us are NOT JWs) has successful fitters, welders, lawyers, doctors, studying politics, business and curators, completed TAFE cert 4s, etc and all of us are doing well except for 2-3bludgers.
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designs
mgmelkat- What are the various views among the aborigine about the 'Colonization' of Australia by the Europeans.
70,000-50,000 years of it being your Lands and then this British culture takes over.
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Vidiot
"Prison guards man-handle a young native Australian."
In other news; racists are assholes and can be found everywhere.
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fulltimestudent
Leeca: l live and work in a very remote Aborigional Community, it's a real eye opener. Most Australians are clueless about what happens in the communities. There is some employment opportunities here but trying to get them to turn up to work can be difficult, hence why white people work in these communities.
Thnk you for your insights into this problem, they add a lot to an understanding of the boy in question.
Its interesting that you chose to work in this field, you must have a strong humanitarian drive.
You also commented:
They just disappear during the day, not turn up for days or months on end. . You can end up hardly functioning yourself, completely exhausted. They call Welfare 'sit down money'. They can be very lazy, have no respect for the hard work you put in helping them.
I wanted to ask, and its OK if you do not feel you can add anything useful, how the problems of the people where you work compare to the problems of some of the 'white' families, in say the poorer areas of large Australian cities.
As you likely know, we have something similar, in that there may be 2 to 3 generations of 'welfare people,' who are essentially unemployable. And, even if they get a job, they are often absent.