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July 08, 2007
The best session at the Adelaide Festival of Ideas that I attended on Saturday was the Indigenous Futures one chaired by Philip Adams in the form of a conversation. I discussed here in a pre-Festival blog on self-determination. John Howard's intervention into Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory formed the backdrop to the discussions. As Adams said something strange and unpleasant is going on and we need to put our finger on it. Eliot Johnston, to whom the festival is dedicated, had a good go at the opening.
What was contested in the conversation was the claim that realistically, there is no alternative to assimilation, as land rights and self-determination haven't worked. So Howard's intervention can't do any worse. The wrongness of this claim was shown from a number of perspectives that argued self-determination was crucial to a better future for indigenous people.
Wilma Mankiller highlighted how the story of oppression and intervention (stolen generation) is the same between Indian and aboriginal peoples. Indian people in the US have their own self-government run their own show and have control over education and health services. Kerin O'Dea then argued that master and control have physical impacts on health as the lack of control over one's life (self-determination) caused chronic stress, depression, increased blood pressure, appetite for sweet foods and so increases the risk of heart disease and obesity.
So Howard's intervention, because it disempowers indigenous communities, increases the ill health amongst the members of those communities. Aboriginal people needed control over their own lives.
The issue is the one mentioned by Paul Keating in 1993:
I am not sure whether indigenous leaders can ever psychologically make the change to decide to come into a process, be part of it and take the burden of responsibility which goes with it. That is, whether they believe they can ever summon the authority of their own community to negotiate for and on their behalf.
Does the non-conservative indigenous and non-indigenous peoples’ failure to take sufficient political and practical responsibility for social functionality in indigenous communities made the recent intervention by conservative leaders inevitable?
Tracey Bunda contested Noel Pearson's positioning of being the indigenous voice who provided justification for Howard's intervention. There are different indigenous voices --eg., those of the strong indigenous women---and Pearson does not speak for all aboriginal people.
Bunda also contested Pearson's argument: that though he would prefer there to be no need to prioritise land rights over social order, if political circumstances became such that he was forced to prioritise, then he would place social order ahead of land rights. Bunda contested Pearson's position that social order should be addressed in punitive language saying that Indigenous people want to be consulted, that they would never give up their land or sovereignty and that Howard's plan won't work unless he consults and gives power to indigenous people.
Jay Griffiths, who worked in terms of the indigenous culture being dominated by the white culture, argued that what the dominate culture could do for an indigenous culture is to leave them alone and for indigenous people to listen to the tribal elders. I'm not persuaded by the first point. Aboriginal people need political help --they cannot do it on their own. What progressive whites can do is to critique those tendencies in white culture that legitimate the conservatives refusing to consult, respect, and work with indigenous people.
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Perhaps there is a difference in the indians and the abo's. The indians may have higher intelligence and more likely to have larger numbers with leadership abilities. They were better in managing their herds and crops.
I would think the average I.Q of the N.T abo would be around 70.