Well argued. I’m coming around to your point of view.
Indigenous people all over the world have a strong connection with their land and enlightened (wealthy) societies try to support their minority cultures.
If the cost is only $30 million then that pales into insignificance against the mineral wealth dug up from former Aboriginal lands.
And yes, bringing people from remote places into towns without jobs etc isn’t going to be a happy event for anyone.
…indigenous people in Australia living in incredibly isolated very small communities is a lifestyle choice is at the heart of what Tony Abbott said. In fact that is exactly what he said. There is no truth in that no matter how hard you try and spin it.
For me, this is the cucial point. Closing these communities will accelerate the already rapid decline of what may be the oldest continuous culture in the world. Comparisons to major world religions are specious since Australian indigenous cultures and languages are fragmented and fall way short of the critical mass required to maintain themselves once they are removed from the environment they are based on.
I suspect Tony Abbott knows what he’s saying is wrong but is continuing the pattern of dog-whistling to the LNP’s core supporters that began in earnest after the spill motion was defeated.
There’s a hefty dose of hypocrisy in this since non-indigenous communities in the same areas will not have their funding cut.
Are you aware that the communities being closed have an average of something between 4 and 8 people in them?
People have talked about shutting down services to sections of Detroit for years, and those are neighbourhoods which are still over 50% occupied with populations in the hundreds. Doing the same to a “community” which is little more than a single household living in the middle of nowhere is no less justified than that.
I guess this is a good example of the elastic meanings in language. Among my middle-class peers a “lifestyle” decision is moving to live in the countryside to a lower paid enjoyable job.
However my reading is Tony Abbott meant these are groups of people who choose to live in remote places. That is meaningful for them and thus they have made a lifestyle choice. Its not a judgement, its a description.
Well said. Can you elaborate on the last bit please?
You are absolutely correct in that it’s dishonest of Abbott to say it’s merely a lifestyle choice. That is a preposterous thing to say.
However, he IS right in that there is an unviability in trying to maintain such communities. His passing the buck solely onto the people living there is wrong; the fact that the situation is fraught with problems is correct.
[QUOTE=Eliahna]
So, ultimately, while the cost of maintaining these small communities may be high, it must be clearly understood that closing them will ultimately result in the destruction of 40,000 year old cultures that have already been under sustained attack for most of the last 220 years.
Yes, their numbers are so low that they’ll probably die out in time anyway and this is hastening the inevitable. Do our past crimes against them that brought them to this point burden us with a greater responsibility towards them in the twilight of their culture? I can’t answer that.
[/QUOTE]
I guess this is really what it comes down to.
We have the same issue in Canada, with many indigenous people living in substandard housing in places that really can’t sustain any sort of meaningful quality of life. (This is not true of ALL Aboriginals in Canada; some don’t live on reserves, some live in reserves that are in and around where most people live, etc.) They exist in a sort of economic and legal limbo where they are, in essence, being paid to live somewhere were desperation, substance abuse and crime is a near-inevitable result of being imprisoned on the bleak shores of an Arctic sea, but they don’t have the money or means to leave, and the structure of the law prevents anyone from doing anything without a remarkable amount of moral courage and a Constitutional amendment.
The sort of fuzzy, soft liberal attitude towards aboriginal populations on Canada is that we should, in some unclear way, have them continue being really, really aboriginal. Usually this amounts to keeping them on reserves and making sure they have the hunting and fishing rights agreed to in the Sixth Treaty of 1889 or whatever was agreed to five generations ago. The perspective is entirely racist, in the purest sense of that term; they are treated as a racial group, not as individuals, even when people/the government are trying to do the right thing.
During the 2010 Winter Olympics, chiefs of B.C. First Nations were invited as honored guests to the ceremonies, and Aboriginal culture featured into much of the pomp and circumstance. Once the games were done, well, back to the reserve. To be honest, the stomach-turning sense I got then, and get all the time, as that we treat Aboriginals like pets, not human beings. I don’t think there is any malice in it, for the most part (there is a lot of individual malice, especially from cops) but that it is, rather, misguided, a feeling that the incredible human cost of Aboriginal poverty and hopelessness can be fixed if we just keep forking over money to let them live in Attawapiskat. Unsurprisingly, it continues to not work.
It would, I would agree, be a shame of the cultures of Australian Aboriginal peoples were lost, as it would equally be a shame to lose the cultures of Canadian first nations, or the Sami, or any number of Amazonian cultures, and so on and so forth. But I think there must come a time, in a liberal democracy, when someone has to point out that the responsibility of the government is to the welfare of human beings, not to the continuation of a particular set of spiritual beliefs, dances, songs and manners of dress. The history of our species is dotted with ten thousand lost cultures; there are more vanished cultures and languages and dances and songs and religions than there are extant ones, and the loss of each was a tiny shame. But, really, the human beings who live TODAY are not individually worse off for the fact that nobody speaks Occitan, identifies as an Etruscan, or whatever.
A baby born tomorrow to an Aboriginal woman should not have less of a right to the advantages and privileges of citizenship, equal treatment under the law, and a fair chance at a happy and productive life, in order to preserve a “culture.” That child should have just as good a chance of success in Australian life whether they are born to parents of Scottish, Aboriginal, Chinese, Polynesian or Russian descent, and really I don’t think it matters which it is.
I must stress; to the extent that helping to preserve a “culture” actually INCREASES the welfare of people I am absolutely all for it. Certainly in the past we have decreases the welfare of people by attemping to squish out their culture. (Google “Canada residential schools” for a dreadful example.)
But in some cases I quite honestly believe we are putting the maintenance of an distinguishable ethnic group and its culture above the welfare of the human beings in it, and I think that’s just an awful, awful crime and a mistake we will regret for centuries to come.
Is that really the case, though? Do native populations in Canada actually live under legal *restrictions *that don’t apply to others?
Again, isn’t that the case? Even jobs dressing and dancing for the tourists are jobs, and would not exist without government subsidies. It’s fair to argue that government should subsidize *other *industries in small, remote areas, and that’s something you see piecemeal in the US - a number of tribes have their own companies doing other things than making souvenirs.
If there really is a problem with native people being stuck in areas they don’t want to live in, how about offering free plane tickets and a few months housing subsidies for anyone who wants them? It would cost less and your conscience would be clear.
I didn’t say that. Yeah, there are a few restrictions on the fringes - for instance, an Aboriginal living on some reserves can be kicked off if they have the temerity to marry a person of the wrong race.
Hell, I’d vote for a plan to give them $250,000 cash.
However, in Canada, this is
Politically impossible because people would lose their shit. It’s racist and bad and Euroentric and culture blah blah, and it just would not fly. The chiefs would oppose it because, of course, they don’t have jobs if everyone packs up and leaves, and many of them are very well paid. The Opposition would declare it the most racist thing ever done. Again, the fuzzy-happy notion of pet Indians who still live traditionally, hunting and making crafts, gets in the way. Canadians generally don’t want the problem solved, they want it invisible. If you move people from Upper Nowhere to Toronto, they’re much too visible. They need housing, education, jobs. That’s just so much more inconvenient that sticking them in trailers way up north.
It’s illegal. The government cannot simply, unilaterally eliminate the legal status of an Indian band (that is the correct term of art here.) It’s unconstitutional.
A full explanation of the complexities of the Constitution Act and how it relates to treaties with Indian bands is far beyond a post’s worth of effort. It’s a second-year university course and you’d still only be a newbie.
Frankly, the situation in Canada is depressingly terrible. The rates of poverty, unemployment, substance abuse, crime, violence and incarceration amongst Aboriginal people are consistent with a failed state. It’s an outrage, but nobody really wants to fix it, or if they do they are politically doomed.
What you did say was “A baby born tomorrow to an Aboriginal woman should not have less of a right to the advantages and privileges of citizenship, equal treatment under the law, and a fair chance at a happy and productive life”. If said baby indeed does *not *have less rights, then what’s the problem?
That’s removal of a privilege, not limitation of a right.
Then let them all buy their own bus tickets. Is anything stopping them?
US tribes do legally exist independent of location, or even the existence of designated tribal lands. Hell, my own wife and kids are still legally Oklahoma Choctaws even though my wife has only been there to visit family and the kids have never been and don’t want to. Does a Canadian Inuit legally stop being one if he leaves the Arctic?
Again, who’s making them stay there?
There is no law in Canada that restricts an aboriginal person from living off-reserve, and aboriginal people travel between reserves as well as to non-aboriginal communities, where social housing is available. Cities to which aboriginal people migrate have aboriginal run friendship centres that help aboriginal people adjust to life off the reserve. In Ontario we also have an aboriginal high-school and an aboriginal college in the city that has the largest aboriginal population.
The problem isn’t legal restrictions, for there are no legal restrictions on aboriginal people. The problem is that when you have a few families living in isolation in the wilderness, with little or no contact with the outside world, you end up with “Lord of the Flies” – absurdly high rates of murder, assault, rape, theft, drug addiction, gas addiction, binge drinking, teenage pregnancy, as well as abysmal rates of literacy and numeracy, plus little or no knowledge or ability to function in a regular job (e.g. go to work each day).
Subsidies of aboriginals runs into the billions per year, ranging from housing and infrastructure to businesses subsidization, to education and health. Note that many of these reserves (and certainly the worst ones), are isolated: a gravel small plane runway, and an ice road that takes a day or two to travel through the bush and across frozen lakes during only three months during the winter. The lucky ones lie on the arctic ocean which permits small boat shipping during the summer. Quite simply, the logistics are such that industry is not possible for remote reserves. When a mine happens to open up, the employer is required to retain a certain number of aboriginal employees, but for the most part these employees receive a paycheque without having to attend for work, due to the problems set out in the previous paragraph. About the only industry that can viably open up in remote areas is mining, but mines open and close – they are not permanent, so remote communities can not count on a mine providing a long-term economic base.
Not surprisingly, given the abject social conditions, people living in remote reserves having a sense of hopelessness. They kill each other and kill themselves at horrendous rates. Assault and rape is the norm. Incest and severe domestic abuse is common. Addictions and binge drinking are common. The family in control of the reserve uses the public resources to take care of its own members, while people outside of the family are left to rot. People who are too violent are banished from the reserve and migrate to cities where they end up in jail, for they are utterly incapable of adjusting to the modern world given that they do not have any skills, and are burdened with their addictions and ingrained anti-social behaviour. People who are bright go-getters, the best of the people on the reserve, also migrate to the cities so as to pursue their education and to seek employment. They have a very hard time of it, and very often fail, for they have a steep learning curve to adjust to a world in which employment is necessary to maintain a good standard of living, and literacy, numeracy, regular attendance and completion of tasks are necessary to employment. Their adjustment is further complicated by the social demons they carry on their backs, for they too usually suffer from the social ills set out above.
Meanwhile, back at the reservation, teenagers are “popping out babies like Pez dispensers” – babies who are born into severe dysfunction, and who will result in growing populations of severely dysfunctional people in severely dysfunctional remote communities.
What it comes down to is that to maintain a modern lifestyle, one must be part of the modern world, both socially and economically, which is not possible for micro-communities that subsist in extreme isolation with insurmountable logistical problems, but at the same time, most people in those communities are not able to make the transition to living outside their communities.
It is a great tragedy, and truly heartbreaking.
Uh, that would be no bus, Bob.
And no life to go to.
There is more to a person’s access to the full exercise of their rights than just saying “okay, you have lots of rights.” We have a system that inhibits people’s opportunities, even while they technically have the right to leave it. As the old saying goes, the rich and poor both have the right to sleep under bridges.
Do black people in the United States have exactly the same level of fair access to life as white people? According to their legal rights, they must, right? Legally, black and white are equal. But I am sure you would say “ah, yes, but there is institutional racism at work,” because of course you would. It’s true, you have said so yourself, and you would not be so stupid as to say “well, what’s to stop a black kid in the worst part of Detroit from just leaving?” Well, in Canada a lot of First Nations people are ten times worse off than that.
It is as Muffin describes it. That description has not one word of exaggeration. We’ve created a system that destroys human beings.
The Australian system is frighteningly similar.
If that’s what you truly mean by “a right to the advantages and privileges of citizenship, equal treatment under the law, and a fair chance at a happy and productive life”, then I guess I’ll have to stay puzzled. You lament government policies and subsidies aimed at *overcoming *the certainly-real social issues and discrimination that you lament with even more anguish - after apparently abandoning the complaint that those people have lessened rights to citizenship and equal protection.
Did they go out of service after the beheading incident? Oh, right, airplanes are the buses of the North. So buy a plane ticket. They’re not all that expensive.
RickJay already mentioned the attractiveness of Toronto as a place to build a good life. If you disagree (and if so, let’s have the reasons), then is there truly nowhere else in Canada an Aboriginal can move to?
A couple of grand per person for a one way trip from Muskrat Dam to Toronto – not the sort of thing a person, let alone a family, on welfare with no employment skills can scrape together.
More to the point, though, I think you do not comprehend the barriers to mobility and employment set out in post #50. The cost of a flight out is the least of the problem, for without education, social and employment skills, and when further burdened with addictions and violence problems, moving unsupported to a city only makes matters worse.
Bottom line: in the short term, moving off-reserve is not a solution, but staying on-reserve is not a solution; in the long term, remote reserves perpetuate severe social and economic dysfunction.
You don’t understand the situation, made no attempt to do so when it was explained to you, and seem determined to remain ignorant. Your posts read like something a really dumb Rand Paul supporter would write.
I could explain why the policies AREN’T aimed at overcoming social issues and discrimination, but since I already did, and you’re not interested in the issue anyway, there’s no point.
If you don’t like what you see in the mirror, it isn’t the mirror’s fault.
Oh, hell … if the government is, in effect, bribing those people to continue living in squalor, for whatever reason the government may have, rather than move to sunshine and civilization, and they accept the offer, then that’s their own free will that they’re acting upon. What right has anyone else to complain about it? Except perhaps that the bribe/subsidy is too high, or should be zero, of course, but that’s not an argument I see here.
…well no he isn’t right at all. People have shown you that the cost of at the very least maintaining the status quo is minuscule. If you don’t want these communities to be maintained then you better explain why not. Because cost is not a factor.
What a load of bullshit.
Don’t blame your countries shoddy treatment of the indigenous people on “fuzzy, soft liberal attitude” and don’t you dare call the simple process of honouring a treaty as “racist.”
I’m tangata whenua, NZ Maori, Nga Puhi, and I’m fortunate that I live in a country where indigenous culture in ingrained in our society. Things aren’t perfect here: but we don’t have people like you sneering and pitying us when we go out and express our culture. The haka is performed here with pride by every member of society:white, Maori, Samoan, Chinese, Indian, because we embrace Maori culture, not look at it with disdain. The Treaty of Waitangi is our founding document, signed about five generations ago, and it is enshrined in law and respected by both parties. The only people that see the Treaty as racist turn out to be, in the most part, racist. I’d hate to think that applied to you.
Its a shame you can’t embrace the culture, instead of thinking of them as dancing monkeys who are performing for the master. You are having a hard enough time understanding the issues at play in your own nation, no wonder you don’t understand what is going on at the other part of the world.
I realize that this thread has taken a serious turn, but I just popped in to let our Aussie friends know that the onion eating made the national news here in the US. I hope you won’t be too upset by this, but it makes me feel a little bit better about GW Bush’s idiocy to know that we’re not the only ones with highly visible morons representing us to the world.
