Worlds Apart

THE LETTER PUBLISHED

I submitted two letters today, the first was spurred by this article about Aboriginal land rights. We've heard these arguments a million times over and they continue to confuse me. But try as hard as you might to get logical explanations for them, you can't. Just by asking, you will be labelled a racist.

The way I read it, these people want Aborigines to continue to live their remote existence (and that's fine by me!) and have a standard of living comparable to white city dwelling Australians (I'm fine with that too!!). I just don't see how any reasonable person can propose to achieve one without it being at the expense of the other?

The desired outcome seems to be that indigenous Mum & Dad go out and hunt & gather food all day while the kids study calculus & Shakespeare. Then everyone meets up at home later where they each have their own bedroom and ensuite (yes there's 8 kids and the grandparents and some nephews live there too, so the house has 21 rooms, but apart from that it's just like yours or mine!). Mum cooks up the bush tucker using the modern kitchen appliances and then it's time to prepare for the corroboree. Everyone goes and showers and exfoliates before applying their ochre paints and heading out to the clearing. If someone gets ill it's no problem we'll just whisk them down to the modern 24 hour medical clinic filled with top class doctors. Sure the town (nomads live in towns?) has only 150 people and is 500km from the nearest big city (1500 people) but a hospital is sustainable.

It's just not logical to me. If Aboriginal people want to live in their traditional way surely they don't want the houses or roads or doctors or schools. So why do we force it upon them yet continue to tell them to live in their natural way. It can't work and it's just prohibitively expensive given the distances and small communities involved. Because the people affected are so minute, the cost spread over all the taxpayers is small. This makes it seem like good value to wash away some of our coloniser's guilt. In reality it's quite wasteful and helping no one.

Sir,

Galarrwuy Yunupingu says that Aboriginal people should be
able to livetheir lives according to their ancient "values and customs."
Pre-industrialcivilisations don't have long life expectancy or high quality
health care,or individual rooms per person. Mr. Yunupingu then goes on to say that Aboriginal Australians desire improved quality of life. By this he means longer life, higher education and better general health. To achieve this they need access to first world quality health and education.

Like many non-indigenous Australians, I remain confused as to how you canhave it both ways. We welcome Aboriginal people into a first world society and the living standards that come with it. To achieve those benefits some customs have to be abandoned, among them are remote living and communal property rights.