Originally Posted by Beoz

I did miss the punch line. The punch line still doesn't change anything in post 100.

Originally Posted by Beoz

I did miss the punch line. The punch line still doesn't change anything in post 100.

Originally Posted by spouse of scouse

I wish you'd stop saying 'they'. Australian Aboriginal people aren't a homogeneous group who all think the same.

A little story for you. While at primary school in the mid-60s, I became friends with a boy named Ronnie. Ronnie lived in a group of cottages next door to the school. The cottages were owned and run by the Department of Native Welfare, a Western Australian government department, when Ronnie arrive there, and were later sold to the Uniting Church. White Christian families were allowed to take the kids home for weekends. My mum often collected Ronnie and brought him home to our place, where he'd eat and eat and sleep and sleep, and be a cheeky and funny little coot in between. We stayed friends until we were 15.

Ronnie was taken from his parents when he was 5 years old. He wasn't taken because he was neglected or abused. He wasn't taken because he didn't have family who loved him - as well as mum and dad he had brothers, sisters, aunties and uncles, cousins. Ronnie was forcibly removed from his family because his skin was lighter than that of his siblings. He was taken because the State thought he should learn how to act like a white person.

Ronnie's parents weren't permitted to visit him. For years his mum wrote letters to the Department's Commissioner pleading to be allowed to see her son. Some of those letters, and the Commissioner's responses, still exist. She was consistently refused any access at all to her son.

I'm not going to go into the history of the stolen generation, if anyone's genuinely interested there's plenty of factual information available. Around 10 years ago the Uniting Church issued a statement, saying it 'unreservedly apologised to children in its institutions who experienced neglect of their social, emotional and physical needs, or physical or sexual abuse perpetrated by staff who should have been trustworthy'.

Many of those who worked with Aboriginal children at that time did so with good intentions, they were following the State, Commonwealth and society in general's belief that a 'white' upbringing was always going to be better than an 'Aboriginal' one. I get that. Most Aboriginal people I've been friends with and worked with get that.

But don't you dare say that 'they should be grateful'. I'd actually like to share your thoughts with Ronnie, we'd hopefully be able to have a good laugh about it. I can't tell Ronnie that he should be grateful though, because when he was 15 years old he hung himself.

Originally Posted by Dorothy

Punch line? You obnoxious piece of crap. How about you explain to me, as the mother of a teenager who hung himself how suicide has a punchline?

Originally Posted by moneypenny20

No but it was does mean you made an obnoxious comment and didn't even have the decency to apologise. Also 'punch line' is the final point of a joke. I missed where Spouse made one so you managed to be doubly obnoxious. Many congrats.

Originally Posted by the troubadour

Time will provide more people akin to Cathy Freeman and other sporting stars from the past. Hopefully not only confined to sport, but more in the intellectual arena

Originally Posted by Beoz

You mean like David Unaipon, Neville Bonner, Bronwyn Bancroft, Lowitja O’Donoghue (who was taken from her mother as a child)? Time has told.

Originally Posted by the troubadour

While those above mentioned may well irritate your side of the ideological divide, and indeed I don't agree with all agendas expressed, more power to them for standing up for what they believe.

Originally Posted by the troubadour

Beoz, Well no colonisation did not benefit the Original inhabitants for a exceptional long time.

Originally Posted by the troubadour

Why finger the past few decades? British colonisation goes back well over
two hundred years. Much of that time the Original inhabitants were treated with total disdain, third rate or less non citizens across this nation. How does that be put right in a few decades?

Originally Posted by the troubadour

Of course it was not only the Australian Original people that felt the consequences of colonisation. First nations in Canada and USA . Not forgetting the native peoples in South America or parts of Asia.

Originally Posted by the troubadour

Time will provide more people akin to Cathy Freeman and other sporting stars from the past. Hopefully not only confined to sport, but more in the intellectual arena, than can articulate the point of view and perspective of the Original people from the soul, rather than a western take on things that can rarely if ever come to an understanding divorced from own cultural perspectives, no matter how hard attempt to be fair minded and under standing.

Originally Posted by the troubadour

One thing remains clear though it takes more than a few generations to radically altar perceptions. Not that all the white man's perceptions on life is necessary the correct way forward, especially the direction of policy over recent years. Must be very difficult for the Original inhabitants to fully come to terms with the individuality and greed seemingly over evident in the majority culture around them.

Originally Posted by GarryP

First, yes it demonstrably does take a few generations. And second, although I wouldn't say right wing capitalism is necessarily the right way forward, it's closer to right than a stone age culture in a 21st century world be....

Originally Posted by Beoz

Apologies for what? It doesn't change my post in which I acknowledge the sadness of the stolen generation, even before I knew where Ronnie was today.

And I was seriously interested where Ronnie was today, hoping for a good story, but of course they are rare to find on this topic.

Originally Posted by moneypenny20

You managed to quote Spouse and suggested she hadn't understood what Astera said. May I suggest, when you read a post and decide to quote it and explain to that poster why they are wrong, you actually read what you are quoting. You obviously weren't seriously interested in Ronnie because you failed to read to the end of the post.

Apologise for not actually reading a post whilst quoting and then asking about a friend of hers who took his own life which was the whole reason for her post. Apologise for using the term 'punch line' which is only ever used for the end of a joke not when someone is explaining horrific events.

Don't worry I don't expect you to. You're too busy trying to prove you know more than anyone else and not accepting another point of view. Pray, continue.

Originally Posted by Beoz

I usually say "agree". Shall I post links?

Will happily do that for you tomorrow when I watch the automation video.

Originally Posted by Shard

...their insistence on living a quasi ancestral life or excluding themselves from the larger society has detrimental impacts. There is a certain incompatibility.

and so are de facto willing to adopt new cultural norms, and join wider society.