BudBrain

I finished reading Bill Bryson's "Down Under" recently and he talked about aborigines, and the fact that Australian's don't really like talking about them - from an expat's POV - what's up with that?

Are they 'put to one side', so to speak? Do they integrate with other communities? When we were last in Perth, I only remember seeing a single aborigine (selling touristy presents) in a town centre.

Just wondering what the truth is behind the whole story anyway, I know most expats here don't hold back

Kim67

Perth? Are you sure you only saw one? Amazing - now if you'd said Brisbane, I'd have believed you, but Perth there are hundreds.

It's a very difficult thing to explain to someone unless they've lived amongst it and I know Brits that have gone to Perth and been appalled by the way locals speak about their indigenous cousins but then they travel on public transport and get a punch in the face for no reason and soon change their attitude. No doubt the aborigines have endured some horrendous treatment at the hands of white settlers, but the modern problems associated with this are complex and nobody seems to be able to come up with a plan that really works in changing the attitudes of both.

Personally I support the plight of the aboriginal people, but I also don't want to live and play among the petrol sniffing kind that would beat or rob me without a second thought. My kids were all born in Queensland and my eldest had a best mate who was half aboriginal at school and we were pretty good friends with her family and still keep in touch. Lovely people - mother was one of the stolen generation and been brought up by a white family in Victoria and moved home to Queensland to find her birth mother (who still lives with her now). So when we moved back to Perth and I started avoiding certain places and suburbs my kids told me I'd turned into a member of the KKK. I guess if you are going to live in Australia, you just have to be patient and be prepared to listen to both sides of the story and experience the things first hand before you can really understand things from a white australian's point of view.

iamthecreaturefromuranus

I have heard said, that the only thing wrong with the early settlers treatment of the Aborigines, was that they didn't do a proper job and get rid of the lot of them. Make of that what you will.

They are universally viewed with suspicion wherever they are... and probably rightly so.

Elmo2552

I have to admit this is a tough one for me too. When I first arrived in Oz I was appalled at the way most of the white Aussie population speak about Aborigines. I lived and worked in the city centre of Perth and never really had any issues at all..........until i started working in Midland!
The area obviously has a large Aborigine population and it has been an eye opener to say the least!! I get the train from CBD to Midland and back everyday,sometimes quite late at night.
I had a bad experience last week when i was coming home at about half nine at night, there were only about 3 of us on the whole train when this gang of Aborigine teenagers and women ( i say gang because it was fairly obvious they were just out to cause trouble) got on the train and sat one immediately on either side of me and 3 opposite me. Two were sniffing glue out of carrier bags, one was so drunk that she was being sick all over the train and another sat with a golf umbrella in hand telling me how good they are for hitting people with!!
now i was a cop back home and i've been in some pretty hairy situtions but I can honestly say i have never felt so intimidated, it really shook me up. Im convinced if i hadnt have been getting off at the next stop then i would have been mugged or assaulted!this was not a one off incident either and is a regular thing on that trainline! I now carry pepper spray but was recently told by a cop out here that if I was being assaulted by an Aborigine and i used my pepper spray then I would be the one charged with assault because " thats the way it is!!!"
i dont agree with the way an entire group of people have been treated over the years and would certainly never judge everyone the same, i take any individual on their own merits, but IMHO, going on my experiences so far, Aborigines in some areas of Perth do themselves no favours, and deserve the reputation they have
this post is in no way meant to be racist( people could be pink with purple spots for all i care!) and apologies in advance if it has offended anyone, just my personal findings so far

Kelli28

A very common statement and I hear it a lot.

They really don't do themselves any favours, I dont know any and the only ones I have come across have some kind of addiction or are in prision. I often look up coroners reports and quite a few are regarding Aboriginals.
I find it absolutly heart breaking how these people live and treat others I have often found myself in tears just from reading them, and I'm sorry to say that most of what people see is only the tip of the iceburg. I personally don't think that it is anything to do with earlier white settlers for how they are today, thats just an excuse.

jad n rich

I was watching a quick history of the ekka on telly last night, they had aboriginal boys lined up to box each other as sideshow entertainment, I felt ill Some years ago but not THAT long ago.

I feel sorry for the kids, look lets be honest if my kids had grown up in those parts of OZ and the total lack of opportunity there they would probably be sniffing glue too. Vicious cycle - kids cant get out till they are older then will white people give them a chance? Many wont

Long and complicated situation, and people do need to see how they live if before saying too much.

TiddlyPom

Wow. Really? You think that it has nothing to being stolen from parents, bought up by whites, told they were dirty and unloveable, abused and degraded for being black, arrested, subject to constant racist government policies, had their land grabbed and got given back shitholes to live in where basic human rights such as running water and electricity are not even provided, etc etc etc.
So when they're drunk, high, disenfranchised, dirty, suffering from malnutrition, high child abuse, high violence ... you think they just do all that stuff because it's an excuse?

http://www.creativespirits.info/abor...ulture/people/ is a good website you might be interested in reading.

ponyrama

OMFG! I hope that post was just to get a reaction and not a true expression of how you feel about fellow members of the human race.

My view - there are good and bad in all walks of life. You reap what you sow, treat people like an underclass and they will eventually conform - and behave like one. It really @&ks me off to hear the immigrant population of this country complaining about a problem that they're ancestors created, without taking any responsibility for what "we" did in the first place.

I would implore everyone who considers "bagging" the indigenous people of this or any other country to first take some time to learn about the history and culture of those people, and the journey they have undertaken since occupation, before forming an opinion. It is true that there are many social issues that affect aboriginal communities, and this manifests in the negative behaviours that people point to as being indicative of aboriginal people. But there are many more non-aboriginal people who behave in the same way if not worse - its the historical judgemental attitudes and prejudicial treatment against indigenous people that turns the statistics into media fodder that then promotes those negative attitudes towards our neighbours.

A little understanding goes a lot further than a whole lot of ignorance.

"I acknowlegde the traditional owners of the land on which I work and live as the first people of this country and I pay my respects to their elders past and present"

TiddlyPom

There is a guy who was a tent boxer near me and he is the most interesting man. Lovely guy. He was stolen from his mother. He wrote to her and his 'parents' kept all his letters to her without posting them. He tried to find his mother when he became an adult and she'd died two years before.

jad n rich

Sad

cresta57

Since when were running water & electricity "basic human rights" When my tank runs dry will I as a white Australian have a free delivery of water? I don't think so! If I don't pay my power bill will Anna Blight pick up the tab? Nope didn't think so either.
Running water & Electricity are conveniences not "rights" we can live without both as many billions of people do. Many Africans live more than a kilometer from any water source.

Kelli28

That website is wrote by Aboriginals maybe it's a bit bias. The problems your mentioning are truly awful and its a huge social problem. However I dont belive that raping children (often their own) can be put down to mis treatment by whites years ago. There are many many disadvantaged people in the world that don't have any where near the amount of problems the Australian Aboriginals do. Why that is I don't know!

verystormy

I work for a company who put us all through a intensive 4 day course on aboriginal culture. This was a serious wake up call for a lot of the guys in the office.

The white population is now reeping the whirlwind is sowed with the stolen generation. One of the teachers on the course had spent a lot of time in prison for a whole list of offences. He was one of the stolen generation. He grew up confused and angry and this came out in a number of ways - none pleasently. He has been lucky and managed to turn his life around, but he is rare. The problem now is breaking the cycle. The parents of the stolen generation are so emotionaly scared that the kids arent being brought up well. These kids will then be scared and so on down the generations.

It is going to be a hard problem to solve.

TiddlyPom

That website is written by some Aboriginals. Perhaps it is biased.
Maybe it's not? Maybe it's a true and proper reflection of the situation?

Native American Indian people share many of the same issues.
If you don't know, then perhaps education is your answer. It's all out there.

Buzzy--Bee

I see no Aboriginals at all here in Melbourne. My wife thinks she saw one once.

Where we live in Mordialloc, the creek was home to many many Aboriginals until the 1870s when they had all been "resettled" in Healesville.

Here's something I find absolutely amazing to think about - 18,000 years ago, where Ricketts Point tea house in Black Rock stands on the edge of Port Philip, there was an Aboriginal settlement. The Aboriginals then would not have looked out on Port Philip, they would have looked out on a vast fertile plain.

In other words, the Aboriginals were in SE Melbourne before the SEA was!!!

My only direct experience with an Aboriginal was when I was stung by an unknown insect on Fraser island in QLD, and a local Aboriginal lady fetched some leaves from a certain bush and told me to rub it on the sting, which then became less painful and inflamed. I was full of respect for her knowledge.

I think that the "Aboriginal issue" is a very very hard one and one that I have no solution for. What the British did to the Aboriginals in Tasmania was the same as the Nazis did to the Jews - genocide. Why do I feel guilty about this? I've never even been to Tasmania. But I do feel the white man's guilt for some reason. Equally when I see the way that the Maori have been kowtowed to in New Zealand with many multi-million "full and final" settlements, which have I'm sure helped that country into the economic challenges that it faces, I do not believe that is the answer.

BB