The Situation of Aboriginal Australians is Nothing for Us to Be Proud Of by Patrick Dodson 1:14pm 26th Jan, 2004   January 26, 2004 (Published By The Age).    Some time this long weekend most Australians will reflect on what it means to be Australian. And although most non-indigenous Australians are content with - indeed proud of - their national identity, the circumstances of indigenous Australians allow no such easy certainty.    What do indigenous Australians have to reflect on today? For one thing, that we are the most marginalised and disadvantaged section of the nation. And that 2004 looks like promising much the same. The health conditions of indigenous people are literally a life-and-death issue affecting every aspect of indigenous lives and communities.    Where is the future for our children? Children under 15 account for 40 per cent of the indigenous population - an extremely young population profile compared with other Australians. Yet the majority of indigenous children grow up in households with unemployed adults and where household incomes are low, and in communities where few adults have even part-time employment.    A plethora of research shows that children who spend their lives in poor households are more likely to lack adequate nutrition and other critical resources, which has a significant impact on their later health and opportunities for economic success and social participation.    Our children are our future. A wealthy, First World nation enjoying unprecedented economic prosperity cannot be proud while continuing to ignore the plight of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged Australian children. Problems in Aboriginal communities are not simply of Aboriginal people's making. They are contributed to by inept programs that cold-shoulder genuine dialogue between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people and focus on supervising indigenous people's behaviour.    Public-sector control programs that debilitate our communities by keeping Aboriginal people dependent are in serious need of a rethink. The lack of public-sector professionalism in many quarters of Aboriginal affairs, policy and service is as of much concern as the lack of capacity in many Aboriginal scenarios.    What do indigenous Australians have to reflect on today? We are the most marginalised and disadvantaged section of the nation.    These programs are meant to be partnerships with Aboriginal people and are supposed to build capacity and governance in their communities. But they are really about conformity and compliance with mainstream objectives.    They allow little accommodation of Aboriginal cultural and social values. They do not inform non-indigenous Australians about indigenous people's protocols or induce respect for them and their unique position as the first people of this land, the land we all share and love. The ongoing thrust of assimilation is to continuously try to make us into something that we aren't, and denies our aspirations to take responsibility for decisions affecting our lives.    Every Australian citizen is entitled to equal access to health and education. Trading such fundamental rights off as "practical reconciliation" means genuine reconciliation is not achievable because there's no dialogue. It means Aboriginal people increasingly avoid articulating their concerns for fear of upsetting the Government.    Aboriginal affairs policy must be about rebuilding Aboriginal nations. Violence, abuse, exploitation, drugs and excessive alcohol lead in any society - not just in ours, but in any society - to a loss of quality of life, suffering, sadness and poverty: poverty in fact and poverty in spirit, resulting in despair.    No human being in the world would willingly desire such a life, and we Aboriginal people certainly do not. The complexity of Aboriginal affairs is that not only must we deal with abject daily lives, but also with the fact that the rights of indigenous people have never been acknowledged and agreed.    "Practical reconciliation" denies this complexity. The Government has shifted the agenda from responsibilities to an allocation of blame.    Our national governments were given clear instructions by the Australian people to take up these responsibilities at the 1967 referendum. But indigenous issues are "out of sight and out of mind" for most Australians, except for occasional sensational headlines about what is wrong.    Too often we hear: "It's really up to the blacks; it's their fault and they'll have to fix it." This blaming debilitates the people who struggle daily to transform their situations against huge odds. Aboriginal people suffer health conditions described by the United Nations and the Fred Hollows Foundation as among the worst in the world. It's irrelevant what or who is to blame for this. It is the nation's responsibility to see that it is fixed. Australia needs agreements about things like indigenous education, job opportunities, service delivery, native title rights. It needs a co-operative notion of cultural heritage. There must be fundamental constitutional change in this country, and there must be a treaty.    This requires matching indigenous people's essential cultural and social value systems with those of society generally. It requires the broader society to consider how it is prepared to adapt and change to give indigenous ways a distinct place in the shared life of Australia.    This does not threaten middle Australia. It would allow Aboriginal people to fully take up their responsibilities in ways consistent with their social, cultural and spiritual values and their obligations. It would enable us to take our rightful place as Australians in an Australia that prides itself upon its own democracy, an identity of which we could all be proud - but that is yet, unfortunately, falsely assumed by most Australians.    What we are talking about here is the survival and sustainability of the world's oldest living continuous culture. It requires more than indigenous people being assimilated into the middle classes. It takes political will and honest dialogue.    (Patrick Dodson is chairman of the Lingiari Foundation and a member of the Indigenous Reference Group advising Australians for Native Title & Reconciliation). Email Patrick Dodson
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