Do you have any facts in support of your view OR are you only interested is starting a slanging match with someone who’s asked a reasonable question.

Blind Freddy: grow up will you……if you can’t say anything constructive, save your bile for someone else.
I also note that you’re not prepared to associate yourself with your own comments…says a lot really

On a completely different tangent I am still shaking my head over the lead story about a bunch of Sydney bushwalkers on Mt Sealy Range in ‘Mt Cook National Park’ who got caught in a blizzard. About 5 to 10 km south of Mt Cook, different glacier and mountain range. All the quality press, ABC etc said they were half way up Mt Cook highest mountain in NZ. Wrong, wrong, wrong geography. Never lets facts get in the way of the hyperbole.

It’s a completely different context but somehow the same problem. Where did these folks get their stupid pills?

remember, blue ones in the morning, red ones at night. Otherwise you do say some rather silly things in public, don’t you?

Now go and have a good lie down.

Comments should at least make sense…check out this proposition with your counsellor.

She is certainly extremely proud of the new swimming pool and her decades of endless service to the youth of Yuendumu through the Mt Theo Program for which she received an Order of Australia Medal (along with 2 others). Perhaps she was reflecting on these events, and she was misunderstood by the reporters. l don’t know. However l do know that this misrepresentation of her views has upset her a great deal.

The onus is on the reporters to ensure their information is correct. If it was a sad misunderstanding on their part then that is their failure to cross this cultural divide. This is highlighted by the fact that PAW Media (formerly Warlpiri Media) located in Yuendumu offers cultural liaison officers to assist external media. Not to prevent access as media often suppose but to prevent outcomes such as this. These local people (local employment….) can assist to ensure locals opinions can be accurately expressed whatever they may be and thus enable media to write stories that are accurate, respectful and truthful.

For future media can l suggest you make employ the use of the local media resources at PAW Media. It will be good for the community and good for your reporting (http://www.warlpiri.com.au/)

I asked the question ‘cos I don’t know what kind of data is available for your region…no hidden agenda on my part….I’ve been an active supporter of Koori rights ever since Stan Davey spoke to our matriculation class in Geelong in 1967, about the ridiculous, two faced treatment of the first Australians. I’m simply trying to bring myself up to speed on the intervention’s success or otherwise.

So I’ll now visit the reference you’ve provided…..that’s all I wanted.

Finally, why exactly is it that you won’t identify yourself with your comments?

Comments should at least make sense…check out this proposition with your counsellor.

To paraphrase Bruce Pascoe in the current SBS series the The First Australians, it is intellectually preposterous to think that a 60 thousand year old culture would have nothing to teach modern man.

The reason your comment was perceived as offensive is that it demands Indigenous people justify who they are in non-Indigenous terms and by non-Indigenous people, in a way non-Indigenous society never has to do - they’re constantly made to feel that their culture and society is inferior and dysfunctional, while deeply believing themselves that it isn’t (although after a few generations some of this outside disparagement becomes internalised as self-hatred and confusion).

Some Warlpiri I know were watching Neighbours and laughing about all the fighting and arguing (dysfunction?) and said - what they need is a skin system. As someone who’s been deeply impressed with the complexity of the kinship system - an inadequate description in English as it encompasses everyone and everything - and the intimidatingly rich and complex body of philosophy, spirituality, social theory, natural science, cosmology, etc., and who knows only a smidgin about these things it makes me really angry when people denigrate Indigenous capability and functionality. It is shameful that after over two hundred years we non-Indigenous people know so little of Indigenous life. If we were to subject ourselves to judgement by their standards we would come up looking similarly threadbare.

We need to support each other and work together - the constant refrain of Indigenous people for decades, if not centuries. We also need to close the gap; the gap between non-Indigenous and Indigenous understanding of this country and this land; the gap between our understanding of family, society and social function. We need to accept that non-Indigenous people have got a lot more to learn from Indigenous people than vice versa.
It’s time for some humility by non-Indigenous Australians.

Have YOU any evidence that it wasn’t well functioning. Unlike - I suspect - you, I’ve spent a great deal of time with Warlpiri people and their main problem is US (by which I mean non-Indigenous people…something tells me you’re not Indigenous) - it is US who have created and continue to create dysfunction.

I presume you maintain that Anglo-Australian society has a well functioning social system in place? Can you provide the independent, third-party verified evidence?

Look forward to seeing it.

For evidence of functioning Warlpiri society you could do worse than look at this paper on ngurra-kurlu:

http://www.desertknowledgecrc.com.au/publications/downloads/DKCRC-Report-41-Ngurra-kurlu.pdf

Over to you.

If so, what are the details?