War has been declared in Australia., page 2

I've lived amongst Australian aborigines and until people have, they aren't qualified to comment one way or the other.

The situation in Australia differs to that in NZ, to that in Africa and to those in the US or UK.

Having more pigment in the skin does not render someone 'innocent' or an automatic 'victim'. Nor does it render them automatically 'bad' or 'guilty'.

War has not been declared in Australia, of course. Rather, people receive astonishing amounts of money to 'fix' the 'aborigine problem' and to date, many problems remain unresolved.

Here's a snapshot of the type of problem the authorities are attempting to 'fix'. Maybe contributors to this thread could tender their solutions ?

We owned the general store in a small, rural town. On the neighbouring property stood a ramshackle shack, one of the original slab dwellings built by those who first pioneered the region. It had no running water, no electricity. If there had ever been floorboards, they were long gone.

One day, a truck stopped outside the local pub (hotel) and an aboriginal woman and half a dozen young children climbed out. Soon, an aboriginal stock-man hitched his horse to the rail and joined the aboriginal family inside the pub. In half an hour, the children emerged. At first, they sat on the verandah. Growing bored, they wandered across the road. The aboriginal stockman and the mother of the children were later heard brawling in overgrown, vacant land next to the pub. It was a very small town, basically one main street with a few side roads leading to distant farms.

By next morning, the aboriginal woman and her children had taken up residence in the shack next to our store. They remained there for over four years. The local school-master and people in the town told the woman her children, by law, were required to attend the local school, half a mile away.

Every month, the aboriginal stockman would ride in from the cattle station where he worked. He would hand his pay-check to the publican upon entering and say (as all the aborigines did), 'Here's me check, mate. Tell me when I've drunk it up'. He would then sit at the bar and sink one drink after another, until he collapsed unconscious to the floor. At that point, he would be carried out the back of the pub to where there were several one room shacks especially for the purpose. When he recovered, he would stagger back to the bar to continue drinking.

The aboriginal woman, who said she was his wife, would be given several large bottles of beer by her husband if she nagged, begged and screamed hard enough. She was not allowed to drink them in the pub because she had always become violent in the past and had several times tried to slash her husband with broken bottles when he refused to give her more grog. So, she would drink on the dirt floor of the shack, or by the road, until she passed out.

When the stockman had drunk away his pay, he'd climb back on his horse and head back to the cattle station. He rarely, if ever, even spoke with his 'wife's' half dozen children during his stay in the town. His children were sent by their mother to beg money from him. They didn't get much.

His wife, during his absence, would trade sex for grog. The woman would have been only in her mid-30s -- she looked to be in her 50s. Sometimes, when she was not on the drink, we kids would end up chatting with her if we were playing with her children at the time. She was great company for kids. The poor woman had a very similar mental age to that of a child. She liked stories and movies. Basically, she was a little girl in a woman's body. She lied a lot. A lot of the Aborigines were that way, imo. In truth though, we saw very little of her. She slept in the shack in the day and begged drinks at night.

We knew the aboriginal children were breaking into our store's store-rooms, which were out the back. As long as what they took was within reason, we didn't say anything. And my mother gave food to the children quite frequently. The children's mother drank away her welfare cheques as soon as she received them. In the end, the children all got scabies. As it is contagious, they weren't allowed to go to school.

Attempts to explain to the children's mother that the welfare cheques were supposed to feed and clothe her children fell on deaf ears. Like a lot of Aborigines, the woman craved alcohol night and day .. nothing else mattered.

Her eldest children, boys, were now in their early teens. They liked to go to white's houses all the time and hated to return to the shack. People tried to help, but the government authorities said it would look bad if any attempts were made to interfere or to separate the mother from the children .. it would be misinterpreted. Yet the woman seemed incapable of learning the basics of household hygiene and nutrition. Grog .. she just wanted grog. When asked, she admitted all the children had different fathers. She could only remember the identity of one of these, the aboriginal stockman detailed above, although he denied it.

The police came to the town and arrested the eldest boy. He and the village simpleton had lain in wait for a young ten year old girl as she walked home from school. They had raped and stabbed her. The next boy soon had problems with the law and was placed in a boy's home. His mother wailed to the authorities that she needed him back at home, otherwise there would be no-one to take care of the younger siblings. The law tried to reason with her and said the boy's best chance lay in being educated by the State. The boy said he did not want to return home.

The mother then began sending her 9 and 6 year old daughters across the road to the pub, to beg grog from men in the bar. You can imagine what eventuated.

One by one, those children fell by the wayside while still children. Attempts by the State to remove them from the woman's care were met by accusations by her that they were trying to 'steal' her children. All she wanted from society was money for grog. And those children were her ticket to welfare payments. When one left or was taken into care, the woman had another. She had at least another 15 to 20 years of breeding left in her.

How would you deal with the situation ? Because it's far more common than you imagine.

[edit on 21-8-2009 by St Vaast]