There are some *serious* issues facing indigenous people in Australia. THe most recent is the Federal Govt 'intervention' in the Northern Territory. The aim, officially, of the intervention is to prevent child abuse, which is at shockingly high levels. But the Federal Govt has some interesting ideas on this - ignoring most of the recommendations made by the people who had spent time in the communities and engaged in consultation etc, and instead engaged in a series of measures that include:
1. Sending in the *army*!
2. Changing the land rights and title of Aboriginal people
3. Suspending/ exerting control over welfare payments.
What's great, in comparison to Malaysia, is that there are articulate indigenous spokespeople who are given a reasonable amount of coverage in the mass media, and loads of coverage in the independent media. What's annoying is that these spokespeople inevitably argue that the Australian indigenous people have 'the worst' deal in the world.
Sorry, but this bugs me. It ignores the bad deal, terrible deal, and often equally genocidal deal, that indigenous people in the developing world. If you compare the deal they get in Australia with New Zealand, Canada and the US, it is horrendous. If you compare with Thailand, for example, or Cambodia, or Vietnam, it looks a lot less bad.
The reason I bring it up is because this focus on the bad West, has led to problems at an international level. When at the World Conference Against Racism, for example, the indigenous womens' caucus put forward a whole series of demands (negotiated in English) that completely ignored the needs of indigenous women in the developing world. And because they *didn't* speak English, they were marginalised by those who are in turn marginalised within their home states.
Grouch.
No comments:
Post a Comment