Posted on 12/17/2005 3:11:07 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Warren Mundine believes it's time for his people to make it on their own. Michael Duffy reports.
'I ACTUALLY find it bizarre to be in this position. I never meant to be here." The speaker is Warren Mundine, and "here" is the position of national prominence he has recently acquired. "All I did," he continues, "was say what I thought."
He thinks a lot, but the thought that's brought him a lot of new friends and enemies was his proposal earlier this year that it be made easier for individual Aborigines to own sections of their traditional land. They should be able to do what they want with it: mortgage, even sell if they want. The proposition has shocked and upset many. It flies in the face of 40 years of land-rights struggle based on the concept of land as communally owned for all time. These days Mundine is on the road a lot of the time, talking with Aborigines around Australia, pushing his ideas.
Becoming a national Aboriginal leader is a difficult balancing act. It's necessary to gain the confidence of disparate black communities while persuading the white media and politicians to take you seriously. Mundine says, with the frequent laughter that punctuates much of his conversation: "You make a lot of enemies if you shake the status quo. People who talked to me six months ago don't talk to me any more. Or if they do, there's a lot of swearing involved. That hurt me at first."
His day job is chief executive officer of NSW Native Title Services, which employs 25 staff and is responsible for making native title claims and negotiating access to Aboriginal land by outsiders such as mining companies. He sits on several boards and is national senior vice-president of the ALP. He's also a member of John Howard's advisory National Indigenous Council, and has no plans to quit when he becomes ALP president next year.
This has brought him plenty of enemies, too. "I've seen the cartoons flying around about me being the Aboriginal real-estate salesman," he says, "or a coconut, which is probably the worst thing you can call an Aboriginal. But I don't worry about those things."
..................Mundine believes the land-rights and welfare policies of the past 30 years have failed to provide most Aborigines with better lives. In his view, some of the Aboriginal leaders still defending those policies "are living in the past, living off the old victories, trapped in the 1970s land-rights rhetoric". The solution? "I want to make Aboriginal communities safe and economically viable. They're the two issues I want to drive forward. We've spent 30 years trying to get economic development into Aboriginal communities through government agencies and community organisations and it just doesn't work. We need to get the private sector in there and encourage Aboriginal people to build their own businesses."
He has great faith in private industry and private ownership. "The discipline of paying off a mortgage affects your whole life. You have to be healthy so you can get an education; you have to be educated so you can get a job; and you have to keep that job. It changes everything." As for government: "It has been an enslaver of Aboriginal people for 200 years. It's time we got them out of the way so we can move on independently."
These days Mundine attends conferences organised by liberal and conservative organisations such as the Bennelong Society and the Centre for Independent Studies. This confuses and upsets many, who perhaps feel he's going over to the enemy, but it seems that Mundine ought to be seen as someone so confident of his own ideas that he can afford to be unusually open. As he says: "I'll sit down and have a cup of tea with anyone."
There's no doubt his ideas are shared by the right rather than the left at the moment, but that's something he's keen to change. He's out to rescue Aboriginal affairs from the influence of white romantics. "A lot of people with influence still believe Aboriginals have to be protected and looked after," he says. "No. Aboriginal people have to look after ourselves. We'll determine what our culture is and where it goes."
Moreover, "there are still too many white people working in top positions in organisations in Aboriginal communities. Surely, in 20 or 30 years, we could have trained Aboriginal people to do those jobs? At the moment we fly in white people and it's hugely expensive. A total waste of time."........................
****..........Log onto the Web sites of the National Wildlife Federation, the Wilderness Society and other environmental groups and you learn that the struggle to save the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska from oil drilling is about more than protecting the environment.
"It is also a human rights issue since the indigenous Gwich'in Indians rely on this important area for their subsistence way of life," says the Wilderness Society's Web site: www.wilderness.org.
But this fall, Petroleum News Alaska — a trade journal — reported a story that environmental groups have not publicized: Over the border in Canada, the Gwich'in Tribal Council joined forces with an oil firm to tap into energy resources on their lands.
"It's time for us to build an economic base," said Fred Carmichael, president of the tribal council in Inuvik, Canada. "Our people can no longer depend on living off the land for a livelihood. That's a fact of life."
For decades, environmental groups have championed American Indians as stewards of the Earth and symbols of conservation spirit. But today, as tribes turn to oil drilling, logging, gambling and even nuclear storage for economic independence, using Indians to promote environmental causes not only is risky and simplistic, but also is stirring charges of cultural insensitivity and exploitation.
"Environmentalists are using Indians the way the French and English used Indians in the French-Indian war: We're their foot soldiers," said David Lester, a Creek Indian and executive director of the Council of Energy Resource Tribes, which represents tribes involved in coal mining, oil and gas drilling, and other natural resource businesses.
Controversy over the Arctic refuge has simmered for years. But today, with the Bush administration pushing to open the region once and for all to energy exploitation, the dispute has reached the boiling point. In August, the House voted in favor of exploring for oil on a small portion of the refuge's coastal plain. The Senate still is weighing the matter.
The Gwich'in flatly defend their right to oppose Alaska drilling while forming an energy company — Gwich'in Oilfield Services. The reason, they said, is simple: Drilling in Canada won't hurt the Porcupine caribou herd, on which the tribe has lived for centuries.
"We will not be drilling on any caribou grazing area that (Gwich'in) people don't want to drill on," said Carmichael. Owning 51 percent of the company "gives us that power," he said.
Scattered across 15 small villages, mostly in Canada, the tribe channels its opposition through a Fairbanks nonprofit, the Gwich'in Steering Committee, that in recent years has received more than $200,000 from foundations and environmental groups. Project director Faith Gemmill said Gwich'in resistance to drilling is homegrown.
"Nobody told us to do this. We had to do it," she said. "If oil development is allowed in the (caribou) calving grounds, it is a threat to the very survival of our culture."
Not far away, Inupiat Eskimos hold an opposite view: They say drilling can be carried out in concert with the caribou. But their position is discounted by environmental groups because the Inupiats have extensive ties with oil companies through their own tribal business: the Arctic Slope Regional Corp.
"The national debate has placed us as caricatures — us, as the tools of the oil industry and them — the Gwich'in — as caretakers of the environment," said Richard Glenn, vice president of lands for the Arctic Slope Regional Corp. "It's unfortunate. And it's not accurate." Source
Alternatively, Aborigines could go out, get a job and work for a living like the rest of us.
In the name of all things decent, the Australian taxpayer is already pouring over $2 BILLION each year into aboriginal welfare without much success.
When and where do we draw the line?
I like the idea of these protected groups being allowed individual ownership of their land.
It's a good thing - IF we're ALL on a level playing field.
I wish him well, too.
Before he does anything, he'll have to dismantle the industry that's built up on aboriginal welfare. As I say, I wish him well.
OTOH because it's a Government program, most of it is wasted.
It has to said it's not showing any great results. By any standards, it has failed monumentally.
He might take a peek at the New Orleans model in addressing how NOT to do things
Don't worry - we've got our own model on that!
Yes.
LIBERALS love the idea of group ownership (communism) and you can see by reservations and welfare that it doesn't work for the masses. It only works for self-described intellectuals that love to dole out crumbs for loyalty.
If a man thinks he has influence let him order your dog around.
I'm sorry, I don't get your remark.
What the welfare liberals will never understand and never admit is that the welfare state kills people.
All of the empty hours generated by welfare endowments have to be filled with something. Often it is with mind altering substances, drugs and alcohol that destroy mind and body.
As Mr. Mundine points out the financial obligations of property ownership discipline a person. If you have a mortgage payment to make you get up in the morning and go to work. If your family’s home depend on your income you don’t party late in to the night and go to work with blood shot eyes.
The proposition has shocked and upset many. It flies in the face of 40 years of land-rights struggle based on the concept of land as communally owned for all time.
The Communal land concept is only possible where the population is living under subsistence conditions and isolated from other cultures by substantial geographic barriers
Anywhere in the world where Communal cultures have come into frequent contact with modern personal property culture that Communal culture has gone into rapid decline.
There will be problems when the individual Aborigines who having become dependant on the government for their subsistence are suddenly land rich decides to take advantage of their windfall and are taken advantage of by land developers.
Transitions are always difficult and people are hurt. It is unavoidable.
Don't ask us. The U.S. has already pour over $7 TRILLION ($7,000,000,000,000) over the past 40 years* into welfare [a.k.a. "War on Poverty"] without much success.
*And counting!
The consultant racket is alive and well in Australia. Try and end this gravy train, and you're cruising for a bruising. Poor guy is trying to give Aussies a blinding glimpse of the obvious.
These lucrative gigs are one of the ways the Left takes care of, and funds itself. Which is precisely why I become bug-eyed furious when a member of the Stupid Party apponts a Lefty to a a key staff position.
On the NGO level, the Leftist Infestation is even more severe. At the root of it all is a patronizing view of native peoples everywhere as 'Noble Savages.' Some how, the Leftists have made this pay, with our money. Makes me angry ... and jealous.
Merry Christmas
This is based on the assumption that the Aborigines want private property. Are the Abors. not allowed to hold private property now? If not, why not? (And why no hue-and-cry from those wanting to?) If they are allowed, then the fact that -- relatively speaking-- so few do own private property can only mean there is no overwhelming desire to own property. So right here you have a problem.
And how will the Abors. get this (initial) private property? They will be allowed to buy it? Well, isn't that a possibility now? Or will they be given some land by the (who else) government? Then isn't the government adding another link to the chain of Abor. dependency? And as for these new landowners will they also not demand building materials, seed, plows, cement, wiring, etc. etc. not to mention endless man-hours of "assistance" paid for and supplied by the government. All for the improvement and maintenance of land they (the Abors.) probably didn't want in the first place....since they had not bought the land i n the first place.
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There will be problems when the individual Aborigines who having become dependent on the government for their subsistence are suddenly land rich decides to take advantage of their windfall and are taken advantage of by land developers.
This is too be expect, and will most certainly be taken advantage of by various "isms"(socialism, conservatism, liberalism, etc.) to their own advantage. Why wouldn't the Abors. -- generally speaking -- sell their newly acquired land at foolishly low prices to land developers?
After all, the fact that they (the Abors.) have no historical reputation of putting down their own hard earned money for real estate can only mean there is no driving desire to be property owners. And if this be the case who can fault the land developer from approaching these people with an offer to take off their hands a thing they have no real regard and/or desire for? The price they (the land developers) get for these parcels of land may been scandalously cheap to us, exploitive even. But so long as they were not physically forced into the deal, the price was perfectly acceptable to the seller. (the Abor.)
Oh? The government should step in before,during, and/or after the land transfer to make sure the Abors. don't get "exploited"? Well, then we come to the question of: Then isn't the goverment adding another link to the chain of Abor. dependency?
Ping for later read. Good stuff.
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