It may work Steve.

Yep, the day after a three- legged horse suffering equine influence wins the Melbourne Cup galloping backwards will be when it is most likely to happen.

As long as customary law is seen as an uncivilised hangover from savage culture rather than social capital to build a future then nothing will be achieved.

It is on this level that I become quite impressed by Pearson. He is talking about solutions within Aboriginal frameworks including a certain authoritarianism inherent in eldership. So I forgive him his authoritarianism, in fact I agree with its necessity.

However the excercise of power in Aboriginal sociology cannot occur within white bureacratic or legal frameworks and colonial land paradigms. Pearson’s attempts to hunt and gather in the white world, by any means necessary, has seen his cultural power and vision refracted and misused by white power blocs.

There is a big difference between “tough love” and a big stick. I believe Pearson knows the difference but his white audience does not.

What kind of â??stickâ?? do you think is appropriate and what would a beating with this stick achieve?

I think that with Lutherans it has always been a literal stick to beat the Devil out of children.

One of the obvious reasons for the failure of many Aboriginal individuals and communities to thrive is a failure to promote an ethic of education. As an example, two female friends of mine (both single mums) have recently immigrated to Australia from Asia. They are both sacrificing everything possible to ensure their kids get the best possible education. The kids themselves appreciate and love school and learning. They’ll sit about in groups and have fun solving maths problems one or two years above their age level.

How does this compare with the education ethic inculcated by indigenous communities? Judging by truancy rates etc the answer seems obvious.

Hence an appropriate “stick” would be assessments, and if necessary penalties, for those parents (and obviously this also includes neglectful white parents) who fail to take responsibility for ensuring their children are educated.

What kind of “stick” do you think is appropriate and what would a beating with this stick achieve?

Or is it just fear of the stick that is the motivating force?

In the immediate period after the NT intervention was announced, listening to ABC radio about 10 hours a day as I do, I was struck by the number of indigenous voices that made it to air saying that their communities are doing well and resented being typified as failing.

Anderson’s approach seems to be to build on success with community-based solutions, building on the strengths within each community. Her academic program produces people with community development skills specially trained to work in Aboriginal communities.

But it goes further than that. She believes in a research-based approach so that what works and what doesn’t can be identified, documented and shared with other communities.

There has never been enough funding to utilise fully the human resources she has developed. Furthermore the Government has a bad habit, not just in this area, of short-term funding and then defunding programs that are shown to be working.

You don’t need to know a lot about on-the-ground problems in communities to see that such an approach might have something to commend it compared with formulaic externally imposed ‘solutions’.

Here is the speech given by one senator showing the problems Highlighted in Alert Digest 13 to be over come from Pearson’s influence.

I don’t expect Aboriginal people in dysfunctional and impoverished circumstances to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. They need help. But they also need some stick as well as carrots.