The social collapse in indigenous communities

[erudito]

I was reminded by email of this publication (pdf) which I had read before doing my The Self-Satisfaction of the Epistemically Broken post but had slipped my mind. A pity, because it provides further and better particulars

Comments

[quatrefoil]

One is that remote communities are so full of endemic violence, intimidation and abuse that it is unsafe for anyone to tell the truth. So information does not get out. Not helped by the fact that permits are needed to visit them. (Restricting movement of people is a great tool of oppression.)

The second is: white Australia and some Aboriginal leaders have built up a smokescreen of politically correct myths about colonialism, reconciliation and a condescending ‘noble savage’ picture of remote Aboriginal Australia (think laughing black children with big white teeth cavorting in waterlilies)
The thing that needs to be remembered is that not all aboriginal communities are full of endemic violence. I've lived in a number of them (including one where we needed a permit, for five years on two occasions) which was a pretty functional community. The laughing black kids among the waterlilies is a true enough image (I'm pretty sure that one was taken at Mataranka near Katherine), and it should stand as a counterpoint to the images of glue

Bad ideas can have good reasons

[erudito]

The permit system has arguments in favour of it, but it is a very different arrangement than we have for other communities. The same power can mean very different things in functional and non-functional communities.

Communities can also deteriorate. The level of social collapse is clearly much worse than it was.

But it would a very useful thing, to carefully examine the differences between the functional and non-functional communities. More empiricism is urgently needed.