ABORIGINAL SURVIVAL ACROSS INCOMPATIBLE DOMAINS

This paper looks at some questions which face policy makers and administrators who are required to make decisions about the interaction between government and its agencies and the Aboriginal people of Australia.

The published measurements of the social condition of Aborigines are uniformly regarded as indicating an unsatisfactory situation which demands remedial action by governments. My dealing with some of the issues is undoubtedly coloured by my experience. When, as a non-Aboriginal policy maker for Aborigines, you are told that it is because of you that such adverse social conditions persist, that is an imperative for intervention. The record of the post-Second World War period suggests that that imperative will remain with us, and that successive future governments will, like the governments of the past, struggle to find approaches which will produce outcomes deemed acceptable by Aborigines and non-Aborigines alike.