If "Indigenous culture" is to be recognised in Australia's Constitution it is vital to understand what the term means. Rap songs and break dancing, perhaps?

(subsequent to the initial rounds of correspondence published at Quadrant Online on December 2, further …

What might lazy journalists and other apologists do if they could no longer liken dysfunctional Indigenous communities to the Third World? They might have to tell the truth for a change

Sexually mutilated infants, toddlers raped, children sodomised, women so badly beaten they come to envy dogs. Stripped of cant and buck-passing, beyond a patronising and indulgent judiciary, remote Indigenous communities are being eaten alive by the cancers of grog, misogny and endemic violence

Death, disease, degradation -- that is what the enormous expenditure "close the gap" is buying. That and a bureaucracy which wraps its failures and waste in the management-speak

Few now remember the Indigenous Family Resettlement Scheme, an astonishingly successful pilot program to help Aboriginal families start new lives in urban centres. Billions of squadered dollars after opponents of assimilation saw it scrapped, the simple and cost-effective scheme is well worth reconsidering

Senator-to-be Nova Peris may be better qualified than many of her detractors believe. After all, what better training for Canberra than a series of lucrative and well-intentioned contracts that did very little to achieve their goals?

The Sydney Morning Herald and Age have just published two articles on Kinchela, the former welfare home for Aboriginal boys. There is much that is wrong and silly in the reports -- and even more astray at Australia's fastest-fading publisher

"In Kulgera, I heard the view expressed that Aboriginal elders effectively fulfill the same role as judges in mainstream courts, and therefore should be paid at the same rate as magistrates"

A perverse comfort and an enduring curse,  the argument that Indigenous Australians will be forever oppressed is a tragic and self-fulfilling prophecy, one that benefits only grievance mongers and their enablers

One hears much of Aboriginal suffering from those who would pin the blame on "invaders". Politically expedient as those excuses may be, they omit a richly documented record of appalling sexual violence and mutilation

Despite its improbable plot, critics are hailing a semi-autobiographical play by "emerging" Indigenous artist and grant recipient Nakkiah Lui. What a pity she didn't omit the tired cliches of black victimhood and simply tell her own story

Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott agree our nation's foundation document needs tweaking  to recognise Indigenous Australians. Having found common ground at last, they are both on the wrong side

To understand where Nova Peris stands on matters political, one place to start is Andrew Denton's 2003 Enough Rope interview. Her reluctance to say anything against ATSIC's scandal-plagued leadership must surely be a comfort to our Prime Minister

Rick Feneley claims: “Three of the 25 men – Uncle Cecil, Uncle Manuel and Uncle …

How to explain the violence, abuse, alcoholism and squalor of many Aboriginal communities? A good start might be the pernicious influence of traditional culture and those who turn a blind eye to its toxins

Round up the usual suspect cliches, the dubious documentarian will need them all by the time he has turned his camera on pallid Australia's oppression of Aborigines. He'll be so busy, ib fact, he may have no more than a few moments to be feted on Q&A and other ABC programs

It is fashionable to excuse the current and appalling levels of Indigenous violence on dispossession and oppression, but the unpalatable truth is that it has been a feature of Aboriginal culture since long before the First Fleet

By all accounts, The Monthly's John van Tiggelen was a picture of gentlemanly decorum at the launch of Stephanie Jarrett's brave new book on the roots of Indigenous violence. Back at the office, however, the bile poured forth

A frank and distressing exchange with author and academic Stephanie Jarrett, whose book, Liberating Aboriginal People from Violence, voices a ground-breaking demand that policymakers abandon their fuzzy cliches and patronising indifference and implement realistic remedies