The University of NSW demands a keen reverence for the ways and customs of "pre-invasion" Aborigines -- an astonishing admonition in the light of current attention to domestic violence. Were those same standards embraced on campus, few female professors, lecturers or students would go unscarred

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Promoting the meme that Aborigines are inevitable casualties of white injustice enshrines the victim/enemy mentality as a bogus but sacred truth. The ongoing tragedy is that this sadly palatable cliche diverts attention from the need to "just get on with it"

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Australians will likely have the opportunity to vote on amending the Constitution to 'recognise' Aborigines. How that vote goes may well be influenced by another recognition -- a weariness, perhaps even disgust, at the sort of unalloyed victim-mongering that animates the ABC series 'Redfern Now'

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A new book makes the plea that Aborigines be allowed "to be who we are" -- an intriguing theme that, alas, the author fails to explore. If he means that Indigenous Australians want to run their own show, the similarly un-examined corollary is that conduct and culture must not be at odds with the larger society

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The modern world, especially its Western incarnation, often has been seen by those whose cultures it has disrupted as an assault on faith, tradition and identity. Islamist aggression is one manifestation of the reaction, a renewed reverence for the Rainbow Serpent another

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Whatever the final wording, the proposal to acknowledge Aborigines and their culture in the Constitution will present but a single theme for endorsement or rejection. That's a pity because, with a a dash of reality on the ballot, some good might come of the exercise

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The leading Indigenous proponent of constitutional recognition is articulate, possessed of a legally trained mind and keen to advance a slate of what are often radical and irrational proposals. The Recognise campaign's most visible advocate may well prove to be its opponents' greatest asset

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The rhetoric of the Recognise campaign is generating a heady brew of myth and imagery, melding a reverence for the cliches of an idyllic past with the aspiration that some deftly turned words can lift the burdens and curses of Indigenous Australians. They won't -- and this attitude guarantees as much

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The first and saddest reaction of far too many Indigenous activists and spokesmen is to see the past as a crushing burden, one that can only be lifted by profuse apologies and, the most recent demand, a re-written Constitution. It is an attitude no less destructive than delusional

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Critics lined up to wield the axe handle when the Prime Minister described residents of remote communities as making 'a lifestyle choice'. Sadly, much of the rhetoric was no less distant from reason than are bush settlements from hospitals, schools and the opportunities of the modern world

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