They’re talking on the radio about, here in Australia, Aboriginal unemployment, what a shame it is, how to deal with it, what to do.
There’s always some story about some Aboriginal problem or other, never fail.
Because there’s no doubt they’re a nation in crisis. If we can call them a ‘nation’. And that’s what, more and more as the years go on, they do call them.
Well, it seems to me, IF they are a nation, then they are in a good position to fix any and all problems they may have.
They should simply start building.
Houses, villages, towns….
And then sell, rent, lease those houses, villages, towns…
You see it seems to me that the basis of the whole ‘aboriginal problem’ is that they’ve left their traditional way of life – hunter gatherer nomads – and yet haven’t adopted our way of life – workaholic machine slaves.
They have managed to hang onto some territory, vast reaches of it in fact but they don’t/can’t do anything with it. It just lies there for the most part.
Now if we had all that land we’d be rich, pretty soon.
Our whole society, our whole civilization is built upon land ownership, trading, speculation, etc…
The first thing they did when they planted the flag on Australian soil was start dividing it up amongst themselves – the lords and ladies, the military, those ‘on top’, not the convicts of course.
And still today we’ve got rich families living in Australia who can trace their wealth right back to the original divvying up, the original granting of gratis wealth.
It was ever thus.
It works everywhere all the time. I don’t need to say this do I?
But I will. Just in case.
Your local council ‘releases’ land and ‘zones’ land. Land speculators and developers buy those releases and either sit on them or ‘develop’ them.
So a residential zone release may be sold to a developer who splits it up into ever smaller blocks as the years go by, with ever smaller access roads as the years go by and ever fewer back lanes and short cut alleys.
And he sells them and makes a fortune.
The council is happy, they’ve got many thousands from him for the original release.
The people are happy, they got work developing the block and now they can buy the houses, tiny, jerry-built, ludicrous things for a nation like this though they are.
And it goes on.
The council now gets rates from each householder. The more houses, the more rates, the richer the council. The council flourishes, the councillors enjoy playing with more money and enjoy being big fish in a pool slowly getting bigger.
The developer (possibly a councillor himself, or brother, or father or whatever…) gets ready to do it again…
It goes on and on.
It is how our nation grows. It is the mainspring of our system. Land values, property values.
Now the aboriginal land holders are denied all of that, it seems.
Their land is held under aboriginal title only and it doesn’t allow for them to build.
I’m guessing. I don’t know.
It allows someone to build. We pay thousands, millions each year for contracts to builders to go out to the aboriginal lands and build and renovate houses.
The same with the roads and water works, electricity sub stations, schools, hospitals, everything on these lands…..
It is all there but none of it is built by the aboriginals and the aboriginals do not build a society the same as we do that is built upon this system.
They do not get their heads together and plan a land release.
They do not take that release and draw up a subdivision plan.
They do not build houses on those subdivided blocks.
They don’t sell those houses.
They don’t rent those houses.
They don’t get richer.
Their nation doesn’t flourish in our way.
There’s no building work going on in their waxing villages and town..
There’s no private enterprise moving in to the burgeoning villages and towns….
There’s nothing happening.
For their land is held as land for hunter gatherers to go hunting and gathering on, I think, and that’s all.
Now we must remember that many, many aboriginals do not want any development on their land.
But we must remember that many aboriginals do want it.
We must remember that the land areas are vast. They could build hundreds of villages throughout Australia and not effect their ability to wander around in the ways of their forefathers….
So what I’m saying is, they could just start doing it.
Start planning and subdividing and selling and leasing and renting and whatever. They could start doing what Australia does.
And there’s more: there’s a need. There’s a market. There’s thousands and thousands of Australians without homes. Without not only material homes but without a spiritual home in our benighted society.
Many Australians are literally estranged, alienated from their own society, their own peers, their own culture. They find it alien, they find it strange, they find it uncultured.
A home in a village in aboriginal lands under the umbrella of an aboriginal world view may very well turn out to be the haven they’ve longed for all their lives…
Aborigines would probably find it hard to understand all this. What I’m talking about. The need that exists. The thing that could be done. The need for it. The market.
Because the aborigines, as aborigines everywhere, have a home from the minute they are born. They are born to the land and have a right to exist on the land. The land is their home, unalienable.
They never are brought up with the concept drummed into them that they are homeless and penniless and worthless until they’ve educated themselves to the nth degree and worked hard and saved hard (making an employer rich on the way, then making a banker rich) and bought a home (making a builder and a banker rich).
And that as they get older their ability to service the cost of that home will diminish until finally they’ll need to be stuck into an expensive nursing home there to slowly die while their life savings and the proceeds from the sale of their home are frittered away…
They know nothing of the awful truth of our willingly accepted slavery. They, I imagine, are incapable of conceiving of the idea that you are ‘homeless’.
Whereas we all embrace that idea and have it as the wellspring of our live’s work. Driven by that idea we make more and more money to buy better and better, bigger and bigger, homes and save more and more for our latter years when the natural forces of western society self-destroying greed will eat at our incomes, drastically diminished by unemployment.
The aborigine anywhere in the world is always at home on the land and in the bosom of his family.
They will wander thousands of miles – I’ve often seen it in Australia – sleeping on the ground, walking miles, hitchhiking, living on bush tucker, to visit a family member thousands of miles away.
They don’t do this in some fever of anxiety or miserable state of depression about how low they’ve fallen, how poverty stricken they are, how awful life is for them…
No… they do it happily, beaming to recount the details of the journey they’re on, where they’ve been, where they’re going, who they’re going to see, what they’re going to do…. etc…
Because they are ‘at home’ there on the land. The soil, the grass, the ground is their bed as a NATURAL thing – not as a last, poor, frightening uncomfortable place at the end of the downward spiral of a failed life, failed career…
No.. just as a natural lovely home. They love (I’m guessing this) the very feel of the ground, the scents of the ground and the grasses etc.. I guess that built on my own experience of enjoying the ground and the bush, because we can all partake of this in some measure and many have done so. Many, many.
So they wouldn’t naturally think – ‘we should build homes’. Either for themselves or for anyone else.
But actually they should. For themselves and for others.
There’s not just the others in Australia, either.
The world is suffering mightily and it is programmed to suffer more as population increases. Even if percentages of poverty stricken dispossessed decreases the absolute numbers will still increase, you can bet.
And these suffering millions are the aborigines spiritual brothers… because most of them are aborigines, too.
They would leap at a chance to come to Australia to live on aboriginal land under almost any circumstances whatever….
Live in a village in the middle of an aboriginal holding… hundreds of miles from anywhere… bore water only to drink… intermittent electricity… but in a burgeoning community grasping this new idea of developing land to build homes etc….
They’d leap at it.
How’s that grab you, darling?