Balance rights and responsibility: Pearson

IT'S not up to governments to save blackfellas but to empower them to help themselves, says academic and activist Noel Pearson.

The chairman of the Cape York Institute was addressing the Garma Festival on Yolngu land in east Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory.

"If our people are deserving of anything, it is the right to take charge of our lives, and it is a right that has been taken away from us," Mr Pearson said.

"We have been hesitant when the word responsibility is used in indigenous affairs - we have disowned it.

"We have been quite comfortable with the idea of rights, but we have to be able to balance the relationship to responsibility."

He called for the government to surrender power to allow indigenous people to lead in issues relating to them, echoing other Aboriginal leaders who gathered in Arnhem Land on Friday to call for welfare reform.

Ian Trust, chairman of the Wunan Foundation in East Kimberley, said people came to Kununurra to take advantage of the opportunities mining had created.

"Yet we have a huge number of my people on welfare and they've been on welfare for generations, while they're surrounded by mines," he said.

He said it was so sensitive an issue that no one even wanted to talk about beginning to address it.

"We have got to do something about people being caught in this passive welfare," Mr Trust said.

"It takes a lot of courage to stand up and say to people, 'you're 19 and strong as an ox, why are you on welfare'?"

Mr Pearson said it was about improving the lot of all Australians, no matter where they were from.

"This welfare reform thing is not a blackfella thing, it's a disadvantage thing," he said.

"The future is not some kind of abstraction. These people are concerned about real children and their destinies."

Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang

Balance rights and responsibility: Pearson

Dengan url

http://mesinjahitan.blogspot.com/2013/08/balance-rights-and-responsibility.html

Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya

Balance rights and responsibility: Pearson

namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link

Balance rights and responsibility: Pearson

sebagai sumbernya