Moments of Permanence - This may need its own post

From: attentive Date: December 11th, 2009 12:08 pm (UTC) (Link)

I strongly agree with the general principle that those with power can't act to empower others without at some stage granting them power and standing back.

The classic example in our lives is indigenous policy where the government of white men + others alternates between failed paternalism and half-hearted, ultimately abortive initiatives to "give" indigenous people some degree of self-determination.

The trouble is that the indigenous groups in Australia are all different, with diverse leadership and different needs, but policy tends to try to interact with the indigenous population as a whole, and efforts at granting self-determination seem to assume there's possibility of a single, purposeful political programme emerging from such a diverse, splintered collection of groups damaged by history.

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As oppression dies a natural death I'd hope that the dilemma of "consent of the powerful" vs. "revolution" you cite would fade away with the attenuation of structural inequality. I'm not sure I agree with the flat binary alternatives by the way ...

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From: trs80.ucc.asn.au Date: December 11th, 2009 12:31 pm (UTC) (Link)

The terminology of indigenous doesn't really indicate that there are multiple groups at all. Canada does better, with First Nations explicitly saying that.

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