Talk:Aboriginal communities in Western Australia

Definition

My recent edit remove a few words from the definition / lead sentence, including.

• communities are groups of people, not "locations"
• "regions" is redundant - without qualification it covers the whole state
• "Western Australia" is redundant - where else are "Aboriginal communities in Western Australia" going to be?

However the resultant sentence is perhaps a bit terse. Suggestions for improvement are welcome. Ideas:

• ".. in remote regions ..."? Is it accurate? Do we need to define "remote"?
• What word - other than location or communities could we insert in "Aboriginal communities in Western Australia are those _____ that have indigenous population ..."

Mitch Ames (talk) 04:20, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

• • communities dictionary definition may be groups of people but the sites are being referred to as communities probably for the political reasons that call them what they are towns would make it harder for the governments to paternalistic to people who live there. Then in some cases the community extends beyond a handful of buildings to include the traditional country of a particular group in other cases its previous station lands they have acquired which dont necessarily include their country. Gnangarra 12:19, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

List

Resolved

I've moved the List of Aboriginal communities in Western Australia into a separate article. Some works is probably required on the wording of the newly renamed section Aboriginal communities in Western Australia#Identification and definition and the lead of the new article. Mitch Ames (talk) 06:34, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

Regarding this edit - should it be "as well as the communities' self identification", with a possessive apostrophe? Or possibly "as well as the communities and their self identification's", ie the critera of the self identification as well as the government's criteria? (Grammatically correct, but probably has too much superfluous verbiage.) Mitch Ames (talk) 07:27, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

Fixed: [1][2]. Mitch Ames (talk) 07:54, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

Respose

This is a highly contentious political issue and the level of interest in conent is not where what does this mean? type of messages or speculation are possible without a very large list of watchers are likely to wonder what the hell is going on. If you want a dialogue on this mitch, please go off wiki. I am not answering here. User:JarrahTree 08:01, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

Lead section

I am not happy about the second sentence of the lead section, which says:

The governments of Australia and Western Australia have supported and funded these communities in a number of ways for over 40 years; prior to that Indigenous people were non citizens with no rights, forced to work for sustenance on stations as European settlers divided up the areas, or relocated under various Government acts.

It appears to conflate several issues:

• Government support and funding for Aboriginal communities
• Indigenous citizenship
• rights
• forced to work ...
• Europeans taking the land
• relocation

The result appears to be factually wrong in parts, potentially misleading, and possibly non-neutral. There are no references for this sentence, and it is not expanded (with refs) in the rest of the article.

Specific problems:

• prior to [government support and funding of these communities] Indigenous people were non citizens – According to

Australian_referendum,_1967_(Aboriginals)#Amendments_to_the_Constitution

Australian_nationality_law#History_of_Australian_citizenship

British_subject#Prior_to_1949

neither Europeans nor indigenes were "citizens" prior to 1949, both were British subjects, and after 1949 both were Australian citizens.

• no rights – while it's true that Aborigines did not have as many rights (eg they could not vote in federal elections until 1949), "no rights" seems unlikely without a reference
• governments ... have supported and funded ... ; prior to that Indigenous people... – implies a causal link that is unlikely to be true. Did government funding give them rights? Did that funding give them citizenship? I doubt it. Were most or all Aborigines forced to work on stations or relocated until their communities were supported/funded by the governments?
• forced to work ..., or relocated – "relocated" links to Stolen Generations, which is about children. Were all adults "forced to work"? Were any adults relocated?

Surely we can do better than this? Mitch Ames (talk) 04:19, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

• a source https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2008/451/who-are-indigenous-australians/ already used in other article about Indigenous history states all of the above yiu are calling factually wrong, it even notes "Western Australia and Queensland specifically excluded Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders from the electoral rolls" Gnangarra 05:46, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

The sentence I am not happy with does not mention electoral rolls. As I mentioned (2nd bullet point under "Specific problems"), not being allowed to vote is not the same as "no rights".

Could you please quote the the specific words from https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2008/451/who-are-indigenous-australians/ that support the parts of the sentence that I dispute. Mitch Ames (talk) 07:08, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

Here's a reference that says "At Federation in 1901 no legal category of Australian citizenship existed", but between then and the Nationality and Citizenship Act 1948 "a de facto administrative Australian citizenship operated..." and that "There were three administrative civic categories of non-Aboriginal people" (my emphasis) only the first (British subjects with permanent residence) were considered citizens. This references notes that "the Nationality and Citizenship Act did not discriminate against Indigenous people, implicitly including them through the more logical use of the term 'natural-born'." Mitch Ames (talk) 07:23, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

• Yellonga and Gnangara camps were where IA people around Perth were forced. Then theres the Moore River Settlement, Rottnest Island in pinjarrah they were just shot, same too down busselton way. Half-Caste_Act#Western_Australia Half Caste act 1886, and aboriginal protection act 1886, then the 1907 act which took away lands owned by Aboriginal people... The link inst causal but rather responsive they gained rights then they got Governmnet assistance, then the communities were developed. Gnangarra 03:21, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

There's no doubt that indigenous Australians were badly treated, but I still think that the sentence (everything after the semi-colon) in its current form misleadingly implies causation. (ie that funding of the communities lead to citizenship, rights, not having to work for sustenance etc) Also its still not referenced. ([3] does not appear to support the sentence.)

I think we should simply just drop everything after the semi-colon, ie

The governments of Australia and Western Australia have supported and funded these communities in a number of ways for over 40 years; prior to that Indigenous people were non citizens with no rights, forced to work for sustenance on stations as European settlers divided up the areas, or relocated under various Government acts.

However if you can come up with some specific references that link (to avoid WP:SYN) the concepts of citizenship, lack of rights, forced to work on stations, relocated - preferably with (approximate) dates, to establish a time line - I'll have a go at re-writing the sentence so that it explains the connection. Mitch Ames (talk) 13:20, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Clearly, this needs some expansion and some better referencing, but I dare say my idea of what is appropriate here looks a lot more like Gnangarra's than Mitch's. I'm specifically not in favour of dropping the second half of that as it renders it wildly unbalanced. The Drover's Wife (talk) 13:49, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

There is confusion over similar but distinct terms. Yes, Aboriginal people may have been citizens but they didn't always have citizenship rights. According to the Natives (Citizenship Rights) Act 1944, Aboriginal people in Western Australia had to apply for a Certificate of Citizenship which granted them certain rights. These rights included, for example, being able to be in central Perth after 6pm.[4][5] I'm not really sure if it's so vital to this article that it needs to be in the lead. Hack (talk) 14:15, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

"I'm specifically not in favour of dropping the second half of that as it renders it wildly unbalanced."
I disagree that it would "wildly unbalanced" - this is an article about Aboriginal communities, not Aboriginal rights. As I previously mentioned, the sentence as it stands implies a causal link between the communities, govt funding, and citizenship/rights, but provides no references to support that implied link, and fails to explain the link. In the absence of any reliably sourced link between communities, govt funding, and citizenship/rights, the last half of the sentence is simply irrelevant in the context of this article. Possibly Hack's reference [6] can provide the missing link. Eg perhaps Aborginal communities arose because they were not allowed into Perth or towns because they did not have the same rights as the whites? If that's the case, we need to say so explicitly. But if that is the case, we might need to explain why the communities continued after the were given rights those rights. And how/where does funding fit into it all? This might help. I'll have look through those refs and see if I can come up with something better. Mitch Ames (talk) 11:23, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

Mitch, I mean this in the nicest possible way because you're not a bad guy, but this is an incredibly sensitive subject and it really worries me that the conversation seems to being driven by someone without even a baseline understanding of it. That you're asking all that last paragraph because you genuinely don't seem to know suggests that maybe this mightn't be the best topic for you to take the lead on. Like, how can someone who doesn't seem to understand the concept of Aboriginal connection to country be writing an article about the issues associated with Aboriginal communities? The Drover's Wife (talk) 13:56, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

How about Gnangarra 11:27, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

The governments of Australia and Western Australia have supported and funded these communities in a number of ways for the last 40-50 years; prior to that Indigenous people had limited rights with many forced to work for sustenance on stations as European settlers divided up the areas, or relocated under various Government acts.

This looks good to me. The Drover's Wife (talk) 11:56, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

Remote?

Are there any Aboriginal communities that are not remote?

The media statement of 7 May 2015 (The reference for my recent addition to the article) includes both:

There are about 12,000 Aboriginal people currently living in 274 communities in Western Australia ...

and

There are about 12,000 people living in 274 remote communities in WA

The first sentence says "274 communities" but the second says "274 remote communities". Does this mean that all communities are remote?

Should the Wikipedia article mention remote communities explicitly?

The Department of Aboriginal Affairs 2013-2014 Annual Report refers in various places to "regional and remote communities" and (page 51) "urban, regional and remote communities", implying that there are Aboriginal communities other than remote.

Page 39 of that report says that there are "approximately 330 communities identified as remote within Western Australia", but then further down says "there are now 205 permanently occupied remote Aboriginal communities". Does this mean that (at the time) about 125 of those remote communities were not permanently occupied? Have some of those communities since closed, leaving only the 274 mentioned in the media statement?

Mitch Ames (talk) 09:51, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

• • would be careful using political statements from the Premiers department in preference use http://www.daa.wa.gov.au/en/Remote-Communities-Reform/What-is-a-Community/ .. for the statement just drop the term "remote" and use that source as well as Department of Aboriginal Affairs 2013-2014 Annual Report to say

    There are between 330-270 communities in WA with population estimates of 12,000 people some communities have been identified as seasonal or vacant

    Gnangarra 11:58, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

http://www.daa.wa.gov.au/en/Remote-Communities-Reform/What-is-a-Community/ is current (12 May 2015) and specific, whereas the Department of Aboriginal Affairs 2013-2014 Annual Report is older - "for the financial year ended 30 June 2014", so potentially out of date. I don't see any reason not to use the specific figures of the current DAA page.

What does bother me is whether there are any communities other than "remote" ones. Most of the the DAA websites and the news reports talk about "remote communities", but our are article is "communities". Potentially there could be a significant number of non-remote communities which ought to be included in the article's figures. I've e-mailed the DAA explicitly asking them for a breakdown of the numbers of urban, regional and remote communities, preferably with a definition of what constitutes "urban", "regional" and "remote" (ideally with an online ref that I can cite). Mitch Ames (talk) 13:42, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

I wouldnt call Cullacabardee, Western Australia remote Gnangarra 14:19, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

an email is useless as its unverifiable, technically DAA could be a primary source or worse a POV source Gnangarra 14:24, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

Do you have any better ideas as to how we might resolve the discrepancy between the use of the terms "communities" and "remote communities"? As has been previously suggested, this is a controversial topic, so we need to be precise. Mitch Ames (talk) 01:03, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

Your own sources as cited above say that there are "urban, regional and remote" communities, but the current political controversy is over the status of the remote communities. This article, however, is about "Aboriginal communities in Western Australia". The Drover's Wife (talk) 01:52, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

According to Table 3.2 of this ABS report the vast majority (> 98%) were in "remote" or "very remote" areas. Is there any reason to believe that this has changed since? Mitch Ames (talk) 03:54, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

removed lead section

There are approximately 274 Aboriginal communities in WA, comprising about 12,000 people"Reform to improve lives of Aboriginal people". Government of Western Australia. 7 May 2015. Retrieved 30 May 2015. 69 of the communities are seasonal, with no permanent residents."What is a Remote Community?". State of Western Australia – Department of Aboriginal Affairs. 12 May 2015. Retrieved 30 May 2015.

This is not what should be in a lead para.

It is not a 'conclusive' element of truth in the assertions or supposed sources. What a community is not what a source in a government department claims in a report.

Please do not re-insert. The article was created to specifically be an encyclopediac article with a good understanding of the historical context. It is turning into a grab bagh of half thought out ideas that are totally irrelevent. User:JarrahTree 02:08, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

Agreed. The Drover's Wife (talk) 02:19, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

Would someone explain to me why the number of Aboriginal communities, and how many people there are in them, is "totally irrelevent" to an article about Aboriginal communities. Does it belong somewhere other than the lead?

Free free to add a reference to what you consider to be a reliable source for what an Aboriginal community is. Mitch Ames (talk) 02:29, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

Another reference that says "274 remote Aboriginal communities in WA" - although this one says 15,000 residents (not 12,000). Mitch Ames (talk) 02:45, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

You are fiddling with numbers - this article is not where such a game occurs, if you really want to deconstruct the numbers that are part of the game - go to the list of communitiies article - find the various lists and play with them there.

this article is not about numbers, it was not created for numbers. To answer why the number of communities is totally irrelevent - it is the game that the federal and state public servants politicians are playing against the broader aboriginal community, to place any one set of numbers into this article - to not be undue - you would need 100 years of detailed complex stats - to put one assessment from one government source is wp:undue.

The number game in this instance does not belong in the lead or the article. that is the point. User:JarrahTree 03:00, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

Surely someone reading the article could reasonably ask the question - and expect the article to provide an answer - "how many of these communities are there?" (2, a dozen , 100, 1000?) and "how big are these communities; how many people live in them?" (a dozen, 100, 1000, 10000?) If the number is unknown, we should say so (with a reference). If the numbers are approximate, or a range, say so (with a reference). If the numbers are disputed, say so (with a reference). If the concept of "Aboriginal communities" is so nebulous that it is impossible to put a figure on number and population, say so (with a reference).

While I agree that the number don't need to be in the lead, they should get a mention in the article.

Here's another reference with numbers. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics in 2006 there were 13 838 people living in "discrete Indigenous communities" in WA. Of these, the vast majority were in "remote" (1 148) or "very remote" (12 521) areas. Mitch Ames (talk) 03:38, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

• When you read the article now it makes more sense without this, even the second para in the lead could go. The numbers can be addressed with in but this is about what the communities are not about justifications for or against any political argument Gnangarra 04:01, 31 May 2015 (UTC)