Gaps everywhere....

"Years of prosperity bypassed Aborigines, says report "

This story from the nzherald covering a report which details the widening gap between Aborigines and white Australians. The report states that even during times of economic growth, Aborigines did not benefit. The report found that there had been no improvements in 80% of the indicators they measured. Solutions were not just for the government:

"Meaningful change will also require commitment and actions by indigenous people themselves, with support from the private and no-profit sectors and the general community, as well as governments," it said

The report goes on to detail some of the indicators, such as children, health, domestic abuse, incarceration etc.

I wonder how long it is assumed a people (way of life, belief system, social norms, hierarchy of values etc etc) completely brutalised by colonisation is expected to have moulded into colonial beings and adapted to their 'multi-cultural' status? What is the result of forcing/coercing thousands of years of knowledge and culture into hundreds of years of rapid change/colonisation? The way in which cultures are simply expected to appropriate the dominant white/colonial/capitalist model of organising society and then 'get up to speed'/'pull their socks up' is extraordinary. This is perhaps the real problem, that Aborignes need to succeed in western model of development, ignoring their own ways of knowing and being.

The second gap relates to the gap in media reporting on swine flu. Hans Rosling examines the 'news/death' ratio between Swine Flu and Tuberculosis during the same 13 day period - Swine Flue =31 and TB = 63 066. For every Swine Flu death there was over 8 thousand news items. For every TB death there was 0.1 news items. You can watch the video below. Demonstrates how massive and powerful the media can be. Not that Rosling says concern over Swine Flu is unwarranted, but that the gap between the media reporting and the other health related concerns is huge. Demonstrates further just how much the media and the news frames and defines the issues we discuss, think about and therefore are willing to act on.