Katlaughing raised the question of "action" by why I inferred "international" action might be contemplated. It's a natural and understandable response but, if foreigners stayed away in droves, there'd be so much less shining of international arclighting on the situation and we all know what happens in the dark out of reach of the spotlights. Personally, I'd advocate that everyone of goodwill came and had a look, chose who they spent their money with to do so, engaged with both the activists and the passive accepters and then spruiked the products of their mature considerations.

I suspect many from the northern hemisphere have a (necessarily) limited understanding of scale (distances, variety etc) that apply in Oz; quite a few Australians do too. Eddie Mabo died after the High Court had retired to consider its judgement but before that judgement was handed down. His community raised a fine headstone on his grave, memorialising his achievement. In less than a month it was savagely desecrated by the yobs of Townsville, resulting in an outcry around the country. In the last month a major memorial to him has been raised in the centre of Townsville, so some things have changed.

After the Mabo Decision the then Prime Minister engaged in discussions about the possibility of a Treaty; because Australia had always been considered to be Terra nullius, there could never have been a Treaty between the colonisers and the colonised in the way they had bee established in NZ, Canada or the US of A, even though these were routinely ignored whenever the colonisers wanted. I think nobody had informed the Prime Minister that there was no such thing as an Aboriginal Nation with whom to treaty. Even now, you'll hear Australians say things like "coolamon" is the Aboriginal word for a bowl carved out of a branch. That's a bit like saying "table" is the European word for the thing you sit at to eat a meal.

There were at least 250 separate Aboriginal language groups in Australia and you could argue that several had many aspects of stature associated with what we might call nations. Even now the variety among Aboriginal groups is enormous, from the very urban Koori groups in SE Oz (Redfern in Sydney is currently having problems with the State govt but the Melbourne Koories seem not to have such problems) through the settled rural SE Oz (the Victorian Koories have some major problems of acceptance but the racism towards the NSW Koories in the Western Division seems more prevasive. And then you've got almost traditional arrangements in the northern half of South Australia and all through the Top End (WA, NT and Qld); even there the variety can boggle the mind.

I've just plucked a trivial example out of the air. Among other things I'm an archaeologist and there is a special (and specially strained, sometimes) relationship between Australia's Indigenous people and archaeologists so I wouldn't wish you to think my view was necessarily "better" than others'. But I'm also an ecologist and the botanists around me have learned to expect a vigourous rebuke if I hear them use "natural" instead of "endemic" or even "native" to describe vegetation that hasn't been modified by those of us with nonIndigenous ancestry. Come and see it all for yourselves and then take the actions you consider appropriate and effective.

Cheers, Rowan