Postcard From Australia: Where Some See Souvenirs and Slang, a Race-in-America Reporter Sees Stereotypes<br />White fishermen with more resources still have a deep hold on the trade, even though the High Court has ruled<br />that the Torres Strait seas belong to its indigenous people.<br />I met a range of indigenous Australians: Aboriginal youths raising horses in a remote town, young fishermen earning a sparse living on the Torres Strait<br />and a university lecturer in suburban Brisbane striving to hold onto a middle-class existence for her family.<br />"If the High Court can recognize that we have ownership and we have management over natural resources in the water for 9,000 years, isn’t<br />that an indication to anyone out there to say, ‘Well, these people can manage themselves.’?" That’s a message I heard from indigenous people all across Australia.<br />Maluwap Nona said that Now if we controlled the economics in this region, we could solve the problem [of indigenous plight],<br />Even when I arrived on the Torres Strait Islands, the unique place in Australia where almost everyone is black, I was taken aback to see<br />that many of the restaurants, shops and hotels were run by white people.<br />That lack of ownership creates a palpable frustration among Torres Strait Islanders<br />— seen most clearly in their efforts to control the fishing on their seas.<br />Virtually every news reporter I saw on television was white, as were all the politicians<br />I saw stumping during elections in the state of Western Australia.
