Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard last week urged Aborigines to take greater charge of their own fate in her annual "Closing the Gap" speech, when she warned that government measures were not enough to lift living standards.
The Australian Reconciliation Barometer survey, gauging relations between Aborigines and their mostly white counterparts, showed a drop in the number of people who considered the relationship important.
The poll showed Australians increasingly blame Aborigines, who suffer disproportionately high rates of disease, imprisonment, unemployment and alcohol and substance abuse, for their own problems.
More than eight out of 10 respondents among the 1,220 non-Aborigines who took part said a lack of personal responsibility was to blame for the problems experienced by indigenous people, Australia's most marginalised group.
By contrast, most of the 704 Aborigines surveyed said lack of respect and inadequate living conditions, poor access to health and education, government failures and discrimination all played a bigger role in their plight.
Australia's first inhabitants with cultures stretching back tens of thousands of years, Aborigines have gone from numbering about one million at white settlement to just 470,000 - less than two per cent of the population.
ORIGINAL SOURCE
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