Part of the problem

I know nothing about anthropologist Peter Sutton, who appeared on The 7.30 Report tonight discussing indigenous community problems. It was hard to avoid the impression that he has at least a little bit of guilt about the role he and his like-minded baby boomers played in encouraging remote area aborigines to not assimilate (oh, sorry, we don't say "assimilate" now, we say "modernise") which has led to the disastrous situations they find themselves in today. Here's a key section:

KERRY O'BRIEN: How have you changed your views in 40 years? How dramatically have you changed your views in 40 years?

PETER SUTTON: Quite dramatically because I was of that generation of people living in remote communities who aided and promoted and took part in things like decentralisation back to outstations in the bush, who promoted cultural traditionalism and supported it where they saw it, took on interest in it, recorded it, filmed it or whatever. And there was a sort of an army of baby boomers, really, who spread out across the outback from the late '60s onwards who I think played a fairly significant role, among other people of course, and I was one of those, that cadre of people who were involved in that. For us, culture was absolutely central, cultural preservation and preservation of knowledge of the bush and of places was absolutely central.

Now, I really think we have to start with three-year-old children, what's essential for them. If it works for them, that's the way to go. If it doesn't work for them, no matter how much it might be about keeping some cultural practice going, the practice needs to be questioned and people need to work out whether they're going to drop it or not.

By the way, do anthropologists like him only feel "safe" to espouse views which common sense conservatives have held for years when there is not a conservative government in power? (The reason being that they don't want to face the criticism of their mates that they are siding with something like the Howard government?) Just a theory...