It broadcasts in the language of the local Yolgnu people to communities numbering about 7000 people over an area a third of the size of Victoria, as well as another 1000 in Darwin. Its emphasis is on providing information on issues such as health, law, land rights and family violence.

"We have young people coming off marijuana and going back to work because they now know how marijuana affects the brain," Trudgen says. "There has been a drop in suicide and an increase in school attendance. Because of the programs we have broadcast on diabetes, people are turning up asking for sugar level testing."

Trudgen, who has worked in the area as a (white) community development officer for most of the past three decades, is no slave to fashion and that includes the emphasis on English as the currency that will enable indigenous people to make their way in the wider world.

It is not that he is against Aborigines learning English: the radio service has programs teaching it. Rather, he takes one step back and argues that teaching children, let alone adults, in something other than their first language immediately puts them at a disadvantage and almost inevitably means they do not receive a proper education.

He believes it is essential that health workers, teachers and others who come into the communities learn the local language so that they can communicate effectively.

What works in Arnhem Land will not necessarily apply to other parts of Australia, particularly where local languages have been lost. This is one of the many overlooked issues in indigenous affairs - one size does not fit all in extraordinarily diverse communities.

But there are plenty of other examples of success, even though they are overwhelmed in the public debate by the sickening stories of domestic violence and sexual abuse.

The mining industry, for so long the antagonist of indigenous people over native title, is now leading the way on Aboriginal employment.

A quarter of the 700 employed at the Argyle diamond mine in Western Australia are Aborigines and Rio Tinto's goal is to more than double that to reflect their proportion of the population in the East Kimberley.

Companies such as BHP Billiton, the big banks, Gilbert and Tobin and other law firms, together with non-government organisations such as Oxfam and the National Rugby League are involved in partnerships with governments and local communities to provide investment and services.

Wave Hill in the Northern Territory, the cattle station that Aboriginal workers walked off in one of the earliest and most famous protests over land rights, operates a high school from which the first Year 12 students graduated in 2003 and which doubled its enrolment last year, even though it is a remote community. At Cherbourg in south-east Queensland, attendance at the state school at the former Aboriginal mission has risen from 63 per cent to 93 per cent since 1999 and literacy levels have improved dramatically.

Former principal Chris Sarra says the key was instilling students with a sense of pride in being Aboriginal and the belief they could be successful. He told a staff meeting at the outset that any teacher who did not share his belief that Aboriginal children could achieve results equal to those of white children should leave. Half applied for transfers.

Delivering the annual reconciliation lecture in Canberra on Tuesday, News Limited chairman and chief executive, John Hartigan, also declared himself an optimist.

It is not often that the head of a leading Australian company speaks out so forcefully on indigenous issues. Hartigan drew a direct link between self-government and the success of indigenous communities in overcoming disadvantage. He argued for a national representative body with a strong mandate from indigenous people to replace the failed ATSIC.

Hartigan called for long-term investment in infrastructure, education and employment. And he spoke of his own experience of success - a tourism project he visited at Titjikala, near Alice Springs, that provided jobs and where health and education were better than in many other communities.

The danger in the present debate is that we revert to the paternalistic stereotypes of a primitive, helpless people whose only hope is to assimilate into European society.

"We could re-adopt the assimilation model and move indigenous people into cities and towns," Hartigan said. "Ask the people of Alice Springs if this works. It doesn't. And it's not acceptable to indigenous people."

Trudgen is scathing of the suggestions that sexual degradation and assault are part of Aboriginal culture. "It's a grog culture, not an Aboriginal culture," he says. He had lived for 11 years in a community in central Arnhem Land which operated under traditional law and "where there is no way that anybody would ever assault a child".

It is a view supported by Reconciliation Australia co-chair Mark Leibler: "To suggest that rape and pedophilia are part of Aboriginal culture is defamation."

The success stories in Aboriginal affairs, divergent as they are, do have the common themes of using indigenous culture as a positive, not negative, influence, and of engaging local communities. "The right to indigenous self-determination, if properly understood, is about the right to take responsibility," says Cape York leader Noel Pearson.