Professor Megan Davis, who was on the losing side in the Voice referendum, was indulged by the University of Queensland to lecture on why she lost. She showed no contrition, blaming others for the loss. She did so in a letter to her niece: an ancient, white literary device.

From the winning side, my letter is to two students of Aboriginal descent who were granted scholarships to attend expensive city boarding schools. It suggests a pathway to swap native title for scholarships to close the gap for needy Aboriginal people. However, it will diminish the privileged Aboriginal leadership that has carved out a role in berating the Whiteman.

Dear students,

Congratulations, you won the scholarship lottery. After receiving a modern education, you can decide your future. If you want to help ‘your people’, you should consider those stuck ‘on country’, unwilling or unable to receive modern education.

You are distant descendants of Aboriginal people. You were awarded a scholarship partly because of that genetic lottery. This must trouble you because you, no doubt, would want to be known for winning a scholarship on merit.

Perhaps your parents could not afford to send you to the expensive boarding school you attend. But most students are in that situation. You could have attended a local high school, just like most Australians.

You are proud of your identity and culture, but do you know that it is broadly a culture shared by all who passed through the neolithic stage of pre-civilisation? What about your other heritage? Are you proud of it? Or are you ‘strongly’ Indigenous because the scholarship depended on it?

You argue that Aboriginal people were ‘custodians and caretakers’ of their land. This recent meme is designed to win land rights and privileges from those who create wealth from the land, or want to stop the development of that wealth. To be custodians suggests Aborigines controlled their environment. They most certainly did not.

You are dismayed that the Voice referendum was defeated. It was defeated for a good reason. It wanted to give you two votes, while your neighbour with whom you are supposed to want to reconcile has just one vote.

You believe politics gets in the way of improving the lives of Indigenous Australians. You are right. Aboriginal politics is about how to squeeze money from the Whiteman, of whom you are supposed to think ill. Not very high-minded.

You wish that fellow students learn about the history of Indigenous Australia. We know the history; it was bleak before 1788.

Aboriginal culture is not the oldest continuous living civilisation in the world; it was not a civilisation. Its economy and culture stopped, in fits and starts, in 1788. Remnants, not always good, remain. The rest, the dance, the smoking ceremonies, art, and the supposed relationship to land, are inventions of environmentalists and others who have been using your people to prevent opening productive parts of Australia. These parts pay for your scholarship.

You would like every Indigenous student to be allowed to make something of themselves and prove the statistics wrong. But do you know that about 80 per cent of Aboriginal people are doing as well as other Australians? Only 20 per cent are doing poorly.

The question is how to help the 20 per cent. Is it to grant scholarships to students because they have Aboriginal descent? Or should it be based on need or merit? If merit is the criterion, there is no need for an Aboriginal scholarship scheme. You compete, you win. If the need is the criterion, the question is where such education has the best chance of success.

Boarding school is the most likely option, although sending bright students to expensive schools a thousand kilometres from home and family is wasteful.

A way to pay for this is for native title holders who receive no income (which is most) to be encouraged to cede their rights (or some of their rights) to the Crown in return for free board and tuition for all native title Aboriginal children in the nearest centre. It would free them from the burden of hanging on in the hope that something turns up. Those earning money from native title should pour it into scholarships.

My plea is to tell your people to give up their native title in return for boarding school scholarships for Aboriginal children who live in remote Australia. They need it.

Gary Johns is chair of Close the Gap Research