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The Forum > Article Comments > How the Murdoch press keeps Australia’s dirty secret > Comments

How the Murdoch press keeps Australia’s dirty secret : Comments

By John Pilger, published 17/5/2011

The most enduring and insidious Murdoch campaign has been against Aboriginal people who have never been allowed to recover.

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Where does one start ? This article is full of so many lies that it seems pointless to try to refute them: every sentence would have to be deconstructed.

In the last thirty years, Aboriginal people have asserted themselves, seized opportunities, created more than 25,000 university graduates, halved the gap in home ownership (all such bourgeois measures ! Sniff, says Pilger) and participated in Australia's open society. Yes, there is a population immured in welfare-dependence, perhaps a third of the total Indigenous population, suffering the worst health, imprisonment and suicide rates - but this is precisely the population which the Pilgers of the world would tout as exemplars for the rest: living in remote areas and on the outskirts of cities, unemployed and unemployable, alienated - and dead in the water.

Save it for your gullible overseas readers, mate.

Joe Lane
Adelaide
Posted by Loudmouth, Tuesday, 17 May 2011 10:56:15 AM
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There I was thinking we had incompetent governments who bumbled around while trying to satisfy all the (self) interest groups and patrolers of the borders of political correctness (keeping ever vigilant for sources of offense and grievance)

Now I find it's all a conspiracy by a newspaper mogul who doesn't even live here, and seems to have little or no record of publicly addressing what the author is mildly hysterical about.

Who gains?

Well the interest groups have a lot to gain, and also seem to be the source of most of the myths.

What would Murdock gain?
Posted by Amicus, Tuesday, 17 May 2011 11:20:41 AM
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Pilger gives one example of this campaign - that of Andrew Bolt's court case and suggestions that one of the aboriginals involved is not, in fact, a recognisable aboriginal.

But Pilger has long been guilty of wild, activist-style overstatement of any case he might have, recognising only facts that suit him, and proving immune to any criticism, reasoned or otherwise. In any case, the world has long moved on from Pilger's heyday of the 1960s and 1970s. The Vietnam war is over, the Berlin Wall fell 20 years ago.

The best way to treat Pilger, fellow posters, would be to simply ignore the man altogether.
Posted by Curmudgeon, Tuesday, 17 May 2011 11:29:47 AM
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Mr Pilger is right.

Remember Australia is on Aboriginal Land that still hasnt been paid for.
Posted by nohj, Tuesday, 17 May 2011 11:45:37 AM
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Ih Nohj,

Yes, you're right, in many ways, at least in relation to the five-sixths of Australia which is not under Aboriginal control. But the $ 3 billion p.a. over and above services (Pilger neglected to mention this) don't count for anything ?

One could easily go down the track of asserting that neither did Aboriginal people pay for the land, and they had fifty thousand years of use out of it, gratis, and just like every other human group, helped to modify the landscape fundamentally in that time. But I don't wish to go down that track: conventional legal systems recognise prior landholders as the legitimate landowners, and that's fine with me.

I'm not as interested in manufacturing a past history of loss and oppression as in what Aboriginal people are doing now, and can be enabled to do, to get themselves out of situations of aimlessness and exclusion - how they are using their sense of agency and how can that be enabled and promoted. On that last point, Pilger even has the hide to suggest that, somehow, locking people out of the economy and parking them off, powerless, in remote communities is fine but enabling people to move to cities and work and join in with the rest of Australian society is 'apartheid'. Doesn't he even know what the word means ? Exclusion ? Segregation ? Forced separation ? Disempowerment by distance ?

Aboriginal people have rarely been passive victims of history, and the great majority are fighting against it right now, with no thanks to the Pilgers of some distant planet, prattling to a distant audience.

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Tuesday, 17 May 2011 12:48:38 PM
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This is the left-wing version of an Andrew Bolt article. Long bows drawn with half-truths and loaded with exaggerations.
Posted by Raptor, Tuesday, 17 May 2011 1:30:39 PM
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As a resident of Alice Springs who often reads Pilger's articles on world affairs, this article was as great a disappointment as are Germaine Greer's attempts to tell it like it is in Australia today.
Mr Pilger, with respect you do not know what you are talking about.
Posted by halduell, Tuesday, 17 May 2011 1:52:59 PM
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Raptor,

You are unjustly maligning the genuine left when you suggest that Pilger is part of it. It might be a broad church, but the more grown-up sections of it do have some sense of decency, and respect for the truth, and have not become lickspittles for dictatorships and anti-Enlightenment fundamentalisms.

You don't think so ? Then wait for Pilger's take on Libya, and on the execution of the war criminal Osama bin Laden, and his defence - by omission - of extreme right-wing reactionary ideologies.

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Tuesday, 17 May 2011 1:53:36 PM
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Not everyone agrees with you that Aboriginal tradition is worthless, Loudmouth. Not John Pilger, not Aboriginal professors, high achievers, community members, spokespersons or the downcast and infirm. Not the overwhelming majority of Australian citizens who consider the tradition of equal rights between women and men of merit and that the gender apartheid Europeans introduced should once and for all be dismantled with the provision of women's legislatures to empower women equally with men. And not the generations of Australians over the past century who have accepted equality between women and men in bringing this about. In fact, apart from Rupert Murdoch and a meagre scattering of his supplicants, you're pretty much talking to yourself. I feel sorry for your eternal frustration over tradition but one day you'll get it, even if it takes the whole nation at a referendum on equal rights to convince you. You must miss your esteemed partner terribly.
Posted by whistler, Tuesday, 17 May 2011 6:08:39 PM
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Hi Whistler, still banging away on the same drum ? Good luck.

I didn't express any negative opinions about traditions, as far as I can tell. In fact, there are some that I find very attractive. Down this way, for example, amongst the Ngarrindjeri and the group up the Murray River, the Ngangaruku (and perhaps some other groups as well), there was a custom which I find quite charming, referred to in the anthropological literature as 'ngangaiampe'.

It worked like this: when a boy was born, his father would carefully preserve his umbilical string, wrap it and give it to a kinsman who had relations up (or down) the river. This kinsman would take the string up and offer it to a man of the other group. If he accepted, then there was this special relationship between the two men, called 'ngangaiampe'. It meant that, if ever one of the men or his close relations were travelling through the country of the other man, the giver or the receiver had to ensure that they remained safe, and that they had enough food. The two men were never allowed to communicate directly, but only through intermediaries. There were so many of these relationships that it fostered strong bonds of mutual, if unspoken, support between the groups: nowadays, they regard themselves as belonging to the one group, the Ngarrindjeri. Of course, nowadays the people speak to each other and frequently inter-marry.

On the other hand, I don't think it is appropriate to talk about gender equality in a traditional context: men and women had superordinate and subordinate roles, and since they came from different family groups, after all, they usually would not have had much authority in the country of the other, certainly not in patrilineal groups' country. Strictly speaking, gender equality, particularly the rights of women to do anything that men can do, is a modern phenomenon - a work in progress.

Still, keep banging away :)

Thank you for your kind thoughts, by the way. Yes, I do, and always will: it will always be like just yesterday ......

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Tuesday, 17 May 2011 6:56:25 PM
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I commend Pilger for telling it like it is--especially since he is saying precisely what I've been saying in recent OLO threads: that the media is overwhelmingly right-wing in Australia; and that both "Labor and [the] Coalition [are] (conservative) governments".
And then there's the aboriginal "problem". Unpalatable or not, what he communicates are simply the facts about colonial Australia's dehumanising, exploitative, discriminatory and murderous dealings with the indigenous population to date.
This is not to absolve aboriginals of often being complicit in their own misery, but it is the essential fact-base we have to acknowledge, and from which the "vital question" ought to proceed: "why do so many indigenous Australians remain 'recalcitrant' when modern Australia has at least thrown money at the problem (money in the West is the cold cure, it solves everything)"?
The answer in my view is simple; because Australia largely retains an "uneasy" supremacist and xenophobic mentality. This is directed, albeit often incoherently, against Asians, Muslims, refugees generally, but with an especially visceral, largely unconscious, loathing and fear directed at our indigenous population--our only genuinely despised subaltern class. This kind of deep-seated racism is akin to what Conrad characterised in "Heart of Darkness" as "the horror".

I like to think of myself as above all this, but even I'm instinctively uneasy around aborigine's in a way that manifests itself to them, I think, as mannered indifference. But more assertive, or less sensitive, individuals than me turn their disquiet into open contempt, even bravado.
Anyway, this needs much more elaboration, what I want to get to is the "effect" of this "civilised disquiet"--at best! contempt at worst--on aborigine's and their culture..
My contention is that this eurocentric superciliousness, fear and condescension we project is "unerringly communicated" to our "benighted brethren", and this is "a" major root of their "self-destructiveness".
I often wonder how "I" would feel if I knew that my mere visage aroused fear and loathing among the other, different-looking, bipeds who dominated the scene, qualitatively as well as quantitatively, putting me decidedly in the shade--in the shadows.
Posted by Squeers, Tuesday, 17 May 2011 7:31:21 PM
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We murdered the most courageous and intelligent of the Aboriginal Community just like Pol Pot,the US backed despot who killed the middle class in Cambodia.To this day,Cambodia has not recovered.

The Aborigines are now laden with European genetics with almost no pure blood of their ancestry left,yet they still get marginalised by an elite who see the mass of our humanity as being a blight on their planet.

Eugenics is alive and well in our post Orwellian world.The middle class of all societies are now in their sights,since perceived climate change and environmental degradation,will impinge upon their grand vision of their New World Order.
Posted by Arjay, Tuesday, 17 May 2011 8:49:45 PM
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Excellent article. Thanks, John.
Can't find anything factually wrong or unfair in this anywhere. It probably seems offensive to white Australian sensibilities because it is such a stark contrast to the information and analysis dished up by most government and media sources.
The smear campaign by Murdoch's The Australian against progressive Indigenous voices last month was probably the most shameful of all in that publication's tawdry history.
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/1435896.html
Posted by Alan Austin, Tuesday, 17 May 2011 9:19:47 PM
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Arjay,
Who's we? How many Aboriginals have you killed?
Why is it that in the context of Settler/Aboriginal history the "Worst of the Worst" White people, ie murderers, rapists and thieves are always held up as representatives of the White side?
The rest of your post goes seriously awry:
-The state doesn't represent White people.
-Race is more than genetics or skin tone and White genes are not a pollutant, you wouldn't get away with saying people with African genes are "laden", which a reasonable person would interpret as "burdened".
-The so called "New World Order" would logically have come about in the 1960's or 70's when the anti Whites had everything going their way,the assimilationist agenda is croaking out it's last breath.
Notice how "Multiculturalism" is suddenly back in the headlines?
That's not "revisionism" it's butt covering, assimilation is Genocide. There have already been several complaints made to the U.N by people of European heritage alleging attempted Genocide of Whites in Canada and the U.S. and there are groups here promising to arrest and try Australian politicians for treason and Genocide if they are elected.

Once someone has publicly supported "Assimilation", which is a code word for Genocide then they've walked onto very thin ice. I'm sure the people who tried to assimilate Indigenous Australians out of the picture never dreamed they'd be reviled and pilloried by future generations and I'm damn sure people today who push the "race is a social construct" BS think of themselves as "good" people.
Posted by Jay Of Melbourne, Tuesday, 17 May 2011 9:26:05 PM
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I am new to this country and do not know what happened before my times. But I do know what I saw when, fifty five years ago, I succeeded in spotting the conditions Aborigine lived in Melbourne and since, noting the treatment meted to them by policemen and Councils in consort.

To my mind it was as if they had been severely wounded and then blasted for being lame.

What Pilger says in this last article is academic, what I have come to note is real, factual.

It is about organizations legally parading as ‘charitable’, whose entrepreneurs live as kings with the proceeds from people of good will and grants of governments, while the intended recipients are left with crumbs.

All Tax-free transactions and no question asked, while Attorney Generals and Directors of Public Prosecution indulge in pursuing so called criminals or waste well paid time in politicking.

All this invisible to the ordinary man, blinded as he is by the many anxieties of his own existence
Posted by skeptic, Tuesday, 17 May 2011 9:30:46 PM
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Appreciate your article John and your tireless investigative journalism exposing injustices elsewhere. We who have lived in this country a long time know this has been going on for many years. There are many historical documents of atrocities and massacres of Aboriginal people; for example Gribble's 'Dark Deeds in a Sunny Land'.

Spotlight on the Murdoch press as biased is also entirely appropriate. The 'Australian'is one eyed conservative; editors and commentators writing opinion as fact. For example omission of rigorous scientific reporting on climate change while repeatedly reporting the opinions of a few 'flat earthers' and climate change deniers (e.g Monckton and Plimer); biased reporting of the mining tax etc the list goes on.

PS. You may have noticed that some of your detractors in these columns are the same old nest of vipers who rail against anything progressive or truthful, never providing constructive arguements or providing relevant evidence to support their destructive rantings.
Posted by Roses1, Tuesday, 17 May 2011 11:02:39 PM
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Interesting use of statistics, John. I suspect that, as a man of the world, you know that you are sensationalising things when you compare present-day Australia to South Africa under apartheid. For example, when you note the rate of imprisonment (5:1) of indigenous people in Australia and apartheid South Africa, you fail to note the enormous disparity in populations of respective indigenous groups.

In South Africa in 1980, there were just shy of 24 million black Africans. In Australia in 2006, there were just over 500,000 indigenous people. That's a ratio of about 48:1. Statisticians (at least those without axes to grind) understand that comparisons of large samples and small samples are unreliable.

The gist of your argument is relevant and interesting, but I am sure you are far more intelligent than some of your arguments. It would be nice if you gave your readers credit for some intelligence as well.
Posted by Otokonoko, Wednesday, 18 May 2011 12:20:38 AM
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roses1 "PS. You may have noticed that some of your detractors in these columns are the same old nest of vipers who rail against anything progressive or truthful, never providing constructive arguements or providing relevant evidence to support their destructive rantings"

This is an opinion site, posters are not required to provide evidence or to contruct arguments in a manner suitable to your sensitive demeanor.

Posters can put up an opinion, regardless of whether you agree or disagree.

If you don't like it, and can't refrain from insults, perhaps you should reconsider posting on the internet.

I suspect you would like to have a site where differing opinions are not allowed?

Have you considered having your own site? Then you could control the entire content.

Is censorship your preferred method of free speech, that is, you are free to speak but anyone who disagrees or does not see the world similarly must not be allowed a voice? (indeed it requires some immediate insult to warn others of the presence of differing opinions and your own opinion of them? PS, I think they know without your helpful little bile spit you seem unable to refrain from every time you post)

I guess even the ABC these days allows differing views, but I'm sure you can still find sites to discuss and examine hatred of conservative views, unencumbered by differing views.
Posted by Amicus, Wednesday, 18 May 2011 7:57:53 AM
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It promotes Aboriginal “leaders” who, by blaming their own people for their poverty, tell the white elite what it wants to hear.
The writer Michael Brull parodied this: “Oh White man, please save us. Take away our rights because we are so backward”

“Where does one start ? This article is so much Crap that it seems pointless to try to refute it: every sentence would have to be deconstructed”
I feel the same way Joe, but here goes !

“My people don’t use money the way white people do.
They don’t save, they don’t budget, they can’t say no to relatives even when they are drunks and addicted to gambling and drugs.
They need help in spending their money wisely.” Bess Price.

In an extraordinary leap of faith, Brull chouse to interpret this as “o white man, please save us. Take away our rights, because we are so backward.”

Bess Price has some relations living in “town camps” in and around Alice Springs. **Sometimes Bess interprets for them and speaks on their behalf in everyday situations.
And a lot of her relations “are” “hopeless with money” !
The same as a lot of mine here in Brisbane !
Bess is not the “leader”of the Aboriginal People in the N.T.
Or in Alice Springs. I doubt very much that she sees or promotes herself as such !
Posted by bully, Wednesday, 18 May 2011 4:34:07 PM
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But John Pilger of course, wouldn't want to know about this !! Is he an “Armchair Expert” on Aboriginal Affairs ?
I don't know if he is Aboriginal or not, but if he is, he would no doubt come under the heading “town black-fella” !
And this attack on Rupert Murdock ! He has obviously got some gripe with the old fella ! I'd like to suggest to you John Pilger,
if you have an issue with Rupert Murdock, go and see him and “get it out of your system” ! “Proper One Time' !
Why ?
Well for a start John, it would save a lot of “media monitors” like me, a lot of precious time,
having to read Crap and, we get to avoid
being “sprayed with your bile” !

** In support of Bess Nungarrayi Price "Alice Springs News" issue 1813.28/4/2011
Posted by bully, Wednesday, 18 May 2011 4:34:27 PM
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Ooops !
Arthur Bell. aka. bully.
Thank You !!
Also, "Have a Nice Day John" !!
Posted by bully, Wednesday, 18 May 2011 4:39:17 PM
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<<“Where does one start ? This article is so much Crap that it seems pointless to try to refute it: every sentence would have to be deconstructed”
I feel the same way Joe, but here goes !>>

Well thanks for your posts, Arthur Bell, but you haven't actually said anything..?
So how about you start over and tell us about the crap that so offends you?
I've stated my thoughts above and am eager to learn and revise them?
Posted by Squeers, Wednesday, 18 May 2011 4:45:25 PM
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I guess, Bully, nothing will satisfy the sort of self-righteous, ignorant people who believe charlatans like Pilger. But let's try:

' “N-gger hunts” continued into the 1960s and beyond.'

When and where ? One example. And 'beyond' ? The seventies ? When and where ? One example.

'The officially inspired theft of children from Aboriginal families, justified by the racist theories of the eugenics movement, produced those known as the Stolen Generation and in 1997 was identified as genocide.'

Only one case of children improperly taken into care - that of Bruce Trevorrow here in SA - has been demonstrated. I've knocked around with Aboriginal people down this way for forty five years and very few were put into care that I know of, and none that I know of were clearly and unambiguously taken for no reason.

We studied the birth, death, marriage and school records of my wife's community going back to 1860, and found that, of the 800 kids who were enrolled at the school at some time, only 45 or so were ever put into care. School-age children. Almost all came back within a year or so and eventually married local people: the only one was the daughter of a single mother who died of TB when the girl was about ten. Here was a community with many quite pale Aboriginal kids and strangely enough, the better they were doing in school (ex school records) and more stable the home, the less likely they were to be 'taken'. In almost all of the 45 kids' situation, the reasons for being put into care were similar to the reasons why 2-3 % of all white kids at the time were being put into care: death of a mother, death of a father and mother re-married (re daughters), dissolution or destitution of family.

Until 1971, single mothers couldn't get any welfare benefits. Up until then, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal single mothers had to put their babies up for adoption. Yes/no ?

Until 1969, Aboriginal people on reserves and missions and government settlements couldn't get unemployment benefit, so

[TBC]
Posted by Loudmouth, Wednesday, 18 May 2011 6:44:33 PM
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[cont]

if they didn't work, the family was destitute pretty quickly. Didn't this happen with white fellas as well ? Yes, indeed, but in a racist and discriminatory society, this affected Aboriginal people far more. When a family disintegrates, what happens to the kids ? You don't have to invent any government policy of deliberately taking kids away.

At the community that we studied, between 1880 and 1960, 40 women died, usually in childbirth, leaving 120 school-age kids behind. What happened to those kids ? They stayed with their extended families, until that was no longer possible. Fathers away working, mothers dead - and only one kid 'taken' out of 800.

'Today, the first Australians have the shortest life expectancy of any of the world’s 90 indigenous peoples.'

Disaggregate, break this down: in the towns and cities, Aboriginal people from working families have life expectancies approaching those of whites' - it is precisely the long-term unemployed people on lifelong welfare, especially heavy drinkers, who have life expectancies of forty years less than whites' generally, but not much shorter than whites in similar situations: FORTY years.

So it's not that people are Aboriginal, but a matter of 'lifestyle': you booze, you fight, you have a lousy Western diet, you get no exercise and bingo ! you have a short life, Black or white. Short life-spans are a matter of class and access to employment, not ethnicity or 'race'.

' Australia imprisons Aborigines at five times the rate South Africa during the apartheid years. In the state of Western Australia, the figure is eight times the apartheid rate.'

And what is the rate of committing offenses ? In your city, dear reader, is there reputed to be a 'gang of 49', or 'gang of 16', of young Aboriginal people who are reputed to frequently commit idiotic crimes of car theft, home invasion, burglaries, street robberies, ram-raiding grog-shops, holding up servos for cigarettes ? Yes/no ? Again, this is a matter of class and long-term unemployment prospects, and being raised in hopelessness, in lifelong welfare families. Yes/no ?

[TBC]

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Wednesday, 18 May 2011 6:47:42 PM
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[contd]

Meanwhile, more than 26,000 Indigenous people have graduated from universities, 90 % in the last twenty years. Nobody forced them. I wonder if Pilger tells his gulls that: the figure is not hard to calculate.

Some 80,000 Indigenous people have either been to university, 10,000 are still there, 26,000 have graduated. Supposedly, 70,000 Indigenous people are currently in TAFE courses. So that's half of the adult population. Where could that be matched - Norway ? Canada ?

The great majority of Indigenous people in Australia live in towns and cities, and they are not going to go back to the bush: get used to it, Pilger. No more apartheid for them ! No more exclusion ! No more 'helpless victims' !

And meanwhile, in the idyllic conditions which the Pilgers would rave about in their ignorance, out in the remote communities - where apartheid is alive and thriving - life is desperate, miserable and full of fear and deprivation. Alice Springs is the murder capital of the world, and the deaths are almost all Aboriginal. Yes/no ?

Due to absolutely crap diets and little exercise, Aboriginal people in the NT have the highest diabetes rate in the world. Coca-Cola used to boast that the people in the NT were the highest consumers of its crap anywhere in the world. All self-inflicted. There are more dialysis machines in Alice Springs (population: 20,000) than in Sydney (population: 4 million), so I've heard. But you won't here that from little Johnny.

Stay in Britain, Pilger: pander to people's gullibility there and you'll do okay.

Bully, the birthers in the US won't believe, ever, that Obama was born in the US, no matter what. That birth certificate is a forgery, they'll say. So it is with prejudiced people, who have already made up their minds long ago. Nothing will change them.

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Wednesday, 18 May 2011 7:02:59 PM
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One further point of interest (to me, anyway) is the statement that there are 90 indigenous peoples of the world, and that Aboriginal Australians have the lowest life expectancy of all of these groups.

Besides the obvious but frivolous claims (i.e. surely Germans who can trace their ancestry to the various tribes who squabbled with the Romans can consider themselves 'indigenous'), I can't work out where this number comes from. Papua New Guinea contains more than 90 distinct groups; are they all grouped together under the hood of 'Melanesian'?

The life expectancy for Aboriginal Australian males is 59.4 (http://www.aihw.gov.au/indigenous-life-expectancy/). Not sure about the reliability of the source, but the Kalahari Bushmen have a life expectancy of 45-50 (http://www.kalahari-meerkats.com/fileadmin/files/guides/Bushmen_light.pdf). Are they no longer indigenous? Again, I can't vouch for the source, but the Samburu of Kenya apparently have a life expectancy of 49 (http://www.icrossinternational.org/downloads/tba_training_samburu_district.pdf).

I don't doubt that Pilger's source identifies only 90 indigenous peoples; nor do I doubt that the Australian Aborigines have the lowest life expectancy of those 90 groups. I do, however, question the validity of that source and wonder if it has a political agenda. Unless Mr Pilger drops by and identifies his source, we may never be able to make that judgement for ourselves.
Posted by Otokonoko, Wednesday, 18 May 2011 7:21:40 PM
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3ytJioxKzI&feature=player_embedded
Posted by whistler, Wednesday, 18 May 2011 9:02:38 PM
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Loudmouth:
"When and where ? One example. And 'beyond' ? The seventies ? When and where ? One example."
You can't argue "n!gger-hunts" (interesting that the n-word is designated a "profanity" [how times have changed] but that it was ok for Pilger) just stopped dead, or treat anecdotal evidence as impermissible if you like, though granted Pilger isn't inhibited by a want of direct evidence. But I've married into the bush twice, and I don't think some of the racists I've met would have any qualms with such sport if it was permitted today. Let's not forget too that running "undesirables" out of town isn't a long way from n!gger hunts. And in a country where Indians, Asians, Moslems and gays are regularly abused and bashed, I doubt aborigines are spared.
In your next part you deny the saga of the stolen generation even happened! You mean to say it was all a beat-up? I don’t doubt there are legitimate rationalisations one could assert, but neither do I doubt these are predicated on racism of one form and another, that is benign, well-meaning, or similar degrees of malignant racism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolen_Generations
I remember my grandmother once swearing she wasn’t a racist because she spoke to a little black girl at a railway station just as though she was no different from her.

As for your rationalisations of life expectancy, prison populations etc., certainly it’s a matter of lifestyle, but my implicit question above was, and still is, “why” do aborigine’s so disproportionately indulge unhealthy and anti-social lifestyles? And this isn’t just in the bush! Despite the positive spin you put on indigenous education and assimilation into the mainstream, aboriginals in the bush “and” in the cities remain disproportionally an outlaw class, both reviled and rebellious.
Posted by Squeers, Thursday, 19 May 2011 10:50:05 AM
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...cont.

I think, if I read you right, your trying to encourage the growth of self-respect, empowerment and success among aborigines, as opposed to finding excuses for self-destructive indigenous behaviour, a la Pearson, and this seems the right kind of affirmative policy. But it doesn’t address the malady; the real problem is not generated by the aborigines, it’s generated by a racist white culture (its historical insecurities derived from its incongruousl antipodean location) in which aboriginals are, whether its spoken or unspoken, designated the lowest of the low. They are quite aware of how they are popularly perceived and many, if not all, unconsciously see themselves in the same dark light, or are inhibited at best in their self-fulfilment. At its worst their self-loathing is reminiscent of Freud’s notion of the “death drive”—indeed the whole culture is more or less afflicted by this compulsion imo; though it is more “inflicted” upon them by common perception, including their own.
We live in a competitive culture where the men in particular measure their stature by their material success. “Failed” (materially unsuccessful) white males are prone to various forms of self-destructive behaviour and anti-social assertiveness; how much more self-annihilating then for an aboriginal who perceives himself a failure in his very being? And supposing he can overcome that, he then must compete on a drastically one-sided playing field that will in most instances patronise him while keeping him down, again positively reinforcing his already precarious self-image.
Posted by Squeers, Thursday, 19 May 2011 10:51:22 AM
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...cont.

Sure things are sweet in universities, and even in later careers for successful graduates—in terms of their insecurities as well as qualifications. But that’s about it for aborigines: high or low; self-transcendence or self-destruction; there is very little equal-opportunity for aboriginals among middle Australia and the off-white-to-blue-collar working classes—the most racist of the lot! Those who do find a place in a white world still have to deal with their repressed demons, and the daily reminders that they’re tolerated rather than included. Well good on those who manage to keep pulling it off day after day; I can’t imagine how hard it must be to overcome against such odds. But as far as I’m concerned aboriginals still live under ideological apartheid. Australian flags dot suburbia, where I live, and flap self-contentedly, uncontestedly! The aboriginal flag, like her people, is an outlaw and God help anyone who flies one!
Pilger is dead right to spell-out the evils perpetrated under Australian colonial rule! And national apologies don’t help if they’re just words. Many many Australians scoff at these apologies and remain perfectly smug in their disgusting bigotry.
By all means urge aborigines to help themselves, to pull themselves up by their boot-straps--despite the fact that the cards are stacked against them! But don’t deny the abuse that’s been inflicted, or the psychological abuse and masochism the victims are still forced to nurse. By doing that you exonerate the abusers and give us moderns nothing to reflect upon and nothing to genuinely regret or apologise for. Perhaps more importantly, by denying or rationalising the actions of the abusers, what do you leave the victims of racism but: "there’s no one to blame but ourselves" :-((
Posted by Squeers, Thursday, 19 May 2011 10:53:59 AM
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Thank you, Squeers, your comments are vastly more honest and thoughtful than Pilger's, who seems to have grabbed onto every outrageous rumour and paranoid suspicion as gospel truth.

But I'm a bit worried by a way of thinking that goes: well, certain people may have wanted to commit vile acts, therefore if they had the chance, they would have, and since they probably had the chance, then they must have. Assert, and prove, Squeers.

Yes, people used to get run out of town, back in the days when it was legal: barely forty years ago in Queensland, a bit longer in other states. In one of Arthur Upfield's novels, set in the early fifties, an Aboriginal guy is jailed for being in town (Echuca) after 5 pm. Yes, that certainly happened all over Australia.

When I went to high school in Darwin in the fifties, the people from Bagot Reserve couldn't come to the pictures on any night, only on Wednesday nights, and then they had to come in a side door and sit on hard benches up the front, with a barrier between them and the 'others'. They werem't allowed in town otherwise.

Yes, that all happened. Discrimination and exclusion are dreadful, soul-destroying evils - and, in my view, they have now been tarted up and re-imposed in many parts of the remote north, sweetened by generous welfare and royalty payments, and remote area education allowances. They call it 'self-determination'.

Yes, I'm saying that the 'Stolen Generation' has not been shown to have happened. If you assert, then prove. But as you say, this principle doesn't bother Pilger.

[TBC]
Posted by Loudmouth, Thursday, 19 May 2011 11:52:55 AM
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Rupert Murdoch was a player during something known as the Warburton Range controversy in 1957.

After hiring his own aircraft and visiting the area,he wrote an article rejecting the findings of a Select Committee report outlining the appalling conditions of Aborigines in the central Australian desert, saying "these fine native people have never enjoyed better conditions." He also observed that, "great companies like International Nickel of Canada are watching for and have prospects of finding some of the world's most valuable mineral deposits in the world."

A background to the situation for Aboriginal people in the central desert at the time.
http://indigenousrights.net.au/subsection.asp?ssID=89

A party of anthropologists also visited and found that the committee's findings were exaggerated, yet a documentary was filmed called "Manslaughter" which depicted the indigenous people concerned in a very bad state.
Rupert Murdoch seems to have gone to a lot of trouble to depict things in glowing terms - even publishing a photo with his article showing a healthy and happy Aboriginal family that was apparently taken some four years before and was in effect misleading.
His accompanying upbeat assessment of mineral exploration on the land that had been usurped from its native owners might be one explanation.

http://indigenousrights.net.au/subsection.asp?ssID=50
Posted by Poirot, Thursday, 19 May 2011 2:30:55 PM
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[cont.]

Squeers, you ask:

" .... my implicit question above was, and still is, “why” do aborigines so disproportionately indulge unhealthy and anti-social lifestyles?"

I'm sure that the reasons are very complex, but the upshot is that they do: there is ample evidence every day, somewhere and in many places every day across Australia. And it is killing Aboriginal people: there is nothing glamorous, or remotely progressive, about it. So the contemptible silence of sections of the Left about it helps whom ? The complete absence of any solution to these massive problems as proposed by the Aboriginal elite benefits whom ?

You may be quite right about the pathology which long-term powerlessness generates, and the ways that it is turned back onto the people. When Maria was in charge of a network of Indigenous university study centres around SA, she desperately wanted to try to get one started up in her own community, so we went down there for six months in 2003, while she tried to persuade people there to move away from the same TAFE course year-after-year and try university, as hundreds of other Ngarrindjeri in the towns and Adelaide had done. Not a bite. She was devastated and it may have hastened her death.

Later we tried again in 2006, putting forward a step-by-step multi-year program of projects, beginning with vegetable garden, chook yard, orchards, etc. Not a bite. Instead, at its AGM, the council congratulated itself that it had maintained its CDEP numbers, that not a job had been created all year. Twelve thousand acres of beautiful land and people didn't actually want to do anything with it. The farming projects there - grain, beed cattle, a beautiful dairy and healthy herd, were either ignored by the people or downright rubbished. It crossed my mind continually that people's response to their own progress seemed to have a pathological side to it: nothing 'could' work, so nothing would be allowed to.

[TBC]
Posted by Loudmouth, Thursday, 19 May 2011 7:15:58 PM
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Squeers,

[contd.]

Yes, you are right on the button: how to motivate some of the men to take on their human responsibilities, cut down on their criminal activities (it has to be said! why are there ten times as many Indigenous men in prisons for their population ? Are they all being framed?) and do something productive and positive. Yes, to work for the Man if that's what it takes.

But, as you suggest, to stop using their Aboriginality as an excuse: Indigenous women are participating at universities at two-thirds of the rate of non-Indigenous women (with a third or so of the entire population immured in welfare: do the maths), so why can't men follow their example ?

There is a huge amount of work to be done at communities, ideally by Indigenous people, and almost all skilled and professional work. So there is - as you imply - an enormous task to be undertaken by university and TAFE student support programs, to publicise, recruit, prepare and support Indigenous students through a wide range of study programs, from basic English and literacy right up to post-graduate study. Not just for an elite but for the majority of Aboriginal people. I hope Larissa Behrendt makes some note of this in her Review of Indigenous higher education, but I'm not holding my breath.

Pilger's piffle is a massive step away from beginning those tasks: it disarms and disempowers people to be endlessly told what has been done to you, and how powerful (and evil) your enemies are, as if there is nothing people can do - except perhaps to wait for the proletariat, the white Anglo-proletariat of course, to liberate them.

But Indigenous people haven't waited - they have used their sense of agency to knock down the doors and seized the same opportunities as other Australians. Call it assimilation if you like, I call it equal rights and equal opportunities and I applaud it unreservedly. As Bess Price says, "I want for my kids what Larissa Behrendt has had." And that goes for all Aboriginal people.

Joe Lane
Posted by Loudmouth, Thursday, 19 May 2011 11:48:50 PM
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Joe,

Unfortunately, I don't have time to research the Stolen Generations, but I reckon there must be something to it.

There is no doubt in my mind, however, that what mainly prevents many indigenous men in particular from escaping their culture of self-destruction is an absolute poverty of self-worth. I agree education seems the only remedy, but such an education should begin with a severe critique of the Western culture that ruined theirs and so morally-eclipses them now with its false conceits. Indeed it would do the rednecks good to be educated in the worthlessness they take such pride in.
The situation seems hopeless so long as this nation goes on celebrating itself as if there are no grounds for self-recrimination. That's what countries like Australia, the US, Israel and South Africa do; they refuse to get down from their high horses and hang their heads in shame for what they've done to precipitate and institutionalise their respective State of affairs.
I don't think aborigines should be striving to be like us. They should see Western culture for what it is and reject and and go beyond it.
How about an indigenous capital; a new Australian city and culture to put the others in the shade? That would give indigenous people their own goal to strive for and resource of self-respect. Who knows, maybe one day they'd be the supercilious ones--though hopefully they'd be better than that!
Posted by Squeers, Friday, 20 May 2011 7:38:32 AM
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Hi Squeers,

This 350-word 4-comments-in-24-hours can be inconvenient: in response to your post at 10.53 yesterday, yes, as you write: " .... By all means urge aborigines to help themselves, to pull themselves up by their boot-straps--despite the fact that the cards are stacked against them!"

Yes, indeed, you don't have to tell me or my kids about the unfairness of it. But what should people do - try harder, as Amy Wax writes in her "Race, Rights and Remedies", or give up and cry into their beer ? Yes, life is particularly unfair for the great majority of Aboriginal people, in ways that you can't even imagine. So they try harder, as they are doing, actually. Or what ?

Your post this morning: I love that logic: I feel something must have happened, it resonates - I don't have any evidence for it, but I'll go with it anyway. Thank you for your ideology in a nutshell :)

South Africa has a nominally democratic government now, Squeers: wind your clock forward.

You write: " ... I don't think aborigines should be striving to be like us...." So .... whites have the monopoly of the good life, on higher education, on comfort and security ? Other people shouldn't try to get some of what is rightfully yours alone ? Pull your head out of it, dear.

[TBC]
Posted by Loudmouth, Friday, 20 May 2011 8:51:01 AM
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Had another read.

Yes, it may appeal to many, but I view the article as absolute rubbish and an example of extreme bias only fitting of a poor scholar weighing up the strengths and weaknesses of Aust society.

To suggest that the Howard govt absorbed white supremacist arguments, and that Murdoch journalists have not had some sincere interest in the plight of Aboriginals, is an absolute disgrace.
Posted by Chris Lewis, Friday, 20 May 2011 8:53:19 AM
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Loudmouth,

"South Africa has a nominally democratic government now, Squeers, wind your clock forward."

Same old, same old....democracy isn't always an instant cure.
While not wishing to derail this thread, I'll remind you that the ANC had the cards well and truly stacked against them by the connivance of the outgoing de Klerk government, who bound and tied the new government by signing South Africa up to all sorts of charming globalised Western agreements, mostly administered by the IMF and the World Bank.

You might think Western culture is the pinnacle of all human aspiration. Perhaps Aboriginal people throughout the world see the reality of Western indulgence for what it is, a system driven by greed and excess, incompatible with honourable shared social bonds and values.
Posted by Poirot, Friday, 20 May 2011 9:24:43 AM
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Chris Lewis,

You may not have noticed it, but it was pretty evident to me that the Howard government did absorb much of the emotive community antipathy toward anything not of White/European/Aussie stock engendered by the Hanson phenomenon.

They quickly realised the groundswell of support for her views and decided that it was a winner. Mr Howard was a wiz at playing the electorate to the right tune at the right time, and the Liberal party quickly moved to take over the Hanson mantle.

They even tried the same ploy in the Haneef Affair - an act of pure desperation, but also a pertinent example of playing the race/terror threat card when the chips were down
Posted by Poirot, Friday, 20 May 2011 9:36:32 AM
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The battle lines have been drawn for half a century. The conservatives seek to impose their views on Aborigines, the progressives seek to enable Aborigines to contribute to Australian society in their own right. The conservative view is collapsing because it's patriarchal and patriarchies are collapsing worldwide. The progressive view has remained constant and will prevail. The transition is taking some time because its part of a global process and its occurring between the extremes of human culture, the most ancient and the most modern. Oh, and if you work for Rupert Murdoch it doesn't matter one wit whether you have "a sincere interest in the plight of Aboriginals", you get paid for writing what the quivering control freaks of the collapsing patriarchy want you to write.
Posted by whistler, Friday, 20 May 2011 10:26:16 AM
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There's one question that I can't move past.
Some of the people who committed depredations against Aboriginals in the 20th century, whether in extra judicial actions or as part of official policy must still be alive so why haven't they been named and prosecuted?
I mean, "following orders" is no excuse and it's interesting to note that when the Australian government was setting up it's war crimes tribunals in the late forties the legal precedent used to assess culpability in the Japanese chain of command was actually a case in Queensland relating to an expedition in which Aborigines were murdered. In that case the commander of the expedition was prosecuted even though he played no part in the actual murder and kidnapping of Aborigines, the perpetrators were, incidentally, convicted and hanged.
What's more, when Pilger asserts that the genocide of Indigenous Australians has been recognised what does he mean?
By whom has it been recognised?
Genocide is not a crime under Australian law and the claim of Genocide has been put before the high court by Aborigines and rejected.
I'm being slightly "cute" with this post, examining the issues of Genocide and why there has been no serious attempt to investigate the claims is not "rocket surgery" but nobody else has brought it up yet.
Posted by Jay Of Melbourne, Friday, 20 May 2011 11:02:11 AM
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You are a disappointment, Joe.

The Stolen Generation certainly is contested, which means there are opposing views. Sorry I'm not willing to dismiss the whole thing on your say so. It's got nothing to do with anything "resonating" with me. If it really was a beat-up someone would have laid down the irrefutable evidence by now, but the whole thing's just another example of "history wars".
I'm buggered if I know why blaming aboriginals "resonates" with you!

On South Africa, in the context of what I said, obviously I meant as it was under apartheid. But since you appear to have little else to offer, quibbling over trivialities will have to do eh?

Your last criticism is contemptible:
<<You write: " ... I don't think aborigines should be striving to be like us...." So .... whites have the monopoly of the good life, on higher education, on comfort and security ? Other people shouldn't try to get some of what is rightfully yours alone ? Pull your head out of it, dear.>>

So based on what I've said above, you think this is a fair summation of my motives: That I'm jealously guarding and seeking to withhold western privileges from aborigines?

Well that's quite a feat, if you can get that from what I've been saying, deny the Stolen Generation's a cinch. I'll leave you to it!

...And who's side are you on?
Posted by Squeers, Friday, 20 May 2011 12:05:09 PM
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whistler, over the last twenty (20) years, “All Governments” have allocated many “billions of dollars”
directly to, Aboriginal Organisations, Programs and Services.
Many initiatives of us Aboriginal People. And for the purpose of, and in the spirit of "Self-determination"
Or, “to enable Aborigines to contribute to Australian society in their own right”
Arthur Bell. ( aka. Bully ) www.whitc.info
Posted by bully, Friday, 20 May 2011 2:19:23 PM
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[contd.]

Hi Squeers,

And: "They should see Western culture for what it is and reject and and go beyond it...." While you sit back and enjoy ? So they are your surrogate revolutionaries, destined to sacrifice themselves for some as-yet-unknown cause that you might approve of ? What if they say instead: "Squeers, p!ss off - I want what you have had for generations." Just a touch of arrogance there, dearie.

Indigenous people are as entitled to the comforts and innovations of the world as you or I are/am. They are as entitled to be corrupted by IKEA or crap food or big cars as we are. They are as entitled to go to uni, and send their kids to uni, or get good jobs in the city, or go on holidays to Bali, or to conferences in Hawai'i, as you or me. I don't mean just the Larissa Behrendts but the Bess Prices too, and her children - all Indigenous people who make the effort.

And they won't be fooled by any grandiose schemes to p!ss them off to somewhere in the north either, no capital cities, no separate states, no separate universities - no more Apartheid. I don't think either you or Pilger understand that yet, with respect.

On South Africa: well, you were using the present tense :)

On your last post, concerning the 'Stolen Generation' fraud, you could have written: " ... If it really WASN'T a beat-up someone would have laid down the irrefutable evidence by now... "

Peter Read wrote of tens of thousands of Aboriginal children stolen. Can you cite one case ? Or is just gut feeling, what 'resonates' ? 'That sounds about right, so I'll go with it.'

[TBC]
Posted by Loudmouth, Friday, 20 May 2011 2:55:12 PM
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Loudmouth,

They are already corrupted by Western crap food, alcohol, etc.

It seems your yardstick for making it as a human being is to go to "uni", and then to really make it by going into debt like the rest of society, to mindlessly consume.... even to go to "Bali".

It seems to me that Aboriginal people value their culture and traditions a little too highly to chuck it away on some homogeneous "made it" consumer identity.

It's a shame (from your point of view) that not every culture is imbued with a materialist fetish like yer average superior Westerner - just think, Australian indigenous culture would have been blended out and obliterated long ago if that had been the case.

....dearie.
Posted by Poirot, Friday, 20 May 2011 3:32:21 PM
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Patriarchies allocate funding to patriarchal enterprise, Bully, thus the problems your site http://www.whitc.info so eloquently documents. Remove patriarchy with provision for women's legislatures and not only are the problems removed, the Aboriginal contribution to Australian society accords in its entirety with tradition.
Posted by whistler, Friday, 20 May 2011 7:27:14 PM
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[contd.]

Poirot, when you write something sensible and stop twisting what I say, then I'll get back to you. Don't confuse relative with absolute: equal rights mean theright to do the same dopey things that others do, it doesn't mean that I am advocating that they actually do the same dopey things that others do. Everyone should have an equal right to get divorced, but I'm not advocating that everyone should get divorced. Can you grasp the difference ? Ask a primary school kid, they can help.

Squeers, to continue,

I'm sure there would have had to be many, many cases of policemen or missionaries or nurses or doctors or social workers making a judgment about the conditions of life of a particular child, non-Aboriginal as well as Aboriginal, and spiriting the kid off to some children's home 'for their own good'. Let's say ten cases per year per state - a total of many thousands over the past century. Some of those cases must have bent the rules - but where are they ? I've been racking my poor brains over this for the past fifteen years, and still don't know of any unambiguous cases where, for no good reason, children were taken away. Single mother, pre-1971, no benefits ? No mystery. Destitute family ? No mystery. Drunken father and/or mother ? No mystery. Mother died, father shot through ? No mystery. Father deserted, mother went round the bend ? No mystery.

You did write: " ... I don't think aborigines should be striving to be like us...." My point is simply: isn't that up to them ? Not really your business or my business - all we should be doing is facilitating their choices one way or the other. I'll stand by what I wrote, Squeers, and ask again: do you think you have some sort of monopoly of the comforts of life, and that Aboriginal people should for some reason foreswear all of that ? What if they don't ? Like say, Larissa Behrendt, for example ? .......

[TBC]
Posted by Loudmouth, Saturday, 21 May 2011 9:20:05 AM
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[contd.]

[So many lies to rebut, so little time ! ]

....... Or should only a Precious Few have those opportunities, while the rest fit back into their natural habitat, out in the sticks ?

So there's your homework for this weekend, Squeers: find a case of Stolen Generation; and provide justification why Aboriginal people should be true to their Culture and shouldn't have the advantages and comforts that you and I have had. And Larissa Behrendt too, come to think of it, which is fine by me, as long as all Aboriginal people have the same mentoring opportunities.

Someone mentioned the Aboriginal Flag: it's recognised by law as an Australian flag. You can fly it where you like. There has never been any move to outlaw it: save that rubbish for overseas audiences. Maria and I were making flags from about 1972, after the Embassy was set up, until the early eighties; I think we made about two hundred. We sent them all over Australia and around the world, and Maria used to give them to visiting artists, Roberta Flack, Buffy Sainte-Marie, B.B. King, the Drifters. Some of them, we got paid for, at least the cost of materials.

Poirot, your point about Indigenous people going to uni: we were running Career Workshops, as we called them, in the mid-nineties and I heard a couple of rumours that we shouldn't raise people's hopes since after all, 'Not all Aboriginal kids were going to go to university.' I learnt to interpret that to mean: 'I think that hardly any Aboriginal kids will ever have the ability to go to university - divert them to TAFE instead.'

Sorry to disappoint you, Poirot, but at least a third of all Aboriginal kids will be going on to uni for the foreseeable future. That will be their choice, not yours or mine. Try to get used to it. You're on the Left, you think ? Please, dearie !

Whistler,

Can't you grasp that, only in common forums, can women, or any other group, raise issues which the entire assembly must consider ?

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Saturday, 21 May 2011 9:29:52 AM
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Old news Loudmouth. Lift your tone, you're sounding boorish.

3. Equal rights governance rebadges the Senate a women's legislature with members elected by women and the House of Representatives a men's legislature with members elected by men, each with exactly the same powers to initiate, review, amend, accept or reject legislation enacted with passage through both.

4. A Cabinet of equal numbers of women, appointed by a majority of the women's legislature, and men, appointed by a majority of the men's legislature, reconciles the business of the Parliament and provides leadership.

http://2mf.net/amendment.htm
Posted by whistler, Saturday, 21 May 2011 9:47:06 AM
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Joe,
that's bloody rich! You accusing Poirot of twisting "your" words!

My full sentence that you conveniently take a snippet from was:
"I don't think aborigines should be striving to be like us. They should see Western culture for what it is and reject and and go beyond it".

I was clearly criticising out Western culture that you appear to celebrate.
It goes without saying that we all live our lives according to our lights. I don't profess to tell anyone what to do.
I wish aboriginal people well and merely expressed the rhetorical hope they might be better than us. I don't "expect" anything of the kind.
Nor do I like the idea of segregation, but as I've said above, they already live under ideological apartheid.
Posted by Squeers, Saturday, 21 May 2011 9:48:12 AM
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Hi Squeers,

I'm sure you would agree that dialogue is preferable to shunning the opinions of others, or abusing them. Thank you for that :)

You did write "I don't think aborigines should be striving to be like us." and seem to reinforce that with: " .... they already live under ideological apartheid." Indeed, but only if sections of the extreme Right and Left have their way.

So ...... somebody cops a boot up the freckle for 'assimilating' indigenous people [don't you just love how people use the active voice for the actions of non-Indigenous people, and almost exclusively the passive voice in relation to what 'happens' to Indigenous people [e.g., they were 'assimilated] ? Fascinating !] and them one in the nuts for forcing them somehow to live under apartheid ?

If you mean, being forced to live in remote areas, with poor, and declining, education and therefore drastically reduced opportunities, then yes, you are right, people find themselves living under a form of Apartheid. Is that what you had in mind ?

The great majority of Indigenous people now live in urban areas. They have chosen to do so. They seek opportunities, education and work, in urban areas. They seek the means to live lives which are as secure, productive and comfortable as yours or mine, and they have every damn right to do so, the same rights as you do. And I'd defend your rights to those benefits, just as I would defend the right of every Indigenous person to those benefits, if they chose to access them.

One thing that has struck me over half a century of involvement with Indigenous people is how active they usually are in their own lives, how they are more likely to spit in the eye of an abuser than touch the forelock to him. They make their own calculations about options - at least, the people in urban environments - and good or bad, right or wrong, those are THEIR decisions. They don't dance to anybody else's tune.

[TBC]
Posted by Loudmouth, Saturday, 21 May 2011 10:21:39 AM
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Loudmouth,

You are not only loud, but you run a particularly snide line of reply which distinguishes your argument in the negative.

....however, I'm sure you're cognizant of the essence of my post, which was partly concurring with Squeers that Western culture is base and awash with avarice and excess - and perhaps our indigenous brethren would do well to incorporate the superior values of their own culture in an effort to rise above the detritus of ours.

Of course they are welcome and capable of joining the party, but don't fool yourself that their culture will not be dissolved in the process.

I know you consider yourself to be an authority on this issue, but even with the aid of your sneering superiority, you aren't the font of all wisdom.
Posted by Poirot, Saturday, 21 May 2011 11:01:50 AM
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Most Australians have long since moved on from the primitive culture of wretched paternalism which washed up on the shores of the continent two centuries ago, having almost entirely assimilated into the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander tradition of equitable governance between women and men, as acknowledged in the Federal Court by Justice John von Doussain with the view he was "not satisfied on the evidence before this Court that the applicants have established on the balance of probabilities that restricted women's knowledge as revealed to Dr Fergie and Professor Saunders was not part of genuine Aboriginal tradition" [Chapman v Luminis Pty Ltd (No 5) (21 August 2001):400]; in ethnographic studies, as with Diane Bell's seminal "Daughters of the Dreaming" (1983); by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples themselves, as with the proposition the 'men never used to boss over the women', "We Are Bosses Ourselves" [Fay Gale (ed), 1983]; and through the affirmation of a heritage of matrilineage, as with Professor Larissa Behrendt.

Why did Australians ever bother with granting women franchise soon after Federation if, as Gary Johns claims in his publication Aboriginal Self-Determination: The Whiteman's Dream, "tribal Aborigines had no real understanding of how the world worked". Australians have overwhelmingly decided by democratic process on many occasions with the progressive achievement of equality between women and men that it is themselves who need to change their behaviour, that taking personal responsibility for their own actions rather than blaming the victim, is the way forward.

There remains reform of the instruments of governance which would have particular impact in contact with traditional communities. Reform of the nation's federal and state constitutions to provide for governance by agreement between women's and men's legislatures, courts and corporate committees would promote genuine dialogue. There is no other enduring solution.
Posted by whistler, Saturday, 21 May 2011 12:25:31 PM
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[contd.]

[you'll have to take your turn, Whistler]

Squeers,

So can we come to an agreement that we will never again - unless it's impossible otherwise - use the passive voice in relation to what Indigenous people are doing and how they may be thinking, and what may be their options ?

So, to every dreadful evil that may have been done, instead of weeping our Walrus-and-Carpenter (aka Pilger) tears about how powerless people are, [with the implication either than nothing can ever be done (how dreadful), or that they should wait patiently for the Anglo working class to liberate all of society, including them,] let's try to find out what people have done about their predicament as they saw it, how did they respond, how did they bounce back, if they did, how did they push back against the tight constraints imposed by policy and circumstances.

Poirot,

Yes, I have to apologise, I shouldn't demean you or anybody: you're as entitled to your opinions as I am. As you say, I'm not the font of all wisdom as I sometimes pretend to be.

But I'm still not sure what actually was the essence of your post, unless it was an attack on the Enlightment, democracy, the rule of law, equality, solidarity and liberty, freedom of expression and assembly, the rights of individuals to make their own choices. To me, the mundane reality of the Enlightment and what has followed is that it is the culmination - and repudiation - of thousands of years of bitter experiences, inequality, injustice, ignorance and despair.

As a residual Marxist, I follow Marx in rejecting feudalism (and by implication, pre-feudalist ideologies such as traditionalist ideologies and Islam and Christianity), and the excesses of capitalism, seeing capitalism and democracy as prerequisites to a better society.

His colleague Engels took this account further back in history, explaing how savage and barbarous societies evolved, over thousands of years of brutal twists and turns, into State systems based on forced labour and slavery, which in turn evolved - over thousands of years of brutal twists and ......

[TBC]
Posted by Loudmouth, Saturday, 21 May 2011 5:02:00 PM
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Joe:

"So can we come to an agreement that we will never again - unless it's impossible otherwise - use the passive voice in relation to what Indigenous people are doing and how they may be thinking, and what may be their options ?

So, to every dreadful evil that may have been done, instead of weeping our Walrus-and-Carpenter (aka Pilger) tears about how powerless people are, [with the implication either than nothing can ever be done (how dreadful), or that they should wait patiently for the Anglo working class to liberate all of society, including them,] let's try to find out what people have done about their predicament as they saw it, how did they respond, how did they bounce back, if they did, how did they push back against the tight constraints imposed by policy and circumstances".

I do take your point here, but the passive voice is not always patronising, and aggressive rhetoric is not always positive. Aboriginal culture is prostrate rather than passive, and self-destructive rather than assertive. Meanwhile, bourgeois culture is complacently triumphant and judgemental. I'm criticising Westernism and not patronising subalterns.
You're not going to fix the problem by convincing aborigines to carry a chip on the shoulder. It's more complicated than that.
Posted by Squeers, Saturday, 21 May 2011 5:46:57 PM
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[contd.]

turns - into rapacious early capitalist cities and states, which in turn evolved over hundreds of years of brutal twists and turns, into rapacious mature capitalism.

This was the context against which much of the Enlightenment had to struggle, a struggle for ordinary people's rights for equality, for equal gender rights, for equal rights before the law, for equal rights to representation. That hasn't gone all that well, I'm the first to admit, but it sure is a hell of a lot better than any alternative dreamed up so far. Perhaps you have some better ideas than a vague reference to the way that Paleolithic societies did business ? So how did Paleolithic societies - that we all are descended from - differentiate 'church' and 'state ' ? How did they protect the rights of individuals, or is that too bourgeois a question ? How did they facilitate the development of ideas, or is that too an impermissible question ? Did they in any way recognise gender equality ?

In fairness, these are inappropriate questions. But so is the attempt to compare Paleolithic with post-Enlightenment societies, or closed with open societies and ways of seeing the world. We are all (or most of us) post-Enlightenment, open-society people now: that genie is out of the bottle and people in the MENA region are struggling for precisely these innovations, and tacitly against their own backward religious notions. You may disagree. Would you give away your gender equality to be someone's fourth wife, and to give over your children to your shared husband when they turn seven ? If you looked at another guy, would you be happy to risk stoning ? If you were raped, would you want to gather four witnesses in order to avoid being stoned for adultery ?

Equal rights opens up possibilities. It is no guarantee of happiness and success, only of the possibility and uncertainty of outcomes: that's partly why it is often seen as less satisfactory than religion which promises certainty. To be able to try, is to take risks, including

[TBC]
Posted by Loudmouth, Sunday, 22 May 2011 10:25:33 AM
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[contd.]

the risk of failure. The prison of pre-Enlightenment thinking, religious thinking, closed thinking, 'promises' that you never have to think for yourself, or to take risks, you just take whatever society (and god) dishes out. Don't think for yourself, because that way lies danger. But as Marx wrote, our task is to change society for the better - not just whinge about it - which entails enormous personal risks, not to mention constant mental struggle.

So, to paraphrase our dear friend Squeers, which side are we on ? Reaction, or change for the better, with all its risks of failure ? It's up to all of us :)

Hi again Squeers,

There are all sorts of gradations between weeping into your beer and carrying a chip on your shoulder, and people are 'doing' all of them. Currently, around eleven thousand young Indigenous people are studying at universities, mostly too busy to carry any chips on shoulders. Yes exactly, as you say: "It's more complicated than that."

And your observation that " ... Aboriginal culture is .... self-destructive rather than assertive." does not apply to the great majority of Indigenous people who are getting on with life and its predicaments - yes, it may apply very much to the people who are embedded in welfare-dependence, skill-less, people who have frankly put themselves (and their children) into some of these desperate situations. But the vast majority of people I know are as assertive as anybody else, not in aggressive ways but in terms of their obvious self-regard and self-confidence.

And what is quite striking about graduates is that their Aboriginality seems to be strengthened by their study experience: it is as if people weren't particularly conscious or focussed on identity beforehand, maybe they took it for granted, but ever-afterwards their passion and enthusiasm for actively building stronger, more positive, identities seems to increase, and increase the more study they do. Just an observation :)


Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Sunday, 22 May 2011 10:29:31 AM
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Hi Whistler,

Have you begun to learn something ? Your comment,

"Australians have overwhelmingly decided by democratic process on many occasions with the progressive achievement of equality between women and men that it is themselves who need to change their behaviour, that taking personal responsibility for their own actions rather than blaming the victim, is the way forward."

is fine with me, as far as I can understand what you are saying.

But then you blow it:

"There remains reform of the instruments of governance which would have particular impact in contact with traditional communities."

In what conceivable way have traditional social relations been a positive influence on modern forms of gender participation ? This is not to pick on one particular form of society, but just to point out that traditional societies EVERYWHERE have - almost inevitably - discriminated against women. Whether societies were based on hunter-gathering, or pastoral/foraging activity, or peasant societies, or early capitalism, on whatever continent, the position of women has almost always been subordinate to that of men. If there is anything to learn from their multitude of situations, it is that (a) gender equality (to the extent that it has been achieved) is a feature of modern capitalist societies, and (b) that it is an incredibly valuable achievement from which there should never be any retreat. In that sense, to defer to traditional forms of social relations is a reactionary step away from gender equality.

Then you really blow it:

"Reform of the nation's federal and state constitutions to provide for governance by agreement between women's and men's legislatures, courts and corporate committees would promote genuine dialogue."

How the hell do you have dialogue if people are in separate chambers ? Why even try !? With differing outcomes submitted to whom, for final approval ? Two more bodies of 'elders' ?! God give us strength.

OF COURSE there has to be dialogue, but in the same chamber, in the one chamber, where ALL participants, regardless of gender, deliberate over the same issues equally, without preference.

One day, Whistler, you may listen and learn.

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Sunday, 22 May 2011 12:49:29 PM
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You might get a big thrill out of the nonsense men came up with about gender relations at a time when the The Lancet published the view a woman's uterus would explode if she attended university, Loudmouth, but there's hardly anyone else left in Australia who does, or the entire planet for that matter. Most Australians are also familiar with the concept of Cabinet government
Posted by whistler, Sunday, 22 May 2011 3:09:03 PM
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I don't know, Whistler, I don't spend my time reading 100-year-old copies of The Lancet :)

As it happens, two thirds of Indigenous students and graduates at university are women and that's fine with me: it's up to the men to get off their freckles and do something for themselves too, and match them - unless of course, their knob-heads will explode if they do: you might know much more about that than me.

If there were as many Indigenous men participating at universities as women, the total numbers would be around fifteen thousand, and graduate numbers would be close to thirty five thousand. Uni works for Indigenous people, but you won't read that in anything Pilger writes: it doesn't fit in with either of his doomsday or the powerlessness scenarios.

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Sunday, 22 May 2011 5:51:30 PM
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How many ordinary white Australians or new Australians are or were ever given land after the old squatter days.

I started my married life with $1.00 in the bank. I had nothing more than most aboriginal people and yet after working hard and paying a mortage for 20years my husband and I bought land and a home. Immigrants come here and still attend school no matter that they are anglo saxon schools. They also start with nothing and end up with land and a house. A lot of these immigrants face the same problems as aboriginals face fitting in with a new culture. How come they manage to make a go of it?

I am pleased that so many aborigines are now getting an educatiion and beginning to lift themselves up off the ground. There are still those, though who want to sit around drunk in the local parks and blame white people for their problems. It 's been 200years, time to get up, take the chip off their shoulders and do the hard work that the rest of Australia has to do to be able to own a relatively small piece of land of their own. Nobody gives land to anyone, white, black or in between, but everyone has an equal chance to obtain it by their own efforts. It's called equality.
Posted by CHERFUL, Tuesday, 24 May 2011 1:00:06 AM
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Hi Cherful,

I was surprised to learn some years ago that a 'land grant' didn't mean that anybody got the land free (except state/privincial governments), but more like that it had been released for sale - it ewas no longer 'reserved'. Governments made their money by selling land, not by giving it away.

Here in SA, it was thought at first that a farmer cold make a go of forty acres @ (from memory) one pound/acre (when an annual wage would have been around twenty or thirty pounds), but pretty soon they realised that they needed far more than that. So they offered sales of 160-acre lots.

Very wealthy landowners back in Scotland and England bought huge areas, but they still had to pay for it, it wasn't free. George Fife Angas paid for hundreds, maybe thousands, of dissident Germans to come out and take up land from about 1840, and they were still paying him and his family back for decades.

Yes, it had been Aboriginal land, but at least down this way, the Aboriginal people tended to live along river and lake-sides and not to use the drier pasture and woodland more than five or ten km away from the water. People were enticed away from their land, and even from the river and lakes, by the new whaling stations and towns and all the strange things they had to offer, so once the whaling industry collapsed, they would have come back to find their lands already occupied.

But they still had the right, and were supported by the Protector, to use the river- and lake-sides: in order to hunt and fish, they were given a 15-20 foot tent, a 15-to-25-foot 'canoe' (more like a raft), and either a shotgun or a rifle every seven years, fishing lines and gear every year, and had their rifle or shotgun repaired for free, from the Protector. As far as I can tell, this was still going on in the early twentieth century.

[TBC]
Posted by Loudmouth, Tuesday, 24 May 2011 10:29:40 AM
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[contd.]

Meanwhile, out in pastoral country, the rights of Aboriginal people were set out in all pastoral lease agreements - all over the country, in every state and territory [except for the period 1911-1924 in the NT]. This clause had to be in every pastoral lease:

"And reserving to aboriginal inhabitants of the said State
and their descendants during the continuance of this lease
full and free right of egress and regress into upon and over
the said lands and every part thereof and in and to the
springs and surface waters therein and to make and erect
and to take and use for food, birds and animals ferae naturae
in such manner as they would have been entitled to if this
lease had not been made."

What does that last phrase suggest ? " ... in such manner as thy would have been entitled to if this lease had not been made." That people had free access to all Crown Lands ? So where is the 'terra nullius' ? And if no enforced 'terra nullius', then what were the relations really like between people and pastoralists ? What really happened ? Or do we keep retrofitting history according to our beliefs and prejudices now ?

Then, after the Native Title Act of 1993, the lawyers come along and 'negotiate' ILUAs (Indigenous Land Use Agreements) on behalf of Aboriginal people: now, if you are Aboriginal and want to go on to a pastoral property, you have to front up to a committee. Where was the due diligence ?

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Tuesday, 24 May 2011 10:36:45 AM
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I would just like to point something out to Bully, since he has alot to say on issues he knows little about. Bess Price most certainly does present herself as a leader in Central Australia. She is in fact a Consultant for the NT Government and Chair of the NT Advisory Committee on Indigenous Affairs. Bess is a totally assimilated Aboriginal woman who lives a middle class life in Alice Springs with her white husband. She has long ago abandoned her culture and does not speak on behalf of the people of the Centre. The signatures on a petition that was recently published purporting to show that the Walpiri support Bess Price were collected at a funeral and none of the signatories knew what they were signing. They were told they were signing something else entirely. I believe another Aboriginal Leader, Alison Anderson MP, collected these signatures on behalf of Bess. The people that need to be consulted about the needs of the people in the Bush, are not assimilated Aborigines but the Yapa that live out there, trying to retain a semblence of a traditional lifestyle. Bess is causing alot of trouble on the east coast amongst Aboriginal people who don't know who to believe. All I can say is, don't believe Bess.
Posted by Nampijinpa Snowy River, Tuesday, 24 May 2011 1:37:13 PM
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Hi Snowy River,

Ah ! The passive voice ! How useful it can be to put someone down.

I should imagine that people on both sides around Alice Springs are campaigning like mad for and against the Intervention, schooling, employment programs, control of the grog and drugs and gambling, and a hundred other issues.

Meanwhile, mainly in the cities, people are getting on with life: record numbers at university, record numbers of graduates, maybe thirty thousand graduates by the end of next year, record numbers of kids finishing Year 12, record home-ownership, probably record low Indigenous unemployment, I wouldn't be surprised.

So what's really working ? Remote community life, or urban, participatory life ? Dependence or active agency ?

So what direction, what pathways, should Indigenous people choose to aim for ?

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Tuesday, 24 May 2011 2:59:06 PM
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Aborigines should aim for excellence in education where they live, nothing less. This has always been the way, the model Europeans assimilated. Same rights for all citizens, equality. If Australians can't educate children in remote communities to post tertiary level they're not really trying. Half-baked solutions aren't what Australians are all about.
Posted by whistler, Tuesday, 24 May 2011 4:57:42 PM
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I hate to dampen your spirits on the university front, Joe, and I'm not singling out indigenous students, but undergraduate studies these days are more and more becoming another arm of subsidised welfare. Because the universities all privatised and competitive, students are now 'clients' and the standards have plummeted. I do a bit of contract teaching and mark undergraduate essays galore, and the standard's nothing less than appalling. I also know people who work in prep-study courses and they're conscious too of the unspoken pressure to get 'customers' into the system. I think it's great if people can derive self-esteem and empowerment from tertiary studies, but these days it's all about making money rather than learning. Acadame itself does actually maintain some rigour because the vast majority of undergraduates are destined for the "professions", and only a tiny percentage become worthy "academics"--but they of course get to enjoy all the perks and prestige, and commonly fall prey to their own egos.
Higher learning is little different to processing bacon, I'm afraid (I hope vanna's reading this).
Posted by Squeers, Tuesday, 24 May 2011 5:01:03 PM
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Thanks Whistler, I couldn't put it much better myself.

Squeers, that's all a bit non sequitur, don't you think ? Give people a chance, admire their efforts and aspirations, before you p!ss on them from a great height. What's your alternative suggestion for Indigenous people: stay/go on welfare ? I hope you never come within cooee of any Indigenous students.

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Tuesday, 24 May 2011 6:04:30 PM
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Whistler, Squeers,

Your last posts re. ( Aboriginal ? ) academics,

All this stuff has been covered,

at

www.whitc.info

Arthur Bell, aka. bully.
Posted by bully, Tuesday, 24 May 2011 6:20:23 PM
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Ooh you are sensitive, Joe. Again I'm only criticising the system and as I said not singling out any group. All are patronised equally!
I'm not being cynical and I'm certainly not pissing on anybody from a great height--I worked in factories from age 14 to 42, remember, and my life's been less than perfect too! I'm just telling it how it is and without exaggeration.
We're all being conned; you seem to be cool with that but I'm not.
Posted by Squeers, Tuesday, 24 May 2011 6:21:47 PM
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"All are patronised equally"!

Squeers, what of "Abstudy" ?

What of "Indigenous Units ?

Arhtur Bell. aka. bully.
Posted by bully, Tuesday, 24 May 2011 6:31:47 PM
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bully,

I have no direct experience of abstudy or indigenous units so can't comment, and I have no wish to belittle anyone. When I look at the work of some of the academics I admire, I feel very inadequate. I only say I don't think the modern western sense of "accomplishment" is worth a cracker. There are other reasons besides political and cultural decadence for this.
Posted by Squeers, Tuesday, 24 May 2011 8:15:24 PM
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"This is Marlene Hodder "Nampijinpa Snowy River" again. I have to correct an assumption by one of your commentators. I am not Aboriginal. I was actually born in England and came to Australia in 1961 (and became an Australian citizen in 1985). I have never claimed to be Aboriginal although I have had a longterm relationship with the Lardil people of Mornington Island. I have twin sons to a Lardil man. I do not have the right to speak for Aboriginal people but I can speak of my experiences and I have the right to speak up when I see injustice being perpetrated in our society. I do assist and advocate for people if they ask for that help. I support the Mulrunji people in their fight for justice and all those struggling under an unfair justice system. We cannot stand silently by as these human rights abuses take place".
Arthur Bell. aka. bully.
Posted by bully, Tuesday, 24 May 2011 10:25:11 PM
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We all have our unique stories, Squeers - I was raised in Bankstown in an extreme left-wing (CPA) family which split up when I was five or six. Yes, I did fifteen to twenty years in factories and on farms, looking for the revolutionary working class. But that's a long time ago and, all in all, I've had a pretty good life.

But it amazes me ! I've put this on different OLO threads and threads on other sites, and sent it off to law professors and Indigenous loudmouths (I'm not so unique!) when they lamented about 'terra nullius':

"And reserving to aboriginal inhabitants of the said State
and their descendants during the continuance of this lease
full and free right of egress and regress into upon and over
the said lands and every part thereof and in and to the
springs and surface waters therein and to make and erect
and to take and use for food, birds and animals ferae naturae
in such manner as they would have been entitled to if this
lease had not been made."

but I've never got any sort of thoughtful response. Ditto, it seems, from OLO readers: have I said something wrong ? Something which conflicts so completely with what you have been led to believe ? If so, I'll retract it at once, hoping that I can keep at least some friends that way.

But the truth is very sticky: there it is, that's the set-up that all governments included in the Schedules to their Pastoral Acts, right up into the 1990s - after which, thanks to Aboriginal people's lawyers and radical activists (who were so sure that "We've got nothin' ! Nothin' ! White b@stards !") they could drop it out.

The truth shall make you free, but by Christ it is sometimes so bloody inconvenient, isn't it ?

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Wednesday, 25 May 2011 8:43:16 PM
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and to take and use for food, birds and animals ferae naturae
in such manner as they would have been entitled to if this
lease had not been made."

You are right Joe, the The above statement(in full) is an admisssion that the Aboriginies occupied the territory of Australia before the British came.

However, Invaders do not usually hand a country back without a military coup or power struggle of some kind. Law Courts can only allow so much because at the end of the day they can hand the whole of Sydney or Melbourne or Pastoral Land back, the snag being that the whites won’t just pack up and leave those areas unless they are forced to by some kind of political or military force.

One day due to immigration and democracy maybe the whites won’t hold political power any more and then they may be systematically pushed out of their positions of power and financial influence. The new rulers however may not be benevolent to the Aboriginal people or any other ethnic group in the country either.

It is not over yet, I see this country divided up into at least 3 countries in a few hundred years or so. It is not only the aboriginal people that will demand huge areas of land to call their own but some of these other big tribes flooding into this country will one day demand separate states or countries of their own,
Meanwhile the only way for the aboriginal people or any ordinary Australian citizen to own land is to go to school, get a good job and buy land and a house. It is the only way permitted by the present ruling culture.

I and any other whites could not roam around on most grazing and pastoral properties either. Try setting up a camp site and the owner would very soon be down to ask you to leave, black or white
Posted by CHERFUL, Thursday, 26 May 2011 12:17:16 AM
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Well, Cherful, pastoral leases run only for forty two years, with an option for another forty two, as far as I know. A lessee pays an annual rent or lease fee, depending on the number of stock: at least that's how it used to be.

Traditionally, Aboriginal people held the land in family groups: any other Aboriginal people or groups had to have the permission of the landholders. What the pastoral leases recognised, as far as I can understand them, were the usufructuary rights, the rights to use the land for food, shelter and ceremony, pretty much everything but the right to exclude non-family landholders, including pastoralists: the lease agreement recognised Aboriginal peoples' right to use the land for every other purpose.

Of course, from a practical point of view, it was clear to any government that Aboriginal people, on their own land, were going to still use it as they always had, regardless of whatever law might have been made down in the capital city. So, after about 1840 or 1850, depending on the state, they wrote that clause into pastoral leases.

As well, pastoralists needed labour and who better than the local people ? Arthur Upfield wrote about station-owners building dams on creeks and rivers near the homesteads, in order to attract Aboriginal settlement, so that labour would be available. Station owners and managers were usually appointed to be ration-keepers, so Aboriginal people on pastoral leases came to know that they could come in at any time and collect rations - which they occasionally did when there was a drought or bad times. But stations had other attractions for young men - tobacco, clothes, horses, secure food supplies for the old people. It was not all one way or the other, all cut and dried.

Inconvenient truths :)

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Thursday, 26 May 2011 12:49:30 AM
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Just in connection with that last post, I remembered that the South Australian government held a 'Royal Commission Into The Aborigines' in 1899, towards the end of a very long drought.

This Report dealt mainly with pastoral leases (mainly in SA), restrictions on Chinese-Aboriginal relations in northern Australia, and reports of abuses in the NT (which was under SA administration at the time, and up to 1/1/1911: in those days SA extended well into what is now Queensland, east of Mt Isa). I typed up this whole Report, around 200 pages, so if anybody is interested, get in touch on

rmg1859@yahoo.com.au ,

and I'll send you a copy.

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Thursday, 26 May 2011 11:32:26 AM
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So saying 'sorry' is no longer enough ? So those of us who were saying this three years ago, and getting howled down, were onto something ? Of course, it wasn't enough - of course something, many things, vastly more substantial and long-term, had to be seriously planned and implemented beforehand, before anybody could pat themselves on the back and say 'Well, that's that then.'.

In fact, I've thought for some time that saying 'sorry' in 2000 or 2008 or 2011, was far too premature. So much would have to be done before anybody could do that satisfactorily, as long as there was still unfinished business - as long as there was a Gap to close.

And there will still be unfinished business as long as despair and fear rule remote communities, as long as people there die thirty and forty years younger than no-Indigenous people, as long as Indigenous women are 35 times more likely to suffer violence and sexual abuse, as long as people are denied opportunities to escape these injustices. As long as a third or more of all Indigenous people are shut out of the free and democratic society than other Australians take for granted, there will be unfinished business.

Meanwhile, especially in urban areas, people are gritting their teeth and getting on with life. Twenty six thousand Indigenous university graduates have put in the effort, in spite of racists Left and Right, Black and white.

Never forget, but never let it hold you back - because who wins if you give up ?

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Thursday, 26 May 2011 1:43:39 PM
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I was served by a lovely aboriginal girl on the check out at a major shopping centre yesterday. Good stuff. Maybe it is starting to happen for the next generations. The fact that they have 26.000uni students is a sign that things are turning around for the aboriginal people. I guess it will take time, but it's a wonderful achievement and can only lead to better things for all aborigines in the future. Maybe it was always just a matter of time and adjustment. It isn't and hasn't been easy for them.

I respect their achievment.
Posted by CHERFUL, Thursday, 26 May 2011 9:15:49 PM
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Thanks Cherful, you're right: it certainly hasn't been easy for Indigenous people, in terms of policy as well as demography. But so many are trying, they are seizing opportunities where they can, because what's the alternative ? To sit back and wait to be liberated (there's that passive voice again) by the revolutionary white working class ? Yeah, that's likely to happen any time soon.

No, people are seizing back their sense of agency, from both Left and right, who at various times have counselled them to give up the struggle - for all sorts of reasons - and wait. Well, they're not going to. And they haven't sat back and waited for a hell of a long time now - they are clawing back their rights and god help whoever gets in the way, including the Indigenous elite who also would rather they waited.

Way back in the sixties, I remember, on one of the first occasions I saw my future wife, a five foot ball of energy, she was cursing a white kid down the street 'top-note' about fifty metres away and he was slinking away with his tail between his legs, over some stupid thing or other. There was nothing submissive about her, she would spit in your eye rather than avoid it, none of the touching the forelock, avoiding eye contact, speaking softly bullsh1t that the Pilgers and so much of the ex-Left of the world get off on. Indigenous people confront adversity all the time, but so many don't cave in to it - they try to rise above it with every effort they can muster.

And those are the sorts of people who will prevail, over their obvious enemies and their 'friends' (if you can tell the difference) who advise them to sit and wait, life has been so hard for them that they shouldn't have to do anything for themselves. Bugger that, many would say - stand up and fight for your sense of agency before it is taken away from you by your oh-so-kind 'friends'.

From little things, big things grow

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Sunday, 29 May 2011 9:40:34 PM
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For decades, many of us believed that all Aboriginal rights in land had been denied, taken away, ignored. 'Terra nullius' had been the legal basis of this theft.

It seems that nobody did any research into this allegation, or to try to find out the actual legal situation, Aboriginal people were persuaded that they had nothing (at least until Mabo), which in turn persuaded them that getting anything back would be better than nothing.

But, as any half-decent lawyer would have known, especially those specialising in land law, that every pastoral lease contained that essential clause:

"And reserving to aboriginal inhabitants of the said State
and their descendants during the continuance of this lease
full and free right of egress and regress into upon and over
the said lands and every part thereof and in and to the
springs and surface waters therein and to make and erect
and to take and use for food, birds and animals ferae naturae
in such manner as they would have been entitled to if this
lease had not been made."

So that's all pastoral land AND Crown Land: Aboriginal people had usufructurary rights, the rights to use the land in all traditional ways, except the right to exclude others. On pastoral land and on Crown Land. They didn't have the right to sell their land, or to set a price on it, but neither did they ever have this right under traditional law.

So what were the lawyers employed by Aboriginal groups doing ? How did they earn their money ?

They and their professors advised Aboriginal groups to negotiate for scraps, anything, anything more than nothing. But ..... they already had far more than nothing. Yes ? No ?

Whatever happened to 'due diligence' ?

So dead silence from law professors, from legal advisers. Nobody comments, nobody sues lawyers for negligence.

Very interesting ..........
Posted by Loudmouth, Sunday, 29 May 2011 10:56:06 PM
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Hey Jo ,
Can you give us a web reference for one of these leases that give all these Rights to Indigenous People that you mention ?
Would really love to see it .
Posted by kartiya jim, Wednesday, 1 June 2011 6:55:43 PM
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Hi Jim,

I didn't get any of the references of the web, but from primary documents, Pastoral Board records, Acts of Parliament, etc. As far as I know, none of them have been scanned or transcribed for the web. But if you can check out your State Library or Parliamentary Library, and look up old copies of Pastoral Acts, or Land Acts, or however the legislation of pastoral leases was dealt with, check out the Schedules or Appendices to those Acts, or Ordinances issued in accordance with those Acts, the clause will probably be there.

But if not, try to find the Annual Reports of the AFA (Aborigines' Friends' Association), for 1936, pp. 35-37. [This will take a few postings]. I'll quote the relevant passage:

[page 35] [Paragraph Title]
"The Rights of the Aborigines Safeguarded in the Pastoral Leases"

"AS ENQUIRIES are being made about the retention of the rights of the aborigines to hunt on pastoral leases, the Association has looked carefully into this matter, and we find that in all South Australian pastoral leases the following clause has been inserted:

"And reserving to aboriginal inhabitants of the said State and their descendants during the continuance of this lease full and free right of egress and regress into upon and over the said lands and every part thereof and in and to the springs and surface waters therein and to make and erect and to take and use for food, birds and animals ferae naturae in such manner as they would have been entitled to if this lease had not been made."

"As in Mr Bleakley's [1928] report on the aborigines, it is stated that all leases in North Australia contain the above reservation, but that in some Central Australian leases it had been omitted. We made enquiries of the Federal Government about the matter, and received the following reply:

[TBC]
Posted by Loudmouth, Wednesday, 1 June 2011 10:33:08 PM
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[Contd.]

"[Paragraph Title] Reservation Omitted.

" I desire to refer to your letter of August 28th, 1936, addressed to ther Minister, relative to a paragraph in Mr. [page 36] Bleakley's report on aboriginals, reading as follows: "All leases in North Australia contain the reservation, but in a number of those recently issued in Central Australia the condition has been omitted." and your request for information regarding the statements made in the paragraph quoted. With regard to your enquiry, I would point out that the reservation in favour of the aboriginal inhabitants of the Northern Territory was first included in the Crown Lands Ordinance No. 15 of 1924, and has been carried forward in all subsequent Ordinances, and all pastoral leases issued under those Ordinances are subject to the reservation.

"Prior to the passing of the Crown Lands Ordinance No. 15 of 1924, pastoral leases in the Territory were issued under the Crown Lands Ordinance 1912-1913, and this Ordinance did not provide for any specific reservation in favour of the aboriginals. Further, when the Northern Territory was transferred to the Commonwealth [from South Australia on 1/1/1911], existing estates were preserved by the Northern Territory Acceptance Act, and the pastoral leases granted by South Australia and carried forward, also did not contain any such reservation. Therefore, there are at present [i.e. in 1936] a number of pastoral leases granted under South Australian Acts and the Crown Lands Ordinance 1912-1913, still in force, which do not contain the reservation above referred to. These leases are situated throughout the Northern Territory, and are not confined solely to the region previously called Central Australia. The Northern Territory was divided into two separate territories, called respecitvely, North Australia and Central Australia, at the twentieth parallel of South Latitude, as from March 1st, 1927, by virtue of a proclamation issued under the Northern Australia Act 1926. Pastoral leases were issued under the Crown Lands Ordinances of North Australia and Central Australia respectively, but all such leases contained the reservation.

[TBC]
Posted by Loudmouth, Wednesday, 1 June 2011 10:35:40 PM
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[Contd.]

[Paragraph Title] "Rights Now Safeguarded"

"When the Northern Australia Act was repealed in 1931, the separate territories of North Australia and Central Australia were abolished, and the Northern Territory as formerly was reverted to. A new Crown Lands Ordinance No. 2 of 1931, which repealed the ordinances of North Australia and Central Australia, was passed, and this ordinance is the existing law under which pastoral leases may be granted throughout the Northern Territory and the reservation in favour of the aboriginals [page 37] has been carried forward and applies to all such leases. It will be seen, therefore, that Mr Bleakley's remarks are not correct as they refer to leases recently issued. However, the matter will ultimately correct itself, as, when the existing South Australian leases and those granted under the Crown Lands Ordinance 1912-1913 expire with the effluxion of time [i.e. after a maximum of 42 years from issue] or are sooner determined, any new leases granted over the lands formerly included in the old leases will be issued in accordance with the existing law and be subject to the reservation."

I hope that answers your question, Jim.

The reference to Mr Bleakley's Report of 1928 needs some explanation: Bleakley was a Protector of Aborigines in Queensland at the time and had been asked to carry out a survey of Aboriginal conditions in Northern and Central Australia [i.e. the Northern Territory] by the Commonwealth government, and recommend action, mainly against the Chinese, and whether to move populations away from Alice Springs as the Railway from Adelaide was being completed [i.e. in 1929] [hence the setting up of Jay Creek]. If you are interested, I have a copy of this Report typed up.

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Wednesday, 1 June 2011 10:43:11 PM
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Thanks for the References Joe.I will try to delve deeper into the morass of what was [Practical ]Disposession ,in spite of the "Clauses of Occupation Rights ."
It is hard to believe then with all this proof, that the High Court would go only 4 to 3 in favour of Native Title ??!
What were the Nationals and Liberals Arguments that made it so difficult for the Judges' Wik Decision ?
And THEN to have the Guts of the Decision removed by the Fascist Howard and Crew . Fear Tactics on top of Fear Tactics by the Liberals and Nationals .
Our farming Neighbour was spreading the word that the local Footy and Show Ground was going to be taken away by maurauding Blacks and their High Court Judge Sympathisers !
I enc. a note from Paul Keating today which you may have already seen.
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/squatters-native-title-and-the-fight-for-indigenous-land-rights-20110531-1fel0.html
Posted by kartiya jim, Wednesday, 1 June 2011 11:17:49 PM
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Thanks Jim,

For the life of me, I don't understand why lawyers and law professors haven't talked about this clause in all pastoral leases: I'm not in any way a legal professional, but I've come across this stipulation in about half a dozen various places,

- in the SA 1899 Royal Commission on the Aborigines,

- in an article in about 1999 in either the Aust Jnl of Politics or the Aust Jnl of Hist, something like that, about leases in Victoria (where the author casually mentions that the condition affecting pastoral leases there was universal across Australia),

- in the Schedule (I think it was) of the SA 1989 Environment Act,

- in schedules and ordinances to various Pastoral Acts (and maybe in Crown Lands Acts too) here in SA, and

- in Bleakley's 1928 Report.

I've seen a copy of a Pastoral Lease (issued in about 1903) in the papers relating to the Pastoral Board, in the State Records Office.

It's not as if nobody else could ever come across any of this material if they were looking for it, and they were competent: surely some lawyer somewhere must have come across it. God knows what must be in every law library in Australia.

What the hell were those lawyers doing, advising Aboriginal groups on the basis of 'you got nothing, start from there' ? And charge $ 200 per hour ? Nice work if you can get it.

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Thursday, 2 June 2011 8:49:08 AM
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It's a clause which was inserted into pastoral leases in South Australia from 1851: http://www.nfsa.gov.au/digitallearning/mabo/info/SALeasesWasteLandCrown.htm.
Similar concessions were made elsewhere.

It gives rights to:

• full and free access into, upon, over and from the said land

• except such parts as improvements have been erected upon and

• in to the springs and surface waters thereon and

• to make and erect wurlies and other native dwellings and

• to take and use for food birds and animals ferae naturae as if this lease had not been

http://www.aiatsis.gov.au/ntru/docs/publications/issues/ip94n1.pdf

... and nothing more, which state governments, including those which never inserted the clause into pastoral leases, have largely extended to Aborigines for decades.

If you're an Aboriginal inmate of a prison in NSW every xmas day you're offered a feast of native game including goanna. Only Aborigines are permitted to eat goanna in the state.

To assert, as does Loudmouth, that the clause somehow overturns terra nullius is a fundamental misunderstanding of the law. Overturning terra nullius was about establishing that an indigenous population had a pre-existing system of law which survived. The ability to make and erect wurlies and to take and use native birds and animals for food, on it's own, has absolutely nothing to do with establishing pre-existing law.

To further assert that thousands of those committed to the cause of assisting Aborigines in achieving recognition at law whilst besieged by an onslaught of racism, "that the local Footy and Show Ground was going to be taken away by maurauding Blacks and their High Court Judge Sympathisers", for instance, were actually deluding Aborigines because Aborigines already had the right to behave like fauna, is a significant insult to the memory of many heroic Australians.

There has been recent speculation in South Australia over the 1834 Foundation Act with regard to Aboriginal rights but not in relation to the clause. http://www.reconciliationsa.org.au/learn%20letterspatent.html

Neither is Paul Keating's commentary about the clause, but pastoral leases per se.
Posted by whistler, Thursday, 2 June 2011 9:54:35 AM
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Thanks Whistler,

So - at least in South Australia, but probably in other states, if not in all of them - governments recognised the rights of Aboriginal people to carry on their daily lives as before. The catch would have been that they had to share the land with other users.

A pastoral lease was (is) very specific about how the land can be used under the terms of the lease: a lessee cannot farm, or cultivate the soil except on his/her one-hectare household block - they can only pasture animals. I'm not sure but possibly a pastoral lease will specify either cattle or cheep (or some other livestock) but it won't be a blanket entitlement.

So I don't know what you mean by " ... and nothing more". Don't the rights recognised mean something to you ? Of course, they did not include the right to exclude, they forced Aboriginal people to share the land, but what was recognised was surely far more than 'terra nullius' ? Imagine if Aboriginal groups in the nineties and since then had started to negotiate for more rights to land, on the basis of what rights were already recognised ! i.e. if what rights were already recognised had been the basis for the recognition of 'pre-existing law' !

And you really are being silly to talk about already having 'the right to behave like fauna'. That demeans Aboriginal traditional culture totally.

My point has been that Aboriginal people always had far more land-use rights than 'nothing', over pastoral leases and Crown Land, and it is a tragedy that negotiations post-Mabo were not carried out on that basis.
Posted by Loudmouth, Friday, 3 June 2011 10:26:08 AM
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Loudmouth, the clause, and certain concessions elsewhere, gave Aborigines the same protection as native birds receive today to build nests and forage for food. The Mabo decision overturned terra nullius, the legal basis for the clause, so it has no legal or moral relevance in the post Mabo environment. The suggestion negotiations should proceed from matters which arose when one side viewed the other as fauna is disturbing. Aboriginal culture has never been demeaned by the permutations of European law and never will.
Posted by whistler, Friday, 3 June 2011 12:06:37 PM
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Henry Reynolds and Jamie Dalziel have pretty thoroughly covered the literature and legislation relating to the conferring of use-rights to Aboriginal people over pastoral leases and Crown Lands:

Reynolds and Dalziel: http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/UNSWLawJl/1996/17.pdf

Dalziel: http://kirra.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/UNSWLJ/1999/4.html

And Mary Edmunds, Frank Brennan and Robert French all have very good takes on Aboriginal land use and pastoral leases:

http://www.aiatsis.gov.au/ntru/docs/publications/issues/ip94n1.pdf

After all, since a pastoral lease was for a specific purpose, how could it be exclusive ? So how could it exclude Aboriginal people from traditional forms of land use ?

And another point that every government must have been aware of: if Aboriginal people WERE excluded from pastoral leases and Crown Lands, then on the one hand, are they outside the protection of the law ? Are they outlaws, in British law ? And since they are on their own land, if they rebel or carry out attacks on 'settlers', are their actions quite legitimate in terms of international law ?

And on the other hand, if they are British subjects, for whom the government is thereby responsible, to what extent can any of their rights be ignored, or removed ? And where can they go if they cannot stay on pastoral leases ? And why do that anyway: Aboriginal people wanted to stay on or near their own land, their land-use was compatible with pastoralists' land use, pastoral stations needed labour, and everywhere Aboriginal people were curious about these new forms of economy and living. So why create problems where none needs to be ?

So now, in 2011, we are left with the shambles of a complete misunderstanding of colonial and early Australian law, and of what land rights Aboriginal people already and always had. At least, until the lawyers negotiated away most of those rights in the period since Mabo.
Posted by Loudmouth, Friday, 3 June 2011 12:14:56 PM
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There is no "misunderstanding of colonial and early Australian law" prior to Mabo. Aborigines had the same rights as fauna unless they succumbed to European law. Aboriginal people were considered to have, and to always have had, nothing, because their capacity to have anything through pre-existing law was not recognised. Since Mabo lawyers have negotiated away nothing because Aborigines had nothing to negotiate away in the first place, apart from rights Europeans extended to fauna.
Posted by whistler, Friday, 3 June 2011 12:44:32 PM
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You're talking through your hat, Whistler. What would have constituted a full recognition of Aboriginal traditrional rights to land ? All those features and functions that you listed above, plus the right to exclude all others. Any other rights ?

So Aboriginal people on pastoral leases and Crown Land had rights - it's not as if they had 'nothing'. They couldn't exclude - but neither could pastoralists, then and now.

Think of it this way: if pastoralists were granted the right, on payment of annual lease fees, to one form of land-use, it implied that there were many other uses - Aboriginal usufructurary rights and rights to camp and carry out ceremonies, mineral leases, education leases, railway leases, roadway leases, the right to travel through a pastoral lease by tourists, military leases, missions, etc.

So the use of land by pastoralists and the use of land by Aboriginal people were quite compatible, complementary and recognised by all legal systems in Australia, at least in the nineteenth and most of the twentieth centuries.

As for the requirement that you infer in your last post, that Aboriginal people would be required to live and 'nest' in trees, as if they were no more than native bird-life, you might have some trouble persuading anybody, Whistler.

I'm certainly not saying that colonial and early Australian legal systems fully recognised Aboriginal native title. But what rights were recognised were a long way from 'terra nullius', from 'nothing'. It's a tragedy that negotiations weren't carried out on the basis of that recognition.

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Friday, 3 June 2011 1:29:20 PM
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Jo , whatever rights they had , the right to water was the most important,and most abused by whites as it is now.
Major Mitchell "Blushed inwardly,in front of my sable companion " when trying to find clean water for his team of men , while exploring north- west NSW in the 1800's.
They had to place branches in the water to try to have some water half suitable to drink .
Having had a few drinks of livestock polluted water on Pastoral Leases through necessity in my younger ,sillier days ,one can only imagine how cranky Aboriginal People would have been with the continual fouling of their drinking water as livestock and their well armed attendents continued their spread west,north and south .
Needless to say the wildlife , their legal food moved as well - but without the problems that Aboriginal People had, moving into the land of a Nation more remote from settlement and speaking another Language .
All the Finely crafted Clauses ,created in the the Capitals and transported by squatters to the bush , created with good intention, meant in practice - Nothing !
In fact it enabled the Govts and their Agent squatters to maintain their avaricious and destructive expansion on Aboriginal Land with the Aboriginals bearing the Cost .
Posted by kartiya jim, Friday, 3 June 2011 4:01:14 PM
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Loudmouth, those features and functions listed above, plus the right to exclude all others, would constitute full recognition of traditional rights to land held by the Sulphur-crested Cockatoo. The notion fauna should possess a right at Common Law to exclude all others is beyond bizarre. If you're arguing, as you seem to be, that a perceived recognition of traditional law in some form granted under the doctrine of terra nullius can be revisited once terra nullius has been removed, your argument is a nonsense. If, on the other hand, you're arguing that certain rights to lands granted under the assumption Aborigines had succumbed to European law can be revisited, state governments for a very long time have largely recognised those rights, so your argument, however well intentioned, has no relevance.
Posted by whistler, Friday, 3 June 2011 5:01:21 PM
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Hi Jim,

Yes, the legal position was muddied by breaches of the law, which would have included attacks on Aboriginal groups and individuals, massacres and all manner of outrages. But the legal position and how it evolved across Australia would have been as Dalziel (1999) has described above: I strongly recommend it. The point is that Aboriginal groups had more rights to use land undisturbed than we have been led to believe and this has led many of us into assuming 'terra nullius' unnecessarily, including some 'learned' justices who should have known better.

Whistler,

The colonial position was to recognise customary land usage practices in all its colonies, including Australia and New Zealand. How Aboriginal people lived and how they used the land was recognised in Australian law - that's the gist of what I am trying to get across to you. If you want to compare those practices to the habits of native fauna, that's your problem to deal with.

For anybody else who is interested in how British colonial authorities actually handled issues of land tenure in the territories that they had invaded, going back to the Middle Ages, check out 'Land Law and Custom in the Colonies' (1st Ed. 1946) by Charles K. Meek, Frank Cass & Co., publishers.

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Friday, 3 June 2011 5:47:22 PM
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Jo , You missed my point or perhaps I did not explain it better .
The Indigenous family's reliance on wild food plants as staples disappeared - they turned to protein .
If you were lucky there were fish and birds if you avoided the guns and poison and the Season was good - otherwise sheep and cattle would be the " Deadly Dividend " of white occupation .
The Land rapidly became putrid for Aboriginal People and in most settled parts of Australia remains so .
Posted by kartiya jim, Friday, 3 June 2011 6:25:57 PM
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Yes, Loudmouth, how Aboriginal people lived and how they used the land was recognised in Australian law and still is, widely, extensively and unilaterally. How Aboriginal people lived and used the land according their own law was not, until Mabo. The comparison of traditional practices to the habits of native fauna comes when you try to infer Aboriginal law was recognised in Australian law prior to Mabo, it was not.
Posted by whistler, Friday, 3 June 2011 9:36:52 PM
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