Don't send your teachers, doctors and social-workers to remote communities, but to be fair, don't send your policemen and other law enforcers there either, also don't limit this lifestyle to those of aboriginal descent.

No bribes - no chains!

My limited understanding of WA 'communities' is that the smallest 173 officially contain a population of 1300, or about seven per 'community'. A house. Maybe.

If you check out the tracks leading away from major 'communities' on Google Earth, and follow them for 50 km or so, you come to a 'community' of one or two houses - and if you look closely, you will notice that many of them are deserted: no cars, no activity whatsoever.

I'm told that solar-powered, but vacant, houses have their lights on all night, nobody is there to turn them off.

A bore, satellite phone-box, solar-power on the roof, a 50-km track, constantly maintained. For one or two vacant houses.

I lived for some years in an SA 'community' and went back there a couple of years ago, to check out what I thought was an outrageous claim. The claim was correct: only one family now lives there. A 300-acre plantation is all dead. A major project is overgrown. Millions of dollars down the drain.

One 'community' of twenty people was in the paper recently. Some of its services were about to be cut. It is five kilometres from a well-known town.

How often are small 'communities' completely vacant ? How many people have their choice of two or three houses, in two or three 'communities' ?

Each one-house 'community' would cost what ? A couple of million dollars ? No worries: easy come, easy go.

Yes, there are huge problems out there - violence, abuse, addiction, lifelong unemployment - but two questions:

* what are the people themselves doing about it ?

and

* what are the 'leaders' doing about it, apart from their preoccupation with constitutional change and committees and conferences and ever-more positions ?

Once bitten, twice shy :)

Joe

My solution is an internet list of all public servants wages and benefits. When the average punter saw how much money is wasted on lousy, useless "Executives" there would be something done.
That list would also include all politicians of course. On the net and updated monthly.

Excellent article, John, that should be widely read by all those people who profess sympathy and support for Aboriginal people and the need to close the gap but who almost universally oppose any initiative that actually has a chance of closing the gap.

If aboriginals want to go back to communities to live their traditional life, rather than just a tree change, lifestyle thing, surely they would not need any support.

Either they live by tradition, including bark humpies, & hunting, or it is a holiday camp, they soon tire of.

For many years some communities have been creating out stations, because they could, due to government support.

And as long as we pay sit down money to folks to sit down, that's what they'll do?

However, if that sit down money was connected to certain obligations, like say having the kids attend school, or an earn or learn concept, then most of those out stations, created in many cases to remove children and others from alleged harm, (drugs, alcohol and or "abuse") just wouldn't be sustainable!

Truancy is massive in some communities!

With this or that community trapped in a generation poverty cycle as the first visible consequence.

Secondly, we must get away from an absolutist black or white way, and just refocus on the right way.

And that right way shouldn't include funding addictive habits of any kind, but particularly when their are less addictive choices of native narcotics to chose from!

Albeit, seasonal, and therefore not habit forming or available 24/7 like packaged tobacco and alcohol?

Nor can I understand why a metal frame 4 B 2 B'th house, which may cost as little to build as $150,000.00 in town or country, costs at lest three times as much inside an aboriginal community?

Perhaps if we simply bypassed the controlling councils and the nepotistic elders, we might be able to build three times as many houses for the same basket of PUBLIC money.

I'm afraid I simply have to agree with the PM's statement, as being calling a spade a spade!

And that this is the 21st century and Australia's no place for (self imposed or reverse) apartheid; or too precious sensitivity looking for a reason to feel offended!?

That said, nobody who wants to exit a community is prevented from following the harvests/shearing etc and a nomadic lifestyle; except perhaps, an extremely diverse curriculum and problematic people, for whatever reason, seeing education as a personal fiefdom rather than the universal service provision and the basic right it should be! Ditto basic affordable health care!
Rhrosty.

Strongly agree with the sentiment, and I am also angry with race baiters on indigenous policy for another reason. They often use the idea that "Australia is not a white European country anyway because they stole it from the Aborigines" as an excuse to import endless amounts of immigrants and 'refugees', despite the fact that this is obviously not a good thing for indigenous and dispossesses them further!!

The need to keep aboriginals as perpetual victims is necessary to keep the thousands or possibly tens of thousands on the public purse satisfied. Usually it people who would not make it in the real world.

.

Dear John (the author),

.

Colonialism with its habitual panoply of oppression, inhumanity and injustice, including slavery and torture (irrespective of ethnicity and colour) and confiscation of traditional lands, was not worthy of proclaimed Christian values of the 16th to 20th centuries.

The Australian aborigines lived in perfect harmony with their natural environment for 60,000 years before Willem Janszoon discovered their existence in 1606 and the first batch of white convict-slaves were diverted to the new colony of New South Wales in 1788 as a result of the American War of Independence.

The clash of civilisations was probably inevitable given the huge difference of socio-cultural and industrial development between the black African tribes that migrated north to Europe and those that migrated south to Australia. The Northerners turned white and the Southerners stayed black. White’s opening move was devastating. It was a no contest.

What was not inevitable was the slavery, the torture and the confiscation of traditional lands and means of livelihood of the resident indigenous populations.

It might be argued that the 162,000 (British) white convict-slaves deserved their condemnation and deportation from their traditional homeland to the penal colony of New South Wales as slave labour. The infamous “bloody code” was in full swing in Britain from 1688 to 1815. That was official Royal Justice. Our dear Queen remains (in)justice incarnate still today, albeit in a purely symbolic role.

Despite the fact that they had committed no crimes, the aboriginal peoples were treated even more appallingly than their long-lost cousins, the white convict-slaves. They were even denied their basic human dignity. Indisputably, they were innocent victims of British colonisation.

In my opinion, John, the injustices of the past 227 years should not be brushed away with just a simple wave of the hand. It makes no difference if we happen to be right-handed or a left-handed. Our ancestors presumably acted according to their values and moral codes. Ours are different.

It is up to all of us, colonisers, colonised and free citizens, to accept our inheritance and work out the most equitable solution to the problem.

.

Well said, Banjo, inaccurate and unscientific, but well said none the less.

John Slater says that "...silencing your opponent by way of public character assassination seems to be an effective in winning an argument."

Yes. But only if the tormented has the same lack of conviction and character as his tormentor.

Our Prime Minister is not a man of conviction. He flips. He Flops.

Like most politicians, Tony Abbott has his eye only on the next election. He pays more attention to appeasing his enemies than he does to pleasing his supporters. He will give in, and the aboriginal problem will continue to fester in the foreseeable future, just as it is now and has done for the last 200 or so years.

Well said Banjo, accurate and scientific.

The British invaders of so many countries all those years ago probably knew no better at the time, as they were expanding their 'empire', but the Aboriginals of today are still paying the price.
Tony Abbott couldn't give a damn about Aboriginals, it is all about money of course.

Hi Banjo,

Some slight exaggerations there, but I suppose hyperbole is easier than evidence.

By the way, some Aboriginal people were assigned convicts: Maria Lock, for example, and the people on Flinders Island.

And from the outset, at least here in South Australia, English law recognised the rights of Aboriginal people to use the land as they always had done. I'm told that is still the law. But, of course, if people DON'T use the land but choose to stay fairly close to ration depots, what is any government supposed to do ? Well, actually, what they did do was to supply people with boats, fishing gear and guns [yes, in SA, Aboriginal people have always had the unrestricted right to use guns], to induce people to actually make use of their country.

As well, by the turn of the 19th century, a few dozen Aboriginal people in S.A., including women, had been granted land leases, rent-free, 160 acres, and often provided with fencing wire, implements, etc., as well.

As for restrictions on movement, people came and went, came and went, as they pleased. As in other States, people were provided with free rail and coach passes. It's all on www.firstsources.info

Sorry for the bad news :)

Joe

Dear Suse,

<<as they were expanding their 'empire', but the Aboriginals of today are still paying the price.>>

So you don't think that the Aboriginals of today have any responsibility for their predicament? Despite having privileges that you and I can only dream of?

After all, unlike those dark times, they are now allowed to roam in the outback, resuming their ancient culture in all its glory, free from the corrupt Western culture of their invaders. Who else gets such a chance? Why would they choose instead this corrupt Western money, spiritless Western doctors and school-teachers to indoctrinate their children into their invaders' greed and arrogance? And why would they still choose to imbibe the toxic ales of their invaders, now that nobody makes them or even tempts them to do it any more?

Had I been living in the outback in a small like-minded community, I would only consider it a boon that the Australian government fails to send its agents to disturb our peace!

.

Dear Is Mise,

.

« Well said, Banjo, inaccurate and unscientific, but well said none the less »
.

Thanks for the comment, Is Mise. If you would care to be a little more specific, I shall be happy to compare my sources with yours and agree on necessary corrections.

.

Dear (Joe) Loudmouth,

« Some slight exaggerations there, but I suppose hyperbole is easier than evidence. »
.

You may be right there, Joe. I’ve never tried. Am I right in thinking you’re not speaking from personal experience either?

Any “slight exaggerations” I might have made are, perhaps, partly due to my lack of formal education beyond age 14. I do my best to cross-check “evidence” from whatever sources I can access but … I may still get it wrong. Doubt is my only certainty and vice versa.

If you’d care to be a little more specific, as I just wrote to Is Mise, I shall be happy to compare my sources with yours and agree on corrections.

Thanks for your info on the historical status of Aboriginal people in South Australia and the link to www.firstsources.info.

A cross-check with Wikipedia indicates that from 1788 until the British Parliament passed the South Australia Act 1834 (Foundation Act), it was part of the colony of New South Wales. From 1834 the doctrine of "terra nullius" (land belonging to no one) ceased to apply to the new province of South Australia.

Wikipedia :

« The Letters of Patent attached to the Act acknowledged Aboriginal ownership and stated that no actions could be undertaken that would affect the rights of any Aboriginal natives of the said province to the actual occupation and enjoyment in their own persons or in the persons of their descendants of any land therein now actually occupied or enjoyed by such natives.

Although the patent guaranteed land rights under force of law for the indigenous inhabitants it was ignored by the South Australian Company authorities and squatters. (Ngadjuri Walpa Juri Lands and Heritage Association (n.d.). Gnadjuri. SASOSE Council Inc. ISBN 0-646-42821-7) » :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Australia (cf., History)

.

Yuyutsu , "
So you don't think that the Aboriginals of today have any responsibility for their predicament? Despite having privileges that you and I can only dream of?"

Of course they should take responsibility for their current ways of life. Many could never live like the rest of society because they don't have the education or employment opportunities the rest of us had.

What 'privileges' do they have that are not available to all Australians? If they do have them, then I don't want them because many of them don't seem to be doing well at all.

Yes, I do have some experience working in Aboriginal health areas, and it seemed to me that the only Aboriginal people with houses and jobs and reasonable lives were those who were children of 'mission' raised parents who were educated fairly well.

Education is the only hope for the Aboriginal children in the future.

Banjo Patterson,

"The Australian aborigines lived in perfect harmony with their natural environment for 60,000 years"

They didn't, they kept setting fire to it and gradually altered it to what it was in the early 19th century.

Burning the countryside was not living in harmony with it, it was farming by fire.

Hi Banjo,

My sources ? Check out my website: www.firstsources.info - you will find about twelve thousand pages of hard-to-find documents there: protector's letters and annual reports, royal commission evidence, conference transcripts, mission letters, a missionary's 300-page Journal, etc. etc. Just try it.

Experience: I won't go into my association with Indigenous people or Indigenous affairs yet again, except to say that it now covers fifty years. You learn a lot in fifty years. Best of luck on your long journey !

Joe

"Education is the only hope for the Aboriginal children in the future.

Posted by Suseonline, Wednesday, 22 April 2015 12:00:28 AM"

Very true. But they will not be educated to a sufficient level if they are kept in living museums outback. Non-aborigines, educated in cities and towns (at least what passes for being educated today) are well behind the 8 all already because of few job opportunities. Young aboriginal people should have the same chances. The economy will need them in time.

Families should not be split, so the only solution is to close down the camps, and give the kids a go where the resources are.

Hi ttbn,

Nobody is going to be evicted from 'communities'. No 'communities' will be 'closed down, but services to tiny populations may be cut back. People will always be living in larger 'communities', pensioners, etc., who don't work. As long as there are pensioners, there will be communities'. 'Closing communities down' is a blatant furphy.

Which brings up the obvious: it's not so much, first-up, trying to get kids to school, but first-up, getting people into work, so that children realise that, one day, they too will have to work and so they might as well get some basic skills.

The problem is how to get the able-bodied adults into work: how to do that if they, too, have absolutely no skills, if they are illiterate, innumerate and can't read signs in English ?

Clearly, there will never be any enterprises at remote 'communities', even if they are bigger than ten or twenty people: fifty years of trying has surely taught governments that much. People in 'communities' don't even want to start up vegetable gardens or orchards or chook-yards: if you want something, just go and buy it. Why produce it when you can buy it ?

So that option has died. 'Communities' won't ever be the sites of work. So what then ? Clearly able-bodied people will have to go to where the work is, unless we all agree that entire populations should be allowed to never work while the rest of us pay for them. Hardly likely, although perhaps we could attach a question to that effect to the 'Recognition' question at the next Referendum ?

So, should people work ? Should able-bodied people look for work ? If they have no skills, shouldn't programs be put in place that require them to get skills ? No BS TAFE courses, but genuine courses ?

And along Forrest's guidelines, able-bodied people should be doing courses for jobs that actually are there. Every able-bodied person in Australia should have the option of working, training for work, or dossing on the streets. Their choice.

Joe

.

Dear Is Mise,

.

« They didn't (live in perfect harmony with their natural environment), they kept setting fire to it and gradually altered it to what it was in the early 19th century. Burning the countryside was not living in harmony with it, it was farming by fire. »
.

Thank you for the precision. As you suggest, it seems that recent research on the subject provides some evidence of impact on climate change due to Aboriginal burning practices. A geophysical research paper published in 2011 has this to say :

« Aboriginal vegetation burning practices and their role in the Australian environment remains a central theme of Australian environmental history. Previous studies have identified a decline in the Australian summer monsoon during the late Quaternary and attributed it to land surface-atmosphere feedbacks, related to Aboriginal burning practices. Here we undertake a comprehensive, ensemble model evaluation of the effects of a decrease in vegetation cover over the summer monsoon region of northern Australia. Our results show that the climate response, while relatively muted during the full monsoon, was significant for the pre-monsoon season (austral spring), with decreases in precipitation, higher surface and ground temperatures, and enhanced atmospheric stability.

Our model results lead us to conclude that Aboriginal vegetation burning practices, while significantly affecting pre-monsoon events, did not have a major impact on the late Quaternary summer monsoon of northern Australia. Our conclusions further prompt a fuller evaluation of the significance of Aboriginal burning practices for the Australian environment. » :

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/doi/10.1029/2011GL047774/full

While there is evidence of impact on the environment, current state of the art geophysical research apparently does not allow us to conclude that it was a major impact.

It has, however, been clearly demonstrated that by burning forests in north-western Australia, Aboriginals altered the local climate. They effectively extended the dry season and delayed the start of the monsoon season.

Also, Is Mise, while I understand that some Aboriginal tribes did do some farming, in their large majority, they were hunter-gatherers. They burned the bush to renew and reinvigorate grasslands for hunting purposes.

.

.

Dear Joe,

.

« Check out my website: www.firstsources.info - you will find about twelve thousand pages of hard-to-find documents there … I won't go into my association with Indigenous people or Indigenous affairs yet again, except to say that it now covers fifty years. You learn a lot in fifty years. Best of luck on your long journey ! »
.

Thanks, Joe. I already checked-out your website. It appears to contain a wealth of information.

Even if I had the time, I doubt that I could sift through, in just a few hours, what took you fifty years to collect.

I’ve put it in my favourites for future reference.

In the meantime, I should still be interested to know what you had in mind when you commented on my original post to John (the author) [page 2 of this thread]: “Hi Banjo, Some slight exaggerations there, but I suppose hyperbole is easier than evidence.”

Any help you can provide to straighten-out the facts would be appreciated.

Regards,

.

Hi Banjo,

I think you've answered your own query. Put the time in, my boy, and you may learn something.

As for Aboriginal people having an impact on the environment, they're not unique in modifying it: everybody, everybody, modified their environments, everywhere in the world and usually not for the better.

Pastoralists over-grazed areas and turned them into tree-less landscapes.

Agriculturalists over-extended their areas under cultivation and increased their populations in the good times, only to suffer devastating crashes in the bad times: the Maya, Spain, the Saharan groups, the Khmer Empire.

Everywhere people cut down forests as if they were inexhaustible or would magically re-grow.

Humans learn, usually the hard way, how to manage their environments. Aboriginal people have been no different [what ?! no different?! NO.] Everybody has over-used and buggered up their environments until they learn otherwise, the hard way.

Don't believe every myth you hear :)

Joe

OK, Joe. I said "camps" not communities. But, it would probably be too cruel to shift the old folks who have no chance of fitting in anywhere else now.

But the camps are no place for kids and young people in the 21st century.

The people remaining of Australia's aboriginal background are not the 'first Australians'. Apart from the fact that the entity 'Australia' did not exist until the Brits came, they are DESCENDANTS of the first people (if we are to accept that nobody lived on the continent before them).

I am a descendant of a mixture of Anglo/Saxon/Celts, who undoubtedly lived in conditions similar to the ones our aborigines lived in at the time.

I don't live the way of my ancestors. So why should any other people living in Australia in 2015 be languishing in the Stone Age? Because people like Nugget Coombes and Gough Whitlam, even in the 20th century, still cherised the nonsense of the 'noble savage'. They even set up their own little artificial dream by providing welfare to keep it going - not a lot different from the original settlers who supplied the natives with rations, which ended the noble savage quick smart.

So, in my opinion, the way to go is - no school/work, no dole (they are changing the rules for the greater community, so let's be consistent. If necessary, bring the kids to centres where tertiary education is available. Then, and this will sound bad but it isn', do everthing legal and humane to prevent them from returning to the camps. If they go back, they will stay.

Something like 40% of aboriginal Australians have moved into the mainstream of their own volition: perfect mentors for the youngsters getting a chance. It has been done on a small scale through cooperation of mothers and state schools. Leave the men out of it for the time being.

Banjo Paterson, "They (Aborigines) burned the bush to renew and reinvigorate grasslands for hunting purposes"

That is a myth, the dreaming of politically correct multicultural apologists.

They burned the bush to harvest part-cooked animals that through injury and shock were much easier to locate and catch.

It was and is environmental vandalism and cruelty affecting thousands of hectares and a myriad of wildlife, destroying rainforests and encouraging rapid takeover by eucalyptus.

Dear Ttbn,

Living in the stone age has both advantages and disadvantages.

Naturally, the hardships of living in the stone age seem excruciating for those accustomed to the comforts of the 21st century, but so are the hardships of modern living excruciating for those accustomed to the advantages of the stone age while the hardships of the stone age are experienced by those as "life", rather than "languishing".

Those who live in the stone age do not need money, jobs or education - but they need to be left alone.

The privilege of being allowed to live in the stone age (or in any other age for that matter), should be extended to everyone who so wants, not only to people of aboriginal descent.

Yes, Yuyutsu, we can all go bush and live off the land if we choose to.

But should other people pay us to do it?

The current situation with settlements is not the traditional way of aboriginal living. The people of the past were nomads, hunting and fishing to survive. The modern way is nothing like that. They can still hunt and fish. But they generally stay in the one place where they have proper, European housing and modern facilities - even if limited. They have access to a store, and to the grog, in some cases. They have become lazy: nothing like the people they claim to be emulating.

If they wanted to live as their ancestors did thousands of years ago, good luck to them. But not on scarce, and getting scarcer according to the government, welfare resources

Dear Ttbn,

To answer your question, we need to get to the root of what welfare payments are for, what they represent and what (if any) legitimises them.

As I see it, welfare payments are legitimate because they are a form of compensation given by civilisation over the loss of our freedom to roam about wherever we like, doing there as we like, including the burning practices just described by OnTheBeach. Having denied our ability to [legally] live directly off the land without using money, this compensation is provided in, sadly, the only remaining means of survival - money.

There are those who like civilisation and benefit from it and from what its money can buy more than others, but doing so they destroyed the "habitat" of others, probably irreversibly, hence they should pay.

Unless we understand the rationale of welfare to be a valid form of compensation, I find nothing else to morally justify taking money from some and giving it to others.

One immediate consequence is that we should all receive equal welfare payments as we are all similarly deprived of this freedom to roam, regardless whether or not we work or earn: in practical terms this amounts to a negative-income-tax, which I advocated several times in this forum.

As civilisation has taken the best, most fertile lands where water is available, only a few would be able to live in stone-age style, while the rest need to be compensated financially.

Now to your question:

Certainly, one may not have the cake and eat it too, yet if those few who do take up stone-age living are still to be somewhat limited by civilisation, for example by not being allowed to burn the forest for harvesting cooked animals, then to that extent they would still be eligible to some compensation: not in the form of money, which would be useless to them, but perhaps in the form of some stone pillar, which if they sit and pray long enough in front of, automatically produces portions of cooked food...

Yuyutsu, "As I see it, welfare payments are legitimate because they are a form of compensation given by civilisation over the loss of our freedom to roam about wherever we like, doing there as we like.."

Whar freedom to do whatever they liked? Just taking one element of that, Aborigines lived in small clans who would and did kill small children for accidentally straying into another clan's land.

Prove that Aborigines have lost those freedoms. Because it is apparent that they were in fact liberated by settlement and could then "go wherever they like, doing as they like..", where previously they would have copped blunt percussive force resulting in death. Some downsides but very well recompensed with upsides.

They were liberated and awarded the benefits of the developed world.

Dear OnTheBeach,

Based on what you describe, you can probably substantiate that aborigines in the past also had justified claims against wrongs done by other tribes.

Even if they were saved at the time by the white people (thank you very much), this does not justify new wrongs by the modern tribes.
(for example, if you save a boy from a paedophile, it doesn't mean that now you are entitled to make him work in your factory)

Further, I constantly emphasise that I'm discussing universal freedoms, which should be equally extended to white people as well (should they wish to live this way), not only to those of aboriginal ancestry.

<<They were liberated and awarded the benefits of the developed world.>>

Alcohol for example?
Having to get up at 7, awakened by a merciless clock and drive tiredly in bumper to bumper traffic to some dull work?

It is a problematic statement: what you consider a benefit may not be such for others.

Hi Yuyutsu,

You're right, so what aren't the Government kill-joys planting more money trees ? Ideally, they could be self-planting, of course, but that's next-technology.

Joe

.

Dear Joe,

.

« I think you've answered your own query. Put the time in, my boy, and you may learn something. »
.

Thanks for the advice, Joe. So you say it took you 50 years to learn all about the Aborigines? I’m a slow learner. It might take me at least twice that much. I’ll come back to you on that just as soon as I can.
.

« Humans learn, usually the hard way, how to manage their environments. Aboriginal people have been no different [what ?! no different?! NO.] Everybody has over-used and buggered up their environments until they learn otherwise, the hard way. »
.

As an eminent authority on Aborigines noted recently: “Some slight exaggerations there, but I suppose hyperbole is easier than evidence”.

If you, too, are willing to “put the time in, my boy”, I should be delighted to consider your evidence.

In the meantime, given the track records of Aborigines and Caucasians in the eco-system, the following observations make a lot of sense:

« Now we’re stuck between two cultures, two worlds; we can’t go back to the old way because the natural environment has been destroyed. Nothing is there in its natural state anymore. We can’t get into your system because many of us don’t understand it. » (Bob Randall, elder of the Yankunytjatjara Nation).

« In our system we have the answer not only to Australia’s problems but to the world’s problems. Our system has stood the test of time. In our system we hold the key to the sustainability for the survival of planet earth and the human race. It is all bound up in this system we are trying to explain to you. » (Wadjularbinna Nulyarimma, elder of the Gungalidda Nation).

Both Aborigines and Caucasians migrated out of Africa about 100,000 years ago so we have a pretty good time scale to work on.

I agree with your observations on the negative effect on the eco-system of excessive pastoral and (industrial) agricultural activities by Caucasians - plus mining and industry.

We are the champions, Joe!

.

Dear Banjo,

As a short-cut, if you check out my web-site (www.firstsources.info) look up a short article titled "Re-Thinking Aboriginal History". It's a potted summary of a few years of transcribing documents.

I'm suggesting that, throughout human history, many groups have been catastrophically decimated by their misunderstandings of things like droughts and floods, as well as the denudation of landscapes, de-forestation, over-sue of fragile environments, including Austtralia's.

Aboriginal people certainly had far less impact on the Australian environment than elsewhere. But droughts, I suspect, were literally devastating on Aboriginal groups. Look at the current drought in Queensland, covering more than half a million square kilometres. What would have happened in pre-Contact times during a three- and four-year drought like that ?

First, mothers' milk would have dried up, so any children under four or five would have died. Died. not just gone a bit thirsty. Died. As a drought bit deeper, mature and fit people would have moved quickly towards where they thought there might be water, therefore animals, therefore food. The old women would have been left behind. They would have died. Some of the less agile older men would also have fallen behind and died.

If droughts were more extensive and lasted longer still, no children would have been born. The youngest person would have been four or five years plus the length of the drought. A ten-year drought would have meant that the youngest person was fifteen, while nobody would have been over forty or forty five.

One drought here, around 1200 AD, lasted thirty two years. What would have been left of any groups enduring that ? Bugger-all: after that sort of drought, neighbouring groups would have slowly re-colonised the empty areas, perhaps over centuries.

That's not just privation, but devastation.

By the way, after a ration system was introduced, what do you think would have happened during a drought ? Everybody would have survived, congregated near to rationing points for the duration. Yes, that's how it went down. What might have been the impact of culture in those circumstances ? Intense, uninterrupted transmission, I'd suggest.

.

Dear onthebeach,

.

I wrote :

« They (Aborigines) burned the bush to renew and reinvigorate grasslands for hunting purposes. »

And you replied :

« That is a myth, the dreaming of politically correct multicultural apologists. They burned the bush to harvest part-cooked animals that through injury and shock were much easier to locate and catch. It was and is environmental vandalism and cruelty affecting thousands of hectares and a myriad of wildlife, destroying rainforests and encouraging rapid takeover by eucalyptus. »
.

That certainly sounds feasible, onthebeach. I should like to investigate the idea further with you. Would you be so kind as to provide a little more detail? Are you speaking from personal experience? If not, could you refer me to the appropriate historical and/or research documentation?

Unfortunately, I have not been able to find anything on the web to substantiate your information. Perhaps Loudmouth has something on it. The closest I could find is as follows:

« The use of fire was an important part of Aboriginal life, apart from its use in cooking. For example, it was used for hunting to drive wallaby or kangaroo into a trap. Particular parts of the bush were set alight in such a way that the wind would drive the fire towards a place where the hunters were waiting. The animals were driven into that area due to the fire and some could then be speared or clubbed as needed. Of course the Aboriginal people had to be careful not to let the fire get out of control and burn the animals and themselves! It took a lot of practise and skill to judge the right time and place to light the fire. »:

http://www.google.fr/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=6&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CEkQFjAF&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tyndale.edu.au%2Flibrary%2FJunior%2FHSIE%2FYear5%2FWebQuest%2FAlphabet%2FFire.doc&ei=SwQ5VfP5DYvB7AaClYGQCg&usg=AFQjCNGYLPfK2FhFFF8IgB1cRUUGPI1T2Q&sig2=FAbdJBw7OarPALLoloQaDg

A Stanford University research team came up with similar findings in a 2010 study:

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2010/april/martu-burning-australia-042910.html

The Alice Springs Desert Park indicates:

« Fire was an important aid in hunting but was rarely used to actually kill animals directly. Instead, areas were burnt in such a way as to direct animals to where they could be easily speared. »

(http://www.alicespringsdesertpark.com.au/kids/culture/fire.shtml)

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Dear Joe,

.

« Re-Thinking Aboriginal History »
.

Thanks, Joe. I read that summary article of the Protector’s account of mission life for Aborigines in South Australia from the 1840’s to the 1950’s and the Journals of George Taplin, the missionary who set up the Point McLeay Mission on Lake Alexandrina.

It does shed an interesting light on the life of the Aborigines in the missionaries at the time. However, as you indicate, « between 1840 and the present, the Aboriginal population on Missions never exceeded more than 18 % of the total Aboriginal population in contact with the state, except during the depression when it rose to about 30 %. In other words, for most of the time, more than 80 % of the entire Aboriginal population lived away from Missions, across the State. »

I suspect that where the problems arose was with the 80%.

Also, I have no doubt that the hardships you mention due to natural disasters such as droughts must have been quite devastating for the Aboriginal populations just as much as they were for the flora and fauna throughout the country.

Finally, allow me to add that I find you and your wife’s passion for the Aboriginal community quite touching. Keep up the good work, Joe.

Cheers,

.

I wonder did Aboriginal hunting fires ever get out of control?

Anyone got anything on their bushfire prevention code?

Dear Banjo,

Thank you. Actually, by the way, my grandfather served under your namesake during the First World War, in the Remounts in Palestine; both were experienced bushmen, good with horses, and with camels. There are a few stories there, some of which may be entirely untrue.

Yes, that 'other 80 %': from what I can gather in other states besides South Australia, life was much harder for them: their kids got little or no schooling, right up to the 950s and beyond. Because grog was banned from missions and government settlements, but was, it seems, easily procured elsewhere, it may have had dreadful effects on those free-floating populations. It wasn't illegal for Aboriginal people to drink, but any grog found on them was taken away, and anybody caught supplying was fined or imprisoned. Outright drunkenness by Aboriginal people was also an offense, they could be fined or jailed.

As well, people living away from missions and settlements did not access medical attention or vaccination programs like people did on those settlements. They still had access to free medical attendance, but would have been far less likely to utilise it.

But of course, Aboriginal people could still fish and hunt. In SA, Aboriginal people were provided with boats and fishing gear and guns, to assist them in this way, and quite deliberately to keep them in their own country, to 'stay in their own districts'. Many times, people were given free rail or coach passes precisely to force them 'to return to their own districts'.

[TBC]

[continued]

Hi Banjo,

I'm not suggesting that life was all sweetness on settlements: during the nineteenth century, and perhaps beyond, the amount of rations was the same, more or less, as people received in the Destitute Asylums ('poor-houses') and in jails. But kids got schooling, everybody got medical support, and at least at Pt McLeay on Lake Alexandrina, all the men found work, at least during the nineteenth century. Rations seemed to be more generously distributed into the twentieth century.

And, of course, for everybody, Black and white, work in the nineteenth century meant hard physical work, often from dawn to dusk, walking behind plows/ploughs or hand-harvesting, or lumping hay, working horses or spending all day in the saddle.

On schooling: at least up until 1908-1910 or so, in SA, Aboriginal kids on missions received standard schooling, with standard Ed. Dept. school inspection: they would have been far more literate and numerate than the white kids in their districts.

Very few Aboriginal people were ever catered for in those Destitute Asylums, by the way, quite deliberately, although some of course would have been provided with standard rations in jail.

So it all seemed from the written record. I'm still looking for anything which might contradict any of this. Some written evidence is not everything, but it sure beats none at all, or mere rumour or story.

Cheers,

Joe

Is Mise,

Not long ago, I saw a TV programme with present day descendents of the originals burning the scrub in the claimed to be the old. They burned small sections at a time and walked with the fire, never letting it get ahead of them. It looked safe.

Banjo Paterson and ttbn,

Regarding fire 'managed' by Aborigines, I would remind you both of the Canberra fires which were 'only' grass yet burned out whole suburbs and despite modern firefighting equipment.

Where is the evidence that Aborigines applied fire breaks for example?

The consequences of lighting a fire in most country in Australia are inevitable, resulting in an uncontrolled burn and devastation. How could a few Aborigines manage a fire in scrub country? As for driving animals into 'traps', how does a fence survive if they built any? More likely the Aboriginals profited where animals were driven to suicide over cliff faces, but it is a stretch to claim that was planned (as the American Indians drove buffalo over cliffs to their death).

I am aware of the very positive and optimistic speculations of some anthropologists who really should have a chat with experts outside of their field and qualify their assumptions accordingly.

I come from the land and I can assure you that NO fire is without slaughter of wildlife. Have you never seen the post-fire evidence in TV reports? Although farmers and the fire authorities always hope to keep that to a minimum by modern management techniques including fire breaks, seasonal considerations, accurate weather reports and early reduction of fuel (opposed by the Greens).

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Dear onthebeach,

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« I come from the land and I can assure you that NO fire is without slaughter of wildlife. »
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Thanks, onthebeach. I understand you are speaking from your own personal experience.

I don’t think anyone would deny that things can easily get out of hand and even though it was not intended, Aboriginal burning could well have resulted in direct destruction of wildlife. However, that was not your original contention. You indicated that it was their objective :

« They burned the bush to harvest part-cooked animals that through injury and shock were much easier to locate and catch. »

To quote the Stanford University anthropologist Douglas Bird in that study for which I provided the link in my previous post to you, speaking of the Aborigines, he indicates :

« You never burn unless you're with someone who has all of that knowledge about that estate. If your fire were to threaten one of those totemic spots where they keep all their religious paraphernalia associated with these rituals, it's technically punishable by death.

Burning desert in about 55-acre chunks, the hunters make their grounds a patchwork quilt of recently burnt earth and recovering vegetation. These scars are much smaller than those left by lightning wildfires, which char an average of 2,000 acres. »

I was raised on the Darling Downs on land that had been occupied for 40,000 years by the Gooneburra (the ones who hunt with fire). Obviously, I was not around at the time and can’t tell you how they operated. However, for as long as I can remember, the local farmers continued the tradition and burnt off their land after each harvest.

I was also co-opted to fight bushfires in the Snowy Mountains when I was working on the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme as a labourer. All we had was our shovels. The fires were ferocious and completely out of control. They were not man-made and nobody could put them out. They just ended-up burning themselves out. I didn’t see any wildlife, either dead or alive. Nothing cooked anyway.

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Dear Joe,

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You certainly paint a colourful picture of Aboriginal life in the old days. Have you ever considered writing a book about it?

I, for one, should be happy to spend a few dollars on it if you did. It’s worth giving it a thought, Joe. Otherwise a lot of that stuff you have accumulated might be lost.

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Hi Banjo,

Not really, I'm not a historian, I wish I was, but I'm too old to start now. I'm curious about the past, of course, but I'm more concerned about the present and the future for Indigenous people, my wife's legacy and my kids' future. I'll let other people argue about the past.

Currently, my focus is on Indigenous higher education and why nobody seems to take any much notice of it: by the end of this year, around forty thousand Indigenous people will have graduated from university, and I'm baffled why no 'leaders' seem to either give a toss, or actually believe that it's happening. Are they all imbued so much with the old racism ? Do they think it just couldn't be ?

Well, all I can say is that it will bite them on the @rse when it finally dawns on them - and on the rest of Australia - that it's happening. Fifty thousand by 2020, one hundred thousand by 2030 - when in that time will anybody, any Indigenous 'leaders', get their heads around it ? It's happening. Around forty per cent of EVERY young Indigenous age-group will go to uni. The vast majority in mainstream courses. Get used to it.

It's been happening for a decade now. Two thousand will graduate this year. More than that next year. And more the next year. Get used to it. Of course, when they do realise it, the gormless 'elite' will sh!t themselves. Forty, fifty thousand breathing down their necks ? A hundred thousand by 2030 ? That means the elite have only ten or fifteen years of bullsh!t domination, of conning that they are the Select, the Mighty Exceptions. Live it up, fellas, while you can.

Joe

To get back towards the topic, with a slight detour to comment on firing practices: the notion of traditional burning, with people carefully walking in front of the fire to control it - perhaps Aboriginal experts could show the various fire-fighting services how it's done. They could get out there in front of the bushfires, let's say, next year and show the Fireys how to walk in front and keep control of the inferno.

I'd like to see that :)

Back to actual topic: the bottom-line seems to be (at least in my imperfect view) that able-bodied people have to be either guided into work, or cut loose, no benefits whatever. Hence the need for a cash card to protect their grandmothers and aunties from humbugging, being stood over. Such standing over one's frail relatives could be made an offence, punishable by compulsory enrolment in, and graduation from, a genuine TAFE course, ideally moving the able-bodied towards a trade, or at least some basic skills.

Perhaps the time is past now, but ideally such jobs should be in larger communities and towns nearby. Like migrants after the War, able-bodied Aboriginal people may have to take basic jobs, cleaning, labouring, etc., with the encouragement that if they want a clean job, one with good pay and pleasant surroundings, all they have to do is study after work, perhaps basic courses at first, then more rigorous courses, until they could handle a semi-professional course - and maybe go on to higher things later.

Yes, it might take twenty years or more, but having mucked up their own schooling by never attending, what should they expect ?

Let's be honest: Aboriginal people in remote areas have made their own beds. Believing that they will never have to work, that they can stay on welfare for life, they have discouraged their own kids from going to school (if you'll never have to work, why do you need education ?), and avoided the need themselves to ever get any skills. Time to get out of bed and go to work.

Joe

Banjo Paterson,

I would very much like to see how Stanford University anthropologist Douglas Bird might demonstrate how Aborigines could effectively control-burn in any but the sparsest of country and how they did it with small numbers. 'Walking with fire' is a fanciful concept. How is that done in practice?

Otherwise and in the general application it is given, it is the wishful speculation of a social scientist and myth-making because others apply it generally.

The Canberra fires show how fires affecting even sparsely grassed areas can lead to a major calamity. That was where modern communications, transport and water supply, heaps of manpower and firefighting plans and expertise were available.

Applying some commonsense and Occam's Razor, it is as I said before, far more likely that Aborigines were opportunist and used fires to get game that were otherwise difficult to find and hunt. That and the will to clear scrub for convenience are far more likely that some complex idea of deliberate land management by 'noble savages'.

It would also be very interesting to know how Bird the anthropologist explained how Aboriginal clans kept fires to their own territory, or agreed fire plans and control with their neighbours.

Controlled burns by farmers are done with a lot of intel, equipment, planning and coordination, including establishment of fire breaks. Even so, damage is difficult to avoid, from an unexpected wind change for example.

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Dear onthebeach,

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« Applying some commonsense and Occam's Razor, it is far more likely that Aborigines used fires to get game than some complex idea of deliberate land management by 'noble savages'. »
.

I should probably have done the same if the idea had occurred to me – though I am not sure I am that bright.

The question is: Did they burn not only to catch wild game but also to have it nicely cooked to their liking, rare to medium perhaps, with or without herbal seasoning? I suppose it depends on the comparative speed of the particular type of game and the bushfire – whether they wanted say snails as a starter, goanna as a second course and kangaroo as the main dish. The speed of the fire would have to be adjusted accordingly. Otherwise, the snails might be burnt to charcoal, the goanna might be either too raw or over-cooked and the kangaroo might get away. If they cooked too much, of course, they wouldn’t be able to eat it all and there might be nothing else available for several weeks.

As you preconise a commonsense and Occam's Razor approach to the question, allow me to suggest that experience may have taught them how to integrate all these variables and work out an optimum solution.

They may well have decided it was more efficient and more beneficial in the long run to use fire simply to herd the game into a position where they could easily catch it.

I can understand your incredulity at the suggestion that the Aborigines might have been capable of « deliberate land management » and that they might qualify as « noble savages ».

My experience of different human beings (including Aborigines), in vastly different situations, has taught me that some can be the dregs of the earth in certain situations and superior human beings, even leaders, in others, demonstrating a totally unsuspected degree of “nobility”.

How else could they have survived for 60,000 years without destroying their eco-system?

They beat us, despite all our science and technology.

.

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Dear Joe,

.

« By the end of this year, around forty thousand Indigenous people will have graduated from university … It's been happening for a decade now. Two thousand will graduate this year. Fifty thousand by 2020, one hundred thousand by 2030 - when in that time will anybody, any Indigenous 'leaders', get their heads around it ?

That means the elite have only ten or fifteen years of bullsh!t domination, of conning that they are the Select, the Mighty Exceptions. Live it up, fellas, while you can. »

Thanks for the info, Joe. That is a major evolution. I should be interested to know what sparked it off back in 2005? Any ideas what it might have been?
.

« The notion of traditional burning, with people carefully walking in front of the fire to control it - perhaps Aboriginal experts could show the various fire-fighting services how it's done. They could get out there in front of the bushfires, let's say, next year and show the Fireys how to walk in front and keep control of the inferno. I'd like to see that :) »

I don’t know if Aborigines walked in front of their traditional burning or not, Joe. It seems most unlikely, except, perhaps in sparse, open areas such as Australia’s Western Desert (cf., the Stanford University study).

However, Aboriginal hunting fires should not be confused with criminal or natural catastrophe fires. They were not on the same scale. Nor do they appear to have occurred in the same regions. Fire hunting seems to have been practised mainly inland, not in the heavily forested regions nor on the coast. This has been evidenced by the scarring of the landscapes.
.

« The bottom-line seems to be (at least in my imperfect view) that able-bodied people have to be either guided into work, or cut loose, no benefits whatever ».

That's the fall-out, from British colonisation. It will take a few more generations to completely assuage the human tragedy they left behind. I guess we just have to manage it as best we can.

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Hi Banjo,

Ah, I love those self-evident 'how-else' questions:

'How else could they have survived for 60,000 years without destroying their eco-system?'

As a totality, yes, people survived, across the entire country. But in regions hit by long droughts, people would have died. The young, the old, the women - in very long droughts, say fifteen or twenty years, the group would not have been able to reproduce. Neighbouring groups were as likely to help that along as otherwise. Apart from the chance to exchange women, neighbouring groups were not particularly sympathetic towards each other.

I wouldn't be surprised if long droughts caused huge areas to be emptied of people, and for generations, until neighbouring groups could colonise them again. And that may have happened over and over.

Incidentally, that really does force us to estimate pre-European populations, not on the optimal, but on a sort of minimum: yes, in good times, maybe half a million people lived across Australia, if they ever occurred uniformly, and for long enough (of course, they never have). But in the frequent bad times, perhaps half the population died, and groups would have taken generations - interrupted by yet more bad times - to build their populations up again.

As for 'destroying' eco-systems, they certainly modified them, although climatic change over that time, twenty thousand yeas of the Ice Age, also forced major modifications, and therefore must have forced major cultural and economic (and technological and geographical) changes.

Banjo, we should always be suspicious of 'how-else' questions, they can really trip us up.

[TBC]

[continued]

About higher education since 2005: ironically, support programs at universities may have been winding down in the years between 1998 and 2006, as money from Canberra for that purpose was moved over to the teaching of non-Indigenous students.

BUT demography stepped in: the Indigenous birth-rate massively increased from about 1981 to 1991, perhaps by 60 %. Why ? Various factors have been proposed: re-identification; false identification by non-Aboriginal people; and inter-marriage. My money is on the last one.

In cities, more than 90 % of working Indigenous people inter-marry, so there is a massive boost to birth numbers thanks to non-Indigenous mothers. Nationally, the size of birth-groups rose from 7-8,000 in the late seventies to 11-12,000 in the nineties.

And inter-marriage was especially common amongst working people, working Indigenous people marrying working non -Indigenous people. Their families would be far more likely to have a work ethic than a welfare ethic. Those working families would have been far more likely to make sure that their kids finished secondary school and went beyond it. Hey presto ! Since around 2006, commencement numbers have risen (for standard degree-level courses) by more than 8 % p.a. i.e. by this year, they have probably doubled.

Again, why ? Why inter-marriage etc. since the late seventies ? Long story, but urban migration in the fifties and sixties may be the key factor.

Yes, false identification may be involved, but that's always been a problem. Some of those people have done very well as 'Indigenous'. They muddy the waters, but the proportion of genuinely Indigenous students is probably the same as it was in 1985 or 1990.

Sorry for this convoluted attempt at explanation: the point about many more finishing secondary school is that the flow-on to university also has increased. By the end of this year (as we will see in the 2016 Census figures, published in early 2017), there will be around forty thousand Indigenous university graduates across the country, overwhelmingly at degree-level and above, overwhelmingly in standard awards, (perhaps 98 %), two-thirds female.

All on www.firstsources.info - 21st Century page.

Joe

Banjo Paterson, "How else could they have survived for 60,000 years without destroying their eco-system?"

You don't think that fires that dramatically reduced and would eventually see the end of the rain forests counts as destroying the ecosystem?

I would also like to correct your belief stated earlier that farmers copied aboriginal land burn-offs to improve land.

Any burning by farmers and foresters is solely to reduce fuel to lessen the impact of highly destructive bushfires, NOT to 'improve' land or improve access. Humus is valued, holds carbon too, but fires are devastating so fuel is reluctantly reduced. It is risk management for farmers and foresters.

It was the low population density of Aboriginals which was a consequence of their lifestyle and ignorance, and fierce separateness of the hundreds of clans, that kept them going. Nature provided limitations as well. It was a daily fight for survival, not the idealised image of the 'noble savage' that some with a secondary agenda in mind would have the public believe. Those living in more advantageous areas, for instance coastal estuaries, would have been under constant threat of invasion from clans enduring a more stressed existence.

Hi onthebeach,

To follow on from your last point, here are a couple of completely unrelated numbers:

* I transcribed a protector's report from NSW in 1882, which counted 8,664 Aboriginal people in the State.

* the recent terrible weather in NSW affected six million people.

Economic systems, dependent on different technologies, can support different-sized populations - not to mention, have something for export as well. I look forward to the day when it can be written that Aboriginal people are, and always have been, as intelligent as anybody else, but that their level of technology was miniscule compared to a modern society's (even with all the comparable environmental costs).

The nub of the actual topic: can remote settlements ever support any sort of population from their own resources ? After generations, it doesn't seem so. So, unless one Australian population is to be allowed to never have to work, to sink - on their own land - into the degradation of lifelong unemployment, idleness, boredom, grog, drugs, violence and abuse - with shortened lives as an obvious consequence - then how to get people out there into employment ?

How long will the pathway be from A to B ? Is the price of doing nothing too high ?

Joe

Loudmouth,

As you most likely realised, I chose 'ignorant' - lacking in knowledge.

It was possibly because Aborigines lived in so many small, separate clans that they were unable to share the experiences and resources that could have allowed them to make progress on their own.

Did the interaction with visitors in the north result in appreciable practical transfer of technical expertise? If not, why not? Maybe others can comment.

Hi OTB,

No, I don't think groups shared much - ideas, technology, common words, perhaps not a great deal. I transcribed the vocabulary of the language group, Ngangaruku, further up the Murray here in SA from my wife's group, Ngarrindjeri, and couldn't find a single word that was similar, except maybe the word for 'woman'.

I lived in New Zealand for a couple of years, where there was basically only one language, Maori: it seems that any new or unfamiliar words from outside were, from the earliest days, incorporated into Maori - 'poaka' for 'pig' or 'pork', for example; 'aeroplane' was easily translated into Maori as 'wakarere' - 'waka' - boat, canoe, and 'rere' - bird, or flying. So they could keep pace over there with incorporating any new words into their own single -living- language.

But it seems that in Australia, words from another language were not easily incorporated into one's own - to communicate, one spoke (as best one could) in that other language: in order to communicate, one learnt bits of the other's language.

In 1845 (in fact, in that vocabulary book mentioned above) the protector noted that when Aboriginal people met each other, they tended to speak to each other in English, the common language. Eight years after 'settlement'!

After all, mobile Aboriginal people seeking work or money to buy all those new things, would have had to immerse themselves in a European-style economy, of harvests and cattle and sheep and horses and ploughs and sickles and grog, tobacco, shearing, mustering, clothes, tinned food, grog, trousers, hats, etc. for which there were perhaps no Aboriginal words in any Aboriginal language.

So, in a real sense, people became bilingual - using one language in one context, their original language in traditional or familial contexts. As they mixed with Aboriginal people from other groups in the course of their work, they would have tended to use English more and their own language less, except when they were speaking to a countryman. Their kids would have grown up with English. The consequences are fairly obvious.

Joe

Joe (Loudmouth),

Thank you for the information. It is always appreciated.

I second Banjo Paterson's plea for you to write a book.

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Dear Joe,

.

Thanks for your suggestions of possible explanations of what might have triggered the current higher education boom of aboriginal students.

As you may (or may not) know, I have been living in Paris for many years now, only returning to Australia occasionally to see family and friends. I have lost track of a lot of the evolution over the years.

To my surprise, the few “aborigines”, mainly artists and cineastes, who get to Paris are not what I would normally call aborigines at all. At least, they are not full-blooded Aborigines but half-castes or, perhaps even something less than that.

The Aborigines I used to know in Australia were all charcoal black. I went to a bush school with some of them in Queensland as a boy.

As it happens, I’m a bit of a mixture myself, including English, Irish and Chinese, but it never occurred to me that I was anything other than Australian.

Do you have any idea how much Aboriginal blood you have to have in Australia to be officially recognized as an Aborigine ?

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Dear onthebeach,

.

« You don't think that fires that dramatically reduced and would eventually see the end of the rain forests counts as destroying the ecosystem? »
.

No, onthebeach, I must confess I have no information on that at all. I should very much welcome any relevant geophysical studies you may be able to indicate.

The closest I can find is a 2011 geophysical research paper which has this to say :

« Aboriginal vegetation burning practices and their role in the Australian environment remains a central theme of Australian environmental history. Previous studies have identified a decline in the Australian summer monsoon during the late Quaternary and attributed it to land surface-atmosphere feedbacks, related to Aboriginal burning practices. Here we undertake a comprehensive, ensemble model evaluation of the effects of a decrease in vegetation cover over the summer monsoon region of northern Australia. Our results show that the climate response, while relatively muted during the full monsoon, was significant for the pre-monsoon season (austral spring), with decreases in precipitation, higher surface and ground temperatures, and enhanced atmospheric stability.

Our model results lead us to conclude that Aboriginal vegetation burning practices, while significantly affecting pre-monsoon events, did not have a major impact on the late Quaternary summer monsoon of northern Australia. Our conclusions further prompt a fuller evaluation of the significance of Aboriginal burning practices for the Australian environment. » :

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/doi/10.1029/2011GL047774/full

While there is evidence of impact on the environment, according to this study, current state of the art geophysical research apparently does not allow us to conclude that it was a major impact.

It has, however, been clearly demonstrated that by burning forests in north-western Australia, Aboriginals altered the local climate. They effectively extended the dry season and delayed the start of the monsoon season.

By the way, I was not suggesting that the Darling Downs farmers copied the Aborigines by burning their land after each harvest. I was just pointing out that they too burned their land but, obviously, not for the same reasons. The farmers did not indulge in fire hunting.

.

Hi Banjo, ca va ?

Your question, 'how much Aboriginal blood you have to have in Australia to be officially recognized as an Aborigine ?' raises all sorts of problems, so much so that it probably couldn't be raised here.

There are all manner of people, many with some Aboriginal ancestry, who claim to be Aboriginal, sometimes on the basis of a new-found grand-parent (usually a grandfather, which is a bit of a giveaway), or even a great-great-grandfather. Many people have gained high positions on the strength of these claims. One born every minute, after all.

In my view, it depends on - apart from at least some Aboriginal ancestry - who raises you, your Aboriginal parent, usually a mother but more and more fathers as well, and in turn, who raised them, and so on, back hopefully in an unbroken line to the ancient ancestors. Usually, genuine people don't have to go back very far at all, they would just shrug and say, 'well my mum's Aboriginal', as if it's self-evident. Which it usually is in their case. After all, especially for older generations, the only relations they know are Aboriginal.

You can usually pick a phony, either they go on about culture, or wear a hat in the colours, or crap on about spirituality and being at one with nature, or all three. They might even give their kids Aboriginal-sounding names.

I try to avoid such people, which means I can't go anywhere near many Aboriginal organisations. Fine with me. Life's too short.

Joe

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Dear Joe,

.

« Your question, 'how much Aboriginal blood you have to have in Australia to be officially recognized as an Aborigine ?' raises all sorts of problems, so much so that it probably couldn't be raised here. »
.

An “Aboriginal” cineaste came through here a few years back, a chap called Warwick Thornton. I was invited to attend the premier of his film “Samson & Delilah” in Paris.

He made a speech at the end of the film and took a few questions. When he stood up to make his speech I whispered to my (French) wife “He doesn’t look like an Aborigine to me. They’re usually charcoal black. He’s probably half-caste or only part Aborigine”.

A cocktail followed and my wife and I happened to find ourselves standing in front of Thornton as we tasted some Australian wine. To open-up the conversation, my wife said to him with a pleasant smile “ My husband tells me you’re not a true Aborigine”. His eyes flared-up. His face turned red. He grinded his teeth and I thought he was going to kill me. He was a pretty big guy.

Then he calmed down a second and blurted out that his Aboriginal mother had been raped by his genitor, a white man.

I told him I enjoyed his film and asked him where I could buy the music. That calmed him down. He told me where I could purchase it on the internet and promptly disappeared into the crowd without uttering a word.

I have the disc right here in front of me. It’s Great stuff.

Getting back to the question of urbanisation, massive population growth and inter-marriage as a possible explanation of the fantastic increase in higher education among Aborigines over the past decade, I can’t help thinking that what you describe seems to translate into an irreversible dilution of the Aboriginal genus and its gradual absorption, generation after generation by the Caucasians.

I found this article which appeared on Thursday, 29 March 1934 in The Observer of Adelaide on the subject:

http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/47547227

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Hi Banjo,

Thanks for that interesting article. Of course, people have never been pawns of policy, they have married who they like (that's never been illegal, although 'consorting' was discouraged: stability of relationships was what policy-makers were after) and can call themselves whatever they like. And of course, no matter how pale people may be as a result of out-marriage, generation after generation, that's still the case. People don't classify themselves just to please policy-makers.

And of course, the upshot is that more and more Australians, on the one hand, have Aboriginal ancestry, but each generation will, on the whole, get paler - with more attenuated links to their ancestors, like the rest of us. So much of that relationship depends, after all, on links to a place, say a 'Mission' or a significant district.

So with each generation, visits and sense of allegiance to a particular place or region also become just another factor in one's ancestry, just as white Australians may proudly say that their ancestors came from County Tyrone or Durham or Glasgow, or Calabria or Chos or Wroclaw, without ever having been there or ever intending to go there.

I'm sure that most of us who have married Indigenous partners have reflected on this. So we try to keep those attachments alive as best we can, although people have busy lives, and reasons and occasions to visit get more limited to funerals, and even those occasions become fewer. My kids haven't been back to their mother's country for perhaps ten years. She and her parents are buried here in Adelaide, with only a brother and earlier generations buried back on the 'Mission'. That's life.

Perhaps people who find out late that they have some Aboriginal ancestry should do a sort of apprenticeship, so that if they discover when they are fifteen, that they have Aboriginal ancestry, they might need to sit back and study and experience and re-kindle relationships for fifteen years before they put their hands out, or take a Indigenous-designated job. They'll never have to do the hard yards, like earlier generations.

Joe

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Dear Joe,

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« That's life »
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You’re right there, Joe …

All the best.

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Careful Banjo asking about what is an aboriginal, Andrew Bolt got dragged
into court for raising that question and he is now gagged and cannot
discuss the matter on risk of contempt of court.

Very dangerous ground.

This whole discussion can be rendered useless by one question;
For how long, a thousand years, will this argument continue ?
I would suggest that in one hundred years there will be next to no
observable aborigines. In 300 years there will be none.

Hi Bazz, where you been ?!

But on the other hand, in a hundred years, perhaps ten per cent of Australians will have some distant Aboriginal ancestry, and in 300 years, pretty much everybody will have Aboriginal, Sudanese, Vietnamese, Tamil and Anglo ancestry etc. Beautiful people ! It will be heaven for old pervs like me :)

BTT: On the other hand, apart from the work- and education-oriented Aboriginal population, I could be wrong but it does seem as if the welfare-oriented population has turned away more and more from education and work opportunities. I have relations in this category, and they do seem, over the last fifteen years, to have shut the door on opportunity and become quite settled and content on welfare. They have a detailed knowledge of all manner of welfare services, but none of education (and work) opportunities.

Of course, this leads into all manner of personal and family crises and disasters, but it seems that once you are far enough down a certain path, you can't even begin to understand the possibilities and benefits of switching onto another path. Closing the Gap is going to be much harder than policy-makers think.

Joe

What needs to be addressed is the apparent nepotism and favouritism in aboriginal organisations.

It is corruption and it does narrow the representation and advice (to government).

Aboriginal organisations wouldn't be only public bodies affected by that, but this thread has to do with Indigenous policy.

Hi OTB,

Neville Shute, yeah, a great writer.

Yes, it's sometimes amazing how nepotism rules in Aboriginal organisations, and between organisations. People look after their own, regardless of talent. In some organisations, half of the staff are closely related and - wonders ! - nothing ever seems to get done by that organisation. But the money keeps rolling in. Amazing !

Hot-shots wheel and deal to make sure their kids also get positions, if not in the organisation or government department that they control or influence, then in another one similar. Nobody slaps down a hot-shot.

I'm sure many people who have worked in Aboriginal organisations, would feel the same, if they were asked, 'Would you do it all over again ?' - they would answer, 'Well, let me think about that.'

'Probably not.'

'Sh!t no.'

Yes Loudmouth, in a number of generations almost everyone will have some DNA.
Are the trendies suggesting the special legislation apply to everyone ?

That is why it is absolutely stupid to write it into the constitution.