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The Forum > Article Comments > Australia, where telling the truth is 'just another form of invasion' > Comments

Australia, where telling the truth is 'just another form of invasion' : Comments

By Vesna Tenodi, published 9/10/2018

The new Australian paradigm: its enforcers, its opponents

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“Why is the Aboriginal industry so determined to hide the truth? Why are they so eager to fabricate the past, as well as present …… “.

We can answer that or ourselves without reading further - money (ours) and power for people who are not really interested in people who could do with help. And, yes, unwarranted and unearned guilt allows the criminality of the aboriginal industry to continue.

A rare, truthful article on the subject.
Posted by ttbn, Tuesday, 9 October 2018 8:58:55 AM
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The truth may be inconvenient but how can it ever be offensive ? It is what it is. Many people may not like it, and wish that 'the real truth' was otherwise, but it surely has to be what we go on ? As one of the dissident women exposing the Hindmarsh Island scam said, 'Reconciliation starts with the truth'.

After all, how can one build an argument based on mistruths ? Not just outright lies, but misrepresentations, fabrications and even honest misunderstandings ?

I've typed up maybe fifteen thousand pages of primary documents, mainly from the nineteenth century here in South Australia, the 8,500 Protector's Letters, a missionary's 600-page journal, Royal Commission transcripts, etc, and they are available on my web-site: www.firstsources.info

What did I find, as a long-term leftie ?

*. that the total full-time number of employees of the Aborigines Department was: one. The Protector. His main functions were to provide wide range of rations to up to sixty depots across the State, as well as medical services, free travel passes for legitimate purposes, boats and guns to Aboriginal people. Yes, guns.

*. that Aboriginal people, for good or ill, were counted and treated as British subjects from the outset. Their rights to use land as they always had done was written into every pastoral lease after mid-1851. Those rights applied to Crown Land. They still apply.

*. So it was illegal to try to drive people off their traditional lands. In fact, pastoralists themselves set up ration depots, at their own cost, in order to attract labour.

And so much more ......

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Tuesday, 9 October 2018 9:45:24 AM
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More inconvenient truths Joe.
I can add to this. Most people seem unaware that most parts of the Kimberley were settled at least 100 years after the east coast, and in fact, the last mission was set up in 1910, at a place called Pt George, in remote far NW Kimberley, a place only accessible by boat or by foot. The Worora tribe there had never seen white people before, so the journals written by the missionary and his wife were observations on an untouched culture.
A book called “ The Road to Mowanjum” is the story of the journey of that tribe from Stone Age culture to modern life, written at a time when cameras were available, so photographs accompany the book and the old customs are detailed with clarity and no judgment.
And in confirmation of the truth of those observations is the fact that my father in law was raised in that remote community and told me stories that correlated with those of the missionaries.
My husbands grandfather is mentioned in the book as the half caste skipper of the lugger that transported essential supplies from Broome up to the mission, whilst his wife and children lived there with the Worora tribe and three missionaries.
The depiction of infanticide, mortuary canabalism, wife beating, young promised brides, sorcery etc are fascinating and a great read.
Naturally todays urban aboriginals wish to deny these events but as they were common in all Stone Age cultures, including white ones, I fail to understand all the angst. None of us are responsible for the actions of our ancestors. All we can do is be grateful we have evolved beyond that stage and have wonderfully easy lives compared to past cultures.
Posted by Big Nana, Tuesday, 9 October 2018 10:32:50 AM
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For a long time, professional victims have been playing the victim card for all they're worth as they seek to impose their will on other Australians!?

We're repeatedly told, we have a shame-filled history. Even though the vast bulk of those who settled here did so at the behest of a foreign crown as emaciated prisoners, clad in iron chains, many of who died before they reached these shores or shortly after.

Time for all our history to be told, warts and all. As who did what to who and why. Remember the nation that transported thousands of prisoners came from a culture that tolerated all manner of atrocities!

Committed by the privileged class against all others, some of who happened to be the original inhabitants of this land and who settled in succeeding waves of settlement, not as a single mass migration that would allow all so-called aborigines to claim a continuous 60,000-year history?

When clearly some can only legitimately claim around 14,000? And notable for their refusal to acknowledge the Bradshaws and any element of archaeological evidence that challenges that brainwashed from birth, catechism or song?

Time all our history was put on the table as truth and reconciliation; and forgiving each other for the sins of long-dead settlers/inhabitants?

As for Australia day? Why not leave that as it is and just report the facts. Captain Cook first set foot at Kernel 29th of April. Not the 26th of Feb. Or Australia day. We're about to have a referendum that is intended to unite us?

How is that going to be possible if it is not founded on the mighty irrefutable truth and if that truth is supported by pictorial and archaeological evidence?

Let's put all of it on the table, draw a line under it that says. We can't undo or change any of this! Start anew with compassion and respect. Along with an earnest desire to make a fair go everybody's inherent right.

If that requires a treaty and a universal bill of rights!? WTF is the real problem with either of those!?
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Tuesday, 9 October 2018 10:32:57 AM
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The truth is offensive re Aboriginal culture because much of the left have adopted a lifestyle just as barbaric. Read the yearbooks of the woman who recently accused Kavanaugh and you get the drift. Multiple partners, fatherless kids and now the murder of the unwanted children is commonplace today. We are dumb enough to ask why so much mental health issues! These lifestyles are as barbaric as the clubbing of the handicapped and the giving of daughters to uncles as practices in the not so distant past. In fact many of our generation are worse because they have had the opportunity to know truth and now reject it. Instead they make up in their heads silly little narratives about how peaceful and loving the Indigeneous culture was pre settlement days. The hatred of truth by academia and media because of personal lifestyle has led us to revise history. Simple as that.
Posted by runner, Tuesday, 9 October 2018 10:56:55 AM
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runner,

I've in the last couple of days that more females are not using contraception, preferring the convenience of abortion to deal with unwanted pregnancies, which are increasing with the barbaric, amoral way of life.
Posted by ttbn, Tuesday, 9 October 2018 11:23:48 AM
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There seem to be (at least) two brutal truths which people find difficult, even impossible, to confront:

* the invasion/settlement of Australia was inevitable;

* almost no Aboriginal people would permanently trade their current living conditions for a totally traditional life. With 20 % of the nation in Indigenous hands, there is always going to be the opportunity to do so, but if anything (from the Census, and anecdotally), Indigenous people seem to be abandoning remote 'out-stations' for larger 'communities, and drifting from those 'communities' to rural towns, and from towns to the cities.

As for some of the idiocies which we are expect to believe - apart from the one about elders forbidding young men from accessing fish-traps unless there as a blue moon (i.e. that Aboriginal people had 30- and 31-day months) - my favourite is still agriculture. I've just come across this brilliant article by Ian Gilligan: http://journals.lib.washington.edu/index.php/BIPPA/article/view/9978/10664
which politely explores this piece of imbecility and suggests that early farmers - and there were only a handful of places in the world where farming originated, it's not a fickle day-to-day decision (hey, should we hunt and gather or farm today ?) - were, at first, very likely to grow crops to feed animals rather than themselves, and that they raised the animals for fibre, as well as for meat. Fibre ? Yes, he suggests, to be woven into cloth, to replace animals skins (which, by definition, can only be 'produced' by killing the animals rather than raising them). Also of course, gathering (and later cultivating) fibre plants such as cotton or flax (linen) or maguey.

Aboriginal people didn't wear a lot of clothes so had even less need to weave cloth from local fibre plants or from animals hair or wool. Yet another reason to be sceptical about Aboriginal 'agriculture'.

Of course, it depends how you define 'agriculture': no-drill ? Sure. Broad-casting ? Yeah, sure. i.e. not cultivation, so not agriculture.

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Tuesday, 9 October 2018 11:58:43 AM
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I must be turning into a grumpy old bastard (an unpleasant truth that I must face).

Perhaps we'll soon be told by some elder that, since no copper wires or fibre-optic cables have ever been found that might have been laid by Aboriginal people thousands of years ago, this proves that they had wireless technology. Thousands of years before whites. Geniuses.

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Tuesday, 9 October 2018 11:59:51 AM
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This is only second hand as I refuse to watch the rubbish, but I have been led to believe that a woman claiming aboriginal background claimed last night on Q&A that her mob kicked off aerodynamics,flight and even drones (!) via the boomerang. Save us from the bulls--t. They are starting to sound like the Muslims who invented nothing after the scimitar.
Posted by ttbn, Tuesday, 9 October 2018 1:46:00 PM
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If you want 'privilege' in join interviews don't tick the white box.
Posted by runner, Tuesday, 9 October 2018 4:34:50 PM
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I think it's one thing to own a private collection of artifacts, but another thing altogether if you think this entitles you to 'own their culture' and keep it from them.

So my natural question is do the indigenous ancestors currently have a right to access and view (not take ownership of) this collection on their culture?
Or do they have to apply and be scrutinised before being allowed to view the collection, if they are allowed?

My opinion is this, whether privately owned or not this collection needs to be accessible to those of that tribe, whether they resemble their forefathers or not.

Keeping it from them would be the bigger crime.
You said this man was entrusted by the old tribal inhabitants with this material, that's slightly different to 100% ownership.

The first issue is to make sure it's accessible, without conditions.
If the current female caretaker of this material does not acknowledge this, then I side with the indigenous people.
Posted by Armchair Critic, Tuesday, 9 October 2018 7:30:52 PM
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Researching the Ayers Rock climb I've also found wide differences between views of elders who had lived a traditional life and those who came later. The views of the current board of management of the Park are polar opposites to those of traditional owners Paddy Uluru and Tiger Tjalkalyirri and the Park is worse off for it.
Posted by MarcH, Friday, 12 October 2018 2:29:38 PM
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Oh my goodness what a miserable bunch of reprobates commenting on an article by a woman who parades herself on programs like Bolt touting absolute BS by the truck load.

According to her “Aborigines are the most privileged segment of Australian society”. Anybody who knows anything about aboriginal mortality rates or incarceration rates or disadvantage would laugh in her face.

In my opinion the woman is a complete crackpot.

But leaving that aside I am really surprised that you Loudmouth of all people would be running the line that there was no agriculture performed by aboriginal people. Have you not read Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe? How about you hop on Youtube and look up some of his lectures;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqgrSSz7Htw
http://youtu.be/8cfhFwGDIqk?t=1053

Borrow the book from the library if you must and come back and tell me why he is wrong.
Posted by SteeleRedux, Friday, 12 October 2018 4:43:48 PM
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Hi Steele,

I suggest you try and find Peter Bellwood's "First Farmers". The original locations of farming, i.e. cultivating the soil, planting crops, tending rhea, fencing them from animals and neighbours, harvesting and storing hem, selecting the best grain etc. to hold back for planting - was incredibly rare in human history. Maybe half a dozen places in the world - SE Turkey/northern Syria/NW Iraq, northern China, Papua-New Guinea, Mexico/Guatemala, Peru/Chile. That's it.

And the practice of farming didn't spread as an innovative set of ideas but as actual people - those Middle Eastern farmers literally migrated, bit by bit, against the resistance of hunter-gatherers across Europe and down the Gulf to India and further east. And over maybe five thousand years. Hunter-gatherers don't give up easy, Steele.

Perhaps you could also have a look at:

file:///Users/joelane/Desktop/Odds/Indigenous/Agriculture%20in%20Aboriginal%20Australia:%20Why%20Not%3F%20%7C%20Gilligan%20%7C%20Bulletin%20of%20the%20Indo-Pacific%20Prehistory%20A.webarchive

Gilligan argues persuasively that the earliest farmers were herders (and 'penners') of sheep and goats whose fibre they valued, so the fist crops deliberately farmed were fodder crops for their animals, not for human consumption alone.

[TBC]
Posted by Loudmouth, Friday, 12 October 2018 6:46:18 PM
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[continued]

As for the half-witted notions of Pascoe, kangaroo-grass ? Which grows every where in Australia, and has almost no nutritional value ? Are you suggesting it was planted, in cultivated soil using cultivating tools, made in their thousands by skilled craftsmen ? Or are you going to do the usual BS trick of re-defining 'cultivation' to mean no-drill, broad-casting, harvesting at will ? i.e. gathering ? Planted by hand ? No tools needed ?

As my former school-mate at Wagga High School, Bill Gammage has my undying love and respect, but he also proposes some pretty ridiculous hypotheses.

So where are there any Aboriginal cultivating tools ? Fences, to protect 'valuable' crops from kangaroos and emus, etc. that are too stupid to eat the kangaroo grass which is readily available everywhere ? Any harvesting tools ? Evidence of tool-makers ? Any system of transport (silly question, it would have been on the backs of women) ? Any storage systems ?

Pascoe talks about Mitchell observing a nine-mile stretch of country looking like it had been 'stooped' (i.e. stooked, or stacked). 'Looking like', i.e. with kangaroos and/or emus running through kangaroo grass across a plain.

A 'paddock' nine miles long, something unknown anywhere in the world of hand-cultivation farming. Even now, farmers in Cambodia or China or Iraq or Ecuador using just hand tools, are pushing it to cultivate forty acres (16 hectares) a year. Yes, at that rate, an Aboriginal farmer COULD form a paddock nine miles long (14 km) (says Mitchell), but only about 11 metres wide.

14,000 metres long and 11 metres wide sounds just a bit implausible, Steele. Yes, it's possible that instead, a paddock nine miles by nine miles, or 207 sq. km, COULD be farmed, with efficient tools (the ones you know all about) by barely thirteen hundred Aboriginal farmers, going flat-out, to grow kangaroo grass which grows wild everywhere and has no nutritional value. (In Africa it's called 'famine food').

[TBC]
Posted by Loudmouth, Friday, 12 October 2018 6:54:51 PM
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[continued]

Hmmm ...... thirteen hundred Aboriginal farmers, supporting villages of, say, five thousand people, harvesting, say, 10,000 tonnes of grain (You don't get much grain from kangaroo-grass, I'm told) ? (Still, that would be 2 tonnes per year per person, plus hunting and gathering). Of course, it would have been the women doing the harvesting. And carting. And storing. And gathering. Perhaps even the digging. And putting up fences. And weeding (although that is such a bourgeois concept).

But then again, anybody who has worked in Aboriginal communities knows just how precious agriculture is to the local people these days, with modern equipment and transport, and running water.

I've got a cute little rotunda in Elder Park (i.e. Adelaide) that you might like to buy, Steele. And a magic teapot. And a magic stick. And a magic pinch of salt. Take your pick. 10 % discount if you get in early.

Happy reading.

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Friday, 12 October 2018 6:59:40 PM
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Theory proves that iron sinks and can't be used to build ships. Also bees wings are too small to fly and there is no honey. Cigarettes are good for the nerves when you get emphysema .

In theory Aboriginals had land rights to hunt roos in Government House Adelaide . The grain fields recorded by numerous British explorers and surveyors were due to opium in the rum , as the lack of daylight saving prevented farming.
Posted by nicknamenick, Friday, 12 October 2018 7:04:09 PM
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Yam sticks were made of stick, formed from wood . Kangaroos were a problem for Aboriginal bureaucrats in official gunyahs. They subsidised work-for-the-woomera and allowed ethnic cultures to eat cake and roo. This applied to remote communities at one end of a grain-plain , in the middle and the far end . However most revenue ended up in the ochre pits and dance halls where morals rapidly sank to a dreaming state.
Posted by nicknamenick, Friday, 12 October 2018 7:18:18 PM
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Dear Loudmouth,

"the grass had been pulled, to a great extent, and piled in hayricks, so that the aspect of the desert was softened into the agreeable semblance of a hayfield ... we found the rick, or hay-cocks, extending for miles . . . the grass was of one kind, a species of Panicum . . . and not a spike of it was left in the soil, over the whole of the ground . . . The grass was beautifully green beneath the heaps and full of seed"

How many aborigines did it take to form 'hayricks' extending for miles?

I am rather disinclined to engage with your pathological skepticism as the last time it took many posts to have you finally admit the impossible; that the girls that the film the Rabbit Proof Fence was based on did indeed make the journey described despite your absolute conviction that it never happened.

Further I am certainly going to take the views of Gamage and Pascoe over anything you may offer. I am also going to take the written accounts of early settlers speaking of extensive cultivated murnong fields of SW Victoria or the terraced hills around Melbourne, or the grain stores found by Mitchell along the Darling.
Posted by SteeleRedux, Saturday, 13 October 2018 6:03:32 PM
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Hi Steele,

About the Rabbit Fence story, I was sceptical that it happened in the way that either the film or the 'story' of it went. I think that, yes, of course, three girls escaped on their first day at Moore River, that they struggled to find the Fence, but probably went back to the Meekatharra Road and hitch-hiked from there to Jigalong, rather than followed the Fence itself - the book certainly gives that impression. Of course, at its top end, there was a branching off into number of Fences, so which one to follow ?

That didn't seem to worry the author of the book in her ten-page account (out of 145 pages) of being somewhere near the Fence, giving rise to my suspicion that they weren't actually following the Fence at all, but the Meekatharra Road. Also there was seemingly no awareness that the Rabbit Department stationed a fence-worker every seven miles or so, yet the author was oblivious of this.

Also I'm puzzled why there was no evidence of any actual pursuit by the evil Mr Neville, not like in the film. I still think there is a lot more to find out about that event. Plus how to explain that the girls were left alone once they had arrived at Jigalong. And yet at least one of them still spent her 18th birthday back at Moore River.

As for your account of ricks extending for miles, one is forced to ask - what then ? Was the grass winnowed for the seed ? Was the seed taken back to the camps to be ground by the women (it's always the women, isn't it, who do all the work). But you haven't explained whether or not the ground was cultivated and fenced, i.e. farmed ? Or was the heaped grass gathered by the women as and when they needed the seed ? i.e. 'gathered', not in any way farmed ? In fact, was the 'crop' grown by cultivation, i.e. farmed, or was it gathered in situ, when it was needed, i.e. 'gathered' ?

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Saturday, 13 October 2018 6:54:16 PM
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Pascoe 'gathers' the 'farming' methods in this field . You can't make a horse drink and neither can I. Capt Cook drank from a creek but why believe him and his drunken sloppy notes? Probably couldn't drive a tractor or coal bark .
Posted by nicknamenick, Sunday, 14 October 2018 8:08:29 AM
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Anyway, to get back to the original thread: does the truth matter ? i.e. what really happened, how things really work ? Yes, of course they do. Can you build a Narrative on falsities ? Not just outright and conscious lies, but on well-intentioned fabrications and misunderstandings of the truth ? No, I don't think so.

Any Narrative which relies on falsities betrays itself. It leads its adherents into blind alleys. But if power is in the hands of such adherents, then the entire Cause is doomed. Any 'non-believers' must be 'neutralised', kept out of any positions of power, ostracised. And worse, if need be.

I've been a believer, at various times, in communism, Marxist socialism, Maoism, and in the Indigenous Cause. I've abandoned those pseudo-left forms of fascism long ago (well, maybe thirty years ago). (Fascism ? Yes: the song goes "We will walk behind the plough-share, we will put away the sword." Yes, I'm happy to walk behind the plough-share, but I know now that the 'powers' are always reluctant to put away the sword. And all revolutions come to rely on the sword; or the bullet in the back of the head).

But I will always believe in the Indigenous Cause as long as it builds on the truth, on evidence, on reality, no matter how uncomfortable and difficult to understand that may be. Currently, that doesn't give me much to go on, but I live in hope.

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Sunday, 14 October 2018 8:06:38 PM
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An interesting subject. Thinking about it, we all started at the same
point in time when exit from Africa started.
Those of us that ended up in Europe had to adapt quickly to cope with
the winters and that probably gave us a head start on those in milder
climates.
By the time people were arriving in Australia they had developed less
techniques for survival due to less need.
Then jump forward tens of thousands of years and us northerners arrived
in our wind powered canoes and people of different eras met face to face.
What has been going on here is probably unique as aborigines had
probably forgotten due to their isolation that the world is populated
by other peoples.
I know, I know the Maccasons visited the north but that knowledge
would not have been known further south.

We should all be proud that we have survived that tremendous adventure.
Posted by Bazz, Monday, 15 October 2018 10:13:09 PM
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The Three Brothers - Planet Corroboree
https://planetcorroboree.com.au/blogs/culture-country/the-three-brothers
travelled from far across the sea, arriving on the Australian coast at the mouth of the Clarence River.

Murni Dhungang Jirrar - Living in the Illawarra - Office of Environment ...
https://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/resources/cultureheritage/illawarraAboriginalResourceUse.pdf
by MD Jirrar - ‎Related articles
of Lake Illawarra in canoes when the Ancestors were ... They brought the Dharawal or Cabbage Tree.Palm with them from the north and are named for this.
Posted by nicknamenick, Tuesday, 16 October 2018 6:31:33 AM
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Hi Nick,

Yes, and there is a story from up that way about an event when Australia and India were joined together as part of Gondwana - that the Indian and Aboriginal tribes were always fighting, until one extremely wise elder advised the Aboriginal men to knock off the turbans of the Indians (all being Sikhs, mostly banana and sugar growers), which they did, upon which the Indians ran away in defeat.

We forget that India and Australia separated only in the past five hundred years - more specifically, between 1500 and 1788. They are still moving apart at about ten km per year.

I just love true stories like that one.

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Tuesday, 16 October 2018 11:19:18 AM
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Yes the WA earthquake proves that.
However , the languages of Bundjalung and Dharawal show evidence of Indonesia loan-words just as in north Oz.
Posted by nicknamenick, Tuesday, 16 October 2018 11:41:51 AM
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Oh Joe, they separated much longer ago. Perhaps you are doing a nickname nick thing !
Afterall many navigators went that way without carrying their ships overland.
Posted by Bazz, Tuesday, 16 October 2018 4:08:02 PM
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Not at Alice Springs Todd river except in a tsunami year.
Posted by nicknamenick, Tuesday, 16 October 2018 5:10:40 PM
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Bazz,

What, do you mean thousands of years ago ?

And of course goods were carried overland, since - until Columbus discovered the world was round - any ship trying to reach far-off places would obviously fall off the edge. Without Columbus, we probably would still be doing that. Traditionally, Aboriginal people knew that too, which is why they didn't get too close to it: that way, they survived for sixty thousand years. Ancient wisdom.

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Wednesday, 17 October 2018 2:11:58 PM
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Several authors have discussed Bugi ( Indonesian) ships sailing to east Africa , Madagascar around 1500 years ago.
History of Madagascar - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Madagascar
Jump to Neo-Austronesians: Malays, Javanese, Bugis, and Orang Laut
Posted by nicknamenick, Wednesday, 17 October 2018 4:05:40 PM
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Dear Loudmouth,

I have read your link to Gillian's paper. I must admit I found it difficult to get past the fact that this bloke is a bit of a rampant self-citing author. Perhaps once or twice but not 5 different papers. It is something that annoys the hell out of me.

Anyway his position, while interesting, is hardly mainstream but is rather unconventional, something he acknowledges early.

He states;

“The transition to agriculture was one of the pivotal developments in human prehistory, yet the reasons why some groups of hunter-gatherers—though not others—began to grow crops (with or without domesticated animals) remain unclear”

and then proceeds to assess his own theory;

“that production of textile fibres for clothing rather than food for human consumption was the primary factor”

Which then trips into this navel gazing;

“Insofar as Australia represents a test case for the textile proposal, these claims for indigenous agriculture in Aboriginal Australia represent a significant challenge to the argument. The purpose of this paper is two-fold: firstly, to consider whether these claims for ―agriculture in Australia may refute the textile proposal and, secondly, to critically examine the extent to which these recent reviews provide a more tenable explanation than the textile proposal for the paucity (if not total absence) of agriculture in Aboriginal Australia.”

So if he can't disprove Aboriginal agriculture, along with Pascoe, and Gamage, then his theory and earlier papers are rendered moot at best.

Seems like a pretty strong motivation to do so.

Try again mate.
Posted by SteeleRedux, Wednesday, 17 October 2018 4:30:03 PM
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SR,

Gilligan suggests that there is " .... paucity (if not total absence) of agriculture in Aboriginal Australia.” Bill Gammage (double-m) and Pascoe have asserted that there was agriculture. It's up to them to prove it. If you want to think that heaps of grass means that someone has cultivated the soil, planted and tended the crop, reaped the crop and stacked it, go ahead.

'Farming' means cultivating the soil in some way, disturbing it and loosening it to enable plant growth. It needs digging tools, perhaps weeding tools. It needs protection from animals and neighbouring groups, i.e. fences, especially when it is ripening. Harvesting needs sharp-edged harvesting tools. A harvest of tonnes of any product needs transport from the site of production to some storage area. Is any of that evident anywhere in Australia ? I prefer to accept Marx and Engels' interpretation, as in Engels' 'Origin of the Family, Private property and the State'. You probably have heard of it, Steele :). It's certainly worth reading.

Why are some people so eager to deny that Aboriginal people were hunters and gatherers ? Do they think that foraging doesn't actually give people much claim to any particular piece of land ? So, in order to lay claim to land, it has to be asserted that Aboriginal people did more with the land than just hunted and gathered over it. After all, in English Common Law, such rights to use land do not confer ownership, even today. Is that it ? Are Pascoe and Gammage et al. trying to assert claims for land ownership which are stronger than usufructuary rights ?

Of course, it depends how you define 'farming': but to define it to mean no-land-preparation, no-cultivation, no-till, no-fencing, no-protection, no harvesting with tools, and using the 'crop' ('gathering') when it is needed, is to define 'gathering'. No holding back the best grain for the next year's crop ? No storage ? No fences ? No organisation of labour ?

Yes, Aboriginal people, especially women, were gatherers. Do you want to deny that ?

Very intriguing.

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Wednesday, 17 October 2018 6:00:55 PM
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You put me to shame Joe when it comes to patience. You have obviously devoted your life telling the truth on these issues only to come across those who choose ignorance because truth does not fit the narrative.
Posted by runner, Wednesday, 17 October 2018 6:06:58 PM
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https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275020269_Sembiran_and_Pacung_on_the_North_Coast_of_Bali_A_Strategic_Crossroads_for_Early_Trans-Asiatic_Exchange

"New archaeological research at Sembiran and Pacung in 2012 ..to late 2nd century BC... .... However, three out of the ten plot close to a Prohear Cambodian gold ring inscribed with a horseman motif, which has been confirmed to be non-Southeast- Asian, . resembles inscribed gold, copper and bronze rings of Saka-Parthian (first century AD) levels at the site of Sirkap, in the Taxila region of Pakistan ."

Sembiran is a 2,000-year-old port on the north coast of Bali so logically the Pakistan goods came by ship.
Posted by nicknamenick, Wednesday, 17 October 2018 6:20:46 PM
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We can suppose that Loudmouth and runner refuse to read the books they deny .
Posted by nicknamenick, Wednesday, 17 October 2018 6:23:06 PM
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NNNick,

Why do people think it was so easy to switch from foraging to farming ? Farming needs a hell of a lot of long-term planning, preparation, etc., time which foragers can't really afford to spend. Perhaps there was a common stage between the two, of mixed foraging and pastoralism (as a form of foraging), perhaps at first following, then pasturing herds of amenable animals (using dogs?), then penning animals, especially fibre-animals like sheep and goats and alpaca. Then growing crops to feed the animals for their wool or fur or hair. Makes sense in colder climates.

Why would anybody farm plant crops which are available everywhere naturally ? Why would anybody plant crops with very little nutritional value like kangaroo grass or muturuki roots ? Why would anybody plant crops without protecting them from neighbours and animals ?

Perhaps it occasionally occurred, that blokes would get up and ask each other, "So what are you going to do today ? Hunt or farm ? It's a good day for hunting." And the other blokes would say, "Nah, I think I'll give farming a go," while they clubbed a couple of bettongs scampering around their feet. How come there are no songs to bettongs ? There were maybe seven hundred million of the cute little balls of meat before 1788. Then off those blokes sauntered, to a likely patch of ground, with their little bags of specially-chosen seed, digging tools over their shoulders. And cleared the ground, loosened the soil, planted the seed, waited for the rains, then waited a bit longer for the crop to ripen, then got the women to go out with their harvesting tools, to cut the crop and bring it back in bundles to the village for winnowing. Then grinding and baking.

Yeah, that might make sense.

Nah.

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Thursday, 18 October 2018 9:14:54 AM
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An overland telegraph can't work , the power is too weak at the far end. Actually the wire is a lightning conductor to protect camels before the Royal Flying Vet did Medicare bulk billing.

Read the book. White man talk with forked tongue , with mattock, crowbar and shovel.
Posted by nicknamenick, Thursday, 18 October 2018 9:55:12 AM
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Dear Loudmouth,

What are we going to do with you old son?

Faced with words direct from the explorer's pen you are so keen to neutralise them that you are now trying to say that there must be some other reason for the Aborigines to have created these hay ricks. Why, because there was no way it could have been they wanted to harvest them and collect the grain since it doesn't fit your narrative.

Well what other bloody reason do you think they put all that time and effort into producing mile after mile of reaped hay? Was it just because they wanted the exercise?

Get real.

You ask “Why are some people so eager to deny that Aboriginal people were hunters and gatherers?”. They don't deny it at all. The way they managed their resources meant they could have lived quite happily off hunting and gathering. It really is a very fine existence for the most part and the early explorers often remarked how fit, healthy, intelligent and happy they seemed compared to virtually all classes of Englishmen. It left plenty of time for ceremony and spirituality. That of course wasn't to last.

Pascoe says he had always accepted the hunter gatherer label on Aborigines until he started reading the explorers account. It then became patently obvious that was not the full story.

So the question really is why are you at such pains to dismiss with prejudice the notion they farmed? I think your ideological slip is showing.
Posted by SteeleRedux, Thursday, 18 October 2018 5:16:08 PM
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Steele,

I just love the "Well, how else do you explain ..... ?!" arguments, they are usually the conclusions of the feeble-minded.

Ask yourself (or get someone to explain it to you): stacking 'hay' (are we talking about kangaroo grass, which grows all over the country and has no nutritional value ?) does not necessarily mean it has been grown from cultivating the soil. It simply means 'gathering the 'hay' into piles'. However you cut it, however big the piles of 'hay', that's 'gathering', without the in-between steps of cultivating the soil, fencing off the valuable crop, and weeding it - and claiming the piece of land as one's private property (as Marx and Engels would assert). i.e. 'farming'.

'Gathering' is not 'farming', Steele. Piling may be one form of temporary gathering and 'storing' and subsequent transporting to camp for winnowing and grinding the seed for damper. Or, as you might call it, bread. That's what gatherers do.

Gathering as done all over the world ten-fifteen thousand years ago. Farming was initiated in very few places in the world, maybe in only four or five. It was an enormously rare and important human innovation, probably done many, many times and lost before it 'stuck' - and probably done by women.

So what's so wrong with hunting and gathering that it has to be so ferociously denied in the case of Australia ?

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Friday, 19 October 2018 1:34:24 PM
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Dear Loudmouth,

You wrote;

“I just love the "Well, how else do you explain ..... ?!" arguments, they are usually the conclusions of the feeble-minded.”

Don't be an idiot. No, this is usually referenced when people try and assign a supernatural explanation to something. That is certainly not the case here, rather Pascoe related a direct observation from an early explorer and you have sought to dismiss it. All I have said is you need reasonable grounds to do so as in a strong alternative which you have failed to furnish. That's it.

As to kangaroo grass having no nutritional value what a crock. So again why on earth did aborigines even bother to gather the seeds if that was the case. It is actually very palatable to cattle, can deliver protein values exceeding 10%, but it is acknowledged that the more nutritious varieties have likely been grazed out over time leaving the less productive ones to propagate.

The vast tracts of open country in Western Victoria were there because of a regime of firestick farming practised by tribes through the area. This not only dealt with weeds but served to domesticate grain species.

There is plenty of evidence from the likes of RG Kimber that Central Australia Aboriginals “engaged in seed propagation, irrigation, harvest, storage and trade of seed”.

Is it your contention that because they didn't fence the crops they don't qualify as being engaged in 'farming'?

Why is it such a big thing to you to state that they weren't anyway? It just seems so bloody minded.
Posted by SteeleRedux, Friday, 19 October 2018 4:42:19 PM
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SR,

Well, I tried. I'm too old to waste my time on people with pre-conceived notions, and no incontrovertible evidence to back them up. See you.

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Friday, 19 October 2018 5:53:14 PM
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"Have you not read Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe? "
Borrow the book from the library if you must and come back and tell me why he is wrong."

"Hi Steele,
I suggest you try and find Peter Bellwood's "First Farmers"."

interesting...
Posted by nicknamenick, Friday, 19 October 2018 7:40:12 PM
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Dear Loudmouth,

You wrote about wasting your "time on people with pre-conceived notions, and no incontrovertible evidence to back them up."

I know exactly what you mean, the pre-conceived notion that Aboriginals were strictly hunter-gatherers is not supported by growing evidence yet is clasped as gospel by those on the right for whatever reason, why I'm not quite sure.
Posted by SteeleRedux, Friday, 19 October 2018 9:43:51 PM
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Steele,

I'll try again. Is there any evidence the Aboriginal people here cultivated the soil in order to grow drops ? Any evidence of the necessary digging tools ? Of specialised makers of digging tools ? Or harvesting tools ?

Heaping grass is not cultivating and farming. It's just another form of gathering.

And why on earth would people seek to 'farm' something like kangaroo grass, which has very little nutritional value in the seed, although cattle -as you correctly point out - like the leaves ? No farmer in his right mind would 'farm' a species which is common everywhere - even now, they tend to farm why are often exotic species, high-value species - at least higher-value than the grasses and saltbush that might have been there before, for sixty thousand years and 0f course longer.

So do YOU have any evidence of actual farming ? You assert, Pascoe asserts, so you and he must prove, not just pluck 'maybes' out of thin air, and shift the goal-posts on what is to be defined as farming. Harvesting a natural grass, which has grown unaided by man (or woman), is 'gathering', not farming. Heaping such grasses is 'gathering'.

Why are you so insistent that Aboriginal people were not hunters and gatherers, like our ancestors were not so long ago ? Do you want me to cite evidence that Aboriginal people were hunters and gatherers ? Hunting tools, gathering tools ? Throwing sticks ? Not much use against kangaroo grass, but quite effective against ducks.

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Saturday, 20 October 2018 10:01:11 AM
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Adelaide Library.
Title Dark emu .
Author Pascoe, Bruce.
Publication Date 2016

Format
Available: 1
Posted by nicknamenick, Saturday, 20 October 2018 11:02:56 AM
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Give me one reason, Nick :)

Did Aboriginal people put labour into cultivating the soil in order to put seed in the ground, tend it and harvest it when it ripened ? Is there any evidence anywhere of cultivating tools ? Marx would say that, once someone started doing that, they would regard that bit of ground as their private property, fence it, patrol it, guard it. Any evidence that this happened ? Any evidence, other than ample evidence that people hunted, fished and gathered food ? Any evidence of tools other than hunting and gathering tools ?

Just one bit of evidence, Nick :). Otherwise don't waste everybody's time.

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Sunday, 21 October 2018 2:41:02 PM
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Yes I have . All your questions are clearly answered in the book. The book clearly states records by British explorers and surveyors. The harvesting tool is there p 34, 116.
Posted by nicknamenick, Sunday, 21 October 2018 4:59:47 PM
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hoe p.27, 34.
Posted by nicknamenick, Sunday, 21 October 2018 5:02:29 PM
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And there are plenty of them around now ? Plenty in Museums ? I'd hazard a guess and suggest that there might be some now up around the tip of Cape York, influenced by current PNG cultivators, particularly women. At places like Seisia and in the Torres Strait islands. Is that what you meant ?

Save us some trouble, Nick, and describe one.

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Sunday, 21 October 2018 5:45:04 PM
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Sorry Nick, a harvesting tool, or a hoe, i.e. a. cultivating tool ? Which is it ?
Posted by Loudmouth, Sunday, 21 October 2018 5:45:45 PM
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Gregory described the harvester 1884.
Mitchell the hoe 1839.
pages numbers as stated.
Posted by nicknamenick, Sunday, 21 October 2018 5:51:50 PM
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Thanks, Nick, now all anybody has to do is produce one. Just one cultivating tool. Just one harvesting tool. I'd be fascinated to know what they looked like. How wide was the digging tool - three or four inches or so like a Maori spade ? A hoe- or a spade-like implement ? as the ground cultivated by digging as in pre-European Maori agriculture, or by hoeing as in much of African agriculture ? Harvesting tools with embedded flakes, like sickles ? So there were specialist blade-makers back in the village ? Specialist blade-makers - using flint or obsidian ?

My sister was working once at the Auckland Museum and showed me over one floor of it - an entire floor - composed of Aboriginal implements. Hundreds of thousands of artefacts. I can't recall seeing any cultivating tools or harvesting tools. But perhaps, as you would surely assert, there were some there.

And surely, a paddock nine miles long would need a hell of a lot of cultivating AND harvesting (i.e. gathering after cultivation), by perhaps thousands of people, co-ordinated and organised on well-known Aboriginal organisational principles. At least Mitchell talks about a nine-mile paddock. Nine miles of heaped-up 'ricks' of kangaroo grass hay. Perhaps ripped about and heaped up by a severe thunderstorm ? Or cultivated,, tended and deliberately harvested ?

You assert, you demonstrate, Nick. :)

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Monday, 22 October 2018 2:58:13 PM
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Adelaide Library.
Title: Dar
Posted by nicknamenick, Monday, 22 October 2018 3:52:03 PM
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Dear nicknamenick,

You wrote;

I wouldn't be wasting your time with Loudmouth. You could show him every hoe in the Australian museum and he would say they were for gathering rather than cultivating.
Posted by SteeleRedux, Monday, 22 October 2018 4:35:37 PM
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Yes but I enjoy the crunching sound as he keeps driving into the stone wall.
Posted by nicknamenick, Monday, 22 October 2018 5:18:50 PM
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SR
Would you be interested in evidence for Indonesian influence of language and culture in southern Aust. ?
Posted by nicknamenick, Tuesday, 23 October 2018 5:39:57 AM
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Hi Steele,

'Every hoe' ? So those nine miles of kangaroo grass were cultivated by hand-hoeing ? At twenty acres a year as a sort of limit to hand-hoeing (and disregarding that the bloody stuff is everywhere, and its seeds of little nutritional value), that might need a work-force of many hundreds of Aboriginal hoers flat-out, year-round. Meanwhile the women keep gathering kangaroo grass seed (did they actually gather kangaroo grass seed ? It's pretty useless) outside the 'cultivated areas', laughing at the dumb-arses trying to grow it ? As hunter-gatherers always did historically, preferring daily returns rather than spending months cultivating, preparing, seeding, tending, fencing, harvesting ?

And I suppose there were kangaroo grass ceremonies in areas where it was scarce ? Even though kangaroo grass had little value, and was everywhere, were there groups with kangaroo grass as one of their totems ? Did other groups have to ask permission to harvest kangaroo grass ? Were (are) there harvesting dances ? Legends about cultivating and harvesting kangaroo grass ? Growing techniques passed down from generation to generation ?

So all you've got is an L-shaped stick ? Like a throwing stick ? or a boomerang ? Wow. So conclusive. So definitive.

So why are you so concerned to deny that Aboriginal people were hunters and gatherers ? For which there is actually some evidence ? In journals, in countless anthropologists' and missionaries' reports and in countless Museums ? Millions of artefacts all around the world ?

How's that stone wall looking ? Getting a bit closer ? No ? God, the power of Narrative.

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Tuesday, 23 October 2018 8:47:49 AM
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spear : for hunting
hoe: for hoeing
coolamon : for gathering
3 skills, 3 time periods : hunting, hoeing, gathering.
In spare time and on holidays : eating.
Posted by nicknamenick, Tuesday, 23 October 2018 9:07:44 AM
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Dear Loudmouth,

Why is this fixation on kangaroo grass. I didn't say the hoes were for cultivating this species but they were certainly used in Aboriginal agriculture.

You say the lack of fences prove no fields were cultivated but these were societies with strict tribal lands, where access was only granted through invitation.

You are viewing all this through european eyes and allied with an almost pathological desire not to give an inch on anything that deviates from the 'primitive' label attached to Aboriginal Australians.

My early education told me that Aboriginals were entirely nomadic, prone to walkabout at the drop of a hat and who were strictly hunter gatherers.

But early explorers do talk about permanent habitations, of buildings capable of containing 40 or 50 people inside, of settled villages, of grain harvesting and storage, of strict tribal boundaries and of the wonderful, healthy and abundant lifestyles of Aboriginal Australians. The more I learn the more I realise how extensive the effort to delegitimise any sense of land ownership through this portrayal.

You are determined to shore up the edifice despite the evidence that it is rubbish.

As an aside what tool was employed to harvest kangaroo grass into miles and miles of hay rickets?
Posted by SteeleRedux, Tuesday, 23 October 2018 9:17:41 AM
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Good try, Steele: no, I've never written that " .... the lack of fences prove no fields were cultivated". But now that you bring it up, I suppose I would have been thinking about fences to keep hungry animals out of valuable, precious, hard-won crop-land.

My understanding is that Mitchell was supposed to have observed a field of kangaroo grass looking like it was 'stooped', or stooked, i.e. cut and stacked, prior (one presumes) to winnowing. Hence my constant reference to kangaroo grass.

I suppose, as a sort of residual Marxist, I'm aware that Marx and Engels would easily make the jump in status from cultivated (worked, guarded, hard-won) land to private property. From memory, that was, in their view, the primary feature of how and why land became privately owned. So a community evolved into a complex network of individual farmers, working their own individual patch of land. Of course, if an entire clan worked the land, it still belonged to the entire clan, as in much of Africa today.

So, are there any clans across Australia with stories - since stories are so important these days - about how their ancestors were cultivators, diggers, who worked the land and did correspondingly less hunting and gathering. [I should point out that, even in advanced farming societies, people still did a bit of hunting, fishing, gathering, wild harvesting, etc.]. The two modes of production are not mutually exclusive: in some hunting and gathering societies, such as in Brazil or S-E Asia, people might still carve out a bit of scrub for a patch of cropping, for a time, then move on. Pity there's no evidence of that here, though :(

You seem to have a lot more respect for early explorers than I do, Steele. I'd prefer to take the accounts of long-term observers such as anthropologists and missionaries, people who knew what to look for and did it over years, not fly-by.

Oh, you have some ? Stories ? Anthropological accounts ? Missionaries' journals ? Evidence piled up in museums ?

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Tuesday, 23 October 2018 12:06:13 PM
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Dear Loudmouth,

You wrote;

“You seem to have a lot more respect for early explorers than I do, Steele. I'd prefer to take the accounts of long-term observers such as anthropologists and missionaries, people who knew what to look for and did it over years, not fly-by.”

I'm sure you would as the anthropologists and missionaries were mostly not seeing and experiencing Aboriginal life untouched by the cataclysmic changes brought on by the invasion of their lands.

From my reading the Aboriginal way of managing the land was about enhancing what was there, not trying to force plants on to land unsuitable to the species requiring fertilisation and more intensive management etc.

They were certainly prepared to alter river flows to water land with records of significant earthworks employed to water vegetation.

They were also operating under a different system. The land was not partitioned like the tenured farms in Europe of the serf communities. Aboriginal societies appear to have been a lot more horizontal without absolute rulers setting forth for new lands to conquer.

Just here in Victoria the eel aquaculture works around Lake Condah for instance allowed the owners to extensively trade their produce. The industry of greenstone quarries of Mt Wallace allowed its tribe to also enjoy significant trade with other communities.

In many ways it was a rigid structure with entrenched rules and once part of it was disrupted through the invasion it fell away quite quickly.
Posted by SteeleRedux, Tuesday, 23 October 2018 12:34:23 PM
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Hi SR,

I like that bit: " ..... once part of it was disrupted through the invasion it fell away quite quickly."

Leaving no evidence, across the entire country. Reminds me of how Aboriginal people invented wireless technology.

You do realise that it took more than a hundred years for European invasion/settlement to spread slowly across the country ? Where it hadn't spread, presumably all that agriculture was still going on ? And usually farming people around the world fight very fiercely - and are well-organised and motivated to do so - to protect their precious property ?

So we're re-defining 'agriculture' now ? To involve fish-traps, i.e. a combination of hunting and gathering ?

Why are you so insistent on denying that Aboriginal people were hunters and gatherers ? Are there crucial differences in how people relate to the land, whether they're foragers or farmers ? I'll take my cue on all of this from Marx :)

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Tuesday, 23 October 2018 1:42:59 PM
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Dear Loudmouth,

What do you mean no evidence. There was plenty and more coming to light as better archaeological surveys are carried out.

Again you say;

“Why are you so insistent on denying that Aboriginal people were hunters and gatherers?” Which is just another rewording of “Why are some people so eager to deny that Aboriginal people were hunters and gatherers?” that you asked earlier.

My response then and now is;

“They don't deny it at all. The way they managed their resources meant they could have lived quite happily off hunting and gathering. It really is a very fine existence for the most part and the early explorers often remarked how fit, healthy, intelligent and happy they seemed compared to virtually all classes of Englishmen. It left plenty of time for ceremony and spirituality. That of course wasn't to last. Pascoe says he had always accepted the hunter gatherer label on Aborigines until he started reading the explorers account. It then became patently obvious that was not the full story.”

If you get the inclination to want to reword it and present it again in the future just instead refer to this.

And there were plenty of fierce battles over land and many aboriginals died defending them. Why are you saying there wasn't?
Posted by SteeleRedux, Tuesday, 23 October 2018 2:57:44 PM
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"My understanding is that Mitchell was supposed .."
left fender crumpled , radiator buckled, right headlight in tatters.
Posted by nicknamenick, Tuesday, 23 October 2018 4:03:40 PM
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Hi SR,

Certainly, it was not unusual, it seems, for early farmers to also be hunters and gatherers, whatever provided. Often in fact, people went back to hunting and gathering if their usual crops weren't viable, such as the tuber-oriented Maori farming applied to much of the top of the South Island where it was just too cold, so people went back to hunting moa.

What is amazing, to follow your hypothesis, is how rapidly and expertly Aboriginal people went back to foraging, as - in your view - they could no longer practise farming. So much so that some observers, such as the Rev. J. R. B. Love in the west Kimberley around 1920, the first white fella the people had seen, wrote prolifically about their hunting and gathering techniques, but seemed to have overlooked their farming techniques.

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Tuesday, 23 October 2018 4:17:36 PM
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In a quick look through this thread I think that you have ignored the
importance of energy.
Hunting and gathering appears to me to produce less surplus energy than
agriculture, which built early civilisations, Mesopotamia etc.
Slaves provided energy that required energy input (food), but required
less support than other members of society. So civilisation was given
a further boost in energy. This enabled civilisations such as Rome to
develop. Windmills added more energy.
Then much later coal enabled great increases in energy and so removed
the slave trade as it was nowhere as efficient as coal.

BTW way the Arabs were far and aware the worlds largest slave traders
and are still so. In their time the Arabs took about one million
Europeans from as far away as Icelend and Britain.
Posted by Bazz, Tuesday, 23 October 2018 11:06:20 PM
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Hi SR,

Just to pick up on your comment:

"And there were plenty of fierce battles over land and many aboriginals died defending them. Why are you saying there wasn't?"

Of course there were battles, and perhaps there always have been over 60,000 years, with clans defending their foraging lands from other hostile clans. Clan numbered sometimes withered, leaving the group more exposed to invasion from neighbouring clans. Clans with more favoured lands at their disposal were similarly subject to invasion from groups in less-favoured areas, especially during our frequent droughts. After all, the lands under the control of foraging groups are all they've got, so they have to protect them whenever they come under attack. And vice versa: when clan numbers grew or droughts afflicted their lands' food supply, they had little choice but to try to seize neighbouring lands.

Back to topic: the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth - this is what counts. One deft in much Indigenous 'research' is to rely on confirmation bias - to accept only what might, with a bit of re-definition, fit one's hypothesis, and to ignore or denigrate anything which doesn't fit. It's a sort of medieval way of thinking, popular in the Catholic Church for centuries. And of course, it's very popular in authoritarian societies, which is perhaps why 99 % of charges against people in countries like China and Russia are 'proven' in court: the confirmation bias, SR.

And of course, there's always the temptation to 're-define' what one means by, say, agriculture: to include no-drill, no-irrigation, no-fencing or -patrolling, and interpret any snippets of ambiguous remarks as 'confirmation' of one's biases. Most of us do it without thinking, especially when one of our favourite and fixed notions comes under attack.

One major principle of the scientific method is to allow for dis-confirmation, to analyse anything which may conflict with one's hypotheses and either to take it on board and change one's hypothesis, or to demolish it in a principled way. That's how human knowledge progresses. One's passion should always be on theside of truth.

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Thursday, 25 October 2018 8:50:26 AM
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"to analyse anything"
How is that possible when you don't have the thing?
Posted by nicknamenick, Thursday, 25 October 2018 11:22:17 AM
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Whatev, Nick. What thing are you talking about ?

Karl Popper provided a brilliant example of critiquing hypotheses in his 'Open Society and its Enemies': he maintained that, if a hypothesis was invalid, then it was invalid at its STRONGEST point - every hypothesis and narrative has wrinkles at its edges, little defects that don't invalidate their central hypotheses but merely need a bit of massaging (not his word) and modification to accord with the hypothesis. But the key task was to pull apart the strongest component of an hypothesis. He did this with his analyses of Plato, Hegel and Marx, and showed (at least to me) that their philosophies led in different (and similar) ways to totalitarianism and ultimately fascism. Highly recommended :)

I want to believe in the current Indigenous Narrative and be part of the herd, but there are too many mis-truths in it: for example,

*. Stolen Generation: how many cases brought to court and won ? One. Why not any class actions brought by major law firms ? They've seen the files?

*. Deaths in Custody: the proportion of Indigenous people dying in custody is lower than the proportion of prisoners who are Indigenous. As Peter Sutton wrote, it's safer for Indigenous people to be in custody than out in the 'community'.

*. from 1788, no rights to use land: explicit rights to use land in traditional ways were advised by the Colonial Secretary back in London in the late 1840s for all colonial governments and put into legislation in relation to pastoral leases - at least in SA - in 1851; those rights still exist in Sa.

*. so no official sanctions for driving people off their lands.

*. in SA, total number of full-time employees of the Aborigines Department from invasion/settlement up until about 1912 was: one. The Protector. His man job was to keep up to sixty or seventy ration depots supplied. By 1900, most ration depots were set up and run, free of charge, by pastoralists. Why ? Access to able-bodied labour.

And much else. The truth is what counts.

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Friday, 26 October 2018 8:43:12 AM
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. What thing are you talking about

Adelaide Library
Dark Emu. Pascoe B.
Posted by nicknamenick, Friday, 26 October 2018 9:21:46 AM
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