"to find ways to responsibly maintain each dispossessed Aboriginal Nation" oh dear what an imagination, wandering tribes of hunters and collectors are now "nations". Next we'll hear of the fabulous cities of old and the wonderful way of life it was back then .. before civilization, modern medicine, fast food and the internet made life so miserable.

Why does no other group in Australia appear to be in such need of total and overwhelming support, why is not other group in Australia such a basket case dependent of help.

We regularly shower this "nation" with money and services, give them special laws and a leg up.

yet I suspect even if we were to house everyone in 5 star hotels and hose them with money .. it still would not be good enough, it still would be basis for their hatred and racism towards all and sundry.

Get on with life, most of us in Australia today are not related to the first settlers or their descendants, do you realize that?

Yes you can stir up guilt in some, but increasingly less and less of the community care about all the constant whining because we do get on with it, we came here with nothing, did not get, do not get handouts - yet have prospered - yet there is one group that only increases in volume as time goes on.

What is it you want?

No one seems to be able to satisfy your demands - and what if they did satisfy them?

Would you then get on with life, go and make something of life.

We're not going away, we're here to stay - and it's not our fault that you remain in the condition you are in - it's your fault if you don't pick yourselves up and DO something.

The cost of keeping people in Stone-Age museums of squalour should not be borne by anybody or any section of society. Integration is the only answer.

It pains me, but Amicus and Leigh have the right of it.
Continuous charity leads to resentment and dependence.
Integration attempts lead to "stolen children", yet many find it hard to witness the suffering that goes with a primitive hunter-gatherer lifestyles: It doesn't seem ethical to leave kids to die horribly.
Sadly, "traditional" practice leads to periodical starvation, over 60% infant mortality and limited medicine.
Western civilisation is based on childhood discipline and is utterly reliant on technology, specialisation and professional discipline. I don't see how we can avoid the inherent clash.
This was brought home to me in a pub in Bachelor (near Darwin) where I was talking with a particularly well spoken and well dressed aboriginal bloke. He said he was somewhat lucky to be an orphan. When I expressed shock at this he said "I get to keep my income and can keep a neat house without it getting trashed by drunk uncles and other family. My aboriginal mates don't bother working, they can't keep it up under the social stigma of 'being a whitey' and any wealth gained is lost to them when the family 'takes their due'. Easier to go with the flow than try."
So how/why do you preserve a culture when the culture itself precludes change for the good of any kind?

JDB Williams is obviously angry but being angry does not make him right. If I understand this article, withdrawing a subsidy is paternalistic. I thought putting the subsidy in place was paternalistic, or did I miss something? As for not meeting the cost of keeping indigenous people in their own country, does this mean if we withdraw subsidies indigenous people will leave Australia in disgust? I don't think they will receive more subsidies in another country.
I have no objection to the Government lending a indigenous people a hand but much aid has been patchy and misguided. Even counter-productive. A more balanced view of such aid would be more constructive.
Incidentally, did I read the last part of the article right in that the author is advocating that idigenous people should be allowed to drown their sorrows in drink, because the government won't help them? Although I think I understand where the author is coming from, that part of the article could have done with rephrasing.

You know, I had to move interstate to find work. I was uprooted from my family, friends and community.

The reality was that there was no prospect for me to pursue my career in the place of my birth, where all my friends and family still lived, where my ancestors had lived for generations. No-one was going to offer me a subsidised government job, so I could remain 'in-country'.

Generations before, my ancestors had uprooted themselves from countries that had been their homes for centuries, if not millennia.
Remind me to lodge my application for compensation from France: my people are still living with the consequences of the Normans robbing them of their land.

Yes, I'm being somewhat disingenuous; but at some point I think people - at all levels - need to stop casting around for someone to blame, and take responsibility for their own destiny.

Surely one of the worst articles ever written on indigenous issues. These inner-city latte drinking 'political' aboriginals do so much damage to the aboriginal cause.

JDB you need to graduate uni then spend a few years out bush before you comment on indigenous issues.

And as a side note, you need to research the concept of the nation. As a starter: many historians put the birth of the nation down to the French revolution. With the abolution of absolutism, it signalled the end of the medieval world order. A new political entity was born centered on the people. It was born in the furnace of revolution and the desperation of invasion by foreign monarchists. This is not quite what was happening in Australia with aboriginals.

Perhaps, when you finish your undergrad degree in stupidity you might consider one in history.

In the eighteenth century, writers like Rousseau and Voltaire used the term 'nation' very loosely, to refer to any form of grouping related by birth - family, tribe, village, 'community', and so on. Perhaps if we substituted the term 'extended family' for 'nation' in Mr/Ms Williams' article, we might be able to make more sense out of it and get everybody's feet back on the ground.

In a long and largely mis-spent life of involvement with the Indigenous community (marriage, residence, employment), I've read (and occasionally written) a great deal of rubbish about the Indigenous predicament, but I don't think I've ever read anything as juvenile and ill-informed as Mr/Ms Williams' diatribe. It might go down well overseas, or in Mew Natilda, but it is so full of holes in logic and fact, that it is hard to know where to begin.

For a start, "dispossessed" nations ? But surely the vast majority of people affected by the Intervention in the NT are precisely on their own land, and have been perhaps forever ?

CDEP (i.e. no-work programs, mowing one's own lawn, home duties): people had thirty years and more to develop enterprises, starting small with projects such as vegetable gardens ($ 10,000 would do it) especially in those 'communities' which once had flourishing vegetable gardens in the mission days, then perhaps chook yards, a few dairy cows - that would have meant a huge proportion of daily needs satisfied - then orchards, and go from there. In fact, 'communities' with ample water could have been supplying those without much water all this time. And with subsidised labour (i.e., CDEP), they could have been selling those fruit, vegetables, milk, eggs and chickens at city prices or lower ! Indigenous affairs is indeed a junk-yard of wasted opportunities.

Remote community poverty: What, standard welfare benefits, royalties, double- and triple-dipping (CDEP + unemployment benefits + ABSTUDY), remote area education allowances, cheap housing, NT reduced tax tates - these aren't enough to keep people in the life of no-work to which they have become accustomed ?

TBC

Joe

[continued]

So why is life in the cities so much better for Aboriginal people ? How come their health and education and employment opportunities are so much closer to the Australian averages ? No, they don't have land rights, or access to royalties (except in Darwin ?) but they are far more likely to be trying to stand on their own feet.

It is surely obvious by now that self-determination has not worked, thanks mainly to the response to it (lifelong unemployment ? beauty !) by the people themselves. So has integration worked instead ? Yes, on the whole, by any measure. And Aboriginal people in the cities, even with very high rates of inter-marriage, have kept their identity, their links - and without being parked out in the never-never either. 25,000 Indigenous university graduates (50,000 by 2020), overwhelmingly in the cities - they will be the drivers of Indigenous futures, not the poor buggers dragging themselves around sh!tty 'communities'. More power to them !

Back to the books, Mr/Ms Williams.

Joe Lane
Adelaide

Days after landing in Melbourne in 1956, I realized the tragedy you so well describe. In my eyes, indelible, is the picture of that year in which three aboriginal boys and a girl are chained together by the neck.

If their situation has changed in the intervening half century, it has been for the worst.

It is true that it couldn’t be avoided in the nineteen century but an entire civilization has come and gone since Cook times. What we have learned by its passage should have tought us to be more humane but we are making no effort to learn from the past

We could have learned a lot from the Aboriginal culture and we still can if dollars and cents were not obscuring our lives and delivering us to an early extinction.

Skeptic, Australia's history is truly horrific as your account demonstrates, and unfortunately the past continues to influence the present. How else could it be that Chris Hurley is the first and only Australian police officer to be charged over an Aboriginal death in custody.

However, other new settlers like Amicus find the need to ask "Why does no other group in Australia appear to be in such need of total and overwhelming support". Surely a basic knowledge of history would show how Indigenous Australians continue to be ostracised and marginalised in Australia, having only gained citizenship in their own country in the 1960's.

Why is that people like Amicus take no responsibility for finding out the history of the country that has accepted him/her, but stridently demand an explanation that they then promptly berate.

Harden up Amicus, do some basic research, learn some of the history of how harshly Indigenous Australians have been treated since the first settlers/invaders arrived in Australia.

For a start, try and google "genocide Australia"

The "SUBSIDY" in question, "Community Development Employment Program or CDEP" IS WORK FOR THE DOLE and it was mandatory on most communities.

It was the ONLY employer, apart from the Council on the majority of remote communities.

As far as it being a subsidy, it entails working to improve the community and it did work.

Now we've gotten rid of it, removed the only reason a lot of people from these remote areas had to get up in the morning, to actually do a job of work and in turn be paid for it, to be off welfare, yeah, that's paternalistic.

For those who think there are "special loans", "special jobs" or whatever "special else" please, point out ACTUAL EXAMPLES? Put up or shut up.

As for keeping people in the communities, this is their land, period.

It'd be like complaining about the communities in western NSW/QLD that need food to be airdropped to them during flooding, or drought, etc. Oh that's right, farmers and blacks are different aren't they?

One lives on land they don't own, making money off that land and being subsidised whenever the seasons make that impossible. The others live in communities, having been dispossessed of that same land, being subsidised when it is impossible to make money on the community. Why exactly should they move? Their families are there, their support network, etc.

I wish people who were going to throw out racist crap would actually pull their head up out of where they have jammed it and actually go have a look at the "super-sudidised" lifestyle on the communities.

aka, well done, you've picked up my phrase "harden up" from the other comments trail - now, take the next really big step and apply it!

I know the history of Australia as I was brought up and schooled here, whether I believe all the opinions and variations of it is another, but less important point.

The thrust of my comments above which you ignore when anyone brings them up, not just me, is that you live in the past, and it is not relevant today.

Your dismissal of everyone else's story is amazing, it's all about Australian aboriginals isn't it? No one else matters, and you don't care.

Well, fine, the feeling is mutual.

BTW - Australian aboriginals were not here forever, so your noxious comments that I should leave because I don't subscribe to your view can be countered with "why don't Australian aboriginals" leave if they don't like it here? 50,000 years, 200 years, it's all relative, is the aboriginal claim better because they have been here longer?

Land dispossession is the undercurrent of world events, always has been, nothing new there.

So, harden up aka, don't take your anger out on people who tell you the truth about how the community feels, you can't take it and you react the same way every time I see our posts - accuse people of all manner of racism and bigotry instead of using your energy to uplift aboriginals into the broader community. The potential and capability to do something is in the grasp of aboriginals.

It is not an aboriginal land, it never was - aboriginals lived here, but there was no "nation", except in the land of make believe.

Join the community at large and move on. Attacking people who tell you hard realities just prolongs the anger and pain.

That's not racism, it's just an observation .. you can argue, but really, shrill hysteria and dog whistling are not helping aboriginals are they?

Reconciliation is a two way street, but there is only good will one way isn't there aka?

What did this article contribute, apart from anger? And what makes Noel Pearson 'amateurish' and JDB Williams any better?

I am SO sick of the Aboriginal industry! Look, somebody needs to say it....you were LUCKY, yes, LUCKY, that it was Anglos that came here rather than the Spanish!

And if one of your bretheren (I think Aboriginies are originally from Sri Lanka from the look of them) came here, you would be simply them now, as they don't have things like ATSIC, or cultural grants to do dancing, or money for not working.

I just think that if we got rid of the identity nonsense and called you all Australians, you would be fixed overnight. Why? Because we could take your neglected kids without racist leftist scum who want to keep your folk down - it helps THEIR cause (which for some reason is to fight the evil of the right wing...bizarre given those on the right are behind wanting to actually do things in reality that WILL help! I.e. everybody thinks the Ron Casey old school types hate blacks..nonsense. They offer jobs to them all the time, THAT is how they think we should help and they are right.

Infant mortality is worse now than it was in the 1920's. Why? Families weren't breaking up back then because Aboriginal men provided for their families, they worked on farms and so on. Yeah, it wasn't the best pay and they weren't treated to well, but they earnt their money and got respect.

An old publican once told me the ONLY reason they were banned from drinking in pubs is because the publicans got sick of the missus coming down the next day with black eyes saying Johnny spent his whole weeks pay and the kids can't eat.

So, they did things to HELP, not hinder.

Leftists like Robert Manne and David Marr (isn't he going to hell!) thrive off the identity politics. Both are paternalistic racists.

Yeah well, the anger is real.

Trouble is, Pearson exporting kids to the other end of Australia for short-term seasonal work, without providing any other answer, was never going to work. Pearson will not say what needs doing, because he knows people who are the major part of the problem. Quite frankly, without radical change in how Communities are organised and administered (and criminal charges for those who have ripped the guts out of them for so long), things aren't going to change.

The church groups who are incapable of even contemplating reaching a compromise with regard to allowing mid-strength beer (instead holding that ALL alcohol should be banned) maintain the hold of the "hot-grog runners" and the bent publicans over communities. People will drink, that was discovered in America for gods sake, banning alcohol means people will only drink once in a while and they'll binge when they can. So banning alcohol completely is not the answer (the meanest communities I've ever seen are ostensibly "dry").

As to the "Aboriginal Industry", the only people gaining anything from it are the "corrupt administrators" (Black or white) and the equally bent "Contractors" who undertake to build sub-standard housing at 20 times the price they'd be able to charge anywhere else. Those who approve such scams are not blameless and should also be bought to account, exactly what link do they have to these "contractors" and why aren't they declaring them?

The average person on the communities is not to blame here, they are merely stuck with a reality that I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy. It is past-time to change that reality, before more kids are bought into these places with their only "role-model" being violent, child-abusing drunks.

FOLKS...*DANGER ALERT*....

In order to unpack where the author is coming from... feel free to find out...

HERE:>>>>> http://www.acrawsa.org.au/

Now we 'whites' are an object of academic enquiry..wooooo....

Notice the 'ethnicity' of many of the academics in that association.
Notice the political ideology of those same academics.

Notice though the similarity in the thinking on that site with that expressed in the first line of THIS essay.

http://racetraitor.org/abolish.html

Hmmm..how coincidental.

Boaz, you can be very exasperating at times.

Your "research" is the internet equivalent of rummaging through garbage bins, and then displaying your findings as if they are somehow significant.

(I was going to say like a child in potty-training, saying "look what I've done, mum". But fortunately I thought better of it)

ACRAWSA is an undergraduate hobby farm. It has no relevance outside the various campuses, and possibly even within those hallowed walls either. Just because they have a web site that publishes such self-indulgent gems as "Re-imagining Citizenship in Suburban Australia", doesn't make them a "danger".

To anyone except themselves, that is...

"Using a theoretical and methodological approach that focuses on poststructural and feminist ideas, I argue that the ways in which place is produced through reiterative everyday practices, makes place a site of transformative social change where white privilege can be questioned and difference welcomed."

I particularly enjoyed the research process:

"I draw on 54 in-depth semi-structured interviews with people who live and/or work in the City of Greater Dandenong, suburban Melbourne, Australia to makes visible these everyday reiterative practices, and illustrate how they can be conceptualised as acts of responsibility, rather than just repetitive acts of hostility and suspicion."

You have a very parochial - and suburban - view of "danger", Boaz.

And that "essay" was published nearly twenty years ago.

How much damage has it done to our social fabric in that time, do you think?

How many posters here have actually chatted to an Aboriginal person, visited an Aboriginal home, or worked with an Aborigine? Where to start with all the diatribes I've just read? Here's one I can refute from personal experience:

Amicus wrote: even if we were to house everyone in 5 star hotels ... it still would not be good enough, it still would be basis for their hatred and racism towards all and sundry.

In 30 years of working with Aboriginal people, I am certain about one thing - the lack of hatred and racism I've encountered from them. The reverse: I've been humbled by the kindness, generosity and friendship I've received, often from people who have experienced appalling things - I'm not talking 1788, I mean the last few decades. In contrast, I've personally met with racism from whites just because I talk to Aborigines: followed by police, insulted, accused of being Aboriginal (good one!). I can walk away from it, back to safety of the dominant culture; my Aboriginal friends and colleagues can't.

I could talk about the positive CDEP programs I've seen, the personal and community successes, often against great difficulties, the depth and complexity reasons for continuing problems, often aggravated by government initiatives that are counterproductive. I could talk about some of the things that have made inroads into the petty racism and aggravation I've witnessed towards Aborigines, the positive changes in attitude. I could give fine detail of the history of Aboriginal - European interaction in the area I work in, and explain why this makes it so hard for Aboriginal people today to get out from under.

But that wouldn't change the mindset of Amicus and others at all, would it?

For all the talk of Aboriginal people getting special deals, often they don't even get things we non-Aborigines take for granted. Government actions have the tag 'if you don't sign this, then you won't get the school, medical centre etc.' And there's a tinge of envy in anti-Aboriginal raves: 'it's not fair, they're getting special deals'. Be very careful what you wish for!

To answer your question, Cossomby, I have worked with many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. I have a number of Aboriginal friends and have been in a number of Aboriginal households. I also live in a predominantly Aboriginal neighbourhood.

I think, in some ways, that we are thinking along the same lines, though. I have experienced (for the most part) a complete lack of hatred and racism and, while our friendships and working relationships aren't entirely colourblind (I am still the whitefella here), they have been positive.

This is why I find the article lacking in substance and purpose. The author reflects considerable anger, which is not reflected in the broader community. He presumes to speak for the community, but does he really?

The future, if there is a future for humanity, is of the young. The establishment of a trust for scholarships to Aboriginal youth, to help them come at par with their brothers of the other ethnic groups living Australia is my dream.

I can start it but I am too old and cannot go on for long.

Can JDB Williams or anybody help in this task? Kindly do.

You will find me at PO Box 59, Hampton Vic 3188

Loudmouth,

I think you missed my point.

The article refers to aboriginal 'nations' on numerous occasions. My point was to show that the word nation signifies a degree of political orginasation which was not evident in traditional aboriginal society.

The point is not how Rousseau or Voltaire might have used the word nation (and whether they saw the nation as embodied in the person of the sovereign or in the people and an elected parliament) but that there was no aboriginal Rousseau or Voltaire.

dane,

I think you missed my point.

In the seventeenth century, nations, as we know then today, were almost unknown: empires were the order of the day, multi-national entities encompassing/entrappin many different ethnic groups, languages, histories (the best take on this would be Benedict Anderson's 'Imagined Communities', a very telling title. 'Nations' were creations effectively of the twentieth century, although from the counter-Enlightenment onwards after the Napoleonic Wars, many, many groups aspired to create 'nations' from from may have never been anything of the sort. Significantly, the first dictionaries of many European languages were put together in the first part of the nineteenth century, as forerunners of nationalist assertion. But even in those cases, the populations in those potential nations ran into the millions, a far different situation than the current Aboriginal population. The tide seems to be going out on the creation of nations, especially mini-nations, although I would predict that southern Sudan will choose independence this year or next and set up a Republic of Matonga. $ 10 on it.

So yes, I hope I do not alienate my Aboriginal friends even further by suggesting that the use of 'nation' may not be appropriate in relation to Aboriginal political structure. Traditionally (someone correct me if I'm wrong) Aboriginal groups held land and exercised necessarily-minimal jurisdiction as extended family groups: clans, or local descent groups, if you like. The family's territory was its own, there was no shared territory, except insofar as members of one family had maternal relations in other groups and thereby some diminished claim to reside in that other territory. For example ....

[TBC]

Joe

[continued]

For example, amongst the Ngarrindjeri, at the mouth of the Murray: on very rich country, replete with fresh water, fish and bird life, about 140 such family groups were clustered in eight or nine dialect groups, with a very loose affiliation to what outsiders called 'Ngarrindjeri'. Often, each year it seems, men from the largest dialect groups would meet and beat the living daylights out of each other - no love lost there.

One dialect group had a very loose and weak system of oversight and chose a sort of head head-man, whose powers did not seem to extend much further than calling a meeting of head-men or elders together, after someone had died, to work out who had killed him (or less often, her). So a sort of peacemaker within the dialect group, and a primus inter pares, with no powers outside the group, and not a hell of a lot within it. In fact, in 1864 or so, his son beat him up and burnt down his pulgi (hut, wurley).

Obviously, the word 'nation' has very different meanings now from what it referred to, in all their manifestations, back in the eighteenth century. It is not entirely honest to slide the eighteenth century content of the word from one extreme to the other now, and to try to apply, in th 21st century, the same word to mean what it was never intended to mean.

Skeptic,
I've started up a scholarship in my wife's memory for Indigenous female university students, in mainstream courses, in the second and later years: people genuinely interested in Indigenous education can contribute to it at:

Maria Lane Memorial Bursary
c/- the Australian Federation of University Women (SA Inc.) Trust Fund
18 Humphries Tce, Kilkenny SA 5009

It really does depend on the language you use.

Loudmouth: 'One dialect group had a very loose and weak system of oversight and chose a sort of head head-man, whose powers did not seem to extend much further than calling a meeting of head-men or elders together, after someone had died, to work out who had killed him (or less often, her). So a sort of peacemaker within the dialect group, and a primus inter pares, with no powers outside the group, and not a hell of a lot within.'

Diane Barwick: 'A clan-head had effective authority within his own group and was considered its rightful representative in external affairs. All clan-heads were men of distinguished achievement; certain of them were so eminent that their wishes were obeyed by all clans ...and their religious authority was acknowledged far beyond the region. Officials [ie white ones] who saw daily evidence of their leadership in the early 1840s had no doubt... The Protectors [white ones] used the words respect and obedience to characterise the loyalty shown to all clan-heads'. etc. [Writing about the Kulin 'Nation' in W. Victoria, Aboriginal History 1984, vol 8. Mapping the Past'.]

We can split hairs about what is a 'nation' and whether it's applicable to Aborigines, but Barwick's account above is reminiscent of say Scottish clan organisation, or Afghan clans and warlords. In any case it was a not unfamiliar kind of human political structure and doesn't deserve the slightly disparaging tone of Loudmouth's account.

We know very little about these complex political structures in SE Australia because they disappeared very quickly after Europeans arrived, possibly partly because the denser populations were more vulnerable to disease and crashed faster, and/or the very complexity of the politics made them more vulnerable as systems, than say the sparser populations in central Australia.

More on language. It is hard to write about traditional Aboryginal people as humans with social and political systems like everyone else in the world and avoid the colonial overtones.

Here is another 19th C description of native life: ‘the men are truly savage, and have neither law nor religion, and support a miserable existence by what they can catch’.

Aborigines? Nope, these ‘savages’ are my ancestors, the Highland Scots. There are plenty of similar descriptions dating from the 18th and 19th centuries when the English were trying to justify their dispossession of the Highlanders.

Loudmouth, I am sending a letter to the address indicated. Why the limitations; girls, universities?

Loudmouth/Cossomby

In the 17c nations as we know them today WERE unknown. That was my point. The word nation may have been used by Voltaire or Rousseau but NOT in the modern sense of the nation state. In their time the nation was embodied in the person of the king. So an insult to the king was an insult to the nation. My point was that many historians put the birth of the modern nation state down to the French Revolution. The French Revolution saw the absolutist monarchy overthrown and replaced with a democratically elected parliament. It was a philosophical change in that previously the king or queen was seen as the embodiment of the nation whereas now the nation was seen as embodied in the people. This meant real change. For the first time a 'nation' united in the face of foreign counter-revolutionary forces trying to reestablish the monarchy. They formed a national army for the first time and introduced promotion by merit (hence Napoleon). They fought with national zeal in defense of the revolution and defeated vastly superior foreign forces. Many see this as the birth of nationalism and the first modern nation state.

It is not about language, dictionaries or population (even in millions); it is about political organisation. Yes, many nations were created in the 20 C but they had a genesis. That was my point.

Loudmouth, you come across as condescending and more than a bit conceited. First you tell me to keep my feet on the ground then you tell me I have missed your point. It seems you consider yourself an expert on aboriginal issues but having studied the French Revolution, it's obvious you don't have a good grasp of European history.

cossomby,
Saying there was no such thing as aboriginal nations may have colonial overtones but that doesn’t make it wrong. Anyone who has any understanding of the intellectual history of Europe could not possible label a hunter/gather tribal society a 'nation'. If words have become so meaningless, we might as well stop using them altogether and start grunting at each other.

Cossomby

Just a post script: there are probably still English who call Scotts savages.

Hi dane,

Thanks for the serve, it spices up my day: condescending - moi ?

Your last point to Cossomby - that's precisely what I was trying to get across in my clumsy way.

And hasn't it occured to you that the concept of 'nation', as we know it today, was so weak and novel at the end of the eighteenth century, that even the post-Revolutionary French easily slipped back into an imperial frame of mind - not just in the suppression of the slaves on Hispaniola, but in the ease with which Napoleon had himself crowned Emperor - not King, notice, but Emperor. Yes, the old monarchy was to be done away with - long live the new form of monarchy (cf. Louis Bonaparte's eventual accession).

But nations as such did really not exist until after 1815 (unless you want to count Andorra, Liechtenstein, etc.: even Switzerland was less a nation than a collection of semi-independent cantons, or sort of republican principalities), and even then, endured an uneasy co-existence with neighbouring empires, a form of government that it was always tempting to fall back into (viz. France, Italy, Germany, the US, post-Revolutionary Russia and China).

Yes, Cossomby, we can all play around with words: 'clan' also meant something different in the Highlands of Scotland and along the banks of the Murray. But we have to try to get beyond the words for things and try to understand the entities (to use a much broader, more neutral word) as they actually existed. Did Aboriginal groups exist as nations or as extended families, and as alliances between family groups, in the usual sense ? Did our ancestors 15,000 years ago - including those in Scotland (even up to the present ?) - perceive 'nationhood' ? I don't think so. Sorry.

Joe

Dane
I wasn't arguing for the use of 'nation'. I placed Barwick's use of it for W Vic in inverted commas. It was used by anthropologists in the early 1900's, but is not generally used now. I wouldn't use it, exactly for the reasons you give.

But, there were political systems connecting people, who saw themselves as distinct, with other groups, often speaking related languages, and the power politics in these groups was complex even if the political structures were not what we would define as 'nations'. The problem is that language such as Loudmouth's: 'a sort of head head-man', 'no powers outside the group, and not a hell of a lot within' goes to the other extreme of implying that there was no political structure, and that is a colonial hangover (that's what I meant in the earlier post).

There are people in the world today who have political structures that are not 'nations' - Afghani tribes for example. Would we say that their leaders and/or warlords are a a sort of head head-man, with no powers outside the group and not a hell of a lot within? We might think that in these situations the actually have a lot of power!

So even though Aboriginal groups weren't 'nations' in today's sense, this doesn't mean that they had no political structures at all.

Cossomby,

The forms of human political organisation are almost infinite - I was writing about one form, and really one form of Aboriginal organisation, only: amongst the fairly free and easy Ngarrindjeri people of the Murray and lower lakes, where life was comparatively affluent, birds and fish galore, never any shortage of food or water. I get the idea that in the more rigidly patriarchal centre, the power of elders and head-men was far more pervasive, particularly with regards to women necessarily brought in from outside, and to young men.

Again, we can't stretch the meanings of words used in one context to refer to another. There have been fairly loose and decentralised empires (Austria perhaps) and there have been very tightly controlled and brutal empires (Mongols, Aztecs, German). The one word doesn't tightly define each one as if they are all copies of each other. Some organisations are run very democratically, some quite the opposite - but we wouldn't imply that if one 'organisation' is democratic, therefore they all are. Don't be fooled by words: it's what actually is the case, not some tightly-defined word used to describe it. Otherwise, we would need an infinite range of words, each of which describes a particular case.

And I'm not saying that any Aboriginal group had no political structure, any more than no family has a political structure. Of course, all Aboriginal groups, all human groups in the world, had/have political structures, but some may have much more defined, pervasive, explicit and/or controlling features than others. No two groups are identical, even though the same word may be used in reference to them.

Jo

To get back to the topic:

You know, if we stood back and looked at what Mr/Ms Williams is advocating, in the context of majority urban Aborigional population, active embeddedness in the Australian economy and society, and two hundred years down the track from the first invasion or settlement or colonisation, this is an appalling proposition: hasn't Mr/Ms Williams heard of Apartheid ? Does he/she have the slightest understanding of the nature of racism, that exclusion, separation and encirclement/encampment are features of racist societies which some of us thought were long gone ? What on earth does he/she think colonialism was all about ? Those laws banning Aboriginal people from simply being in towns after dark, still prevalent in Australia into the fifties ? Those laws prohibiting inter-marriage, or at least fraternising ?

And I'll bet that Mr/Ms Williams thinks that he/she is radical ! Progressive even ! God give us strength !

Joe

As a CONSTITUTIONALIST I am getting sick and tired of all those good doers about aboriginal suffering while not having a clue what the real problems are. First of all the States have no legislative powers to deal with Aboriginal issues as by the 1967 referendum this power belongs to the Commonwealth. As for the Northern Territory Intervention Act it would be obvious that it is not a legislation within s.122 of the constitution because the Territory has no such legislative power due to the 1967 referendum and it neither is within s.51(xxvi) of the constitution because the Commonwealth cannot legislate as to a race unless it is regarding all persons of that race throughout the Commonwealth. As such the NTIA is and remains to be unconstitutional. Now is that not simple? Why then go about that Aboriginals are suffering where the Federal government despite its “SORRY” really couldn’t give a hood about it? All that is needed to be done is to challenge it on constitutional grounds and that can resolve it. For sure since I wrote to Kevin Rudd about this he obviously decided to make it a general law throughout Australia as to avoid it being declare unconstitutional and as such no longer being a race legislation as such but that too can be disputed on constitutional grounds. The question is who of those complaining will pursue the legal way? Or is it just people trying to make themselves prominent by claiming they care about Aboriginals and their suffering but couldn’t care less to take the appropriate course of action?

Aiyyyyyyoh.... (singaporian expression of exasperation :) back to Pericles management yet a-gain. *sigh*

Listne up P.... (frowny look) you luurrrrv to try to make things 'old and of no relevance' by claiming articles are 'old'....nope sorry.

//ACRAWSA is an undergraduate hobby farm.//

Nice touch!

But given:

Author Note
Michele Lobo completed her PhD in
Human Geography from Monash
University in 2008. Her research interests
include cultural experiences of
marginalised groups and the
implications for social inclusion in
Australian cities. Michele is a Research
Fellow at The Institute for Citizenship and
Globalisation, Deakin University, and an
Assistant Lecturer at the School of
Geography and Environmental Science,
Monash University, Melbourne.

The 'references' for that Essay are ranging in dates around 2002 etc...

I'm curious about your '20 yrs old' bit?

She is now a lecturer at Deakin and Monash which means she is infecting bunches of students with her bile.

Sorry Pericles "potty training" just doesn't fit.

I suppose that people within those campus walls never go out into the real world and...teach others in turn :) ummmmm *rolls eyes*.