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.