Cornflower wrote:

“Shouldn't we be talking about the empowerment that comes from casting away the baggage of past wrongs, real and imagined, and getting on with life?

“Employment (in real jobs!) is the missing element. Breaking out of the unemployment poverty trap is difficult without a decent education (and support at home).”

May I refer you to Loudmoth’s post of Friday, 3 December 2010 12:43:19 PM on this thread.

Fact is Cornflower, most Aborigines do seem to be moving on. It seems to be mainly the “professional grievance mongers”, White as well as Black, who are still stuck in the past.

King Hazza,

<< Why is it that the English today seem to have little trouble allowing the Scottish regional autonomy- to the point of being allowed to elect their OWN parliament to legislate on their own behalf>>

Rubbish, the English are bitterly opposed to the Scottish parliament because its parliament and its economy are subsidized by the English.

<< and the concept meets little opposition amongst the British people:>>

Rubbish, The Scots, Welsh, Ulster and English are the British.

Be very careful using the UK in general and Scotland in particular, as any basis for any form of indigenous rights.

The Scots actually came from Ireland into the Southwest in the 5th century, nurturing the spread of Gaelic language and culture which the influenced the resident Picts.

Robert the Bruce was himself Norman and descendant of Robert de Brus who fought with William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings. Bissett, Boyle, Colville, Corbett, Gifford, Hay, Kinnear and Fraser in the 12th century.

Now run the Scottish analogy by us one more time?

Mr Gump,

In relation to your mention of this myth of 'terra nullius':

A few years back, I was doing some research on the Pastoral Board here in South Australia and, a couple of times - and a few times since then - I came across stipulations in all pastoral leases in favour of Aboriginal people, as follows :

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

I have since seen something similar in Bleakley's 1928 Report, references to it in the SA 1899 Select Committee 'on the Aborigines' and in the Aborigines' Friends' Association Annual Report 1936 (pp. 35-37), and also in earlier Environmental Acts here in SA.

The gist of the AFA report was that such clauses were in all pastoral leases in all states and territories of Australia, except for a handful of leases issued by the Commonwealth during the twelve years after its assumption of control of the Northern Territory in 1911.

So I am puzzled how this squares with notions, or myths, of terra nullius. Was terra nullius the prevailing law or not ? This has enormous implications for the interpretation of earlier Aboriginal-non-Aboriginal relations, not to mention the initial positions that negotiators over land rights took after Mabo.

[TBC]

Is the grumblings coming from black aboriginies, or white aboriginies when the mood suites them.

[continued]

And what is implied by that last clause: '... in such manner as they would have been entitled to if this lease had not been made.' Does this suggest that Aboriginal people had all of those usufructuary rights on Crown Land as well as on pastoral leasehold land ? And would this suggest that Aboriginal people thus have always had usufructuary rights over the greater part of Australia ?

Many of us, especially on the Left, labour under many false suppositions, instead of finding out realities: it's easier. For instance, I always thought/assumed that, as the frontier moved outwards, Aboriginal groups moved AWAY, further out. After forty years, I asked myself, where's the evidence either way ?

Lo and behold, in at least two of Arthur Upfield's 'Bony' novels, to which I confess an addiction, he refers to pastoralists building dams and weirs on creeks and ephemeral rivers, to trap water and thus attract Aboriginal groups to settle closer to their homesteads. And it dawned on me, of little brain, that all of the early accounts spoke of people coming IN from outlying areas, TO frontier towns. So, in some ways, recognising those usufructuary rights of Aboriginal groups may have been a way of managing the flow of people to stations, and to and from towns.

Genuine research often throws up such awkward surprises !

So here's a couple of questions for Mr Dodson, and Aka too:

* what the hell were those lawyers doing in the nineties, in 'negotiating' land rights deals, when people already had ususfructuary rights ? Didn't anybody do due diligence ?

* Why did people rely so much on their gut feelings and oral history, to actually pass over the real legal position and run with the easy 'we got nothing ! nothing!' approach, which may have been very satisfying, in the well-mined vein of 'Whites are all b@stards, and they took everything from us', but actually gave away far more than they gained.

Sometimes genuine liberation is a lot of hard work, but is no less valuable for that.

Joe

Hazza,

In connection with your remarks about integration in the cities:

* around ninety per cent of Indigenous people in cities are inter-marrying, thus bringing large numbers of non-Indigenous people into the fold of Indigenous society. We are talking about perhaps hundreds of thousands of non-Indigenous people, now and into the future;

* in my experience, Indigenous university graduates are MORE likely to consciously see themselves as Indigenous, and to actively seek out closer interaction with other Indigenous people - breaking away from their families, and from the community, rarely seems to happen, quite the reverse in fact: people certainly seem to get more choosy, and to focus their relationships more selectively, but that's partly a function of scarce time-resources, and an awareness that they don't have to put up with humbugging, even from relations;

* Indigenous people in cities, particularly graduates - particularly any Indigenous person in employment, actually - tend to have better health and far less trouble with the Law [see Cornflower's remarks, above], they are more likely to be buying their own home, and much more likely to interact with their children's school.

Sorry, mate. I presume you are non-Indigenous and think of yourself as on the Left ? Try to get some actual experience of Indigenous people across the spectrum of class and location: this would be a great antidote to so much of the rubbish that you believe.

Just trying to help :)

Jo