"This is Marlene Hodder "Nampijinpa Snowy River" again. I have to correct an assumption by one of your commentators. I am not Aboriginal. I was actually born in England and came to Australia in 1961 (and became an Australian citizen in 1985). I have never claimed to be Aboriginal although I have had a longterm relationship with the Lardil people of Mornington Island. I have twin sons to a Lardil man. I do not have the right to speak for Aboriginal people but I can speak of my experiences and I have the right to speak up when I see injustice being perpetrated in our society. I do assist and advocate for people if they ask for that help. I support the Mulrunji people in their fight for justice and all those struggling under an unfair justice system. We cannot stand silently by as these human rights abuses take place".
Arthur Bell. aka. bully.

We all have our unique stories, Squeers - I was raised in Bankstown in an extreme left-wing (CPA) family which split up when I was five or six. Yes, I did fifteen to twenty years in factories and on farms, looking for the revolutionary working class. But that's a long time ago and, all in all, I've had a pretty good life.

But it amazes me ! I've put this on different OLO threads and threads on other sites, and sent it off to law professors and Indigenous loudmouths (I'm not so unique!) when they lamented about 'terra nullius':

"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 for food, birds and animals ferae naturae
in such manner as they would have been entitled to if this
lease had not been made."

but I've never got any sort of thoughtful response. Ditto, it seems, from OLO readers: have I said something wrong ? Something which conflicts so completely with what you have been led to believe ? If so, I'll retract it at once, hoping that I can keep at least some friends that way.

But the truth is very sticky: there it is, that's the set-up that all governments included in the Schedules to their Pastoral Acts, right up into the 1990s - after which, thanks to Aboriginal people's lawyers and radical activists (who were so sure that "We've got nothin' ! Nothin' ! White b@stards !") they could drop it out.

The truth shall make you free, but by Christ it is sometimes so bloody inconvenient, isn't it ?

Joe

and to take and use for food, birds and animals ferae naturae
in such manner as they would have been entitled to if this
lease had not been made."

You are right Joe, the The above statement(in full) is an admisssion that the Aboriginies occupied the territory of Australia before the British came.

However, Invaders do not usually hand a country back without a military coup or power struggle of some kind. Law Courts can only allow so much because at the end of the day they can hand the whole of Sydney or Melbourne or Pastoral Land back, the snag being that the whites won’t just pack up and leave those areas unless they are forced to by some kind of political or military force.

One day due to immigration and democracy maybe the whites won’t hold political power any more and then they may be systematically pushed out of their positions of power and financial influence. The new rulers however may not be benevolent to the Aboriginal people or any other ethnic group in the country either.

It is not over yet, I see this country divided up into at least 3 countries in a few hundred years or so. It is not only the aboriginal people that will demand huge areas of land to call their own but some of these other big tribes flooding into this country will one day demand separate states or countries of their own,
Meanwhile the only way for the aboriginal people or any ordinary Australian citizen to own land is to go to school, get a good job and buy land and a house. It is the only way permitted by the present ruling culture.

I and any other whites could not roam around on most grazing and pastoral properties either. Try setting up a camp site and the owner would very soon be down to ask you to leave, black or white

Well, Cherful, pastoral leases run only for forty two years, with an option for another forty two, as far as I know. A lessee pays an annual rent or lease fee, depending on the number of stock: at least that's how it used to be.

Traditionally, Aboriginal people held the land in family groups: any other Aboriginal people or groups had to have the permission of the landholders. What the pastoral leases recognised, as far as I can understand them, were the usufructuary rights, the rights to use the land for food, shelter and ceremony, pretty much everything but the right to exclude non-family landholders, including pastoralists: the lease agreement recognised Aboriginal peoples' right to use the land for every other purpose.

Of course, from a practical point of view, it was clear to any government that Aboriginal people, on their own land, were going to still use it as they always had, regardless of whatever law might have been made down in the capital city. So, after about 1840 or 1850, depending on the state, they wrote that clause into pastoral leases.

As well, pastoralists needed labour and who better than the local people ? Arthur Upfield wrote about station-owners building dams on creeks and rivers near the homesteads, in order to attract Aboriginal settlement, so that labour would be available. Station owners and managers were usually appointed to be ration-keepers, so Aboriginal people on pastoral leases came to know that they could come in at any time and collect rations - which they occasionally did when there was a drought or bad times. But stations had other attractions for young men - tobacco, clothes, horses, secure food supplies for the old people. It was not all one way or the other, all cut and dried.

Inconvenient truths :)

Joe

Just in connection with that last post, I remembered that the South Australian government held a 'Royal Commission Into The Aborigines' in 1899, towards the end of a very long drought.

This Report dealt mainly with pastoral leases (mainly in SA), restrictions on Chinese-Aboriginal relations in northern Australia, and reports of abuses in the NT (which was under SA administration at the time, and up to 1/1/1911: in those days SA extended well into what is now Queensland, east of Mt Isa). I typed up this whole Report, around 200 pages, so if anybody is interested, get in touch on

rmg1859@yahoo.com.au ,

and I'll send you a copy.

Joe

So saying 'sorry' is no longer enough ? So those of us who were saying this three years ago, and getting howled down, were onto something ? Of course, it wasn't enough - of course something, many things, vastly more substantial and long-term, had to be seriously planned and implemented beforehand, before anybody could pat themselves on the back and say 'Well, that's that then.'.

In fact, I've thought for some time that saying 'sorry' in 2000 or 2008 or 2011, was far too premature. So much would have to be done before anybody could do that satisfactorily, as long as there was still unfinished business - as long as there was a Gap to close.

And there will still be unfinished business as long as despair and fear rule remote communities, as long as people there die thirty and forty years younger than no-Indigenous people, as long as Indigenous women are 35 times more likely to suffer violence and sexual abuse, as long as people are denied opportunities to escape these injustices. As long as a third or more of all Indigenous people are shut out of the free and democratic society than other Australians take for granted, there will be unfinished business.

Meanwhile, especially in urban areas, people are gritting their teeth and getting on with life. Twenty six thousand Indigenous university graduates have put in the effort, in spite of racists Left and Right, Black and white.

Never forget, but never let it hold you back - because who wins if you give up ?

Joe