Thank you Joe

Why re-think it, why not do the standard academic thing & invent more on the run as money becomes available ?

Joe
Can you forward this account to Professor Peter Read who has done so much damage in his Stolen Generations.

Thanks, Dan.

Hi Individual,

I suppose I would, but I'm not an academic :) I'm retired, a free agent, a very dangerous species.

Hi Leslie,

Done, thank you for the suggestion.

Joe
www.firstsources.info

Joe, I would just like to put in my perspective. When I moved to the Kimberley in 1970 I married an indigenous man who naturally introduced me to all his "grannies" and boy did he have a lot of them. I was lucky enough to get a bit of information from some of those who were children when their families moved into the missions. Remember that the Kimberley was settled much later than the rest of Australia. When I asked one old dear why her family had moved into the missions, she looked at me as if I were slow and replied "for the mie of course" . Mie was local dialect for food. She said they were not compelled but simply followed the rest of the tribe who were looking for easy food. I could find no evidence of gross abuse of the people in the early mission days, quite the opposite. The old people I spoke to talked about the old days with affection. The only practise that caused real unhappiness was that of removing the children from their families at the age of 7 and putting them into dormitories, mainly to ensure they went to school I think. My husbands mother and all her siblings had gone through this system and seemed none the worse for it. A bit like boarding school I guess, although they saw their parents on a daily basis and spent Sundays with them. From listening to stories from the old people I gather more trauma was caused by inter tribal fighting than by early settlers and missionaries.

Yes, Susieonline, there are numerous books on the subject of aboriginal and white relations in WA in the early years. Could I recommend two of them for you? They are "Australia's Living Stone Age" and "Over the Ranges" by Ion Idriess.

Idriess wrote about his personnel experiences in the remotest parts of Australia, and they just do not conform to the black armband view of history. I know that you desperately do not want to believe it, but aboriginal life was hardly Edenic (especially if you were a female) and the white settlers that Idriess met were truly concerned with the welfare of the aboriginal people.

The settlers were angry about the WA government's policy of "no interference in native affairs" which meant hat the aboriginals were free to kill each other off for various reasons. One reason was the unique aboriginal belief that no man died for any reason without somebody being responsible. That "somebody" had to be identified and killed. That "somebody" was usually someone in the tribe that the Old Men wanted eradicated.

But I am sure that you won't read these fascinating books. Your compulsive need to believe that your own race are the cause of all the world's misery is something dear to your heart and there is no way that you want to read something which might cast doubt on that premise.

Turn away from the Dark Side, Susie. Come back to your people.