Just to give some numbers to the broad statements in this article, in South Australia, a total of nineteen Aboriginal people were executed, all for the murder of white people, at the rate of about one per year. The last execution of an Aboriginal person occurred in eighteen sixty two. The last execution of a white man in SA occurred in nineteen sixty four.

A disproportionate number of Aboriginal men, twenty seven in all, had their death sentences commuted, and seemed to spend, on average, eighteen months to two years in prison. The great majority of these cases involved the killing of an Aboriginal person, about half of them women, by another Aboriginal person.

That throwaway line,

"Eventually, the British gathered the disoriented leftovers of colonial conquest on reserves and they entered the twentieth century out of sight and out of mind."

has no basis in South Australia. The one-man 'Aborigines Department', the Protector, did not 'herd Aboriginal people onto Missions' - his main function was to provide stores for up to eighty ration-points across the state, well into the twentieth century. In fact, quite a few missions closed up - Poonindie, Killalpaninna, Manunka, Finniss Springs.

In order to encourage people to 'stay in their own districts', the Protector issued 15-ft boats on almost all waterways - including the Cooper's Creek - and fishing gear. It has always been legal in SA for Aboriginal people to have guns - in fact, from about the 1880s, the Protector used to provide these free to non-working Aboriginal people, usually elderly, and had their guns repaired for free as well.

It has always been legal - even now - for Aboriginal people to go onto pastoral leases (and Crown land) to use the land as they had always done traditionally.

I know it's fun to seize on every rumour, especially rumours that can't be tested, but sometimes a bit of truth doesn't go astray.

Joe
www.firstsources.info

If Aboriginal people want to commemorate these events then it's their business and they don't need the support of the government, what I see though are White people organising commemorations on their behalf and worse, like Joe Toscano grandstanding to promote their own platform.
Hey, I've an idea, why don't we also erect a monument and have a yearly commemoration to our old foes the German 7th Flieger division or the Japanese 5th Sasebo Naval Landing Force?
We could also make a little memorial to the Japanese soldiers who were executed or imprisoned by the Australian war crimes tribunals after the war...or we could just let bygones be bygones.
I'm not even going to use the term "White guilt" here because the people behind these commemorations are cynical, shameless White hucksters and incapable of guilt on any level.
Paul Newbury, this is about what YOU want, you're just looking for a crowd of Aborigines to stand behind to promote YOUR agenda.

I think the article is naïve in a number of respects.

Firstly, the history of conflict between Aboriginal people and white settlers is disputed (acknowledged at the end of the article). Nobody seriously doubts that frontier wars of a sort happened but their scale and the number of casualties is disputed. If we cannot agree on the history, we do not know what in particular we are commemorating and many key figures on the Aboriginal side have been forgotten.

A second issue is that non-combatants were attacked by both sides. While we need to view happenings in the context of the values of the time, many Australians may not wish to honour anyone who was involved in atrocities against either blacks or whites/invaders.

I agree that one can argue a case for a memorial somewhere to broadly commemorate those defending their traditional lands. I do not think the War Memorial is the appropriate place. The purpose of the War memorial is to commemorate those fighting to defend the nation of Australia. Indigenous freedom fighters are worthy in their own way but had they been victorious in repelling British and other colonialism, the Australian nation would not exist, instead only a large number of competing Indigenous clans.

What next? Part of the War Memorial set aside to commemorate the Vietcong?

I am a bit bewildered by the current push to commemorate aboriginals who stole, murdered, and committed other offences against the early settlers.

After all, we do not commemorate the German and Japanese soldiers we fought against in World Wars I and II.

After all, if the settlement of Australia is classified as an invasion, it follows that the aboriginals were the enemy, and that having lost the war, they are now a conquered people.

The author seems to behave as if he is an aboriginal and the pioneer settlers were the enemy.

The author ignores the fact that under international law Australian territory became British following Cook's proclamation on Possession Island in 1770, and that prior to that, the land belonged to the King of Spain.

This religion of self-hate seems to still have many fellow travellers, who continue to peddle stories such as those about settlers in 1789 distributing blankets laced with smallpox to Sydney aborigines, (despite the fact that this has now been shown to be medically impossible).

It just shows you that just like the theory that someone else wrote Shakespeare, this career of self-hate and denigration continues to provide a comfortable career niche for many who would otherwise be on the dole.

The R.S.L allow former enemy combatants to march on ANZAC day if they want to but again, they're an NGO.
Furthermore if this is really a racial question then surely the war against the Japanese should be given prominence in the Anti Racist list of grievances? That was a bone fide race war, with massacres, torture and summary executions committed on both sides and, by Anti Racist standards some of the most egregious, race baiting propaganda of the era.

I'd be quite happy to see a memorial of the brave men and women who died bringing civilization to this backward land.

Let the Aborigines raise funds by having raffles,cakes stalls and dinner dances like the R.S.L did in order to build their monuments.
Seriously does the author believe that the cenotaph and R.S.L hall in every Australian town was provided free of charge by the government?

It’s all part of the aboriginal industry and the white renegades who bullied our weak politicians into meddling with the English language and putting a capital letter on a common noun. All original inhabitants of ANY country are aborigines; they are not Aborigines. The names of their individual tribes are proper nouns, deserving of the respect of a capital letter. En masse, aborigines do not rate a capital any more than does the term ‘first inhabitants’. They are Australians.

Capitalising aborigine is a total insult to the members of the 250 or so tribes in existence. They are not all the same, and the loudmouths with a little education who make big money out of their ‘industry’ don’t speak for all of them, if any.

So while the do-gooders, self-appointed ‘leaders’ of all aborigines and ignorant politicians are stirring up anger among non-aboriginal people who object to the apartheid-like separation of aborigines from the rest of us, they are also raising the ire of, and insulting the intelligence of, many aboriginal Australians who do not want to be made to feel different like, and be treated like, museum pieces. We are supposed to be a democratic and free country where people have the opportunity to do what is best for them. Most aborigines have done what is best for them, and they work and live in cities and towns.

They do not need Left wing agitators speaking on their behalf.

The mention of Fairfax and Tim Flannery by Paul Newbury (who seems to concentrate on writing about aboriginal matters exclusively) tells us that the usual suspects are continuing to preach their paternalistic nonsense and arrogant penchant for telling other people what is right and wrong.

The ‘frontiers wars’ talk is absolute nonsense. There were clashes between aborigines and whites; but that occurred in all countries colonised and civilised by the British, French, Spanish and Portuguese; regrettable but perfectly natural when modernity meets the Stone Age. Australian aborigines would have been a lot sorrier if they had been colonised by any of the other powers mentioned above.

I have no view on the Frontier Wars except to point out that everyone's ancestors have certainly been dispossessed and maltreated at some point, and whether this was done in relatively recent history or the remote past doesn't have any bearing on the moral issues involved. But I must say that anyone who believes they can add credibility to an article by quoting Tim Flannery has clearly lost the plot.

If one had not read this article to be aware of its nonsensical basis, its lack of any worth could be ascertained by the fact that it has the support of Tim Flannery and Henry Reynolds. To banish any doubt of its reprehenxible nature, I can add that John Pilger has previously written in support of this weird notion.

Great article, interesting and well researched - and I can't believe the number of nonsensical "I'm not racist but..." comments from respondents who want to venerate the White Australia version of our country's history.
Australia's institutions - such as the War Memorial - seem to want to refuse a formal history that recounts anything but the victor's side - and we will all be worse off for its omission.
Yes - early settlers from Europe killed the original inhabitants of Australia for their land - and some European settlers were killed despite never attacking the locals. Yes, many Aboriginal people fought back - some bravely defending their kin against technologies they had little hope of defeating.
Refusing to talk about it, doesn't mean it didn't happen. We are out of step with international thinking (again).
In New Zealand, for example, more than 60 memorials commemorate the dead of the New Zealand Wars. Initially these commemorated dead white soldiers and the Maori who fought alongside them against other tribes; but since the 1970s new memorials have been erected to commemorate the dead on both sides, such as that at New Plymouth (St Marys) and Wakefield St Auckland.
Time for us to move beyond 1960s sensibilities and tell our nation's true history, not the most convenient one.

Flannery's record as a weather prophet has been atrocious. It seems he is blinded by his world view. This issue seems no different.

"Gray defines war 'as an act of force to compel an enemy to do your will'"

And since when do we give medals and memorials to the "enemy"?

"Native peoples fought the invaders on a tribe by tribe basis because each of them was a sovereign people defending their land"

Not even strategic enough to form an alliance! No wonder they lost.

"it is incumbent on non-Indigenous Australians to own our past"

And the Aborigines? They can still claim the land is "theirs", even though they lost the "war"? Absurd!

Hi Fran,

To repeat,

"It has always been legal - even now - for Aboriginal people to go onto pastoral leases (and Crown land) to use the land as they had always done traditionally."

In South Australia, about half of the ration depot managers were pastoralists, unpaid, who had to provide a store-room for up to a few tons of supplies. Rations were for the elderly, sick and infirm, nursing mothers an orphans. Able-bodied people were able to hunt and fish and gather as they always had done. And still can, if they have a mind to.

According to the record, which of course we are free to ignore, the number of whites killed by Aborigines in the early days, almost always over sheep or supplies, far outnumbered the number of Aborigines killed by whites. [Of course, the record would say that, wouldn't it, you may add].

Ration depots all over Australia acted as pull-factors - people came IN to the depots, they didn't - as I and many others have always thought, but without a shred of evidence - that people moved OUT, away from the 'Frontier', away from ration depots. But people weren't stupid then or now: if the dependants of a group could get free food, then why not ? A huge burden was taken off the able-bodied, who, in any case, were as happy to work for money wages - and buy tobacco and clothes and, where possible, grog, in the process.

Ask yourself: what happened to those dependants in pre-European times during the frequent Australian droughts ? They died. Babies being nursed died. Old people died. I would suggest that during long droughts, up to half the population may have died. Of course, the more mobile moved into the shelter of neighbouring groups if they had friendly relations with them, but otherwise people died.

[TBC]

[continued]

With a ration system, those days were gone. Not only that, but during droughts, the able-bodied were also provided with rations. People seemed to camp usually a mile or two from depots. In SA, a drought lasted throughout almost the whole of the 1800s. What cultural impact might that have had in traditional times ? What cultural impact might it have had under the ration system ?

From what I can tell from the record, that system lasted well into the twentieth century. So the question arises: do we go by available evidence, or by our gut-feelings ?

Joe
www.firstsources.info

r there commemorate sites in NZ where the Maori's ate previous inhabitants? if not why not?

Oops, I meant the '1890s'. Sorry :(

Certainly, the subject deserves a lot more acknowledgement in mainstream discourse. Although some excellent work has been done in this area - especially the SBS documentary, The First Australians - the true story of the frontier wars is still beyond the general knowledge of most Australian people.

I for one don't seek it out much because I find it too heartbreaking. I'm such a coward.

Having said that, however, I don't see the point of adding another set of war commemorations to an already overcrowded war commemoration agenda on the Australian cultural calendar. I'd rather see us ditch all this Anzac obssessing rather than adding empty commemorations of our frontier wars.

Killarney, that would be the ideal, we also need to consign the 1939-45 mythology to the mullock heap as well.
You've got to look where this is coming from, the proponents of the Black G.S.T of which the "Frontier War" narrative is an element are a mix of Aboriginal Ethno-Nationalists and what can only be characterised as Aboriginal Fascists (and as a Fascist sympathiser I don't mean that in a derogatory way).
I can accept the views of Robbie Thorpe, Sharon Firebrace or Richard Downs, in fact I'm in agreement with them but I won't put up with White Anti Whites, Anarchists and religious fruitcakes who are nothing but parasites on the Aboriginal cause.
People like the author of this article aren't interested in reconciliation, they're the weaklings and outcasts of what's left of White society who, (to draw an analogy from Joe's posts) are looking to attach themselves to another tribe because they know they can never live up to the standards of their own society.
In days past Paul Newbury and Joe Toscano would have been the ones left behind by the tribe or killed because they were undermining the cohesion of the group and to the extent that their parasitic behaviours have been noticed by the Aboriginals they are rapidly spreading their toxin to their new hosts and turning broadly sympathetic Whites away from reconciliation with their Anti White slander.
They say they are Anti Racist, what they are is Anti White, Anti Racism is just a code word for Anti White.

Hi there JAY of MELBOURNE...

I'm not quite sure when you say the RSL 'allow' former enemy combatants to march on ANZAZ Day ? My friend, the RSL is no more than a big club of ex and serving members of the Armed Services. While it's true they tend to organise the March in the various Cities, the question of 'allow' is patently incorrect ?

If an individual is a legitimate veteran of Australia or it's allies, that individual does NOT need permission from the RSL in order to march. I'd dearly like to see any RSL official try to stop any Vietnam Veteran or any other Veteran, march if he so wishes ! The RSL does NOT speak for all Veterans, only those who belong to the League.

There are occasions where the RSL tend to get a 'little bit big for their boots', and there are many, many Veterans, who have little or no regard for them whatsoever !

"There are occasions where the RSL tend to get a 'little bit big for their boots', and there are many, many Veterans, who have little or no regard for them whatsoever!"

Including some Korean War veterans who were not allowed to join the RSL because the Korean War "....was not a real war".

Good afternoon to you IS MISE...

I know, I know, my friend ! A disgusting piece of work for sure ! Similar to the Vietnam Vets, the Malayan Emergency, the Confrontation ! From what little I've seen of the Korean War, a terrible price paid for a war without a declaration of peace ! Merely a cease fire ? Still, that maniac in North Korea, is still provoking the US and it's allies ?

Take care IS MISE please.

O sung,
Apologies for the late reply but I hit my post limit on this thread.
From 2006 Turkish veterans were able to participate in ANZAC day, though I've no idea how many did or if any are even still alive, it seems unlikely but perhaps their relative march on their behalf.
The RSL has also been criticised for their link with the NVA veterans association, there was a paper written by a woman named Natalie Nguyen on the Vietnamese veterans living in Australia but I can't find it online so I'm at a loss as far as making any further observations on the subject.
I may be mis-remembering the story of the NVA veterans marching but aside from evidence of ARVN veterans participating in ANZAC day I can't provide any more information on Vietnamese veterans.

Good afternoon to you JAY of MELBOURNE...

Thank you again for your 'heads up' on the proposition that the RSL may be considering whether or not to permit North Vietnamese Regulars to march on ANZAC Day ? If this is the case, it is hoped the RSL have sufficient sense to canvas the views of ALL Vietnam Veterans within their membership, if they wish to allow such a thing ?

Once every single Vietnam Vet. is gone, perhaps then, in the interests of peace and reconciliation that may be OK, but 'NO' not while one single Vietnam Vet. still lives !

Thank you again JAY, I appreciate your information.