Joe, the divisions are still there today. I see local jobs in Indigenous organisations now asking for applicants of a certain descent. Not just Indigenous applicants encouraged now, it's down to actually which tribes are preferred. And the generational feuds still go on. Here in Broome a few months ago the police had to ban all take away alcohol sales for a night because of massive on going violence between two warring factions.
The back lash from the greater population was an education in itself! I hadn't realised how many people couldn't exist without alcohol for one night.
And Individual, I agree about the dislike of other races. In Darwin there a quite a few African nurses these days. Blacker than black. And the Indigenous patients don't like them. I was quite surprised by that when it first became apparent. I still am not sure why. Is it embarrassment that certain black people are very proficient and well qualified? Or is it simply a tribal instinct to hate someone who looks like they belong to another tribe

Hi Individual and Big nana,

I wish it wasn't so, but it is, and has been. I wonder, if there was some constitutional recognition of 'culture and language', if that situation would actually get much worse, not better.

Correct me please if I'm speaking out of my backside, but what does Senator Peris' 'the world's oldest culture' mean ? All humans have had 'culture' long before we all came out of Africa. Does she mean the world's most unchanging culture ? Culture which stifles innovation, sharing ideas, learning from each other ? Stagnant culture ?

The rest of the world had the good fortune (even the Native Americans originally) to be living on a huge land-mass, Asia-Europe-Africa, a dozen Australias, with (painfully slowly but eventually) innovations, such as pastoralism and agriculture, refining metals for more efficacious tools, and exchange of religious and philosophical ideas - as well as interminable and brutal wars - which slowly created the societies of today.

Apart from the last few hundred years, Australia has been cut off, even from Papua-New Guinea, for more than ten thousand years now, so any flow of ideas within Australia would have been only between groups in Australia, when and if they could ever come together to exchange half the population, women, and treat each other peaceably. Human innovations have been spread painfully slowly at the best of times - it took us hundreds of thousands of years after the discovery of fire, to use it for cooking. Probably women 'invented' that. And agriculture arose in only a half-a-dozen places - including Papua-New-Guinea - and only in the last ten thousand years. Probably women invented that too. And looking after animals as well. And probably taming dogs.

Now we're all in the modern world, a world swirling with ideas in comparison. What's the good of praising un-change ?

Cheers,

Joe

loudmouth,
all this is highly interesting especially when we hear the terms rich & diverse culture. All the ignorant & more often than not artificial put-on fawning re this diversity is doing a severe disservice to the genuine indigenous who get caught up in expectations of diversity. Why does no-one ever ask the real indigenous what they would like to see ? I feel sorry for them because they just don't get a say as the pretend indigenous override them everytime, very much like academics do to normal society.

Individual,

I suppose every 'culture' is rich and diverse, but some may be based on the intricate weaving of a body of knowledge which is necessarily incomplete on the one hand, and is bound to be skewed in favour of one group or other in those societies, usually the men, usually the older men - that's how 'culture' tends to work. Thinking about my Scottish and Irish tribal forebears, 'rich and diverse' doesn't mean they weren't also brutal and violent.

You and Big Nana would know far more than me about it, but from the little I've experienced and read about, it seems that not only were the cultural practices of neighbouring groups distinctly different, but WITHIN 'tribes', clans within 'tribes', families within clans, cultural practices could be quite different - different naming practices for example.

This makes sense, since land use and claims for ownership were/are family-based or maybe clan-based, but rarely 'tribe'-based - you can correct me on this. If this is so, then any talk about 'nation' has to take into account, not a few hundred 'tribes', but tens of thousands of extended-families, descent groups, if 'nation' means traditional control of who could hunt or gather or fish on whose land. So tens of thousands of 'nations'.

Of course the word was used very loosely a few hundred years ago, often to mean just families. But this is no :)

Joe

Joe, re land usage, I can only comment on what has always happened in the Kimberley. Here, land is separated into areas, with certain clans belonging to each area. Within that area, then comes the family allocation. For example, my husband was allocated 200 acres by the elders, in the location of that clan, more specifically at the place his mother was born. My sons and nephews are all building little weekend dongas on that 200 acres. Neighbours with claims on each side are other members of that clan.
The clans collectively are known generally by a tribal name and speak the same language, although the clans actually consider themselves as separate tribes and have their own tribal name.
Just within the Broome area are at least 12 main tribes, with further subdivision into what we would call clans. The tribes all speak totally different languages, a fact that is always overlooked by those who try to say that the tribes were on good terms and violence between them didn't exist. Tribes with good relationships usually have share a common language or at least are able to communicate.
Ownership of land has become the most divisive issue up here.. You probably heard about the huge James Price Point gas hub that almost started a war between environmentalist and people wanting development. The biggest problem arose when the two tribes with claims on the area were on opposite sides of the debate and we had people who had never set foot on the land getting a vote on it's usage. Aboriginal people who are the descendants of original inhabitants, but raised elsewhere, are now claiming the right to be involved in land issues. It gets extremely nasty and violent at times.
All the locals are wanting individual leases so they can have some guarantee of permanence with whatever project they are already doing, or wanting to do on their recognized areas but the Land Council has got the grip of death on the land and is refusing to support the issue. God knows where it will all end up.

Joe, regarding the "nation" issue. You are correct in that each little clan, which was just a few families, had hunting and fishing rights over certain areas. Many years ago, one of the old female elders, who was a relative of my husbands, told the story of how a young boy, early teens probably, was padding a raft across across a bay, when he lost his paddle. His raft was pushed by the tide onto land belonging to a neighbouring clan. The law was inflexible. Because he went on someone else's land without their consent he had to be killed. And so he was. I was even shown his burial place.
This idea of negotiating with nations is bizarre. Obviously the people proposing it have no idea of the real situation or the original culture.