Hi Banjo,

Not really, I'm not a historian, I wish I was, but I'm too old to start now. I'm curious about the past, of course, but I'm more concerned about the present and the future for Indigenous people, my wife's legacy and my kids' future. I'll let other people argue about the past.

Currently, my focus is on Indigenous higher education and why nobody seems to take any much notice of it: by the end of this year, around forty thousand Indigenous people will have graduated from university, and I'm baffled why no 'leaders' seem to either give a toss, or actually believe that it's happening. Are they all imbued so much with the old racism ? Do they think it just couldn't be ?

Well, all I can say is that it will bite them on the @rse when it finally dawns on them - and on the rest of Australia - that it's happening. Fifty thousand by 2020, one hundred thousand by 2030 - when in that time will anybody, any Indigenous 'leaders', get their heads around it ? It's happening. Around forty per cent of EVERY young Indigenous age-group will go to uni. The vast majority in mainstream courses. Get used to it.

It's been happening for a decade now. Two thousand will graduate this year. More than that next year. And more the next year. Get used to it. Of course, when they do realise it, the gormless 'elite' will sh!t themselves. Forty, fifty thousand breathing down their necks ? A hundred thousand by 2030 ? That means the elite have only ten or fifteen years of bullsh!t domination, of conning that they are the Select, the Mighty Exceptions. Live it up, fellas, while you can.

Joe

To get back towards the topic, with a slight detour to comment on firing practices: the notion of traditional burning, with people carefully walking in front of the fire to control it - perhaps Aboriginal experts could show the various fire-fighting services how it's done. They could get out there in front of the bushfires, let's say, next year and show the Fireys how to walk in front and keep control of the inferno.

I'd like to see that :)

Back to actual topic: the bottom-line seems to be (at least in my imperfect view) that able-bodied people have to be either guided into work, or cut loose, no benefits whatever. Hence the need for a cash card to protect their grandmothers and aunties from humbugging, being stood over. Such standing over one's frail relatives could be made an offence, punishable by compulsory enrolment in, and graduation from, a genuine TAFE course, ideally moving the able-bodied towards a trade, or at least some basic skills.

Perhaps the time is past now, but ideally such jobs should be in larger communities and towns nearby. Like migrants after the War, able-bodied Aboriginal people may have to take basic jobs, cleaning, labouring, etc., with the encouragement that if they want a clean job, one with good pay and pleasant surroundings, all they have to do is study after work, perhaps basic courses at first, then more rigorous courses, until they could handle a semi-professional course - and maybe go on to higher things later.

Yes, it might take twenty years or more, but having mucked up their own schooling by never attending, what should they expect ?

Let's be honest: Aboriginal people in remote areas have made their own beds. Believing that they will never have to work, that they can stay on welfare for life, they have discouraged their own kids from going to school (if you'll never have to work, why do you need education ?), and avoided the need themselves to ever get any skills. Time to get out of bed and go to work.

Joe

Banjo Paterson,

I would very much like to see how Stanford University anthropologist Douglas Bird might demonstrate how Aborigines could effectively control-burn in any but the sparsest of country and how they did it with small numbers. 'Walking with fire' is a fanciful concept. How is that done in practice?

Otherwise and in the general application it is given, it is the wishful speculation of a social scientist and myth-making because others apply it generally.

The Canberra fires show how fires affecting even sparsely grassed areas can lead to a major calamity. That was where modern communications, transport and water supply, heaps of manpower and firefighting plans and expertise were available.

Applying some commonsense and Occam's Razor, it is as I said before, far more likely that Aborigines were opportunist and used fires to get game that were otherwise difficult to find and hunt. That and the will to clear scrub for convenience are far more likely that some complex idea of deliberate land management by 'noble savages'.

It would also be very interesting to know how Bird the anthropologist explained how Aboriginal clans kept fires to their own territory, or agreed fire plans and control with their neighbours.

Controlled burns by farmers are done with a lot of intel, equipment, planning and coordination, including establishment of fire breaks. Even so, damage is difficult to avoid, from an unexpected wind change for example.

.

Dear onthebeach,

.

« Applying some commonsense and Occam's Razor, it is far more likely that Aborigines used fires to get game than some complex idea of deliberate land management by 'noble savages'. »
.

I should probably have done the same if the idea had occurred to me – though I am not sure I am that bright.

The question is: Did they burn not only to catch wild game but also to have it nicely cooked to their liking, rare to medium perhaps, with or without herbal seasoning? I suppose it depends on the comparative speed of the particular type of game and the bushfire – whether they wanted say snails as a starter, goanna as a second course and kangaroo as the main dish. The speed of the fire would have to be adjusted accordingly. Otherwise, the snails might be burnt to charcoal, the goanna might be either too raw or over-cooked and the kangaroo might get away. If they cooked too much, of course, they wouldn’t be able to eat it all and there might be nothing else available for several weeks.

As you preconise a commonsense and Occam's Razor approach to the question, allow me to suggest that experience may have taught them how to integrate all these variables and work out an optimum solution.

They may well have decided it was more efficient and more beneficial in the long run to use fire simply to herd the game into a position where they could easily catch it.

I can understand your incredulity at the suggestion that the Aborigines might have been capable of « deliberate land management » and that they might qualify as « noble savages ».

My experience of different human beings (including Aborigines), in vastly different situations, has taught me that some can be the dregs of the earth in certain situations and superior human beings, even leaders, in others, demonstrating a totally unsuspected degree of “nobility”.

How else could they have survived for 60,000 years without destroying their eco-system?

They beat us, despite all our science and technology.

.

.

Dear Joe,

.

« By the end of this year, around forty thousand Indigenous people will have graduated from university … It's been happening for a decade now. Two thousand will graduate this year. Fifty thousand by 2020, one hundred thousand by 2030 - when in that time will anybody, any Indigenous 'leaders', get their heads around it ?

That means the elite have only ten or fifteen years of bullsh!t domination, of conning that they are the Select, the Mighty Exceptions. Live it up, fellas, while you can. »

Thanks for the info, Joe. That is a major evolution. I should be interested to know what sparked it off back in 2005? Any ideas what it might have been?
.

« The notion of traditional burning, with people carefully walking in front of the fire to control it - perhaps Aboriginal experts could show the various fire-fighting services how it's done. They could get out there in front of the bushfires, let's say, next year and show the Fireys how to walk in front and keep control of the inferno. I'd like to see that :) »

I don’t know if Aborigines walked in front of their traditional burning or not, Joe. It seems most unlikely, except, perhaps in sparse, open areas such as Australia’s Western Desert (cf., the Stanford University study).

However, Aboriginal hunting fires should not be confused with criminal or natural catastrophe fires. They were not on the same scale. Nor do they appear to have occurred in the same regions. Fire hunting seems to have been practised mainly inland, not in the heavily forested regions nor on the coast. This has been evidenced by the scarring of the landscapes.
.

« The bottom-line seems to be (at least in my imperfect view) that able-bodied people have to be either guided into work, or cut loose, no benefits whatever ».

That's the fall-out, from British colonisation. It will take a few more generations to completely assuage the human tragedy they left behind. I guess we just have to manage it as best we can.

.

Hi Banjo,

Ah, I love those self-evident 'how-else' questions:

'How else could they have survived for 60,000 years without destroying their eco-system?'

As a totality, yes, people survived, across the entire country. But in regions hit by long droughts, people would have died. The young, the old, the women - in very long droughts, say fifteen or twenty years, the group would not have been able to reproduce. Neighbouring groups were as likely to help that along as otherwise. Apart from the chance to exchange women, neighbouring groups were not particularly sympathetic towards each other.

I wouldn't be surprised if long droughts caused huge areas to be emptied of people, and for generations, until neighbouring groups could colonise them again. And that may have happened over and over.

Incidentally, that really does force us to estimate pre-European populations, not on the optimal, but on a sort of minimum: yes, in good times, maybe half a million people lived across Australia, if they ever occurred uniformly, and for long enough (of course, they never have). But in the frequent bad times, perhaps half the population died, and groups would have taken generations - interrupted by yet more bad times - to build their populations up again.

As for 'destroying' eco-systems, they certainly modified them, although climatic change over that time, twenty thousand yeas of the Ice Age, also forced major modifications, and therefore must have forced major cultural and economic (and technological and geographical) changes.

Banjo, we should always be suspicious of 'how-else' questions, they can really trip us up.

[TBC]