[continued]

I think that traditionally, young children were not exactly highly valued - they could always be reproduced. So in some families, according to the death records, they may have had ten or twelve kids but almost all died in infancy. Perhaps this is why surnames that were around in the nineteenth century haven't survived - because their children didn't survive.

Of course, introduced diseases wiped out many people, Black and White, in those days. There was no cure for TB, 'consumption', 'phthysis', until after the War. Women became sterile from STDs. And no, no poisoned blankets etc. and all that paranoid bullsh!t.

Meanwhile, the workers were getting on with business, raising all of their kids to adulthood. My wife's great-grandparents, hard-working people, had twelve kids and they all survived to adulthood. Hence, in SA, for some ancestors, huge books of genealogies and huge numbers of descendants; for others nothing.

But I don't think that populations actually declined as much as we assume now. In 1860, at the Select Committee investigation into Aboriginal affairs, Rev. Taplin was asked (and you can imagine the committee members nodding in anticipation) if numbers were declining rapidly. No, he said, we've had more births than deaths. And that seemed to be the case on missions - and from natural growth and voluntary movement, not - ever - from any forced settlement. Not in SA, anyway.

Best wishes in Iowa,

Joe

John might loathe the fact that the British and other immigrants built this country to be largely what it is today. I am thrilled that someone built the roads, hospitals, schools and shops. The Indigenous life excepctancy would be far less without the hospitals, the clean running water and electricity. Barbaric practices of young girls been given to uncles would still be wide spread. Tribes would still be at war (just like now to some degree). It was no paradise as often portrayed buy the fudges of history. Chill out, thank God for the pioneers and enjoy the benefits on Australia Day whether you are black or white. This country was not stolen by the British it was built. Get over it.

Don't listen to this Pill Jar, sunlamp codger, git.

He is but a Permanent Pom Punchy Poxed by Putin.

Pill Jar's brain is stuck in 1962, the year he left the shores of fair Austraya for the Pommy land of Greer and Edna Everage.

Although must be said Dame Edna Everage is more the intellectual than pint sized Pill Jar.

What happened when we were still a british colony is something outside of the control of all modern day AUssies. Perhaps you should take your case to the English parliament who were the overseeing authority at the time of the worst excesses, and see if you can morally blackmail them instead?

I like most Australians own my own behavior, but not that of now very distant forebears.

Moreover many of the early settlers were transported here in iron chains. And when finally free, were often given crown land.

It may not have been the crown's land to give, but most of these folk weren't to know or understand that and when the inevitable clash of cultures occurred, they defended their patch with everything they had.

Particularly when they believed women and children were in the firing line.

I'm not saying they were right, just dispossessed folks that needed to survive.

Even so, neither I or my parents were there; and my earlier forbears recount stories of friendship and owning their survival to aboriginal friends and bush medicine.

Which meant a blind eye was turned when the occasional jumbuk went missing.

We can't unsay what was said, undo what was done or unmix the racial mixing!

The only way forward is through reconciliation not entirely undeserved guilt trips or black armband wedging by activists like you, who want something very different to a peaceful resolution we can all live with.
Rhrosty.

Hi Rhosty,

Maybe we should be working towards genuine recognition and reconciliation:

* recognition of the truths of our past and recognition that, on balance, the settlement of Australia has been positive for Indigenous people,

* and reconciliation of all Australians that we are all here to stay, to intermix and intermarry, and to jointly produce a New Australia for the next centuries.

Then we can all get on with business.

Cheers,

Joe

In order to be able to look to the future we need
to face our past. Black armband history is often
distressing but it does enable us to know and
understand the incubus which burdens us all.
(Historian - Henry Reynolds, "Why Weren't We Told?").