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The Forum > Article Comments > Australia Day: the least we can do is accept our own history > Comments

Australia Day: the least we can do is accept our own history : Comments

By Andrew Bartlett, published 25/1/2016

The fact Stan Grant’s compelling speech has gone viral shows just how deeply this refusal to accept the reality of Australia’s history resonates with so many people.

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If we are going to use Australia Day to remind us of the bad things Exdigenous Australians have done to Indigenous Australians, then it's fair we also talk about the bad things that Indigenous Australians did to themselves: infanticide, internecine warfare between tribes, massacres of early explorers and so on.
Sorry, Andrew, but Australia Day should be an opportunity to be grateful for the present while committing ourselves to a positive future yet never forgetting our past. It should not be a day whose main role is to make Exdigenous Australians feel guilty for past wrongs carried out by previous generations.
Posted by Bernie Masters, Monday, 25 January 2016 11:10:11 AM
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Thanks Bernie. I have no problem with the reality of past practices by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people being talked about. But the core issue is that we can't ensure we don't forget our past if we refuse to acknowledge big chunks of it in the first place.

And I don't see it at all about trying to make people feel guilty - rather the opposite in fact. It is much easier to feel proud about where Australia has got to (for me at least, and I expect also many other non-Indigenous people) if we genuinely understand and accept all of the events/actions that occurred to get us to where we are now.

(plus we need to change the date)
Posted by AndrewBartlett, Monday, 25 January 2016 3:57:24 PM
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Bernie Masters. No one is suggesting indigenous society was any better than it should be, but it certainly was a great deal better for most people than the British/European social structure of privilege and poverty, injustice and disease. Sensible people learn from their mistakes. Australia is the way it is because of the forceful, brutal and violent dispossession of the original occupiers and the subsequent mean-spirited, nasty refusal to then share it with the original occupiers. If there's anything worse than a poor loser, it's a poor winner, and Australians take the cake when it comes to lack of generosity in victory. If you reckon Australian Aborigines should have the same rights as you, then you must honour their bravery and sacrifices in the same way as the invaders have been honoured. Why is it ok for us to have monuments to brave men and women, but not for them? In this excellent opinion piece Andrew was not suggesting we make people feel guilty, but that we should bring the original people into the celebration as equals who have also suffered, fought and desired a good life.
Posted by ybgirp, Monday, 25 January 2016 4:09:29 PM
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Thanks for your reply, Andrew. By using the words "It is much easier to feel proud about where Australia has got to ... if we genuinely understand and accept all of the events/actions that occurred to get us to where we are now.", you are indeed looking to the future and being constructive on how we should view our past. I don't have any problem with this, but I fear that the majority of people who are anti-Australia Day and who want to change its name to Invasion Day do not have your affirmative, mature and sensible way of looking at how we can make progress on the many issues facing both Indigenous and Exdigenous Australians.
Posted by Bernie Masters, Monday, 25 January 2016 4:16:56 PM
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don't you luv how this present generation feel so much morally superior than the pioneers who built this great country. I suspect ex pollies and public servants who benefited so much and now bang on about how bad the whites were have no idea whatsoever. Education has certainly left truth behind especially in our unis. The continual victim status given to our first people by pollies and academics have done far more harm than anyone else. Drugs, child abuse, lack of education, domestic violence has all thoroughly ingrained the poor me victimhood mentality. Very convenient for the aboriginal industry and pollies not to have the guts to address home truths. God forbid the Islam should ever take root here.
Posted by runner, Monday, 25 January 2016 6:37:00 PM
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runner "don't you luv how this present generation feel so much morally superior than the pioneers who built this great country".

Amazing isn't it. A bunch of lefties drunk on their own feelings of moral superiority, trying to turn every Australian into a self-loathing depressive. Meanwhile, our ancestors gave us cars, roads, electricity, rule of law, economic and material prosperity, comfort, security, schools, universities, running water, sewage systems etc.
Posted by Aristocrat, Monday, 25 January 2016 7:58:54 PM
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runner and Aristocrat,

Spot on. Ditto.
Posted by onthebeach, Monday, 25 January 2016 8:27:02 PM
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No answer Andrew?
These blokes are spot on! Why stop with this? Lets really get stuck into all the muslim over their historical invasions and massacres with your new chums eh Andrew? To say nothing of their present behaviour.
Posted by JBowyer, Monday, 25 January 2016 10:15:18 PM
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I believe it's hard issue in every country. Many nations have problems in accepting their history. What's more - it is often very hard to say if widely known history is actually real.
Posted by Helen78, Tuesday, 26 January 2016 12:09:33 AM
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The best thing that ever happened to the aboriginal people (especially aboriginal women) in 40,000 years was the arrival of the British.

The aboriginal people were caught in a time warp where they could never advance. Denied having fauna that could be domesticated, or any flora that could be cropped, they could never advance beyond a hand-to-mouth existence. Their culture was probably unique in it's extreme violence towards women, a practise that continues to this day. Although Andrew with his own history of violence towards women in the Australian parliament, probably approves of this well known behaviour of aboriginal men towards aboriginal women.

The colonial settlement by an advanced civilisation of this planet's fifth continent was an inevitable as the rising of tomorrows sun. You would have to be as stupid as a Greens or Australian Democrats voter to even entertain the thought that the advanced civilisations of this world was going to just sail past the world's fifth continent, and just wave at the worlds most backward people. Or think that black people anywhere could ever create modern functioning societies. Thank heavens it was the British who came first. If it had been the Germans or the Japs there would be no aborigines today. The Arabs would have made them all slaves and bred them out of existence. The Dutch or Belgians would have exploited them as something akin to slaves.
Australia is one of the best countries in the world, Andrew, so our ancestors obviously did something right.

I used to be a trendy lefty too, Andrew. But it was this hatred of your own culture and people which turned me right off your left wing ideology and forced me to think rationally. I grew out of it. What happened to you? Do you really believe the crap you are sprouting? Or are you some sort of Elmer Gantry figure who is smart enough to know that there are plenty of suckers around who need to believe that they are morally pure, and that a smart dude, who's own drunken behaviour is hardly beyond reproach, can exploit that?
Posted by LEGO, Tuesday, 26 January 2016 4:27:07 AM
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The actual people responsible for that history and from all sides, need to front up and own their own behavior!
What? they're all dead now?

Struth, how can we get them to pay restitution!?

I know, let's see if we can get their great great great grandkids to embark on some sort of guilt trip.

And if that works, well the Japanese and the Germans still owe us war debt money?
Rhrosty.
Posted by Rhrosty, Tuesday, 26 January 2016 8:58:54 AM
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ANDREW BARTLET: What have the Romans ever done for us?: They've bled us white, the bastards. They've taken everything we had, and not just from us, from our fathers, and from our fathers' fathers.

NATASHA STOTT DESTROYA: And from our fathers' fathers' fathers.

BOB BROWN: Yeah.

NATASHA STOTT DESTROYA: And from our fathers' fathers' fathers' fathers.

ANDREW BARTLET: Yeah. All right, NATASHA. Don't labour the point. And what have they ever given us in return?!

LARISSA WATERS: The aqueduct?

ANDREW BARLET: What?

LARISSA WATERS: The aqueduct.

ANDREW BARTLET: Oh. Yeah, yeah. They did give us that. Uh, that's true. Yeah.

LEE RHIANNON: And the sanitation.

NATASHA STOTT DESTROYA: Oh, yeah, the sanitation, ANDREW. Remember what the city used to be like? God! This place used to stink before the Romans came here.

ANDREW BARTLET: Yeah. All right. I'll grant you the aqueduct and the sanitation are two things that the Romans have done.

BOB BROWN: And the roads.

ANDREW BARTLET: Well, yeah. Obviously the roads. I mean, the roads go without saying, don't they? But apart from the sanitation, the aqueduct, and the roads--

SARAH HANSON YOUNG: Irrigation.

SCOTT LUDLAM: Medicine.

NATASHA STOTT DESTROYA: Education.

LEE RHIANNON: Ohh...Yeah!

ANDREW BARTLET: Yeah, yeah. All right. Fair enough.

LARISSA WATERS: And the wine.

LEE RHIANNON: Oh, yes. the wine.

NATASHA STOTT DESTROYA: Yeah. Yeah, that's something we'd really miss, ANDREW, if the Romans left.

SCOTT LUDLAM: Public baths.

LEE RHIANNON : And it's safe to walk in the streets at night now, ANDREW.

SARAH HANSON YOUNG: Yeah, they certainly know how to keep order. Let's face it. They're the only ones who could in a place like this.

ANDREW BARTLET: All right, but apart from the sanitation, the aqueduct, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, public safety, public baths, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?

BOB BROWN: PEACE: Peace?

ANDREW BARTLET: Oh. Peace? Shut up!
Posted by LEGO, Tuesday, 26 January 2016 10:49:24 AM
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Stan Grant's rant puts him on a par with Pilger. I need say no more.
David
Posted by VK3AUU, Tuesday, 26 January 2016 3:41:13 PM
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You blokes have done it now! You have hurt Andrew and he is not going to answer any of us now!
Posted by JBowyer, Tuesday, 26 January 2016 5:05:21 PM
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Lego,
Your analogy with the Romans missed slavery and their total disregard for human life. When the Romans conquered, the vanquished were permitted to remain in charge and keep their own customs as long as they paid tax and planned no insurrections. Vanquished Australians, though, were labelled non-human and enslaved.
The British found a continent inhabited by strong, healthy people [hence the beach named “Manly”] who for 40,000 years had enjoyed bountiful food from pristine plains and forests, drinkable rivers, and seas teeming with fish, their shores empty of non organic flotsam and jetsam. The air was clean. There were no fences, borders, police, army, governments, because ancient customs kept everything going in a manner that ensured it would last another 40,000 years.
The colonisers deforested vast swathes, lost most of the topsoil, extinguished much of the wildlife and rendered land, waterways, sea and air toxic. Their social system of wage slaves saw once free people rendered beggars with no land to provide food and no money to buy the unhealthy stuff provided by their overlords.
New diseases killed hundreds of thousands, greedy squatters did the same. They couldn’t get paid work and were forced to live on the rubbish belts of towns, shot if they complained, raped with impunity, their children taken from them…but I digress, back to the beneficent changes wrought by the British.
Forests replaced by vast cities and bleak towns populated with alcohol and gambling dependent bigots. Streets riddled with crime, health so poor the budget for health services is crippling. Increasing gap between rich and poor. No natural spaces within walking distance for most people, no chance to grow or catch one’s own food, no possibility of living a simple life because money, not manly strength is the only way to get food. Education that prepares kids for nothing. A climate that’s changing. Diseases, obesity, depression, debt. Empty lives filled with mindless television and Internet propaganda designed to keep the masses ignorant and docile…Yeah, it’s a great society that greedy, ignorant, racist bigots like you guys have helped create.
Posted by ybgirp, Tuesday, 26 January 2016 5:49:52 PM
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Gee ybgrip, you really have a problem with the modern world, don't you? I see that you are another "noble savage" advocate, who thinks that living in barbarism and ignorance is the way the human race should have stayed forever.

I have no knowledge of aboriginal Australians being considered by any Australian governments as non human. Governor Phillip himself was speared at Manly when he went on an inspection. When his marines raised their muskets to return fire, Phillip ordered them to lower their weapons. He was trying to create a new nation inclusive of aborigines, and he realised that the aborigines did not understand that yet. Your premise that the British brought human pathogens is true. But since they did not even know what a "germ" was in those days, how you can blame them for the resulting pandemic is beyond me. Human pathogens are the entire human race's enemy.

I have no knowledge of aboriginals being turned into slaves. The "stolen generations" was a Big Lie on the same level as The Eternal Jew. It was conclusively destroyed as a legal concept by the High Court of Australia. One judge described the removal of at risk (of being murdered and raped) half caste children as a "moral obligation."

Just in case you have not noticed, Australia is considered one of the best countries in the world to live in. Got that? Those dirty British colonial invaders did something very right. Billions of people in the world sit around trying to figure out how they can get into Australia, but all you can see is negativity.
Get a grip. You must have had a "progressive" education where some socialist teacher thumped into your head that white people are the biggest bastards in the world, and you swallowed it, hook, line, and sinker.

When those same "progressives" turn Australia into a battlefield through multiculturalism, and you need to find somewhere else decent to live, my advice to you is to head somewhere where they speak English. The English had the knack of creating viable and stable countries, everywhere they went.
Posted by LEGO, Wednesday, 27 January 2016 3:08:27 AM
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"The English had the knack of creating viable and stable countries, everywhere they went."
Right on LEGO.
Not only that, you only have to look at the chaos in most of the countries which have gotten back independence. Some people don't know when they are well off.

David
Posted by VK3AUU, Wednesday, 27 January 2016 7:17:04 AM
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Yprgb,

Isn't hyperbole fun ? "New diseases killed hundreds of thousands, greedy squatters did the same."

How many people do you think were in Australia, with all its regular droughts, by 1788 ? I'd suggest a sort of steady-state range of 150,000 to 250,000 max, across the entire country, with drought as the conditioning factor.

In very extreme times, say once-in-a-1000-year drought (one lasted across most of Australia for 32 years, about 800 years ago), I'd hazard a guess that the population was confined to coastal waterways and dropped overall below perhaps 50,000, each group jealously guarding its precious resources, to be built up over the following generations slowly, as the fortunate survivors in those favoured areas, colonised areas further inland.

Look at the current drought in Queensland: apart from recent rains, it had been going for four or five years, across a million square kilometres. Think through what might have happened in the remote past: animals would have moved out looking for feed, the older and very much younger ones died early on, so people would have had to scatter to follow them, also leaving the old and very young behind. If the movers weren't welcome in neighbouring groups' territory, even the fittest may not have survived. Hence, by the way, marriage between groups, as an insurance policy.

Again, do you have evidence of 'hundreds of thousands' ? It rolls off the tongue so easily, doesn't it - 'hundreds of thousands'. What bastards whites are, so powerful, so evil. Oops, except you, of course. Thank god for you, you're so different, so good.

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Wednesday, 27 January 2016 9:14:29 AM
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Ok, I exaggerated.
So far I've learned that 1. You guys do not think the colonial invaders should have treated the defenders of their country with humanity, dignity or respect. 2. You think it acceptable that the original inhabitants were de-facto labelled nonhuman, so the entire continent could be declared terra nullius, making it open slather on getting rid of indigenous vermin.
3. You think the present way of life is the best, despite it being the cause of the planet’s sixth mass extinction through destruction of land habitat by clearing, waterways and the ocean by dumping contaminants creating 'dead zones' and great floating garbage patches.
4. You don’t care that most of the world's >40,000 tropical tree species are globally threatened because about 80,000 acres of rainforest are destroyed each day, taking with them over 130 species of plants, animals and insects.
5. It doesn't concern you that fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and other poisons destroy the soil in which we grow our food by reducing the nutrients and killing the microbes.
6. You support prodigious military contamination and destruction of soil ranging from the radioactive contamination of vast areas to the extensive and multifaceted chemical contamination that occurs at military bases.
7. It doesn't worry you that, like destroying the oceans, destroying the soil is an ongoing investment in future extinctions, with human extinction possible by 2040.
Question: ‘Do you honestly think our environmentally destructive way of life is better than one that keeps it healthy and productive?
Posted by ybgirp, Wednesday, 27 January 2016 2:56:03 PM
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Have you ever picked up a history book on colonial Australia because you were interested in the history of your own country? No, I thought not. You don't want to read anything that would contradict your black armband detestation of our ancestors. Accusations are accepted as fact. Like all western self loathing Flagellants like Andrew Barton, you have a compulsive need to think that your own people are the scum of the earth. And that you and Andrew are different, something special.

The British considered Australia Terra Nullius because they thought that aboriginals were simply nomads, like the gypsies or the Bedouin. That was a reasonable assumption. The aborigines did not build towns or villages, they grew no crops, nor erected any fences. And our ancestors were 16th century colonists living precariously at the ends of the Earth, not 20th century anthropologists living comfortably in Glebe

The most common estimate of aboriginal numbers at the time of white settlement is around 250,000-300,000 people, and that after 40.000 years of habitation. Their mortality rate mut have been horrendous. What does that tell you about the joys of primitive life? One anthropologist once summed up primitive life as being "Harsh, brutal and short." After 200+ years of white settlement, there are now over 600.000+ people claiming to be aborigines. The aborigines seem to have become fruitful and multiplied under European civilisation.

Once again, you are sprouting some nonsense about how evil the modern world is. If you think that the human race should have stayed living as primitives or peasants, living in commune with nature, then I can assure you that there are real primitives and real peasants who would think that you need your head examined. The people that immigrate to Australia from countries where they were real primitives and real peasants want to live in the modern world. But you dream of being a cave man, do you?

We are living in the most free and most prosperous time in human history. And all you can see is negatives. You must be fun at a party.
Posted by LEGO, Wednesday, 27 January 2016 6:28:39 PM
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pribyg,

1. No.

2. No.

3. Yes, pretty much, all things considered.

4-7. A bit of a side-track ? Actually, I agree with you on most of it, but it's not completely relevant to this thread.

Your last question: Compared to what ?

Joe
www.firstsources.info
Posted by Loudmouth, Wednesday, 27 January 2016 6:57:49 PM
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I hate to nitpick, LEGO, but most estimates of the indigenous population at the time of white settlement are actually between 750,000-1,000,000. Simply Google it. I have never seen an estimate as low as your 250,000-300,000.
Posted by AJ Philips, Wednesday, 27 January 2016 7:42:04 PM
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Hi AJ,

Those figures are quite ludicrous. Even Butlin didn't float off into the ether with such figure, and he usually tended to assume optimal numbers, rather than the minimal numbers more appropriate to the conditioning factor of drought.

On one-in-a-hundred-year droughts, half the country might be affected, and for a decade or so. That happened between 1892 and 1904, and again last decade. Affected populations would have been seriously diminished, and it would take sometime to build up numbers again, before the next drought.

So 150,000 in hard-to-'normal' times, to 250,000 in optimal times after long good spells, would be more appropriate. Say, 200,000 at a rough hypothetical 'average'.

Cheers,

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Wednesday, 27 January 2016 8:23:20 PM
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Well I don't know where you get your information from either, Joe.

http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/0/68AE74ED632E17A6CA2573D200110075?opendocument
http://demography.anu.edu.au/sites/default/files/publications/working-papers/97.pdf
Posted by AJ Philips, Wednesday, 27 January 2016 8:58:39 PM
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Hi AJ,

One of your sources suggests " .... The estimates varied from a minimum figure of 300,000 to as high as over 1 million .... " and then mis-quotes Radcliffe-Brown, in his Australian Year Book article of 1930 as suggesting 750,000. My recollection, perhaps faulty after so many years, is that Brown cited a figure in his article of 250,000.

I'll stick with that.

Cheers,

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Wednesday, 27 January 2016 10:15:12 PM
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Hi AJ

Every reference that I have ever read on the numbers of pre colonial aboriginal population figures put the number as 250.000 -300,000. That included the book by the sainted lefty Jared Diamond who wrote "Guns, Germs, and Steel".

Although it would hardly surprise me if today's left wing academics who were criticised in the series of books written by Keith Windshuttle on the fabrication of aboriginal history, have air brushed history to suit their evil white oppressor ideology.
Posted by LEGO, Thursday, 28 January 2016 2:42:40 AM
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Joe,

I might have missed it, but I don’t see where either link has quoted Radcliffe-Brown.

The article I linked you to does cite Radcliffe-Brown as one of their references for the 300,000-1,000,000 estimate, but that’s not a quote. If you are going to research indigenous history and social sciences, then you’ll want to understand the difference. They also cite two others in that same citation: Muvaney 2002:6; Smith and Gray 1985:15.

Radcliffe-Brown (1930) estimated between 250,000-300,000; Muvaney (2002) estimated about 700,000; and Smith and Gray (1985) estimated around 750,000, with an absolute minimum of 315,000. Others have estimated as high as 1,000,000 (http://sgo.sagepub.com/content/3/3/2158244013499143).

So what are we going to go with? An estimate of 250,000-300,000 from 1930? Or average out all the estimates to around the 750,000 mark?

The fact that you insist on sticking to the former suggests a motivated reasoning on your behalf.

LEGO,

So now I have seen an estimate as low as 250,000-300,000. I wasn’t aware of the Radcliffe-Brown estimate. But the fact that everything you have read has cherry-picked the lowest possible estimate (which, mind you, is quite old) suggests a bias in your preferred reading.

It appears that those who insist on sticking with the lowest estimate available (regardless of its age) are determined to make the indigenous peoples appear as hopeless as they possibly can.
Posted by AJ Philips, Thursday, 28 January 2016 7:21:28 AM
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Hi AJ,

Yes, he is cited in that Kinfu article, page 2, about two-thirds of the way down: " .... recent archaeological findings suggest that a population of 750,000 could have been sustained (Mulvaney 2002:6; Smith and Gray 1985:15; Radcliffe-Brown 1930: 671–696)."

Do I have a motive for suggesting a low figure ? Yes, it's called drought. At the very least, a serious and widespread drought would interrupt what you might call demographic processes, of reproduction and group maintenance.

A widespread drought of, say, six years, like in NSW in the nineties, then again last decade, or like the one in Queensland at the moment, would mean the death of any children under four or five, and a hiatus in reproduction for the duration of the drought, and perhaps a bit after, plus of course the nine months needed to produce the first of the next generation.

So there would be a gap of at least four plus six plus one = eleven years between the youngest survivors and the bare beginning of a new generation of babies. We can quibble, if you like, about those years, I don't mind quibbling. But the point is that it would take some time to re-build that population back to what it was before the drought. And another drought may hit before that can happen.

Some droughts have been known to last a lot longer than six years. Perhaps entire generations, fifteen or twenty years, could be lost due to very long droughts.

There would have been other causes for population loss, such as mutual extermination between groups. Yes, they happened, although of course, I shouldn't say so. What a bastard I am. Just getting in first :)

Hopeless ?! Christ, no ! Australia has been a very harsh environment for most groups, and how they survived is a matter of miracles of human ingenuity and endurance. You may see Aboriginal people as hopeless but I couldn't possibly see it that way.

Joe
www.firstsources.info
Posted by Loudmouth, Thursday, 28 January 2016 9:34:22 AM
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Joe,

I don’t know if or how so many indigenous Australians survived drought. My indigenous studies focused more on crime.

I don’t have the time at the moment to look into exactly how the various estimates were arrived at. But since you seemed to have studied the effects of drought on the indigenous population before 1788, then perhaps you could tell me how the majority of estimates arrived at their conclusions and how you think they erred?

<<Hopeless ?! Christ, no ! Australia has been a very harsh environment for most groups, and how they survived is a matter of miracles of human ingenuity and endurance.>>

I agree. Tell that to LEGO though. It seems strange to me that you wouldn’t point this out when he was trying to paint indigenous as hopeless without white people. So please excuse me if I sense motivated reasoning.
Posted by AJ Philips, Thursday, 28 January 2016 10:09:03 AM
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There is something else that needs to be factored into the discussion.

Prior to 1788 there was a truly genetic Aboriginal population. After that it started to get diluted with European and Chinese genes. As an example, well known and now deceased Charles Perkins seems to have only acknowledged his Arrernte and Kalkadoon heritage and ignored the fact that his mother had a white father and grandfather and his father had an Irish father. A good many successful Aboriginals seem to fall into this category, but their white heritage is conveniently ignored. I suspect this is often to their detriment.

Behavioral characteristics and abilities which are currently attributed to Aboriginals in general can be very distorted because of this.

David
Posted by VK3AUU, Thursday, 28 January 2016 12:02:56 PM
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"....and ignored the fact that his mother had a white father and grandfather and his father had an Irish father."

Must have been one of the 'black' Irish.
Posted by Is Mise, Thursday, 28 January 2016 5:45:34 PM
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Ygirp
don't know why people keep saying the whites
Don't accept the history of the British Empire
Claiming this land for Britain ,despite there being
Aboriginal people here.

Most whites have heard nothing but this for decades
On documentaries and panel shows with left wing academics
Or 1/2 white Aboriginal stirrers pretending to be totally Aboriginal
On panel talk shows.
They even teach that we invaded this country to
My grandchildren at school.

I think the whites have just got sick of the constant playing the victim
Racist card and have realised no matter how we try to help them
Nothing will change until they accept the equal chances they have today
To get an education and pull themselves up.

Happily this is happening with the latest generation of aborigines.
After all they have the same chances as the fellow from Sudan who had
Absolutely nothing when he came here. Got an education became a lawyer
And isnt complaining about no opportunities or racism
The whites respect him for working hard to make something
Of himself.
Why do the Aborigines expect someone else to do it for them.

It's not that the whites don't acknowledge the history of white settlement
And the effects it had on the Aboriginals,
It's just they have shrugged their shoulders and become indifferent.
After realising the Aboriginals are not making enough effort to
Help themselves and so no matter what you do to help them it won't
Make any difference.

It's indifference this article writer is sensing, certainly not any lack of historical
Knowledge by the whites.
Posted by CHERFUL, Thursday, 28 January 2016 7:45:48 PM
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It's all a smokescreen for other problems like unresolved hurt or anger
Posted by John1967, Thursday, 28 January 2016 8:00:06 PM
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A.J. Phillips,

The Aborigines like most people a couple of centuries ago
Probably had a short lifespan.

The old cemeteries in Australia and Europe have whole graveyards full of
People who died in childhood or before thirty.

An infected tooth would have been one cause,of death.
The have found human remains where the infection has bored right up into the brain.

A scratch from a stick or rock if infected could also poison your bloodstream
And killed many people before penicillin was discovered.

If you want to romance, the back to nature scenario.
We'll give you a stick to make a spear and you can toddle off into the bush.
Be careful of the snakes..
Back to nature sounds idyllic, but up close at the survival level
Natural is very cruel and totally without pity.

By the way it is the overpopulated nations causing much of
The clearing of the forests, Their populations keep eating
Up any available land and resources at a frightening speed.

The dirt and unfiltered sewerage in Places like India
Pollute the waterways mush worse than modern nations
Who have the means to purify it.
The cheap anything goes,cars, in India pour a continuous
Stream of poisonous fuels into the air.

In the West our petrol is clean of a lot of toxins.
Posted by CHERFUL, Thursday, 28 January 2016 8:04:54 PM
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CHERFUL,

I'm off to India again next month and I shall be careful to always only drink boiled water, just as I boil all water from the local supply in NSW, if I don't I get crook and I'm renowned for having a cast iron stomach.
At home I have tank water so no problems.
Posted by Is Mise, Thursday, 28 January 2016 9:42:18 PM
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Mise

Yes some of the water in outback Australia can
Contain some undesirable disease causing bugs.
because it's not treated like the big city water.

Have a wonderful trip.
Posted by CHERFUL, Thursday, 28 January 2016 11:33:42 PM
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To AJ

I have long been interested in the estimates of how many aborigines existed in Australia prior to white settlement. I have read many estimates over he years from books, newspaper articles, and magazines. The lowest was 150,000. The highest 700,000. But the figure which most consistently came up was a midrange 250,000-300,000, a figure repeated in the book "Guns, Germs and Steel" by sainted trendy lefty author Jared Diamond.

"In addition, Australia's infertility, aridity, and climatic unpredictability limited the hunter-gatherer population of Australia to a few hundred thousand people." Page 312

"Tasmania's population of four thousand hunter gatherers........." Page 313.

"Mainland Australia's 300,000 hunter-gatherers were more numerous and less isolated than the Tasmanians......" Page 313

This is a bloke who's opinion that "all humans are equal" conforms to your own worldview, but who (unlike your good self) at least tries to present a well reasoned argument as to why he thinks that way.

I can agree with Jared Diamond that all people are equal, if the more time that any group of humans spends in a civilised state will increase their intelligence. Aboriginal people are capable of acquiring the same intelligence as Asians, provided that they had 5000 years of civilisation behind them. But what we are dealing with today is the intelligence levels of aboriginal people in their present state.

Socialist egalitarians insist that aborigines are equal to whites in every way. Therefore, they insist that aboriginal dysfunction is a product of white oppression and white discrimination. In order to "close the gap", billions of dollars are wasted every year by organisations who love wasting billions of dollars every year trying to prove their ever failing social theory is correct. In the NT, two thirds of the NT Education budget goes to one third of the population who are aborigines, with the only result that there is a 90% failure rate in aboriginal NAPLAN examinations.

So what do we get from the Socialists to solve this problem? Constant demands to stop all examinations of all children for sundry politically correct reasons
Posted by LEGO, Friday, 29 January 2016 3:19:52 AM
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LEGO,

I find it difficult to believe that the 250,000-300,000 estimate was the figure that continuously popped up in all your reading of pre-settlement Australia. I have linked to two articles that reference the most authoritative sources for estimates, and the median estimation hovers around the 750,000 mark, which is more reliable than, “Well everything I’ve read said 250,000-300,000.”

<<This is a bloke who's opinion that "all humans are equal" conforms to your own worldview, but who (unlike your good self) at least tries to present a [well-reasoned] argument as to why he thinks that way.>>

Really? You're already starting that this early in the piece? In all our discussions you are the only one who has given an unreasoned response:

“If you listen real hard, you can hear the cashed up professionals in Madison Avenue, Saatchi & Saatchi, and Mojo laughing their heads off at that one.” (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=17896#318497)

Try give one example of an unreasoned response from me.

*Crickets chirping*

Anyway, what matters is what this Jaren Diamond’s sources are. Has he found a bunch of 250,000-300,000 estimates that no-one else knows about? Or has be compared them all and decided that the Radcliffe-Brown estimate was the most accurate? And if he did, how did he come to that conclusion? Because, if he’s just seen the 1930s Radcliffe-Brown estimate and then used it, then citing his book doesn’t strengthen your argument.

<<[Socialist egalitarians [whoever they are]] insist that aboriginal dysfunction is a product of white oppression and white discrimination.>>

More so just oppression and discrimination. The fact that it was done by white people is irrelevant. I know you want to make that an issue, though; just as much as these fruit loops, who wish they weren’t white or refuse to have children because they’ll be white, want to make it an issue. Only for different reasons.

But you forgot to mention the biggest factor by far: cultural dispossession.

Do you have evidence against this?
Posted by AJ Philips, Friday, 29 January 2016 8:23:23 AM
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Hi AJ.

If you read Radcliffe-Brown's exposition on the Aboriginal population, you may understand how he came to his total of 250,000. Australian Year Book,1930: it's available in most large libraries.

Your two citations using a figure of 750,000 are not any more reliable than Radcliffe-Brown's. I think he was a bit of a blowhard, but his survey of the possible figures was pretty thorough and he knew his business.

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Friday, 29 January 2016 9:23:06 AM
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Thanks for that, Joe. I didn't mean to imply that the higher estimates were more reliable, I'm just interested in why the lower estimate should be preferred for reasons other than trying to portray Indigenous Australians as hopeless, or better off after 1788.

Pointing out the fact that Australia suffers from a lot of drought alone isn’t a reason in itself because we don’t know that a population of 750,000 doesn’t take this into account, and that the Indigenous population would be closer to 2,000,000 had it not been for drought. As a couple of my links pointed out, recent archaeological findings suggest that a population of 750,000 Indigenous peoples could have been sustained.

Radcliffe-Brown may have been thorough, but we know more than we did back then and it's hard to gauge just how thorough and accurate he was without comparing his estimate to those of others.
Posted by AJ Philips, Friday, 29 January 2016 9:55:03 AM
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Hi AJ,

The term "cultural dispossession." has been around for a very long time, but I've never figured out what it is supposed to mean, and how it is supposed to have occurred. Yes, a lot of 'make it up as you go' has gone into its construction, to which you are free to add to your heart's content, but back on the ground, it does need some untangling, and some foundation.

I suppose we can fart around over a sort of CEM Joad's 'Well, it depends what you mean by .... ' things like culture, and processes of change, amongst which may or may not include 'dispossession'. But whatever people dram up, or seize upon, they still need to provide some evidence.

Cultural change over time, and in a wide variety of circumstances, is an incredibly complex and involved set of processes, and it's easy to stand back and say 'dispossession', but I don't think it's anywhere near as simple as that. Would you like some examples, and evidence ?

Cheers,

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Friday, 29 January 2016 10:01:38 AM
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AJ,

" .... trying to portray Indigenous Australians as hopeless.... "

Why even assume that ? Australia was a very harsh environment to live in, most of it, so great ingenuity must have been needed to survive. The tragedy was that people were trapped here without any opportunity of moving beyond hunting and gathering. All credit to them

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Friday, 29 January 2016 10:10:34 AM
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Joe,

Now you just sound like you’re trying to obfuscate. Some examples of cultural dispossession are the colonisation of Australia and North America. The evidence is the fact that the Indigenous peoples of these places have largely lost their culture and way of life.

Other than that, I’m not sure what you’re asking. Are you wanting examples and evidence of white people deliberately stripping indigenous peoples of their culture and way of life in a cold and calculated way? Because we both know that would be difficult to prove.

Whatever the reasons are for why Europeans did what they did during the colonisation of Australia, racism certainly played a big role. Why else, for example, would there be no known cases of full-blood aborigines being taken away to "save them from neglect"?

But I’m more interested in the pre-settlement population figures because there seems to be racist motives for clinging to the lower figures. I haven’t studied Indigenous history thoroughly enough to tackle what appears to me, at this point in time, to just be another form of denialism in the stolen generation.

<<Why even assume that [that others would portray Indigenous Australians as hopeless]?>>

Okay, maybe not “hopeless” (note, however, that LEGO didn't protest). But the lower figure certainly has been used to suggest that Indigenous Australians are all much better off with white people (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=17978#319488).
Posted by AJ Philips, Friday, 29 January 2016 10:37:28 AM
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Oh sorry, Joe. Unless there was a typo there, it appears you were actually asking if I would like some examples and evidence of why cultural dispossession is too much of a slippery concept to apply to what happened to Indigenous Australians. If you’ve got some, then yeah, great.

Speaking of which, though, I just thought of an example of deliberate attempts from white Australians to culturally dispossess Indigenous Australians. The exemption certificates - which were issued on the condition that those who were granted a certificate abandon all association with their Indigenous community.
Posted by AJ Philips, Friday, 29 January 2016 11:17:29 AM
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Hi Aj,

Where to start ? Here's as good as any:

" .... But I’m more interested in the pre-settlement population figures because there seems to be racist motives for clinging to the lower figures. I haven’t studied Indigenous history thoroughly enough to tackle what appears to me, at this point in time, to just be another form of denialism in the stolen generation."

I guess we'll all have to wait until you have.

In the meantime, you mention exemption certificates: "The exemption certificates - which were issued on the condition that those who were granted a certificate abandon all association with their Indigenous community."

No, not at all: how could any authorities have engineered such 'abandonment' ? My wife's family left the 'mission' in about 1953, to live in a small town. I've always presumed that the parents were given exemption certificates, but maybe they just left, set up in the town, and carried on with life. Most certainly however, from the countless stories my wife told me, that many, many people, relations mainly, passing through and staying with them, had no trouble unless they played up - but I don't recall her ever talking about some copper knocking on the door about any trouble.

And there were enough stories about pretty outrageous behaviour that, on balance, would have earned at least a visit - for example, one uncle and his girlfriend on the grog, brawling and stripping each other naked, for the entire school bus to witness, much to my wife's shame. But still no coppers.

Exemption certificates meant that, once they were issued, people couldn't go back and live on the 'mission, on rations. But strangely, they could still get benefits from the 'Department'. The Department bloke still came down to visit, they used to set their dog on him. I suppose he was used to that. Halcyon days !

My wife's family was fairly pale. Ten kids, and not one of them ever taken away. Not much 'stolen generation' there.

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Friday, 29 January 2016 1:51:05 PM
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"Cultural dispossession" AJ? I am not sure I understand what you mean by that? I suppose us whites are guilty of telling aboriginal men that bashing aboriginal women to death is naughty, and that having old men with harems full of little girls is naughty too. Ferking the little boys up the bum as a way of initiating them into the tribe was another thing we frowned upon. Although if the statement given by Australia's sainted Dr. Fred Hollows, that "certain practices" in Australian aboriginal communities "must end, or there will soon be no more aborigines", seems to suggest that this practice is still going on. Especially when an "aboriginal" teacher in Cairns used this excuse in court to explain his having sex with a young male pupil. No wonder the homosexual community savagely attacked Fred Hollows. They all think that initiating young boys into society by screwing them up the bum is a wonderful idea.

And we also are guilty of stopping the aboriginal practice of holding somebody responsible for the death through old age of any old man, and killing the supposed offender. Guilty of stopping aboriginals from killing the second born twin because they believed the second twin was a "spirit." Guilty of preventing aboriginal men of raiding neighbouring tribes and kidnapping the young girls as wives and sex slaves. Guilty of saving the lives of old aboriginal women who were usually just clubbed to death when they became too old. Guilty, guilty, guilty.

I don't see anything in aboriginal culture except perhaps their unique art that is worthy of preservation. I think it strange how "progressives" sneer at "conservative" Australians for their nostalgia of 1950's white Australian culture, when at the same time encouraging aborigines to wallow in a brutal and misogynistic stone age culture.

My own explanation for aboriginal dysfunction is simple and follows a natural progression. Stone age people who's lifestyle is hand mouth, who did not grow crops, did not need to evolve those parts of the brain associated with higher thinking. Most criminals have low intelligence. 1+1 equals 2
Posted by LEGO, Saturday, 30 January 2016 5:15:22 AM
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Joe,

You start talking about exemption certificates and then add in a throwaway line about the stolen generation. Ten is hardly a large sample size and I don’t think anyone has claimed that the entire generation was stolen.

Back to exemption certificates, though. Based on what little you’ve said, you paint a very different picture to Chris Cunneen in his text book, ‘Conflict, Politics and Crime: Aboriginal Communities and the Police’.

<<Exemption certificates meant that, once they were issued, people couldn't go back and live on the 'mission, on rations.>>

Yes, convenient that. Then there’s also the fact that they were only granted to those who demonstrated to the Chief Protector’s satisfaction the capacity to survive in the outside world. In other words, they were imbued with capitalist values regarding money, time and work. I would say that that’s also a deliberate attempt at cultural dispossession. Not to mention the fact that exemptions could be revoked at the whim of an administrator, with no right to appeal.

I’m sure your wife’s family could leave a mission without an exemption certificate, but they wouldn’t have been granted the same rights as whites without them.

LEGO,

Whether the culture is good or bad, the effects of removing it from an entire people is going to have catastrophic effects. Then there’s also the dispossession from their lands, which, according to their superstition, was sacred. There was also more to Indigenous culture than savagery and art.

<<Stone age people who's lifestyle is hand mouth, who did not grow crops, did not need to evolve those parts of the brain associated with higher thinking. Most criminals have low intelligence.>>

I knew it would eventually come down to intelligence with you. The fact that Indigenous Australians never went through an agricultural revolution should come as no surprise given their environment and isolation. No one people just invented agriculture. Inventions are the result of a network of ideas from various different places. Having agriculture in itself doesn’t make us smarter either. At least no more than the required problem-solving skills and constant battle of living hand-to-mouth.
Posted by AJ Philips, Saturday, 30 January 2016 8:36:00 AM
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AJ,

Where to start ? is there any point ? Yes, of course, even casting pearls before swine may pay off eventually. But it is difficult trying to explain to an ignoramus who believes he knows it all.

Okay, exemption certificates: "<<Exemption certificates meant that, once they were issued, people couldn't go back and live on the 'mission, on rations.>>"

Yes, people couldn't get, say, both unemployment benefits AND rations. Actually, people did, come to think of it. By the way, at least in SA, unconditional exemption certificates couldn't be revoked.

Your top-of-the-head remark: " Then there’s also the fact that they were only granted to those who demonstrated to the Chief Protector’s satisfaction the capacity to survive in the outside world." Not really, in my experience, people seemed to be desperate to get away from the parasitism on the settlements and find work, any work, and do it, regardless of whether or not here was some booby-man Protector looking over their shoulder. And the vast majority of those 'workers' didn't go back to the settlement out of sheer choice.

Your comment: "In other words, they were imbued with capitalist values regarding money, time and work." Pretty clearly, you have no knowledge of the long history of Aborigijnal people working in the 'Western' economy, right from the first days. Here in SA, the whaling industry attracted many hundreds to the South Coast for many years. From there, they contracted to work for local farmers - for standard wages - in order to buy the sorts of goods they had become accustomed to. As well, people became far more mobile, with access to ships, horses, etc., so roamed around picking up work all over the State.

And in the process, changing their cultural practices, and by choice. One thing that struck me again and again, typing up those documents, was that Aboriginal people did whatever the hell they liked, within limits. Anybody trying to force them to do anything would be like herding cats, it really would have.

[TBC]
Posted by Loudmouth, Saturday, 30 January 2016 10:07:01 AM
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[continued]

The mere presence of whites, the ration system, horses, ships, clothing, tobacco, schools, grog, money, tinned food, etc., etc., etc., around them, would have wrought very rapid changes in what people did every day in a semi-urban environment, and how they were coming to view the world - which is a broad definition of 'culture' after all.

I certainly haven't seen much evidence of force, to make people change their cultural practices, for whatever purposes you may imagine there might have been in that. Quite the reverse. In his letters, sometimes the Protector lamented the cessation of a particular practice. But that's life, an life goes on, to a large extent as people wish it.

Please feel free to present your half-baked opinions, AJ. Throw in that I'm a racist, and a denialist as well, if you wish, if that's all you have. Great fun :)

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Saturday, 30 January 2016 10:10:09 AM
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Joe,

I only came here to dispute one point, and so far I don’t think I’ve received a satisfactory rebuttal to that. You and LEGO have led me off on a tangent to your hobby horses.

<<But it is difficult trying to explain to an ignoramus who believes he knows it all.>>

I have freely admitted that I am no expert on this topic, so I don't know where this attack comes from. I'm sensing a lot of butthurt. Your conservative views/beliefs on this topic are obviously very important to you and if this passion is not the result of racism (unlikely given that you are/were married to someone who is part-indigenous) then I don't know where they stem from.

The conservative spin you put on Indigenous history may very well be right. I don’t know for sure (I’m only going by what brief study I’ve done on Indigenous history when doing a unit on Indigenous crime). But I remain sceptical that it is for a few reasons. One being that it would mean that garbage like Bolt and Windschuttle were actually right for once, and that’s something I’m yet to see. But even a broken clock is right twice a day, so who knows?

I don’t doubt that there is an element of black-armbandedness to the mainstream version of events that may have exaggerated just how brutal and cruel the white settlers were. But, on the opposite end of the spectrum, with Nationalism comes all sorts of historical denialism.

Perhaps Professor Robert Foster was right when he said, “What Mr Lane is saying is not untrue, but it is how you choose to spin it ...” (http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/amateur-historian-challenges-black-armband-story/news-story/47bca2cddbe39a0fb9bf3e50c0c3d281)
Posted by AJ Philips, Saturday, 30 January 2016 2:07:06 PM
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To AJ

If removing a people from their culture is bad, AJ, then I would expect you to get apoplectic over the removal of Australian culture through multiculturalism. But I know how this works, AJ. It is OK to dilute and destroy white culture, but the culture of stone age primitives is sacrosanct.

The best argument that contradicts your premise is to point out to you that those aboriginal communities that live in isolation on their own land, and who largely kept their culture, are the most dysfunctional of all. Children as young as six are being screened for sexually transmitted diseases, and the biggest problem within these communities is alcohol. The "racists" like myself were the ones who did not want aborigines to drink alcohol because we knew what it would do to aboriginal communities. It was the "human rights" morons like yourself who insisted that aborigines must have the right to drink, and it is your team which made the mistake. Don't blame us for your stupidity.

Aboriginal "culture" was largely a gerontocracy where the young men were terrorised through a series of painful and degrading ceremonies to be the slaves of the Old Men. The young women were the property of the Old Men to do with as they pleased. The old women were just killed off when they were no longer any use. The coming of the white man was seen by the young aborigines, male and female, as the chance for a better life. They walked away from the tribal system in droves. The young men to become exceptional stockmen, fencers, and labourers, because on the frontier they were needed. The young women become exceptional stockwomen, cooks, maids, and for some, the wives of pioneering white settlers. These young aboriginal women were treated much better than the Old Men treated them.

Stone age cultures can not survive in a modern world. How ya gonna keep 'em, down on the farm, after they've seen Pareeeee?
Posted by LEGO, Sunday, 31 January 2016 10:30:59 AM
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AJ,

Perhaps you need to read more, learn more, if you want to make any thoughtful contribution.

I've knocked around indigenous affairs (this is where I pull rank), and read a book-case of stuff, documents galore, histories, genealogies, theses, letters, conference papers and transcripts, etc. etc. There's around twenty thousand pages of transcriptions on my website: www.firstsources.info : each page takes a hour or two to type up, format, etc. I'm thinking about what I'm typing up while I'm doing it. I don't put any spin on what I type up, I just type it up. There it is.

Bob Foster was a bit pissed off with what I had put together, I think, but I was very gratified when he remarked that what I wrote was not untrue. As an ex-Marxist, I still can't see myself as a conservative, as you suggest, I simply comment on what I have learnt.

And if you had told my wife she was 'part-Aboriginal', she would have ripped your eyes out. Try wandering through Redfern and tell the people there they are 'part-aboriginal'.

Perhaps, to paraphrase Grouch Marx, some people may sound like ignoramuses, but don't be fooled - they really are ignoramuses.

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Sunday, 31 January 2016 1:35:27 PM
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Joe,

I apologise for not being able to make a more thoughtful contribution but as I said before, I only came here to dispute one point. I did not come here to discuss what it is that you and LEGO have dragged me into.

Please excuse me for implying that you’re conservative if you don’t consider yourself to be so, but you seem awfully quick to correct me, yet are quite happy to ignore LEGO’s offensive and racist nonsense. Odd for someone who is married to a full-blood Indigenous Australian.

LEGO,

Australia’s culture is alive and well. I would disagree with you, however, that it is alright to destroy Australian culture.

<<The best argument that contradicts your premise...>>

The damage is already done. You’ve contradicted nothing.

<<It was the "human rights" morons like yourself ... and it is your team which made the mistake.>>

There you go generalising again. Did you learn nothing from our last discussion? (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=17896#318864)

Unfortunately history shows your denial of the negative effects of dispossession to be misguided. The varying degrees, the indigenous peoples of North America and New Zealand are other examples of this. You claim to have read text books on sociology and yet you don’t understand the devastating effects that dispossession has on a people (regardless of whether or not the newly introduced culture is superior). You must have very selective comprehension.

As for your specific claims of savagery in pre-settlement indigenous culture, I knew about the twin bit (done for economic reasons) and the kidnapping of girls from neighbouring tribes wouldn’t surprise me given what us whites did in more primitive times, but do you have any evidence of your other claims? I’ve had a look on and off for the last couple of days but have found nothing other than modern day Indigenous guys appealing to cultural practices as a defence for child rape.

Please don’t just quote a book you’ve read either. I want to know what their sources are, and their sources. The primary sources. Hey, maybe Joe knows? That is what his website specialises in, after all.

Joe?
Posted by AJ Philips, Sunday, 31 January 2016 2:46:38 PM
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OK AJ.

I have read many books on Australian history because I am interested in it. I read "Australia's Living Stone Age" and "Over The Ranges" by Ion Idriess. Ion Idriess was Billy Sing's spotter at Gallipoli. He was not at Bersheeba, but he witnessed that historical charge and doubtless saw my grandfather's horse shot out from under him.

In these books, Idriess simply wrote what he saw in his travels around the remote parts of Australia and PNG after WW1. He observed that aboriginal culture in the top half of Australia was almost uniform, and he described many of the cultural practices of aboriginal people in a non judgemental way. His observations of how aboriginal men treated females confirmed what I had read from other accounts. When it came to aboriginal "marriage", he said that aboriginal men had a ceremony in which it would be declared as tribal law that all of the female children of a particular pubescent girl would be given to a middle aged man as his future wives. Confirmation of this was from a university sociology text book which described this exact ceremony.

You know that people are telling the truth when independent accounts cross connect with other independent accounts.

Trendy lefties like yourself have a compulsive need to destroy your own people's faith in their own culture as a way of destroying their nationalism. This is because you equate nationalism with war. So what you do is to equate what the yanks did to the native people of the USA, with what the British and Australian settlers did to the aborigines. But the two histories are different. In the USA, the native people were often friendly to the whites who eventually turned on them and wiped them out. (A lesson there for multiculturalism advocates) In Australia, there were initial clashes and even some massacres, but the young aboriginals saw in the coming of the white man, the chance of a better life.
Posted by LEGO, Monday, 1 February 2016 2:46:54 AM
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AJ,

Wow, I haven't heard or read that term 'full-blood' except in its contextualised form, for quite some time.

If you know anything about Aboriginal people in the 'South', you would know that 'full-bloods' are pretty thin on the ground. I reckon there are more than people might think, out in the rural areas, but the vast majority, while they would have very few non-Aboriginal birth-relations that they knew actively, would overwhelmingly have non-Aboriginal ancestry going back nearly two hundred years.

Since you are interested, my wife's ancestry would have been similarly mixed, and amongst her great-great-grandparents would have been English, Scots, Chinese and Italian. She could trace her Aboriginal ancestry easily back to the 1830s, perhaps even the 1820s, (Aboriginal people are far better documented than people think), back to a half a dozen of those gr-gr-grandparents, mostly Ngarrindjeri (in fact, mostly from the Jaralde dialect group of the Ngarrindjeri (Narrung Peninsula, Lakes), and at least one from the Ramindjeri dialect group of the Ngarrindjeri (South Coast)), with one Narrunga gr-gr-grandparent as well, from northern Yorke Peninsula here n SA. In terms you seem to be familiar with, you would have been classed her as 'quadroon'. So to continue in the same vein, I guess you would call my kids 'octoroons'. We called them 'kids', 'people', vibrant human beings like other Aboriginal people of all manner of fractionations.

Having got that out of the way, to LEGO's comments: no, I don't see much wrong with them. I'll check again. Nope, sound good to me.

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Monday, 1 February 2016 9:52:46 AM
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LEGO,

Thanks for that. I guess that’ll have to do for now. I find it a bit odd that this Ion Filings guy (or whatever his name was) witnessed so much, though.

Joe,

So let me get this straight. In indigenous culture, Aborigines would:

- anally penetrate young boys as a part of their initiation ceremonies;
- blame one of their own for the death of someone who died of natural causes and then kill them for it;
- club old women to death simply for being too old;
- make slaves of their young men?

Interesting.

So what are the primary sources for this? These are the claims that I can’t find any evidence for and would be interested in reading about.
Posted by AJ Philips, Monday, 1 February 2016 10:36:17 AM
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AJ,

You're asking, did any of these occur ?

- anally penetrate young boys as a part of their initiation ceremonies;
s
Yes, in some part of Australia, usually the areas under patriarchal rules.

- blame one of their own for the death of someone who died of natural causes and then kill them for it;

Yes, this seems to have been fairly common: death wasn't considered 'natural', except perhaps for small children and old women. So obviously, someone must have caused any derath. Amongst the Ngarrindjeri, a council, called a 'tendi', was called (pretty much solely for this reason) of all the relevant elders, i.e. heads of families, and someone had to be blamed, often a sort of 'outsider', and then pursued and killed. This usually set off an inter-clan feud in which every one merrily participated.

- club old women to death simply for being too old;

No, I haven't heard of this: often they would be put out in the sticks, under a bush. They weren't all that important in traditional life, so they often weren't given the standard drying/smoking treatment more commonly employed in the funerary ceremonies for men.

- make slaves of their young men?
No, I haven't heard of 'slaves'. There was no point, in hunter gatherer societies, in holding slaves, so when one group raided another, the men were usually just killed and the women taken as wives. Except maybe for the old women. [see above] But the young men were often made to wait for decades until they could get wives (unless they could capture them from neighbouring groups). So they were probably at the beck and call of the older men, the 'elders', who often had several wives, from several neighbouring groups.

Dig around, you can find reports of all of these in early writings. And of a lot worse.

[TBC]
Posted by Loudmouth, Monday, 1 February 2016 2:48:38 PM
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[continued]

That's how it was. A very ingenious people with incredibly limited technology, in a very harsh, unpredictable and limiting environment, no animals or plants to domesticate so that they could conceivably become agriculturalists. A dreadful human tragedy. Humans like us, you and me, condemned to be stuck on an island with no economic or social innovations diffusing from the outside world. People who deserved better.

I don't know why some people make out how idyllic life was in traditional times. And in confirmation of that, I also don't see too many people going out and trying to live like that - no welfare cheques, no Toyotas, no fast food, no government services, just a plain, traditional life. Perhaps you could try it :)

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Monday, 1 February 2016 2:51:22 PM
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To Aj

Ion idriess is a world famous author. Even if you have never read his books, I am surprised that you never heard of him. Why don't you just look him up in Wiki?

Aboriginal people did not live a hobbit like existence, communing with nature, and living in peace with each other. Why don't you just get a copy of "Australia's living Stone Age" and read for yourself how life was in the remotest parts of Australia where some aboriginals had never seen a white man?

"Over the Ranges" is very good too. Idriess accompanies a patrol officer into tribal lands to arrest a half dozen aborigines whom the Old Men had asked the whites to capture and jail. The patrol officer himself claimed that aboriginal people were not dumb, they were smart in a different way to whites. The prisoners he arrested and chained together proved his point. The arrested aborigines were chained with a lock which had been the standard prison lock for 200 years because it was unpickable. Two aborigines picked the locks and escaped.

They did not know what keyways, tumblers or springs were, but they divined how the lock worked and they used human hair to pick the lock.

Another amusing bit was when the patrol officer got his remaining prisoners back to the coast road and a truck came along. The aborigines had never seen a truck in their lives and they climbed a tree in panic. They were put in the truck and were astonished at the experience of travelling in a truck. They were eventually released, and they must have returned to their tribes with the sort of tales one would expect of one abducted by space aliens.

Another amusing example was when Idriess asked three stone age aboriginal men, how did they track over solid rock? The three aboriginal men looked at each other in consternation. Idriess knew from the looks they were giving each other that the aboriginal men were thinking "What! White men can't even track over rock? Hey, how dumb are these guys?"
Posted by LEGO, Monday, 1 February 2016 6:57:12 PM
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It looks like Andrew Bartlett has slunk away to wherever the Australia haters reside. Hey Andrew! If you are still around, don't think that you can sneer at my people and my culture and then expect the people that you despise to be nice to you.

I had a funny feeling that you would stick around not trade broadsides with us. It is OK sticking your face on TV and wagging your fingers at everybody else, but you don't want your own behaviour examined or criticised.

Perhaps it is time that you did a Jimmy Swaggard and prostrated yourself in front of a Green audience screaming. "Ah have sinned, Lord!"
Posted by LEGO, Tuesday, 2 February 2016 2:39:56 AM
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