Hear, hear, and well said John.
Rhrosty.

Right on! Let's face it: Australia Day is used as an excuse for a piss up by the masses, an excuse for idiots to beat the drum on everything they hate about Australians, and for the 'authorities' to award meaningless gongs to dreary people most of us have never heard of - such is their worth! The farce should be cancelled until people grow up.

Thirty billion gets spent each year on Indigenous welfare. Tell me about disadvantage.

Yes, there is one that you won't hear about from 'leaders': Indigenous graduates seeking mainstream employment. The great majority of the forty thousand Indigenous graduates have been studying in mainstream fields - very few ever, and almost none now , enrolled in Indigenous Studies or in an Indigenous-oriented course - including the vast majority of current Indigenous academics at universities, and 'leaders'. Yet they are quite happy to wink at the denial of mainstream employment to Indigenous graduates.

Twenty-odd years ago, I recall that it was looked on as sort of treasonous for Indigenous people to enrol in mainstream courses - which the great majority did anyway, including the children of the 'leaders'. I more or less got sacked for suggesting that the unwritten requirement to push Indigenous applicants into Indigenous-focussed courses was a path that led to Apartheid.

So I'm very happy to have been proved right: that disastrous strategy was abandoned early last decade, and Indigenous enrolment and graduation numbers - in mainstream courses - have boomed ever since: commencements go up each year by about 7-8 %. Wonderful ! Up yours, hotshots !

But Indigenous graduates are still being forced to find their inner 'Indigenous' and confine their employment prospects to the segregated domain, for life. That's 'leaders' for you. But don't worry, they're doing okay.

Joe
www.firstsources.info

Joe,
Just thought I'd let you know that I forwarded your website address to some people who were making a lot of silly comments on Facebook on the 26th, a few of them actually looked at it and made positive comments.
My argument with them was about accentuating the positives in race relations rather than dwelling on the negatives, about the difference between shame and guilt and so forth.

Yep maybe there are some good things in the British heritage to celebrate and sonme ugly things in the Indigenous culture to eliminate. Won't ever hear it on the national broadcasters. Thats your abc.

Joe (Loudmouth),
www.firstsources.info

There is an enormous amount of quality information to be had from even a short visit to your site and I regularly return to it. Thank you.

I am sure there would be a lot more use made of it by the public and researchers, especially young international academics, if some talented web designer could volunteer to lend a hand to enhancing the presentation for the Web.

Great piece.

As most sensible people understand, the colonisation of Australia was inevitable. At some point settlers or immigrants from elsewhere were going to land on these shores and disrupt the archaic Aboriginal culture and way of life. While far from perfect, the British were generally more tolerant and cordial toward indigenous populations than some other colonial powers.

As Geoffrey Blainey has written: "The shrinking world was becoming too small to permit a whole people to be set aside in a vast protected anthropological museum where they would try to perpetuate the merits and defects of a way of life that had vanished elsewhere, a way of life that - so long as it continued - would deprive millions of foreign people of the food and fibres that could have been grown on the land."

It is also grossly unfair to attribute Aboriginal disadvantage exclusively to white Australian racism and discrimination. As urban anthropologist Frank Salter has noted, Aboriginal outcomes tend to become worse the further Aboriginal communities live from non-indigenous people and their allegedly discriminatory behaviour, which is the opposite of what one would expect if racism was the root cause. [https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2013/12/misguided-case-indigenous-recognition-constitution/]

Hi Drab,

Jeez, I thought I had a self-effacing pen-name: I'm sure you're not !

In SA and maybe all States, Aboriginal people were declared to be British subjects, with all the rights of British subjects, from the word go. It may not have worked out pervectly, but that was the law laid down by London.

Their rights to use the land as traditionally were recognised, and still are. Pastoralists (actually, only one) who wanted to push people off their leases were reminded that they/he would be in breach of their (his) lease conditions if they did so, because those rights to use the land as traditionally were written into all pastoral leases.

Aboriginal people were provided with rations from day one, especially for the elderly, sick and nursing mothers. Through the nineteenth century, they were also provided with boats on all waterways(even Cooper's Creek), decent-sized boats fifteen feet long and five feet beam, maybe a hundred of them, and guns. If they were able-bodied, they had to pay half the cost. Repairs, similarly. Around a hundred Aboriginal men and women were given land leases, at peppercorn rent. Some of those have been transformed into Aboriginal Lands Trust leases these days.

From the record up to 1912, no children were taken into care except if orphaned or neglected. Nobody was ever forced en masse onto missions. Even at their height, missions made up less than 20 % of the known Aboriginal population. Especially on early missions, when the people were more or less from only one language group, missionaries frantically learnt, and then taught in, the local language. Of course, as time passed, and people mixed, and kids learnt English, that was impractical, so the later schools taught in English.

Imagine: if some people didn't have massacres, epidemics, forced removals, etc., etc. to fall back on, would that change their perception of the effects of settlement ? So, of course, many people HAVE to believe in all those make-believe atrocities, regardless of the lack of evidence. A bit like a religion, and as hard to shift.

Cheers,

Joe

Thanks for re-opening this discussion.

IIRC, Stan Grant said something to the effect that he looked forward to a time when we can all, regardless of historical accidents, be proud to celebrate being Australian.

There is plenty of work yet to be done to get there.

But if that isn't the goal, what is?

John, I do hope you learn more about Law than you know about this subject. Disadvantage starts with dispossession, all the rest,massacres,virtual slavery,abuse of women and so on are products of that dispossession. Take our country and you take our spiritual base - the land owns us - we do not own the land in the white society way. We are charged with the duty to care for our country, to nurture it and to hand it on to our future generations who will do the same. If you check the huge amounts of money you mention are generally spent on administration first - as much as 50% - and are often taken from existing budgeted items i.e. spurious figures.
It may be worth looking at the Aboriginal population that lives in urban and regional settings as well - these are the majority and products of dispossession. Do your homework before putting pen to paper.

I am shocked that On Line Opinion has published your article and agree with John. Until we acknowledge that racism is alive and well, we cannot move on. The author needs to educate himself and actually THINK before he puts pen to paper on this topic - now its out there for all to see for all time. Here's something much more sensible http://indigenousx.com.au/acknowledging-racism-is-not-being-divisive-it-is-our-only-hope-for-unity/

Mean to say I agree with Growly, not John!

Joe, you are correct in stating that Aboriginal people were classed as British citizens and were supposed to be treated equally under British law. In reality that never happened and Aboriginal people rarely allowed to testify at trials as they wouldn't swear upon the bible.

As to any rights to use land traditionally are you denying that settlers murdered Aborigines and took their land by force? Ever heard of the Frontier Wars? Are you saying that historians such as Reynolds, Bottoms, Johnson, McFarlane, Broome and Clements (to name but a few) are all wrong when they document the massacres and murders?

As to Aboriginal people who were privileged with leases you nominate a paltry figure of one hundred. I wonder how many of those lost their lands after the First World War when veterans were given free land, some if that had been farms that Aboriginal people had successfully run. Notably Aboriginal veterans were not given any land at all (told to bugger off basically).

When it came to the removal of children it did happen and the records clearly show that. In NSW it lead (in part) to the formation of the Australian Aboriginal Progressive Association in 1924. The law in NSW was changed in 1915 to give the Aboriginal Protection Board (a misnomer if ever there was one) the power to remove children and they did. Those removed, mostly young girls, were put into servitude and never paid what they were supposed be owed. No doubt you've seen the documentary 'Lousy Little Sixpence' and read Rosalind Kidd's research?

Finally, to claim there are 'make-believe atrocities' is to be in denial of the truth and offensive.

Not that many years ago many non-Indigenous Australians would have strongly denied the historical abuses that are now acknowledged about the colonisation of Australia.

Invasion day events, speeches and articles serve a wonderful purpose (though not so much for the Libs with Howardlike thinking neo-con thinking) to slowly educate Australia's population. This includes new Australians who would otherwise never hear anything than the mainstream, and often the racist mainstream, views on Australia and her Indigenous peoples.

This article implies that the author and supporters would rather we just don't talk about it - it upsets their enjoyment of the day for celebrating the invasion of Australia by the first fleet. Poor precious souls.

If the author and his acolytes would like to silence such dissent on Australia day, does that mean we are going to stop ANZAC day celebrations - I think not.

John Slater, and all the same old racist clowns on this site, simply prove Stan Grant's point that the Australian Dream was/is based on racism.

There are a number of issues with having January 26th as Australia Day. it is seen as the arrival of the First Fleet but they'd arrived in Botany Bay a week beforehand and come ashore. Therefore on that count the day is historically wrong. Some say it represents the annexation of the eastern seaboard as British territory but that too is wrong. The proclamation ceremony occurred on the 7th of February. If the day was called Sydney Day it would be far more historically accurate than the 26th of January. It certainly isn't Australia Day.

As it stands it has come to represent the violence, destruction of cultures and brutal land dispossession of Aboriginal people. It exposes as myth the notion Australia was peaceably settled. It stands as a reminder of the outright hostility and racism Aboriginal people faced and still face. In modern times Queensland Aboriginal people were 'ruled' by the Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders Act of 1965 and continued the Director's powers over Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. As part of that act District Officers had the power to 'manage' the property/possessions of Indigenous people. That domination continued until 1975. That is recent history.

In Tasmania there was a brutal war against Aboriginal people that saw the population almost completely destroyed. From around 7000 in 1806 by 1834 there were only a couple of hundred. In 1828 Martial Law was declared and there were bounties for capturing Aboriginal people. In reality was financially prudent to catch a few and kill the rest, particularly if wounded and troublesome.

Those a just a couple of examples that show what Australia Day has come to mean for many Aboriginal people. It is day to remember when hell on two legs and with a white face came to Australia.

I would say the aboriginal industry dream is far more racist than any other Australian dream. Thankfully it is only a dream as time and time again we see the industry stealing funds that should be used to lift their own people from poverty. To often, family grievances and jealousies and outright theft has prevented this.

runner, I know this site has become a closed shop for the close minded, with any rational views contrary to the gang, getting hounded out - but really is that all you can come up with?

Follow the money trail and you will see the vast majority of moneys for Indigenous peoples goes to non-Indigenous peoples. Somehow the non-Indigenous people think they are more entitled to the cash and so will deliver shoddy or dodgy services, overprices services, and sometimes just cook the books to make it look like they delivered when they did not. These scams have been going on for ages and always get worse with the Libs and their 'business mates'. This is why the Close the Gap push has seen health get worse under the Libs

Aka
with the regressives having hijacked the Liberals, things will get worse. Ideology is always more important to them than results. I agree their are many suckers wherever their is the public purse including whities. You however would be in total denial not to have witnessed brand new landcruisers being trashed, families having their pockets lined and corruption rife in many if not most aboriginal commuties. Tribal attitudes having always created a favour system similar to that of PNG.

Runner, you would have to be in total denial if you thought that greed and corruption is solely the domain of one race or culture.

I would be howled down if I stated that it is a cultural trait of white Australians to pay bribes and engage in corruption to gain business and or personal advantage as per AWB, Securrency, the East Timor negotiations etc. even though there are many examples to support such a claim.

You see, Indigenous Australians are very smart and learn quickly, and one of the things that some have picked up is the dodgy practices of their non-Indigenous overseers.

As for making direct comparrisons to PNG, that is pretty offensive and indicates you cannot tell the vast differences between the two.

'Runner, you would have to be in total denial if you thought that greed and corruption is solely the domain of one race or culture. '

I agree Aka it is the domain of every race and culture. Christian influence ensured checks and balances needed to be in place. Secular Governments today are becoming more and more corrupt. Look at our biggest unions as another example. Our first female PM was up to it with a corrupt boyfriend. Also look at places like Germany, Australia and France where the leaders tell bare face lies to the population about Islamic beliefs. The more secular we have become the more corruption is envitable. With no moral base to draw from even barbaric parts of aboriginal law start to look reasonable.

Hi Minotaur,

Welcome to your introduction to Indigenous history. [This is my third attempt of a useless, bastard computer which goes blank: it pays to copy as you go]. Evidence is what counts, not just passionate assertions - although they can be very satisfying. Perhaps if there had been many more massacres, atrocities, etc., you would be even happier ?

No, I don't agree with almost everything you assert. Evidence, not just passion. Find out for yourself, don't just rely on 'authorities'. I hope that in the next few years, you can keep learning - it's really a lifelong journey.

Cheers,

Joe

Hi Aka,

You assert: " Indigenous Australians are very smart and learn quickly, and one of the things that some have picked up is the dodgy practices of their non-Indigenous overseers."

Indigenous Australians are not sheep, or puppets. They do their own thinking. They do their own thing. The notion that they somehow have to be carefully shown how to be corrupt is so off the wall, so laughable. Back in the 1980s, before ATSIC (of which the less said the better: that will neve come again), the old Aboriginal Development Corporation gave out loans totalling billions of dollars. Every one went bad. Many of the loans were to directors of the ADC, home loans, loans for boats, etc., and they all went bad. So tell us about corruption. Blame whitefellas.

And then there was ATSIC ......

And so many other organisations, so many crooks, so many people with their hands in the till for millions upon millions, to blow at the local casino or on the fruit machines .......

Good try, Aka :) But have enough respect for Indigenous people to understand that they can think quite well for themselves, they're not just empty vessels.

Joe

Minotaur wrote: "In Tasmania there was a brutal war against Aboriginal people that saw the population almost completely destroyed. From around 7000 in 1806 by 1834 there were only a couple of hundred. In 1828 Martial Law was declared and there were bounties for capturing Aboriginal people. In reality was financially prudent to catch a few and kill the rest, particularly if wounded and troublesome."

Disease was one of the biggest killers of the Aborigines, both on the mainland and also in Tasmania.

Martial law was declared in 1828 by Lieutenant Governor George Arthur in an effort to end conflict between Aborigines and the settlers. According to historian Robert Murray, Arthur wanted to relocate the Aboriginal population to a reserve near Hobart where it was hoped they would adopt a more peaceful, settled life (The Making of Australia, 2014). This was an attempt to preserve a people who were facing demographic decline due to, among other things, illness and small family size.

Of course, efforts by colonial authorities to protect the Tasmanian Aborigines are ignored by those who wish to unfairly portray the early British settlers as genocidal murderers.

"Even Great Britain, the greatest colonial power the world has ever seen, endured a period of bloody occupation by the Romans early in its history."

Not to mention subsequent invasions, occupations and migrations by the Anglo-Saxons, Scots, Scandinavians, Normans...

Yawn, Joe, I have not bothered with this site for a few years but nothing has changed. The same old rhetoric remains as if in a time warp.

Drab, so after disposessing and masacring Tasmanian Aboriginals you seem to think they should be happy and greatful for being hounded into a reserve/prisons.

Typical colonialist thinking.

Stan Grant was spot on - the great Australian Dream was founded on racism.

Joe, that is the typically pathetic response of someone who poses a lot but has no substance. Given you state you disagree with me then give some evidence that refutes anything I've stated. And your comment about more massacres/atrocities making me happy was just idiotic. There has been more than enough killing, destruction of cultures, rapes and enslavement of Aboriginal people and only a sick person would be happy with any of it.

Drab, it is typical denial tactics to claim disease was a great killer of people and then not address anything else. While disease did kill a great many people who brought the diseases here? And it is widely considered that Major Ross committed biological warfare on the Aboriginal people of Port Jackson using smallpox in 1789.

In Tasmania the research of Nicholas Clements clearly shows that there were massacres done by roving parties. There was also the effect of whalers/sealers and their kidnapping of women that destroyed societies in the north east of the state. To keep hiding behind the cloak of disease is a cop out.

Minotaur,

I know you won't but you could have a look at Windschuttle's massive book on Tasmania -he concludes that roughly as many whites were killed as Blacks, about seventy or so each. As for reserves/prisons, the people on Flinders Island had convict-servants.

Do you have any evidence - not just what somebody 'considered' possible - for smallpox being spread deliberately in 1789 ?

In the early documentation - check out my website: www.firstsources.info - there's plenty of information there, and I've provided Indexes to most of the bigger documents to make accessing information easier - about the impacts of diseases for which there were no cures at the time (and in the case of, say, TB or serious infection, none until after the Second World War): actually go out to any old country town and check out their cemeteries - you will find huge numbers of people who died very young, perhaps entire families.

Certainly, in the Aboriginal genealogies down this way, and in the family and death records, one can trace a major difference amongst Aboriginal families: in some, even with large families, nobody died, while in others, most if not all of the kids died. There's a large family now which owes its name to a single survivor after a couple of generations. There are other surnames which are unknown now.

One of my wife's gr-gr-grandmothers was one of ten Aboriginal kids, born and raised on Kangaroo Island, but that surname is extinct now. TB seemed to have been the big killer in the late nineteenth century, followed by death in childbirth: forty women from her 'mission' died, mostly in childbirth and TB, between 1880 and 1960, leaving 140 kids motherless.

I don't know about other groups, but for the Ngarrindjeri, from the lower Murray and Lakes, there is an enormous amount of documentation: birth, death, marriage records from 1860; school records from 1880; I presume hospital and police records; a 600-page missionary's journal from 1859 to 1879; a

[TBC]

[continued]

couple of thousand letters from the four or five superintendents between 1880 and 1900; a Select Committee transcript of a few hundred pages, aimed directly at trying to close that mission in 1860; much other material at a 1913-1916 Royal Commission. Etc.

So when people make airy statements, I suspect that they take it for granted that there is no information otherwise, so they can make all the assertions they like and some fool will believe them.

A 'friend' once told me that his mum had been told by her dad that a farmer woman had poisoned five thousand Aboriginal people with arsenic out around Dubbo. [Strange: it's as if the bigger the story, because it is SO monstrous, the less evidence you need].

Anyway, I said that there's probably never been a time in sixty thousand years when five thousand Aboriginal people came together in the one place (maybe the Bunya harvest times in SE Queensland?). And why did they go there when there were ration depots around Dubbo and Wellington and Warren and Bathurst ?

And just wondering, but how did she dispose of the bodies ? Five thousand people would weigh around two hundred tonnes. To burn the bodies would take a tonne of wood each, an entire forest that this farmer woman had to cut down, cart and put bodies on.

She probably buried the bodies, he said. Then they are still there, at least some bones and teeth (and of course traces of arsenic), I said, presuming that one woman could dig a hole big enough for five thousand people, presumably with a spade.

We're still not speaking.

You need truth, and therefore evidence, to take the first step towards true understanding of anything. And what is more important than a true understanding of our history ?

Joe

Joe, your desperation in telling me to go and read Windschuttle is amusing. Not only have I read it but I was in the audience when he came to Tasmania for a debate about his content. Good ol’ Keify’s work is now out of date and completely discredited. You can’t even get his figures correct either. Winschuttle nominated the figures of 118 Aborigines killed between 1803 – 1834 and in the same period 187 colonists. In his 2014 book, based on years of meticulous research done for his PhD, Nicholas Clements blows those figures away and nominates 600 Aborigines killed by invaders in the east of Tasmania alone.

If you want to go national then historian Timothy Bottoms’ research came to the conclusion that in northern Australia the death toll of Aborigines was in the order of 40 000. That is supported by Henry Reynolds and other historians.

You also stated that the Aborigines removed to Wybalenna had convict-servants but that is blatantly false. Yes, there were a small number of convicts on Flinders Island but they certainly weren’t servants to the Aborigines. In April of 1833 there were 15 convicts on the island; four boatmen, a cook, a tailor, a baker, two brick-makers, one bricklayer, a carpenter, clerk and three labourers. Those numbers did not increase in order to provide Aborigines, a vanquished people, with servants!

Nominating a huge repository of information primarily recorded by those creating the Master Narrative of white dominated historical record is all well and good as long as you recognise the inherent and often extreme biases within. It seems to me that you are intent on propagating the myth of peaceful settlement Joe and not prepared to consider the evidence that counters that of the Master Narrative. You are hiding behind lies and verbosity.

Joe - Windschuttle - really? As Minotaur states Windschuttle has been well and truly discredited - he is a dinosaur relic of the past.

Well, there is nothing new happening on this thread, just the same old inward looking crowd intent on bullying any dissenters away so they can wallow in their smallminded creche.

It is such a pity really because this used to be a reasonable, if right-whinging, site.

Perhaps I will visit it again in a couple of years.

'It is such a pity really because this used to be a reasonable, if right-whinging, site.'

good on you Aka just join the self loathing/righteous left wingers who are more than happy to use mythology to verify their flawed narrative. You won't be helping the Indigeneous one little bit but its all about remaining the victim.

runner, your comment is exactly what I mean. Limited in intellect but full of small-minded snarking.
You haven't changed a bit over the years, you mind is firmly stuck in some self-righteous groove, incapable of discussing anything rationally.

It is kind of sad really - but I suppose y'all enjoy nattering amongst yourself about those 'do-gooders' (because you prefer do-badders perhaps?) and those 'lefties', with little need to question the extreme right swill you enjoy.

I must admit to being surprised that some of the old regular right-whingers are not on this thread - but I am not prepared to check this site further because it tends to make me feel a bit dirty for having visited it.

enjoy having your predujices confirmed Aka.

Minotaur,

Well, it's been ten years since I read Windschuttle's first volume. So just over three hundred people were killed in 31 years ? Roughly ten each year during those early years in Van Diemen's Land ? I would have thought more than ten convicts were flogged to death each year.

'Years of meticulous research' - are you suggesting evidence ? Of an exhaustive collection of reports and rumours, which would be admirable but not really evidence ?

'Coming to the conclusion that .... ' Evidence, please.

Maybe I should come to my senses, claim to have carried out many years of research and found that 56,500 Aboriginal people had been murdered across the North, or maybe just in Queensland alone. I would have been carried through the streets, and could dine out on that for years. Nobody would ask for any verification - too inconvenient.

Actually, if just a small random sample of rumoured massacre-sites were examined and evidence was found of massacres at each of them - not by other Aboriginal groups, but by whites - I would be happy to concede that someone was 'coming to a conclusion that .... ' and that their conclusion was very plausible. Otherwise, I'll wait for evidence.

Joe

Aka, it appears your comprehension skills are as weak as your spelling.

I never claimed the Tasmanian Aborigines were a happy people. On the contrary, their condition seemed miserable. They were a small population with an isolated gene pool, which limited resistance to disease. At some point diseases such as small pox were going to arrive on Tasmanian soil. Their isolation could not last forever.

Nor could the clash of cultures be avoided. This notion that Australia could have been set aside as some sort of 'racially pure' sanctuary for the Aborigines, untouched by modernity and the mass movement of outsides peoples and cultures, is fanciful. As I stated earlier, at some point foreign peoples were going to land on Australian soil. How would have the Aborigines fared under a different European power? What about under Chinese, Japanese or Indonesian rule?

What happened in Tasmania was ultimately a conflict over land. Dispirited, hampered by inferior technology and outnumbered, the Tasmanian Aborigines had little hope of keeping Tasmania for themselves. Violence was perpetrated by both sides. While tragic, such events are all too common in human history.

Minotaur,

I should clarify that I do think it's very likely that a range of killings took place, from single to multiple murders. After all, invasions provoke responses, and those responses provoke further killings - that's in the very nature of invasions, whether by the Romans, or the Normans, or by the Muslims, or any other colonial powers.

But where, and how often, and how violent - these have to be demonstrated. Without evidence, I would suspect that, for all that, there were massacres out beyond the reach of government in all states. There are many factors to take into account, the perceived value of the land to pastoralists, the population recovery from drought, the pull-factor of ration stations and missions, etc.

Still thinking this all through, with more factors to consider, after fifty years :)

Joe

It is quite simple Joe, Nick Clements presented his research in a PhD thesis for scrutiny and would not have it accepted if it simply stated hearsay. From that he got a book published, here I'll even give you the title: The Black War - Fear, Sex and Resistance in Tasmania. Rather than relying on something you read ten years ago and been completely discredited in that time by genuine academic historians it would serve your knowledge base greatly to read more contemporary accounts of history. You know, stuff that has been researched!

Drab, thanks for graphically demonstrating you know absolutely nothing about Aboriginal Tasmanians. Your ignorance is telling.

Hi Minotaur,

Greg Lehman's review of Clements, in 'Aboriginal History', Vol. 39, 2015, makes some telling criticisms of Clements' thesis:

"The most obvious obstacle is that there are no first-person accounts by Aborigines of events described in each of the ‘Black’ sections. Both ‘Black’ and ‘White’ must be read through the lens of a non-Aboriginal commentator, inescapably enmeshed and inevitably partisan. The author acknowledges the problem as a limitation of the archive, but I am not sure that this is enough to surmount the moral and ethical dimensions of this challenge."

"Those seeking a rigorous contribution to the question of genocide in Tasmania will not find it in The Black War. A few critical contributors to the debate are briefly dismissed in favour of Reynolds’ conclusions, without reinforcing argument or discussion. In fairness, Clements makes it clear that his volume is not the place for ‘delving deep into government policy’ (p. 56). Rather, he argues the use of genocide because there was no ideological basis for the killing of Aborigines by colonists."

What ?

"Clements effectively transforms Reynolds’ idea of Aborigines as a proactive resistance, into one where they formed a determined aggressor no more or less guilty of genocide than the colonists. "

Say again ? Even I wouldn't fully agree with that equation.

But, unless Clements presents some in his thesis, there still doesn't seem to be much in the way of evidence mentioned in Lehman's review, which is frustrating.

[TBC]

[continued]

I wonder if people think, well, there HAD to be massacres, because the pastoralists didn't want Aboriginal people round. But they usually did: squatters needed people who knew the country, who could take to horses quickly and who were bound to that country, and wouldn't shoot through at the first opportunity, like whitefellas. They needed Aboriginal women to help their wives with the housework (as my wife did in the sixties).

In a couple of Arthur Upfield's 'Bony' detective novels, pastoralists actually build weirs on seasonal rivers to trap water, precisely in order to attract Aboriginal groups to camp near their homesteads, so that they could use the younger men as stockmen.

In SA, pastoralists used their control of ration depots to maintain a local population - even though they were never paid to do the job by the Protector or to set up a store-room for their tonnes of rations, it was still worth their while just to have a reliable supply of labour handy.

But to get back to Clements's thesis, Minotaur, perhaps you've read his thesis and picked out hard evidence of massacres ? Any hard evidence to contradict Windschuttle's account of three hundred people killed in thirty years ?

I haven't done a count, but in SA, that figure of three hundred, about half and half, sounds about right. But I suspect that it was far higher in Queensland - in fact, across the entire North and down to the Pilbara and Gascoyne. Maybe not in the tens of thousands ? This is why evidence is so crucial - without it, why believe anything ? Just for the passion ? Not enough.

Cheers,

Joe

Joe, since you are intent on using Greg Lehman, the man who wrote one of the most inaccurate and misleading articles about what happened at Risdon Cove on 3 May 1804, as some sort of guide maybe you overlooked this from him about Clements’ research. “the author attempts to construct a social history of the attitudes and actions of both parties to the conflict. He does this with extensive reference to an impressive array of primary sources, drawn from Tasmania’s rich colonial archive.” That means Lehman is actually impressed with the level of research and the amount of primary sources used. Clements also provides extensive evidence to support his claims…which Lehman is acknowledging.

Lehman is right that Clements does not agree with genocide being an aim as Tasmanian Aborigines were offered a peaceful (yet ultimately destructive) solution of removal from the main island…with a promise of being able to return when safe to do so. Regardless there are records of massacres all over Australia and you seem to be denying them Joe and so far done a very poor job of presenting anything of substance to refute anything. And to be relying on some detective novels for a source of information is worthless.

When you have something of substance get back to me Joe…so far all you’ve done is present hollow arguments and blatant mistruths. I have no time or regard for either.

Minotaur,

I did write:

"I should clarify that I do think it's very likely that a range of killings took place, from single to multiple murders. After all, invasions provoke responses, and those responses provoke further killings - that's in the very nature of invasions, whether by the Romans, or the Normans, or by the Muslims, or any other colonial powers.

"But where, and how often, and how violent - these have to be demonstrated. Without evidence, I would suspect that, for all that, there were massacres out beyond the reach of government in all states."

I'll repeat: "Without evidence, I would suspect that, for all that, there were massacres out beyond the reach of government in all states."

I don't know Clements, or Lehman, or what happened at Risdon Cove. Lehman's review of Clements was on Google.

Research and primary sources may still not be enough in this case unless primary research includes evidence of something. Otherwise 'research' is just surmise, backed up by rumours and further surmise. In these sorts of cases, that may be hard, or impossible to find, but how can one believe without evidence ? Just by gut feeling ? A plausible narrative ? Sorry, not enough.

'Records of massacres' ? Or just reports, rumours, barfly accounts ? Yes, of course, there may have been many, many massacres, as I suggested above, but evidence of at least a few out of many would clinch it.

I don't have to refute anything: if someone asserts that something happened, then it is their obligation to provide evidence. As the Romans declared, 'asseritur gratis, negatur gratis' - he who asserts without evidence can be ignored and his assertions set aside.

Upfield's novels were just novels, yes. But he was extremely meticulous and accurate with his background detail: it indicates how things were and why, but doesn't prove anything.

But when you have something of substance, get back to me. No rush :)

Joe

God, I'm a slow learner.

For the last few years, I've been trying to map the droughts across Australia since 1788, AND to try to understand what happened to Aboriginal groups in marginal country when droughts took hold, especially long droughts such as the 1890s drought, followed quickly by the Federation drought.

Many groups had relations with neighbouring groups - probably clan to clan, which might partly explain how and why groups like the Kamilaroi and Wiradjuri seem to control such huge areas of country: that, during droughts, outlying clans were able to move into the better country of related clans near headwaters and ranges, and away from the waterless plains.

Still, during a severe drought, young children could no longer be nursed, so they died. dearly on. Groups fragmented and scattered. Old women died, with nobody to provide for them. If the drought went on long enough, the middle-aged women and older men would have begun to die. And it would take many years for the population to build up again.

So, say, a five-year drought affected most of southern Queensland, like the present one, any young children under four would have died, as would any women over, say, fifty. If a drought lasted five years, it would take another year or two before groups were sure enough of better times to begin to have children again. That takes nine months. So with a five-year drought, there may be up to a twelve-year gap in the age-structure of a group. In other words, the gap in a group's age-structure may be seven or more years longer than the drought itself. And one drought, about eight hundred years ago, lasted 32 years.

Kangaroos can have multiple births in the first good year after a drought, and young females can be bearing within a couple of years. Humans take a bit longer to re-build populations.

So, across Australia, any estimate of population before 1788 has to take all of this into account - and take into account, not the very highest number in the very best of times, but

{TBC}

[continued]

of the 'highest' numbers given the alternations of droughts and good times.

So perhaps three hundred thousand may be a rough estimate of average total population across the entire continent, pre-1788.

PART TWO

I've tracked the Censuses since 1971, and was a bit sceptical about sudden, 50 %, rises in numbers from, say, 1981 to 1986, and from a third increase from 1991 to 1996, and almost as much from 2006 to 2011. But I didn't do much about it until this last holiday period. I tracked later age-groups back to when they were born - for example, the 35-39 age-group in 2011 who were born in the period just before the 1976 Census - and was struck by how that age-cohort, the same people, had GROWN in number, sometimes almost double.

How could this be ? An age-cohort can't grow, it can only decline with mortality. So I thought, bugger it, I'll re-adjust those figures back to previous Censuses, and back to the time when they were born. With a bit of very rough and creative doodling, one could re-build earlier, older age-cohort numbers as well. Then I added them up, Census by Census.

Officially, the 1971 Census counted around 106,000 Indigenous people. But with my crude adjustments, the figure was more like 300,000. So the population may not have risen from 106,000 in 1971 to 548,000 in w2011 - five times as many ! Wow ! Fantastic ! - but barely doubled, from 300,000 to 548,000. I put it in a paper:

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=1796

The original data and the adjusted data are there, in easy-to-read Tables.

And if slightly higher mortality estimates are made, the 1971 population is correspondingly higher, around 330,000.

Of course, re-identification is probably the main factor causing that growth. Fair enough, that's people's right, to identify or not. But if there is anything in those figures, then the growth in the birth-rate has been far lower than I used to take for granted, probably barely any higher than the birth-rate growth for Australia as a whole.

[TBC]

[continued]

If anything, the Indigenous population has risen since 1971, to a large extent, not because of high birth-rates but due to people living longer, i.e. a massive growth in the older age-groups.

PART THREE

So could the Indigenous population have been around 300,000 back in 1971, not 106,000 ?

And if (from the first part, above), the Indigenous population in 1788 was also around 300,000, when was the dip and when was the renewed rise ? If there were catastrophic impacts on population due to massacres, epidemics, grog, etc., when did the population start to recover ?

OR [this is where I have to contemplate emigrating], has the Australian Indigenous population hovered around 300,000 ever since 1788 ? With not much of a dip, and not much of a rise ?

Just trying to tease out a couple of dynamics, and provide some constructive food for thought.

Joe

Really, Joe? Keith Windschuttle?

And here I was starting to warm to you as a potential authority on indigenous history. I warned myself. I've always been sceptical of right-wing historical revisionists like yourself because they only ever have a nationalist political agenda for their re-writing of history and they always turn out to be wrong.

But no, I started to give you the benefit of the doubt, and now you're citing a dishonest piece of crap like Windschuttle. Now I feel naive and stupid again. Thanks for that.

No political agenda there, eh Joe?!

Serves me right, I suppose.

Hi AJ,

No need to be so tactful, let it all out :) But I was quite hurt to be called right-wing: I was born on the Left and I'll die on the Left, only it isn't the same Left these days. I suppose I'm old Old Left.
.
As for Windschuttle's work, some of the most exhaustively researched work I've ever read. perhaps you can give an example of where he might have fudged or mis-quoted or fabricated anything ?

As for revisionism, yes. So much of Indigenous 'history' needs to be re-assessed. If you're interested, you could start with the primary documents on my web-site: www.firstsources.info That should keep you busy for a few years.

But it'll be a bumpy ride :)

Joe

Sorry, Joe. You're a unique and interesting character and very knowledgeable when it comes to indigenous history. Being somewhat interested in the topic, I appreciate your knowledge - even if I suspect a little bias here and there. But to lump you in with disgusting and purely politically motivated freaks like those on the Right was uncalled for and below the belt, and I unreservedly apologise.

HI AJ,

Thank you for your gracious response. Yes, I'm probably a bit biased, but biased both ways in that I think Indigenous people have exercised far more ingenuity and craft than they have been given credit for.

For example, it's clear from the documents in the nineteenth century that, at least here in SA, Aboriginal peopl3 came and went as they pleased. As they pleased. People may not put that construction on it now, but that certainly seems to have been how it was. People were given boats, modern fishing gear, guns, etc., so they must have been able to exploit their environments far more efficiently than they ever had before. Of course, there may have been an ulterior motive giving people boats and fishing gear and guns, namely that they didn't need so much in the way of rations. But surely that was a win-win ?

And certainly the one-man missionary didn't have time, muscle or - it seems - any inclination to try to 'herd people onto his mission', quite the reverse. He hums and has about taking orphan children, or one family that had been playing up in Adelaide.

The different superintendents over the years to 1900 occasionally ordered people off the place - including David Unaipon, the bloke on the $50 note, for attempted sexual abuse: being a smart-arse, Unaipon camped just outside the boundary of the mission from where he could 'nyah nyah! ' to his heart's content. A couple, busily engaged in adultery, were threatened with expulsion, but left anyway for Goolwa, the woman leaving behind her six kids for the poor husband to care for, and somehow find work at the same time: my wife's great-grandfather, originally from Albany, from the Camfield's school.

Sceptical rather than be biased, AJ. "An Old Left sceptic" - sounds good to me :)

Cheers,

Joe

I'm surprised that nobody has started a thread about the QUT debacle.

Indigenous support centres have played a vital part, really an essential part, in boosting Indigenous student numbers at universities. At many universities, there had been almost no Indigenous students at all before such centres were set up. At first they consisted of just a staff member (perhaps part-time) and office, then as numbers increased, a common room where students could relax and socialise, and then perhaps a work room.

Nowadays, there are some fifteen thousand Indigenous students, perhaps sixteen this year, across the forty-odd universities, and a hundred-odd campuses, across Australia. Some universities, such as Newcastle and Charles Sturt, are enrolling more than eight hundred students. That's an amazing difference from the early eighties.

For some years I was involved at the Indigenous student support centre at Salisbury campus of the SACAE/then the Uni of Sa, a program called PAIS. We built the program up from eight to forty students, across a wide range of mainstream fields of study, as well as a one-year Bridging Course to prepare students for the Conservation and Park Management degree.

I don't recall having any trouble with allowing non-Indigenous friends of our students to use the spaces and equipment - we had three or four old Amstrad computers (does anybody remember them?). As it happened, our students were just as likely to use the mainstream facilities anyway, as they were fully entitled to. In fact, it provide opportunities for better liaison and to firm up friendships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students, which is what we always wanted.

In fact, we were lucky that our Centre was smack-bang in the middle of the campus, next to the student bar. On other campuses, staff had to fight against senior management for the Centres NOT to be parked out on the edge of a campus. Or even over the road, in one case.

On the face of it, and with the amazing benefits of hindsight, perhaps this situation at QUT could have been handled more constructively from the outset.

Joe