Hi Minotaur,

On your first point: in 2015, 4,789 Indigenous women, and 168,029 Non-Indigenous men, commenced university studies. The total for Indigenous women was 2.85 % that of Non-Indigenous men. Parity for 25-28-year-olds is about 2.8 %. [Parity varies for different age-groups]. So Indigenous women are commencing university at a slightly better rate than Non-Indigenous men.

No, I haven't back-pedalled over the existence of massacres, simply suggested that if they occurred, then there should be evidence of them. So I'm confident that, if they occurred, evidence will be found. Some of the places you mention may be difficult, being places where people have supposed to have been pushed into the sea: ipso facto, no evidence. But therefore no evidence of a crime, either.: it may have occurred, but there is unfortunately no evidence of it.

But if you wish to assert something, YOU must prove it, it's not up to someone else to 'disprove' what essentially can't be disproven.

One facet of a 'story', which may not be accurate (to put it politely), is that the 'story' may contain elements which are unlikely. For example, you mention Gippsland - you may mean a reported massacre where two hundred people were pushed over a cliff into the sea: two hundred ? It would have been hard in that country to find twenty people together, let alone two hundred, not to mention that they would have been two hundred who would have known their own country pretty well. How many white fellas, in unfamiliar country, would you need to push two hundred people into the sea ?

Perhaps a rule in such claims is not to make them too outlandish: be content with ten or fifteen, but don't exaggerate. And don't believe every bar-fly.

In the Protector's Letters here in SA [on my web-site: swww.firstsources.info],

[TBC]

[continued]

Hi Minotaur,

In the Protector's Letters here in SA [on my web-site: swww.firstsources.info], he recounts in detail a couple of reported massacres and his response, as Coroner. Responding to a report of thirty killed up near Burra, he heads off, and by the time he gets to Clare, the number has dropped to ten. When he gets to Burra, it has dropped further. He investigates, and finds the shallow graves of two people, a woman shot and a man killed by sabre. On another occasion, he finds one body, burnt then buried. You can find the full details on my web-site: each volume of Protector's Letters is indexed, just look under 'Massacres'.

You write about " .... the Frontier Wars where invading squatters and pastoralists shot and killed Aboriginal people in order to clear them from the land so their cattle and sheep could take over."

Very likely, but at least some evidence would be useful and I'm sure you would be confident in providing it. Pastoralists generally needed labour, at least in old-fashioned South Australia, so were prepared to set up ration depots to actually attract workers, including all their dependants. I haven't found any evidence that there was any differentiation in wages, but you may have evidence otherwise.

About wages, since you may wish to raise the issue:

* in the missionary's Journal and Letter-Books from Pt McLeay in the nineteenth century, they off-handedly remark that wages are the same for Aboriginal people and whites. In a Victorian Royal Commission around 1877, the same is recorded, with a recommendation that pay-cheques be paid directly to Mission superintendents to avoid the lot going on grog, and payment dispersed back on the Mission, after deductions for rations, stores, etc.

* during the Depression in the thirties, the SA annual Protector's reports complained about the men not leaving the settlements if wages were to be at all reduced, as they had been for everybody else: my mum was out on the streets back then, finding work at 15/- per week. I don't want to think how she survived.

[TBC]