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Dear Loudmouth,

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Yes, it’s a sad tale I’m afraid. There has been gross miscomprehension all along the line. Yet, it could have been otherwise. Cook’s description of the Aboriginal peoples he observed while charting the east coast of Australia from April to August 1770 rings so true :

« They go quite Naked, both Men and Women, without any manner of Cloathing whatever … I do not look upon them to be a warlike people; on the contrary, I think them a Timerous and inoffensive race, no ways inclined to Cruelty … They seem to have no fixed habitation, but move about from place to place like wild beasts in search of Food, and, I believe, depend wholy upon the Success of the present day for their Subsistance … Their Houses are mean, small Hovels, not much bigger than an Oven, made of Peices of Sticks, Bark, Grass, etc., and even these are seldom used but in the Wet seasons, for in the daytimes we know they as often sleep in the Open Air as anywhere else …

From what I have said of the Natives of New Holland they may appear to some to be the most wretched People upon Earth; but in reality they are far more happier than we Europeans, being wholy unacquainted not only with the Superfluous, but with the necessary Conveniences so much sought after in Europe; they are happy in not knowing the use of them. They live in a Tranquility which is not disturbed by the Inequality of Condition. The earth and Sea of their own accord furnishes them with all things necessary for Life. They covet not Magnificient Houses, Household-stuff, etc.; they live in a Warm and fine Climate, and enjoy every wholesome Air, so that they have very little need of Cloathing; and this they seem to be fully sencible of, for many to whom we gave Cloth, etc., left it carelessly upon the Sea beach and in the Woods, as a thing they had no manner of use for; in short ...

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they seem’d to set no Value upon anything we gave them, nor would they ever part with anything of their own for any one Article we could offer them. This, in my opinion, Argues that they think themselves provided with all the necessarys of Life, and that they have no Superfluities. »

Cook’s voyage had been organised in 1768 by The Royal Society of London as a scientific venture to Tahiti to record observations of the transit of the planet Venus across the sun during 1769. The Scottish geographer, Alexander Dalrymple, was to lead the expedition, but the Admiralty refused to allow a non-naval person to take command of a naval vessel and appointed Cook instead.

The instigator of Cook’s mission, the president of the Royal Society, James Douglas, 14th Earl of Morton (1702–1768), wrote this to him prior to his departure :

« Hints offered for the consideration of Captain Cooke, Mr Bankes, Doctor Solander and the other Gentlemen who go upon the Expedition on Board the Endeavour:

To exercise the utmost patience and forbearance with respect to the Natives of the several Lands where the Ship may touch.

To check the petulance of the Sailors, and restrain the wanton use of Fire arms.

To have it still in view that shedding the blood of those people is a crime of the highest nature: they are human creatures, the work of the same omnipotent Author, equally under his care with the most polished Europeans perhaps being less offensive, more entitled to his favour.

They are the natural, and in the strictest sense of the word, the legal possessors of the several Regions they inhabit.

No European Nation has a right to occupy any part of their country, or settle among them without their voluntary consent.

Conquest over such people can give no just title; because they could never be the aggressors.

They may naturally and justly attempt to repel intruders, whom they may apprehend are come to disturb them in the quiet possession of their country, whether that apprehension be well or ill founded.

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Therefore, should they in a hostile manner oppose a landing and kill some men in the attempt, even this would hardly justify firing among them, ‘till every other gentle method had been tried. »

Cook chose to ignore Morton’s advice on the important question of land ownership in favour of what he considered to be his primary duty to King George III and the colonial ambitions of the British government and the Admiralty, the people to whom he owed his appointment as naval officer in charge of the expedition. He took possession of the whole of the east coast of Australia without any reference to the Aboriginal peoples or their sovereign rights.

Botany Bay was chosen as a convict settlement on the recommendation of Joseph Banks to replace the colonies in America which Great Britain lost in 1783 due to the American War of Independence. Convicts were subsequently diverted to Australia as slave labour to develop the new colony of New South Wales.
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The British authorities apparently concluded that the indigenous inhabitants were some sort of hybrid species of wild animals and human beings and that the country was “terra nullius”. That was the beginning of the long, tragic reign of mutual incomprehension that has marked the history of our two cultures.

I can't help repeating what Bob Randall, elder of the Yankunytjatjara Nation, said :

« Now we’re stuck between two cultures, two worlds; we can’t go back to the old way because the natural environment has been destroyed. Nothing is there in its natural state anymore. We can’t get into your system because many of us don’t understand it. »

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Hi Rodney,

Where to start ?

1. Cook was writing nearly 250 years ago.

2. The term 'Terra Nullius' was not used, as far as I can tell, until the Blackburn Decision (1971).

3. Perhaps you can name any reputable writer who has described Aboriginal people as flora and fauna, etc. ? I don't know of anybody.

4. Land 'ownership' is a very fraught area: what does it mean for foragers ? Not, say, the right to buy and sell, that would have been irrelevant. Land 'use' was certainly recognised early on, in SA, and presumably in all colonies, at first implicitly then (at least in SA) in 1851 quite explicitly in the Pastoral Acts, with clauses written into every pastoral lease, guaranteeing the right of Aboriginal people to enter, cross over, exit from, camp on, hunt, gather and fish, on carry out ceremonies on, the land 'as if this lease had not been made'. i.e. also on Crown Lands. So traditional land use rights were recognised: the major difference would have been the denial of the right of Aboriginal people to exclude others.

Those rights still apply.

We can fight the battles of yesteryear to our heart's content but the outcome won't be reversed. Here is where we are, and the problems of here and now are what we have to deal with. What do we do about them ? Yes, we can sit back and make ex cathedra pronouncements about ultimate cause, but that means absolutely nothing to the children in remote communities. As Marx said (Thesis 11), something like: Hitherto philosophers have been content to describe the world [read: 'deconstruct'; analyse' critically examine], our role is to change it. Or at least facilitate people's efforts to change it.

Joe

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Dear Joe,

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Thank you for expressing your opinion on this important question.

« Where to start ? », you ask.

Allow me to suggest the following guiding principle as an appropriate starting point: that we are the product of history - biological, environmental and event-driven.

Why we are, who we are, how we are and where we are – are the result of that history. To ignore history, or part of it, consciously or unconsciously, deprives us of valuable explanations of ourselves and the present state of affairs – in particular, why certain outback Aboriginal peoples are in the complete state of disarray that you describe so vividly elsewhere on this thread.

That said, we are probably all subject, to some extent, to selective memory and selective amnesia. I guess it’s part of our natural defence. Otherwise we might have difficulty looking ourselves in the mirror.

You point out that “Cook was writing nearly 250 years ago”, but that’s yesterday compared to the 60 000 years that the Aboriginal peoples have inhabited Australia. Also, I find Cook’s description of the Aboriginal people in 1770 pretty much the same as the nomad Aboriginal tribe I encountered while driving across the Nullarbor Plains in 1963 on my way from Sydney to Perth. That was only a little more than half a century ago. It was just a dirt track in those days. I have no idea what it’s like now.

You are right in thinking that the term “terra nullius” was not employed, per se, for many years following colonisation, but the doctrine of “terra nullius” was, nevertheless, strictly applied from 1788 to 1992 when it was finally invalidated by the High Court of Australia in Mabo and Others v Queensland (N°2).

You suggest:

« Perhaps you can name any reputable writer who has described Aboriginal people as flora and fauna, etc. ? »

Stuart Banner, a legal historian and Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law in the US cites a number of cases:

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[The merchant Edward Lucett declared; "some monkeys I have seen might feel injured by a comparison." The marine Robert Scott … told his mother: "I never saw such ugly people they seem to be only one degree above a beast they sit exactly like a monkey." But some writers, decades before Darwin, wondered whether there might be more to the resemblance than just a resemblance. Might the Aborigines be "the connecting link between man and the monkey tribe?" asked the naval surgeon Peter Cunningham. "Really some of the old women only seem to require a tail to complete the identity: while the manner in which I have seen these aged beldames scratch themselves, bore such a direct analogy to the same operation among the long-tailed fraternity, that I could not, for the life of me, distinguish the difference." Another writer likewise suggested that the Aborigines of Van Diemen's Land "may almost be said to form the connecting link between man and the monkey tribes." The idea was commonplace at least as early as the 1830s, when Charles Napier found it necessary to refute "all those who have called the natives of Australia 'a race which forms the link between men and monkeys”] :

http://www.treatyrepublic.net/content/terra-nullius

And you conclude :

« We can fight the battles of yesteryear to our heart's content but the outcome won't be reversed »

No, but the adverse consequences of British colonisation can be mitigated and compensated. That can be done now. There is no reason for delay. I have outlined what we can do in my open letter.

In addition, common law is subject to evolution and there is absolutely no obligation to repeat past in justices. On the contrary, they can and should be redressed wherever and whenever it is possible to do so.

Your quotation of Marx is eminently appropriate and I see no valid reason why it should not be put into practice.

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