We're not Canada Big Nana and can and do atribute land rights etc to a maternal link!

Which is true for many aboriginal tribes, whose link to land is linked exclusively via maternal links, and always has been?

Thus when women were stolen from other tribes, their connection to land, was stolen with them? As would seem, common practise in Tasmania, Where the women ruled the roost?

At least that is my understanding of our difference, inculcated at my Grandmother's knee, with other indigenous inhabitants of other lands.

The rest of your post, I can broadly agree with. Native title should go to folk, indisputably native, regardless of paternal or maternal lineage!

Me, I strongly identify with my Celtic forbears, who had their traditional generational land and tenure stolen by armed invaders!

Many of whom, would have been forced to witness the burning of their crofts and humble possessions as harsh northern winters threatened, leaving few survivors/rebels, lucky enough to find and share a cave and a few crumbs.
Cheers, Alan B.

I can remember the start of the Race Relations Industry (1960's UK) the main objection was that there was no "Race" in the British law and now it is being introduced. That objection was swiftly cast aside and since then the "We are all equal" mantra has held sway except that some racial groups are more equal than others. Australia actually excepts aboriginal people from some of this law too. I strongly object to this and always have especially seeing how it is working.
What an excellent suggestion Loudmouth, a question in the referendum to except no one. I will vote for that and believe it would get up too, along with a real test for "Aboriginal status".
It can never happen as there are just too many people on this gravy train.

@Loudmouth, Thursday, 15 December 2016

Excellent summary and conclusions Joe, many thanks.

Aw shucks, you fellas ;)

Isn't freedom of expression wonderful, or at least illuminating: Michael Mansell has just published a book on a separate Aboriginal state and sovereignty from outside rule, and manages to square the circle by explaining how it would also mean extra funds from Canberra for this break-away from its control, AND an Indigenous body in Australia's parliaments to oversee any legislation affecting Aboriginal people, i.e. every new bit of legislation, a new organisation 'a bit like ATSIC', and also separate representation in parliaments, to boot.

And - hey presto ! - probably an end to all discrimination into the bargain.

Do some of these children ever think beyond their brilliant little five-second thought-bubbles ? For example, where would a separate State be ? One with a 'predominantly Aboriginal population' ? Let's see; you draw a line from way out west of Ceduna, across to the Flinders Ranges, across the north-west corner of NSW, up to around Cooktown; then on the other side, down from south of Broome to east of Esperance. You would have to leave out Alice Springs (oh, all right then, it can be the capitol) and of course Darwin and Katherine - and Broome, since they don't have a predominantly Aboriginal population.

So what area are we talking about ? Perhaps a hundred thousand people, in five million square kilometres of the hardest, most barren country in Australia, with the most mendicant, skill-free Aboriginal population in Australia.

Of course, another question arises: how many of the Aboriginal elite would go there ? In fact, how many of the elite have EVER been there ? Would they be happy to live in Alice Springs ? And let's not talk about passports. Haven't these duck-brains ever heard of South Africa ? What a bunch of warnkers.

But if this is what some Aboriginal 'leaders' REALLY want, i.e. anything but reconciliation, then perhaps we should put this whole 'Reconciliation' band-wagon on hold until they get a modicum of common sense and think through - just this once - the implications of one of their thought-bubbles.

Joe

I hate to say this Joe, but sometimes I think the brains of some of these so called "leaders" are back in the stone age still.

David

Hi David,

I don't know about that, I don't believe anybody inherits much from their ancestors, culturally maybe but not mentally. More likely, many 'leaders' see opportunities for power, from the point of view of 'representing' a small minority (whether they like it or not), and one way to grab more power is to flog these sort of issues for all their worth without thinking through their associations (i.e. Apartheid in Mansell's case) and consequences (i.e. the further disintegration of the Indigenous entity, which has enough to contend with on that score already.)

Meanwhile, while these would-be Neros play on their fiddles, remote and rural 'communities' go even further down the drain (their problems are not the concern of the elites, after all), and urban populations successfully integrate their lives further with the lives of other Australians (bad urban populations !). After all, Indigenous people have historically, usually, done whatever they liked within constraints, they've never let themselves be herded anywhere, or told what to do. And their 'leaders' won't have much success there either. They're pissing in the wind. Leave them to it, it's no less than they deserve.

Cheers,

Joe