Mexico should be worried too. Most experts are discovering that Australia was empty apart from crocodile shooters from Dundee and China just unloaded surplus Manchus between 1770 and 1788 in the big picture.

I'm fascinated by the way threads go off in all sorts of directions. Try to get a better idea of Indigenous history and you end up writing about China or Mexico.

Anyway, to get reluctantly back to topic: should we believe everything that is asserted about our past, or suspend belief until we have some acceptable level of evidence for any claims ?

For example, massacres: I assume they occurred, but where ? It appears that there has not yet been a single forensic examination of any supposed site in Australia. Surely, one would have thought, some amateur archaeologist or forensic detective has spent years combing their local countryside to find sites ? So claims of thousands here or tens of thousands there are a bit premature. About all we know about massacres are those of the 28 on the Coorong in 1840, of the 19 on the Dawson River in Qld in about 1858, of the Rainbird family on Yorke Peninsula in SA around 1860, the Baird family on Eyre Peninsula around 1848, and a few other families. But they don't matter much, because after all, they were white.

As for, say, the 'Stolen Generation': were kids taken into care ? Of course, for neglect, abuse and abandonment. Should governments have done that ? Or don't governments have any responsibility for the most vulnerable in the societies they administer ? i.e. were governments 'reactive' to actual circumstances, or were they scheming and 'proactive', taking children for no reason, with some devious plan to adopt them all out ? How did that go ? As far as I can tell, none of my wife's relations were ever taken for no reason, or adopted out: so is that a myth ? Anyway, any claimant's record would show the truth, if they dared to present it in court.

Sometimes the truth is very hard to discover. Acceptance of story is easier. Everybody's choice.

Joe

Should be records in undertaker's files about black horses and funeral carriages for beloved deceased 142 miles west of outer Bringabeeralong . Marble slabs and concrete head stones were the bare minimum with gold lettering of dates of birth and bullet calibre. Otherwise rest in peace for dingos , wedgetails and quolls.

Hi Nick,

Yes, remembering history. In many, if not all, Aboriginal groups, a practice of 'forgetting' was common: the names of the deceased were not used, nor any words which sounded like their names, so many ordinary words in the dialects had to be changed. Hence rapid differentiation between dialects, to the point of mutual incomprehensibility. Hence also, no handed-down genealogies.

The bloke on the $ 50 note, David Unaipon, from Pt McLeay, died in 1967 and his grave was marked only with a little wooden cross. More or less forgotten. When my wife was appointed to a senior position at her university, she exploited her financial situation so that funds could be allocated to provide him with a proper headstone, I think about $ 3000. Big unveiling, many putative relations suddenly came forward. School at the university named in his honour.

Now, I suspect, forgotten again. No more University School in his name. Sic transit gloria.

Joe

I've just come across this amazing article by the historian Michael Connor, titled 'Error Nullius Revisited', available on:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1906369299642736/

Anybody who believes that there ever was such a term as 'terra nullius' used liberally in Australian history, should have a good look at this article, it's a real eye-opener.

One wonders how other historians, judges, lawyers, etc. could have got it so wrong. How can you so easily mix up 'res nullius' - a stretch of land without observable forms of government', with 'terra nullius', a stretch of land which seems to have no form of land ownership, only land use' ?

i.e. confusing concepts of sovereignty with concepts of land ownership ? Amazing.

Sory, that URL should be:

https://www.samuelgriffith.org.au/papers/html/volume16/v16chap4.html