[con tinued]

And of course, for single women with children, there was no financial child support until about 1971. Not quite true: in SA, the Children's Relief and Public Welfare Board provided single mothers with a weekly amount to KEEP their children. In checking out her records, my wife found a list of about fifty Aboriginal kids from about 1950 whose mothers were getting this sort of assistance.

Adoptions: my bet is that extremely few adoptions of Aboriginal kids were ever carried out; fostering yes, but not adoptions. I recall Jimmy Little getting angry with a radio interviewer for innocently perpetuating this myth. Yes, I know of adoptions, I've read of others, but nothing like the numbers of kids taken into care for short periods, six months, a year, etc. (In the record, one kid died of starvation in 1955, and many died of gastro, a typical 'neglect disease'). Why ? Because, perhaps both parents were on the grog ?
Because their mothers had died. Because their fathers had died. Because they had nobody to really look after them. Then back with other relatives when they could, grandparents, aunties. And backwards and forwards. I'm sure that still goes on.

Any other issues ? Okay: here's one: around 45,000 Indigenous people have graduated from universities across Australia, mainly in mainstream awards at degree- and PG-level, overwhelmingly urban people. Enrolments and graduations improve around 8 % p.a. One hundred thousand graduates is possible by 2030: i.e. one in every two urban women, one in four urban men.

All on my web-site: www.firstsources.info

Hi Foxy,

I doubt my own oral memory, let alone anybody else's :)

As for your conclusion:

"The most insidious myth perpetuated about Aboriginal Society is the idea it was "primitive" "stone-age" "nomadic" or unevolved." The archaeology of our continent directly refutes this type of thinking, but until recently the monuments and achievements of ancient Australia remain largely invisible to the mainstream public.... "

I have to suggest that Indigenous people here were as intelligent and as ingenious as anybody else in the world, but yes, had a very primitive technology, no contact to speak of with the outside world for tens of thousands of years, and that - if 'stone-age' has any meaning at all - were living stone'age lives. If anything, archaeology confirms that. Nothing that unusual about all that - the Scots were still using stone weapons barely three hundred years ago; Maori used stone weapons; most of the entire world did barely a thousand years ago.

So where are these monuments that 'remain largely invisible' ? Let's be honest about all this. Let's make sense from the evidence, not just from some stance, or from some 'oral memory'.

Love,

Joe

Dear Joe (Loudmouth),

Read the link that I gave you - it may
help.

Foxy, "Aboriginal oral narratives"

I really cannot understand why you and ors imagine you can bluff it through with such claims. There is plenty of research to prove that your belief, faith, in memory and oral history is without basis, complete bunk.

In a previous thread, one relating to a mythical journey by some children, I mentioned the known unreliability of memory. People imagine that memory works like a tape recorder. It is anything but that, reconstructing events each time memory is accessed. I provided a link to an authoritative site.

For others with an open mind and who have regard for scientific evidence,

http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_loftus_the_fiction_of_memory

leoj,

Actually there is plenty on the web regarding the
importance of Aboriginal oral narratives to historians
all you have to do is search.

The number and spread of narratives that match up
give credibility - especially when they span several
living generations and when the stories are so well
maintained.

The importance placed on oral traditions should be
re-evaluated.

http://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p70821/pdf/introduction11.pdf

Foxy,

Do you say that psychologist Elizabeth Loftus is wrong? There are many more and the science of the brain is supported by magnetic imaging and other technology.

False memories are the same as real memories to the storytellers.

That doesn't mean the stories have any factual basis at all. Of course they don't.