Loudmouth. The idealised “bare-arsed, foraging existence” was sustained by population control, and that involved infanticide; but it is “racist” to say so.

Hi Leslie,

Yes, but I think that there was a host of ways in which populations could be cut back, in all traditional-type societies.

During droughts in Australia, young children would have to be left to die because their mothers had no milk. Old people died quickly in droughts. Some droughts lasted ten years or more, massively impacting on future populations. One drought, around 800 years ago, lasted 32 years, judging from lake-deposit records: that would have wiped out entire groups, i.e. no new births possible, so their country would have been slowly re-populated over centuries. And of course, the longer a drought, the larger its geographical spread, usually.

Lloyd Warner, a US anthropologist of the Top end in the 1930s, wrote of a death-rate amongst warring groups equivalent to a constant World War I death-toll. Hence, by the way, old fellas with many wives.

Down this way, death records have been kept since the 1860s, so we can construct birth-families and observe their mortality rates. In some, every child died, often from TB or gastro, and perhaps neglect. Hence their family name has vanished.

Yes, there seems to have been infanticide in most places, often because the young mother either had a falling-out with the putative father, or couldn't be bothered carrying a baby around, or more likely already had another baby on the breast, and not enough milk for two.

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 and land-use ? Amazing.

Was there ever an explorer, ship's captain, etc. who ever declared that Australia was empty of people ? No ? Then why do some idiots push the idea ?

At least in SA, and I suspect (why not?) in other colonies, the right of Aboriginal people to use the land as they always had done was recognised from the outset. Of course, ration depots were set up simultaneously, so people seemed to abandon their lands in return for easy food. Those rights are still active, in SA's Environment Act.

Notice that the recognition of the right to use land is completely different from the recognition of sovereignty, some sort of governmental control or administration. The first might be standard English common law, while the second is part of international law. The absence of one, i.e. terra nullius, which never seems to have existed wherever there were people, does not necessarily presume the absence of the other, res nullius.

Did Aboriginal people have customary systems of land-use ? Of course, and these were recognised. Did they have any systems of government ? Maybe not above clan-level, family-level, the level of groups of 20-50 people: above that was always the threat of warfare between clans, and even more so between more distant groups.

You live and learn all your life, don't you ?

Changing the date will not satisfy the whiners: it is not the date but the fact of settlement which offends them.

Fremantle Council tried the same stunt a couple of years ago and was promptly cut out of the citizenship ceremony loop.

The Fremantle Council posturing was ludicrous, since the first white settlement in what is now Western Australia did not occur until 1826 (at Albany) and three years later the Swan River Colony was established - now Perth. How could any Aboriginal people living near Albany or the Swan River have been concerned about the arrival of the First Fleet at the other end of the continent in January 1788?

One of the great mysteries of public administration is that Aboriginal communities have been able to continue "traditional" hunting of rare and endangered species such as dugongs and magpie geese - with their traditional high powered rifles from their traditional Yamaha-powered tinnies.

Yes Joe, except if you're a radicalising urban activist, rewriting oral history to make it fit the victim, new narrative? To foment mindless hate and disunity! And at the one time in our history, when we need exactly, the very opposite!

Thus color code infanticide, just didn't happen. Neither did cannibalism, now reinterpreted as a sort of honor the enemy communion? All the tribe partook of, and tribal wars that lasted longer than the blood soaked divide between the Sunni and the Shiite? Just didn't happen, and used by the white authorities, following successful Roman example, to impose their rules and regulations, on a new to them, territory!

Rewritten oral history/self delusion, not worth the paper it was written on! Educated, erudite, cogent, credible comment mate!
Alan B.

Hi Alan,

Thanks. I also just found this article by Geoffrey Partington, on the same subject, i.e. 'terra nullius':

https://www.samuelgriffith.org.au/papers/html/volume19/v19chap11.html

Thankfully, at least some writers have paid attention to this key issue. I look forward to the day when an Indigenous 'researcher' turns their valuable attention to this issue, even just to rebut what Connor or Partington write. If they can.

I suspect that one principle in Indigenous discussion, such as it is, is that, because Indigenous people have suffered so much, to a degree unknown in human history, therefore everybody should go easy on whatever their 'experts' assert. Any exaggeration should therefore be taken at its fullest, any asserted crime believed without question.

Sounds a bit racist to me :) i.e. that one can't disagree with an Indigenous person for fear of seeming to be racist. Bugger it, if someone asserts something, they must demonstrate, no matter who they are. Any outlandish assertion has to be questioned until it can be demonstrated. That's how we discover the truth. Otherwise, it remains 'undiscovered'.

Joe