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The Forum > Article Comments > Australia Day deserves to stay > Comments

Australia Day deserves to stay : Comments

By Charles Smith, published 2/10/2017

Newcomers are unlikely to join our national community and adopt our culture if we keep telling them that our country has very little of which to be proud.

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Shadow Minister, you need to do some research into how Aboriginal people around Australia lived and their practices for food production. To label them as simple hunter/gatherers is to completely ignore some of the very advanced methods used to produce and harvest food sources. One example being that of the groups in the Lake Condah area (Victoria) where they created complex systems of lake level management to ensure a constant supply of short finned eels. The eels were often smoked to preserve them and the people lived in huts of stone, wood and bark.

It is now established the people lived around the lakes for up to 9 months of year. Their times away from the area coincided with when the eels would migrate north to spawn and later return, as would the young…thus ensuring a constant supply of food. The 3 months the people were not in the area was a time for them to go and trade with others, have ceremonies and reconnect with relatives or others. All very important cultural and social practices.

In Tasmania, on the far north-west and west coasts, Aboriginal people lived in small villages of sturdy huts built on the sand dunes. Often they’d have a winter hut in one area and a summer hut in another. As coastal people they had constant supplies of food, all of it full of nutrients necessary for a healthy diet. Their seasonal movements reflect what many modern Australians do if they are affluent enough to have a home in one place and ‘shack’ in another.

As to there being internecine warfare, yes there was but most often done under strict regulation that both sides adhered to. The same cannot be said for many of the ‘wars’ (including terrorism) being conducted across the world now. As to ‘unsavory’ cultural practices, well yes there were (and in some cases still are, such as male genital mutilation via sub-incision). However, many cultures today have ‘unsavory’ practices some believe to be integral to them…often done, or ‘justified’, as a ‘cultural practice’ and therefore should be (according to the proponents) ‘untouchable’.
Posted by minotaur, Wednesday, 4 October 2017 3:45:51 PM
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Minotaur,

I can see that your reading of aboriginal history consists entirely of fluff pieces.

Try an unfiltered diet for a change:

http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/bennelong-papers/2013/05/the-long-bloody-history-of-aboriginal-violence/
Posted by Shadow Minister, Thursday, 5 October 2017 6:47:42 AM
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Shadow Minister accuses me of only reading 'fluff' pieces in regards to Aboriginal history and then presents an article from the biased and barely reputable Quadrant Magazine, whose editor in chief is (and was at the time of the article's publication) Keith Windschuttle...bahahaha. Immediate credibility fail!

SM, I suggest to you that you do as I have done and research more widely than simply relying on articles in such a biased publication. Then again that would mean having to confront material that doesn't suit your agenda or narrow-minded view of things. I believe that you'd much prefer to keep relying upon the master narrative of Australian history and the mythical peaceful colonisation of 'savages' who deserved to be conquered, massacred, raped, forced into slavery and 'meekly' surrendered their lands that they had cultivated and mastered so well for 60 000 years.

If ignorance is bliss then you must be one very happy person SM!
Posted by minotaur, Thursday, 5 October 2017 3:44:56 PM
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Minotaur,

If you restrict your reading only to PC sanitised articles then you will come up with drivel like this. I fully accept that there are positive stories, but to airbrush out the unpleasant facts is to be deliberately ignorant. If you don't accept the quadrant essay, then there are plenty of others and plenty of archaeological evidence to show a pretty violent past. With regards your previous post, one tribe migrating to follow their food source (the eels) is exactly the behaviour of hunter-gatherers.

No one thinks that the treatment of the native population was acceptable, but present-day Australia is something to be proud of.
Posted by Shadow Minister, Friday, 6 October 2017 8:10:55 AM
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How priceless of SM to accuse me of 'drivel'. Keep posting SM as it is quite entertaining to see someone continually and graphically demonstrating they have no credibility.
Posted by minotaur, Friday, 6 October 2017 1:39:32 PM
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Minotaur,

As you have zero credibility, your posts are laughable as well.
Posted by Shadow Minister, Friday, 6 October 2017 4:43:04 PM
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