Hi SR,

Just to pick up on your comment:

"And there were plenty of fierce battles over land and many aboriginals died defending them. Why are you saying there wasn't?"

Of course there were battles, and perhaps there always have been over 60,000 years, with clans defending their foraging lands from other hostile clans. Clan numbered sometimes withered, leaving the group more exposed to invasion from neighbouring clans. Clans with more favoured lands at their disposal were similarly subject to invasion from groups in less-favoured areas, especially during our frequent droughts. After all, the lands under the control of foraging groups are all they've got, so they have to protect them whenever they come under attack. And vice versa: when clan numbers grew or droughts afflicted their lands' food supply, they had little choice but to try to seize neighbouring lands.

Back to topic: the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth - this is what counts. One deft in much Indigenous 'research' is to rely on confirmation bias - to accept only what might, with a bit of re-definition, fit one's hypothesis, and to ignore or denigrate anything which doesn't fit. It's a sort of medieval way of thinking, popular in the Catholic Church for centuries. And of course, it's very popular in authoritarian societies, which is perhaps why 99 % of charges against people in countries like China and Russia are 'proven' in court: the confirmation bias, SR.

And of course, there's always the temptation to 're-define' what one means by, say, agriculture: to include no-drill, no-irrigation, no-fencing or -patrolling, and interpret any snippets of ambiguous remarks as 'confirmation' of one's biases. Most of us do it without thinking, especially when one of our favourite and fixed notions comes under attack.

One major principle of the scientific method is to allow for dis-confirmation, to analyse anything which may conflict with one's hypotheses and either to take it on board and change one's hypothesis, or to demolish it in a principled way. That's how human knowledge progresses. One's passion should always be on theside of truth.

Joe

"to analyse anything"
How is that possible when you don't have the thing?

Whatev, Nick. What thing are you talking about ?

Karl Popper provided a brilliant example of critiquing hypotheses in his 'Open Society and its Enemies': he maintained that, if a hypothesis was invalid, then it was invalid at its STRONGEST point - every hypothesis and narrative has wrinkles at its edges, little defects that don't invalidate their central hypotheses but merely need a bit of massaging (not his word) and modification to accord with the hypothesis. But the key task was to pull apart the strongest component of an hypothesis. He did this with his analyses of Plato, Hegel and Marx, and showed (at least to me) that their philosophies led in different (and similar) ways to totalitarianism and ultimately fascism. Highly recommended :)

I want to believe in the current Indigenous Narrative and be part of the herd, but there are too many mis-truths in it: for example,

*. Stolen Generation: how many cases brought to court and won ? One. Why not any class actions brought by major law firms ? They've seen the files?

*. Deaths in Custody: the proportion of Indigenous people dying in custody is lower than the proportion of prisoners who are Indigenous. As Peter Sutton wrote, it's safer for Indigenous people to be in custody than out in the 'community'.

*. from 1788, no rights to use land: explicit rights to use land in traditional ways were advised by the Colonial Secretary back in London in the late 1840s for all colonial governments and put into legislation in relation to pastoral leases - at least in SA - in 1851; those rights still exist in Sa.

*. so no official sanctions for driving people off their lands.

*. in SA, total number of full-time employees of the Aborigines Department from invasion/settlement up until about 1912 was: one. The Protector. His man job was to keep up to sixty or seventy ration depots supplied. By 1900, most ration depots were set up and run, free of charge, by pastoralists. Why ? Access to able-bodied labour.

And much else. The truth is what counts.

Joe

. What thing are you talking about

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