Good piece, Graham, and I agree with it all.

Maybe the numerous benefits they received by colonisation should be taken away.

Hi Graham,

"I have always been sympathetic to the Aboriginal cause, but it can't proceed on the basis that some people have a better right to title, or say, than others because of race. The cards have fallen where they are, and we must all play our best game with what we have, not try to reshuffle the deck."

Yes, indeed. Australia didn't exist as a political entity until 1/1/1901. It's 118 years old. Before the colonies came together in 1901, Australia didn't exist as a single political entity. Before 1788, Australia was fragmented into more than three hundred language groups and maybe five to ten thousand clans (numbering around 100-200 people each): clans as the land-holding and land-using groups.

Now, of course, we're supposed to believe that they were all farmers, if we bend the meaning of the word somewhat to include pulling eels out of a creek, building fish-traps, setting fire to the bush and 'stooking' kangaroo-grass. Forget about farming requiring cultivation - Aboriginal people were the first no-drill farmers.

Back to reality: the rights to use the land in all traditional ways (i.e. hunting and gathering) of those five to ten thousand land-holding groups were recognised and written into pastoral leases, at least here in SA, in mid-1850. I typed up the letters of the Protector 1839-1912, and many, many times he asks police and missionaries to 'try to keep people in their districts'.

To facilitate this, a network of up to seventy ration depots were eventually set up as the frontier moved out. By 1900, most of the ration-issuers were the pastoral station managers. The Protector also issued 15-ft boats, 'canoes', to people on the waterways, the coasts and rivers - even one on Cooper's Creek. And guns, as well:
boats and guns were issued and repaired free except for able-bodied people who paid half of the costs. Those letters are on my website: www.firstsources.info

[TBC]

[continued]

Did clans exercise the powers of governments ? Sort of family governments ? Did groups come together for some elders to make decisions of any sort, over and above clan-level ? Yes, mainly to deliberate over the deaths of able-bodied people, since all such deaths had to have human causes. That seems to have been about it. Of course, clans related to each other for the purposes of marriage and simple trade as well. Whether all of that is 'government' is up to others to decide.

Humans, intelligent human beings, have been in Australia for maybe sixty thousand years, in their amazing diversity. Did any of them ever know 'Australia', walk all over it ? I don't know how that could be ascertained: people trod lightly on the earth, after all. Of course, they had immense and permanent impacts on the landscape, as Bill Gammage has written about so eloquently. But does setting fire to something confer government, or ownership ?

Australia is a young country, 118 years old. Indigenous people have equal rights to participate in all its workings. In that sense, we are all 'young and free'.

Joe

These ignorant people are not worthy of the country they live in. They are not worthy of any discussion or consideration. Will they sporting organisation they are paid by treat them the same we it has treated Israel Palau? Not likely.

I also think it's an excellent piece. What's more it states the essence of the problem - "when you can't win using rational argument"..... I'd even add that most problems today seem no longer resolvable by rational arguments (if they ever could be). As evidence we have a roughly 50:50 split in political leanings that no amount of argument, rational or otherwise, seems to influence. Underlying values seem unshakeable, over the short term at least. What's more, these particular young men, whom I too admire enormously (as a recent convert to watching NRL), are accustomed to resolving differences, to winning their disputes, by mainly physical measures. That's what their job's all about and they do it admirably. I think the best response to their public display is pacifism and tolerance. The crowd seemed not to mind. I've convinced myself to agree with them. As for the people who ought to know better, keep at them!