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The Forum > Article Comments > Emus cannot fly > Comments

Emus cannot fly : Comments

By Les Louis, published 14/1/2020

If Bruce Pascoe is a charlatan, he should be prosecuted...and his claims that Aborigines were not hunter/gatherers should be exposed as bunkum.

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There is a multitude of information held in state archives relating to aboriginal ancestry.
When my husband died without leaving a will, in 1991, the law at that time decreed than any person who was more than 1/4 aboriginal, who died without a will, had to have the Public Trustee as the executor of their estate. In my husbands case, as he was on the executive committee of the Aboriginal Legal Service when died died, was deemed to have the right to have his estate, such as it was, handled by ALS.
This led to a long dispute between the Public Trustee and ALS and involved a search of records to determine if he was more than 1/4 aboriginal.
Copies of the records accessed from public records were sent to me as proof of his status and I was stunned by the amount of information on his family, going back to 1900.
The point of this ramble is to show that pretty well all aboriginal people would have a paper trail showing where they originated from. I know many who were adopted or fostered out as babies yet were easily able to track their families and get in contact with them.
Bruce Pascoe should have no problem proving his claim.
Posted by Big Nana, Tuesday, 14 January 2020 11:11:35 AM
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"Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton has asked the Australian Federal Police to consider the veracity of an allegation that celebrated author and academic Bruce Pascoe has benefited financially from fraudulently claiming to be Aboriginal, The Weekend Australian reported on Saturday.

The allegation was levelled against Mr Pascoe in an email written by Worimi businesswoman Josephine Cashman that was received by Mr Dutton on December 11, the Weekend Australian reports".
http://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/article/2020/01/11/dutton-refers-matter-bruce-pascoes-identity-federal-police

Worimi.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worimi
Posted by Is Mise, Tuesday, 14 January 2020 11:11:49 AM
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White settlement in the Kimberley occurred much later than over east, many missions just starting up around 1900, so when I arrived in the Kimberly in 1970, there were still people around who remembered life before white contact and many were still practising traditional hunting and burning.
My father in law spent his childhood in a very remote mission that saw white people for the first time in 1912 and his stories of their culture were fascinating and horrifying.
I have been told by many aboriginal people, including my husband and father in law, that burning bush was done for hunting purposes.
The benefits were many. The initial burn flushed out animals into the waiting spears, boomerangs and clubs of combined tribes in a communal hunt. After the fire had cooled, there were some edible, dead animals in the burnt area, waiting to be collected by the women.
The long term benefits were that the undergrowth was cleared away, making hunting much easier. After a few weeks, small green grass shoots appear in the burnt area and these attract insects like grasshoppers. The insects attract bush turkeys, goannas, etc.
As the grass gets longer, the larger animals appear. Kangaroos, wallabies, emus etc.
So one burnt area provides an ongoing food supply for some time. Not once did I hear anyone speak of any other reason for burning off.
Posted by Big Nana, Tuesday, 14 January 2020 11:25:15 AM
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Hi Big Nana,

Down this way in SA, attempts by whitefellas to gain some benefit assumed to be available to Indigenous people, are two a penny. All they have to do is walk into some Indigenous agency, claim they're Indigenous, and bingo, they're on their books, another state-funded customer.

A long time ago it seems, I worked in Indigenous student support at universities and every year, one or two would try it on. They usually got past the Indigenous organisation validating stage.

One bloke, blue-eyed and ginger (not that I've got anything against that) claimed to be a TS Islander; then, using dodgy-looking photocopies of birth certificates, claimed that his great-great-grandmother AND great-grandmother, were both Aboriginal - with a statement written on them (one supposedly in 1865, and one in 1888, strangely in the same handwriting) that the original names of the mothers of his gr-grandfather and grandfather were recorded incorrectly by the doctors involved, that the real mothers were both Aboriginal.

Perhaps doctors can get confused about whose legs they're looking up, even if - as in these cases - the 'original mothers' were both high-society ladies who they may have known socially (you may remember the names Bagshaw of Horwood-Bagshaw, and Chapman, the Name of the State).

As it happened, there was a biography upstairs in the uni Library about this bloke's gr-gr-grandfather, an early settler and landowner on a huge scale all over SA and later in the NT, and of his descendants. No mention of any Aboriginal wives, however. The men of the family tended to graduate as engineers, one later in charge of the Goolwa Barrage construction.

That bloke was later accepted into another, slacker, Indigenous program. It pays to keep trying.

Joe
Posted by loudmouth2, Tuesday, 14 January 2020 11:46:04 AM
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maybe the problem is making it so profitable to 'identify' as Indigenous. Wherever there is Government money numerous hands go up whether entitled or not.
Posted by runner, Tuesday, 14 January 2020 12:58:33 PM
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A simple DNA test is all that is required to establish aboriginal ancestry given the real deal will have no Neanderthal ancestry way back when, as do Europeans!

Mixed race will have some dilution of both characteristics And given the remnant Neanderthal gene is predominant they should not qualify as Bona Fida Aboriginal for special benefits or land rights, but be treated for all practical purposes as whites with white ancestors regardless of skin colour!

Given all the dodgy claims there needs to b a definitive test that'll stand up in court, otherwise, every boy and his dog is going to claim some Aboriginal or TS heritage?

And all the benefits and land rights that may accrue. Other than that folk of genuine aboriginal ancestry need to make out a legal will transferring any native title or portion thereof, as how they chose! And shouldn't allow elder humbug to change their rights!

There's so much humbug and a lot of it claimed as L.A.W. law!

Agree with big nana that the tradition of Mosaic burning had nothing to do with land management, just done for primitive hunting purposes and nothing more!
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Tuesday, 14 January 2020 2:54:17 PM
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