THINKABIT, you continue to deepen the hole of ignorance that you have so assiduously dug for yourself.

So you pride yourself in your knowledge of science and maths?

Then you ought to learn from Bertrand Russell who would strongly question your dogmatic and lopsided material determinism which demonstrate not only your failure to fathom the importance of arts but more imortantly also of spirituality in grasping the nature of reality.

You seem to be functioning exclusively from the robotic, unoriginal, rationality enslaved left brain.

But no matter how much encyclopaedic knowledge you accumulate, you lack wisdom that would stem from a well functioning right brain, which in your case seems to be sadly underfunctioning.

According to the emerging new integral, holistic scientists, without operating from a well integrated spiritual-rational perspective the nature of reality cannot be grasped. Please see my further exploring this here:

https://startsat60.com/stories/opinion/have-i-now-grasped-the-secret-of-happiness

and further here:

https://startsat60.com/stories/opinion/how-did-we-lose-the-plot

Please read and reflect on what I wrote in my above reply to Individual. No doubt you'll be further outraged.

I recommend that you read scientist Rupert Sheldrake's 'The Science Delusion' where he shows the utter failure of conventional physical science to grasp the nature of reality.

Further, read virtuoso pianist and world renowned systems-scientist, Ervin Laszlo's book 'What Is Reality?: The New Map Of Cosmos, on the new and valid scientific spiritual-material-integrated paradigm of the emerging holistic science.
Perhaps, if I may say so, these books could help you to see through and beyond your self-delusion, if you could only open your mind.

INDIVIDUAL.

The Aborigines were well aware of and had experience of other, including consumerist cultures, long before the invasion, such as
their extensive trade experience with and visitations from the Macassans.

But their traditional authority with its laws remained intact before they got dispossesd of their land, much of their culture and languages and before the missionaries also got down to the business of trying to rob them of their soul.

So prior to the invasion, the Aborigines chose to resist the temptation to transform themselves into a consumerist, possession and materialism worshipping society.

A critical factor in their becoming vulnerable to and many falling for the trappings of Western consumerism was the utter disintegration of their traditional authority structures in most Aborigine nations through and following the invasion and colonialisation.
(Yet this resistence is still continuing with a minority of Aborigines still stronly rooted in traditional culture, for example those who knocked back offers of lots of money in return for uranium mining on their sacred lands.)

Take a bird and put it in a cage where it can no longer forrige for food.
It will become utterly dependent on your feeding it.

So which is the primary cause of degradation here: the cage or the generated dependency?

What concerns me is your consistent denial of cause and effect here:

Their being put in a cage in the first place, the resultant intergenerational devastation of Aborigines and the continuation of dicrimination against them.

You blame 'would-be' and 'noisy Aborigines' for stirring up the 'real' Aborigines who would be ever so content to get on with their lives if only they would not be stirred up by such Southern pseudo-Aborigines.

Really?

Ask yourself: why do you direct your energy against those who wish to make Aborigines express their indignation about what has been and still being done to them and encourage them to stand up for themselves against the continuation of their oppression?

Why not recognise and condemn the still ungoing discrimination against Aborigines and demand a 'fair go'?

Continued in my next comment.

Dear Thinkabit,

Ah mate, up to your old tricks I see.

Selective quoting seems to be the way things are done now is it?

I said: “Here is the Boon Wurrung story regarding the filling of Port Phillip bay”

I concluded with: “The scientific date for this was only recently been pegged to be about 1000 years ago. Stories like these are woven into the culture of the different tribes.”

You then say:It is factually WRONG. Although I'll be generous and give them some points anyway because Port Philip Bay did form by rising waters but it wasn't a flood but rather sea level rise.”

Nowhere did I use the word form rather I specifically said 'filling'.

A filling event did occur about 1000 years ago. That event was contained within the stories of the tribes in the area. It has only relatively recently been fully confirmed by science.

That knowledge predated the European scientific 'validation' of it. Why is this an issue for you?

Thanks for the correction SteelRedux! Yes, that's right, I'm thanking you for correcting me! That's because I process claims to truth with an open mind and just like a working professional scientist when presented with authentic hard facts that discredit my claims I acknowledge it. Believers in the utility of the western scientific method are always prepared to retract their claims because that is the whole point of it. Scientists deliberately try to disprove their claims with real facts and observation. Unlike Andris who simply refuses to accept the facts.

So I've re-read the story and realised where I made my mistake. It's from this line: "The wurneet became flooded and eventually the whole flat plain was covered in baany.", where the "wurneet" is a word for river, but it does indeed say that it floods because the "warreeny", which is the sea, causes it to. I slipped up because of the sheer number of new-to-me aboriginal words confused me.

But everything else I said still stands. For example, you yourself deferred to western science's knowledge to verify the validity of their claims. And also that story telling oral traditions are a hopeless way to transfer large amounts of factual history because the each story doesn't convey many facts (this story had just one fact).

And example of how useless oral histories really are, consider your piece of trivia that aboriginal children could name 100 stars and constellations. Now that does sound impressive, but to put it in perspective I've this program which is a star-chart called KStars on my computer http://apps.kde.org/kstars/ . If you configure it right it can accurately display up to 100,000,000 stars! Now, do you really think that the aboriginals could ever have had the slightest chance to know the precise locations of and then invent unique stories for that many stars?

condemn the still ungoing discrimination against Aborigines and demand a 'fair go'?
Andris,
Examples please from your personal experiences of being part of a racial minority among indigenous people.
As for the contact with the Macassans, that was only a small number along the northern shores. This contact was not continent-wide.
The book By Flood & Field explains a few extra bits that are no longer in vogue to mention.
I don't know about others but I'm not trying to change a history in which today's society had no part in.
Be it oral or written, who are we to invent history to make ourselves feel better ? Even in my life-time I have read wrong reporting & un-factual hearsay !
Fake News are bad enough but to create Fake History by judging with the benefit of hindsight is even more unjust !

INDIVIDUAL,

Take Adam Goodes' story.

He was vilified and consistently booed off the field by a minority of racists while the football authorities allowed this disgraceful behaviour to continue.

And what was his 'crime'?
That he dared to call out racists who vilified him publicly and to assert his identity by performing an Aborigine warrior dance after he scored.

Though slowly but,' the times, they are a'-changing.'

Witness the Matildas posing with the Aboriginee flag at the Tokyo Olympics last night and the Socceroos doing the BLM salute today.

But consider how slow progress has been in Australia in comparison with NZ.

They made a treaty with the Maoris in 1840.

Where is ours?

And the warrior dance of the All Blacks has become a national tradition.

Contrast that with the crowds booing Goodes and the authorities’ initial apathy about this!

The above is one of numerous examples of continued present day discriminations. Add to this Eddie Macquire and Andrew Bolt's form and the maintaining of Australia Day celebration at the anniversary of Invasion, and the long list continues.

You ask: 'who are we to invent history to make ourselves feel better?'

Ask this from official historians who for over a centuary wrote a falsified Au history that was taught to generations of students and adults in the first place.
They ignored and minimised the reality of the first nations' 65 thousand years of Au history and they systematically airbrushed the reality of invasion, massacres and other atrocities committed against the Aborigines, out of Au's history books.

When Henry Reynolds and other respected historians fact-checked and began to write the truth, people like John Howard wanted to discredit them by calling them the 'black armband' brigade.

So again Individual, you put the horse before the cart: instead of acknowledging that the history that was told to Australians for over hundred years was full of lies in the first place and had to be re-written to tell the truth, you are concerned about whether the truthful re-writers of history should be doing their corrections.