tubley - i thank you for your valuable post and I do agree. I am from a similar background to you (I am from English Irish heritage and grew up in outback NSW around Aboriginal peoples) and I agree. I am plain sick and tired of people flaming on about how to fix the 'Abo problem' when they have never even spoke to an Indigenous Australian.

As for wre's comments, I think the Indigenous people of Australia would indeed appreciate if their weren't any colonialists left. They would not have had generations stolen from them; be forced into slavery; have their land stolen and then have to prove it is there’s in a foreign court; whilst be consistently told 'we know what’s good for you', up to present day. You understand my point.

As for another point, since when does a person have any standing to judge how another culture exists and operates, and compare it to their own? People cop-out behind the 'we need to westernise Africa to solve their problems' whilst supporting governments who encourage pharmaceutical corporations to patent AIDS drugs and monopolise their availability to 3rd world sufferers. Problem solved indeed.

And as for Ro: "Most Aboriginal people today are Anglo-Irish-Aboriginal in their heritage, so should they just simply beat themselves up in an act of historical retaliation?" and just where do you gain the standing to spew such a rabid generalisation. Keep you sweeping labels to yourself mate.

I risk being accused of suffering from poikiloderma of Civatte but here goes. I thought style guides suggested that aboriginal should be used as an adjective. And further, that the word Aborigine/s was to be used as a noun to describe an individual, or, that whole group of people.

Back O/T, Bashir wants nothing to do with Europeans so I assume I can walk on by when confronted by the posters of pitiful African children who have no idea what clean water is. Am I absolved from reaching for a coin when charity collectors tell me that African children need text books?

Sage,
Anglo-exCatholic-Taxpaying-Australian.

JKenno
I must take issue with your comment 'Then they would not have had generations stolen' in connection with the White invasion. Do you really .... REALLY believe that ? or.. do you suspect if it was not 'this' group of whites it would have been 'that' group of whites from different countries.. or even those 'yellow' people from up north way.
I claim it was historic inevitability that Australia was colonized by SOMEone.. and if it was say the Japanese, going on track record, I seriously doubt if they would have had anything other than contempt for the 'backward Indigenous' people as they tend to regard non Japanese.

This is most important in the discussion of the Indigenous situation.

There is one other response to Culture Shock which I didn't mention in a previous post, and that is 'limbo' neither going native or retreating to ones 'own and known' the Limbo position is probably the most dangerous because it is not able to sink down roots on either side.

I suspect many Indigenous people are exactly there.

Bashirs post seems wistful.. a longing for what deep down I think he knows is a romanticized version of 'the old days', but the 'now' confonting him, is so foreign to values and social mores he cherishes, perhaps he cannot embrace 'us' either.. specially given that he is also a traditional Muslim.

Craig,

keep up the good work on correcting errors, but please don't waste a whole post JUST on that (and specially just on me).. I'm sure you can provide some further analysis of the actual issue at hand also no ?

Tubley, Africa was always destined to run into massive strife, because and only because one or another foreign peoples were always destined to invade and conquer, or at least massively disrupt. Without that input, I don’t think Africa was destined to destroy itself. Sure, the internal history of displacement would have continued, such as the Bantu over their neighbours, but this would not have meant anything like the strife we now see.

Similarly, Australian indigenous culture was not at all destined to destroy itself.

Yes you can point the finger at the English for “their brutal mistreatment of native Australians”. But as wre points out, the Portuguese, French and Spanish would probably all have been much worse.

I certainly don’t celebrate invasion day. But neither do I any longer dwell too much on the history of the spread of humanity. I said earlier on this thread that this has happened throughout the history of humanity and indeed throughout the history of life on earth. Further to this; it is a fundamental ecological principle… and humans are no more strongly driven to it, nor in a more aggressive manner, than many other creatures on earth. We just happened to have the power to be much more destructive about it.

The day humans escape our ecological principles will be the day we really mature. We have to escape the fundamental ecological principle that drives us to continuously breed up and to base everything on continuous growth. We are nowhere near escaping this, which means we are nowhere near reaching sustainability. The invasion of foreign lands has just been part of this same principle. The population will continue to rise and the discrepancy between resource demand and supply will continue to increase until we enter another phase of ‘invade and conquer’ in the very near future.

Australia with by that time about 25 million people, sitting next to Indonesia with 330 million, and looking invitingly empty and resource rich to 1300 million Chinese had better take notice

wre

The gentleman I mentioned was ironically of British descent. A Christian Brother who worked as a missionary in almost every country in the world. I know the missionaries have alot to answer for themselves but I think his point was worthwhile.

I’m thinking that you suggested that through British colonization (Australia/India) that those countries may have received the better of prevailing invaders. The lighter of punishments? Perhaps – but that hardly makes it right.

Thanks Bronwyn andjkenno for your encouragement. The feeling’s mutual.

Bronwyn and Ludwig – when I said Africa was destined to destroy itself I meant itwas highly vulnerable to forced change and its means of coping with these changes not particularly effective. Africa was self-sustaining like you say. But any changes were met with catastrophic consequences – an archaic chain reaction across the continent. I think any foreign exposure would have tipped the harmonious balance – particularly British exposure.

Ludwig, I think Australia will be looking quite tasty for Asia in few years time, interesting challenge for all involved.

Yabby

No it wasn’t sweet and romantic but what civilization is? Internal conflict is inevitable but when we reflect on the large scale catastrophes caused by white influence it makes such conflicts look small.

The world is a set of scales – the person next door is rich but the one across the road is poor. Where one gains another loses. One loses another gains. Simple economics.

Same for countries. Have a look at your pants, your shoes, your rug on the floor, your tablecloth, your dinner plates or the toys your kids play with. You buy them cheap at warehouses because some poor eight year old kid was made to work in a factory for fourteen-hour days. Same for continents – we can throw down a three course meal and complain that it wasn’t cooked right when there are people in Africa starving to death.

Sage

Your absolution comes from yourself, not Bashir. If you can live with the knowledge that your comfort comes through another’s misery then the burden may well be with you.

tubley - what confusion!

>>The world is a set of scales – the person next door is rich but the one across the road is poor. Where one gains another loses. One loses another gains. Simple economics.<<

What utter rot! If this is the case, then world GDP would not change at all.

Economics, whether simple or complex, has never stated that it is a zero-sum game, in fact quite the opposite.

By increasing the ability of poorer countries to trade with larger ones, economic benefits accrue to each.

How do you suppose that it is possible for China, the fourth-largest economy in the world, to grow at 9% p.a., if it can only be at the expense of another country? Just that growth itself - in your fantasy one-wins, another-loses scenario - would wipe out the total GDP of a dozen small countries. Ask yourself, why hasn't this occurred?

On another topic. In your Irish-slanted rant against the British, it is interesting that you seem to have omitted the United States from your list of their colonial failures. Any particular reason?