What the bleep has happened to "rancitas". Too much copy and paste if you ask me - no doubt research will prove it.

To quote him again: "Research indicates that pre-invasion there were 750,000 indigenous people in Australia, and now there are around 200,000. There were 500 distinct groups using 200 distinct languages."

However research would also indicate that there were no pyramids, temples, monuments or even permanent buildings of any size in pre-1788 Australia. Yet indigenous people managed to erect these in what today is Cambodia, Mexico, Micronesia, Peru, Zimbabwe, etc, etc, etc.

Affixing stories to natural objects is something any child could do.

To JohnJ Part 1

All the power in aboriginal cultures resided in the whims of the Old Men. The Old Men owned all of the women and sexually abused the young boys during periodic "initiation" ceremonies. The tribe simply worked to keep the Old Men in stone age luxury. The Old Men got all of the choicest cuts of meat while the tribe got the leftovers.

Young boys were "stolen" from their mothers at around age 11, where they underwent a painful tribal ceremony where a tooth was usually ritually knocked, out and their foreskins removed with a sharp rock. (ouch) Those that did not die of septicaemia then became "hunters". They were forbidden to ever talk to women again, even their mothers and sisters. All of their social life revolved around life with older boys, who became their totemic brothers.

Other "initiations" followed, one particularly gruesome one being the cutting of a slot above the head of the penis to make two urinary tracts. Why in God's name they did that will never be known, but we are seeing the cultural practices of very primitive people. But the result was that the tribes men who inevitably underwent this ordeal could never again stand to urinate. After white settlement, those initiated aboriginal men who had escaped from tribal life used to laugh at tribal aboriginal men who had undergone this initiation procedure, they used to call them "whistlers."

The purpose of these continuing “initiations” during the life of aboriginal boys was to terrorise them into accepting the unquestioned authority of the Old Men.

For the girls it was not much better. The tribes young girls were handed over to the Old Men at puberty for their amusement. Some girls had their little finger on the right hand amputated to purportedly make it easier for them to dig for roots and yams. The female offspring of these pubescent girls was then promised to men already in the late thirties or forties as future "wife’s." Any young aboriginal Romeo and Juliet’s who tried to run away together were hunted down and killed.

Your reference to a possum skin coat is unknown to me and I would love to know when it was manufactured. Lieutenant Watkins Tench who was on the First Fleet wrote in his book that all of the aborigines he saw were entirely naked. He wrote that when the cold weather arrived. "The aboriginal people suffered terribly, all they could do was retreat to their caves and shiver."

The legal system of aboriginal communities was novel. It was not unnaturally administered by the Old Men. One of the central aspects of aboriginal law was if a man or boy died of any natural or accidental cause, somebody was responsible who had to pay with their life. The culprit was assumed to have used witchcraft to "sing" the departed to death. There were various ways of ascertaining who the culprit was, but basically, if you were somebody that the Old Men either considered a burden or that did not like, you were dead.

However this did have the benefit of keeping the population down and stopped the tribe getting too big. Old aboriginal women were rented out to the young men by the Old Men for sex and were simply murdered when they got too old and became a burden.

When white people first made contact with aboriginal tribes there were often armed clashes. But the reason why Australia did not have the decades long continuing armed conflict with hostile tribes which the Americans had with their primitive native people, was because the young aboriginal men and women quickly saw that the coming of the white men was a chance for a much better life. They walked away from the tribal system in droves.

On the frontier they were needed, and they quickly adjusted to life working for the white men as trackers, fencers, general labourers, carters and they were exceptional stockmen. The young women became exceptional stockwomen, domestic help and often the wives of lonely pioneering men. . It is interesting to note that white people who's families have lived in remote areas for generations display traces of aboriginal ancestry.

Tradition wrapped up in cloaks of possum

Barmah Forest Cloak
Artist: Treahna Hamm

By Robin Usher, Arts Review - The Age
March 13, 2006

The skill of making possum-skin cloaks disappeared from Victoria about 150 years ago, leaving behind only a few specimens in museums around the world.

That all changed seven years ago when three women on a printmaking course were shown the Aboriginal collection at the Melbourne Museum, which has two cloaks from the 19th century.

"It brought me to tears when they brought out the cloak from my family's country around Lake Condah (in western Victoria)," says Vicki Couzens.

"I felt such a strong connection to the past - I could feel the old people. We were all tremendously moved."

That chance viewing changed Couzens' life, as well as that of her two companions, Treahna Hamm and Lee Darroch. They set out to rediscover the skills needed not only to make the cloaks but to put motifs on them similar to those from the past.

"The most important thing is that we are telling our stories in our own way," Couzens says.

"In the past seven years, the cloaks have slowly come back into use as a normal part of welcoming ceremonies and at funerals."

The three received a grant from Melbourne City Council for their work and began importing skins from New Zealand, where the foreign possum is regarded as a pest, similar to the rabbit in Australia.

The first two cloaks made by the women are on permanent display in Canberra's National Museum of Australia, where they have represented Victoria for the past three years.

Three more decorated cloaks are now on show at Bunjilaka, the Melbourne Museum's Aboriginal cultural centre. They are part of an exhibition, Biganga, which is the Yorta Yorta term for the cloaks. Another is in the office of Melbourne's Lord Mayor, John So.

The show demonstrates traditional and contemporary practices based on the unique Victorian tradition.

Contd

Contd

The women are keen to teach others how to make the cloaks. For example, Couzens, who is from the Kirrae Wurrong clan, works with her daughters. Darroch, from the Yorta Yorta clan, is a community arts worker in East Gippsland and Hamm, also from the Yorta Yorta, is an artist in the state's north-east. Couzens says the cloaks are a key ingredient in cultural regeneration.

"We are creating connections for future generations," she says. "They reinforce our identity. It's only when you know who you are that you can gain the strength to go forward.".............

............."I became aware that while we were reviving an art form that had been rested for 150 years, we were, in fact, reinforcing something that has never been in doubt, but may have been taken for granted," Hamm says.

"As we talked about the cloaks, I realised that we were not only connecting with each other, but also with our people from the past who had made cloaks just as we're doing."

Hamm was taken from her mother at birth in 1965 and given up for adoption. She did not meet her again for 27 years.

"I only stopped asking questions when I met my family and began learning about our culture and continuing traditions," she says.

Hamm, whose Possum Skin Cloak Spirit is also on display at the Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, is doing a PhD in philosophy as RMIT, where Couzens is also undertaking a masters degree.

Darroch, whose grandmother was removed from her family, was brought up being told her dark skin was the result of Pacific Islander ancestry - "anything but Aborigines," she says.

Couzens says that people's skin colour is no indication of their sense of being Aboriginal.

"That might fade over generations," she says, "but that doesn't affect the spirit."............

.............."One of the old cloaks had 81 stories on its panels and no one knew them when we started," she says. "But, as we have gone on, the stories have started to come back."

http://www.teachers.forests.org.au/statenewsmarch06.html

Donna,

What you feel and describe is what all people should feel when they see the truth about how our first inhabitants actually live. There is a way too romantic type view held by many who haven't seen that the aboriginals are somehow living well, spiritually and culturally. They don't, it's bleak poverty and brief life expectations.

The facts are stark are they not Donna? If you haven't seen many aboriginal communities believe me the Uluru one is probably slightly better than most. Hard to believe but true.

The big question for you Donna is what are you going to do about it? If you continue writing in a way that indicates the problem exists because of the white man you will achieve nothing. White men do not force the aboriginals to live in such squalor, they have choices but their "culture" drags them back in most cases.

To be still blaming others after 200 years is fairly indicative of what their culture is really about isn't it? So much money has been poured into those communities but what is there? Houses gutted, garbage everywhere, abandoned kids wandering around mainly never seeing the inside of a classroom and drunken bodies collapsed during daylight but walking, drinking and doing damage at night.

Focus on facts Donna. The idea of an aboriginal culture is complete rubbish. Why? Because there are so many distinct groups/tribes and most of them hate each other. There is no unity, combining to help each other. Whatever culture there was 200 years ago (hunter/gatherers) is very limited and today's culture is evident. It's what you saw, not what is written in papers.

I have to ask, how on earth did Ayer's Rock become your spiritual home? If you had never been there you had no connection with it at all and simply invented a vision of what it would be like. Shattered vision now.

Go and see it for yourselves. Maybe that will help change what is an impossible situation. Reality, not fantasy as spun by the media.