Dear Brian , You are having a lend of us .

White invaders ,yes Invaders, Our forebears ,knew exactly what they were doing -they were and are onto a good thing, plenty of resources, few, semi -illiterate and relatively powerless rightfull owners to overrun, and by fair or foul we are going to hang onto what we have got hold of .

Howard and Brough's Divide and Conquer "Task Force" are not really interested in law and order otherwise they would get a swag of the Federal Police back from overseas immediately to lend a very usefull hand as they have experience with Indigenous Communities .

On Aboriginal Intelligence , in the 1830's that famous Australian Explorer ,Major Mitchell when exploring Victoria, said in his diary, that his black guide was extremely intelligent and turned to him ahead of others for counsel and company .

David Unaipon [dec], the bloke on the $50.00 note and many other Aboriginal People have shown their many talents in many fields all over Australia .They are an untapped resource of great promise for them and us .

Does the Government owe them an Apology for our apathy - too right they do .

Leunig's historic cartoon in the "Age" last Saturday says it all.

This talk of invaders and colonialisation from a people developed from and by colonialisation and repeated invasion. The original Celtic tribes were assumed by the Norse, the Angles, the Saxons, the Normans, and the Romans. The Moors after invading Spain gave it thought, and later the Spanish and Germans had a go. Though they both failed. Makes one wonder how Great Britain became Great Britain given that if anyone should be a land of victims it ought to be Great Britain. Perhaps it was called Great Britain because it was a great place to invade. Just a thought. And how many Australians are of the invaders and how many are from those who were dragged here in chains and simply had to make do and get on with life and living. Just another thought for the guilt trippers.
Mans been moving around the globe since Cain and Able and the inevitable clashes of civilisations are part and parcel of the history of man. The trouble with the later migrations in my mind especially with the Americas and Australia is that instead of assuming the native peoples, they were isolated, placed on reserves. This has been shown manifest in the long standing acrimony between aboriginals and "occupiers" and the maintenance of such thinking 200 years on after the fact in Australia and the Americas including what was the Spanish colonies.
Perhaps the best way to redress this divide would be to offer the Aboriginals housing allotments with in their original tribal lands among the rest of the people of Australia instead of maintaining the isolationist practice of reserves.

Fencepost,

Thank you for your comments on British genetic diversity. Interestingly a couple of recently published studies (The Origins of the British: A Genetic Detective Story, Stephen Oppenheimer; Blood of the Isles: Exploring the Genetic Roots of our Tribal History) have both concluded that the predominant genetic source for the British Isles is the ancient Britons. The various invaders (Romans, north Germans, Vikings, and Normans) haven't contributed a great deal to the gene pool. The Angles and the Saxons - despite having given us basic grammar and much of the vocabulary of the language, and the name of the place and the people - only make up a couple of percent of the gene pool. So as Fencepost says, we modern-day Brits are an absolute hodge-podge with a great tradition of mixing genes together. I have no idea what this really means, but it is interesting. Perhaps the message is: blend or dissapear.

Runner, how do you manage to work your disbelief in evolution into every thread?

kartiya jim,

The invaders were invaded by the Norman French in 1066 and Nomandy itself in 911. The Italian tribes invaded Rome, Rome took Greek and Eyptian territory and Alexander the Great establsied the broad foot print of Greek/Macedonnian society. Invasion happens.

If the Anglo~Celts left tomorrow and the West took a hands of Australia approach, the remaining people would speaking Indonesian in no time.

With invasions come the opportunity for cross-accrulturation and technology transfer. So, its not all bad.

King Canute,

I guess I have to have admit having a townhouse in Redfern and a country estate [Wagga Wagga for many], would represent a change in culture.

1788:

Else put, my original point was that a Scotish clan cannot exist in the way it once did and stand against the steamroller of history. But traditions can be respected and preserved as some level for those who are interested in kilts and sword dances. Ditto for aboriginal clan society.

Having an enclave of familialism, kinship structures and tribalism perpetually set against the dominant nation state technology-based culture is just not going to let the sore heal. Both parties have a responsibility to fuse to the next society, which is likely directed by globalisation.

Nomads:

Nomad is in the same class as city-state or nation-state, being different than migration. There were three waves of immigrants into Australia, between 40,000 and 25,000 years ago, making all them immigrants and the latter two groups black skinned invaders, who walked downed the coast line to Australia's north, when ocean water levels were lower than today. Europeans were the third wave

Oliver, I challenge you to produce one grain of evidence to support your hypothesis.....

"There were three waves of immigrants into Australia, between 40,000 and 25,000 years ago, making all them immigrants and the latter two groups black skinned invaders, who walked downed the coast line to Australia's north, when ocean water levels were lower than today. Europeans were the third wave"

Some non Aboriginal person made this up in their mind and you are presenting it as fact.
Carbon dating shows people were here over 150,000 years ago, thus debunking the "out of Africa" theory/myth.
This notion of Australia being previously invaded and colonised, which for some reason is a common story, is just a sick ideological fantasy to legitimise attitudes of cultural superiority. There is no evidence at all for it - prove me wrong!
(I have issued this challenge before and got a plethora of links to someone or other who reckons its true, but no archaeological or historical evidence of any sort has been produced to date).

Again I ask the proponents of these ridiculous theories, especially the author of the article who rattled off many "facts"......

If you know of no evidence for these things, and you can find no evidence, then please examine yourselves as to why you assert this information with such confidence of its accuracy. Why do you need it to be true?

And furthermore, Oliver, regardless of whether you can find any evidence for immigration of the type you claim, what's the relevance of this so-called immigration to land ownership? What's your point?

Are you arguing that might is right - that whoever has the numbers and the power can just assert that they now own the land? If so, spin your argument forward to a time when numbers and power might be against Anglo-Australians. That would be OK? There are no moral questions to be answered? Or negotiations to be entered into?

Are you saying (assuming, for the sake of argument, you're right about historial migration) that 25-40,000 years is not long enough to establish ownership of the land? If so, what is the right length of time? Is there a right length of time?

Or do you simply assert that Australia belongs to anyone who comes here with the military capacity to take it?