Perhaps the author might like to consult the meaning of ethnocentrism here at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnocentrism

Notions of "primitive" and a hierarchy of cultures can only be sustained if we first privilege our own culture and judge every other culture by its standards.

For those of you advocating such consider if you were forced, without the advantages of western technolgy, to survive in central Australia. Very soon notions of "primitive" and "unsophisticated" would be judged in more relative terms when compared with the skills, knowledge and survivability of a person who grew up within a culture where the knowledge to do so was acquired as part of the maturation process.

You see where you stand on an issue is very much determined by where you sit.

King Canute, start with this. I got it in five minutes from wikipedia. If you need more follow the links to the actual studies.

Main article: History of Indigenous Australians
See also: Prehistory of Australia
See also: Aboriginal History of Western Australia

Then ask yourself why it all must be untrue for you.
Enjoy.

omygodnoitsitsitsyou, said :

"We ARE an inherently racist society, although we furiously claim otherwise."

Really? Yes there are, of course, racists in this country. Are we a racist society though? Do we, like Malaysia, have a quota system in place so that indigenous Malays, the majority of the population, are given a leg up over Chinese Malays? I always had to laugh when Mahatir accused us of being racist, the racism in his country is institutionalised and legislated for - do some research!

Do we stage a military coup like Fiji, every time indigenous Fijians don't like the fact that an Indian is running the show?

Australia has a plethora of anti-discrimination boards, human rights & equal opportunity commissions etc, to ensure that racial discrimination is not allowed to fester. While attitudes take time to adjust, legislation does not, it just takes an act of parliament - don't hold your breath for Malaysia and don't give me this bull___t handwringing that we are a champion nation in the racism stakes, we are not even a contender.

omygodnoitsitsitsyou, said :

"it may or may not involve a degree of financial restitution to create sustainable infrastructure and institutions to deliver the benefits"

Really? So what else has government at all levels been doing for the last, oh, 40 years or so other than attempting to assuage invader-guilt by throwing money at the issue? Having just spent a couple of months in an Aborignal medical service in the NT, I can tell you there are resources around, the problem goes far deeper than that, primarily the fact that when you get out of bed and have NOTHING to do, other than drink, and resources are made available for you to do so without working, and without those payments being tied to food/clothing/housing, then the alcohol-sodden mire that engulfs the NT is hardly a surprise.

The fed govt. is onto something up there (albeit with questionable electoral motives) and I only hope that the reactionary Howard-haters can get of their own way long enough to realise that drastic problems require drastic intervention

King Canute,

I am out of Australia at present. If memory serves the claims were made by a genetist, West/Wells?. Think it is the guy mapping the human migration patterns in consort with the National Geographic Society. [Incidently, one can pay for a swab and participate in the study.]

The Oz first wave c. 40,000 BP is pretty much established. Mongo man and via Richard Leaky [paleo-anthhropolosit]. When humans have moved allowed the world, their is a major decline in the number of animal species. Leaky measured these extinctions and determined the same date. Even if one allows 50% margin, that is 60,000 BP.

Surely you are not suggesting that the indigineous Australian evolved indepedently? I think you would find it hard to support with any science. Carbon dating is unrealiable at 150,000 BP. Other methods, would be used to to date the rock strata. Rock strata move.

I have ready access to university journal databases. May I have citation for the 150,000 BP paper?

After 1788, there were waves of immigration into Austalia too. The convicts, the settlers/squatters, the gold rush [included Chinese], Germans in the early 1900s, Greeks & Italians in 1950s and 1960s, many Asians became Australians after the Vietnam.

Waves of migration even on small time intervals are typical. How would the belief that Australia received waves of immigration have anything whatsoever with an argument positing the racial superiority?

I must query the first black immigrants on this. There is no basis for them to feel "superior" than those, who came latter, any more than people colonised by Rome should feel superior to its legions [who settled].

I don't [yet] accept your 150,000 BP date: But, if it were correct, humans, we are all in palaelolithic era. On what basis, how could these people be said to be superior to the rest of humanity? Genetics suggests that humans are highly undifferentiated, all would have a familial societial structure with a clan leader and the religious system animal and spirit based, none temple based.

Actually King Canute, while there has been recent speculation and some evidence that humans have been here longer than previously thought, the jury is still well and truly out. Part of the problem for your theory is that radiocarbon dating is inherently limited to material that is 58,000 to 62,000 years old, so figures like 150,000 years BP have to be estimated by other, less tested, means. As far as I'm aware, the 'Out of Africa' hypothesis is still supported by most palaeoanthropologists and archaeologists.

Anyway, as FrankGol says, that really isn't the point. Even if Brian Holden's fanciful pastiche of folk theories about Aboriginal people is 'true' at some general level - e.g. successive immigration periods tens of thousands of years ago - this in no way justifies his gratuitous inference that Indigenous people ought to blame the impersonal tides of history, rather than hold their colonisers accountable.

Every non-Indigenous person in Australia is a direct beneficiary of the removal of Indigenous people from their lands. Among my many Aboriginal friends, acquaintances and former colleagues, I can't think of any who would say they have benefited similarly.

That's why an apology is still in order, on behalf of those of us who still benefit enormously from Aboriginal dispossession, which is apparently continuing still. Kevin Rudd knows this and said as much last night on ABC TV. That is one reason the Opposition holds the high moral ground in Indigenous affairs, and of course one reason for Howard's 'shock and awe' circus.

RE: Runner's comment that:

"Anyone who believes the dumb unscientific theory of evolution could not help but to come up with the same answers as the scientist did back then. If evolution was true then nearly all of us are cannibals!"

Questions:

1. - Which theory of evolution is the "dumb, unscientific one"?

2. - Runner states: "If evolution were true, then nearly all of us are cannibals!" I cannot make this particular leap of logic. Is there a brief explanation to help me across the chasm?

3. What have runner's points, referred to in 1 & 2, to do with Mr Holden's amateur anthropological pontifications?