There are some truly mean spirited people out there with a selfish opinion as to who are the real owners of this continent.

High Court Legal argument determined that this Australia was not unoccupied land for the taking by British Colonists and true recognition was given to Aboriginal ownership which has been established since in numerous hearings under Land Rights Legislation which granted 'Native Title' to clans who could satisfy the court of continuing association of the areas they claimed.

Early settlers proceeded to claim tribal land after shooting the Indigenous owners or poisoning them with flour laced with strychnine until religious sects established sanctuaries where they set out with Missionary zeal to introduce them to Christianity
Government policies adopted various strategies designed to " breed Aboriginals out" and assimilate them into the broader community. The traumas now acknowledged because of the 'stolen generation' are a product of this cruel practice and further policies which segregated 'coloured' from 'Traditional' people served the assimilation policies by conceding 'rights' to coloured people and declaring Traditional Aborigines as 'Wards of the State", effectively dividing what unity was developing between them.

Coloured people generally assimilated into suburban life and a work ethic whilst Traditional Aboriginals became third class non-citizens confined to remote settlements under paternalistic protectionist policies which created a generation of welfare dependency that Noel Pearson is now attempting to reverse in his Cape York community.
or a cheap labour pool for pastoralists under a unique indenture system where wages were not regulated under awards

Native Title and Land Rights has served to reunite coloured people with their Traditional roots causing a renaissance of Aboriginal language art and culture.

This article,is a total mis representation of the issue, a right wing scare tactic that has its roots in anti Aboriginal racism.The recent actions of the Howard Government in passing legislation to acquire 5 year leases on Aboriginal communities should be sufficient proof that where Law and Order in Australia is concerned,there is and has been one set of rules for ALL Australians.They can do this to YOUR land too if they want to.

CJ, the mathematics used above is called geometric series. The process is good for modelling population growth, and it demonstrates how populations can compound very quickly. In more recent times, despite wars and famines, world population has been doubling every few decades.

"The only good Indian is a dead Indian."

That's a quotation of a 19th-century army general. The sentiment simply doesn't apply to the US today where, if anything, Indians and their culture are idealized. Ever hear of "American Indian Princess Syndrome"?

Indians (which is what they prefer to be called, not "Native Americans") are not equal in measurable outcomes to the mainstream, but they are in a lot better shape than Aborigines.

There are more Indians living both on and off reservations now than there were when the Spaniards first came to what became the US. Some of the Spanish horses went wild, enabling the photogenic horse culture of the plains to take root, creating generations of white guilt for having wiped out what Europe created.

There are more speakers of Lakota today than there were in the early 19th century. Many reservations out west have 4th of July pow-wows. Do any Aboriginal settlements have Australia Day corroborees?

Mick: I don't pretend to understand all of the science, and there is never a last word, but it seems according to the latest evidence that the founder population of Aborigines came to Sahul about 50K years ago: http://archaeology.about.com/od/humanorigins/a/australia_popul.htm

Some of the contributors here claim that the purity of indigenousness doesn't depend on length of tenure, and some resort to the antiquity of Aborigines. Which is it?

Also, you can't revive a dead language. Give me one example of assimilated part-Aborigines who have revived a dead language and make a living in that language. Sometimes you have to admit that something is history. It strikes me, from what I've read, that a lot of what is called "Aboriginal culture" is simply working class country Australian culture, and there's nothing especially Aboriginal about it. I refer specifically to the part-Aboriginals of QLD, NSW and Victoria, not to the Aborigines in the center of the country who do have some real-life experience with traditional Aboriginal culture.

Finally, this UN Declaration isn't going to make one iota of difference in the real lives of real Aborigines, so what's the fuss about?

You can't equate aboriginal family culture in south eastern Australia to country culture. The country folk know who has white lineage and who has aboriginal blood. In NSW until quite recently aboriginal children were removed from school if white parents complained about them being educated, so understandably until about 1985 families didn't talk about or seek out their aboriginal heritage. Even though there have been quite good financial incentives in recent years for aboriginals, families that have assimiliated into white Australia have not come forward to declare their aboriginality.

Of course Australia wouldn't sign a UN Declaration on Indigineous Rights, we are not so breathtakingly hypocritical as to sign that and whilst sending the army into the Northern Territory to strip the aborigines of their land, their assets, their jobs and move them into concentration camps on the edge of large towns. Camps as in the Boer and Vietnam war usages.

Shocka: "I don't think there's a single indigenous person left in Chile, Argentina or Uruguay!"

Well I suppose we'd better let the Alacaluf, Aymara, Chono, Diaguita, Fuegians, Mapuche, Patagon, Puelche, Rapanui, Selknam, Tehuelche, Yaghan of Chile know that they don't exist in Chile. However, I take your point with respect to Argentina and Uruguay, where the Spaniards were more successful in their genocide of the Indigenous peoples. Interestingly however, Chile was a signatory to the declaration.

Mick V, simple geometric series would be most inappropriate mathematical models to apply to hunter-gatherer populations like Aborigines, where ecological and cultural factors combined to restrict population growth to the carrying capacity of the environment for that subsistence strategy. Face it mate, you don't know what you're talking about.

lizz-the-yank: "Finally, this UN Declaration isn't going to make one iota of difference in the real lives of real Aborigines, so what's the fuss about?"

Indeed. Like most countries, Australia only observes and enacts those aspects of UN treaties and declarations that are politically palatable for whatever government is in power, as with respect to our obligations towards refugees, for example.

"It strikes me, from what I've read, that a lot of what is called "Aboriginal culture" is simply working class country Australian culture, and there's nothing especially Aboriginal about it."

If you ever come to Australia and meet some Aboriginal people, you will quickly realise that their culture is quite distinct from that of the dominant Australian culture. It may not be the same as that which you have read about as "traditional" Aboriginal culture, but it is nonetheless distinctively Aboriginal. A bit like the way that contemporary Lakota reservation culture is not the same as "traditional" Lakota culture. All cultures change, particularly those that are subject to centuries of misguided and malign policies and marginalisation from the invader society.

The irony is that when Indigenous cultures survive, albeit in modified form, then they are often derided as being inauthentic - most often by members of the dominant culture.

Billie: you contradict yourself. First you say that "The country folk know who has white lineage and who has aboriginal blood." Then you say that "families that have assimiliated into white Australia have not come forward to declare their aboriginality." If country folk know who is white & who is aboriginal, then how could there have been assimilation to such an extent?

I'm confused.

CJ: "If you ever come to Australia and meet some Aboriginal people, you will quickly realise that their culture is quite distinct from that of the dominant Australian culture." Perhaps I should have been more specific: I don't mean full-blooded Aboriginals. I specifically mean part-Aboriginals.

Before we continue, please don't remind me that it's un-PC that the usage "part-Aboriginal" is un-PC. I know it is. I use it anyway because that is who I am talking about. Pretending that there is no difference between blackfellas and "mixedfellas" is ludicrous, and a lie.

From what I've read, the detribalization and loss of traditional culture with the part-Aboriginals is in no way analagous to differences between contemporary reservation culture with the pre-reservation culture.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about: http://www.abc.com.au/missionvoices/

Click around this website, and pay especial attention to the "voices of the elders." Most of what they relate strikes me as simply rural poverty culture. What's so uniquely Aboriginal about extended families, hunting, fishing and tin shacks? Correct - it may be quite different from mainstream Australian culture. What I dispute is how much of it is Aboriginal. I think it's just the retention of rural patterns long after they had died out amongst the local white folks (to whom they were related).

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