"Why can't non-Indigenous people just say that they support Indigenous people in the full exercise of their rights under Australian law, to do what they damn-well like - to live in the bush (10 %) or in the towns and cities (90 %) and to work where they like and to study what they like and marry who they like, i.e. equal rights?" - Joe

Yes, they, and, all Australian, should exercise their rights, all their rights; but saying aborigines "owned" the land say circa 1,500 CE, is a nonsense in their own culture. They, we humans, ARE the Land. Don't you understand? Can't you comprehend the concept.

For an indigenous Australian to say, we respect our traditions and we own our land is a contradiction. One needs to say we own the Land, at the expense of tradition; or, we respect our traditions and whites and blacks need to reconcile their differences with life-lines which bind life to the land.

Stephan, forget the Boston Consulting Group Matrix, your true field of study, look at a sixteenth century treaty acceptible to animists.

Equal rights, Joe? Yes. Absolutely, yes. Equal means equal.

WE are a part of the land [like your arm is a part of your body], its a fact ,that land cant be taken anywhere ,but it can be poluted ,it can be covered over with cobncrete and tar

We can pretend that we own it [but it owns us]

we destroy the land [or the air or the water at the cost of our own survival]

When white fella come there was 25 million AB-origonal's on this land yet the white fella he say this is ''terra nullious'' [empty land] but it isnt now , just as it wasnt then.

We all know terror nulious was a lie

[one needs only look as far as cpt-Aurther-Phillips instructions dated 25-april-1787;
read page 14

....''You are to endeavour,
by every possable means

to open an intercourse with the savages-[struck-out]-Natives,

and to conciliate their affections ,enjoing ALL our subjects to livein amity AND kindness WITH them.

[thus not over them?]

And if ANY of OUR subjects shall wantomly destroy them

OR give them ANY unnessesary interuption in the exersize of their several occupations.

It is OUR will and pleasure that YOU do cause such offenders to be brought to punishment ,ACCORDING to the degree of offense''.....

So this is from your king of britan,

what is just ?

[a punishment that is 'according to the degree of offense] to murder , rape ,poisening dispossession, immprisonment ,fraud , deception

and numerous other acts of colenisation forced upon this nations indigenous first peoples?

Lets just say the karma needs balancing

[not by force ,or punitive justice ,or by feeding them western disease producing food replacements ] dead food from cans loaded with salt and suger and transfats

but to help preserve that which was stolen,
from innocents ,

.. something that must be better than our current and past health medicine , laws and justice /imprisonment systems .

,that kill thousands of australians every year

[yet stil gets covered over by our 'madia and 'pub'lick servants]

but now more of the invaders than the invaded
[sic]

Agree, ''terra nullious'' was nonsense. To say it was "owned" is equal nonsense from the perspective of an aboriginal living in 1600. The traditional concept would have been spiritual and the Western political/corporate.

To pay for Land is an insult to traditional culture. To help people in need is moral and universal. We must not insult aborigorial culture with something as crass as money for the Land. We, black and white, reconcile WITH the Land, of which, we are apart. The social issues are social issues, and, here is where monies are directed.

C. 1788: The aboriginal population was probably, 300,000. One million max.

The problem is the same; what does Alexander after Darius is defeated. Yet, Alexander had the benefit of some likeness in the societies.

Oliver,

You're lucky that this is only on-line, otherwise, with your racist comment about 'bastardised hybrids', I would reach through the airwaves and rip your racist face off. My wife and kids are, as you call them, 'bastardised hybrids', and if they knew where you lived, you would be done for. Fecking racist tord.

Loadmouth,

By hybrid, I meant one does not acculturate aboriginal traditional culture with Western values. The concept of the ownership of land goes back to the Middle-East, c. 6,000 BP, when priesthoods administered land, after the old animist traditions became obsolete.

I said ingenious people should stay true their own culture, as it was, and, to not contaminate ancient values, with today's Western values.

Where money is needed help aboriginals, it should be given; But money should not be associated with the Land, which is a spirital, not a financial entity.

Actually, no one owns the Land in Australia: It belongs to the Crown. We hold Estate.

I am at loss as how you read your family into what I said. I think you need a new set of glasses.

"Where money is needed help aboriginals, it should be given; But money should not be associated with the Land, which is a spiritual, not a financial entity.

Loadmouth, I have had the night to think about it. Selling-out one's spiruality for a price, isn't really that different than the Catholic Church of old selling indulgences.

Aboriginal traditional values are important and should be preserved, not flushed away.

If any disadvantaged person needs a hand-up so be it. Money should forth coming to address the need, not the race.

Want to see real racism, watch the Hispanics vote against Obama, an Africa American, in Florida, in the US elections. Here, we have factions of racists competing to be the major minority group to leverage financial advantage.