Just a point.
What proof do aboriginals have that they 'own' the land?
Can they prove they didn't steal it from another group long ago?
Are they in fact the 'dis-possessers'?
This gets sillier and sillier.

It comes back to 'we cannot change history'.
What's done is done.
And we, living in the present day, are in no way responsible for what happened before we were born.
We are only responsible for what happens now.
And we cannot pay reparations to persons long dead .
Those persons simply don't exist.
To pretend they do is a fantasy?
And we certainly cannot give benefit to them through lavish gifts to their descendants.
So is this a con?
Is this a ploy to extract wealth from others?
Is it done because it CAN be done?
Did someone misinterpret the Mabo decision?

Dear Ipso Fatso,

So you believe Jewish heirs who are recipients of German reparation money should return it?

"From 1945 to 2018, the German government paid approximately $86.8 billion in restitution and compensation to Holocaust victims and their heirs. Germany has also identified Nazi-looted objects – including art works, books, and objects within larger collections – and has returned 16,000 objects to survivors and their heirs over the last 20 years. Thousands more pieces of looted art are still missing worldwide."
http://www.state.gov/reports/just-act-report-to-congress/germany/

Ipso Fatso

The "ownership" myth is an invention of modern activists. Aborigines were originally said to be part of the land; they had no conception of ownership; they were never in the one place long enough to "own" anything.

In 1945, when reparations were 'set-up', the matter was current.
The people directly affected were alive.
The link between them and the dead was direct and provable.
Our situation is not the same.
The dead are ancient history.
Links are hazy at best.

The same thing applies to belief systems.
Whether it be Aztec or Roman or any other long past time, they have no direct relevance now.
Similarly with past languages.
Even though we study them to find out what the people were doing.
Curious little fellows aren't we!
But we plan survival based on what is happening around us right now.

We could not write down any significant amount of the total of past history.
Logically, so much has happened that could be 'corrected'.
But it never shall.
Nor should it be.
The past is past, and it should stay there.
We can learn from the past, but now we must live in the present, and plan carefully for the future.
Survival and procreation depends upon it.

And I disagree about ownership.
Ownership has always involved control.
And this requires combined effort.
In the past, ownership would have been patchy across the world?
Most peoples simply occupied an area, and moved on when needed?
So their approach was occupation, rather than ownership.
And you seem to agree with this.

And these conversations often remind me of the founding of the US of A.
I think their original declaration is wrongly worded.
But as they are bigger than I am, I won't bother to tell them so.
But the fact is that no one has natural 'rights'.
Rights are given by law.
Laws must come first.
A group must first establish itself, and THEN contrive and enforce laws.

But what they did have are NEEDS.
Life is about survival.
To do this, we need at least food and water and shelter.
We also need the freedom to move and to think.
Significant freedom to move and think was being denied them.
So of course, and quite rightly, they made a stand.
It is pleasing that they were successful.
They must have come from good stock.

Steele cannot get over the fact that the German government paid the repatriations to family members who lost members of their immediate family and were displaced in the current time. The family members were still alive, and suffering from the loss of their parents and homes.

This is not the same as what happened 200 years ago, to aboriginals who owned nothing and lost nothing. Before 1788 only the fittest survived, death was frequent and violence commonplace. After 1788 attempts They have been made to repatriated into our society and those that have survive very well.

A yes Vote is racial aparthied and discrimination on the basis of race.