Antiseptic said:
I'm still puzzled by why the minority Aboriginal ancestry is more important to some people than the majority that's not and whether it would be if there were benefits to NOT having aboriginal ancestors.

Careful, someone got into trouble saying something like that.

A question, does the legislation have a defined limit to aboriginality ?
Is 1 16th, 1 64th, 1 256th, - - - - 1024th, 2048th, 1 4096th
1, 16384th etc etc.

Surely the legislation is not open ended ?

Antiseptic,

Thanks for your query asking " .... if there were benefits to NOT having aboriginal ancestors."

You're serious, aren't you ?

Policy, especially between Federation in 1901 and the 1960s, provides you with many answers: the rights to vote, drink, live where you liked, live in towns, to marry who you like without having to get permission, etc. My wife's grandfather, and many, many of his fellow-Ngarrindjeri from Point McLeay here in SA, fought in the 48th on the Western Front for two years during the First World War, even though he and his mates did not have the vote, couldn't drink (he got pinged for that in Sydney when he came back in 1919 and spent a week in the cells), and didn't get anything like a soldier-settler's block - although he did get an Army great-coat which he kept all his life. Back on the mission, the school curriculum had been dumbed down from a standard curriculum to one which didn't get above Grade Four, from 1908, and no kid there finished primary school between 1908 and the fifties, and so were barred from secondary schooling. The legacies of those policies are still blighting the lives of many Aboriginal people.

So what were you saying about benefits ?

Joe

Then there's the case of my great Grandmother, her paternity was until recently unknown but her surname suggested links to a local Aboriginal family.
In the end the truth came to light via some documents my old aunty had stashed away then forgotten about due to her dementia. Her parents were simply unmarried British migrants, her father did a runner when she was a baby and her mother re married to one of his cousins but you can see how things get mixed up over a period of decades.

BTW the alternate theory on Aboriginal origins sees them as descended from other Asians who colonised Africa and the Pacific, not the other way round.
It's he said/she said, on one hand extremely White skin, green eyes and Red hair are thought to be far more ancient than dark skin, that people of my complexion with blue eyes and brown hair are hybrids of these first people and some other races.
The Y chromosome studies are suggesting that dark skin possibly evolved in Asia and came to Africa within the last 15,000 years.

But that's not the point, Aboriginals were here first and their descendants have a right to claim that ethnicity, that much at least is beyond dispute.

Jay of Melbourne,
You may not be aware of very recent information.
A lock of hair obtained from an aborigine on the Kimberly coast 100 yrs
ago was found in a British museum.
DNA examination showed that the aborigine ancestors left Africa before
the ancestors of those that went to Europe and Asia left Africa.
So they were a separate strain of out of Africa.
They did not derive from Asians.
They did have a common ancestor, just earlier but only in Africa.

Dear Graham,

I'm not going to argue with you.

Kindly read the following website.
It puts things into their proper
perspective regarding Mr Bolt:

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/in-black-and-white-andrew-bolt-trifled-with-the-facts-20110928-1kxba.html