Torres Strait Islander people - who were dispossessed of their land.
Lexi,
I think you're out of your depth there. Name one.

Come on, individual. I doubt the Torres Strait Islanders built this:

http://queenslandplaces.com.au/sites/queenslandplaces.com.au/files/imagecache/watermarked/exhibits/digital/DSC00395.jpg

Being a military installation, I doubt they had free access to the area, either - an area of which they consider themselves custodians or (to some) owners.

I doubt they were asked 'hey, do you mind if we use your land to build a fort?', either.

Many bad deeds against both Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are questionable in their historical authenticity. I don't know that we can really question the idea of dispossession in this case, though.

I get heated only on this subject.
And boy am I hot right now.
Thanks to our Author, real thanks and agreement.
How many Gday Loudmouth, like your post, know what took place?
Abbott a man I do not like, said nothing wrong!
Did you see both a woman and male spokes man/woman, talk.
No way the represent Aboriginal Australia.
But SOME, who followed them did, both speakers showed poor education, followers showed none.
Abbott may well have spoke for most Australians.
I have HAD A GUTFUL! of alleged past crimes of long dead people, whites only, being blamed for today.
BALANCE TRUTH PLEASE!
Is it known, understood, such miss use brings Great damage TO ALL ABORIGINALS?
That this morning now, this instant most Australians would vote against any action to give more rights, vote to bulldoze that Embassy?
A considered thought,I would recommend a prison term for some who took part, long one for the flag burner, and that we all of us!
Stop blaming every Aboriginal and stop giving air to white extremists, uninformed Aboriginal activists, and not ignore they are few.
And they, the Aboriginal industry jockeys should be unloaded now and then, we can fix what needs fixing.
As an ALP fixed voter No way I need to lie for my party Abbott did nothing wrong .

It was perfectly clear that Abbott at no point called for the tent embassy to be torn down or even removed.

The entire incident was just another of the PM's staff dirty tricksters who told Kim Sattler (who is a well-connected Labor figure) who then passed on the message to the protesters.

While I don't believe the PM was personally involved, it was her office from which this outrage originated, and the PM needs to take responsibility and find out exactly who was involved and who said what to whom.

While the PM can make Hodges a scapegoat, the question is why Hodges would be under the impression that this behaviour was acceptable? Was this a man acting alone or was this standard practise that went wrong? While the PM claimed he was acting alone, Hodges has not come out and said so.

Unless the PM allows a full police investigation this will look like yet another cover up.

Joe.
Comments from a 15 year old, a person who was in no way affected by those acts or by those policies, who taught this child to live in the past?.
The "crimes against humanity" approach was put to the test in Kruger & Bray v The Commonwealth of Australia, don't they teach kids about that in school?
I'm opposed to Genocide and I'm sensitive to anything that can be construed as supporting such crimes but I'm also aware that there's the way things ought to be and the way things are, anything occurring before 1948 has to be water under the bridge because the U.N convention is all any of us have to rely on at this point in time.

Otokonoko,

Yes, well, I'm getting sceptical even about forcible 'dispossession'. I suppose, like everyone else, that it happened but since 1851, on all pastoral and other leasehold lands and Crown Lands, in all States and Territories (for most of the time), Aboriginal people have had the full rights to use land in traditional ways, to hunt, gather food, collect water, camp, carry out ceremonies, etc. 'as if this lease had not been made'. This did not amount to land OWNERSHIP, just the usufructuary rights, the rights to USE lands in traditional ways.

Of course, people have now lost - or surrendered - many of those rights: in the nineties, believing that 'we got nothin ! Nothin !' groups down this way 'negotiated' from a position of zero, and eventually settled for less than they already had: you have to apply to a committee now to enter all leased land.

Here in SA, once Adelaide and other ration stations were set up, in the late 1830s, it seems that people often moved to them permanently, leaving their own country empty. After all, they no more had a sense of losing their country than you or I might have a sense of not having enough air to breathe: the concept may not have occurred to people (pace Henry Reynolds). Along the south coast here, the whaling stations would have attracted a huge proportion of the population - all that meat that the whites didn't want ! So their original country would have been emptied of people.

The Barossa Valley, for example, would have seen all of its Aboriginal inhabitants head off to the city nearby. So when the early governments talked of 'Waste Lands' there, they meant literally empty lands. No massacres, no driving of people away.

People got used to rations amazingly quickly: within two months here in Adelaide, the people became so used to getting rations of flour that when it ran short and the government tried to provide them with rice instead, they complained about 'maggot' food and wouldn't eat it.

Primary sources of history - fascinating stuff !