Cont’d

The pseudo-intelligencia is always right because they have the “most” and the “best” links. They have well thought out and best constructed defense because someone else gave it to them, the real intelligencia.

It would be interesting to see you challenge the pseudo intelligencia to argue their case based on their “own” thought processes rather than the ones they have adopted.

Why don’t you ask david f, Poirot, Lexi if they would be prepared to set aside their referential “narrative theories” such as;

Documents, archives and eye witness accounts, that have been informed by prejudices of the historians, Chinese dynastic history, book burnings, tearing down temples and churches, biblical propaganda, the Peterloo massacre, proxy tree ring evidence, unreliable plausibility, Occam’s razor, plausibility and analogously in history, corroboration from various sources and outcomes, prejudice, the human condition, primary sources, “theory” of the past, Josephus and the chronicled events in ancient Israel, writings by the dominant caste and written primary evidence, just to mention a few narrative theories.

If they could set aside these adopted narrative theories, I wonder what would be left or what sort of gobbledygook they would produce. At least it would be original, whacky but original. Well, when I say “original” I mean a sort of well constructed but borrowed, easy to promote, ideologically based, canned interpretation of the sort of reality that few can understand, except of course the professional borrowers of someone else’s opinion.

Dear runner,

"The Lamb Enters the Dreaming" by Robert Kenny tells of the first Aboriginal convert to Christianity. The missionaries mentioned in the book were caring. They believed in the biblical myth that all humans were descended from Adam and Eve and regarded Aborigines as human contrary to much of the scientific thought of the day which thought different peoples had different origins. After the publication of Darwin's work scientific thought mostly changed to accept that all humans had a common origin.

However, you are right. Many of the missionaries were decent people who did what they could to stem the slaughter.

[contd]

So I don't really believe any more that, at least in SA, people were 'driven off their lands' - far from it, the Protector is always insisting that local coppers strive to keep people in their own districts and he spends a lot of time organising free travel for people to 'return to their own districts'.

And if not 'driving people off their land', then maybe 'no massacres' either.

If one asserts, then one must prove. Evidence. Proof. Not just passion and stance and plausibility, not when there are immense amounts of primary documentation slopping around.

I would love to believe that the most terrible things happened to Aboriginal people (no, not really) because whites are, after all, so evil, to be one of the mob, but I have this failing of wanting to rely on evidence. Now that there are Aboriginal archaeologists, maybe they can organise a 'Time Team' to investigate notorious massacre sites, to see if they are genuine ?

I would love to know about vast numbers of children being taken away, for God knows what reason, (ah yes, because all 'whites are b@stards') but the genuine evidence is a bit thin.

God, I'd like to see all that. And if I'm wrong, wouldn't you like to see me climb down, to grovel for forgiveness, Poirot :)

Cheers,

Joe

Loudmouth,

You really do display an immature sarcasm.

"...but the genuine evidence is a bit thin."

I don't know why those Aboriginal girls at the mission were there being looked after by white missionaries (and I did sleep in rooms with them and do work with them and go to school with them - so they weren't figments of my imagination).

I don't know why the Aboriginal boys were in a dormitory in town being looked after by white missionaries - but they were there because we used to socialise with them.

Is that genuine enough for you?

( Btw, it was in 1974, probably at the blunt end of the practice)

Hi Poirot,

Thank you for your observations.

Maybe I'm not as bright as you think, but I don't know what you mean by 'sarcasm'. I'm trying to be fair dinkum.

I don't know the circumstances (or even the state or territory) that you are referring to. Give me a clue :)

1974 - I'm wracking my brains to even grasp where that might have been.

Kids in dormitories in 1974 - I'm sorry, I don't even understand what you point might be, I'm tempted to say 'Duh ! So what ?' - I think there may have still been a dormitory at Koonibba at that time where kids were looked after during the week while their parents went out to work on local farms and stations. Is that what you are referring to ?

So what are you getting at ? What are you suggesting that was so out of the ordinary ?

Joe

Dear Joe (Loudmouth),

Have you read anything by the historian Henry Reynolds?

I've read, "Why Weren't We told?"
and found it to be a must-read.

He went on a personal search for the truth about our
histor His primary research interest has been the
history of Aboriginal-white relations in Australia.
His publications include:

"Aborigines and Setters," "Frontier," "The Other Side of the
Frontier," "The Law of the Land," "Dispossession,"
"With the White People," "Fate of a Free People," and
"An Indelible Stain."

"Why Weren't We told?" was the Winner of the 1999 Australian
Human Rights Award for the Arts.

It is crucial reading on one of the most important debates
in Australia in the twenty-first century.