I've been typing up the correspondence of the Protector of Aborigines here in South Australia, 1840 to 1907, for the past year or so, about eight thousand letters over 2,500 pages. It's been an amazing journey.

For example, in spite of the myth of 'herding people onto Missions', the one-man 'Department' sent out rations to up to one hundred places across the colony, forty designated ration depots and up to sixty places where Aboriginal people could get rations, as they were travelling through.

Rations, as the Protector had to remind Issuers (who were never paid) time and again, were mainly for the elderly, sick and infirm, and in drought times, for the able-bodied as well.

I'm intrigued by the impact that a huge network of ration depots might have had on the ability of the elders, the old and infirm, to gather in relative comfort for long periods - effectively for the rest of their lives - near ration depots, in good times and even more so in bad times, where for year after year, they could exchange knowledge and ceremonies and stories and magic while the able-bodied could be assured that they would be looked after. As well, the able-bodied had to look after more or less just themselves, and not have to find food for their elderly and sick and infirm as well. Sounds like win-win to me :)


In other words, in bad times, instead of scattering across their country and having to shelter in the country of neighbours, people could stay put. In fact, they were able, through the ration system, to stay put precisely in the worst times, instead of scattering - and droughts down this way could last for years. One lasted from about 1892 until 1900 or so, then there was the 'Federation drought' from 1902 to 1904. What do old people do during bad droughts ? They die. What do mothers with young babies do during droughts ? They often had to let their babies go. i.e. their babies died.

But not once a ration system was instituted. They lived.

[TBC]

[continued]

Paradoxically, counter-intuitively, is it possible that Aboriginal groups – at least in South Australia - were able to be more solid, practising their culture, or at least major ceremonies, based for perhaps years around a ration depot, when there was a long drought ? In other words .....

Did the ration system actually strengthen Aboriginal culture ?

Of course, the elders would have said that it was the power of their magic that persuaded or maybe tricked the whites to provide for them and for everybody, precisely during the worst times, and people would have believed them. Clever people !

Maybe the ration system even managed to actually boost the population in bad times as well as good, when it would have been decimated in pre-colonial times ? I don't know enough about the interaction between environment, climate, and demography to know.

There's more scope for genuine research, right there - if there ARE any genuine Indigenous researchers out there :)

Hey Joe are you going to publish the letters?

I think we can find them in the same spot Joe did.
And thanks bloke I do look such up may do that today after get things done.

All very enlightening Joe. But I'll wager you wont have any of that covered, in any of the "progressive" curricula our schools have received from on high --It tells the wrong story.

They would rather cover the fictions of "Rabbit Proof Fence" etc.

SPQR,
If you take away fiction and artistic creation from the "progressive" belief system then they have no documentation at all, these are the people who believe that the "truth" is divined from novels and allegories such as "Night" by Elie Wiesel, "The Handmaids Tale" by Margaret Atwood and "The Power Of One" by Bryce Courtenay.
I've a sister given to daydreaming and utopianism, her bookshelf is filled with "historical" novels.