Dearest Foxy,

"ABORIGINAL AUSTRALIANS ARE descendents of the first people to leave Africa up to 75,000 years ago, a genetic study has found, confirming they may have the oldest continuous culture on the planet."

Well, yes, the first people to move out of Africa [who perhaps did not have Australia in mind as their destination] were the ancestors of almost everybody in Asia, Europe, Oceania and the Americas - everywhere but Africa, in fact.

Those ancestors took tens of thousands of years to reach Siberia in one direction, Australia in another. Once some of the descendants of those foraging voyagers travelled through India and south-east Asia before they reached Australia, then yes, they became some of the ancestors of today's Aboriginal people, the Aboriginal Australians.

Another group might have turned left and gone off into Europe, rather than detouring through central Asia first.

Of course, the groups would have been 'travelling' so slowly, perhaps a mile a year on average, that they weren't actually aware that they were actually migrating from x to y. We know it now, but they didn't.

As for 'the oldest culture' - I've never understood that: all human cultures are equally old. If what is meant is that Aboriginal culture is the most unchanging culture in the world, then I'm not sure what is so great about that: other words for 'unchanging', especially for human culture, would be 'stagnant', 'rigid', 'unlearning', 'hidebound'.

I think the Aboriginal population in Australia had the disastrous misfortune to be cut off from the flow of human ingenuity of the Asia-Europe-Africa landmass for so long.

But Australia was one of the richest countries in the world in the late nineteenth century, and Aboriginal people - at least down this way in South Australia - shared in that affluence. Aboriginal women here in SA had the vote thirty and more years before women gained it in the UK, the US or France - a bit of an improvement on fifty thousand years of violent treatment, as occurs for women in all traditional societies.

Willerslev has written some great stuff.

Love,

Joe

Dear Joe (Loudmouth),

Talking about Eske Willerslev :

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/genome-analysis-links-kennewick-man-native-americans-180955638/?no-ist

Joe (Loudmouth), "I think the Aboriginal population in Australia had the disastrous misfortune to be cut off from the flow of human ingenuity of the Asia-Europe-Africa landmass for so long"

Regrettably the 'self-managing' communities favoured by the left and Whitlam resulted in a self-imposed apartheid, a black curtain, that among other very unfortunate effects, ensured that many aboriginal children and youth were denied the essential keys, English and mathematical proficiency, to realise their possible futures in modern Australia and the world.

Political correctness is working against the interests of aboriginal children and stunting them in all ways but particularly psychologically.

Apart from your contributions and those of an experienced woman senior (who has not posted for a while), few on OLO have but the most superficial idea, usually wrong thanks to activists and the media, of the poor prospects for aboriginal children inherent to the misguided policy of preserving 'indigenous' (a word disliked by Aborigines I have met out bush) culture by isolating children from their destiny, which is broader than sitting in the local creek.

I have found articles by Anthony Dillon interesting and informative. I don't think he has ever appeared on ABC programs like Q&A, which is a pity, but possibly predictable given its emphasis on entertainment and sensationalism.

Hi OTB,

Anthony appears often on The Drum, and gives a very good account of himself. He's written a timely article recently on suicide:

https://bay167.mail.live.com/?fid=fl4LGX7MXV3k-1G_XxcmBv9A2

There is an article today about the positive correlation between remoteness and untreated illnesses, especially cancers. Being totally cynical, I suspect that if we asked our Goat Cheese Circle friends whether they thought Aboriginal people would be better off as far out as possible, I'm sure they would all say immediately 'Of course,' and launch into paeans about culture and community.

The old Marxist in me suspects that the GCC classes have vested interests in such Apartheid, as it probably did, in its earlier incarnation in South Africa, in the Bantustans - that dirty alliance between white bureaucrats and local Black go-getters which we know so well here these days. And culture is so colourful and charming - in South Africa, the bare-breasted maidens certainly were boons for tourism (and for National Geographic, and for adolescents like me), as remote Aboriginal people are now seen to be.

Perhaps this is why so much is put into Indigenous tourist ventures, i.e. vast expenditure projects, big turnovers, many Chinese and Filipina workers, many 'council' members sitting under trees on commissions. Sweet ! For some. As an Aboriginal friend keeps saying, 'Racism is good for some Aboriginal people.'

Back to topic: I was trying to calculate the degree of Aboriginal re-identification since the 1970s - the Census figures each time give different - and growing - figures for, say, the age-group born in the early eighties: 31,849 Aboriginal people were aged between 0 and 4 years in the 1986 Census, but through the process of miracle births, that cohort number (now aged 25 to 29) has grown to 38,804 at the last Census. In fact, there were 46,445 in that age-cohort in the 1996 Census, but it seems many have become non-Indigenous since.

[TBC]

[continued]

On that last point: those 38,804 in 2011 were the median age-group enrolled at universities - an average of only 7,761 in each age-group; but 5,726 Indigenous people commenced award-level university study last year (overwhelmingly at degree- and post-grad levels) which is equivalent to a fairly respectable 73 % of the median age-group.

So the stats would tell us. Even I, gullible as I am, would question those figures, or who they represent. Back in the day, I used to reckon on about 10 % of Indigenous students not actually being Indigenous, but the proportion may have increased since then. Or something.

Meanwhile, out in the more remote communities, expect an epidemic of ice and the brutal murders of Aboriginal women by their beloveds in the coming years.

Cheers,

Joe

Loudmouth, what question did that census actually ask?