Loudmouth
Clergy didn't organise killing parties , it was police and settlers who did that. Survivors were sent off-country to ...church missions. They exist today. One was on Fraser island , for example in 1870.
"Written in Sand'. F Williams p67. Aboriginal hunting rights on cattle stations ? ( cough splutter..)
Aboriginals travelling to Europe before 1788 was Bazz comment and seems irrelevant. He says that this colonisation had to happen . I ask why ? The q. seems baffling to you guys.
Put it this way : is it unthinkable for Aboriginals today to have been left alone to stay alive for another 2000 years? No English , no church , no computers , no grog.

Hi Nick,

You airily suggest: "Clergy didn't organise killing parties , it was police and settlers who did that."

Prove it. Get some evidence. Otherwise it's just blather.

Of course, you could talk about the Myall Creek massacre in 1839, for which nine whites were hanged in Darlinghurst Gaol.

And do you have the slightest evidence for this: "Survivors were sent off-country to ...church missions."

Do you mean Dunwich Mission, on Stradbroke Island, also called 'Moreton Bay' ? People could come and go as they pleased from there.

Aboriginal hunting rights on pastoral leases ? Yes. Now. Today: they just have to apply to a committee and show some ancestral link to the land - at least, here in SA.

Yeah, we will have to tackle this issue of 'should Aboriginal people have been left to hunt and gather forever ?' some time. I don't see anybody rushing back to live traditional lives anywhere in Australia, except by Toyota and for a weekend or so - and provided they could keep getting welfare payments, and access the fast food outlets.

And surely nobody seriously suggests that the outside world - the British, French, Russians, Chinese, Japanese, etc. - would have let Australia alone ? The bigger question is: are Indigenous people better off for it ? I think so, enormously so. Discuss.

As for grog, who is forcing Aboriginal people to drink ? In fact, for more than a hundred years, they weren't allowed to drink: suppliers could be fined or gaoled. Equal rights meant they could drink. Their choice.

Nice try :)

Joe

nicknamenick,

That Politically Correct version of an idyllic, land-caring life of Aborigines pre-settlement (and it was settlement, NOT invasion as you would have it), is absolute tosh.

You are part of the guilt industry, selling eternal victimhood and guvvy handouts forever. The public is not going to wear that. Especially with the enhanced information sources and changed demographics of recent years.

It is now possible to explore the past by means of
a large number of books, articles, films novels, songs,
paintings, primary sources, and archival records,
National and State Libraries have this information
on offer. We can know a great deal about the history
of Indigenous-Settler relations.

Of course as historian Henry Reynolds points out -
knowing brings burden which can be shirked by those
living in ignorance. With knowledge the question is no
longer what we know but what we are now to do, and that
is a much harder matter to deal with. It will continue to
perplex us in this country for many years to come.

Dearest Foxy,

I most respectfully disagree: " .... the question is no
longer what we know but what we are now to do .... "

The question most certainly is what we think we know: just because it all fits nicely into a narrative, doesn't mean that a single facet of that narrative is correct.

On my web-site I've typed up around fifteen thousand pages - pages - of material, and very little if any of it fits the narrative. I've been around long enough to have experienced the Hindmarsh Island Secret Women's Business scam, the Rabbit-Proof Fence scam, the Stolen Generation scam, the Self-Determination scam and various other scams.

I'm desperately searching all the time for anything that's genuine, but not much luck, I have to say. The university participation figures seem about the only things that are genuine (if anything, I suspect they are UNDER-estimates of success).

So, yes, we urgently do need to re-assess what we DO know, or think we know.

Love nevertheless,

Joe

Dear Joe,

Of course we have to re-assess but at the same time
we should not deride the evidence and look at the
evidence from all sides. It's never just a case
of "black" and "white." So much has been hidden
in the past and altered to suit the popular
version. I cannot deride people's actual experiences
and what they lived through.