Hi Bazz,

You ask, most perceptively:

"Isn't it time that aborigines accepted the world as it is and joined in ?"

And of course, they have done, ever since 1788: nobody lives, or seems to even want to live, in completely traditional ways any more, bare-arsed and hungry around a piddly fire on a winter's morning. And why don't they ? Because they're not bloody half-wits, they are intelligent people, who can see benefits in choosing Course B over Course A like anybody else.

Of course, nobody will admit it, that Indigenous people have said good-bye and good riddance to sixty thousand years of living bare-arsed and hungry, but there you go. Perhaps those Uni of NSW classes could discuss this, and lynch anybody who suggests any value whatever for Indigenous people being now in the modern world: women could wear little stick-on beards while they are doing it.

Phillip (i.e. the British) beat La Perouse (i.e. the French) to Sydney by two weeks. They both probably beat the Dutch and Russians and Japanese by several decades. But who in their right mind thinks that the world would have left Australia alone ? Christ, even the Maoris, as they were becoming experts in modern shipping and trade before 1840, would have had a go.

So it's all done and dusted. We can argue over terms, just as we can still argue over how many angels can fit on the point of a pin - great fun, a lot of spleen vented, people (esp. Abbott and Howard) cursed up and down, but ultimately pointless.

What to do about the current situation that a minority of Indigenous people in outlying areas have got themselves into, and how to somehow motivate them to do something about it ? Or is that too hard ?

Joe

Shadow, if you are going to accept that the British were right to turn up in 1788 with their bag of English laws an apply them to the indigenous people of Australia, so be it. Then to give you another case, the Nazi's Nuremberg Laws, which ultimately led to the deaths of millions of Jews in Europe. Why was it deemed unacceptable for Nazis on trial at Nuremberg tp use the defense that they were only following orders which had a basis in law, the Nuremberg Laws.

I don't think it was a case of TERRA NULLIUS for Aboriginal people with the arrival of the British in 1788, it was more a case of another British law, TERRA FYING.

Dear Jayb,

Thanks for that but Chinese for Terra Nullius is 'Australia'. Or as the Chinese more commonly like to refer to Australia: 'Our Lebensraum'.

Let put it another way. I wasn't an Invasion as in D Day. It was a slow infusion over 200 years.

The new Australians I feel have recently done as much as they can to accommodate the original peoples into a modern society. Any one less than 1/8 aboriginal should be considered as mainstream and not considered aboriginal. We should not place guilt on our society as activist want; but be every bit neighborly toward each other. Governments do assist in developing resources to help communities become self supporting.
Calling British settlement today an "invasion" is a racist attitude, to breed hatred, and social division.

Josephus: Calling British settlement today an "invasion" is a racist attitude, to breed hatred, and social division.

I agree. If you are looking for Racists you don't have to look past the Aboriginal Activists. But, I apologize. Apparently, because of Political Correctness, you are not allowed to articulate that, or, possibly even think it.