mhaze, Do not worry about Mr O as he believes in the invasion of the yellow hordes coming from the North, as similar view held in the 1940 - 60's.

The argument over the legal status of the land that became Australia in 1788 is irrelevant. We may as well argue as to the legality of the Roman expulsion of the Jews in the first century or the legal status of the Bradshaw peoples.

The land that is Australia was going to be colonised because its inhabitants were stone age peoples unable to defend their land even if that had a concept of it being their land. That those colonisers were British was extremely fortunate for those then inhabitants since they were colonised by the most benign of imperial powers. Had they been colonised by any other of the potential contenders, there wouldn't be arguments about land rights or legal status or recognition since those original cultures and populations would have long since been destroyed.

mhaze: The land that is Australia was going to be colonised because its inhabitants were stone age peoples unable to defend their land even if that had a concept of it being their land.

Careful Hazie, there are those on here who "might/will be" be offended by suggesting that the Aboriginal Peoples were "Stone age." Even if they really were/are.

Dear maze,

I read about it in a news article posted online. Given the excerpt you just posted it now looks like that news article was incorrect.

Dear Paul1405,

Is Mise is referring to me, being Mr Opinion. He and his engineer colleagues on The Forum are upset with me for letting people know that engineers are knuckleheads. Engineers like to think that they are on the same level as doctors. If that is correct then why is it that one needs a degree in medicine to be a doctor but one does not need a degree in engineering to be an engineer?

Hi Mr Opinion,

In order to comply with your requests, and at the risk of referring in any way to 'the University of Life', I tentatively venture to suggest that when I went from Wagga High School to Darwin High School in the late fifties, and coming from a very left-wing family, it wasn't possible to ignore Aboriginal students, or Aboriginal people generally or the various situations they were in at the time in Darwin. Signing up for the Works (now Nightcliff) Rules team, in the B Grade Colts (reserve), I was justifiably the butt of much good humour from the other Aboriginal kids for my kicking and marking skills.

My wife of 43 years was Indigenous, she's been gone now nearly eight years. Our kids are Indigenous. We made Aboriginal Flags in the early seventies, back in the days when no 'leader' would come near us for one, except at the back door. We ran and funded a scurrilous journal, 'Black News', 1973-1974. We lived for some years in an Aboriginal community. Later we worked for many years in Indigenous student support. From about 1984, we wrote articles mainly about Indigenous success and issues in higher education. I ran a series of about thirty Career Workshops in 1994 for a total of 1200 Indigenous kids, from Grade Six upwards (and once, accidentally - and delightfully - for a Grade Four class at Koonibba), from northern and western NSW (down to Ivanhoe: 'Where the hell is Ivanhoe ?' said a sticker that I bought there) and western Victoria up to Leigh Creek and across to, well, Koonibba. Very proud of that.

I've kept an Indigenous higher education database for more than twenty years. And then, of course there is my web-site: www.firstsources.info - I've been working on that, on and off, for twenty years.

Apart from that, I don't know what you want. If you can spare the time, I would be grateful if you could clarify your requests.

Cheers,

Joe

Hi Loudmouth,

So basically you're in teaching, education and community services with extensive participatory involvement in indigenous activities and affairs.

I was trained separately as an anthropologist, a sociologist and a historian. My predilection is for anthropology with specialisation in Melanesia supported with auxiliary studies in Asia, Australia, and the Pacific. Doing additional postgrad work (outside of working in engineering which I absolutely abhor) but now getting involved in transdisciplinary research where I can incorporate the scientific knowledge gained from my engineering degree with the humanities. Mr Opinion might be my nom de plume but I really only want to hear about the facts.