Loudmouth,
I've never read so much from a dedicated, denialist apologist.

You make it seem that the English came to liberate the aboriginals from themselves and fifty thousand years of occupation must have been an meaningless accident.

Perhaps it serves them right for not being familiar with the intricacies of British Law.

Try inviting somebody into your home and watch as they exclude you from each room in turn until they eventually put their name on the deeds and offer you a bit of space in the back yard.

Just because it didn't happen overnight doesn't change the outcome. They were here first and now they are second-class citizens - just the same as every other conquered or displaced indigenous native group in history.

It's nothing to be proud of, no matter how many axe heads and blankets we gave them before poisoning their waterholes.

One documented role of the 73rd Troop Regiment was to "suppress the resistance of the Aboriginal population to British settlement" and the first recorded deaths of two convicts occurred only months after the Union Jack was raised. The Hawkesbury and Nepean Wars lasted from 1790 to 1816.

We were never told about this in school. All I was taught in the 1960s that they were "a dying race" and would disappear by the end of the century - as well as being read "Little Black Sambo" in Primary School and the only view I had of Aboriginals was from Jolliffe cartoons that either represented them as noble savages or objects of ridicule.

Even PM Harold Holt once admitted to Nugget Coombs that he had never met an aboriginal person so what chance did we have of being told the whole truth?

rache,

The whole truth? Who knows 'the whole truth'? (Particularly as so much depends on who's telling the story, and on what particular axe they have to grind.)
Are you really interested in the truth? Or, are you more interested in a re-writing of history to reveal a nation-wide bloodbath devoid of any consideration for the welfare or future of the original inhabitants?

Shadow Minister posted on 2 April:
An invasion is a military action consisting of armed forces of one geopolitical entity entering territory controlled by another such entity.
This never happened.

So, by definition, no invasion. (So, what's UNSW on about?)

Occupation? Essentially inferring the domination and making subservient of another nation or peoples.
So, were the native inhabitants enslaved or made servitude? Were they corralled and beaten into submission?
Were they never individually or collectively offered subsistence or care - then or now?
Were they widely prevented from pursuing their traditional lifestyle, culture or religion?
Was there no attempt at peaceful coexistence? Anywhere?

So, settlement, obviously, but not occupation. (UNSW?)

'Terra Nullius' is an unfortunate descriptor - being inaccurate, misleading, and unduly derogatory.
Would that the law or legal system applicable at the time were more comprehensive in its available descriptors for the various national/occupational/cultural territorial circumstance which might be seen to prevail throughout the world. Alas, British brevity.

In one point I disagree with Shadow, in that, considering the evolution and development which has prevailed, and the greatly changed circumstances which now apply, I do not agree that native title should universally entail full transfer of ownership and entitlement to any developmental purpose or sale.
Traditional culture was being pursued, and should be enabled to prevail for current and future generations. Hence, the land should be deemed in a form of trust.
Was it not traditional culture which deemed that 'we are merely the custodians of our children's inheritance'?
Truth in word and deed? Or forever, self-interested and exclusionist?

Loud,

Thanks, Joe, for your most informative and invaluable contributions.

I may not always agree with you, or with your mode of delivery, but here you have demonstrated mastery, conviction, and an extraordinary degree of goodwill.

Why then do you dismiss global warming (or at least any significant human contribution to this)? Or, may you have revised your position on this?
(Or, is my memory in error in this?)

Since you are a person of great knowledge, and much wisdom, why is there so little concern being expressed generally about the future impacts of population growth and accelerating industrial development?

War, mass-migration, climate-change, China, North Korea ....
Where are the three (or more) wise men?
Is politics destined to forever inhibit genuine human evolution?
(Or perhaps plastics will in due course make any such questions moot?)

Hi Rache,

I'm sure like most people, that Aboriginal people suffered in a multitude of ways from the piecemeal invasion of Australia, particularly out beyond the reach of the law, and often, judging by some of the policies of Governors like Macquarie and Arthur and Darling, justified officially within the law as well.

Perhaps not so much here in South Australia, which had the benefit of the fifty years' experience of the eastern colonies. Coming from Sydney, I agree that policy was often grossly mismanaged by authorities in New South wales (i.e. up until the 1850s, including Victoria and Queensland).

By settling/invading a vast open country, the British, through their local administrations, opened up a geographical Pandora's Box of huge proportions, distances, and opportunities for land-grabbers from the Gulf to Gippsland, three or four million square kilometres in which squatters must have fallen over themselves to get as much as they could, no matter how. One day, thorough forensic examinations are going to be carried out on suspected massacre sites to establish the truth of those allegations.

In SA, the right to use land as traditionally was recognise from the outset. A ration system was installed from the outset. Aboriginal people were declared to be British subjects from the outset, with the full protection of the law, at least officially. The first school in Adelaide was for Aboriginal kids, taught in their own language, Kaurna.

Of course, it probably couldn't be anticipated that

[TBC]

[continued]

recognition of traditional use-rights and the ration system cancelled each other out: if one can get rations for nothing, why go foraging ?

The ration system was used very effectively to defuse frontier conflict: in one region, south of the Gawler Ranges, the Kokatha people used to move down into Eyre Peninsula during droughts, raiding out-stations as they went. But once ration depots were set up to the north-east (Port Augusta and Franklin Harbour) and the north-west (Wallianippie and Venus Bay) of the Peninsula, even before pastoralism had been extended to those areas, the raiding stopped, more or less. People still came freely right down to Port Lincoln, being given rations along the way, for example at Poonindie.

I'm trying to sort out in my mind whether 'invasion' or 'settlement' would have occurred, one way or another, sooner or later, across Australia; whether the British broke their own laws in doing so; and whether or not, on balance, Aboriginal people (a) would genuinely prefer to return to completely traditional lifestyles, or (b) are better off, despite their violent history, being part of a modern Australia. So far, my tentative answers to myself are: yes; yes; and (b).

Joe

rache, one of the best analogies on the subject I have read. What I do disagree with is there was no invite, the star boarder simply moved in and took over. On British law, there would be a problem with understanding, given the fact that no Aboriginal person graduated from university with a degree until Charles Perkins in about 1965.

Found this timeline 1900-69 very interesting.

http://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/history/aboriginal-history-timeline-1900-1969#axzz45BmJNroe