cont'd ...

My apologies for having left out this
link in my previous posts from which I
gleaned the information:

http://www.australianstogether.org.au/stories/detail/mabo-native-title

Dearest Foxy,

I could be wrong but the earliest reference to 'terra nullius' that I'm aware of was in Justice Blackburn's decisokn on gthe Milirrpum v. Nabalco case (the Gove Case) at the end of 1971, which provoked the setting up of the Aboriginal Embassy, and also the making of a single nation-wide Aboriginal Flag.

Perhaps the term is used in earlier works on 'the Law of Nations' by Vattel in the eighteenth century, or Maitland or other legal authorities in the nineteenth.

We are perhaps not aware that Australia was in a unique position, an entire continent populated by foraging people, completely (as was thought) out of touch with anybody else in the world. Even the Bushmen and Pygmies in Africa had strong trading relations with neighbouring groups, and had had for centuries. But not the people here, except for Timorese and Javanese and Macassarese for sandalwood and trepang.

But even the Bushmen of southern Africa were also cattle herders, not just foragers. How does a government recognise the rights - what rights to recognise ? - of people who don't seem to be farming the land, or even pasturing animals on it ?

Marx would say that different types of economic systems develop different relationships to the land - foragers, agriculturalists, and capitalists. People embedded in one system find it very difficult to imagine how people in another system can possibly have a proper sense of land proprietorship or ownership, since they are using it in such a different way from themselves.

Still, the British - at least here in SA - recognised the use-rights of Aboriginal people from the outset. I'm not sure what else they could have done. Sometimes people stumble through history: the early administrations here didn't, couldn't, foresee that, with a ration system, the local Aboriginal people would abandon foraging in preference for sitting down. I guess we're still learning that lesson.

Lots of love and best wishes to your lucky husband,

Joe

Foxy: It is inherent to Indigenous Peoples by virtue of their status as First Peoples and the First owners of this land.

Did they infact OWN the land or did as, their folk lore says, they were Caretakers of the land.

Loudmouth: If you are suggesting that people who forage are no more entitled to ownership of the land on which they forage than animals who might roam about, then that is you problem. I think it's grossly offensive to suggest such a comparison.

Why, just because it’s Politically Incorrect does not negate a fact of life.

SOL: Not all historical facts are morally or ethically correct...

Maybe not by today’s standard, but they were 230 years ago, which is as it was, at the time it happened.

My Grandfather narrated a story to me about a big fight over a corner of Sandy Creek near Ravenswood. About 100 worriers on either sid lined up & threw spears at one another until blood was drawn. That was the end of that & the one that drew blood won the rights to the corner of the Creek.

On Ravenswood., my Grandfather said they often found very old Chinese Crockery when they took the pieces to the Chinese miners they said that they were hundreds of years old. There were some places around Ravenswood the Chinese wouldn’t go because of the Ghosts of the Old Chinese that were buried there. Booran or James Morrell was a prick relation I’m told.

Cont.
In the Taiwan Museum there is a map with Australia mapped from the mouth of the Murray River to around Hughenden & Richmond. It was also well known that the Chinese ventured inland a long way to find Sandalwood. There are Chinese Maps showing the best places near Wyndhum to forage for Sandalwood. They also frequently used the East coast of Australia as their fishing grounds.

It is also understood that James Cook had a map from the Portuguese of the East coast of Australia. A part of his mission was to check it out as a possible place to settle Convicts. Which the subsequently did. The Logistics for such a massive expedition with so many Convicts would have taken more than 5 years of Planning. I do believe it is wrong to say James Cook “Discovered” Australia. It could be said he mapped the East Coast & took Possession of the Land for the British Empire on Possession Island.

I doubt whether you could call the Settlement an Invasion either. Seeing that they nearly all starved to death until relief provisions arrived. Don’t forget the same thinking almost killed the settlers of James Town in America. The thinking at the time that if crops weren’t planted in neat furrows then they were heathen food & if it wasn’t Pig or Cattle the game couldn’t be eaten. Phillip didn’t have much trouble with the Natives in fact he allowed himself to be speared in the Thigh because he had transgressed a local Law. It was subsequent Governors who had a disdainful outlook towards the local Aboriginals heathens that started the trouble.

Jayb, Cook was here in 1770 and left the UK in, what 1769 ?
The purpose of sending convicts here was brought about by
the Nth American colonies revolting in 1776 because they could no longer
be sent to the Americas.
I have never seen mention previously that Cook's commission included
finding convict settlements.
I could of course be wrong.

Anyway the aboriginals might ask the Tibetans if they would have
prefered China to have avived first.

Will Native title fade away with continued merging of the races ?
Hide me from 18c.

Shellbapples

your post makes heaps of sense. Don't worry about Susie, she appears bitter and never allows facts to fog up her story.