Hi Hasbeen,

Is it an Australian thing to pick self-deprecating noms de plume ?

In the Protector' letters here in SA, especially in the early days, he reports a number of cases of men beating their wives to death. Given that the population was barely in the hundreds around Adelaide (and that included people from hundreds of miles away, coming in for the rations), one case every few years, would be something like one case per 1000 per year. The courts treated these cases quite leniently really, taking into account the people's cultural practices.

My friend Alistair Crooks has put all of that material into a coherent analysis called 'Voices From the Past' - at first he wanted to call it 'The Pocket Protector', but SWMBO overruled him. It can be found on his web-site: http://www.aboriginalculture.org/index.html

In George Taplin's Journal (on my web-site: www.firstsources.info), he also reports a number of cases of men beating their wives, sometimes to death but sometimes only to a pulp. Again, out of only a few hundred people in the area over twenty years, this would amount to comparatively high levels of DV.

I've been told about a busload of women about to come down to Adelaide from the SA North-West, and being beaten by their husbands even while they were embarking.

One wonders if a young Aboriginal girl in an isolated 'community' had kept a comprehensive Journal since, say, 1960, what encounters she would have reported. If she survived, of course.

Alternatively, if there were any anthropologist around with enough courage, what would they report in a single 24-hour report in an isolated 'community' ? Could they turn that into a TV documentary series, hour by hour ? Probably not for the ABC these days.

Joe

Loudmouth

the academics must hate you. You certainly have a great knowledge of what took place among the SA aboriginals. I have spoken to old missionaries who spent up to 40 or 50 years in the lands who confirm that it certainly was no island paradise. Many of the so called stolen generation were really the saved generation. Truth can be cruel but unless faced up to and there will be no freedom. More victimhood status, more bashings, more child abuse, more spearings, more crime etc. Heartbreaking for many who have devoted their lives to improving conditions. Good though for the many whities who get on the Government gravy train. Feminist hate the truth because by and large white ladies have had it very good. Unfortuntaley their are exceptions.

Well I've been trying to stay out of this but I gotta have my 2 cents.

I didn't really know that I had any aboriginal heritage until a couple of years back. I'm a shade of white that compares pretty much with any other white person.

My dads mum left my grandfather when my dad was really young and he grew up with his grandparents.
At age 12, he was told that his mother had been killed in a car accident in Sydney.
This was about all I knew about my grandmother and her side of the family until last Christmas.

Over Christmas, my dad showed me this book which he said had been sent to him by a person whom he'd met through ancestry.com who had full details or his mothers side of the family.

My grandmother was part-Aboriginal part-Irish and the book contained full details of the family tree dating back from when they first came to Australia in 1824, up until around the generation of my grandmother.

Now firstly I've always held the opinion (even before I knew I had a family connection) that if anyone has the right to be racist in this country its the indigenous.

But since I've read the book and now understand a little more about one branch of my family tree where I came from I do feel like I want to defend them more - I feel like I want to say want to say hey! don't try to play down in any way what was done to them.

Lining them up along the cliffs of gorges and just shooting them into the ravine. Shooting them for petty things, like stealing a vegetable.
My great-grandmother (its shown in the book) had her kids in different towns. She couldn't stay put in one place for fear of having her children taken, as was the practice.
My indigenous family were only given the option to own the worst most unproductive pieces of land, and even then were prayed upon by white landowners who saw increasing their holdings as just a trivial thing.

I don't know what being made slaves and victims does to a people on their own land, especially when it comes to their mindset and how they feel about being oppressed.

I don't know if its a semi open wound that never really heals, whether some are genuinely just taking advantage of the system.

But I'd like to say that for all their faults (and some of you suggest they were letting the land go to waste) they were on this island for 40,000 years, and during that time they did keep it in pristine condition. Look what we've done to the place in 300yrs.

Hi AC,

I guess you might need some evidence of reported atrocities, if they occurred. It's been easy enough for barflies to trade on rumours.

It's a terrible thing to come to believe that whatever you do, wherever you go, you'll be victimised. That you'll always be a victim. As we know from Martin Seligman's research, 'learned helplessness' is a most insidious danger. It must absolutely sap anybody of any determination to do anything to overcome their situation. I think we have to be very careful not to let that happen, especially in self-reinforcing groups of 'victims'.

In fact, one could see the 'stolen generation' myth as part of that learned helplessness narrative. NO ! There was NO Stolen generation: find the files, the data, and check it out, if anybody really wants to get to the truth. So far, only one case has been demonstrated in all of Australia, and that, Bruce Trevorrow's, was pretty dodgy: if I had been that social worker, I probably would have done something similar - and I did know some of the family, his mum, brothers, stepfather, stepfather's sisters and in-laws, etc.

Cheers,

Joe

The problem with the $1.3 billion pa ABC having a 'Progressive' slant and spruiking such cr@p as the 'Stolen Generations' is that there are many people who accept the myths without question and as fact.

To top it all off, books like The Rabbit Proof Fence are promoted in schools as factual historical records and Indigenous are invited in to scare children with their fictitious PC stories of victimhood.

The victim industry must be one of Australia's largest and booming industries and the taxpayer has to pay for it.