How can you claim something has been stolen from you when you stole it in the first place.

History suggests that many strong indigenous tribes over powered weaker tribes and not only took their claims, but also brutally killed the others off.

So, given there is a huge push by the indigenous community, suggesting that white man stole their land, was it actually theirs to be stolen or, was it just overtaken by yet a more powerful force.

The Maori people ate some of the first people of NZ and yet still managed to make claims on land. Its called leftist logic. Dogma one is to demonise the whites. Dogma two is to glorify cultures that have very barbaric aspects to it.

Butch...human history repeating itself mate, that's all. But hey while you're on a good thing let's keep on saying "sorry" forever and insisting that you were hard done by and demanding a payout for every ill inflicted upon you, your father, his father and his fathers father ad nauseum. As my Grandad once said: "I'm sorry, sorry that my Grandad and his Grandad didn't have enough black-powder and lead to finish the job..."

I've written as posted on OLO a few weeks ago, to the British Government & to HM QEII asking for compensation for my Scots and Irish ancestors being kicked off their lands, shot at by troops, police and whoever. That and to ask atonement on behalf of my other relatives who were kidnapped and shipped out to government homes to be raped, buggered and brutalised by the churches here in Australia. Guess what ? I didn't even get a reply, let alone a "sorry" or sixpence for a cup of hot tea.

But the even funnier thing is, in 2003 my aunt was doing the ancestry dot com and genealogy research thing to find that my grandfather himself was of "aboriginal heritage". Seems around 1820 there was a liaison with my great-great-great grandfather and a young Dharruk woman from around Emu Plains (NSW).

I remember him in 1968, just prior to us leaving to go and live in PNG, standing in tears outside the Wreck Bay (south coast NSW) community with me and my cousins in the car. He was a big man, well over 6' in the old measurement and I'd never seen him get emotional before then. Poppa pointing at the dozen or so houses he had recently built, saying: "Look at this, 6 weeks ago I handed these houses over to the community, and now there's not even a window or a floor board left inside...just burnt out shells. That's the thanks I get from black fellas...!"

Many years later we find out that he himself was actually a "black fella".

60,000 years I seem to recall is the length of time of occupancy evidenced by carbon dating in at least one location if I do not misrecall.

Even if the Original Australians did wipe out a pre-existing group (which I have never heard to be the case and is probably discounted by what we already understand from the genetics) the length of time since then is not an unreasonable basis for a claim of "ownership."

..

I don't see that as the issue though. The problem is, that the happiest times of our lives are when we are children and retired, and arguably, some people at least are better off being on a pension than they otherwise would be as members of the so called "working poor."

But I would suggest to you that it is not the fault of the Original People (many of whom reject you lot outright and I for one do not blame them for that) that the "working poor" are not paid more.

So, short version is is if some people are to get more, other people are to get less. So, who is going to get less? (and do any of them ever want to talk about who gets less when they are talking about who gets more?)

I would say, as I have said before, that there is a gross excess of non-essential personal being paid 100's of dollars per hour on the public purse whose contributions in no shape or form constitute "a fair days pay for a fair days work," nor do the business practices here come close to best practice when it comes to Free Markets. In fact a lot of so called business people are little more than glorified pencil fiddlers for the guvment all for a living wage ++

I want to see the PM in budgey smugglers in a LGBT Salon, front on, inflicting the first stroke of the shears to his own head with his own hand (thereafter he can hand over to the best of professionals) and give the overpaid a big correction.

50 years ago, the dominant theory of Australian pre-history was the tri hybrid theory, which suggested that Aboriginal people are the third people to inhabit mainland Australia. Few Australians currently seem aware of this and it is unclear if this reflects political correctness or weight of scientific evidence. Whatever the case, the matter is far from resolved. That being the case, we should not be inserting preambles into the constitution with unproven claims and we should be wary of handing human remains to Aboriginal groups who currently inhabit an area, as they might not allow the remains to be studied.

Hairy Scottish tribes made Saxon haggis from testicles ( or "pom poms") of poms filled with burnt copies of Magna Carta boiled in cannon fodder. The Scots poachers were shipped to Botany bay and their bandicoot whisky was grabbed by organised Aboriginal land dealers who stole a generation of High Court Judges. China took the lot.

nicknameprick strikes again!!

Dear Butch,

You wrote;

"History suggests that many strong indigenous tribes over powered weaker tribes and not only took their claims, but also brutally killed the others off."

Which history?

about grade 5 if I recall steel. About 1970 I think.

Are you suggesting now that this didn't happen?

Dear Rehctub,

«How can you claim something has been stolen from you when you stole it in the first place»

It's pretty easy - one only needs the ability to speak and the intelligence of a 3-year old or above.

«History suggests that many strong indigenous tribes over powered weaker tribes and not only took their claims, but also brutally killed the others off.»

Ditto for the White/British tribe.

«So, given there is a huge push by the indigenous community, suggesting that white man stole their land, was it actually theirs to be stolen or, was it just overtaken by yet a more powerful force.»

True, the latter.

My question then, is how would you feel once the Chinese, apparently justifiably, get their turn?
(personally I hope to be peacefully resting by then, oblivious to all this Chad-Gadya)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWbFcwicwUo

Butch, you often throw up unsubstantiated material as fact, it suits your narrative. In this case you made the claim that "History suggests that many strong indigenous tribes over powered weaker tribes and not only took their claims, but also brutally killed the others off" That is your justification for European ownership of Australia. What history does suggest is the European colonized Australia without the approval or consent of the indigenous inhabitants. with the use of superior force the British were able to subjugate the Aboriginals, nothing new in that. For two hundred years various arguments were put forward to justify that colonization, your "facts" are simply a part of that argument, an argument that is now discredited. People such as yourself will continue to fight this rear guard action in an attempt to stifle Aboriginal claims, as you perceive you would lose if such claims were successful.

Benk, what we are seeing more and more, is the politicking of "scientific correctness" hand in hand with political correctness...when will it all end ?

When an incumbent government removes wholesale, organisations like those within CSIRO, some whose research, data and evidence is spot on irrefutable, then we are seeing the return of ideologies like that which preceded the rise of Nazism in 1930's Germany.

That scares me.

Primary school textbooks in 1970, eh. Mungo Lady, the first Aboriginal burial (a cremation) dated to the ice ages, was found in 1969, and would not have made it into the 1970 textbooks. 99% of research into Aboriginal prehistory has been done since 1970.
On the same principle, I guess rehctub doesn't believe in pc's, mobile phones, the internet, space shuttles, heart transplants, and all the other things discovered or invented since 1970.
You don't need a degree in archaeology to comment on Aboriginal prehistory, but you are disqualified if you base your comments on 50 yr old information, which is what would have been in a 1970 textbook.

It's quite confronting when you look at the pre-settlement AIATSIS map of Aboriginal Australia.
http://www.abc.net.au/indigenous/map/
So if you take one area of that map, say, the landing site of the first settlement, Sydney, you find an estimated 1,500 Eora people who occupied the entire Sydney coastline including Parramatta in the west and right up to the mouth of the Hawkesbury approaching the central coast. This poses the question: why only 1,500 people occupying this magnificent coastline after the tossed about number of 40,000 years of occupation? And 70% were wiped out by smallpox (introduced) and the 'destruction of natural food sources' (not really sure what that meant in the eighteenth century). Only 1500? Considering there were 1300 on that 1788 first fleet -- and my great, great, great, (and so on) grandfather on the last conflict fleet some years later.
So I'm all for settling up. I think we should return most of the prime foreshore properties as an interim gesture, starting with Point Piper, Elizabeth Bay, Vaucluse, Double Bay etc. It would sure make those of us riddled with guilt living in our fibro homes in the western suburbs who -- like my great, great, great (whatever)grandfather, who received nothing from the invasion -- at least feel a lot better.

Its always from the sublime to the ridiculous with some isn't it?

That's and interesting analogy of the disparity between Sydney's east and Sydney's west -- I guess.