On this coming Sunday, we will be only six months from the fiftieth anniversary of the 1967 Referendum which approved of Indigenous people being counted in the national Census instead of State Censuses only, and for the federal government to make laws specifically for Indigenous people, rather than just the States.

It was hoped that by May next year, the ‘Recognise !’ campaign would have built up enough head of steam to oversee another Referendum, this time on whether or not Australians want to change the Constitution to specifically recognise just Indigenous people.

Indigenous people have their own Flags which one can see every day at schools and post offices, a multitude of organisations are funded for their benefit. Indigenous people are in at least three State and Territory parliaments and the National Parliament. Indigenous members of sporting teams are commonly feted and quite deservedly so.

Clearly this may not seem enough for many Indigenous people. A range of measures have been promoted for public support, but clearly any Referendum proposals would have to have the backing first and foremost of the Indigenous population. In other words, before a national referendum, there may have to be an Indigenous-only referendum, to narrow down the options for the rest of the population to deliberate over.

Currently, they range as follows:

1. No change at all;

2. Mention of the 60,000-year Indigenous presence etc. in the Constitution’s Preamble;

3. A more elaborate clause about Indigenous language and culture within the body of the Constitution;

4. With or without the above, a Treaty either between the Australian Government and Indigenous people, or multiple Treaties with each ‘nation’, i.e. clan;

5. Setting aside land for, and recognition of, an Indigenous State within Australia;

6. The cession of an Indigenous State from Australia and its international recognition as a sovereign nation;

7. The gradual accession of Indigenous power over all of Australia and the repatriation of non-Indigenous people to their home -countries.

If it were possible to organise such a Referendum by next May 27, how would you vote ?

//If it were possible to organise such a Referendum by next May 27, how would you vote ?//

42. Because that is always the right answer when you don't know what the question is.

But seriously, I'll vote yes or no, Joe. Those are the only two options in a referendum. But I'd have to know what the actual question is - not just various proposals for the question - before I collapse the wave function one way or the other.

I've heard it said that Canada is much like Australia, but with more ice and less fire. The non-indigenous Canadians and their indigenous peoples seem to have reached an agreement that both sides are reasonably happy with. Even the Kiwis seem to have managed this better than us.

Would there be any shame in Australia plagiarising from other countries who've got a better answer to the problem than us? Or is it a matter of national pride that it all be our own work, even though we don't seem to have much aptitude for it?

Hi Joe, to answer your list of proposals in a yes/no fashion.

1 No, 2 Yes. 3 Yes, 4 Yes and No, 5 No, 6 No, 7 No and more No.

You did not actually frame a question.

Hi Steele, I know a bit about The Treaty of Waitangi 1840. As it was then, and still is today, Maori and Pakeha are divided on the merits of the treaty. Some agree with it, other vehemently oppose it. Being a one page document, drawn up by men of goodwill, and they were, you would think there would be no problems, but there are numerous disagreements over interpretation, particularly between the Maori and the English versions.

I would like to see a formal treaty with our Indigenous people, but it has to be a fair and balanced document. It should not be some wishy-washy feel good vaguery full of nonsense, or a draconian decree which is biased against 97% of the Australian population. The answer to all that might be 42.

Hi Toni & Paul,

I apologise for not framing an actual yes/no question - I was, in a clumsy way, trying to put forward a range of options, most of which have been canvassed over the past few decades. Clearly, Indigenous people would have to have the opportunity to choose their preferences first - which in any case may well cover a similar range of options.

It would be obviously inappropriate to put any question, or questions, to the Australian people generally until Indigenous people have had that opportunity.

Of course, organising an Indigenous-only process of choice will take time and money, and will probably raise issues concerning who can and can't express their choice. As well, a 'No' campaign would have to be funded as well as a 'Yes' campaign.

Even then, there may be problems with how to 'translate' those choices into a form which all Australians can deliberate over at a Referendum. For example, should the single most popular option of Indigenous voters be the only question for all Australians to give a yes or no to, at a subsequent Referendum ? Or should, say, their three most popular options be on the Referendum paper ?

Whichever option is chosen by the Australian people, by a majority of voters in a majority of States, can then be acted on. This all may take some time. I hope I'm still here to participate in it.

Cheers,

Joe

As I said previously, I would have no mention of race at all.
In some hundred years or so we will all have some aboriginal blood in our DNA.
This is just the same as we all have some DNA of the Kings of England.
There is no point in having a mention of aboriginals unless it is to
enable some benefit. We have that already, aboriginal or Torres Strait.
It becomes pointless.

Rather than add the word aborigine or Indigenous to the constitution, I would vote to remove both from the language, if that is what it takes to fix the mess.

With this done we could then treat all Australians as equals, rather than some as special cases.

just because aborigines were earlier immigrants to this land is no reason to give them special treatment, or indeed treat them as second class citizens.

This would also remove thousands of obviously useless bureaucrats from the taxpayers burden.

Okay, thanks, that gets the ball rolling :) So far, we have votes as follows:

Option 1: Two votes

Option 2: One vote

Option 3: One vote

Option 4: One vote

Option 5: No votes

Option 6: No votes

Option 7: No votes.

Informal: One.

Starting to shape up !

Sooner or later, we shall all have to vote in such a Referendum, so it's important to know what we might be asked and for us all to think carefully about our preferences. This process might take another decade, but its implications will set policy for much longer.

Cheers,

Joe

I'm with Hasbeen on this one. I will be voting no. The victimhood status granted by the lefties have already done more damage to the Indigenous people than all others combined.

I will vote no because, if passed, the circus would be administrated by unelected judges of the High Court, who's meddling in politics has already taken the politics out of the hands of the Australian people and lodged it entirely with government. Thanks to High Court interference in politics and their activist, highly fanciful intepretations, our system of Federation has been wrecked, ensuring that more and more decisions and powers are being centralised in Canberrra, totally isolated from the states and the Australian people. The High Court, in fact, has already handed the key of the Constitution to incompetent politicians and their elitist power brokers, beavering away behind the scenes. In the case of Recognise, 88% of Aboriginals see sovereignty as the top issue, no matter what the devious politicions tell us.

Anyone not sure how they will vote would do no better than reading Keith Windschuttle's "The Breakup of Australia: The real agenda behind Aboriginal recognition". The price is a bit steep, but for nothing, you can read a long exerpt on The Quadrant Online, which will give you a fair idea what is going on, and how we are having the wool pulled over our eyes - as usual.

Hi Joe, the reality is no one person can frame the question(s). A very tricky proposition to come up with something of substance, and still achieve bipartisan support, from the moderate sides of politics. Some people have a closed mind and are going to vote no to any proposed change(s), regardless of the question.

Hi Paul,

Yes, that's why it is likely that there would have to be a formal vote amongst Indigenous people first, with a range of options to choose from. [Of course, the range of options may be expanded from my miserable list].

If one option stood out far above any others, then the Australian people could be asked to vote on that proposal. And if, say, there were three or four options with a fair degree of popularity amongst those initial Indigenous voters, then those options could be put up for the Australian people to decide between.

And whichever option was chosen, by a majority of the population in a majority of states, would be the 'winner'.

Of course, some of these options would have to be spelt out well beforehand: for example, if the option of a Treaty was proposed, clearly there would have to be clear understanding of what was IN a treaty, which entities it would be between, how it might be implemented, etc.

Hmmmm ..... a bit of work to be done yet .....

I've been up to Waitangi a couple of times and studied the monument there, with (I think) the Preamble to the Treaty, in Maori and English. My Maori is pretty basic, but the Maori version seemed to differ slightly from the English. It had a very definite purpose, it seems, to surrender sovereignty to the British in return for protection from other tribes - absolutely nothing about land or tenure or surrender of land, by the way.

It's interesting that the great Maori jurist, Hugh Kawharu, wrote two books (well, many really), one on 'Maori Land tenure', and the other on 'The Treaty of Waitangi', and there was little cross-over. Sovereignty, or its surrender, doesn't have to involve land tenure.

Cheers,

Joe

Joe, has anyone suggested a sunset clause for the amendment.
It seems ridiculous that it would still be there in 1000 years time.

Oops, sorry, I'm misused the terms 'referendum' with 'plebiscite': as Toni Lavis has pointed out on another thread, we need to avoid

" .... confusing plebiscites with referendums. A plebiscite only needs a majority to pass, but it's non-binding. A referendum needs a majority in the majority of states - much harder to achieve - but it is binding. Referendums can only be held on constitutional matters."

So I'm tentatively suggesting that any agreement about 'Recognition' would have to be deliberated first by Indigenous people at a PLEBISCITE - deciding by a simple majority of voters what should be put to the Australian people at a subsequent REFERENDUM, i.e. a change to the Constitution.

Of course this process would have to be funded by the national government, both a 'Yes' case and a 'No' case.

I would respectfully suggest that the elites who have initiated this 'Recognition' issue have a hell of a lot of work to do over the next few years.

Joe

Joe do you recognise that your suggestion is acting as if we have already given just 3% of the population the exclusive right to set the agenda for all.

This is exactly why any thinking person would vote a very large NO to this bit of politicking, if it ever comes to it. This a typically left ploy to start with something that looks harmless, before turning it into something destructive, to use to control & rule all.

I don't know how many will think hard enough to see this for what it is, but expect the Ozzy bulldust detector will be triggered, & will probably consign it to another failure.

//Joe, has anyone suggested a sunset clause for the amendment.//

It dies when you do, Bazz. Or at the very least, it stops effecting you in any way, shape or form. Which is pretty much the same thing.

I don't know if you believe in an afterlife or not, but even if you do I sincerely doubt that you believe it's run according to the Australian Constitution.

Unless you agree with Belinda Carlisle that heaven is a place on earth. But if that's true then the place is clearly the Scottish Highlands, in which case the Constitution of Heaven is British.

//It seems ridiculous that it would still be there in 1000 years time.//

It seems ridiculous that anybody would try to predict the future 1000 years from now.

Hi Bazz,

A sunset clause: perhaps that should be included in any question or questions in a referendum.

Hi Hasbeen,

Any questions so important to Indigenous people would surely have to get their concurrence first, before being put to Australians generally ? That seems to be how their 'leaders' want it anyway.

Hi Toni,

You suggest that the location of Heaven " .... is clearly the Scottish Highlands, in which case the Constitution of Heaven is British."

For the time being .....

Cheers,

Joe

Australian's are and never will be treated equally under the law.
If you are a member of the rich elite.Bill Shorten,Iman Malcolm Turncoat come to mind.
These people are born into a safe and friendly neighbourhood.They have accountants and lawyers willing to advise them from cradle to grave.
They are able to get the best inheritance advise,Tax and legal advise.They are able to join exclusive clubs and organisations both public and secret.
The children who have had to watch their father dragged out of home by the local Police.Then later found out that they were the wrong person.
The children who cannot get a job as they are living in a town with massive unemployment.
The families who struggle to earn enough doing casual work.
These families will never be self funded retirees as they never have any cash left over at the end of the week.
Centrelink will hunt them down if they earn a few dollars on the side. The elite will get an accountant to claim thousands in rebates.
There will never be equality in Australia while the rich get tax breaks such as Superannuation and work related entertainment.
Poor Australians both black and white are discriminated from birth.
They will never get their parents to buy them a home.

Thank you to all contributors to this important discussion. Votes in this straw poll seem to be as follows:

Option 1: Four? votes

Option 2: One vote

Option 3: One vote

Option 4: One vote (for 4 (a), but not for 4 (b))

Option 5: No votes

Option 6: No votes

Option 7: No votes.

Informal: One [or maybe four ?].

Very roughly, it seems that more conservative voters would choose Options 1 and 2, i.e. little or no change; while more progressive voters would choose Options 3 and maybe 4. Options 5, 6 and 7 seem to be well beyond what would be acceptable.

Cheers,

Joe

Well, Joe, we don't know what the questions will be; but,now well into " Breaking Up Australia", I am even more convinced that the referendum must fail. No matter what the questions are, or how they are worded, the activist judges on the High Court will give the 3% whatever they want. But, what will Aboriginal-identifying Australians vote? The 2011 Census revealed that there were under 690,000 of them, nearly 80% living in cities and urban areas, with about 20% in remote locations. Of about 100 remote locations, some had as few as 2 people, most had 20 to 40 people. Do we really believe that the majority of Aboriginals really want to leave modernity and it's benefits in cities and towns to go bush, have nothing, and suffer under brutal, undemocratic traditional law? I would not have thought so. Did you read ABC News online today, describing the foul-mouthed thug, Noel Pearson and they way he addresses government education officials and white women? The average person identifying as Aboriginal is fine, but their self-appointed 'leaders' really, really hate us, Joe.

Hi Ttbn,

I suspect that there would be a wide range of Indigenous preferences in any Referendum, predominantly at Options 1, 2 and 3 but tailing off right through to Option 8. Amongst some organisational elite staff and remote leaders, there may be a spike for Option 4, a Treaty, or even for Option 5, a separate State within Australia (not that the elites would ever go there to live). Some urban radicals would prefer Options 6 and 7, a separate, independent State with or without non-Indigenous people.

But this may be part of the problem: that Indigenous people themselves are not in agreement about what they want. I suspect that non-Indigenous people would favour Options 1 and 2, with some Greens favouring a Treaty. Of course, nobody knows what would be in a treaty but one might sound good.

If it comes down to it, my bet is that the majority of Australians, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, would favour Option 1.

So what this whole Recognition process might lay bare is that there isn't much agreement, reconciliation or concurrence, certainly not any unanimity, within either Indigenous OR non-Indigenous society, let alone across Australian society, about Indigenous Recognition. Its initiators may be wishing that they had never tried to start this whole business.

Cheers,

Joe

But would people who are 50% aboriginal and 50% European origin get
the same as someone who is 75% European and 25% aboriginal ?
What about someone who is 10% aboriginal, 15% Asian and 75% who knows what ?
What level would enable them to be able to live in the new state ?
What would be purpose of the new clauses ?
Would they have a purpose ?
Can you see where this is leading ?
It would become a bureaucrats paradise.
Just have nothing about peoples race in it at all !

Hi Bazz,

When the Black State proposal was first made back in the early twenties by Colonel Genders here in Adelaide, it seemed to be assumed that, like it or not, all 'full-blood' Aboriginal people would be required to go there, sealed inside an 'inviolate' area populated only by other 'full-bloods', missionaries, nurses and administrators. Back then, Aboriginal people were pretty sophisticated, so they wouldn't have a bar of it.

Presumably it wouldn't be in the most lush and productive parts of Australia, but out in the sticks, where there are currently very few non-Indigenous people, since they might have to be 'trans-located'. I would confidently suggest that not one single urban elite member would re-locate there, so god knows how it would be staffed. And the slightest whiff of compulsion would rightly bring charges of Apartheid, not that the current elites and radicals seem to understand that Apartheid may not be a Good Thing - it's separatism, after all, so it must be good. People have learnt so much since the twenties.

It's all a fantasy, Bazz, nobody is going to move to some bush site IF they haven't done so already. And I haven't noticed any charge into the bush on the part of the elites. Or the radicals either. The poor buggers already living out there would gladly swap, I'm sure.

And if not a separate State within Australia, i.e. funded from Canberra, then a completely independent State separated off from Australia is an even bigger daydream.

Cheers,

Joe

Actually I should not have mentioned the new state as that was not
really the point I was making.
The question is;
What facilities, rights, advantages, finance is to be given to those
who claim to be aborigine ?
Will a 10% aborigine get the same as an 75% aborigine ?
Will a 50% aborigine get the same as me a 0% aborigine ?
If not why not ?
Who will arbitrate these percentages ?

After all I was born here as were my parents.
As was my great grandfather.

Hi Bazz,

It could be that what passes for discussion about Recognise! has pushed the reactionary discourse about difference and special rights, has reached its logical end. As you suggest, the best resolution is to recognise the needs of people as they arise and cater for them, regardless of their 'difference' or claims for special rights.

Matt Ridley has a brilliant article in today's Australian on the bankruptcy of identity politics: he contrasts the equal rights struggle of Dr Martin Luther King with today's grab-bag for special rights: as he points out, since when did a genuine Left ever give preference to the colour of one's skin rather than the content of their character ? How on earth can special rights be progressive ?

And, as you point out, how do you calibrate extra rights with one's degree of ancestry or skin colour ? Aboriginality today, at least in 'settled' Australia, is of course far more historically and sociologically diverse than any definition by 'race' or 'culture', so the most equitable way to provide services to people must surely be on the basis of need, regardless of ancestry.

Just by the way, watching the previews of tonight's SBS series on Aboriginal society, it seemed that someone (maybe Tom Ballard?) made some outrageous comment to the effect that Aboriginal culture was so fundamental that it outweighed the rights of Aboriginal people themselves to live as they pleased - maybe I got that wrong. No, if people wish to live comfortable lives in the cities, and to gain the education and skills to enable them to do that, it's nobody else's business but theirs.

Cheers,

Joe

Hi again Bazz,

Going back maybe forty years, most Aboriginal people in the 'South' would have known only their Aboriginal relations, no matter how much of their ancestry was non-Aboriginal. Two generations later, the great majority have that much more non-Aboriginal ancestry and are far more likely to know their non-Aboriginal uncles and aunts and cousins and grandparents, etc. than ever before.

Back about 1993, I knocked up an article about Mabo and the urgent need to put together a Register of Indigenous people, ideally with basic family trees, to avoid claims being made by non-Indigenous people, along with some mechanism to verify claims of Indigeneity. Maybe such a Register, or Registers, was/were put together, maybe for the ATSIC elections; I hope so.

Following the 1937 Conference, Norman Tindale was contracted in 1938-1941 or so to visit every Indigenous community and population centre in Australia, record names and family trees, etc. and photograph everybody he could. Often those photos are the only ones known of many people. One SA community council enlarged this collection of photos and put them up all around their rooms: brilliant. What was striking, by the way, about the photos was that everyone was looking directly, clearly, openly, unblinking, at the camera - no bullsh!t about not looking at a stranger and all that sort of colonialist rubbish. Leave that to the Greens.

Anyway, the family histories are there if people want to dig into them. All that Tindale material is in the SA Museum, but available only to Indigenous people: they should ring 08 8207 7375 to find out how to tap into theif family history in Tindale's collection, who and where they lived, and other details.

08 8207 7375: persist, don't take 'no' for an answer.

Joe

OK Joe, thats good. Someone should put it up onto a genealogy site.
There is very good software available for that sort of job.
I was able to find my Great-Great-Grandfather that way.
Lived near Bath and married Sarah.

Hi Bazz,

Yes, we've all got eight great-great-grandfathers (and eight gr-gr-grandmothers too). Trying to write out a family tree rapidly becomes a huge, wide, enterprise. When I was much younger, I did a vast family tree of all the Greek gods and heroes mentioned in Robert Graves' 'Greek Myths' - it covered a couple of square metres on butcher's paper. My mum accidentally threw it out.

The Ngarrindjeri down here in SA have been lucky that the wonderful Fay Gale and Doreen Kartinyeri put together huge family trees of people from Raukkan, from the late '70s. Doreen later put each major family (Sumner, Wilson, Rigney, Rankine, Kartinyeri, and Wanganeens from Point Pearce) into readable books. It's interesting that some early families seemed to disappear entirely, while others grew very large and more extensive with each generation, including up to a couple of thousand family members.

So Tindale's family trees would provide incredibly valuable foundations for anybody trying to put together their families, anywhwere in Australia. But locking them away in a museum seems precisely the wrong way to go: Tindale's data is already nearly eighty years old, so people need to move fairly quickly to get hold of those family foundations in order to build family trees up to the present. In fact, Doreen's data, printed in the 1990s, is already a generation behind, there would have been many people married, born (and died) since then.

Museums act like dung beetles, finding and hoarding bits of information away and not making enthusiastic efforts to let people know what's there. People need to be the butterflies, find out what's there and fly away with it.

Joe

At some point I believe aborigine families would have started registering
their BDMs so they would give a link back to the previous generation.
I hope someone presumably in Sth Australia does the job.

Hi Bazz,

On missions and government settlements, Aboriginal people were amply recorded, and often curious missionaries would dig deeper and find out ancestries going back before 1800.

My wife could trace hers back to her great-great-grandmother Ngaikinyeri and her son John Sumner on one side, and Rebecca Giles on the other; that's her maternal grandfather's side, and she could do something similar with the other sides. She would have had ancestors going back to the lower Murray Lakes, Yorke Peninsula, the Fleurieu Peninsula via Kangaroo Island and perhaps the southern Adelaide area.

This is one mistake that phonies make, that nobody can check, there won't be records anyway, so they can get away with claiming to be Indigenous. Yes, there are, oodles of them. And one day, they will be called to account.

Oh, of course, then there's the 'Stolen Generation'. One person so far. But that ruse has worked well for nearly forty years now. Of course, there were many kids taken into care, and there would be ample records of that as well. Perhaps they should have the courage to take their cases to court.

On that subject of children in care: certainly from the late forties, if not earlier, here in SA, the Children's Welfare and Public Relief Board paid mothers, usually single or deserted mothers, to look after their kids. I've seen a list from about 1952 of the names of about fifty Aboriginal kids who were being supported like this, and, it seems, until they turned sixteen. That would have given mothers the chance to hang onto their kids and raise them properly. So much for a 'Stolen Generation'.

Cheers,

Joe

Hi Ttbn,

I've just finished Windschuttle's book on the possible proposals for a Recognition Referendum. As usual, Windschuttle is thorough with his research and exhaustive with his evidence, as any good historian should be. Leave 'post-truth' for the liars and bigots, I suggest.

It seems that the more 'radical' a proposal may be, the less relationship it bears to the real world: for example, the notion of a separate State, either within or outside of the rest of Australia, presupposes functional, hard-working, busy and supportive communities in remote areas. Is this so ? is it even likely ? Are 'communities' currently poster-material, likely to attract any of the 80 % of Indigenous people who live in cities to flock out there and devote their lives and careers to building little Utopias ? What halfwit believes that ?

Windschuttle's book is reviewed in The Australian today, well worth buying just for that. On the opposite page is a review of Stan Grant's Quarterly Essay, in which he hints at my last paragraph above. He cites an essay written by my darling wife about ten years ago, differentiating an opportunity-oriented Indigenous population from a welfare-oriented population. Back then, the total number of Indigenous university graduates was only about twenty thousand; since then, it has doubled. Maria never doubted that graduate numbers could reach fifty thousand by 2020, and she was right.

She would be very proud - actually I think she would have suggested a new target, a hundred thousand by 2032 or so - and would echo Stan Grant's comment about white people's worry that Indigenous people might lose their 'culture' by seeking education - that Indigenous people 'have the right to do anything they damn like'.

[TBC]

[continued]

But people like Maria and Stan Grant seem to be poles apart from the deluded Sovereigntists who very likely have never lived or worked in 'communities' and would therefore not have a clue how difficult - impossible perhaps - it is to get anything positive going there. It was hard forty years ago, and a damn sight harder today. Is there a single vegetable garden on any Aboriginal 'community' ? Yet people complain about the price of food. Well, grow the bloody stuff. No ? Why not, because there is actually plenty of money slopping around, thanks to the many money trees in Canberra ? So why work ? Why even get any education ? White fellas can do it all for us anyway.

Oh, we can't dig up the soil, that's out Mother Earth, some say. Utter bullshirt: how did/do women gather food ? What's their usual tool ? A digging stick. They dig out a whole tree to get at the marku. And in patriarchal societies like most of those in the 'North', they are not even on their own land but on their men's. And the men don't complain. Any more bullshirt excuses ?

Needless to say, Windschuttle is highly recommended, as an antidote to so much poisonous rubbish. Well worth fifty bucks.

Yes, in case you're wondering, I'm with Option One.

Joe

On the subject of Indigenous university participation, I checked out the relationship in the figures between bachelor-level graduations and post-graduate commencements. I was amazed to find that it was around 100 %: that, within a reasonable time, bachelor graduates re-enrol in post-graduate study. Perhaps not all, perhaps some PGs are onto their second or third new course.

But clearly, Indigenous students and graduates have tended overwhelmingly to be enrolled at degree-level or above, in mainstream courses. In fact, from the earliest records, the great majority of Indigenous university students have been enrolled at degree-level or above, and in mainstream courses. There was a burst of channelling Indigenous students into Indigenous-oriented courses between about 1985 and 2000 - a weird sort of Left-Apartheid - after which the sub-degree courses were wound down - but so few Indigenous students, as far as I can tell, ever enrolled in degree-level, Indigenous-oriented courses that, effectively by about 2005, they had become an endangered species, perhaps 2 % of all enrolments (but maybe 5 % of Master's-level enrolments). So much for the prattle about 'culture'.

The upshot is that, in spite of the efforts of the education elites to restrict Indigenous participation at universities, and to cultivate a small coterie of disciples through post-graduate study, to be absorbed into the loyalty structures which seem to dominate many university and other organisations, mainstream undergraduates will, within a short period, go on to enrol in post-graduate study, and - as Stan Grant says - do what they damn like. So, by 2020, of the fifty-odd thousand graduates, close to a quarter will be post-graduates.

I was thinking of starting up a web-site of 'good news stories from Indigenous Australia', because as well as in higher education, surely there must be positive stories out there, projects which are not just flash-in-the-pan but sustained (and replicable) ? Stories of Indigenous people working wonders ? Live in hope :)

Joe

Right I will be voting NO in the Referendum for Constitutional change re Recognition.

1/ Aborigines are already mentioned in the Constitution they are called Australians.
2/ Any treaty surely needed to have been made with the British, they Colonised Australia.

I would however vote YES to changes to the Constitution where Aborigines are specifically referred to as non-citizens or fauna, due to the ignorance and politics of the time.

Hi T800,

Where on earth do people get this idea about 'fauna' from ? Where is there any mention of Aboriginal people as fauna anywhere, let alone in the Constitution ? It's a furphy: from the outset, they were considered British subjects, like all other British subjects - and now that we are Australian citizens (since the 1948 Citizenship Act), Indigenous people are automatically Australian citizens.

In the earlier days in SA, if an Aboriginal prisoner was up in court, say for murder, but there wasn't an interpreter, he was let go. That's in accord with British justice. In case you're wondering, the last Aboriginal person executed (for murder) was hanged in eighteen sixty two; the last white fella was hanged in nineteen sixty four. 1862: 1964.

When white men got the vote here, so did Aboriginal men. when women got the vote in SA in 1895, so did Aboriginal women.

Where do these crazy ideas come from ? No offence, T800.

Cheers,

Joe

Sydney Morning Herald (May 23, 2007) – Linda Burney, an Aboriginal politician, repeats the claim during an interview with the Sydney Morning Herland. In the article she is quoted as saying, “It still staggers me that for the first 10 years of my life, I existed under the Flora and Fauna Act of NSW.” The SBS quote in the section above seems to be referring to this quote.

Been doing the rounds forever, there are parts of the Constitution that do need amending though... just cant quite remember what and where they are without reading the boring bloody thing again.

Hi T800,

When you find the offending sections in the Constitution, please let me know :)

Part of the confusion may be the way that Ministers, in all governments, may have mixed portfolios - Education and welfare (does that mean that education is only a welfare issue ?), transport and infrastructure (does that mean the minister is concerned only with roads ?), and famously in the McMahon government, a minister for the Arts, Environment and Aboriginal Affairs (Did that mean that Islanders were ignored ? Are Aborigines part of the environment ? Are Aboriginal issues all subsumed under 'Arts' ?)

Back in the nineteenth century, governments had far fewer ministers, five or six, so their responsibilities covered many disparate areas. They usually had the wits to keep them separate. In SA, the minister ('Secretary' or 'Commissioner') responsible for Aboriginal affairs was the Commissioner of Crown Lands and Immigration - did that mean that Aborigines were immigrants, or just part of 'Land' ? No, it meant that he had a range of responsibilities, including as well (from memory) settling Irish immigrant girls, issues concerning the Destitute, and probably the environment.

Could that be it ? Why some dumb-arse goes on about 'being part of the flora and fauna' ? Christ, a little learning certainly is a dangerous thing.

T800, if you ever come across something that seems absurd, it probably is: investigate, don't accept anybody's word for it, especially from someone who wants to make a huge grievance out of a tiny ant-hill.

Frankly, I've had respect for Burney for thirty years, but it's taken a huge dent over this foolishness.

Cheers,

Joe

I don't respect Birney or Grant... they both decided to ignore half their ancestral heritage...

As for Birney and fauna... I'd expect an MP State and Federal would know what she was talking about... I simply accepted that they know more than me and I must have missed it... I think 25 and 51 are the contentious parts they keep referring to.

Hi T800,

Yes, you would think so, ay ? Anyway, here's the Constitution:

https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2013Q00005

Sections 25 and 51:

25. Provision as to races disqualified from voting

For the purposes of the last section, if by the law of any State all persons of any race are disqualified from voting at elections for the more numerous House of the Parliament of the State, then, in reckoning the number of the people of the State or of the Commonwealth, persons of that race resident in that State shall not be counted.

51. Legislative powers of the Parliament

The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to:

(xxvi) the people of any race, for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws;

I thought that Section 25 had been scrapped by the 1967 Referendum; Section 51 was modified by it. They were both State-oriented clauses. Neither has much place in today's conditions. Neither clause said anything about 'flora and fauna'.

Perhaps it's still wise not to believe anything without some evidence. From 1788, Indigenous people were deemed, like it or not, to be British subjects. Again and again, that ruling was applied (and presumably was also breached at least as often). But how could any British subjects be fauna ?

Please let's bury this rubbish and move on.

Cheers,

Joe

Hi T800,

Speaking of rubbish, in today's Australian, Shirley Peasley from Kingston in SA's South-East, asserted (p. 2) that 'terra nullius' meant that Aboriginal people weren't acknowledged as being in Australia at the time of settlement/invasion/contact.

I wonder who on earth ever suggested that ? Cook in 1770 writes of never being out of sight of the smoke from camp fires. Sturt, as we all learnt at school, was confronted in his journey down the Murray in 1830 or so, by a party of several hundred Aboriginal warriors. Phillip anticipated working with Aboriginal leaders before he arrived. That bastard Dampier spoke of seeing the 'most miserabilist people on earth' in the Kimberley in the 1680s. Hartog wrote in the 1640s of giants climbing trees in Tasmania. Many early explorers were speared, presumably by someone.

So who ever said that there were no Aborigines in Australia ? Nobody. Straw man.

But what did 'terra nullius' mean originally, in Roman law ? As far as I can tell, it meant 'land over which there did not seem to be any organisation of ownership'. Small islands, shoals, reefs, etc. and usually not inhabited. The problem seems to be whether or not a foraging system of land USE - which was recognised across Australia by the British, by the way (and still is, at least in South Australia) - amounted to a system of land OWNERSHIP, proprietorship, 'to the exclusion of all others', or was a much more basic system of land USE, providing what are called usufructuary rights to the land, which are recognised in British common law.

Unless I'm mistaken, the earliest use of the term in relation to Australia was made by Justice Blackburn in the Gove Case, in 1971. It was taken up then by Henry Reynolds in his series of books, culminating in its dismissal by the High Court in the Mabo case, 1992.

So the question should be, not whether or not people were here, but whether or not they had a recognisable system of land ownership, proprietorship, and/or title. The High Court said yes. End of.

Joe

I for one will not vote for this referendum because I just do not trust the federal govt because how come we only have a referendum which is binding on the govt, when the govt wants us to have a referendum?

This is vote is supposed to be about aboriginal recognition issues but I bet my bottom dollar there will be something sinister and underhanded go on as well.

Something tells the Australian people will be blackmailed into a situation where if you want 'x' then you must give the federal govt 'y'

Why is this upcoming referendum NOT ALSO about establishing mechanisms which make it relatively easy for the AUSTRALIAN PEOPLE TO INITIATE A REFERENDUM?

We have to learn off the Swiss experience people!

//From 1788, Indigenous people were deemed, like it or not, to be British subjects. Again and again, that ruling was applied (and presumably was also breached at least as often).//

Although in Queensland, they didn't have the right to vote until 1962. We haven't all been as nice to the Aboriginals as you South Australians.

Hi Toni,

Yeah, we forget now that Indigenous affairs were still officially State matters until the 1967 Referendum - that, in fact, this may have been the point of the Referendum - to take Indigenous affairs out of the hands of States and lodge them with the Commonwealth.

Even so, it seems that the law after the Commonwealth Electoral Act of 1949 ensured the right of Indigenous people to vote in Commonwealth elections IF they had the right to vote in their respective State elections.

This is interesting, because of course the Northern Territory was administered by the Commonwealth at the time, so Indigenous people there automatically gained the vote - but as we know, by declaring 'full-blood' Aboriginal people to be 'wards', they were barred from voting. But people of mixed race did have the right, even if they had to keep fighting for it well into the mid-fifties, when they were exempted (I think?) from the restrictions of any legislation. Somebody would know much better than I do.

Thanks,

Joe

Dear Joe (Loudmouth),

I don't quiet understand what all the fuss is about.

If our Indigenous people want to be recognised in the
Constitution - give it to them. Because history and
anthropology records show the fact that the original
inhabitants of the Australian continent have resided
in this land for approx. 50,000 years.

All other arrived much later.

For us not to recognise the original inhabitants seems
unjust.

Really?
I recall Mungo Man... and then there were also apparently pigmies in Northern Queensland.

In the study of human evolution, the skeletal record has thrown up a few spanners in the works that may one day transform beliefs about where humans came from.

One of these spanners is Mungo Man, who was discovered in 1974 in the dry lake bed of Lake Mungo in west NSW. Mungo Man was a hominin who was estimated to have died 62,000 years ago. Anatomically, Mungo Man's bones were distinct from other human skeletons being unearthed in Australia. Unlike the younger skeletons that had big-brows and thick-skulls, Mungo Man's skeleton was finer, and more like modern humans.

The ANU's John Curtin School of Medical Research found that Mungo Man's skeleton's contained a small section of mitochondrial DNA. After analysing the DNA, the school found that Mungo Man's DNA bore no similarity to the other ancient skeletons, modern Aborigines and modern Europeans.

Furthermore, his mitochondrial DNA had become extinct. The results called into question the 'Out of Africa' theory of human evolution. If Mungo Man was descended from a person who had left Africa in the past 200,000 years, then his mitochondrial DNA should have looked like all of the other samples.

So the question is should Aboriginals be considered the first "Australians" after all.

Dearest Foxy,

How wonderful to have you back with us, discussion has been quite dull without you (no offense, fellas) !

The Constitution doesn't mention any group of people, that's not its purpose: it's a document of rules between States, and how the country is to be governed. It could be argued that it would be inappropriate to insert any mention of any group of Australians, to the exclusion of others.

Hi T800,

Are you suggesting that Mungo Man wasn't actually human ? That his DNA has no resemblance to that of any other human being anywhere ?

Actually, I thought that his skeleton was dated to about 32,000 years ago, after a long warm period (perhaps twenty thousand years) of lush growth across Australia, when most of the interior was well-watered and forested, and when humans were much more likely to be gracile, lean and tall, rather than short and stocky, or robust, like those found in Kow Swamp in Victoria from twenty thousand years later, after the Ice Age.

Are you suggesting that there have been successive invasions of different groups, that the groups of which Mungo man was a part were wiped out ? You would need a bit more evidence, because that wouldn't be the only possible conclusion to draw: 'Mungo People', if we could use that term, may have formed a very small, isolated group and died out when the Ice Age hit a couple of thousand years later.

Either way, nobody is surely arguing that SOME people were here in Australia long before Europeans arrived ? Whether it was a hundred or a thousand or ten thousand years, is not really relevant.

But still, the Constitution may not be the sort of document which deals with that, that may not be what it's for.

Cheers,

Joe

Dear Joe (Loudmouth),

Thank You for the "Welcome Back."
I've missed you too.

I cam across the following website which explains
what Indigenous Constitutional recognition means and
why we should do it. I'd be interested in what you
think of it?

http://www.theconversation.com/explainer-what-indigenous-constitutional-recognition-means-31770

Dearest Foxy,

Yes, by all means, let's get rid of any clauses in the constitution which mention 'race'. I fully agree. And NOT to put something back in which does.

There are possibly enormous implications in every proposal to insert something into the Constitution, and obviously this would also be the case with a Treaty (with one single Indigenous entity, or with each of the hundreds of nations) or any move towards Indigenous sovereignty. Even something as innocuous as a sentence in the Preamble about Indigenous languages and cultures would have far-reaching implications, if interpreted as such by courts, for school curricula, social policy, tourism, etc.

If you can get hold of Keith Windschuttle's new book, 'The Break-Up of Australia', or read his articles in the last two editions of Quadrant, you may get a better idea of what could happen.

I'm all for full equal rights for all people in Australia, including Indigenous people. Whatever makes attainment of those rights easier, I'll stand on the battlements for. But not for any half-arsed, half-thought-out, neo-Apartheid notion of driving (or 'encouraging') urban Indigenous people out to some god-forsaken desert 'State' in the sticks where nobody, even now, seems to be able to make anything work. Dumb, dumb, dumb ideas.

Overwhelmingly now, Indigenous people are urban. They've chosen urban. Nobody forced them. Few urban people seem to have moved out to desert 'communities', certainly not any of the elites, and they won't in the future. So what on earth can 'Sovereignty' mean ? Or even a Treaty ? And wouldn't it be discriminatory to insert clauses in the Constitution specifically mentioning only Indigenous people ?

So clearly I'm in support of 'No Change', apart from removal of those potentially discriminatory clauses.

Lots of love,

Joe

Dear Joe (Loudmouth),

As always you've made me think raising some very valid points.
Ttbn has recommended that book to me also. I'll ask for
it for Christmas. Sounds interesting - and I'm all for
broadening this debate and reading other opinions.
Thanks for responding in such a lovely way.

Dear Foxy,

Nothing could give me more pleasure than making you happy :)

Love,

Joe

PS. Those Quadrant articles are available on-line. Like all good historians, Windschuttle writes exhaustively, thoroughly, citing evidence for each point, I suppose like a lawyer would in court. We an surmise, we can prefer one plausible story over another, we can assert (and thereby condemn anyone who disagrees with our assertions) - or we can try to find evidence and base our beliefs and understandings on that evidence. That's much more time-consuming. But of course, you can lose friends that way :) It's probably even more problematic with things like a Treaty if only because it's in the future, it hasn't actually happened yet, nobody has even clarified what the hell is supposed to be in one that is acceptable to 'both' sides. Now, that's an aspect that nobody has thought of: acceptable to 'both' sides. Or all sides, really, since there would be so much disagreement. Christ, life's too short.

Joe

Dear Joe (Loudmouth),

You're such a sweetie.

But back to the topic...

This Recognition Referendum is certainly a complex issue.
I did look up the book on line. I read bits from it. I'm
still going to ask for the book for Christmas - it will
keep me busy over the holiday period. The views that you
state and ttbn states - also reflect my husband's views.
He'll be delighted to buy me Windschuttle's book.

Dearest Foxy,

Your husband is not just lucky, but intelligent as well. Don't tell him.

I've been struggling with the Indigenous Narrative for decades now, I've gone from a 100 % True Believer to a Sceptic about most of it. Living in a community was a wonderful encounter with reality. But even after that, I had a rock-solid belief in many of the pillars of the Narrative, for example 'that Indigenous people live in poverty'. So in 1982, I did an income study of the community where we had lived, assuming of course that aspect of the Narrative. Instead, I found that average income there was equal to the Australian average. This was incredibly traumatic, I went over and over the figures and eventually buried them.

Then I read the Journals of the missionary who had set up Point McLeay Mission, on the lower Lakes of the Murray. Of course I assumed that he might have written them - fabricated them - with an eye to the distant future, but it was soon clear that he simply wrote down what he did and what he experienced, no more and no less. What he described over twenty years transformed my understanding of early life - no, no herding onto the mission (how ? One person ? Why ? If anything, people came and went as they pleased, and he was picky about who could be catered for, if only because of his shortage of funds). In the next fifty or sixty years, no great numbers of kids being brought to, or taken from the Mission, and no evidence of a 'stolen generation'. And none since either. Reality rules, not convenient Narrative.

Yes, the British invaded and settled Australia, probably the One Great Crime. But even now, who would go back to an entirely traditional life ? Nobody seems to be rushing. So, the Terrible Question: are Indigenous people better off living modern lives or going back to foraging ? I suspect that that Great Crime has been, or is being, paid for.

[TBC]

[continued]

Yes, there were probably massacres and, out beyond official control, driving people off their land; maybe: after all, pastoralists needed labour everywhere and yes, it does seem - at least in South Australia - that Indigenous workers were paid equal wages or their equivalent. During the depression, the SA Protector complained that men at missions and settlements refused to work for less than award wages, which other Australian men were doing at the time, just to get by.

As for massacres, how many ? Henry Reynolds estimated that fifty to eighty thousand people were killed in massacres. Now, that's a lot of large massacre sites, perhaps many thousands. Surely people are finding them all the time ? Not just bones (which might be at burial sites, mass burial sites after the small-pox epidemics swept through before whites arrived, or sites of inter-group battles), but evidence of gunshot wounds, sabre cuts, etc.?

Perhaps half a billion people, at least, have lived and died across Australia in fifty thousand years, so surely there are plenty of bones ? Forensic experts could identify how they died, but we don't hear much about established, definite, identified massacre sites. Surely there were some ? Not just Myall Creek ?

As for 'recognition', special benefiting laws, programs, funding for a multitude of organisations, the Flag, inclusion in school curricula, special media like NITV, constitute various forms of 'recognition' ?but I'm puzzled these days about what people want that they don't already have. Am I wrong ? Have I gone rabid-Right-wing and become complete bastard ?

I want to keep working, voluntarily, in the Indigenous Cause until I drop, like many, many other people, but we need to be confident that our contributions are in the right direction :) For me, it's the rapid improvements in higher education - perhaps one in every four urban Indigenous women is now a graduate - which won't stop, and which will form the basis for a strong, healthy, secure, contributing population into the future, long after I'm gone.

Love,

Joe

Dear Joe (Loudmouth),

Gosh, fascinating stuff. Ever thought of writing a book?
I'd buy it!

I'd love to read more on the subject. Personal experiences
open one's eyes.

Dearest Foxy,

As it happens, now that you mention it, my friend Alistair Crooks and I have a book out this week, available now on Amazon and Book Depository: 'Voices from the Past', mostly Alistair's work, mostly from the annual reports of the SA Protector of Aborigines between 1837 and 1959 - Alistair put more than a year into typing them up and putting them on both his (and my) web-sites. I did most of the maps of ration depots at the back. 300 pages of detail: good value.

The book covers most of the suspicions and gripes that people might have about the role and activities of the Protector, i.e. as to what an utter bastard he was, how he connived at massacres, driving people off their land, herding them onto missions, and other unsubstantiated allegations. None of them true, by the way. The maps of fifty rations, expanding over time, gives much of the lie to those suspicions. The constant worries of the Protector, what to do with neglected or abandoned kids (surprisingly not many), employment, illnesses, travel passes, boats, guns, getting rations out to those fifty depots - all by one man. Quite amazing. Annual censuses from each centre track the decline and rise in the population. The preoccupation with the proper treatment of girls and women stands out.

Next, we'll have to do something similar with the nine thousand letters of the Protector. Then maybe a rough history of some of the Missions, from an outsider's point of view. There's a lot of material there - and that's just little South Australia ! The truth is still out there in other States, just waiting for someone to bring it to light.

If I had a couple more life-times, and better eyes, I'd give it a go. But if I had better eyes, they probably would never stray from gazing at you, Foxy :)

Love,

Joe

Dear Joe (Loudmouth),

I'll have to look into getting a copy of that book.
I'll let you know when I get hold of a copy.

I'm sorry that your eyesight is not what it used to be.
Thank You for the lovely compliment.
I haven't blushed for a while :-)

cont'd ...

Dear Joe,

This may be a stupid question. In your research on
Aboriginal history were you able to access many primary
sources? How difficult was it?

I've read somewhere that Windschuttle did not use primary
sources in his writings.

Dearest Foxy,

My heart sings when I see post from your lovely hands :)

Yes, Windschuttle very definitely and extensively used primary sources. In fact, he seemed to use ONLY primary sources. He's a historian after all, and a bloody good one. They are available in every State of course, since each State has its State Records or State Archives. Of course, they usually can only be accessed on-site.

Yes, on my web-site (www.firstsources.info), 99 % would be very definitely primary sources, mostly from the SA State Archives - now out at Cavan: anybody can look them up on-line, organise times to go out there, usually 10 am to 3 pm, something like that, and do their own 'primary research' if they wish. In fact, I wish someone would, just to check anything or everything that my colleague Alistair Crooks and I have typed up, for fabrications. They'll be disappointed :)

The other 1 % would be things like the Indigenous higher education database which I have kept up for fifteen-odd years now. But that uses data from the national Education Department site:

https://www.education.gov.au/student-data

Our book summarises policy, mainly from the annual reports between 1837 and the 1950s. One thing about typing up such documents: you learn a hell of a lot, fine details, and neither of us are naïve enough not to have our BS antennas up every second. So far we haven't found any, but anybody else is welcome to try. Just give State Archives a ring and arrange a time to visit.

Well, we did that for a total of eight years, voluntary. That's were my eyes went. They aren't what they used to be, they used to be me knees, mate. And me knees are pretty shot too. Good Show joke.

Lots of love,

Joe

Is anybody else having huge problems with email ? Every day, I bound out of my cave, hoping to launch myself onto a fleet-footed young gelding to race across a flat plain. But instead, I wake up to an interminable craggy mountain range, with only an old mule to take my baggage up and over, crag after crag. Often he refuses to budge, I flog him and kick him but he refuses to go forward - in fact, sometimes we end up back at base. Sometimes he tries, staggering up narrow paths, only to tumble back down into the creek just as it seems he is about to reach the summit, so down I go and drag him up again. And when we do reach a summit, all we can see are a multitude of more summits. At which point he is like to vanish and re-materialise back at base again. And so it goes, all bloody day.

Back to topic:

it seems, from meetings of elite Indigenous 'leaders', that any 'Recognise!' Referendum will now come down to two options:

Option 1: No change.

Option 2:

2 (a) A Treaty

(i) between an Indigenous entity and the government of the Commonwealth of Australia;

(ii) between each Indigenous 'nation' and the Commonwealth of Australia;

(b) Indigenous sovereignty, in the form of

(i) a separate State within the Commonwealth of Australia; or

(ii) a State independent of Australia, occupying roughly the country from Ceduna to Esperance up to Broome (or perhaps the Pilbara) and across to Cape York;

3. Special Indigenous representation in all Australian parliaments;

4. Other substantial means to improve Indigenous well-being;

5. Abolition of all discriminatory legislation.

Yeah, that should do it. Piece of cake.

Buckle up !

Joe

Get serious
They are after your home, your money and your lifestyle.
They want your land and and everything you bought and paid for and they don't want to pay for it.

Those Options should read:
.
.
.

Option 1:

No change.
.
.

Option 2:

(a) A Treaty:

(i) between an Indigenous entity (chosen by Indigenous people) (as defined by Indigenous people)) and the government of the Commonwealth of Australia, the contents to be negotiated; OR

(ii) between each Indigenous 'nation' and the Commonwealth of Australia;

(b) Indigenous sovereignty, in the form of

(i) a separate State within the Commonwealth of Australia; OR

(ii) a State independent of Australia, occupying roughly the country from Ceduna to Esperance up to Broome (or perhaps the Pilbara) and across to Cape York;

(c) Special Indigenous representation in all Australian parliaments;

(d) Other substantial means to improve Indigenous well-being;

(e) Abolition of all discriminatory legislation.
.
.
.
That would all fit nicely on a voting paper.

That might be how it all pans out, what we can all make our decisions on.

Joe

Dear Joe (Loudmouth),

Thank You for such detailed explanations.

What an amazing achievement for you.
A worthwhile life's work on Aboriginal history.
I do intend to get hold of "Voices from The Past."
So that I can discuss things with you more
intelligently in the future.

Dearest Foxy,

Thank you for your kind words. What we have been trying to do for some years is to scour primary sources in the State Archives [Records]. We transcribed what you might call the biggest nuggets, but have left the future task of scouring the rest. There's plenty there, but it will require more time per unit of gold.

For example, the boxes and boxes of letters in to the Protector in SA are stored in with all other letters to the Commissioner of Crown Lands, the minister responsible. There are a few boxes for each year's correspondence; over eighty years of hand-written letters, some written with a thumb-nail dipped in tar. It would be a huge, tedious job to go through them.

Mind you, I was doing that for 1868 (I think), and came across a letter from Florence Nightingale, concerned about Aboriginal children's health.

The Protector's letters were hand-written of course (no typewriters back then, not until about 1912), and the copies are on very thin, corroding paper, with the ink either blurred or faded or both. Sometimes we had to carefully slide a sheet of white paper under a page to block out the page underneath and/or to keep it intact.

Those files are still there, presumably, so anybody who doubts the wording of anything we've typed up can make time to check for themselves. In our book, we've tried to stick to the very words of the Protector and other correspondents, and let them speak for themselves. To me, that's the hallmark of making use of 'primary sources'. I'll leave creative interpretation to qualified historians.

Love always,

Joe

Dear Joe,

You deserve all the accolades.

I can't even imagine the effort and all
the hours of research that you
must have put into your work. I admire you
greatly for it.

Historians have such a difficult job.
It's no wonder that there are so many cases
that exemplify the arguments of those who insist
there is no such thing as "objective history."
I've written in the past that the historian
can establish that an act took place on a certain
day, but this, by historical standards constitutes
only chronology or, as Europeans call it, "Factologija."
The moment the historian begins to look
critically at motivation, circumstances, context,
or any other such
considerations, the product becomes unacceptable for
one or another camp of readers.

My dearest Foxy,

Of course there is 'objective history': Japan invaded China in 1937. The second World War came to an official end in 1945. Charles I was beheaded in 1649. Shakespeare was born in 1564 and died in 1616.

In relation to Aboriginal affairs, during the nineteenth century, there was only one employee in the Aborigines department, the Protector - occasionally he had assistance from 'Sub-Protectors', at Wellington, Moorundee, Port Augusta and Blinman, but usually they weren't paid. Not by him, anyway.

The main duties of the single employee of the Aborigines Department in SA revolved around servicing the thirty, forty, fifty ration depots across the State, with ensuring that Aboriginal people had access to free health care, and that Missions were funded sufficiently to run schools. Nobody was ever (it seems) driven off land. Nobody was herded onto missions. It seems that Aboriginal workers were paid standard wages, or the equivalent on stations out beyond the money economy.

These are pretty objective facts. There isn't much wiggle-room for interpretation there. Of course, none of this fits in with the conventional Narrative, but this obviously means that there is something wrong with the Narrative: it doesn't fit reality. It doesn't fit history. It needs to be drastically re-assessed.

Love,

Joe

Dear Joe,

You're referring to "factology."

Go back and re-read my earlier post.

Cheers.

Dearest Foxy,

I'm not sure what you mean. 'Factology', 'post-truth', etc. are just synonyms for 'complete rubbish' and 'bigotry', the wilful ignoring of overwhelming evidence OR the seizing on the slightest scrap to 'conclusively prove' some point.

Or by 'factology', do you mean an obsession with evidence ?

As we all know from watching a multitude of crime shows on TV, a case can only be built on genuine evidence, and 'sufficient' evidence, beyond a reasonable (not an absolute) doubt.

So there are cases for which there is not enough evidence against a particular person, and they are put on hold. Rarely, there are cases where the evidence is overwhelming, and more than sufficient. And usually the evidence against a guilty party is not vast but conclusive enough to suspect, and then prove, his/her guilt, i.e. there are unlikely to be plausible alternative explanations.

I'm presuming that this is what you mean in relation to presumed massacres of Aboriginal people by whites ?

I'm suggesting that yes, there were probably such massacres, but any assertion has to be demonstrated with at least some evidence, ideally conclusive evidence. Bones with bullet or sabre wounds. If a 'historian' can be precise about the number of people killed across an entire State over a specific period, then the least one can expect is some evidence.

Crushed skull bones might indicate killing by whites, but wouldn't be conclusive, since such evidence may also indicate battles between Aboriginal groups.

Oh, you say, how could anyone claim that such battles have ever occurred ? Well, yes, every year down around the lower Murray Lakes: a place called Wommerang was favoured for battles between the various groups within the Ngarrindjeri. The missionary knew that he would have to be treating the wounded after one of these exciting times. One entire group was wiped out near Mt Eba (south of Coober Pedy) in about 1872, for 'marrying wrong'.

What happened in history (to cite Gordon Childe, the communist arschaeologist) - is sometimes fascinating.

Love,

Joe

Dear Joe,

I shall try again to explain what I meant by "factology."

As I stated earlier -

The historian can
establish that an act took place on a certain day, but
this, by historical standards, constitutes only
chronology, or as Europeans call it - "factologija"
(factology). The moment the historian begins to look
critically at motivation, circumstances, context, or
any other such considerations, the product becomes
unacceptable for one or another camp of readers.

It is for that reason that a historian needs to ask the
relevant questions and look not only for answers, but
the silences as well. When historians ask questions
about the past and cannot get an answer, that too tells
something - it could mean that what was asked was not
considered worth writing about, or that that aspect of the
past is no longer relevant to us.

In any case - I really have nothing further to add to
this discussion. I look forward to our next one.

All The Best.

Dearest Foxy,

Hmmm .... I don't think you can slip out the door quite so easily :)

OF COURSE a historian tries not just to establish what may have happened, or what long-term processes may have been operating - by gathering evidence - but why, what difficulties were encountered, what opposition, what were the costs and benefits, implications and consequences.

Of course, some of a historian's conclusion may be contentious, others may disagree with her methods or the scope of her research. Of course. Many of those who are the objects of some contemporary historical study may feel wronged or slighted by the historian - who may still have been broadly correct. It depends, as someone remarked, what sort of spin you put on it.

So yes indeed, as you say:

"It is for that reason that a historian needs to ask the
relevant questions and look not only for answers, but
the silences as well. When historians ask questions
about the past and cannot get an answer, that too tells
something - it could mean that what was asked was not
considered worth writing about, or that that aspect of the
past is no longer relevant to us."

And after all, those 'silences' may well mean that there was nothing consequential or controversial about what he has been describing - it may be up to another historian to uncover those 'silences' if they existed. Again, one would need evidence that they did.

You don't get away so quietly :)

Love notwithstanding,

Joe

Dear Joe,

There you go - at last we've made the connection
and are seeing things eye-to-eye on this subject.
Glad to finally see that we can agree.

Michael Mansell has published a book in support of a multitude of Aboriginal nations and treaties, and sovereignty. He has had this thought-bubble for more than forty years now but, thanks to freedom of expression laws in Australia, has now put them down in a more systematic way: clearly, the bounds of thought-bubbles can be stretched without endangering their initial contents.

Mansell suggests that areas of Australia 'with a predominantly Aboriginal population' could form a new sovereign nation. I've been trying to estimate where the boundaries of such a nation might run: my best guess would be:

* from 150 km west of Ceduna, up and eastwards to the lower Flinders Ranges, then north-east across the Strzelecki region to the north of Broken Hill, then to the Queensland border east of Tibooburra; from there to the area west of the Atherton Tablelands and Cooktown;

* in the west, from a point say 100 km east of Esperance, up around the Goldfields and east of the Pilbara, then just east of Broome.

* All of that area - excluding major towns like Darwin, Katherine, Derby, Kununurra, Alice Springs and Mt Isa - would be transferred to an Aboriginal sovereign body, perhaps under Mansell's prime-ministership, perhaps five million square kilometres, and currently containing two hundred thousand people in a thousand small communities, in roughly equal numbers of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people.

* In order to augment that small (and unskilled) population over such a large area, Aboriginal populations in eastern cities are to be transferred to the new Sovereign State: this could add several hundred thousand (skilled) people and counter any influences of non-Aboriginal people there. This transfer could be completed by train and bus within six months.

* Canberra is to increase funding, so that the influx of new people can be housed.

* Inter-married Aboriginal people would be asked to cease all association with their non-Aboriginal partners when they are moved to the Sovereign State, and to seek Aboriginal partners instead.

[TBC

[continued]

* Non-Aboriginal people within the Sovereign State will either be asked to pay a special tax, or will have any rights to participate in the new State withdrawn. In any case, they will have fewer rights than Aboriginal people, in order to prevent them from ever gaining power and threatening the very raison d'etre of the Aboriginal Sovereign State, i.e. Aboriginal power.

* Canberra will be required to fund new government buildings, including an Indigenous-only university teaching Indigenous-only courses, perhaps an independent airline and a world-wide network of ASS embassies.

In this way, Australians - i.e. the people living on the rest of the continent - and Aboriginal people will find true reconciliation at last.

Roll on, May 27, 2017. I just can't wait to cast my vote.

Joe

Joe