Foxy,

I never thought that you would support unfair legislation.

Of course, 'offend' and 'insult' should be removed from Section 8 (c), perhaps to be replaced by 'vilify'.

On another thread, one dealing with Aboriginal history, missionaries have been 'vilified' without evidence. Many people have no trouble doing that, people who have done nothing for anyone else, and who would not be worth a gram of the scanty droppings of the average nineteenth-century missionary.

One major problem is that the Conventional Aboriginal Narrative is replete with undemonstrated vilifications: the assumption that all whites are bastards is what strings it all together. Without any of its unproven components however, it collapses: all the bits are necessary - massacres, driving people off their land, herding onto missions, rape, brutality, cruelty, etc. galore. Each piece is vital to the whole.

So when I tell people, old friends, that, in the nineteenth century in South Australia, there was only one employee in the 'Aborigines Department', i.e. the Protector, they immediately understand the implications for the Narrative and turn away. Goodbye, old friends.

So, in a fundamental sense, has Australian - or at least, South Australian - history been vilified ? If some people can 'explain' to themselves our history only by vilifying one entire population, without actually knowing much at all, then haven't we got an enormous task to then try to get across the truth of our history, using that rare commodity, evidence ?

Otherwise, how can there ever be genuine, truth-based, reconciliation between Black and white in Australia?

Joe

Joe, you wrote "So when I tell people, old friends, that, in the nineteenth century in South Australia, there was only one employee in the 'Aborigines Department', i.e. the Protector, they immediately understand the implications for the Narrative and turn away."

Maybe I'm slow today, but I didn't "immediately understand the implications for the Narrative". Maybe you could spell it out?

Hi Cossomby,

Maybe I've been at this business too long :(

IF there was only one employee in the so-called Aborigines Department in South Australia (in fact, right up until about 1932, apart from a couple of office staff), then who was - according to the Narrative - driving people off their land, or herding them onto Missions ?

His main task was to provide rations - a pound of flour, a pound of meat, etc. per day (have you ever tried to eat a pound of meat each day for, say, a week ?) and to arrange for free health services around the State (one doctor worked from the Ghan between Oodnadatta and Hawker for many years, free). On weekends, he waited for people to arrive by coach, or by rail, to take them to hospital or to accommodation. He issued travel passes. On my web-site, swww.firstsources.info, on the Protector's Letters Page, there are Depot Ledger files - they are huge, so give the file time to come up.

So, if some of these props in the Narrative fall over, what did occur that accords with the Conventional Narrative ? No, (at least in SA), no massacres. What other acts of unspeakable horror did white people commit against Aboriginal victims ? White bastards ! So different from us now ! No.

Aboriginal people had rights to use the land as they had done traditionally recognised at the outset, and in legislation from 1851. Those rights still apply.

Cossomby, can you see that the Narrative depends on the existence of vast numbers of employees of an 'Aborigines Department', that, without that mythical vast, brutal, all-powerful semi-military force, much of the Narrative collapses ? Nobody being forced off their land ? Nobody being 'herded' onto missions ? Everybody being fed at fifty ration depots all over the State - ESPECIALLY during droughts, when the able-bodied were also fed. So what effect on culture might such ration stations have had during long droughts, when instead of scattering to the four winds, people could congregate for years near one point ?

Cheers,

Joe

For NSW, I only know of one 'employee' of the Aboriginal Protection (later Welfare) Board, the Secretary. He sent out instructions about rations, clothing, reserves etc. Who to? The police, who did the work on the ground.

So the idea that things were fine, on the grounds that there was just one employee who could not have been herding people all over the state does not hold water for NSW.

Having said that, in NSW the police often looked after the interests of Aboriginal people well. The police were directly responsible for the 'reserves', where Aborigines could live without direct supervision; on the 'stations', with managers and teachers, there was much more control, some of it quite coercive. Both reserves and stations were and still are colloquially called 'missions' because the first were set up by missionaries, but in the 1880s were taken over by government (who then expanded the system). This is 40 or so years after the 'massacre' period of the 1830-40s. So the good intent and sometimes good actions of the reserve phase cannot be used to deny the fact of massacres.

Being forced off the land? That can happen directly, at gun point, or indirectly by government policies. In WNSW Aborigines were collateral damage from the subdivisions of the pastoral empires that employed Aborigines on their country, to small family stations where there was no room for Aborigines. The boom in reserves related to this, particularly the soldier settlements. In fact there are cases of pastoralists lobbying for refuges for Aborigines, sometimes out of sympathy but perhaps also because there was still a need for seasonal labour. Whatever the reason, Aboriginal people were still 'forced' off their land.

Reading the Protection Board minutes, the language can be chilling. Girls in their very early teens were sent out from the Aboriginal Stations as servants often in response to a letter asking for one. The term used for sending off a girl is 'disposed of'. If they ran away, due to mistreatment or loneliness, they were apparently refused re-admittance to the Station where their family lived.

Re those who are taking umbrage over the statue commemorating the way the Japs behaved where they ruled at gunpoint, they should harbour not a skerrick of fellow feeling for them. Is it some sort of "call of the blood"? The Jap war criminals had no right to storm over Asia and the Pacific murdering their betters, they had no right killing Australians or anyone else defending their own and others' right to self-determination, they had no right attacking Australian cities or American and Australian ships. They had no right to inflict multiple rape on captured women. It wasn't some obnoxious cloud labelled "war" that committed these crimes against decency, it was self-willed and self-propelled Japs, taking the law into their own hands while committing the despicable crime of armed aggression. And in Japan they still have shrines commemorating those scum as "heroes".

80C rightly forbids insults based on race, but it doesn't protect cultures. It's up to the individual whether or not to close ranks with the Banzai culture.