[continued]

No wonder people 'came in', as some courageous (and retired) anthropologists have pointed out, and exchanged the relentless search for food for .... well, doing nothing really. As a leftist, I always imagined and strongly asserted without evidence, that as the Frontier moved out, people moved further out, causing all manner of havoc between groups. White capitalist bastards.

But actually no. In SA, most ration-issuers by 1900 were pastoralists, doing the work free, including building and maintaining a ration store-room. And, of course, using the labour of the able-bodied without which they probably couldn't have survived. Some pastoralists in very hard country even built locks on their ephemeral creeks in order to attract Aboriginal people, for the labour of their young people. We've worked together in harmony for quite some time now, all over the country, haven't we ? Tell me about low- or no-wages :)

So possibly, land became vacant by being de facto vacated, which suited aspiring farmers. Of course, this would have been a prior assumption of colonial authorities: otherwise what did settlement mean ? The question is: was a ration system adequate compensation for vacating the land ? Were Aboriginal people entitled to both ? Which would they have rather foregone ?

Joe

paul,
"you actually managed to slip this "thread" past GY for approval "
yes , a few of them failed but he's just given up trying..

Hi Nick,

When you set up this thread, called 'land grab', I assumed it would have something to so with land grab. Instead, somebody goes off talking about pigs and poultry. Oh gosh, I do believe it was you.

Oh well, BTT: if we are to talk about 'land grab', then we need to explore the relationship that Aboriginal people had to the land. As an ex-Marxist, it still seems to me that that means primarily economic relations - how people used the land, i.e. foraged over it, and the impact that relationship would have had on their camping patterns, i.e. their social relationships.

Amongst the Ngarrindjeri, in very fertile areas and with no shortage of food or water, therefore no threat of droughts, they differentiated into about a hundred extended family groups, each of fifteen to fifty people, as people did elsewhere across Australia. Each group jealously guarded its foraging territory. In the case of Ngarrindjeri, this could be as small as twenty square kilometres, each group having access to ready fresh water, grassy plains, bush, swamps, etc. In much harsher country such as the northern deserts, with much smaller family groups, the territory needed for sustenance might exceed ten thousand square kilometres. So there may have been anything upwards of ten thousand family groups, territories, 'sovereignties', 'nations' in the very old language of eighteenth century political scientists, across Australia.

We can talk about the 'sovereignty' or autonomy of the family group given that they guarded their lands ceaselessly, against neighbouring families and marauding groups from the drier country, especially during droughts. Necessarily, groups had to communicate, mainly for marriage partners. Thus groups, especially those close to each other, had inter-family ties. Further out, fewer ties, and thereby more suspicions and hostility. So there was limited reason for contact between more distant groups, even those within the same dialect group or 'tribe'. 'Government' such as it was, was thus usually no more than family business. No group had power over any other group. No family had power over other families.

[TBC]

[continued]

Occasionally groups came together, after careful negotiations, to share ceremonies and to exchange young women. With inevitable feuds over wife-snatching, there were usually battles as well, to settle old scores and initiate new ones.

There you have it: autonomy of families, each numbering in low double-figures, each patrolling sufficient territory to feed their numbers. In drier country of course, droughts would have been catastrophic, forcing people either to live with related neighbours, or to raid their resources, perhaps take over their country, depending on relative numbers.

Land was used as needed, 'government' was primarily a family affair. Such systems occupied seven million square kilometres for tens of thousands of years, some of it constantly and some intermittently. Then along came the British .....

Joe

Incidentally, and speaking of 'land grabs', where do simpletons get the idea that everything, every land boundary, the continued dexist4ence of every group, was unchanging ? 'We had the oldest culture in the world', except of course for every other human group in the world. So people move to: 'We mean "unchanging" culture', which is posed unquestioningly as a virtue. Perhaps, in people's perception, there was no need to change anything, and anybody who suggested some refinements was summarily subtracted.

So do people mean 'the world's most stagnant culture' ? Cultures, of course: it may come as a surprise, including to many Indigenous people, including radicals, to learn that there were very many different, usually environment-oriented, cultures across the country. Is stagnation good ? Live and learn.

Anyways, land grabbing: group family size fluctuated with resource availability, droughts, and chance: if a group had, by chance, many daughters but few sons, it could be more easily incorporated into inter-marrying groups and disappear. If it had many sons and few daughters, it may have been seen as a threat to neighbouring groups and exterminated, and its territory incorporated into those of neighbouring groups, or its men could alleviate the sense of threat by migrating on marriage to other groups.

So there was nothing 'unchanging' about traditional society. Environments changed rapidly with droughts. Relative strength of groups varied rapidly over time. Large family groups might split into two 'brother' groups, occupying different even distant, territories, eventually losing the sense of being related and going to war. Change was, in many ways, unavoidable. But it's always easier for fools to presume that nothing happened.

Joe

Captain Cook's old man lived when England and Scotland were 2 countries. Wiradjuri country NSW is bigger than Scotland and is free from bag-pipes. Europe was never united and may be grabbed by Papua New Guinea which is a united nation. As our landlord Charles will need to be paid out for family expenses funding the First Fleet we need to put a value on:

10 Forges
700 Iron Shovels
747,000 Nails
40 Corn Mills
12 Smith’s Bellows
330 Iron Pots
4 Timber Carriages
1 Small Cask of Raisins
1 Printing Press
6 Bullet Moulds
1 Portable Canvas House (Gov. Phillip)
Kittens
Puppies
700 Gimlets
700 Wooden Bowls
8,000 Fish Hooks
1 Piano
1 Set of Candlestick Makers.

Starving convicts lived on kangaroo, rats and fish and the buildings they made are not Crown property unless the king gets feral . George got the land at bargain price and the kittens and pups are not numbered , say 5 each and we're done