Dear Lucifrase,

You asked;

“is it unreasonable if the dispossession is formally acknowledged a on each anniversary (which it has been already by giving back under land-rights legislation)?”

Well ultimately that would be a question that should be put to our indigenous people and I suspect that the answer would be different around the country depending somewhat on the amount of destruction experienced by the various Aboriginal nations.

My personal opinion is that it is certainly unreasonable. Returning land is separate to addressing the genocide that occurred in many parts of this nation during its formation as a country, nor was it designed to do so.

Then you put this;

“Is it unreasonable for aborigines to oppose the newcomers' desire to celebrate their success in building a modern nation, on each anniversary of their coming? (I can't roll with your cherry-picking deflection on this point. The newcomers were of British decent and the later-comers came at their invitation for nation-building purposes....”

Well you have loaded that up beautifully haven't you and it is rather inane I'm afraid, as well as divisive as discussed.

I don't think there would be too many aborigines who would oppose celebrating what we have become as a nation. Tolerant, fair, inclusive, often progressive, still to a large measure egalitarian, democratic with a decent social safety net and sporting a laid back attitude to life.

Cont

Cont

But why does it have to be “on each anniversary of their coming”? The treatment of our first peoples is one of the blights that any nation worth it salt should be keen to work through and redress to its best ability. Retaining this divisive date can hardly be part of that.

But let's look at main national days in other countries besides New Zealand. Canada Day celebrates the joining of the colonies into a single dominion. In the USA it is the date of independence. I invite you to find a single country where the occupiers have invaded, stayed and now celebrate the arrival of the colonisers.

Finally mate don't tell me I'm taking “yet another swipe at 'my' own culture”. I am a proud Australian trying to live up to the values I cherish about this nation and heightened sense of fairness is one of them. I will leave you with the words of our national anthem; “Advance Australia Fair” and those who aren't aboard should just get out of the bloody way.

Dear Josephus,

You wrote;

“A treaty is signed with a government or ruler when a country was invaded. A Treaty is recognised to live together in Peace after a war. The fact is there was no recognised Government or Ruler recognised by all aboriginals, and there was no war with the inhabitants.”

At the risk of you lashing out again I am going to repeat my admonishment of earlier, what a hell of an ignorant comment.

The Treaty of Waitangi initially signed by representatives of the British Crown and Māori chiefs from some of the tribes of the North Island of New Zealand.
“It was intended to ensure that when the declaration of British sovereignty over New Zealand was made by Lieutenant Governor William Hobson in May 1840, the Māori people would not feel that their rights had been ignored. The Treaty established a British Governor of New Zealand, recognised Māori ownership of their lands, forests and other properties, and gave Māori the rights of British subjects. An immediate result of the Treaty was that Queen Victoria's government gained the sole right to purchase land."
Wikipedia

Over the next months copies of the treaty were taken around the country and ultimately signed by over 500 different Maori Chiefs, about a dozen were women.

So how many aboriginal nations were recognised as being intact at the time of colonisation? About the same number.

“Before the arrival of British colonisers in 1788, Australia was inhabited by the Indigenous peoples - Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, sometimes referred to as the First Australians. Aboriginal people inhabited the whole of Australia and Torres Strait Islanders lived on the islands between Australia and Papua New Guinea, in what is now called the Torres Strait. There were over 500 different clan groups or 'nations' around the continent, many with distinctive cultures, beliefs and languages.”
http://www.australia.gov.au/about-australia/our-country/our-people

Finally of course there was a war with the inhabitants. It was one of the longest military campaigns of the last two hundred years involving significant numbers of men and material. Go learn some history my friend.

Those opposed to Australia Day do so because of the
historical significance - the British arrival and
the destruction it brought. Consequently some
Aboriginal people and a number of other Australians see
Australia Day as a day of mourning - while others
simply believe it is offensive to Aboriginal Australians.

I celebrate January 26th with thousands of others for a
different reason - because Australia is a great country
to live in. I've always felt that Australia Day brings
the community together and it celebrates the good this
country has provided. Of course I now
realise that not everyone feels the same way I do.
But, I can't help but wonder how will protesting the date
and changing the date help those Aboriginal people most
in need? Will it change the sexual abuse, the hard drinking,
the poor health conditions, the tremendous gap in their
living conditions and education, the high percentage in jails,
and so on?

Celebrating on a particular day does not have to be tied
to historical events even if its origins are tied to those
events. Consider Christmas Day. Though traditionally it had
religious significance (and still does for some), for many
Australians they celebrate Christmas for other reasons -
family, end of another hard year, food and drink, and summer
holidays. Like Christmas Day, Australia Day is a holiday
where most can relax and socialise and reflect on matters
that are of importance to them.

I don't have a problem of changing the date of Australia Day
if it means that it really will make a difference to some
of my fellow Australians and become a more inclusive day.
However, I would like to see that it will make a genuine
difference to the lives of others - and not just be a politicised
move that won't amount to much at all.

This was copied and pasted from the link given below - which
I found useful and well worth a read:

http://theconversation.com/changing-australia-day-is-pointless-and-there-is-much-to-celebrate-71010

Hi Steele,

Yes, you're right: The Treaty signed at Waitingi dealt strictly with issues of sovereignty - i.e. the handing-over of the Maori sovereignty, external control of territory only, in exchange for the protection to be given by the British Crown. It clearly did NOT impinge on the relationship of Maori cultivators to their land: in fact, the Treaty prohibited the sale of Maori land to anybody but the Crown.

Of course, the relationship that Maori had (and of course, still have) to their land was that of cultivators, with clear demarcations between plots of clan (hapu) land and, within hapu, family (whanau) land - and certainly clear and ritually-controlled space (rahui) between the lands of 'tribes' (iwi). The relationship which Torres Street Islanders had/have to their lands is very similar, since they too were/are cultivators. The relationship that Aboriginal people had/have to the land is that of foragers, hunters, fishers and gatherers, ranging over specific domains, and with clear (if sometimes shifting) boundaries between the lands of clans and 'tribes'.

The English weren't newbies: they had had enormous experience with different systems of land relations - the Udal system in the Falklands, the Tanistry system in Ireland, the clan lands in Scotland, the various systems of land ownership and land use in India and South Africa, and amongst the Native Americans in the US and Canada. The standard British procedure was to recognise such different land-relationship systems as far as practicable (see C. K. Meek's book "Land Law and Custom in the Colonies" on my web-site: www.firstsources.info, on the Land Page). So Philip was instructed to implicitly recognise the Aboriginal systems of land-use, in their 'undisturbed enjoyment of their lands', etc. - and just occasionally breached.

These rights were made more explicit in the 1840s (see H. Reynolds & J. Dalziel's 1996 article on Google Scholar) and

[TBC]

[continued]

and written into law in (I suspect) every colony, although clearly those rights were ignored in some colonies. Certainly they were law in SA from 1850, and relevant Clauses had to be inserted into every pastoral lease, recognising those rights 'as if this lease had not been made', a phrase which has always intrigued me: i.e. traditional land-use rights on Crown land. Those rights to use lands as traditionally, still exist (at least in SA) if people wish to exercise them - in fact, independent of the federal Native Title legislation.

When you write 'war with the inhabitants', do you mean the Maori Wars of the 1850s, and later ?

Cheers,

Joe