Dear Foxy,

He's a lucky man !

I was raised in Bankstown, so I don't have much interest in unreality or magic. Reality is fascinating, challenging and exciting enough. Yes, I have dreams but if they don't come to Adelaide, what can i do ? Love always

Hi Steele,

If you use greatly inflated pre-invasion figures, and greatly deflated post-invasion figures, yes, sure, it looks pretty bleak, as you say. But going by SA figures over the years from 1836, I simply don't believe yours. Not to mention all of the factors that inevitably affected those figures, one way or the other. Keep learning, mate, you'll get there.

Still, the fundamental question that we have barely examined is: was invasion/settlement inevitable ? Could it have been forestalled ? Could Australia today, in 2018, be occupied only by foragers ? Would the rest of the world have left it alone ? And could Indigenous leaders do without their air-conditioning and BMWs ?

Joe

Why, O why, do only aboriginals deserve to be left alone?

Aborigines cannot be 'left alone' because they are totally dependent on other people's money, and our pathetic political class couldn't face down the condemnation of the UN and the 'global community' as they died out in even greater misery than that now live - on our dollar.

//would it have been eventually more beneficial than otherwise for the outside world to make close contacts with the Indigenous people here, and bring the benefits (and drawbacks - nothing's perfect) of outside civilisation to Australia ?//

If the gift of modern western civilisation is of such profound benefit, is it unethical to not seek to bestow this gift upon the Sentinelese people and drag them kicking, screaming and shooting arrows at us into the 21st century? Discuss, and remember to show all working.

It certainly would be interesting to time travel and see how
Australia would have developed under different
colonial powers.
Foxy,
No need to wonder, the evidence is at your doorstep, PNG & West Papua. You couldn't wish for a better example.

Hi Toni,

Very likely. Of course, other countries have tried to quarantine foraging groups from the outside world (and vice versa), notably Brazil. This raises the question that, as our own technology and civilisation becomes rapidly more sophisticated while those of the 'protected' foraging people remains more or less unchanged (well, that's the idea), then any eventual entry of those people into the outside world will be that much more disruptive, difficult and devastating.

Obviously, no matter when it would have happened, contact with the outside world was going to be devastating for many people. As I wrote in my first post here, I have agonised over this for years, probably decades. Hence my second query about whether or not such contact was/would be, on balance, beneficial. These are very difficult issues - and eventually they will be difficult and devastating for the Andamanese on Sentinel Island. Will they curse the outside world for (a) forcing contact when it happens, or (b) not forcing contact earlier ?

So was imperialist contact, here and in New Zealand and the US etc., the Great Historical Crime (which could have been avoided), or was it the Great Historical Gift ?

Joe