Foxy,
Integrity & good will aren't nails just because you et al have a problem in that field !

mhaze, show me the pre 1788 evidence.

"Just look at how barbaric tribes treated each other and especially girls before colonisation"

I'll look at it when someone provides the evidence. 1935 or 1960 or even 1870 are not before colonisation. One of the big problems for Aboriginal people was the introduction by the European of alcohol into their lives, with generally disastrous effects. Maybe they were a better people in pre colonial days, before the days of alcohol.

I'm not saying the above claim is not possible, it is, all I asked for was the evidence to substantiate the claim. It has not been provided, and never will be

Paul,

If you won't admit evidence, even from the earliest days, because "it's not before 1788", then how would you propose that anybody could analyse data before 1788 ?

William Buckley lived with groups around what is now Geelong for thirty-odd years, BEFORE invasion/settlement. Early missionaries all around Australia reported stories from old people of extreme violence. Tell it like it is, Paul.

Peter Sutton has analysed a great many archaeological remains of Aboriginal people who died long before 1788: amongst female remains, he found evidence of head-crush injuries, usually on the left side of their skulls, and other evidence of violence on their forearm bones. Would that count ?

Those remains would be available for anyone hoping to prove that the wounds were self-inflicted, or random accidents, but I don't expect that anyone would take up that task. Easier to prattle about colonisation - you know, that dreadful force which impacted on southern Indigenous people, urban people, far more than on remote populations, and for far longer.

Joe

Paul 1405, did you not read my account of stories from my father in law, raised in a remote traditional community where alcohol did not exist and people lived their traditional lives? Or hear about the life story of William Buckley, who spent 30 years living in the bush with a tribe who had no contact with white people, apart from himself?
However, seeing as those types of stories are not enough for you, I suggest you get hold of a book written by Stephen Webb, who was a paleopathologist who examined thousands of aboriginal bones in order to gain some uunderstanding of life before settlement.
One of the thing he found was concrete evidence of violence towards women. Up to 30% of women had at least one skull fracture, some up to three. The majority of the blows came from from the side or behind the head.
Different areas of Australia had different results. Some areas it was only 3%, others much higher.
Considering how rare it is for any woman today, apart from aboriginal women, to have even one skull fra tire, I think that’s an extremely telling finding.

There are 1606 reports by the Dutch. As with most such reports the modern academic versions are heavily focussed on finding fault with the explores wherever possible, justified or not !

Le's be honest: for good and/or ill, colonisation was inevitable. Some imperialist power would have invaded/settled Australia sooner or later, as they have done in practically every corner of the world over the past four thousand years or so. Nothing new about it.

And using it as an 'explanation' really doesn't get anybody anywhere: what then ? That everybody else packs up and goes back to wherever their ancestors came from ? Hardly likely. And how much does it 'explain' ? Perhaps it might explain the current sixty thousand Indigenous university graduates ? What would they be doing now if, somehow, people were still living un-trammelled traditional lives ?

Perhaps it might 'explain' - in a negative way, the dreadful lives that many people, especially young people, especially girls, are living in 'communities' ? And the more remote, the more dreadful, on the whole ? i.e. the communities' which have felt the slings and arrows of colonisation far less than people in the cities ? How's that ?

So even if it 'explains' anything at all, what to do about it ? Financial compensation, based on some sort of time-scale - the longer people have been 'colonised', the more compensation ? My kids would be interested since 'colonisation' for them goes back 170 years or more. It's interesting that their gr-gr-grandfather, if he were still alive after 170 years, could proudly look on his descendants who are university graduates and who number in the hundreds. They would also be interested in any financial compensation for the opportunities that 'colonisation' has given them.

Or perhaps large swathes of land can be given back in compensation ? Oh wait, that's already happened and presumably people are far better off now. No ? Why's that ? At least in SA, some of that land is very fertile, 'communities' have (or had, until they sold them) water rights. But I suppose that won't been enough ?

[TBC]