cont'd ...

In the 1960s, Aborigines demanded fairer laws and they
gained some benefits. Aborigines were finally allowed to join
trade unions and were given freedom to remain on reserves
or leave. They were given more freedom from their bosses
(their families no longer had to work for the white bosses
for nothing). Then, in 1967, a referendum (national voting)
was held, and the whites of Australia decided to give the
blacks what had long been the natural right of any white
Australian citizen, the right to vote.

In the 1950's I was listening to a missionary from the Gulf country, who was helping the aboriginals to establish a cattle station. There were about 150 blacks living on the property. One young black man married a black bride but he said to the missionary she was lazy; initially the missionary had taught them not to be violent to their wives. But he pleaded to the missionary to allow him to beat his wife, after several weeks of pleading the missionary gave him permission to use his belt only. It worked! Violence against women in aboriginal communities was endemic before colonisation.

Josephus,

You mean that Aboriginal men also beat their
wives prior to colonisation?

Gee whiz, then they should have fitted right into
the white society - ay? Why didn't they?

Paul,

Can you try to understand that ALL. hunter-gatherer societies used appalling amounts of violence - there was nothing uniquely Australian-aboriginal about it. Check out old Scottish stories, about the feuds and vendettas and pay-back, and brutal treatment of any women suspected stepping out of line.

If we go back, say, fifteen thousand years, ALL human groups or clans - perhaps half a million of them - were living in those sort of conditions. Technology was by definition, incredibly primitive: hunting on foot with spears and clubs, against wary animals, couldn't have been easy. Fishing by spear and raft, only for the fish that one could see at the best of times, must have left the vast majority of fish believing in eternal life. Gathering pissy grass-seed all day, lugging it around along with babies and other tools, then spending hours grinding it, then baking damper from it, mustn't have been much fun, for sixty thousand years. Then facing a husband jealous of a woman suspected of meeting some bloke up behind a tree, and belting her just in case. Great life.

Early reports here in SA, of the Protector and of missionaries, repeatedly deal with men beating their wives, often to death, and how the law now was firm against such pastimes - even though in most cases, the perpetrator got off with a light sentence, since it was a sort of customary thing for Blackfellows to do. In one missionary's journal, one bloke stood out for having very likely beaten his young wife to death, and smashing another 'beloved' with a fence paling (and admittedly for many other less serious offences).

A far higher proportion of Indigenous people (men and women) are in custody for violent crimes than other Australians. That merely continues a common trend going back to the earliest days. Even William Buckley, in his memoirs of his 35 years living amongst people around the Geelong area before settlement/invasion, recounts may times of fights between groups and of women being beaten. Check it out on Book Depository.

To get back to the original topic:

[TBC]

[continued]

To get back to the original topic: (1). was invasion/settlement inevitable ? Like it or not, I think the answer is yes. If not the French (we beat them by two weeks), the Spanish (four years), the Americans (recall that they were rumoured to be menacing New Zealand before 1840), and god knows who else during the nineteenth century; then the twentieth; now the twenty-first - do you think Indonesia or India or China or Russia would leave Australia alone now, if everybody else had done so before them ?

(2). On balance, was settlement/invasion detrimental or beneficial, or both ? I think it certainly was both, but even in the eyes of Aboriginal people themselves, probably more beneficial than otherwise.

Perhaps one tragedy for many Aboriginal people in current remote areas was that their incorporation into Australia was far too late, when the economy had moved on from any need for unskilled physical labour, and onto needs for professional skills when schooling for Aboriginal kids seems to have actually deteriorated to the point where, in many 'communities', they can't read and write - and are not inclined even for unskilled, physical work even if it was available. They're stuffed unless they can get the hell out.

The anthropologist W.E.H. Stanner remarked once that he had never known of any Aboriginal people to give up the ration/welfare system and return to traditional foraging - one could add, without some extraneous reason such as expulsion from the group for some infringement, mostly likely involving some breach of marriage rules.

Aboriginal groups now control a sizeable chunk of Australia, in all sorts of environments from lush to barren: so are people foregoing their welfare payments now, to return to traditional life, when it would be perfectly possible ? No.

So, why's that, Paul ?

Joe

methylated spirits, which they drank.
Foxy,
add to that Aftershave lotion & tuba.