thanks Nana

I have actually spent many hours talking to elders and old missionaries who were among the first whites some aboriginals had contact with. Unfortunately the older elders are dying out. For practical purposes some disabled babies were clubbed. Things were far from idealistic. Probably the introduction of grog was the worst thing white man did. Some missionaries really opposed this however were overruled by secular Government. The plight of the bush aboriginals have gone backwards at the rate if knots since the Government took over the old missions.

I know a PNG family that was taught in german Lutheran missions & the parents who are no longer alive expressed their appreciation of the times before PNG was taken off the Germans.

Runner, it wasn’t just disabled babies. Baby girls were frequently killed, one of twins was always killed and if the mother was still breast feeding a toddler, then the new baby was killed because no woman could successfully carry and feed two babies at once. This is why pre settlement families were small. Some women had no children at all, others only a couple. It was an economic decision.
If you study all the old photos you will notice that despite plenty of men and women, only a few children were with each group.
With wives, it was also economics because if a man lost his wives he had no one to gather food for him and hunting is not a reliable source of food. So run away wives had their ankles broken so they were crippled and couldn’t run and disrespecting wives were battered over the head with a nulla nulla.
Dave Price, the husband of NTs, Bess Price sent me a few paragraphs of Bess’s local language, along with translation and it was all about the violent ways in which a cheeky or unfaithful wife was to be dealt with.

Big Nana,
Early indigenous life was governed by common sense instead of misguided emotion, hence the 40 thousand + years existence of these people.
The West will be lucky to make it another 10-20 years judging by the idiocy of our intellectual leaders & the rest of the academic social expert pedestal brigade.

From the WA Moseley Royal Commission into the Aborigines, 1935: part of the testimony of Mrs Mary Bennett - by no means a right-winger:

" 591. The desert tribes of Western Australia are known above the others for having worked out the most complete rules for maintaining the supremacy of the patriarchal oligarchy by compelling the women and young people to accept the property status, which is just slavery, property in human flesh. The old men polygamists assign the female children at birth amongst themselves, and every female child, be she full-blood aboriginal or she be half-white, is the property of some old polygamist.

"One result in the settled district that I know is that there are at least fifty young men unmarried, and with no prospect of marrying for many years, and then they will have to marry girls who are hardly more than children, whereas if polygamy were stopped in the settled district, they could have young women for their wives now. The squatters pretend that the old men would make trouble if polygamy was stopped, and perhaps kill some of the young men. The truth is that the death rate would actually be less than it is now through polygamy and adultery."

[TBC]

[continued]

Polygamy is the cause of nearly every fight among natives. A man takes another wife ; sooner or later the first wife has reason to be jealous of the new wife, and a fight ensues between them.
Old Wodja of the Koolahr tribe at Forrest River brought me his new wife one morning after a terrible beating from his first wife, and I spent days nursing her back to life after the most terrible shock and battering. A great number of examples of suffering and injuries can be given. If a husband takes part in the fight, he sides with the new wife and the first wife gets an unmerciful beating. It is not usual for her relatives to interfere, for she is his property to do what he likes with, but sometimes family affection is too strong and there is a spear fight between the men. If one should chance to be killed, it starts a vendetta which is endless.

A young man may run away with one of the wives of an old man, or with one of the girls whom the old man has bespoken. The young people are tracked at once, if possible, and punished. One man I know, Gympie’s husband, Paddy, was punished by having an eye put out. An unfaithful wife may be put to death, and her husband is held to be justified in killing her, though he may have five other wives, and may have neglected or deserted her, or even sold her to white men.

Mary Ann, killed at Laverton, had been sold to white men many times by her husband, Moonggie, but when she failed to return at his command, his brother Bung-arra in his absence, rightfully according to native law, speared her to death. The brother was imprisoned for seven years, but nothing was done to improve the position of native women or give them the protection of our laws.

[TBC]