There are a couple of questions raised; The first assertion by thinkabit is that Aboriginal society did not have a high degree of sophistication, and the people were not living a rather complex existence pre colonisation. This is based on a comparison with modern western society. The reasoning being that Aboriginal knowledge was no match for modern western societies collective knowledge which is immeasurably greater than that found in earlier Aboriginal society. The second assertion by Joe is there is some reluctance to accept that Aboriginal people were simply primitive hunter-gathers. Both these assertions are untrue.

In the book 'Dark Emu' by Bruce Pascoe, which Foxy mentioned, there is reference made that before colonisation Aboriginal people lived in villages with permanent buildings made of clay coated wood. These people baked bread, sowed cloth, created art galleries and maintained cemeteries. Aboriginal people also built dams, worked to alter the course of rivers. They also irrigated crops, used fire to tend and improve the land, and controlled burning was also used to regulate plants and animals. Early European explorers and settlers believed they had stumbled upon a gentleman's estate of gardens and farms.

The primitive culture myth was first described by James Cook, whose writing wrongfully described Aboriginal people as "weak, timid, cowardly and incurious". The acceptance of the Cook style narrative led many white Australians to believe Aboriginal people were a lazy good for nothing race looking for a free ride. The negative disposition justified many of the later evils that were perpetrated against Aboriginal people. As Bronwyn Carison Associate Professor of Indigenous Studies at the University of Wollongong concluded "(The) characterisation of Indigenous Australians as recipients of a 'free ride' and who are seen to be motivated to rort the public purse has its roots in an ignorance of indigenous experiences of dispossession, colonisation and ongoing colonial violence."

Not all are going to accept the above as the truism of Aboriginal experience. Many will stick with the wrongful Cook type narrative.

//Funnily, they didn't have any of the traditional red cloth for clothing and headbands//

Issy, are you still wearing the traditional wig and frock coat? If not why not, you trend setter you!

Hassy, thank you for your bog ignorance on the subject.

Many Australian indigenous are now almost indistinguishable from non-indigenous.
Particularly those who present on the ABC/SBS talk shows etc. Thus far I have not heard of cases seeking compensation for loss of pigment. Has Michael Jackson had any influence on this phenomenon ?

Paul would have liked to post a link here but did not
It is well worth the reading and in the SMH it tells us true out back law is being done by police and at the invitation of elders, who run the whole thing
For our first nations true out back folk our law is of no use

Paul 1405, but they were a near naked race living a relatively simple existence as hunter gatherers. Just as our remote ancestors were.
They were also a very violent society, where murder, mutilation, infanticide and canabalism were seen as normal.
In fact one of the cultural shocks I had to endure whilst living with remote traditional people was the everyday acceptance of violence, to a degree I had never experienced and which I still have problems accepting. And no,this is not some reaction to colonisation, my father in law grew up in an extremely remote, almost untouched tribe inthe far north west and his stories of how women and babies were brutalised were horrifying.
This is not to say they were not intelligent, simply they were so isolated from the rest of the world that they hadn’t evolved past the Stone Age. Certainly since settlement they have proved how smart and adaptive they are, especially when provided with the right motivation.

Paul,

While much of what you say is true and I support changes to constitution to remove racial discrimination in the constitution and grant recognition of the first peoples, I baulk at the attempts to insert new racially based privilege into the constitution.

The Uluru statement goes too far and attempts a form of entrenched apartheid.