.

(Continued …)

.

You added :

« As for the term, "terra nullius" being used in the 1970s and 1980s-by whom ? The courts, or by Indigenous people themselves ? God - what am I saying ? That the term "terra nullius" was primarily, if not the invention of, then the vehicle or myth promoted by, Indigenous people themselves? »

The Proclamation of New South Wales Governor, Sir Richard Bourke, 10 October 1835 is historically significant. It implemented the doctrine of terra nullius upon which British settlement was based, reinforcing the notion that the land belonged to no one prior to the British Crown taking possession of it :

http://www.migrationheritage.nsw.gov.au/exhibition/objectsthroughtime/bourketerra/index.html

.

Hi Joe,

Why the closed mind? //So I fear reading his (Bill Gammage) book - I want to keep a high opinion of him// If the book contains material contrary to the widely held opinion that Aboriginal people were a primitive lot of exclusively hunter/gatherers eking out an existence in a harsh landscape, simply struggling to survive, if facts showed that not to be the entire story, would that lower your opinion of the gentleman. You are not accepting of views that are at odds with your mind set, in fact you become hostile, cynical, patronising, towards anyone who doesn't agree with your world view on the subject.

Looks like I have one up on you. I find Bill Gammage's book very interesting. The book does contain first sources, which you do appreciate, references to early European explorers and settlers accounts of a cultivated landscape by Aboriginal people.

Hi Foxy,

I have 'Dark Emu' on hold at my local library.

Dear Paul,

I'm glad that you've reserved Bruce Pascoe's
book, "Dark Emu" at your local library.

If we look at the evidence presented to us by
the explorers - it puts forward a compelling
argument for a reconsideration of the
hunter-gatherer label for pre-colonial
Australians.

The book injects a profound
authenticity into the conversation about how
we Australians understand our continent.

Thanks for this discussion. However for me its
now run its course. See you on the next one.

Hi Banjo,

Sorry, I can't read the copy of Bourke's Proclamation. Does it actually use the term "terra nullius" or is that someone else's gloss ?

As for British land law, I was amazed when I was reading C. K. Meek's Land Law and Custom in the Colonies, 1948 [available on my web-site: www,firstsources.info on the Land Matters page, halfway down] to realise that the British (I don't know about any other imperialist powers) employed the practice of recognising whatever the land tenure system may have been wherever they encountered it - less the land that they themselves and for their settlers wanted of course.

Communal land tenure systems across Africa, the mixed systems in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), the systems in Cyprus, Malaya and Fiji, etc., etc. So it was in accordance with that principle that they recognised the rights of Aboriginal people here to use the land as they always had done. Those rights still stand in Australian law, at least in SA and federally.

Land-use rights, not a recognition of land ownership. So the question may still remain: did the way that Aboriginal people used the land, constitute land ownership ? The High Court in Mabo (1992) decided it did in the TS Islands. And 'therefore' on the mainland. Still, slight doubts.

So yes, I can understand the denial of Aboriginal people as foragers and the insistence that they were farmers,since farming obviously gives much stronger proprietorial rights to land than foraging over it. So all supporters of those assertions have to do is find Dreaming stories dealing with farming, and some evidence from the earliest days of observing Aboriginal people farming. Real farming, not just using fish-traps, or setting fire to the landscape. i.e. farming as defined in the standard way.

So often it seems, an argument is maintained by re-defining what is referred to, and re-defining the references more and more away from conventional definitions.

Joe

Hi Paul,

I've said before that what the entire Indigenous Cause desperately needs is a network of committed but critical 'devil's advocates' along the lines of the Catholic church in choosing a new pope - people who are dedicated to the essential truths of the Indigenous Cause BUT also to ensuring that it IS the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, which should be supported.

I realise that many whitefellas are so terrified of being accused of being racist that they may be tempted to support every assertion, whether or not it is supported by any solid evidence. So they dare not make any 'negative' comment, or subject any assertion to scrutiny.

Hence, for example, the 'stolen generations' story, with its single proven case (and with everybody ever taken into care, Black or white, having a file in their state's archives).

Hence the 'deaths in custody' false controversy: that 28 % of people in custody are Indigenous, but only 23 % of deaths in custody are Indigenous. Nobody examines those figures closely. Meanwhile Indigenous suicide rates OUTSIDE OF custody are far higher than the national average. So actually Indigenous people are far safer in custody than living in remote communities.

I desperately want the Indigenous Cause to succeed, but not with lies or falsifications or charlatanry. The truth is more important, and surely we should all be dedicated to that principle ?

So .... in this case, is there any evidence of cultivation ? Farmtool-making ?

Why do people think the switch to farming was so easy ? It occurred in only about five places in the entire world, and spread - not the idea of farming, but the actual farmers - slowly, slowly, generation by generation. They took five thousand years to get across Europe from eastern Turkey - another six thousand years to get to the Baltic.

Joe

That’s about the best I can do Individual.
Banjo paterson,
Apologies for no replying sooner, I somehow missed reading it.

A no-nonsense reply ! Very well summed up.