Hi Paul,

Yes, perhaps I know comparatively nothing about Indigenous issues anywhere outside of South Australia - not only that but I live in one suburb, in one street, in one house, so clearly my experience of the entire world is extremely limited. How's yours ?

Fortunately, I've lived elsewhere and done a bit of reading over sixty years. Incredibly, I've actually learnt something from those sources - similar to how you may have done.

Just to correct a misunderstanding: on my website: www.firstsources.info , I've transcribed many thousands of pages of documents from outside South Australia - royal commission transcripts, reports, booklets and pamphlets, etc. I haven't included anything from New Zealand, I'm sorry, but I have read a few bits and pieces over the years, especially when we were living there: Kawharu, Rangi Walker, Waititi, Matt Rata, Awatere, the Jacksons, Sinclair, etc., etc.

And In the Higher Education section of my web-site: www.firstsources.info , on the Database spread-sheets, I make no distinction between States - data going to back to 1989, commencements, enrolments, graduations, classified by type of award, by university, by gender and by field of study.

That's another thing: let me know when you ever hear an Indigenous 'leader' say anything about the sixty thousand graduates, the 140,000 Indigenous people who have been to university, and the twenty thousand Indigenous students currently enrolled. Why are they so quiet about success ?

Cheers,

Joe

Joe,

" Why are they so quiet about success ?"

Perhaps it's because they are busy getting on with their lives as Australians.

Hi Banjo,

'Farming' is generally defined as requiring the cultivation of the soil. I'm not interested in any claims which skirt around that and talk of 'management', etc. 'Cultivation' is the cornerstone of farming. Marc Bloch, in his wonderful books on the development of feudalism, explores these beginnings, particularly in France (hint). As did Pirenne, Lefevre, de Ladurie, Braudel, etc.

Hi Is Mise,

I didn't mean that the graduates themselves were quiet about Indigenous success at universities, but that the Indigenous 'leaders' were. A couple have made mention of it over the past decade or so, usually with out-of-date figures - but that's not necessarily their fault: the figures change so quickly.

Here's how the numbers have grown (from memory), according to the ABS Censuses:

1991: 3,600
1996: 8,800
2001: 13,400
2006: 19,400
2011: 29,200
2016: 49,400

One can anticipate that the 2021 Census will record around 70,000. The numbers in the 2026 Census may top one hundred thousand, or a fifth of all adults.

Two-thirds are women, graduates are overwhelmingly urban, around 18 % are post-graduates.

As for commencements, given an average young-adult age-group size of about 14,000, in 2017 (the latest data), 7,300 commenced award-level study, a bit over 50 %. Commencements rise annually by 6-8 %; post-grad commencements rose by nearly 14 % in 2017.

Some universities are outstanding: Charles Sturt, Newcastle, Griffith, QUT. Some are rat-sh!t.

Those commencement and enrolment numbers may be under-counting, since the Ed. Dept relies on data from universities, and universities rely on people ticking the Indigenous box. I suspect that those figures are, on balance, at least 20 % short.

But don't hold your breath, waiting for any 'leaders' to let any of that information escape. No matter, the numbers keep growing. And growing. And growing. A new class ?

Cheers,

Joe

Hi Paul,

You started off this thread with, among other statements,

"Aboriginal people were nothing more than nomadic hunter-gatherers. "

Every group in the world were once "nothing more than" hunter-gatherers, most of our ancestors until much more recently than is usually realised. Farming reached north-eastern Europe and Scandinavia barely a thousand years ago. Ireland maybe similar.

And while "nothing more" than hunter-gatherers, Aboriginal people here were as intelligent as anybody else - they had to be in order to survive the harsh conditions for daily survival over most of the continent. Even now, there are no native animals which can be domesticated (Pascoe's cassowaries notwithstanding), and nobody has yet spelt out what plants may have been domesticated, to qualify any Aboriginal groups as farmers. Farmers cultivate, and plant and nurture, the most highly-productive species and variations that they can find, which they develop into even more productive variants over time (most likely the women). Nobody deliberately grows crap.

Apart from river valleys where food was so abundant that people were much likely to be 'gatherers' than 'hunters', yes, people had to be nomadic, chasing prey and moving around their clan country in order to access all of the vegetable food as well. In that sense they were very much at the mercy of nature, especially of the droughts. Only intelligent people could have survived in those conditions.

So would you have preferred to have worded your "nothing more than .... " differently ? I'm puzzled why you chose that description and therefore - please excuse me - suspect some ulterior motive.

Joe

Hi paul,

Back in the seventies, my sister worked at the Auckland Museum up on Mt Eden and she showed me over the vast Australian collection, the entire first floor, of grinding stones, spear-points, clubs, women's digging sticks, etc., but I don't recall any cultivating or harvesting tools. As you would know, Governor Grey would have collected much of it, in WA and here in SA where he was governor before going over to NZ. Do you know of any Australian cultivating or harvesting tools in any museum, or - better still - currently in use here by Indigenous people in agricultural enterprises in Australia ?

I've tried to keep up with collections of Dreaming stories, which usually deal with an ancestor chasing prey, or more often, women. As you point out, the stories have a very strong emphasis on travelling, moving from A to B, confronting enemies, combats between various fauna.

But I can't recall any stories about new-season plantings or harvests or even specific 'comin' through the rye' encounters between boy and girl. Plenty of 'encounter stories' though, which usually end badly for one party or the other. Usually the woman - most Aboriginal societies were patriarchal, after all, and the victors tell the stories.

You or your beautiful Ngapuhi wife may know of Maori stories which unambiguously deal with crops, somebody out digging or protecting the harvest, encounters and dalliances while harvesting, somebody breaching rahui, etc. ? Maori up that way were unambiguously farmers, after all, settled in pas, storing food in huge quantities, weaving flax for clothing, with very strict hierarchical structures and protocols. With my incredibly limited experience in one small corner of SA, I haven't come across any of that.

But I think we're moving forward, clarifying issues :)

Cheers,

Joe

.

Dear Loudmouth,

.

You wrote :

« 'Farming' is generally defined as requiring the cultivation of the soil. I'm not interested in any claims which skirt around that and talk of 'management', etc. 'Cultivation' is the cornerstone of farming. »
.

The OED defines farming as :

« The activity or business of growing crops and raising livestock »

« Origin :

« Middle English from Old French ferme, from medieval Latin firma ‘fixed payment’, from Latin firmare ‘fix, settle’ (in medieval Latin ‘contract for’), from firmus ‘constant, firm’; compare with firm. The noun originally denoted a fixed annual amount payable as rent or tax; this is reflected in farm (sense 3 of the verb), which later gave rise to ‘to subcontract’ (farm (sense 2 of the verb)). The noun came to denote a lease, and, in the early 16th century, land leased for farming. The verb sense ‘grow crops or keep livestock’ dates from the early 19th century. »

No "talk of management etc." there - nor anything about "requiring the cultivation of the soil" either as a matter of fact. Strange, isn't it ? Though I guess modern-day crop farmers do both.

On the other hand, I guess you could say that sheep and cattle (and other livestock) farmers just do "management etc." not necessitating any "cultivation of the soil".

It's obviously a different type of farming to the one you (and those authors you cited) had in mind.

Perhaps they (the authors) had "some ulterior motive".

.