Foxy,

"...that collectively
challenges the narrative of the Aboriginal people
as nomadic hunters."

What were the majority then?

Aboriginals that I have known well have no folk memory of their people ever having been farmers until the mid C19th.
My own distant Aboriginal relatives bear this out, in fact I rang up a distant cousin only an hour ago and he hasn't heard any stories of pre-1788 farming.

Dear robroy,

Greetings.

You claim to have read Dark Emu unlike our serial denier Loudmouth who seems to be able to make vast pronouncements about its veracity without having opened a single page.

You also claim to have deemed it fiction.

Well giving us three examples of the fiction you find within its pages would allow a more fulsome discussion of its merits.

The floor is yours.

.

Dear Loudmouth,

.

Thanks, Joe. If I understand you correctly, so far as you are aware, no squatter/parstoralist/grazier has ever owned any pastoral land in South Australia at any time in its history, to date.

So, let's consider that settled – unless, of course, something contrary comes to light sometime in the future.

To sum up : in the new colony of South Australia, from its creation in 1836 until the 1860s, the British Crown/squatters/pastoralists took much of the traditional lands of the Aboriginal peoples from them for grazing purposes on the pretext that the Aboriginal peoples did not farm it (« till the soil ») - which, of course, neither the British Crown, nor the squatters/pastoralists nor the British speculative investors did either, after they had appropriated all that land free of cost.

It is not surprising, under these circumstances, that many of the descendents of those primitive peoples never assimilated the culture of the colonisers and continue to live hopeless, despicable lives at the periphery of modern Western civilisation.

They are caught in limbo, having lost their land, dignity, self esteem and much of their traditional culture while acquiring only some of the worst of ours.

The founding fathers had high hopes for South Australia when it was created because it was not founded as a convict colony but, unfortunately, the worm had been in the apple ever since the first fleet left Portsmouth, England on 13 May, 1787 for Botany Bay.

Australia was founded on a gross injustice and South Australia bears its share of that collective injustice. Many deny it. Many more prefer to ignore it. But we all reap the benefits of it.

.

Banjo,

There may have been cases of the early SA colonial authorities, up to about 1849, 'granting' pastoralists freehold title - there certainly were in the late nineteenth century in Qld and WA - but I don't know enough about the subject to say yea or nay. All pastoral leases were cancelled and re-negotiated in mid-1850.

All pastoral leases issued after 1850 had a clause protecting the rights of Aboriginal people to use the land as they always had done, provided they kept at least half a mile from stock yards, etc. Those rights still exist in SA. The assumption purported to be that pastoral and traditional uses of the land could co-exist. Of course, there was already too much disruption to Aboriginal people's lives to facilitate this: men were going off to work for money, ration depots offered many Aboriginal people (but not the able-bodied) the alternative of foraging or doing nothing.

What does this have to do with farming ?

Joe

//a clause protecting the rights of Aboriginal people to use the land as they always had done//

Did that allow for the massacre of Aboriginal people when they stepped out of line?

"1849, Port Lincoln - five Aboriginals including an infant were killed after being given arsenic mixed with flour by hutkeeper Patrick Dwyer near Port Lincoln. Despite being arrested with strong evidence against him, Dwyer was released from custody by Charles Driver, the Government Resident at Port Lincoln."

Not exactly peaches and cream for Aboriginals in SA was it Joe.

Paul,

No.