Banjo,

"Also, there is no evidence that the various supposed waves of colonisation by different Aboriginal tribes at different periods had the same devastating effects to the total Aboriginal population of Australia as that of British colonisation in 1788."

Nor is there any evidence that these early invaders brought benefits to the degree that the British did.

Hi Joe,

//And can't un-happen. That's exactly right. Thank you, Paul.// To a certain extent that's true, physical things like the British spread small pox catastrophe of 1790 which almost wiped out the entire Aboriginal population around the British settlement can't un-happen. But where an injustice like failing to recognise Aboriginal sovereignty in 1788 can un-happen in 2019, but only if we as a nation so desire.

Gee Issy, what you see as benefits may not have been so, alcohol was that a benefit?

Paul,

To the extent that the concept of sovereignty may be relevant, the unit of sovereignty was the clan in most cases, and perhaps the 'tribal' level. So 'sovereignty' would be relevant to somewhere between 300 and 10,000 units of sovereign organisation.

So what would such 'sovereignty' mean today, with the Indigenous population vastly more mixed-up than in 1788, with most of it living in urban areas, and many of the rest aspiring to do the same ?

As for the small-pox epidemic in 1789-1790, the evidence seems to show that it came down to Sydney from the northern coasts. The epidemic around 1829 seems to have spread from the Gulf of Carpentaria down the inland rivers and overland to the Darling. But you can make your own mind up, as you wish:

https://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&lr=&id=i7V5DQAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PT8&dq=Australia+small-pox+%22judy+campbell%22&ots=6tpOPAHrvm&sig=rqRZBF3uL4lmvsFrS9XZocU3xGE#v=onepage&q=Australia%20small-pox%20%22judy%20campbell%22&f=false

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/261665/summary

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/003591571500801402

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10314618508595711?journalCode=rahs19

Interestingly, Aboriginal people may have had immunity to at least one serious disease: in the correspondence from the Poonindie Mission near Pt Lincoln, around 1880, the superintendent was fearful that a scarlatina (scarlet fever) epidemic might devastate the Aboriginal population there, since it had already killed many people in Port Lincoln. In the upshot, he lost two of his own children, but no Aboriginal people were affected. All on my web-site: www.firstsources.info , on the Poonindie page. But of course, that's only South Australia, an insignificant part of Australia, and it has no relevance to Australia as a whole.

Joe

Paul,

"Gee Issy, what you see as benefits may not have been so, alcohol was that a benefit?"

Yes, in moderation.
None of my aboriginal relatives were/are drunks but they enjoyed/enjoy a drop.

.

Dear Is Mise,

.

You wrote :

«  Nor is there any evidence that these early invaders brought benefits to the degree that the British did. »

In fact, Is Mise, there is no evidence that there were any « early invaders » – which is why I qualified them, in my last post to rhross, as « supposed waves of colonisation by different Aboriginal tribes at different periods ».

According to the most recent and most extensive DNA tests on present-day Aboriginal populations, it appears that all living Aboriginal Australians descend from a single founding population that arrived about 50,000 years ago. But as archeologists' analysis of ancient stone tools found in the Kimberleys have been dated back to 65,000 years ago, the difference of 15,000 years has yet to be explained.

Is it due to the archeological method of dating – not the tools themselves – but the geological matter in which they were found ? Or could there have been a « ghost » population that has left no genetical trace on earth ?

I suspect that the assumption that there had been « waves » of early migrations of Aboriginal peoples to Australia is based on what occurred in Europe and the rest of the world, and which has been indisputably established scientifically.

Even if there had been a « ghost » population during the 15,000 years for which we have no evidence, we have no way of knowing if the « new » arrivals were in any way responsible for their "ghost" predeccessors' complete disappearance.

The only « invaders » we can identify with certainty are the British. As you rightly point out, they brought some benefits. But their arrival had such catastrophic effects on the Aboriginal population, at the time, that the final result can only be qualified as negative.

It is estimated that between 1788 and 1900, the Indigenous population of Australia was reduced by 90% due to :

- the introduction of new diseases
- settler expropriation of Indigenous lands
- direct and violent conflict with the colonisers

.

Hi there Issy and Co.

In the light of BP's claim of a decimation of the Aboriginal population between 1788 and 1900 of 90% those "benifits" you speak of would have to be rather substantive to justify that horrendous population decline. Could you please list some of the benefits, as you perceive them, bestowed on Aboriginal people by the British between 1788 and 1900.

Joe, it appears to me, correct me if I'm wrong, that its not whether past Aboriginal sovereignty has existed, what is relevant to you is that if sovereignty is recognised then the impact on Australian society could be so disconcerting to the majority that it should be avoided at all cost.
Its my view that it would be better to come to an arrangement that both recognised Aboriginal sovereignty and in tern in a magnanimous gesture on the part of Aboriginal people handed that sovereignty to the Commonwealth of Australia. In that way we can all move on as a united people.