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Dear Loudmouth,

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You wrote :

« "We have no way of knowing, today, if, ..... " Well, yes we do. The anthropologist W.E.H.Stanner, at the end of his long career, remarked that in all his time in the field, he had never come across any Aboriginal person who had 'come in' for the rations, etc., who had gone back out into the traditional foraging life again ». 

That's quite understandable, Joe, but it has nothing to do with what I was referring to when I stated that « we have no way of knowing ». Here it is again :

« We have no way of knowing, today, if, at the time, the Aboriginal peoples had been allowed to choose freely, they would have preferred to be colonised and educated by the British, assimilate British culture and live in modern urban environments, or « stay out-bush, living their charming but quaint culture, doing their colourful dances », as you describe it ».

You now rightly point out  that « people are, after all, not stupid ». Evidence of that is the fact that, as the Aboriginal peoples were no match for the superior force of the British, they had to submit to them and deal with colonisation as best they could in order to survive.

Acceptance of rations after their traditional lands had been expropriated is, by no means, evidence of the willingness of Aboriginal peoples to freely choose colonisation by the British and adoption of their culture. It is simply an example of « choice under duress of colonisation ».

I doubt that W.E.H.Stanner, whom you cite, would think otherwise. According to his biographers, he frequently spoke and wrote about the erasure from history of the violent colonial encounters "invasion, massacres, ethnic cleansing and resistance" between European settlers and the Indigenous population meant that there was "a cult of forgetfulness practised on a national scale"

That does not tetify to any sort of willingness on the part of the Aboriginal peoples to freely choose colonisation if they had been offered the oportunity to do so.

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rhross, showing your true colours in this debate, with a load of spiteful vitriol for Aboriginal people when the opportunity arises. Yes alcohol is a blight on remote communities, just as it is in other sections of society.

//@Paul 1405 you appear not to know, that, like many things associated with Aborigines, the Welcome to Country ceremony, an utter disgrace and insult when applied to other Australians, was invented. Courtesy of Ernie Dingo, a part Aboriginal comedian, in the Seventies.//

You fail to realise that all cultures including your own, are dynamic and not static in nature, forever changing. If, and it appears so, Aboriginal culture now embraces a "welcome to country" ceremony, courtesy of Ernie Dingo, then so be it. I was aware of the ED involvement in all this. Among other things culture embraces social behaviour, which is forever changing. Is you culture the same today as it was in your grandparents time? I'm thankful that modern Australian culture is not what it was a couple of hundred years ago.

Hi Joe, when you refer to the "Protector" was he the person given the authority to supposedly watch over the rights of Aboriginal people. Matthew Moorhouse the first Protector of Aborigines in South Australia. Moorhouse led the Rufus River massacre, in which 30 to 40 Aborigines were slaughtered, probably more.

Don't seem real protective, wouldn't you agree?

Paul,

I agree, all cultures are dynamic and thus change, but lots of dynamic Aboriginal Culture is passed off as traditional, especially for the tourist industry.

A good example of a cultural change becoming "traditional" is the present Scots' Kilt, it was invented by an Englishman as a more convenient mode of dress for his workers.

1795, the benevolent British were doing really well with kindness to the local inhabitants. Lieutenant Governor William Paterson ordered two officers and 66 soldiers along the Hawkesbury to "...destroy as many as they could meet with..in the hope of striking terror, to erect gibbets in different places, whereon the bodies of all they might kill were to be hung ...". Seven or eight Bediagal people were killed and strung up that way for display.

Paul,

Moorhouse was the third Protector, after Bromley and Dr Wyatt. A thorough account of the Rufus River Battle/Massacre is in the Protector's Letters, Volume 1, on my web-site: www.firstsources.info. From his account, it seems much more like a set-piece battle between hundreds of well-armed warriors and thirty whitefellas with muskets, following many months of skirmishes along the Murray, which in turn followed the massacre of a party of overlanders from Sydney. Check it out.

After the battle, some Aboriginal women were 'captured' to be taken to Adelaide, and were raped by both Blacks and Whites along the way.

As you write, quite correctly, "all cultures including your own, are dynamic and not static in nature, forever changing." Yes, indeed, and I've been trying, in vain, to get that across - that many Aboriginal practices became redundant after Settlement/Invasion. After all, people were moving from a foraging society to a farming and mercantile society.

So even the languages that people were using were changing; from languages rich in foraging terms to a language (English) with entirely new terms. So the last full-speakers of people most impacted by the new-world situation, usually were born barely a generation after Settlement/Invasion: even the bloke on the $ 50 note, David Unaipon, born in 1872, a 'full-blood', could not speak the full language.

Within one or two generations, Aboriginal men were usually working for money, living in cottages, their children going to school, everybody receiving medical services, many people being issued with 15-ft 'canoes' (i.e. pointed bows at each end) and guns, repaired either for free or at half-cost.

So yes, cultural practices changed very quickly in many areas. Even though people had the right to use the land in traditional ways, people didn't. But Aboriginal people were exempted from the provisions of the Game Act in 1895, which barred hunting or fishing or shooting birdlife for set times during the year - 'close seasons' - but not for Aboriginal people, who could hunt etc. at any time of the year.

And of course,

{TBC]