Narelle,

The Budj Bim site is managed by
Gunditjmara Traditional owners and Parks
Victoria.

They already look after the native plants,
and animals, the buildings, and maintaining
walking tracks, providing guided tours and
running the visiting schools program.
There's a huge master plan to make
this a popular tourist attraction. I'm sure
that restaurants and other facilities are included
in the plan.

I suggest you contact the Gunditj Mirring Traditional
Owners Aboriginal Corporation at:
Shop/4
48 Edgar Street
Heywood Vic. 3304.

Tel: (03) 5527-1427.

However, don't
limit yourself to just one author. Perhaps our
resident Aboriginal expert on this forum
- Joe (Loudmouth)
might also qualify for an invite?

Dear Nareele47;

You wrote;

“Steele - thank you for the reference book.”

No problems, I hope you make good use of it.

“I cannot recall making an individual post before.”

You posting history can be found here; http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/user.asp?id=66217

There you will find you joined the forum in 2017 and that you made a post just a week ago. But then again a week can be a long time for some.

“Thanks for refereshing(sic) my memory with such grace.”

I wasn't attempting to be gracious but then again neither were you.

“I might have to swallow some steel and toughen up.”

Oh I think you are plenty tough enough and pugnacious enough on the issue of indigenous rights that you felt compelled to reply to Is Mise in this fashion on a thread about SSM.

“Hopefully, this will herald the end of all discrimination in this country and we can get on with the task of creating true equality. Posted by Is Mise, Wednesday, 15 November 2017 2:41:40 PM”

“Absolutely - let's stop discrimination and have welfare based on needs only - and not race based.”

This is despite neither the topic nor the subsequent posts going anywhere near questions of race.

Then this from you;

“I am so pleased that changing the Constitution to have a separate page for the Indigenous - or - how many treaties - how many tribes?.....has been rejected.

United we stand.
One people.
One country.
One Nation.”

The capitalisation of the 'N' was naturally the clincher.

Now I may be completely wrong and you aren't a One Nation supporting bigot and if so you will have my apology.

Am I?

(since all Indigenous people are one people, their culture is all the same everywhere)
Loudmouth,
Doesn't the concept of one people entail that they can clearly communicate with one another ?
Wouldn't that outcome be many little nations in Australia ? At what stage does a tribe become a sovereign nation when it wasn't actually a Nation before invasion ? I recall a Qld Labor Deputy Premier telling me some years ago that they were toying with the idea of creating an Aboriginal State on Cape York to get all the Aboriginals out of the cities & live happily ever after in their own State.

SR,

You speak as if words like racist, bigot, homophobic, antisemitic,
atheist, sexist, to name a few, are bad.
They are merely Nouns, which are used to make a more refined comment during the course of a conversation.
Is it not correct to express oneself in exactly the manner in which they feel will best convey their message?
If someone feels aggrieved by use the of such words, maybe they need to study the context of the message before hand.

Hi Narelle47, "sell eels as they have done in Rotorua". Not familiar with Maori selling (smoked) eels in Rotorua, probely do, they sell many other foods, there is a thriving Maori culture business in the local area catering to tourists. The sale of NZ green stone has declined significantly in both Rotorua, and in the major green stone trading location of Hokitika in the South Island. Cheap Chinese imports have impacted the local trade. My wife's Pounamu cost me $350 ten years ago, done by an authentic Maori carver in Rototua, I could have bought a cheap Chinese neck decorator, an inferior import, and look-a-like, for $150 at the time, but of no cultural significance what so ever.

Just on eels, great when smoked, they were once plentiful in the creeks and rivers of Northland NZ, but my bros tell me they are harder to get these days, due to Pakeha farmers using fertilisers, the run off pollutes the waterways, too much weed in the water sucking up the oxygen, and eels are very sensitive to their environment, less eels.

Hi Individual,

Yes indeed: that's my point. Like all traditional societies, from Scotland to Mexico to New Zealand, fragmentation is the norm: clan against clan, forever. Aboriginal people - or at least their 'leaders' - seem to have a genius for fragmenting, breaking up into warring factions, each trying to dominate and crush the other.

When my late wife and I were making Aboriginal Flags back in 1972, we desperately hoped that the Flag would be something which pulled people together, one Flag, some unity at last. At the time, every dickwick was knocking up his own flag, replete with all the stereotypical artifacts and animals. We tried to counter that. We were just factory workers back then, and kept making the Flag until about 1980, perhaps one or two hundred, sending them around the country, all for free.

Now many groups are knocking up their own flags again, dickwiks reborn like bloody zombies. The concept of 'nation' is bound to set group against group. So many issues in Indigenous affairs will end up doing the same unless people are very careful, such as language revival.

As for sovereignty, power over land, some elements of government, surely this was at the clan level ? With 300-500 language groups, and by definition many clans within each language group, then it's possible that there were many thousands of clans across Australia before 1788. Ergo theoretically, thousands of 'nations'.

Of course, most Indigenous people - at least the majority in the 'south' - may not know exactly what their clan is, especially given the traditional practice of taking your father's clan, and in any case,most city-based people might find it all totally irrelevant.

'Their own State' ? How different is that from Apartheid, particularly since the great majority of Indigenous people are now urban ? Do Indigenous 'leaders' need some education in what Apartheid is ?

Sometimes I despair about the idiot pressures on Indigenous people by their 'leaders'. I suspect that sometimes you feel the same.

Cheers,

Joe