Joe,

What would we do without Dr Google, you ask?

Well, you could also go to other search engines
and databases, you could go to original works,
diaries, books, articles, original research,
fieldwork, research published in scholarly
academic journals or alternatively go to your
state and national libraries and ask a librarian
for help.

There's also essays written by people like -
Megan Davis, Damien Freeman, Stan Grant,
Jackie Huggins, Nolan Hunter, Rod LIttle,'Shireen
MOrris, Warren Mundine, Noel Pearson,
Galarrway Yunupingu, to name just a few.
Then there are the diaries of explorers,
pastoralists, protectors, and historians.
Bill Gammage is worth reading.

But, perhaps you're right - stick with Google.
It's an easier option for you.

A multicultural Pom, with the grand old English name of Sahil Mahtani, has written a tongue-in-cheek piece demanding that Britain’s Anglo-Saxons deserve reparations for the Norman Conquest of their country. Funny and absurd, it highlights the equal absurdity of our own Recognition and Voice nonsense.

He refers to the enduring devastation, war and genocide that occurred in 1066. The Anglo-Saxon ruling class was was replaced, the church had to surrender to foreigners, English was replaced as the official language by Norman French.

The Conquest of Britain by the Norman invaders has had lasting effects, according to Sahil Mahtani. Norman surnames are over-represented by 25 percent in Oxford and Cambridge. Cambridge “drips with Norman money”. Graduate descendants of the “rapacious Norman invader” class earn 400,000 pounds more during their lifetimes than do graduates from non-Norman universities. And, it’s been like this for ‘31 generations’.

There should be Royal Commission to trace the present day descendants of the Norman “usurpers”, and they should pay a tax to the Anglo-Saxon victims for the invasion and genocide.

Mahtani knows that there will be the “inevitable” moans from descendants of Normans that they were not personally responsible, but this is “feeble prattle”. (Sound familiar?).

And, that’s not the end of it. One Royal Commission into injustice will not be enough. Once the Anglo-Saxons have been compensated, the descendants of the ancient Britons will need to go after the Anglo-Saxons who took over from them. The enormous cost of all this, could be retrieved by the Scandinavians in compensation for all the raping and pillaging by the Vikings.

Constitutions confer power upon parliaments, which
are, by definition, political organisations. The
purpose of constitutions is to organise and manage
political processes through the creation of political
institutions.

Internationally, many publicly funded institutions empower
First Nations with a voice in their own affairs, often
accompanied by constitutional provisions, recognising and
protecting Indigenous rights.

Norway, Sweden, and Finland have publicly funded Sami
affairs, New Zealand has the publicly funded Maori
Council (and reserved Maori seats) to ensure the
Maori have a voice in Maori affairs; and Canada has publicly
funded the Assembly of First Nations,

All these countries not only guarantee First Nations have
a voice, but also constitutionally recognise Indigenous
rights and interests.

Why do they accommodate their First Nations in institutional
and constitutional arrangements? Because the First Nations
of a colonised country are not the same as any other lobby
group. They are a group of citizens descended from the
original owners of the land. They were dispossessed, and have
rights and interests arising from this history.

Responsible democracies put in place measures to manage
relationships between their Indigenous peoples and the
nation state, to ensure Indigenous peoples
can participate fairly in the nation.
Representative arrangements are part of such
measures.

Hi there ALTRAV...

I'm sorry I hadn't realised you were addressing me in one of your posts. As you can probably gather, I'm very much a blue-collar person, who will never cite some academic opinion, on a particular topic, other than statements made by the individual(s) I'm responding too.

I don't think anyone is smart enough to determine a person's ethnicity purely by meeting and speaking with them momentarily. But as a copper, stationed in an area with a high (Australian) indigenous population, you do tend to know, after you've been talking with them for a while, precisely who they are.

As an example, when I did a stint at Redfern (Sydney), and we had an area under our local Command, very near the Redfern Railway Station, known as the 'Eveleigh St.' sector. Four densely packed Streets, bordered by Eveleigh, Holden, Vine & Caroline St's. with Eveleigh Lane, abutting behind. This group of streets roughly in a square had a very high concentration of blacks 'living' there in conditions that I could only call squalor.

I kid you not; it was a veritable war zone! Drunken, brawling, rowdy, drug-affected individuals, all spoiling for a decent stink with the coppers! Egged on, by several people of questionable Aboriginal heritage, who delighted in nothing more, then agitating and stirring these people, to belt the 'bejesus' out of the coppers. It got so bad when I was there. I (think) it was 'Four Corners' that did a TV Show dedicated to all the trouble. It was the 'stirrers' we wanted to lock-up, but 'the best laid plans of mice and men'?

The only voice of reason in those violent times, was an Aboriginal lady called 'Mummy SMITH', a really wonderous person who knew exactly where the troubles laid?

Foxy,

Both Canada and Australia fund their respective Assembly of First Nations. But your surfing through Google is commendable.

It strikes me: do you actually know any Indigenous people ? I don't mean someone on the same Committee, maybe a few years ago, but an ordinary person, here and now ? Your comments have a sort of extra-planetary sound about them.

Dear O Sung Wu,

I was honoured to be mistaken for you by AltRav.

I have some second-hand association with Redfern: my father was born there, and my mum's father died there. My sister was beaten up there on the railway platform by an Aboriginal bloke who pinched her purse. Those were the days.

Many of those inner-city suburbs are familiar by word of mouth (I'm a Bankstown boy myself, we moved up in the world): as a kid my mum lived in Glebe, her mum later lived in Surry Hills and died in Annandale, an aunt in Woolloomooloo - all back in the days when a hovel was a hovel: my grand-dad's had a dirt floor, it was eight or maybe ten feet wide. If only he'd lived to 100, or 120, he could have sold it for a fortune to a Green. Or a left-Labor functionary.

Have you thought about writing up your memoirs ?

Cheers,

Joe

Ttbn,

Your thread has got me thinking. Indigenous groups are trying to revive their languages, maybe all 500 or more of them, a task difficult enough for a team of linguists, let alone someone with the basic 200 words or less. Indigenous languages were full of hunting/gathering terms (and farming terms in the Torres Strait Islands), which have largely fallen into abeyance, at the same time as new terms have not been devised. I wish them every good luck.

Fortunately for Indigenous gatherings, they have a language which is almost universal, spoken from one side of Australia to the other, from universities to communities. It's called English. That's their language as much as it is anybody else's.

Of course, it may be spoken in a vast range of dialects and accents - my wife had a charming Pt McLeay accent from the lower Lakes, it was a shock recently to hear her voice on tape.

Different groups - at least in SA, an insignificant state - have slightly different accents (phonies, please note: copy an Indigenous accent). But they all can understand each other through a common medium for the first time in 60,000 years: English.

Cheers,

Joe