Dan,

This was partly my point, that there is confusion over so many concepts in land law: the crucial differences between occupation, possession, ownership, holding and use-rights, between customary useage and proprietorship, between land-use and ownership and sovereignty, etc.

In all the land law text-books, right or wrong, the history and evolution of ownership seems to start AFTER the transformation from group and individual land-use rights to private rights to use and to sell and buy, i.e. to alienate land, usually once it has been put under agricultural cultivation, fenced, jealously guarded and protected from trespassers.

So I'm trying to firm up whether or not very long-term land-use eventually constituted ownership - presumably, first on a group-owner basis (very common all over the world) and then privatising ownership, usually in the person of headman, chief, custodian, etc.

Joe

Paul,

So ...... how would you go about identifying the oral historical accounts of Aboriginal people around Botany Bay when Cook arrived ? Not some garbled, and just possibly inaccurate,accounts of some smug 20- or 30-year-old Elder with his thumb up his arse.

I think some time ago you demanded that I find written accounts from Aboriginal people which might dispute the 'allegations' in letters of the Protector here in SA. I failed quite miserably in finding any such letters, being a complete bastard.

But no doubt you could find letters from Aboriginal people around Botany Bay at the time of Cook's arrival which give a different story from the sanitised version which we have been afflicted with ?

Without such letters, or some other form of records from the actual time, all we have are the sanitised stories, which, I suppose, will have to do, since - as you claim - written records are so crucial.

As an aside, I remember talking to an elderly Cook Islander in Auckland around 1970 who told me of a legend that Maori sailors had crossed the Tasman (presumably in the last 800 years since Kupe) - he spoke of the long line of blue mountains fifty-odd kilometres back from the coast. I wouldn't be at all surprised.

Joe

Hi Joe (Loudmouth),

There is so much researchers can find in accessing
state and national archives. So much information
available - all you have to do is ask a librarian.

For example, Professor John Maynard is a Worimi man
from the Port Stephens region of NSW. He is the
Director of the Purai Global Indigenous and Diaspora
Research Studies Centre and one of the world's
respected voices on Indigenous history. He has written
widely on issues ranging from military involvement to
political activism and sport and published titles with
the National Library of Australia. Including -
"Living with the Locals: Early European Experience of
Indigenous Life."

His essay - "Cook and the Pacific"is worth a read.

Then there are Cook's own diaries.

The following links are interesting:

http://www.nla.gov.au/digital-classroom/senior/Cook/Indigenous-Response/Maynard

http://www.theconversatio0n.com/a-failure-to-say-hello-how-captain-cook-blundered-his-first-impression-with-indigenous-people-126673

Sorry for my typo. Here's the second link again:

http://www.theconversation.com/a-failure-to-say-hello-how-captain-cook-blundered-his-first-impression-with-indigenous-people-126673

Want to hear another lie about Captain Cook?

One Rodney Kelly claims that his great, great grandmother , a native "queen" no less, passed down a story about Cook leaving casks of dynamite, rigged to blow up after he had left.

A couple of problems with that yarn: Nobel didn't invent dynamite until 1867, and if 'her majesty' meant gunpowder, there was no way that a timed explosion could effected in Cook's time. It would take a very, very long fuse to get Cook and Co out of harm's way before an explosion, which would make no sense at all just to get rid of a few, if any, locals, who were unlucky enough to be wandering past when it went off. But hey: sense goes out the door each time Cook-haters open their big mouths

Hi Foxsy,

Cook didn't say 'hello' ?

Is that it ?

What, he didn't gesture, wave, sing out, cooee, yodel, throw both arms over his head, turn around and wriggle his arse ? God, what a vile creature.

Right or wrong, good or bad, invasion/settlement/occupation/ colonisation was inevitable. When I first got really interested in Indigenous issues, around 1963, I recall having a row with my mum, saying that everybody should pack up and go back to Britain. Of course, to a normally-intelligent person, one would have realised in about 43 seconds, where to exactly ? Ireland ? Scotland ? Cornwall ? even England ? It took me about a year.

Yes, it's possible, after all, the Romans went back to Rome. But maybe it's a bit late now. So we're all stuck with our history. It's happened. It can't un-happen. So we can acknowledge it, castigate it and invent ever-new atrocities, or celebrate it. But nothing we do can un-do it.

And really, I don't think that many Aboriginal people would want to go back to sitting around a little fire, bare-arsed, on a cold morning like today, wondering where they might find food. I recall one of my students, very cultural, complaining about how her AC wasn't working properly. Fair enough too.

Of course, I could be wrong, but when I see some Indigenous academic, with his 0.4 work-load, not just cultivating his illustrious career but also spending any time at all in the bush, say a year, I'll change my tune.

Joe