Steele,

Provide a link to one Australian Aboriginal person who has gone back to the old ways and I'll produce a thousand who love their electric light; no sitting around a campfire for them.

Is Mise,

Yes, I remember one of my Indigenous students, a good, strong woman, very cultural; complaining one Winter's morning that her A/C was playing up.

Down this way, people living around Lake Alexandrina barely ever go fishing any more - they can buy the local fish, already processed, in the supermarket 30 miles away; easier. But blokes might go out hunting in a 4WD, mainly for the thrill of shooting something.

Mind you, there are no kangaroos within cooee of that place; but as I write, there are kangaroos within three or four miles, in these southern suburbs of Adelaide, beautiful 'Eastern Greys', dark brown really, very graceful and intelligent.

Paul,

Anyway, the question still hovers there, like a fart in a lift:

Was occupation of Australia by some external country inevitable ? While of course history SHOULD always be positive and uplifting, has it been ?

Yes, I think I grasp where you might be going - sovereignty. But if all of the land in Australia was jealously guarded by clans, in their many thousands, can we talk about clan sovereignty ? Any more than, today, we can talk about householder sovereignty ?

And if not clan sovereignty, and given the battles between neighbouring clans in the same language group even if with different dialects (and even if they later exchanged women as wives and workers) - i.e. what used to vulgarly be called 'tribes' - can we talk about 'tribal sovereignty ?

And if 'tribes' either habitually fought each other, or were oblivious of any other 'tribe's existence out beyond the next 'tribe', can we talk about some sort of over-arching Aboriginal 'sovereignty' across whole regions, or across Australia ?

None of these is a given, Paul. Good griping points, of course, and god knows, every progressive person needs griping points. But there are plenty of those to go around :)

Joe

Dear loudmouth2,

What is it with you and primary sources? As soon as they are given to you you go in to a fluff. Is it because having a site called First Sources you push back on anyone who dares cross into your domain?

Sorry mate I am going with them well before I listen to an ideologically tainted keyboard warrior who is determined to eschew any evidence that doesn't coincide with his world view.

Get a grip.

You ask why didn't they use flax instead of possum skins. Clearly because a single rug afforded the protection from the cold equal to 10 blankets as attested by the first hand account I provided.

Dear Is Mise,

Strewth mate. You do hate letting anything go don't you. What don't you understand about these things lasting a lifetime?

As to tanning:

“Once the skins were removed from the animal, the flesh was scraped off using a sharp stone implement or mussel shell. The skins were then stretched over bark and hung out to dry often near a fire as this would slightly tan the skins and protect them from insect attacks . After the skins were dried out they were then rubbed with fat, ochre and or ashes to make them pliable and keep them supple. The cloaks were sewn together using sinew, which was taken from the tail of kangaroos. Holes were pierced through the skins using a sharp pointed stick or a pointed bone needle. The sinew was then threaded through the pre made holes to sew the skins together making them into a cloak.”

They lasted and were in high demand from the likes of prospectors. Every Australia Day I tend to read at least one of the classic Australian authors. This year it was Lawson's Brighten's Sister-in-Law. Putting aside the blankets and wrapping of the sick child in the possum skin rug stood out.

This was settlers purchasing Aboriginal technology because it was useful and it worked. Why is that so hard for you to accept?

Hi SR,

Irony. Oy.

Yes, of course, many groups used possum-skin cloaks. I've never actually heard of anybody using the local flaxes, or any 127,000-year-old genetic improvement of 'natural' flaxes. You got me there :)

Perhaps you haven't caught up with the agreed assertion that Aboriginal people were mainly farmers, not foragers ? Or are there groups on the 'left' who reject the assertion of 127,000-year-old Aboriginal farming ? Get with the vibe, SR !

But you need to understand that, in the push to assert some sort of Aboriginal 'sovereignty' over the continent of Australia, it may be actually necessary to also assert Aboriginal farming ? Perhaps not Pascoe's 127,000 years, but certainly at some time before 1788 ? Perhaps from the Maoris - ask Paul :)

Speaking of which, when I was working at a bookshop in Ponsonby in Auckland, fifty years ago now, an elderly Rarotongan bloke told me about an obviously-true story of Rarotongans or Maori sailing across to Australia and back, citing the viewing of Blue Mountains as incontrovertible evidence. Good enough for me :)

Joe

The whole thread is based on a monumental misunderstanding by SR of the award Murdoch got. And sadly that was the highlight of his efforts.

I find it rather fascinating the way people swoon over aboriginal 'technology'.

OMG they made fur coats - what geniuses!! ....just like every other stone age people other than those who lived in the tropics.

OMG they drew on cave wall - what a culture!!....just like every other stone age people.

OMG they had 'bone technology' (that one still breaks me up)....just like every other stone age people.

The only way to swoon over the very ordinariness of aboriginal 'society' (if you could even call it that) is to be utterly pig ignorant of what stone age life was like throughout the planet.
But while most of the planet moved onward and upward, Australia in 1788 was little changed from Australia in 8000BC.

Hi Mhaze,

In his magnificent book, 'Against the Grain', James C. Scott notes that hunter-gatherer societies, foraging societies - consuming rather than producing and accumulating, societies - were still predominant throughout the world barely four hundred years ago.

Four hundred years.

It's an entire mind-set: I recall working on a vegetable garden on an Aboriginal community, like so many other dopey whitefellas, while other people watched or drove past and/or watched. Once the vegetables - tomatoes, peas, sweet-corn, whatever- were ready, they politely asked if they could, effectively, have the lot. Muggins said, sure, go for it. And they did. Reciprocity - bah ! Humbug ! Once bitten, twice shy.

Someone should write a history of that interface between cultivators and foragers (hunters, poachers, gatherers, fishers, birders, sometime thieves and pirates) since it is still very much alive and well all around the world - wherever there is forest on one side and cultivated fields, or pastoralists tending their animals, or towns and cities on the other, there is likely to be exchange.

Hence the Wuhan wet markets.

Joe