A great man, or ‘turrwan’, might have two or three or even four wives … They were useful in carrying burdens from one place to another. A woman, because she was a woman, always carried the heaviest load. A man took his tomahawk, his spear, and waddy, and that sort of thing; a woman humped along with the weighty kangaroo and ’possum skin coverings, the dillies with eatables, and sometimes also a heavy little piece of goods in the form of a child. At times, too, she would carry tea-tree bark on her back for the humpies [makeshift tents], while ever and anon as they travelled along the men enjoyed themselves hunting and looking for ‘sugar bags’ (native bees nests), etc.” — Tom Petrie’s Reminiscences of Early Queensland, 1904
Cont

“In 1849 I saw a battle where about 500 of the Narrinyeri met some 800 of the Wakanuwan, and it was very evident that if the conflict had not been stopped by the colonial authorities the Narrinyeri would have been signally defeated by their opponents. They bore a special enmity to [their opponents] because these latter had a propensity for stealing fat people and eating them. If a man had a fat wife, he was always particularly careful not to leave her unprotected, lest she might be seized by prowling cannibals.” — George Taplin, The Narrinyeri: An Account of the Tribes of South Australian Aborigines.

“The natives told me that some twenty years before I came to Port Macleay they first saw white men on horseback, and thought that the horses were their visitors’ mothers, because they carry them on their back! I have also heard that another tribe regarded the first pack-bullocks they saw as whitefellows’ wives, because they carried the luggage!” — Taplin, ibid., p. 68, footnote.

“If a man has several girls at his disposal he speedily obtains several wives who, however, very seldom agree well with each other, but are continually quarrelling, each endeavouring to be the favourite. The man, regarding them as mere slaves than in any other light, employs them in every possible way to his own advantage. They are obliged to get shellfish, roots, and eatable plants. If one [man] from another tribe should arrive having anything he desires to purchase, he perhaps makes a bargain to pay by letting him have one of his wives for a longer or shorter period.” — H.E.A. Meyer, Manners and Customs of the Aborigines of the Encounter Bay Tribe, South Australia, in Taplin, ibid., p. 191.)

"What an absurd remark."

The remark was from a government report based on actual hospital statistics. But, Foxy, if you don't want it to be true, then it isn't.

Vincent Lingiari was born in 1919, a member of the
Gurindji people of the Victoria River region of the
Northern Territory. Vincent's parents worked on the
Wave Hill cattle station, 600km south of Darwin, and
even further away from any actual city. It was a starkly
remote place in the middle of some of the world's most
inforgiving country, seemingly designed less to raise
cattle than to punish them for their sins.

At the time of Lingiari's birth, Wave Hill was owned by
William Vestey, the employer of Lingiari's parents, and
and later the boss of Vincent himself, when the boy was
put to work at the age of 12 at the Wave Hill stock
camps. Today it might seem appalling that a 12 year old
could be forced to work mustering cattle, but these
were different times, when child labour was a cherished
part of everyday life. As was institutionalised racism
and the belief that Aboriginal people were subhuman.

Forcing Aboriginal people to work for them was a
longstanding tradition for the Vesteys and the Wave Hill
station.

Like many Aboriginal nations, the Gurindji had found their
traditional way of life somewhat squeezed by white settlers.
The white settlers, of course, were only following their
own traditional way of life, that is, theft and genocide,
so it was a real clash of cultures.

The waterholes that Aboriginal tribes had depended on had
been fenced off by pastoralists or polluted by their cattle,
which also destroyed desert plants that were an important
resource for original inhabitants. Meanwhile white hunters shot
the the Aboriginal hunting dogs, and the kangaroos...

cont'd ...

Foxy,
I’d like to see you stop a 12 year old who has been raised on a cattle station from wanting to join the men in the mustering; your knowledge of bush life is somewhat wanting..
Also at twelve he is already a man or about to become one so to call his work ‘child labour’ is also shewing lack of knowledge of the subject.

The good ole boys are at it again.

mhaze, how about you look at whites who best fit the same broad socio-economic grouping as most disadvantaged aboriginal people fall into, a much higher proportion than in white society, and you will find they also have a very high rate of family violence. For you its black skin, and nothing else, ever thought family violence might be due to environmental factors more so that "culture".

PBJ, you accept the lying colonial propaganda that was used to justify mass genocide against aboriginal people. Nothing to say about the European cultural practice of cutting the genitals of aboriginal men just to watch them run around in agony until they died. Nothing to say about aboriginal children heads being bashed off with polo mallets in the name of sport.