Dear Paul,

Don't despair. So many good people are supporting
what is being asked and most Australians do see
the need for deeper engagement and respect for
our 1st Australian's achievements. Acknowledging
their history and them will happen. I am quite
sure of that. The nay sayers will be left behind.
Take heart.

Hi Foxy,

I watched Erine Dingo's show on NITV tonight, btw a great episode on the town of Broome WA, they ran a couple of their "cultural inclusion" ads, how anyone could be upset by them is beyond me. I suppose our forum friends are, just as they are too busy tuned into the Fuhrer Channel on KKK TV watching re-runs of Joe Goebbles speeches with sub-titles. Gotta laugh.

Very few people in Oz today could survive a hunter gather life style, & that includes all but a few aboriginals as well. Take the guns, four wheel drives & out board powered tinnies of those who still practice a bit of the old ways, & they would not fare much better than us.

Years ago I knew a couple of old timers who had survived the depression mostly on what they could get out of the salt water estuary they lived on, but it was a very bare existence, only made possible with large fish traps that required modern steel to be available, & very few competing for what was available. Such traps are illegal today, they are too efficient.

I have seen the remnants of aboriginal stone fish traps on the tidal flat on Magnetic island. Those people would have lived well, if strong enough to defend their construction & catch. The owner of the small resort at West Point had duplicated the design in steel & wire, & found it very efficient. However there are not many places with sheltered water, & gently sloping beaches with big tides to suit such designs, & of course they are illegal today.

Personally the idea of wandering around naked throwing rocks & sticks at anything that moved, trying to catch something to eat tonight does not appeal. I'll stick to the supermarket & the odd home grown steer thanks.

Dear Josephus,

Christian superstition with its man-god, virgin birth and other nonsense is better than pagan superstition? Let everybody enjoy his or her superstition.

60000-year-old culture? What a load of bollocks.

All cultures evolve over time and without any written records the culture 300 years ago is unknown let alone 1000 or 60 000 years ago.

When you consider the decline of native art vis a vis the Bradshaw culture and the fact that some tribes actually 'forgot' how to make fire, we can say that, at least in some case, the native culture didn't evolve but rather devolved.

I've never understood this swooning over the fact or assertion that the aboriginal culture is [insert latest fantasy number] years old. Literally every other peoples on the planet managed to find ways to improve their lot and that of following generations. Australian natives alone failed to find ways to advance their culture and in many cases merely found ways to reduce their cultural output. In a more honest world, anthropologists would be studying so-called native culture to understand this phenomena. But in the currently charged arena, any anthropologist doing so would be committing career suicide