Statehood for Australia's Aboriginees?

You`ll need to get an education, if you want to be part of an adult discussion. Don`t expect others to provide links on common knowledge issues. When you do that once, you give the impression of trying to dumb the discussion down, just to hide from the truth. You`ve done it more than once.

dumb is lethal.

 

To the dogma swallowed by the brain dead, they were stone age hippies, sort of like Niel in "The Young Ones". Just more docile, like would be vegetarians, who wouldn`t eat veges, because they didn`t want to hurt them.

 

There you have it folks the serial troll can't help himself! He has got nothing of substance once again! I don't know about anybody else but the only time I learnt anything of aborigines prior to adult studies, and direct experience was primary school! These stories suggested aborigines were somewhat mindless savages without any societal structure! This must be what aussiefree2lies common knowledge must be based on LMAO!

In all my studies, I had not come across anything that suggested this supposed ongoing warfare and mindless bloodshed between aborigines! Artworks would be the biggest indicator of historical events, would they not?

This guys depiction are simply racist fantasy, especially due to the fact he can't find a credible link for us all to investigate! We just have to believe the stories from our childhood....

 

Aborigines weren`t / aren`t, spineless veges, as you try to spin. Even today, there is animosity between traditional enemies. A very large number of atrocities committed against Aborigines in the 1800`s, were committed by other Aborigines, Native police from other tribes. Warfare, is the primary reason for Aborigines being so tough, athletic. Charles Darwin was right, in his theory of Natural Selection, Aborigines are human, and the human condition includes warfare, regrettably.

Only a mind with a world the size of a suburban back yard, could be brainwashed into thinking that Aborigines were / are so pathetic. During the period of white settlement of this country, the two most significant factors, that allowed white settlement, were the fragmentation of Aboriginal forces due to tribal animosity, and the industrialisation / agriculture of Europe, which supplied an "endless" supply of expendable Europeans.

Aborigines aren`t, and never were, dopey veges. They are different to whites, in the sense that they are a product of a different environment, not because they are pathetic, as you attempt to portray. Cultures have clashed, it was inevitable that Australia be settled by an "advanced" culture, regrettable, but true. Aborigines have been severely disadvantaged, and now we are morally bound to assist their wellbeing, but silly, delusional fantasies, can only impede their progress, if allowed to impede progress by denying truth.

 

I don’t know why you waste your time responding to that idiot.

 

I just let him make a fool of himself. Notice how he does a job on himself, while I just go along for the ride?

 

Interesting read on how docile Aborigines really are towards each other. The killing of women was condoned. The rape and genital mutilation of young girls was condoned. Paedophilia was condoned. The men killed each other.

http://www.stolengenerations.info/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=156&Itemid=126

 

The dogma followed by some of the gullible, that before white settlement, Aboriginal life was euphoric, couldn`t be further from the truth. They made life hell, for each other.

 

What a load of absolute garbage. Here we've got a website based on Keith Windschuttle's take.....I don't think it requires any further comment....

You need to get past the fact that we as a race missed how important social obligations were and could learn plenty from how aborigines structured their lives traditionally. Their cultures lasted millennia, which is obviously not as a consequence of thoughtless bloodshed. Give up with the racist fantasy. They obviously did something right for existence to last and endure millennia side by side within their separate clans, moieties and tribes. Again, another thing that intrigues me is that artwork never depicted violence! It says a lot!

 

Aborigines dancing around with flowers in their hair, and sitting around having cups of tea, rationally discussing territorial and resource divisions and rights with other Aboriginal tribes, is the perceived nonsense Australian children are being taught in school. Children are not being taught the truth, that Aborigines were an aggressive and savage race of people towards themselves and others.

Aborigines were not a bunch of loving flower children conquered and enslaved by the evil white man. Aborigines were a group of brutal and savage people conquered by a more technologically advanced group of people.

Aborigines have asked for all manners of compensation from white Australian settlers on the premises they were the first Australians, as this was their land.

I say prove this was your land first, by releasing fragments of Lake Mungo 1 & 3 for independent mtDNA testing.

Ancient cave painting; drawing, and tools, doesn’t automatically mean these things belonged to modern day Aborigines. It just means these things could have been copied and adapted from Mungo man into Aboriginal society, because what Mungo man was doing, was more sophisticated than what Aborigines implemented at the time. Cultures have copied from each other throughout history.

 

Humans haven't changed a great deal since homo sapiens arrived on scene. I mean mentally and physiologically. We are the supreme adapters though, through time and place that has been proven as we basically own the show (with a few interruptions from creepy crawlies and things that bite your head off). I don't think anyone in their right mind would argue that ancient aboriginal society was some sort of hippie commune living. By our standards - contemporary European Australian - things were pretty bloody brutal. But without going all relative and subjective on this, the reasons for behaviour have to be considered in situ. In another thread Margot has pointed out that Bedouin killed their prisoners, one reason being that they couldn't afford to keep them alive. Brutal but apparently objectively necessary.

But before we dismiss ancient aboriginal culture as being only brutal, out of necessity, we need to think a bit. It was - probably still is for all I know - for what we would call parental discipline to be enforced not by the parents of a child but by the person we would identify as an "uncle" or "aunt" of the child. The parents didn't discipline the child. Therefore children didn't have a view of their parent as simply an authoritarian (not to be confused with "authority") figure. The children were given love and guidance by their parents. Discipline they got from someone else. Not a bad idea. Not possible in contemporary Aust society but it worked for them. Again, it was for a sensible reason.

So, no hippie stereotypes, that's supreme rubbish, but let's not go all demonising either.

 

Yeah ya know the thing I can not get my head around, these people are Australian's But there seems to be this need to treat them as something else. I personally have great affinity for them and their culture. I also have affinity for my ancestors and my roots, so pardon me for not falling for all this white guilt rubbish peoples seem to want to blame.

The only guilt I suffer from is seeing a bunch of Australians not doing as well as the rest of us.

 

The previous commentary basically suggested that there was thoughtless bloodshed and constant battles between tribes. Socially Aborigines were unbelievably and meticulously structured. Aboriginal culture was structured around community, therefore completely operated on a system of socialism. Their link and purpose for life and living revolved around their land in an extremely spiritual sense. There wasn't a sense of ownership, so what would these senseless killings be as a consequence of. I mean, why would it be difficult to see that a people could live relatively harmoniously, and in this sense obviously directed by strict Aboriginal lore and law. I'm yet to hear of or see anything that remotely demonstrates senseless killings.

I'd have to say that there are a number of traditional cultures around the world that lived relatively peacefully within their strict but deeply ingrained culture of responsibilities and obligation. There was no sense of ownership but belonging. General customs and obligations are and were very similar between tribes around the country when you look at it. Yes, there were battles, but not senseless ongoing bloodshed that the pair of trolling clowns would want us to believe to fulfil their racist fantasies.

 

You are right, first and foremost I think aborigines expect to be treated equally without discrimination AND without special treatment above and beyond the law, however, I believe anybody with any sense of empathy for their circumstances would acknowledge that they require an equitable approach to ensure they are given every opportunity to function equally on all levels. EQUITY is the key word in all this. Admittedly their is a transitional stage of evolving into western culture that wasn't natural due to restriction to land and culture that positioned aborigines in no mans land without value, purpose and meaning. They weren't allowed to practice their own culture and follow their own values and were restricted from practicing western culture fully. This was evident from the old dog tag days whereby special permission was granted to aborigines to live outside of missions and reserves in exchange for leaving all cultural thought and practice behind. This system only goes back 50 years in many locations. Segregation was still operating in the 70's in many NSW towns. Blacks had their own drinking space in the pub and weren't allowed to enter the whites section of the pub, so you can imagine the sentiment, especially if there is just a slight hint of discrimination in today's world.

I would never say sorry to an aborigine for past wrongs but I certainly supported and expected it from the government who are representative of all actions that had detrimental affect on aborigines. In the utopian ideal it would be nice if tomorrow the slate was cleaned and everybody moved on but obviously these sentiments will take time. I am very optimistic and positive about our approach to aborigines and how things will be in the next few generations, but we will always get negativity and propaganda as is displayed by the forums 2 most notable trolls.

 

You got it wrong again, tribal animosity was severe, in line with human nature. To you, TV, reality is racism. To me, trying to portray reality as racism, is cheap political opportunism. Divisive, dumb.

Tribal life did have strong socialistic tendencies though. Nobody really owned anything personally, and brutality reigned supreme. This could be the reason for the lack of technological advancement. Nowdays, one of the problems besetting Aborigines, is their sense of entitlement of all possessions within each group. Nowdays, this tends to drag down, any member of a group, who attempts to better themselves by being productive. I`ve seen this numerous times, the worker amongst a group, eventually giving up under the futility of their efforts. It`s often said, that for an Aborigine to succeed, he needs to break away from his group. Easier said than done, particularly considering the close ties among Aboriginal groups.

The tribal, pack mentality, works well for hunter - gatherers in a harsh environment, but is a handicap in an industrialised society. This would be too hard to understand for a suburban battery hen of small IQ, who would die of thirst if the coke machine ever broke down.

- - - Updated - - -

You got it wrong again, tribal animosity was severe, in line with human nature. To you, TV, reality is racism. To me, trying to portray reality as racism, is cheap political opportunism. Divisive, dumb.

Tribal life did have strong socialistic tendencies though. Nobody really owned anything personally, and brutality reigned supreme. This could be the reason for the lack of technological advancement. Nowdays, one of the problems besetting Aborigines, is their sense of entitlement of all possessions within each group. Nowdays, this tends to drag down, any member of a group, who attempts to better themselves by being productive. I`ve seen this numerous times, the worker amongst a group, eventually giving up under the futility of their efforts. It`s often said, that for an Aborigine to succeed, he needs to break away from his group. Easier said than done, particularly considering the close ties among Aboriginal groups.

The tribal, pack mentality, works well for hunter - gatherers in a harsh environment, but is a handicap in an industrialised society. This would be too hard to understand for a suburban battery hen of small IQ, who would die of thirst if the coke machine ever broke down.

 

I believe we should trust ourselves enough to be able to be aware of the truth of the past, so as to better understand the present, without wearing the hair shirt of guilt, or the millstone of PC censorship. I will point out one often ignored aspect of the demonisation, aspect of one particular agenda. Those who follow the, for the want of a better term, "politically correct" agenda, have their own imbalances in the demonisation department. Take for instance, the ready acceptance of labeling all Roman Catholics with a broad brush of negativity. This is obviously acceptable to those who follow that particular dogma, and they are blind to the double standard. Although less religious than a stray dog myself, I do regognise that many Christians are wonderfully moral and functional people, they make their rule book work.

My old granddad used to say "if you can`t deal with the facts, the facts will deal with you".

 

Thoughtless bloodshed and constant battles would be impossible as the end effects would be horrendous. I would think that - not being educated in anthropology - some sort of accommodation had to be reached between neighbouring groups (bearing in mind that "neighbouring groups" would be very different from, say the eastern temperate coast to the inland where Anangu, for example, may never see another neighbour in their nomadic lifestyle). Maybe there were some battles, possibly more symbolic than purposeful (ever seen a confrontation between two family groups of magpies, they each stand their line and chortle at one another for a few minutes before honour is satisfied and it's back to looking for food). I have no doubt that there was bloodshed. I do doubt that it was ever severe or constant. It would have made a difficult life even more difficult.


The little I know about indigenous culture does confirm your point about meticulous social structure. The taboos were/are many and very detailed. And they had/have a reason for existence which shows that indigenous people relied on rule-observance to ensure group cohesion. Not sure of this but I would think the idea of wife-promise was possibly linked to a sensible (less the European notion of romance as a manifestation of the human instinct for pair-bonding) distribution of couples and ensuring reproduction and sexual order. We might be horrified but then as far as I know indigenous culture, being an oral and not a written culture, did not have Mills and Boon.

 

On the pubs. True enough. In my own experience in the far north of SA in the early 1970s though, it differed from town to town. Port Augusta definitely had its share of pretty blatant discrimination. No name no pack drill but there were a few pubs that enforced unlawful discrimination outright and they were pinched for it before the message sunk in. Of course there were those pubs that set aside the front bar for anyone, which meant aboriginal people, there they would serve people until they were falling down drunk and wonder why they had to call the cops when the fights started. Not enough of them were pinched for serving intoxicated persons. And then there's the Opal Inn at Coober Pedy in my time there in the early 1970s. It had a really tough front bar, really tough, but aboriginal people also drank in the saloon and the lounge, some of the women used to love to dance at the jukebox there and provided there were no blues all was good. The proprietor was adamant that there would be no racial discrimination in his pub.

 

Me thinks you project a little too much

 

The truth is a bit of a fluid concept in history and I think in historical anthropology. I'm neither in Windschuttle's camp nor in Reynolds' (Henry) camp. I don't subscribe to either the white armband or the black armband theories of history, not with Manning Clark or Blainey. Bloody hell I just dealt myself out of the debate! But seriously, grey armband suits me.


I despise the pc approach, primarily because it's overtly paternalistic but also because it's proponents would be able to find their arses with a torch and a map and detailed instructions. They are not helpful.


I was just listening to ABC NewsRadio a few hours ago and got a little listen to part of the recent Law Report (usually on RN and you can download the podcast) that was interesting in that there was some tension apparent between legal eagles concerning a murder/manslaughter case where an abused indigenous woman killed her partner (not unknown in European Australian society as we know) and her sentencing and the Crown appeal against a "manifestly inadequate" sentence and another case in which an indigenous man charged with assaulting a prison officer had his life of privation taken into account when sentencing (again I need to add that the decision in that case from the HCA applies to all defendants, not just indigenous people so it may be a win for everyone). The difficult in the discussion turned on the issue of domestic violence in indigenous society and the tensions between sentencing indigenous offenders and protecting indigenous victims. The pc brigade would be in knots over that one. My simplistic view is bang them up for dv and that's that, don't care about ethnic appearance or cultural issues.


But nor will I subscribe to the view that all/most indigenous people are dysfunctional. I know many are, I have the experience that informs me, but I also know, without being patronising, as to how and why this happened. It's complex, a bit ugly and almost without solution but - and this is an important but - ideologies of whatever type must be suspended and replaced with - as Wizard pointed out - the objective of rectifying the situation.

Your granddad was right by the way - the problem is though, who defines the "facts"?

 

I can`t see how recognising that Aborigines, in traditional life, were capable of, and did practice territorial conflict, could be construed as racism. This to me, is comparable to the hangups of Victorian era Polite Society, when one had to describe the supporting members of furniture as "limbs", for fear of the sexual innuendo of the word "legs". The fear was, that the word "legs", would get everyone within earshot, hot & sweaty, sparking a spontaneous orgy.

I prefer to read history written by people who were not only actually there, but were capable of straight dialogue. I don`t know much of the history over your way, but Queensland Aborigines were renowned for inter tribal violence. There is no shortage of indisputably documented evidence of this. One easily researched instance, was that during the time period that the Jardines were at Somerset, Cape York, one of the local tribes completely exterminated the other. There were large numbers involved too. This wasn`t uncommon. Aborigines were human, they weren`t vegetables.

My point here is. For dialogue to be meaningful, we need it to be honest, we shouldn`t be too hung up to deal with reality. Objectivity, can`t function without honesty.

 

I invite you to think a little bit deeper. Stepping to the side a little, no, a lot, as an example. Although the fact is too impalatable for the delicate sensitivities of the Australian public in general, during WW2, particularly in New Guinea, Australian soldiers "committed" what would now be termed "atrocities", on a very large scale? Are we going to condemn them, from the comfort of our lounge chairs? It wouldn`t be hard, particularly after they all die, by the simple use of selectivity, to rewrite their story to make them appear to be low life, psychopathic scum.

 

The actions of Australian servicemen have absolutely nothing to do with the case at point. The realities of the current situation faced by the indigenous population have absolutely nothing to do with their propensity for inter-tribal conflict.

 

I`ll try to explain it once more. The WW2 example was an example of how history can be misrepresented to suit those too delicate to stomach the harsh realities, to appreciate the prevailing conditions at any given time.

The reality of traditional Aboriginal life, is directly linked to the present. To BS, and try to spin a sensationally bleeding heart fairy tale. To propagate and prolong a victim mentality, is the most destructive approach to Aborigines, that`s legally available today. Those who lie about our history need to be put straight. Some get it, some don`t. Aborigines have it tough enough, but if you can instil enough self pity, resentment, and hopelessness into their psyche,
you could just about completely destroy them in a couple of generations.

 

I think eventually we had to get to "racism". For me the word has become misused, not an uncommon thing in the development of the English language. I could be well off beam here but I prefer to think of "racialism" as being the thing where someone believes that one race is superior to another. Fine if there's some scientific evidence for the argument but I'm not sure that there is. The second way I think of "racism" is in what we used to call - might still do for all I know - "racial prejudice". Somewhere in the last x years the ideas got tangled up. It's a basic tenet of English (and therefore Australian) law that you can't be indicted for your thoughts. So if someone thinks that one race is superior to another they're entitled to think that way, entitled to that opinion and - within certain bounds - entitled to express that opinion. Same with someone being racially prejudiced. What matters though is action. Plenty of people hold one or both views but never act on them. I'm aware of the idea of "casual racism" which seems to have been produced in the last few years and is being attacked or exposed. This is the area I think in which the accusations of pc are raised. "Casual racism" is all around us and it crosses different ethnic lines. Being a white European male of Anglo-Irish heritage with a South Australian accent (we say things like "park" instead of "paaaark", "charnce" instead of "chaaance" and "school" instead of "skewl")casual racism is invisible to me. I may even practise it myself. The purpose of identifying casual racism is to reduce and eliminate it. If any of us have to ask why then we don't get it yet.


So, that's out of the way, perhaps.


Good example of the Victorian's use of language. It's all about context isn't it?


I'm not all that knowledgeable about inter-tribal grouping relations in the area we've named South Australia. The only places in the state that various language groups would have been fairly close to one another would be the southern, more temperate areas. In the far north people pretty much stayed in their own areas with little contact with others due to the large areas of occupation. Down south it was much different but the boundaries of the language groups were quite well marked. Not sure about the conflict but there obviously was between Europeans and indigenous people. The different attitudes can be seen in a couple of events which took place during our colonial years (we were established in 1836). In what we now all the Riverland at Overland Corner on the Murray there was a lot of running conflict between settlers and indigenous people, not quite "wars" but often and bloody enough to be a major problem. Settlers, including police, basically hunted indigenous people. Over on the bottom end of Eyre Pensinsula near Port Lincoln there's a decent surfing beach with cliffs (Sleaford Bay) and a cairn on the top of the cliffs to commemmorate the indigenous men, women and children who were murdered by being driven over the cliffs by white settlers. And the tale of the Brig "Maria" which foundered on rocks in the upper south-east coast. The survivors were helped by a local indigenous tribe who began to take them back towards Adelaide. They had to be handed over to another tribe which, after a short interval, murdered them. Word got back and the then Commissioner of Police and a party of troopers and non-police went down to the Coorong and set about murdering members of that tribe.


So it seems here at least the shenanigans were more between Europeans and indigenous people rather than purely between indigenous people. But that's only to my knowledge, someone with more expertise in anthropology would know more, much more.


History, even when written by contemporary observers, is always skewed, it is never completely bereft of ideology. It's up to us to be as objective as possible, without ideology taking over. Then it's up to us to acknowledge what we know and are sure of about our history and then it's up to us to deal with the issues as we see them today. Armbanding of any colour isn't much help.