Legacy Of Racism

[Georgie-Porgie]

About Australian Aboriginal Culture

Australian Aboriginal culture can claim to be the oldest continuous living culture on the planet.

Recent dating of the earliest known archaeological sites on the Australian continent - using thermo luminescence and other modern dating techniques - have pushed back the date for Aboriginal presence in Australia to at least 40,000 years.

The hallmark of Aboriginal culture is 'oneness with nature'.

In traditional Aboriginal belief systems, landscape had the central importance Christian culture attached to the bible. Prominent rock, canyons, rivers, waterfalls, islands, beaches and other natural features - as well as sun, moon and visible stars - had their own stories of creation and its inter-connectedness. To the traditional Aborigine they are all sacred: environment is the essence of Australian Aboriginal godliness.

Out of this deep reverence for nature Aborigines learned to live in remarkable harmony with the land and its animals.

It seems there's a lot our modern world can learn from these people.

Nomadic Brilliance

Traditional Australian Aborigines lived a nomadic life, following the seasons and the food.

With very few simple tools, used with incredible skill, the Aboriginal learned to live in the harsh and inhospitable Australian outback.

It's possible that the first Aborigines in Australia hunted the Australian megaphone - giant kangaroos, giant wombat etc. to extinction.

Maybe that was when Aborigines learned to take care of natural resources and move to new hunting grounds before the old ones are depleted beyond repair.

When at rest, Aborigines lived in open camps, caves or simple structures made from bark, leaves or other vegetation. Their technology was both simple and sophisticated. Above all, it was appropriate for their way of life - ideally matched to the constraints of nomadic life.

The modern notion of possessions is alien to traditional Aboriginal culture. Material things were shared within groups. The idea that an individual could 'own' land was foreign to Aboriginal thinking.

Clashes with colonists

When Europeans first began to colonise Australia, towards the end of the 18th century AD, they found cultures and environments which, in hindsight, were of incalculable value.

Much of this ancient legacy has been destroyed forever in the subsequent two centuries.

Contact between new settlers, under imperial British rule, and Australia's indigenous people, led to the decimation of many Aboriginal groups due to disease, dispossession and in tens of thousands of cases, outright murder.

As populations declined and were fragmented, many unique linguistic and cultural traditions were lost forever.

Land Theft

Seizure of Australia by British Imperial forces was claimed to take place under British law.

Even at that time, the British legal system had developed some traditions of fair dealings with native populations inside colonies.

These constraints were not applied on the ground in Australia. Invasion and blatant land theft by settlers were justified under the astonishing legal fiction of "Terra Nullius" - the notion that Australia was effectively unoccupied before British colonisation.

The lack of indigenous systems of land ownership (in the European tradition of private land ownership) was used to give credence the idea of Terra Nullius. The basic idea was that it was impossible to rob Aboriginal people of land, as they'd previously never owned land.

Over two centuries, the continent was progressively stolen from Aboriginal people. Settlers moved in and appropriated the overwhelming majority of Australia - either for private use or in the name of the British Crown.

Even after Australia was declared independent in 1901, Aborigines continued to be marginal to the new nation and were debarred from becoming citizens by the 1902 Australian Constitution. Citizenship was granted to Aborigines only following a national referendum in 1967.

Legacy of racism

Racist attitudes to Australia's indigenous population evolved through different phases. In some places and on some occasions, settlers behaved in a quite civilised way. In others, they practiced outright genocide. In between were a range of assimilationist and patronising policies. Many of these helped deepen the plight of Aboriginal people and culture.

As recently as the 1950's, as many as one tenth of Aboriginal babies were removed from their natural parents and taken into foster care by white families, in the belief this was to everyone's benefit.

This quite recent forced removal of children on a massive scale - known as the 'Stolen Generation' - came to widespread attention only in the late 1990's.

The current Australian Government has refused to make a formal apology over the 'Stolen Generation' (in contrast to President Clifton's apology for the historical wrong of black slavery, and successive Australian Governments' demands for the Japanese to give a full apology for crimes committed during World War 2).

Looking forward

Two centuries of dispossession and maltreatment have left deep scars in surviving Aboriginal communities. In life expectancy and key health indicators, Aboriginal Australians as a whole lag far behind the average Australian population. A range of serious social problems confront the leadership of Aboriginal Australia.

Yet there has also been major progress in recent times, as Australia's first peoples develop their own national and regional institutions - and political strength - to meet the challenges of the modern era.

Struggles for Land Rights, for greater autonomy in the management of Aboriginal affairs, and for greater recognition and respect to be given to traditional Aboriginal lore, have all met with partial success.

In 1991 Australia's High Court finally overturned the disgraceful legal myth of Terra Nullius. As a consequence, native title to continuously settled land, which had until then been completely denied to Australian Aboriginal was "rediscovered" in Australian law.

Throughout the 1990's, Australian Governments enacted legislation which greatly limited the applicability of High Court decisions on native title.

This second dispossession of Aboriginal Australians - in favour of big mining and pastoral interests - is a blemish on recent Australian history. It should be challenged in the international courts, as it breaches Australia's international obligations on human rights.

If you're interested, you can explore these issues in much greater detail via the references on the Aboriginal Australia section of the Didjshop's Links Section.

We've also started an Aboriginal News Web log listing some interesting recent media articles available on the web - please check it out.

[the gentleman]

yes it is terrible, same thing you did to the Indians - anyway a response to this would be - We can only do what we have been doing for the last 30 years and that is trying to fix problems between two cultures, that both think they are right and voice rasicm slogans to win sympathy. My generation wasnt on the first fleet, so I need to apologise for no one.

[Pink Mist]

At least they wern't imported to use as slaves.

[Georgie-Porgie]

At least they wern't imported to use as slaves.

They didn't have to be imported, did they?

[meadish_sweetball]

As interesting as it is to dig in the cesspits of colonizing countries' crimes against humanity, maybe you could bring down the "posting the entire article and then some" to a minimum, and instead provide the URL's, maybe quoting the essential bits to forward your argument. Otherwise you're just eating server space for no reason.

Yes, no country is perfect. I think that was your point, right, Georgie-Porgy?

My issue with the US lies in the fact that so many Americans try to convince themselves and others that they ARE more or less perfect.

Some previous poster (Chinky? If not, my apologies) wrote "the difference between US and other countries is that here people are held accountable for their actions", which is probably the funniest thing I've heard since that dog rape story (not to mention the one with the British guy who voluntarily let himself be sodomized by a terrier).

There are plenty of "other countries" where people are held accountable for their actions.

It seems that some Americans also believe they are the only country with a reasonable justice system. This is what irritates me. Assumptions based on a blatant, complacent ignorance unworthy of the modern age, which appears to be a feature that permeates society all the way up to the top (not to say that all Americans are ignorant, of course). P Wolfowitzes motivation for his plan to consolidate US worldwide supremacy: "...because, let's face it, we stand for something good".

The delusion that "we are the good guys in the drama, whatever we do".

At least in Australia, despite all the red necks (and I've met a few), there are enough people who are aware of their predecessors' digressions, don't believe they have a supreme democratic system (because they study the a new invention, an amazing subject called geography), and know when it is time to give it a rest.

[Pink Mist]

At least they wern't imported to use as slaves.

They didn't have to be imported, did they?

They wouldn't of been any good as slaves anyway you could't get them to work and still can't. That isn't a redneck statement but a fact.

[Guest chingy]

Some previous poster (Chinky? If not, my apologies) wrote "the difference between US and other countries is that here people are held accountable for their actions", which is probably the funniest thing I've heard

you don't believe that, i feel sorry for you.

There are plenty of "other countries" where people are held accountable for their actions

having law is one thing but you also have to reinforce the law, to make the system work

It seems that some Americans also believe they are the only country with a reasonable justice system. This is what irritates me

would you refer to live in a democraticy country or a Communist(dictatorship) country, The US is the only country strong enought to balance the two idealism.

our "reasonable justice system" keep us balance and became who we are, the US are made of many nationality and many culture, and why do we chose to be here, because the system work.

[the gentleman]

Some previous poster (Chinky? If not, my apologies) wrote "the difference between US and other countries is that here people are held accountable for their actions", which is probably the funniest thing I've heard

you don't believe that, i feel sorry for you.

There are plenty of "other countries" where people are held accountable for their actions

having law is one thing but you also have to reinforce the law, to make the system work

It seems that some Americans also believe they are the only country with a reasonable justice system. This is what irritates me

would you refer to live in a democraticy country or a Communist(dictatorship) country, The US is the only country strong enought to balance the two idealism.

our "reasonable justice system" keep us balance and became who we are, the US are made of many nationality and many culture, and why do we chose to be here, because the system work.

I think myself, Bronco and our learned friend meadish_sweetball, come from Democratic countries - whats your point, if you beleive the good ole US of A is the only country with "reasonable justice system" - you are living under a rock, also Australia is made of many culture,s as is the majority of the free world, multicultures are in every country - what was actually your point?

[meadish_sweetball]

Quoting Chingy: "would you refer to live in a democraticy country or a Communist(dictatorship) country, The US is the only country strong enought to balance the two idealism.

our "reasonable justice system" keep us balance and became who we are, the US are made of many nationality and many culture, and why do we chose to be here, because the system work."

I am very sorry Chingy, but you obviously have not been to, or studied in detail, any country in Northern Europe, nor Australia, New Zealand, Canada or any other of the places in the world where justice works just as well as in the US, if not better.

I definitely do not refer to any of the so-called communist countries, I refer to functioning Western democracies which still provide their citizens with some welfare instead of buying guns and developing military technology for the majority of the tax money, and the majority of the rest to convince its citizens that waging war on others is their duty.

I know people with a business-centered mind from all over the world chose to move to the US because the US climate supports entrepreneurs, but as for the rest of your system - I'm sorry, I don't believe that it is superior for a second. Your country time and time again fails to remember the number of kids born in poverty who have to be ten times stronger than middle and upper class kids to get anywhere in life.

You are welcome to visit Sweden or Norway some time.

[Guest chingy]

I think myself, Bronco and our learned friend meadish_sweetball, come from Democratic countries - whats your point, if you beleive the good ole US of A is the only country with "reasonable justice system" - you are living under a rock, also Australia is made of many culture,s as is the majority of the free world, multicultures are in every country - what was actually your point?

im sorry gentleman, when i reply to this post i thought we would have a good conversation, and showing each other of our opinion and thought but when a person starting to attack on another indivitual, its time for me to stop.