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[My remarks are in square brackets]
In 1770, Captain James Cook took possesion of the east coast of Australia and named it New South Wales in the name of Great Britain. The Aboriginal population was decimated by British colonisation which began in 1788, when news of the land's fertility spread to Europeans causing them to begin settling in the Aborigines' land. A combination of disease, loss of land (and thus food resources) and outright murder reduced the Aboriginal population by an estimated 90% during the 19th century and early 20th century. A wave of massacres and resistance followed the frontier. The last massacre was at Coniston in the Northern Territory in 1928. Poisoning of food and water has been recorded on several different occasions.
The number of violent deaths at the hands of whites is still the subject of a vigorous and politically-loaded debate, with some figures—notably Prime Minister John Howard—rejecting what Howard terms "the black-armband" view of Australian history. Figures of around 10,000 deaths have been advanced by historians such as Henry Reynolds. Historian Keith Windschuttle claims such numbers are not backed up by documentary evidence, finding evidence existing only for a much smaller number. Reynolds attacks Windschuttle's interpretation of the existing evidence, points out that documented proof that Windschuttle requires is unlikely to be available, and questions Windschuttle's rejection of other forms of evidence such as oral history.
User:Premier 20 Jan 2005
Mambo / Land rights / the stolen generation all deserve a mention if someone has the motivation
I removed this header (which was recently added to the entry) as, although I agree entirely with it, the placement of it was such that it served to suggest that the remainder of the entry was terribly biased and should be ignored. Nothing wrong with the sentiment, but a similar comment could equally well be made about almost any topic in modern history. Tannin 08:35 27 May 2003 (UTC)
"...spiritual values based upon reverence for the land and a belief in the Dreamtime or Tjukurrpa"
Could we please see something clarifying which language the word "Tjukurrpa" comes from?
Although this is a sensitive issue, I removed Mudrooroo from the list of well-known Aborigines because his own family have said that he is not Aboriginal and is more likely to be of African American descent. As far as I know he has refused to comment on this. While I understand that he identifies strongly with Aboriginal people, I don't feel that is sufficient qualification in itself.
Perhaps there should be a sub-section on "Aboriginality"? This could also deal with other non-Aboriginal authors and artists (etc) who have posed as Aboriginal, as well as the issue of Aboriginal people such as Sally Morgan who have been brought up to believe they were NOT Aboriginal. (Grant -- March 2, 2004.)
How come no mention of the 1967 Referendum?- Daeron 03:08, 4 May 2004 (UTC)
Do they call themselves Aborigines? or is this a name given them by the settlers? If they call themselves something else, what is the name? If it's in the article, why is it not more prominent?
Shouldn't we call people by the names they want to be called instead of forcing our concepts onto them? Duemellon 12:00, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I'm confused about the use of the term ' fish-farming' in the following paragraph. Should this be fishing/farming? - Andrew Moran
Mulvaney and Kamminga 1999):
Builth, H. 1996 Lake Condah Revisited: Archaeological Constructions of a Cultural Landscape Unpublished Honours thesis, Deptartment of Aboriginal Studies, University of South Australia, Adelaide.
Builth, H. 2000 The connection between the Gunditjmara Aboriginal people and their environment: The case for complex hunter-gatherers in Australia. People and Physical Environment Research 55-56:1-18.
Builth, H. 2000 The Connection Between the Gunditjmara Aboriginal People and their Environment: The case for complex hunter-gatherers in Australia. In G. Moore, J. Hunt and L. Trevillion (eds), Environment-Behaviour Research on the Pacific Rim. Sydney: Faculty of Architecture, University of Sydney.
Builth, H. 2002a Analysing Gunditjmara settlement: The use of an appropriate methodology. In G. Carver and K. Stankowski 2002 Proceedings of the Third National Archaeology Students' Conference, Adelaide, 2000. Blackwood, S.A.: Southern Archaeology.
Builth, H. 2002b The Archaeology and Socioeconomy of the Gunditjmara: A Landscape Analysis from Southwest Victoria, Australia. Unpublished PhD thesis, Department of Archaeology, Flinders University, Adelaide.
Clarke, A. 1994 Romancing the stones: The cultural construction of an archaeological landscape in the western district of Victoria. Archaeology in Oceania 29(1):1-15.
Coutts, P.J.F., R. Frank and P.J. Hughes 1978 Aboriginal engineers of the Western District, Victoria. Records of the Victorian Archaeological Survey 7.
Lourandos, H. 1997 Continent of Hunter-Gatherers: New Perspectives in Australian Prehistory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mulvaney, J. and Kamminga, J. 1999 Prehistory of Australia. Sydney: Allen and Unwin.
Newby, J. 1994 Blackfellow Never Tired: An Investigation of the Interpretations of the Lake Condah 'House' Sites. Unpublished Honours thesis, Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, Australian National University, Canberra.
Nicolson, O.E. 1996 A Fish Called Condah: An Analysis of Archaeological Interpretations of the Cultural Landscapes of the Lake Condah Region in Southwest Victoria, Australia. Unpublished Honours thesis, Department of Archaeology, Flinders University, Adelaide.
Wesson, J. 1981 Excavations of Stone Structures in the Condah Area, Western Victoria. Unpublished Masters Preliminary thesis, Latrobe University, Melbourne.
Williams, E. 1984 Documentation and archaeological investigation of an Aboriginal 'village site' in southwestern Victoria. Aboriginal History 8:173-188.
Williams, E. 1988 Complex Hunter-Gatherers: A Late Holocene Example from Temperate Australia. BAR International Series 423. Oxford.
Regarding the following paragraph:
I wish this article would say more about what Aboriginal culture was like pre-colonisation, and less about what it isn't like. I don't want to hear that this stereotype is only correct in 70% of cases, or that stereotype is wrong, I just want a detailed description of their way of life. The article seems to be attempting to deny that they nomadic or primitive, as if being nomadic or primitive is somehow bad. In particular:
Despite their reputation as stone-age relics, there is evidence of substantial change in Aboriginal culture over time.
Not all readers of this article know about their reputation, and even fewer care for references to it, especially when it's phrased in such a demeaning way. What is a stone-age culture anyway? What sort of stone-age culture was it, if that's what it was?
Lifestyles varied a great deal, and the stereotyped image of a proud and naked hunter standing one-legged in the red sand of the central Australian desert cannot be applied across the board.
I'm not here to read about stereotypes. Did they hunt or didn't they?
The 2nd, 3rd and 4th paragraphs of the pre-colonisation section give the impression that nothing is known for certain about these people. That may be true, but if anything is known, I'd like to read about it, preferably before I read about the bits that aren't known.
-- Tim Starling 06:01, Nov 25, 2004 (UTC)
They were hunter gatherers with most of their dietary intake coming from insects and small bush animals. Whilst heavy research was thrown into their history in the early years of federation, especially, most of the last two decades has been spent tearing down the 'stereotypes' that that research put forwards and done very little into investigating further their lifestyle and history.
The history of aboriginal culture is forced upon all high school students in Australia, it is a compulsory topic, which I, as a student, found to be obnoxiously full of propaganda and not an inkling of facts on their lifestyle or actual history. That vexed me beyond belief, more time was spent demonising white settlers than actualy telling us about the people themselves.
I do concur that more details should be put into defining them than defining what they are not.
Jachin 22:43, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I propose that this page be moved to a location that has a less offensive connotation than "Australian Aborigine". The people who this term is used to refer to consider this an offensive usage and I believe that means that it is necessary to move the page. I think we should move the page to the redirect "Indigenous Australian", the term that so called "Australian Aborigines" actually call themselves in the modern era. - Aaron Hill 22:52, Nov 29, 2004 (UTC)
I oppose the hyper-politically correct mentality that there is anything offensive in the nomenclature of 'Australian Aboriginie', I live in a highly aboriginally inhabited region of Australia, and the folks here quite happily refer to themselves as 'abo's (which is an abbreviation of aboriginie and turns city folk pale, running to the media screaming 'racism' if heard, although is the most common taxonomy applied to aboriginies as inhabitants of the country and not specific tribes / regions). There is nothing offensive about this nomenclature in my eyes, let it stay.
My people come from an Ulster-Scottish background but I regard myself as 'Indigenous Australian'.
After more than 200 years surely decendants of the colonial population are not non-Indigenous, which is the only label you can give them if Aboriginies are indigenous. The article could also point out that many aboriginies approve of the arrival of europeans into Australia - apparently. According to sources in the media 64% of aborignies are living with or married to a non-aboriginal, something which learned academics acknowledge as an important social indicator. Upwards of 70% of blacks list as their religion one of the Christian denominations. Less than 2% beleive in an aboriginal religion.
Also, the abolition of ATSIC is quite an important moment in aboriginal history which the article dosen't talk about much. Separate elected representation for aboriginies has now been abolished in Australia and it is very difficult to see a future federal administration bringing it back. Isabell Coe and her fellow radicals can jump up and down on the spot until the earth moves - aboriginal soverienty is not an issue in the Commonwealth of Australia.
Groups interested in aboriginal welfare like the Benelong Society basically advance the view that aboriginal assimilation is not only inevitable but desirable (although they don't get as much media coverage as they might - their arguments are quite compelling actually).
Perhaps somebody could work this stream of thought into the article.
By the logic raised in this article, the aboriginal people of Australia are not indigenous, just as 'European settlers' aren't either. I would like to argue the toss with those who claim they are the direct decendants of the 'original people' of the country as that cannot be stated nor substantiated as a fact. Jachin 16:45, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I have a 1971 book which says that "The present theory" is a Three Wave Aboriginal colonisation theory. Tasmanoids (Negroid stock) arrived, then Murrayians who drove the Tasmanianoids off teh mainland, and settled in E/SE Australia, and then the Australoids, of more Caucasian origins (from Indian subcontinent) who "never penetrated south of the tropics". This replaced the old theory of Two waves, first negroids, then Caucasians.
Incidentally their date of initial colonisation is 20,000 or more years go (I guess 50,000 is "more").
It also mentions a theory that Tasmanoids never actually reached the mainland (because no archeaologic/palentologic evidence suggests this).
Anyone know what present theory is? Because the article seems to suggest a single wave of origin.-- ZayZayEM 03:02, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Edit:Re-reading the above I note this does not clarify whether there were two "waves" or one. It may be that this recent low level they speak of may have brought more people from the Indonesian area. As archaeological evidence is sketchy for anything other than determining if people were present or absent at a time, I would suggest looking for a Dreaming that talks of new arrivals. Many Dreamings have accurately told of events happening more than 10,000 years ago, and later confirmed by methods of science. -- Batronibat 03:19, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
As I have seen the image of the elderly gentleman featured on this page (image "Aborigene23323.jpg") on postcards and the like, I am removing it from the page as it is no doubt copyright. If someone can show that it is not copyright, then feel free to return it to the page. -- Roisterer 01:06, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Where to start...
I'll start with this quote from Jackie Huggins (Indigenous historian)
"a" is for apple, agile, anger, another, address, alphabet, but not Aboriginal. It is insulting and destructive to use a small "a". This spelling is extremely racist, as are the biologically racist definitions of part, quarter, half caste and full blood Aboriginals. It's like calling us boong, coon, nigger or abo, and just as blatant and condescending. It is also similar to spelling a Christian name such as dianne or gail like so. Negating our identity and nationality, it also tacks empathy and understanding as any Greek, Italian or Jew would understand - though they are paid the privilege of getting their names spelt with a capital. It is indicative of notions of inferiority/superiority of Blacks and whites [sic] in this country. On the basis of white superiority it could be presumed that the initiators of small "a" subconsciously act our their power games in order further to maintain their privileged position, and to keep Blacks in their "subjugated" line. The usual excuse is that there has been a "typo", but I have yet to see "europeans" or "australians" in Australian books. Why therefore does the typewriter possess an incredibly persistent disability when it comes to Aboriginal? My preference is for the term "Aboriginal" both as noun and adjective. "Aborigines" has long been a term used to classify and demean Aboriginal people in the repressive state of Queensland, particularly by the old Department of Aboriginal and Islander Advancement [sic]. It also assumes an "air of superiority" by a dominant culture and attempts, as does small "a", to operate as a divide and role tactic.
My point is that why is 'Australian Aborigine' still being used in this article? Even when the article itself notes: "this is partly because Aboriginal people increasingly dislike being called Aborigines. Today the preferred usages are Aboriginal People or Indigenous Australians". There is a reason WHY these are the preferred usages, because terms like 'aborigines' or Australian 'aborigines' are OFFENSIVE, colonial terms. Why the article does make a point of this concern and still neglects to apply this sensitivity to the body of text is mind boggling.
Do they call themselves Aborigines? or is this a name given them by the settlers? If they call themselves something else, what is the name? If it's in the article, why is it not more prominent?
Shouldn't we call people by the names they want to be called instead of forcing our concepts onto them? --Duemellon 12:00, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)
How many times does this point have to be made? Aboriginal Australians or Aboriginal people are accepted, 'neutral' terms that refer specifically to Indigenous people of the mainland, ie. not Torres Strait Islanders. Aboriginal Australians, Aboriginal people, this SHOULD be a non-issue -- Black Dagger 13:22, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
[Slavery was illegal..] So was homosexuality in Tasmania, until very recently, but there was/are still gay people in tasmania, despite the fact that it was 'technically' illegal. Slavery was very much alive and well in N.Queensland, the fact that some people were forced into work, which was not paid, qualifies as slavery, whether it was 'legal' or not, it happened, and was NOT actively discouraged by the colonial government. The point is whether or not people were treated as slaves, not whether there was a 'let's ensalve the darkies act' 1864 (cth). Conditions did not 'virtually amount to slavery', actual slave conditions existed, not EVERYWHERE, but they did exist. -- Black Dagger 13:48, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Okay, re this word 'nomadism'. It's silly trying to capture a large variety of human lifestyles with one word. To many people 'nomadism' means to wander around without a home base. I have heard it said (and seen it written) that Aboriginal people were nomadic, therefore they would wander anywhere in Australia without caring where they were. This is simply not true. As best we understand it, in pre-European Australia (if I may use this term to refer to the post-1788 situation), many Aboriginal people did move around, but normally within a given 'home' area. There was much variation in how much people moved around, depending on seasons, environmental conditions, etc. Some Aboriginal people moved around a lot, across a large range (ie Western Desert people), while some moved around relatively little (ie people in Cape York, or the Yolngu of north-east Arnhem Land). Using the word 'nomadic' really tells the reader nothing useful, and I advocate that it not be used, unless heavily qualified. Dougg 04:47, 1 May 2005 (UTC)
The second para says that Torres Strait Islanders are '... culturally and linguistically distinct from Aboriginal peoples'. This is only half correct. There are, linguistically, two main groups in the Torres Straits: in the west there live speakers of an Australian language (one name for which is Kala Lagaw Ya), a member of the Pama-Nyungan family (the family of languages which covers most of Australia's mainland); in the east are speakers of a Papuan language called Meriam Mer (there are various spellings). The former group have close linguistic ties with 'Aboriginal people' while the latter have close linguistic ties with the Papuan people of the nearby coast of PNG.
A bit further down it is said that there were about 200 languages. Actually, it is generally accepted that there were more like 250, or even more. Dougg 05:01, 1 May 2005 (UTC)
I'm going to propose moving the page again, because the current title is potentially offensive, and because it doesn't reflect official usage. I suggest a choice of two new titles, Indigenous Australians (which could also cover Indigenous Tasmanians and Torres Strait Islanders), or Aboriginal Australians. The former is the term in official usage at DIMIA, at various educational institutions (eg the Centre for Indigenous Education, and at international organisations (eg the United Nations). The latter uses the adjectival form, and is consistent with phrases such as "Aboriginal people" and "Aboriginal communities". Currently there are ten different phrasings which redirect here. At the very least it would be good to establish a consensus one way or another as to which term is best and then start updating articles to reflect that usage. -- bainer ( talk) 9 July 2005 12:39 (UTC)
I've just reverted an anonymous edit which added that Aboriginal participation in serious crime is higher than the total population. I would like to see a sentence like that substantiated before being in the article. While I believe Aborigines may be over-represented in jails, I don't think it's due to serious crimes. Anyone with references? -- ScottDavis 00:59, 12 July 2005 (UTC)
Is someone going to add discussion on the problems with Aboriginal society in Australia, ie: high rates of incarceration, alcoholism, petrol sniffing, high illiteracy, high unemployment - or is the bleeding-heart viewpoint only allowed to be presented to the world at large? (I haven't created an account yet, but plan on doing so)
How is truth and facts propaganda? Just look at the recent attention in the media (as of 12th August) of the petrol sniffing problem in Alice Springs? All the problems I mentioned above, the stats which are way higher than mainstream Australia, ie: health, education, employment, crime, alcoholism, petrol sniffing, etc... How is that propaganda? Please don't let your ideology bury your head in the sand and neglect the sad state of affairs that Aboriginal Australia is in. The world at large should know the plight that these people face, rather than the bleeding heart, social-engineer, do-gooder view. Face reality.
There's no need to resort to name calling like Nazis, Bleeding Hearts or anything else. This is incredibly silly! I don't think that mentioning problems that do exist is necessarily contrary to a bleeding heart viewpoint, nor is it necessarily One Nation propaganda - depending on how it is written. It is a fact that indigenous communities all over the world experience substance abuse, unemployment disease and mortality rates higher than the settler populations. This is acknowledged by settler populations and Indigenous people themselves and there are often calls for these situations to be addressed. Sometimes they are, and sometimes they are ignored. - I don't see anything wrong with stating that these issues exist. People need to be aware of them and both governments and communities need to be doing something to address them. I don't see how a so called 'bleeding heart' would disagree with that, and I don't see how its 'One Nation propaganda' - hence I see no need to name calling. Perhaps we should use the heading Problems Facing Indigenous Communities rather than Problems with Aboriginal Society to try to be slightly less confronting. It might also be an idea to post any proposed text on the talk page before including it in the article as it appears that it might be controversial. (14 Aug 2005. 13:15 AEST).
Good idea for the name change of the section (Problems Facing Indigenous Communities). Like all entries in Wikipedia, this needs to be objective, not subjective.
Funnily enough, I was having a discussion with a group the other day on how difficult it is to obtain unbiased (is there such a thing?) information on the problems facing indigenous societies, and I promised I'd start putting some stuff in Wikipedia on this if it wasn't already there. And then I saw your note on this discussion page! So it seems there are at least two of us planning to put in some material like this. My goal, in the best wikipedia tradition, would be to write something that either John Howard or Noel Pearson could read without objection, stating the problems, statistics, and attempts at solution, without preaching and without politicking. Is this possible? So we might, for example, have a subsection on aboriginal heath, document the problems, statistics on child mortality, etc, and then document what governments and NPOs have done to try to address the problem. Answering why the problem still hasn't been solved would probably be beyond the scope of the article - I don't think anybody knows the answer. Does this seem like a reasonable start? Rayd8 22:28, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
There are 400,000 blacks in Australia and 300,000 have been assimlated - no connection to traditonal ways. Zero. Most are now of mixed decent and 69% are either living with or married to an non-aborignal.
Where is this information in the article?
Where does it say that aborignality as we now it has no future?—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 203.51.88.184 ( talk • contribs) 19:46, 18 August 2005.
I would suggest that all aboriginal tribes knew of the existence of other humans. In fact thats what 'yolgnu' and 'gudjitmara' (amongst many others)means-- 'human being' The guff introduced by Adam Carr about them not having a collective name for humans is pure invention and without any support(as usual). It needs removing and rewriting. Eric A. Warbuton —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Eric A. Warbuton ( talk • contribs) -- Scott Davis Talk.
Hottentot posed the question (in his edit summary) of why Koori and Yamaji were not wikilinks. Presumably the answer was that there aren't articles for them. Koori is a blue link, but it's a redirect back to this page. Does anybody know enough to write more than the one-sentence stub I could on Koori, and stop it being a redirect? -- Scott Davis Talk 11:36, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
I read somewhere that it has been proposed that Australian Aborigines may have some genetic admixture of Homo Erectus. This would have putatively come from some residual population in Indonesia or Australia encountereed by the modern Homo Sapiens during their migration to the area. This is prompted in part by some physionomic characteristics of many aborigines (brow ridgs, large teeth, etc.) which more resemble archaic hominids and are different than the aborigines proposed ancestral populations in South India and Indonesia. I know this is the area of the world that homo erectus would likely have survived the longest on account of its archipelago geography (the "Hobit" miniaturized variant recently discovered supports this). Does anyone have any information on this? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.166.238.6 ( talk • contribs) 08:13, 3 September 2005.
I'm about to add some material on indigenous Australians to wikipedia, but first I'd like to run a question past this discussion group. At the risk of boring people, I'd like to see if there is a consensus on acceptable terminology.
First, I think we all agree that the best way of referring to people is in a way that doesn't lump them together at a homogeneous group, or have any derogatory overtones, by using specific terms such as Koori, Yolngu, etc. However, that isn't always practical, and we need a collective term for both indigenous and non-indigenous people that can be used in a sentence such as "Indigenous Australians have a lower life expectancy than non-Indigenous Australians". "Indigenous Australian" works fine, but is a heck of a mouthful if it's used many times in a paragraph. "Aborigine" also works well, has both a noun and a verb form, and is easier to say, but I'm told that some consider it to have colonial overtones. I'm not sure why, since "aboriginal" and "indigenous" have essentially the same meaning. Furthermore, aboriginal has a noun form ("aborigine") whereas indigenous doesn't (other than the long-winded "Indigenous Australian"). So aboriginal/aborigine would be preferable, provided it doesn't cause offence.
Although I'm from an anglo-saxon descent, I'm privileged to have several aboriginal friends, and my work brings me in to contact with many aboriginal communities, from SE Australia right up to NT. No aborigine that I know takes offence at the word "aborigine". Please note that I'm not accusing anyone of misrepresentation, it's just that I don't know where the objection to the word "aborigine" comes from. Can someone please help me there?
On a related subject, how should we refer to non-aborigines in a discussion such as life expectancy of aborigines? People frequently use words like "European", "Anglo-Saxon", or "white", but they all seem to exclude people such as my colleagues of asian descent. Has anybody a better suggestion that "non-aborigine"?
Rayd8 01:36, 2005 September 10 (UTC)
Many thanks for those helpful comments. Clearly "Aborigine" is inappropriate when including Torres Strait Islanders. And thanks for reminding me to use upper case A. But from comments so far, I see nothing to exclude the use of "Aborigine" as a generic term when referring to groups that happen not to include Torres Strait Islanders, such as "The Aborigines in the central desert region urgently need improved access to healthcare." (Note that e.g. Arrente would not be appropriate here, as I am referring to several language groups.) And yet there is a common perception that some find such a use offensive in some way, although I haven't seen that perception properly sourced. Rayd8 22:59, 2005 September 11 (UTC)
The reason why I only included those communities in the map is because they are the ones which already have articles in Wikipedia. I can copy all the communities from the [2] map, but this has many differences with the [3] map, and some communities aren't even mentioned in either, or a different name is given. I don't think an "all or nothing" attitude is very useful here - its a start, and people can add to and reupload the image later. Cfitzart 14:55, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
[My remarks are in square brackets]
In 1770, Captain James Cook took possesion of the east coast of Australia and named it New South Wales in the name of Great Britain. The Aboriginal population was decimated by British colonisation which began in 1788, when news of the land's fertility spread to Europeans causing them to begin settling in the Aborigines' land. A combination of disease, loss of land (and thus food resources) and outright murder reduced the Aboriginal population by an estimated 90% during the 19th century and early 20th century. A wave of massacres and resistance followed the frontier. The last massacre was at Coniston in the Northern Territory in 1928. Poisoning of food and water has been recorded on several different occasions.
The number of violent deaths at the hands of whites is still the subject of a vigorous and politically-loaded debate, with some figures—notably Prime Minister John Howard—rejecting what Howard terms "the black-armband" view of Australian history. Figures of around 10,000 deaths have been advanced by historians such as Henry Reynolds. Historian Keith Windschuttle claims such numbers are not backed up by documentary evidence, finding evidence existing only for a much smaller number. Reynolds attacks Windschuttle's interpretation of the existing evidence, points out that documented proof that Windschuttle requires is unlikely to be available, and questions Windschuttle's rejection of other forms of evidence such as oral history.
User:Premier 20 Jan 2005
Mambo / Land rights / the stolen generation all deserve a mention if someone has the motivation
I removed this header (which was recently added to the entry) as, although I agree entirely with it, the placement of it was such that it served to suggest that the remainder of the entry was terribly biased and should be ignored. Nothing wrong with the sentiment, but a similar comment could equally well be made about almost any topic in modern history. Tannin 08:35 27 May 2003 (UTC)
"...spiritual values based upon reverence for the land and a belief in the Dreamtime or Tjukurrpa"
Could we please see something clarifying which language the word "Tjukurrpa" comes from?
Although this is a sensitive issue, I removed Mudrooroo from the list of well-known Aborigines because his own family have said that he is not Aboriginal and is more likely to be of African American descent. As far as I know he has refused to comment on this. While I understand that he identifies strongly with Aboriginal people, I don't feel that is sufficient qualification in itself.
Perhaps there should be a sub-section on "Aboriginality"? This could also deal with other non-Aboriginal authors and artists (etc) who have posed as Aboriginal, as well as the issue of Aboriginal people such as Sally Morgan who have been brought up to believe they were NOT Aboriginal. (Grant -- March 2, 2004.)
How come no mention of the 1967 Referendum?- Daeron 03:08, 4 May 2004 (UTC)
Do they call themselves Aborigines? or is this a name given them by the settlers? If they call themselves something else, what is the name? If it's in the article, why is it not more prominent?
Shouldn't we call people by the names they want to be called instead of forcing our concepts onto them? Duemellon 12:00, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I'm confused about the use of the term ' fish-farming' in the following paragraph. Should this be fishing/farming? - Andrew Moran
Mulvaney and Kamminga 1999):
Builth, H. 1996 Lake Condah Revisited: Archaeological Constructions of a Cultural Landscape Unpublished Honours thesis, Deptartment of Aboriginal Studies, University of South Australia, Adelaide.
Builth, H. 2000 The connection between the Gunditjmara Aboriginal people and their environment: The case for complex hunter-gatherers in Australia. People and Physical Environment Research 55-56:1-18.
Builth, H. 2000 The Connection Between the Gunditjmara Aboriginal People and their Environment: The case for complex hunter-gatherers in Australia. In G. Moore, J. Hunt and L. Trevillion (eds), Environment-Behaviour Research on the Pacific Rim. Sydney: Faculty of Architecture, University of Sydney.
Builth, H. 2002a Analysing Gunditjmara settlement: The use of an appropriate methodology. In G. Carver and K. Stankowski 2002 Proceedings of the Third National Archaeology Students' Conference, Adelaide, 2000. Blackwood, S.A.: Southern Archaeology.
Builth, H. 2002b The Archaeology and Socioeconomy of the Gunditjmara: A Landscape Analysis from Southwest Victoria, Australia. Unpublished PhD thesis, Department of Archaeology, Flinders University, Adelaide.
Clarke, A. 1994 Romancing the stones: The cultural construction of an archaeological landscape in the western district of Victoria. Archaeology in Oceania 29(1):1-15.
Coutts, P.J.F., R. Frank and P.J. Hughes 1978 Aboriginal engineers of the Western District, Victoria. Records of the Victorian Archaeological Survey 7.
Lourandos, H. 1997 Continent of Hunter-Gatherers: New Perspectives in Australian Prehistory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mulvaney, J. and Kamminga, J. 1999 Prehistory of Australia. Sydney: Allen and Unwin.
Newby, J. 1994 Blackfellow Never Tired: An Investigation of the Interpretations of the Lake Condah 'House' Sites. Unpublished Honours thesis, Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, Australian National University, Canberra.
Nicolson, O.E. 1996 A Fish Called Condah: An Analysis of Archaeological Interpretations of the Cultural Landscapes of the Lake Condah Region in Southwest Victoria, Australia. Unpublished Honours thesis, Department of Archaeology, Flinders University, Adelaide.
Wesson, J. 1981 Excavations of Stone Structures in the Condah Area, Western Victoria. Unpublished Masters Preliminary thesis, Latrobe University, Melbourne.
Williams, E. 1984 Documentation and archaeological investigation of an Aboriginal 'village site' in southwestern Victoria. Aboriginal History 8:173-188.
Williams, E. 1988 Complex Hunter-Gatherers: A Late Holocene Example from Temperate Australia. BAR International Series 423. Oxford.
Regarding the following paragraph:
I wish this article would say more about what Aboriginal culture was like pre-colonisation, and less about what it isn't like. I don't want to hear that this stereotype is only correct in 70% of cases, or that stereotype is wrong, I just want a detailed description of their way of life. The article seems to be attempting to deny that they nomadic or primitive, as if being nomadic or primitive is somehow bad. In particular:
Despite their reputation as stone-age relics, there is evidence of substantial change in Aboriginal culture over time.
Not all readers of this article know about their reputation, and even fewer care for references to it, especially when it's phrased in such a demeaning way. What is a stone-age culture anyway? What sort of stone-age culture was it, if that's what it was?
Lifestyles varied a great deal, and the stereotyped image of a proud and naked hunter standing one-legged in the red sand of the central Australian desert cannot be applied across the board.
I'm not here to read about stereotypes. Did they hunt or didn't they?
The 2nd, 3rd and 4th paragraphs of the pre-colonisation section give the impression that nothing is known for certain about these people. That may be true, but if anything is known, I'd like to read about it, preferably before I read about the bits that aren't known.
-- Tim Starling 06:01, Nov 25, 2004 (UTC)
They were hunter gatherers with most of their dietary intake coming from insects and small bush animals. Whilst heavy research was thrown into their history in the early years of federation, especially, most of the last two decades has been spent tearing down the 'stereotypes' that that research put forwards and done very little into investigating further their lifestyle and history.
The history of aboriginal culture is forced upon all high school students in Australia, it is a compulsory topic, which I, as a student, found to be obnoxiously full of propaganda and not an inkling of facts on their lifestyle or actual history. That vexed me beyond belief, more time was spent demonising white settlers than actualy telling us about the people themselves.
I do concur that more details should be put into defining them than defining what they are not.
Jachin 22:43, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I propose that this page be moved to a location that has a less offensive connotation than "Australian Aborigine". The people who this term is used to refer to consider this an offensive usage and I believe that means that it is necessary to move the page. I think we should move the page to the redirect "Indigenous Australian", the term that so called "Australian Aborigines" actually call themselves in the modern era. - Aaron Hill 22:52, Nov 29, 2004 (UTC)
I oppose the hyper-politically correct mentality that there is anything offensive in the nomenclature of 'Australian Aboriginie', I live in a highly aboriginally inhabited region of Australia, and the folks here quite happily refer to themselves as 'abo's (which is an abbreviation of aboriginie and turns city folk pale, running to the media screaming 'racism' if heard, although is the most common taxonomy applied to aboriginies as inhabitants of the country and not specific tribes / regions). There is nothing offensive about this nomenclature in my eyes, let it stay.
My people come from an Ulster-Scottish background but I regard myself as 'Indigenous Australian'.
After more than 200 years surely decendants of the colonial population are not non-Indigenous, which is the only label you can give them if Aboriginies are indigenous. The article could also point out that many aboriginies approve of the arrival of europeans into Australia - apparently. According to sources in the media 64% of aborignies are living with or married to a non-aboriginal, something which learned academics acknowledge as an important social indicator. Upwards of 70% of blacks list as their religion one of the Christian denominations. Less than 2% beleive in an aboriginal religion.
Also, the abolition of ATSIC is quite an important moment in aboriginal history which the article dosen't talk about much. Separate elected representation for aboriginies has now been abolished in Australia and it is very difficult to see a future federal administration bringing it back. Isabell Coe and her fellow radicals can jump up and down on the spot until the earth moves - aboriginal soverienty is not an issue in the Commonwealth of Australia.
Groups interested in aboriginal welfare like the Benelong Society basically advance the view that aboriginal assimilation is not only inevitable but desirable (although they don't get as much media coverage as they might - their arguments are quite compelling actually).
Perhaps somebody could work this stream of thought into the article.
By the logic raised in this article, the aboriginal people of Australia are not indigenous, just as 'European settlers' aren't either. I would like to argue the toss with those who claim they are the direct decendants of the 'original people' of the country as that cannot be stated nor substantiated as a fact. Jachin 16:45, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I have a 1971 book which says that "The present theory" is a Three Wave Aboriginal colonisation theory. Tasmanoids (Negroid stock) arrived, then Murrayians who drove the Tasmanianoids off teh mainland, and settled in E/SE Australia, and then the Australoids, of more Caucasian origins (from Indian subcontinent) who "never penetrated south of the tropics". This replaced the old theory of Two waves, first negroids, then Caucasians.
Incidentally their date of initial colonisation is 20,000 or more years go (I guess 50,000 is "more").
It also mentions a theory that Tasmanoids never actually reached the mainland (because no archeaologic/palentologic evidence suggests this).
Anyone know what present theory is? Because the article seems to suggest a single wave of origin.-- ZayZayEM 03:02, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Edit:Re-reading the above I note this does not clarify whether there were two "waves" or one. It may be that this recent low level they speak of may have brought more people from the Indonesian area. As archaeological evidence is sketchy for anything other than determining if people were present or absent at a time, I would suggest looking for a Dreaming that talks of new arrivals. Many Dreamings have accurately told of events happening more than 10,000 years ago, and later confirmed by methods of science. -- Batronibat 03:19, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
As I have seen the image of the elderly gentleman featured on this page (image "Aborigene23323.jpg") on postcards and the like, I am removing it from the page as it is no doubt copyright. If someone can show that it is not copyright, then feel free to return it to the page. -- Roisterer 01:06, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Where to start...
I'll start with this quote from Jackie Huggins (Indigenous historian)
"a" is for apple, agile, anger, another, address, alphabet, but not Aboriginal. It is insulting and destructive to use a small "a". This spelling is extremely racist, as are the biologically racist definitions of part, quarter, half caste and full blood Aboriginals. It's like calling us boong, coon, nigger or abo, and just as blatant and condescending. It is also similar to spelling a Christian name such as dianne or gail like so. Negating our identity and nationality, it also tacks empathy and understanding as any Greek, Italian or Jew would understand - though they are paid the privilege of getting their names spelt with a capital. It is indicative of notions of inferiority/superiority of Blacks and whites [sic] in this country. On the basis of white superiority it could be presumed that the initiators of small "a" subconsciously act our their power games in order further to maintain their privileged position, and to keep Blacks in their "subjugated" line. The usual excuse is that there has been a "typo", but I have yet to see "europeans" or "australians" in Australian books. Why therefore does the typewriter possess an incredibly persistent disability when it comes to Aboriginal? My preference is for the term "Aboriginal" both as noun and adjective. "Aborigines" has long been a term used to classify and demean Aboriginal people in the repressive state of Queensland, particularly by the old Department of Aboriginal and Islander Advancement [sic]. It also assumes an "air of superiority" by a dominant culture and attempts, as does small "a", to operate as a divide and role tactic.
My point is that why is 'Australian Aborigine' still being used in this article? Even when the article itself notes: "this is partly because Aboriginal people increasingly dislike being called Aborigines. Today the preferred usages are Aboriginal People or Indigenous Australians". There is a reason WHY these are the preferred usages, because terms like 'aborigines' or Australian 'aborigines' are OFFENSIVE, colonial terms. Why the article does make a point of this concern and still neglects to apply this sensitivity to the body of text is mind boggling.
Do they call themselves Aborigines? or is this a name given them by the settlers? If they call themselves something else, what is the name? If it's in the article, why is it not more prominent?
Shouldn't we call people by the names they want to be called instead of forcing our concepts onto them? --Duemellon 12:00, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)
How many times does this point have to be made? Aboriginal Australians or Aboriginal people are accepted, 'neutral' terms that refer specifically to Indigenous people of the mainland, ie. not Torres Strait Islanders. Aboriginal Australians, Aboriginal people, this SHOULD be a non-issue -- Black Dagger 13:22, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
[Slavery was illegal..] So was homosexuality in Tasmania, until very recently, but there was/are still gay people in tasmania, despite the fact that it was 'technically' illegal. Slavery was very much alive and well in N.Queensland, the fact that some people were forced into work, which was not paid, qualifies as slavery, whether it was 'legal' or not, it happened, and was NOT actively discouraged by the colonial government. The point is whether or not people were treated as slaves, not whether there was a 'let's ensalve the darkies act' 1864 (cth). Conditions did not 'virtually amount to slavery', actual slave conditions existed, not EVERYWHERE, but they did exist. -- Black Dagger 13:48, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Okay, re this word 'nomadism'. It's silly trying to capture a large variety of human lifestyles with one word. To many people 'nomadism' means to wander around without a home base. I have heard it said (and seen it written) that Aboriginal people were nomadic, therefore they would wander anywhere in Australia without caring where they were. This is simply not true. As best we understand it, in pre-European Australia (if I may use this term to refer to the post-1788 situation), many Aboriginal people did move around, but normally within a given 'home' area. There was much variation in how much people moved around, depending on seasons, environmental conditions, etc. Some Aboriginal people moved around a lot, across a large range (ie Western Desert people), while some moved around relatively little (ie people in Cape York, or the Yolngu of north-east Arnhem Land). Using the word 'nomadic' really tells the reader nothing useful, and I advocate that it not be used, unless heavily qualified. Dougg 04:47, 1 May 2005 (UTC)
The second para says that Torres Strait Islanders are '... culturally and linguistically distinct from Aboriginal peoples'. This is only half correct. There are, linguistically, two main groups in the Torres Straits: in the west there live speakers of an Australian language (one name for which is Kala Lagaw Ya), a member of the Pama-Nyungan family (the family of languages which covers most of Australia's mainland); in the east are speakers of a Papuan language called Meriam Mer (there are various spellings). The former group have close linguistic ties with 'Aboriginal people' while the latter have close linguistic ties with the Papuan people of the nearby coast of PNG.
A bit further down it is said that there were about 200 languages. Actually, it is generally accepted that there were more like 250, or even more. Dougg 05:01, 1 May 2005 (UTC)
I'm going to propose moving the page again, because the current title is potentially offensive, and because it doesn't reflect official usage. I suggest a choice of two new titles, Indigenous Australians (which could also cover Indigenous Tasmanians and Torres Strait Islanders), or Aboriginal Australians. The former is the term in official usage at DIMIA, at various educational institutions (eg the Centre for Indigenous Education, and at international organisations (eg the United Nations). The latter uses the adjectival form, and is consistent with phrases such as "Aboriginal people" and "Aboriginal communities". Currently there are ten different phrasings which redirect here. At the very least it would be good to establish a consensus one way or another as to which term is best and then start updating articles to reflect that usage. -- bainer ( talk) 9 July 2005 12:39 (UTC)
I've just reverted an anonymous edit which added that Aboriginal participation in serious crime is higher than the total population. I would like to see a sentence like that substantiated before being in the article. While I believe Aborigines may be over-represented in jails, I don't think it's due to serious crimes. Anyone with references? -- ScottDavis 00:59, 12 July 2005 (UTC)
Is someone going to add discussion on the problems with Aboriginal society in Australia, ie: high rates of incarceration, alcoholism, petrol sniffing, high illiteracy, high unemployment - or is the bleeding-heart viewpoint only allowed to be presented to the world at large? (I haven't created an account yet, but plan on doing so)
How is truth and facts propaganda? Just look at the recent attention in the media (as of 12th August) of the petrol sniffing problem in Alice Springs? All the problems I mentioned above, the stats which are way higher than mainstream Australia, ie: health, education, employment, crime, alcoholism, petrol sniffing, etc... How is that propaganda? Please don't let your ideology bury your head in the sand and neglect the sad state of affairs that Aboriginal Australia is in. The world at large should know the plight that these people face, rather than the bleeding heart, social-engineer, do-gooder view. Face reality.
There's no need to resort to name calling like Nazis, Bleeding Hearts or anything else. This is incredibly silly! I don't think that mentioning problems that do exist is necessarily contrary to a bleeding heart viewpoint, nor is it necessarily One Nation propaganda - depending on how it is written. It is a fact that indigenous communities all over the world experience substance abuse, unemployment disease and mortality rates higher than the settler populations. This is acknowledged by settler populations and Indigenous people themselves and there are often calls for these situations to be addressed. Sometimes they are, and sometimes they are ignored. - I don't see anything wrong with stating that these issues exist. People need to be aware of them and both governments and communities need to be doing something to address them. I don't see how a so called 'bleeding heart' would disagree with that, and I don't see how its 'One Nation propaganda' - hence I see no need to name calling. Perhaps we should use the heading Problems Facing Indigenous Communities rather than Problems with Aboriginal Society to try to be slightly less confronting. It might also be an idea to post any proposed text on the talk page before including it in the article as it appears that it might be controversial. (14 Aug 2005. 13:15 AEST).
Good idea for the name change of the section (Problems Facing Indigenous Communities). Like all entries in Wikipedia, this needs to be objective, not subjective.
Funnily enough, I was having a discussion with a group the other day on how difficult it is to obtain unbiased (is there such a thing?) information on the problems facing indigenous societies, and I promised I'd start putting some stuff in Wikipedia on this if it wasn't already there. And then I saw your note on this discussion page! So it seems there are at least two of us planning to put in some material like this. My goal, in the best wikipedia tradition, would be to write something that either John Howard or Noel Pearson could read without objection, stating the problems, statistics, and attempts at solution, without preaching and without politicking. Is this possible? So we might, for example, have a subsection on aboriginal heath, document the problems, statistics on child mortality, etc, and then document what governments and NPOs have done to try to address the problem. Answering why the problem still hasn't been solved would probably be beyond the scope of the article - I don't think anybody knows the answer. Does this seem like a reasonable start? Rayd8 22:28, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
There are 400,000 blacks in Australia and 300,000 have been assimlated - no connection to traditonal ways. Zero. Most are now of mixed decent and 69% are either living with or married to an non-aborignal.
Where is this information in the article?
Where does it say that aborignality as we now it has no future?—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 203.51.88.184 ( talk • contribs) 19:46, 18 August 2005.
I would suggest that all aboriginal tribes knew of the existence of other humans. In fact thats what 'yolgnu' and 'gudjitmara' (amongst many others)means-- 'human being' The guff introduced by Adam Carr about them not having a collective name for humans is pure invention and without any support(as usual). It needs removing and rewriting. Eric A. Warbuton —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Eric A. Warbuton ( talk • contribs) -- Scott Davis Talk.
Hottentot posed the question (in his edit summary) of why Koori and Yamaji were not wikilinks. Presumably the answer was that there aren't articles for them. Koori is a blue link, but it's a redirect back to this page. Does anybody know enough to write more than the one-sentence stub I could on Koori, and stop it being a redirect? -- Scott Davis Talk 11:36, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
I read somewhere that it has been proposed that Australian Aborigines may have some genetic admixture of Homo Erectus. This would have putatively come from some residual population in Indonesia or Australia encountereed by the modern Homo Sapiens during their migration to the area. This is prompted in part by some physionomic characteristics of many aborigines (brow ridgs, large teeth, etc.) which more resemble archaic hominids and are different than the aborigines proposed ancestral populations in South India and Indonesia. I know this is the area of the world that homo erectus would likely have survived the longest on account of its archipelago geography (the "Hobit" miniaturized variant recently discovered supports this). Does anyone have any information on this? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.166.238.6 ( talk • contribs) 08:13, 3 September 2005.
I'm about to add some material on indigenous Australians to wikipedia, but first I'd like to run a question past this discussion group. At the risk of boring people, I'd like to see if there is a consensus on acceptable terminology.
First, I think we all agree that the best way of referring to people is in a way that doesn't lump them together at a homogeneous group, or have any derogatory overtones, by using specific terms such as Koori, Yolngu, etc. However, that isn't always practical, and we need a collective term for both indigenous and non-indigenous people that can be used in a sentence such as "Indigenous Australians have a lower life expectancy than non-Indigenous Australians". "Indigenous Australian" works fine, but is a heck of a mouthful if it's used many times in a paragraph. "Aborigine" also works well, has both a noun and a verb form, and is easier to say, but I'm told that some consider it to have colonial overtones. I'm not sure why, since "aboriginal" and "indigenous" have essentially the same meaning. Furthermore, aboriginal has a noun form ("aborigine") whereas indigenous doesn't (other than the long-winded "Indigenous Australian"). So aboriginal/aborigine would be preferable, provided it doesn't cause offence.
Although I'm from an anglo-saxon descent, I'm privileged to have several aboriginal friends, and my work brings me in to contact with many aboriginal communities, from SE Australia right up to NT. No aborigine that I know takes offence at the word "aborigine". Please note that I'm not accusing anyone of misrepresentation, it's just that I don't know where the objection to the word "aborigine" comes from. Can someone please help me there?
On a related subject, how should we refer to non-aborigines in a discussion such as life expectancy of aborigines? People frequently use words like "European", "Anglo-Saxon", or "white", but they all seem to exclude people such as my colleagues of asian descent. Has anybody a better suggestion that "non-aborigine"?
Rayd8 01:36, 2005 September 10 (UTC)
Many thanks for those helpful comments. Clearly "Aborigine" is inappropriate when including Torres Strait Islanders. And thanks for reminding me to use upper case A. But from comments so far, I see nothing to exclude the use of "Aborigine" as a generic term when referring to groups that happen not to include Torres Strait Islanders, such as "The Aborigines in the central desert region urgently need improved access to healthcare." (Note that e.g. Arrente would not be appropriate here, as I am referring to several language groups.) And yet there is a common perception that some find such a use offensive in some way, although I haven't seen that perception properly sourced. Rayd8 22:59, 2005 September 11 (UTC)
The reason why I only included those communities in the map is because they are the ones which already have articles in Wikipedia. I can copy all the communities from the [2] map, but this has many differences with the [3] map, and some communities aren't even mentioned in either, or a different name is given. I don't think an "all or nothing" attitude is very useful here - its a start, and people can add to and reupload the image later. Cfitzart 14:55, 9 October 2005 (UTC)