Atheist knowledge

[Marty_d]

Don't get me wrong, I feel no personal guilt. I don't like the unfairness of it, but unfortunately you get that whenever two civilizations collide. Spanish and Inca. British and Native American. British and African. Dutch and African. French and African. You get the gist...

 

 

[bexrbetter]

Don't get me wrong, I feel no personal guilt. You get the gist...

We are where we are today due to some tough decisions and lives lost, on all sides, in times before us.

 

We have persecuted, and we have been persecuted throughout history to expand our own kind, and for others to expand their kind with us in their way.

 

What we "did" to the Aboriginals is miniscule relative to what others have done to others, Romans, Mongols, Ottoman, Vikings, Russian Empire, etc etc.

 

 

[nomadpete]

However, Bex, the transgressions of others do not make it right. All that you listed (and the more recent Aussie history), comes down to our collective animal instincts at work. Until we collectively acknowledge that fact, it is unlikely that humans will start behaving 'humanely'.

 

 

[bexrbetter]

However, Bex, the transgressions of others do not make it right.

You are enjoying all that you have now directly due to it, including and especially, that you even exist.

 

I have history on my side to thank for our actual existence, so thanks Great, Great, Great, Great, etc. Granddad for clearing the path that ended up at me.

 

Until we collectively acknowledge that fact, it is unlikely that humans will start behaving 'humanely'.

The population is now at 7.5 billion, there will be a breaking point sometime in the diatant future, so out of the bleeding hearts with their pens, Religio's with their word, and those who can kill - who you going to put your money on?

 

 

[Bruce]

If you read the proclamation for South Australia, you will see that the Aborigines were specifically given the protection of the law. Now atrocities did happen, but they were not systematic and not ordered as policy by the government.

 

The Coniston massacre near Alice Springs in 1928 was led by a policeman but when the government heard about it they didn't approve, to put it mildly.

 

In Central Australia, the Aborigines provided women ( unwillingly I guess) for the first white male settlers, and this helped the white men to stay. And no matter how bad the white man was, these women were generally treated much better than in their tribe, so they didn't run away at the first opportunity.

 

 

[turboplanner]

At Beachport the tribe had formed a group for some feasting and dancing. One guy noticed a few too many were looking at him and started to run, but they clubbed him, cut him up and ate him. Life could' be tough on the range.

 

 

[Guest Deskpilot1]

At Beachport the tribe had formed a group for some feasting and dancing. One guy noticed a few too many were looking at him and started to run, but they clubbed him, cut him up and ate him. Life could' be tough on the range.

ER, if they clubbed and ate him, how do we know that he noticed 'a few too many were looking at him' in the first place?

 

 

[Bikky]

Secret men's business. Maybe it was time for the "dust boy". Stay inside, and if you really need to go outside look at your feet. Respect the culture and you will survive. I have a great respect for Aborigines. I lived and worked with them for many years. I have a skin name and a place where I am always welcome. White Australians, well ...

 

 

[turboplanner]

ER, if they clubbed and ate him, how do we know that he noticed 'a few too many were looking at him' in the first place?

There was a missionery present.

 

Apparently it was a regular occurrence in SA, a bit like musical chairs on steroids.

 

This is another occurrence, from the Booandik Tribe, by Mrs James Smith, who ran an orphanage for aboriginal children in the South East, written in 1880.

 

"However, he told me he once went to a murapena (a native festival), and that after the dancing was over, the men ran after each other with their spears. He saw one fall, and soon after heard the death-cry. The poor man was killed and speedily divided and devoured by his comrades."

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

If the earth is flat you don't go down hill so often. When Columbus set sail they were expected to fall off the edge...

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[Old Koreelah]

That's silly stuff about the aborigines. When Europeans came to Australia they found the most primitive people on earth.How could they have had agriculture and flour-milling ages ago and then lost it all? And where are the surviving plants they cultivated?

 

And why didn't they put up any resistance to Europeans when they arrived?

 

Sorry but its very hard for me to believe any civilization happened among Aboriginal tribes.

Bruce I agree with much of what you post, but this one is way out of line.

 

"The most primitive people on earth"? By what measure? By their limited ability to destroy?

 

The white fellas may have had a more sophisticated material technology, but in their arrogance and intolerance they quickly destroyed much of what they encountered.. Not a lot different to how IS barbarians behave in our time.

 

Bruce I can refer you to some good sources on pre-European agriculture in Australia.

 

"...And where are the surviving plants they cultivated?..." Mostly wiped out by the White fellas, thru overgrazing by sheep and cattle, ploughing and deforestation. A few food species can still be found in eastern Australia, but most knowledge of them has been lost. One good place to look is isolated and neglected old cemeteries. One of the few places that introduced grazing animals were kept out of.

 

 

[Bruce]

For years I wondered this: did the Aborigines consider themselves better off before the white men came or not?

 

Then one day in about 1985 I got to ask the question.

 

A workmate had a brother in Alice Springs who was married to a full-blood woman from Yuendumu. She was a nice woman, but of course she only knew her own times.

 

But she had an elderly but mentally acute grandfather at Yuendumu, and she undertook to ask him for me. He well-remembered the time before whitefellers.

 

Personally, I would have thought they were better off before the whites arrived, after all they had their pride before white men came.

 

Well I got his answer via his grand-daughter and it was very definite indeed. Do you want to guess what it was?

 

 

[bexrbetter]

Well I got his answer via his grand-daughter and it was very definite indeed. Do you want to guess what it was?

You got 5 dolla fella?

 

 

[Bruce]

My answer to that one is " some whitefeller their missus got all the money " which horrifies them.

 

 

[IBob]

For years I wondered this: did the Aborigines consider themselves better off before the white men came or not?Then one day in about 1985 I got to ask the question.

 

A workmate had a brother in Alice Springs who was married to a full-blood woman from Yuendumu. She was a nice woman, but of course she only knew her own times.

 

But she had an elderly but mentally acute grandfather at Yuendumu, and she undertook to ask him for me. He well-remembered the time before whitefellers.

 

Personally, I would have thought they were better off before the whites arrived, after all they had their pride before white men came.

 

Well I got his answer via his grand-daughter and it was very definite indeed. Do you want to guess what it was?

Waiting for someone to spot the problem in the chronology here...waiting....

 

 

[turboplanner]

You have to give Bruce some slack in his story telling.

 

 

[IBob]

You have to give Bruce some slack in his story telling.

Oh, right.........sorry.........for a moment there I thought it might be Methuselah.........)

 

 

[Marty_d]

Waiting for someone to spot the problem in the chronology here...waiting....

I spotted it early, but thought maybe Grandpa remembered a time when there were no white folks in his particular area. Rather than him being a couple hundred years old.

 

 

[IBob]

I spotted it early, but thought maybe Grandpa remembered a time when there were no white folks in his particular area. Rather than him being a couple hundred years old.

Yep...I don't know anything at all about over there.

 

What I think about over here (NZ) is that our ideas and guesses and interpretations of 'how things were' (right or wrong) have already fed back into the big picture for many years, making it very difficult now to look back with any certainty.

 

And that's just the accidental effect: to that we must now add revisionist 'historians' and all sorts of other people who think the end justifies the means, and are happy to colour the picture however it suits them.

 

 

[Bruce]

I'm sure the grandfather was aware there were white men around, but they had not yet had anything to do with their way of life as far as this guy was concerned. His family group would just not have crossed paths with whites before the 1920's. (The last group to come in from hunter-gathering did so in about 1956. They had been aware of white men but chosen to avoid them.)

 

Anyway, the old man's answer to my question was that it was far better after white men took over, because "before white men there was all this killing".

 

This question and answer took place 20 years before I read Jared Diamond's book " Guns, Germs and Steel" which explained why this was how indigenous people lived.

 

 

[Bruce]

Correction... the last group of uncontacted aborigines to be "brought in" was in 1984 in the Gibson Desert.

 

So the group I referred to, who made the news at the time, was in the 1950's and I think they came into Santa Theresa mission after deciding to retire from the traditional life.

 

 

[facthunter]

What do you know of "McLeod's Mob"? Nev

 

 

[Bruce]

Nev, just north of Gawler is the place where they made McLeod's Daughters and I have actually been inside before it was famous. But I think you are referring to something else which I don't know about.

 

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[Bruce]

Having looked up the McLeod who organized the aborigines in WA then he was a great bloke and I'm sorry I didn't know of him.

 

But there was a woman in Alice Springs called Olive Pink who had an unfinished anthropology degree. She used to represent aborigines in court and lecture the judges about aboriginal culture. They would sometimes be charged when they were carrying out tribal obligations, like ritually spearing some transgressor.

 

Although I knew her to well by sight, nobody ever told me what a great lady she was. Us kids thought she was a crazy old woman and no teacher or parent told us anything different. She is properly recognized nowadays.

 

 

[Marty_d]

Olive Pink

Some parents just don't think.