Tag Archives: Aboriginal history

Australia, Australia Colonial history, Culture, History, Politics, radicalism

The Voice – be sure of what you wish for

The vote for the Aboriginal Voice in Parliament is the most critical vote living Australians will make in their lifetime. One should be absolutely sure of what one is voting for. David Barton has written one of the clearest articles I have come across on what’s at stake.

*****

As Lidia Thorpe so Eloquently Said, ‘It’s War’

David Barton, Quadrant, 6 April 2023

Most people don’t realise that Australia is at war – with itself. In a sense we are already engaged in an internal ‘us and them’ civil war which shows every sign of becoming much worse. This will be especially true if the ‘Voice’ referendum is successful. Indeed, the democracy of Australia has not been under such threat since World War II.

In 1940 Great Britain was under attack by Germany and losing heavily on all fronts. British forces hastily evacuated the beaches of Dunkirk, and France surrendered. The great battleship Hood was sunk by the Bismarck in early 1941 and with Japan entering the war in late 1941 the Prince of Wales and Repulse were both sunk and Singapore fell in early 1942. Things could not have looked worse. It was not until the Battle of El Alamein in November 1942 that the British had their first serious win and from then on there were many victories.

The ‘Voice’ referendum is Australia’s El Alamein. Let me explain why.

In many respects, Aboriginal activists have declared war on the rest of Australia and they did so many years ago. Senator Lidia Thorpe made this clear by declaring on January 26 “this is war” to the crowd at the Melbourne ‘Invasion Day’ Rally.1  Arguably, she is right. We, the citizens of Australia ought to consider ourselves at war with those who would seek to take over and reshape Australia in their own image and for their own purposes. Most Australians probably haven’t noticed, but we’ve been at war with ‘Aboriginal interests’ for a long time now, and over the last few decades it’s not been going well, to name but a few here:

♦ We have lost and given up vast tracts of land under spurious ‘Native Title’ legislation, now “formally recognised to be about 50% of Australia’s land mass”.2

♦ We have lost and given up to the now obligatory ‘Welcome to Country’, which in reality is a statement about who really owns Australia.

♦ We are now surrendering our language so that many English place names are being replaced with Aboriginal names.

♦ We have lost and given up to mountains, beaches and waterways being closed and ‘non-indigenous’ access denied or new access fees charged.

♦ We have lost and given up freehold title to National Parks now handed over to localised Aboriginal Corporations.

♦ We have lost and given up to having our children’s education about early Australian history now revised, distorted and perverted into self-loathing.

♦ We have lost and given up to our universities being run by socialist academics hell-bent on revising our history, society and culture.

We have lost so much, especially in the last five years; we have voluntarily given up so much at the hands of black and white racial oppressors. And they are oppressors, because no-one has ever asked us if we wanted any of this stifling treatment. All of what we have lost, of what has been forced upon us, has all been done to us without any consultation and without our permission or consent. Who gave them the right to do that?

Read the rest here …

Australia, Economics, radicalism

Who will pay to support the return to the stone age?

Nuclear tests, missionaries displaced the Spinifex people. Now they’re back and relearning from the elders

Landline / By Emily JB Smith and Giulia Bertoglio, ABC, 13 March 2023

The sun sits low on the horizon as Maureen Donnegan searches the cool outback sand.  

She bends near a scrubby bush, lifts one end of a stick and kicks down on its middle, snapping it in two.  

A creature – creamy yellow and wriggling – spills onto the ground of Australia’s largest desert.

Ms Donnegan grins, triumphant.

Her friend Shona Jamieson plucks the squirming lump from the dirt and sets it over the coals of a small campfire, before cupping it in her hands and blowing gently.

“It’s got protein in it,” Mrs Jamieson says.

“Really healthy.”

Three photos show Maureen Donnagan snapping a stick and finding the yellow grubs
Maureen Donnegan finds maku in the Great Victoria Desert. (ABC Esperance: Emily Smith)

Read the rest here …

Australia, Culture, radicalism

Reinvented Aboriginal culture drowning us

Everywhere one goes these days, one is confronted by claims of indigenous cultural superiority to which all must yield. If one visits the website of Museums Victoria, for example, one is confronted by the notice below. It’s all part of the Marxists’ campaign of a complete Aboriginization of Australia. Soon the exploits and achievements of the British settlers, those who built the Australian nation, will be a counted as a myth, a pernicious myth spread by the Anglo-capitalist class.

* * * * *

CULTURAL SENSITIVITY MESSAGE – Please read

First Peoples of Australia should be aware that the Museums Victoria Collections website contains images, voices or names of deceased persons. For some First Peoples communities, seeing images or hearing recordings of persons who have passed, may cause sadness or distress and, in some cases, offense.

Language

Certain records contain language or include depictions that are insensitive, disrespectful, offensive or racist. This material reflects the creator’s attitude or that of the period in which the item was written, recorded, collected or catalogued.

They are not the current views of Museums Victoria, do not reflect current understanding and are not appropriate today.

Feedback

Whilst every effort is made to ensure the most accurate information is presented, some content may contain errors. The level of documentation for collection items can and does vary, dependent on when or how the item was collected. We encourage and welcome contact from First Peoples Communities, scholars and others to provide advice to correct and enhance information.

Australia, Australia Colonial history, History, Politics, radicalism

The Voice – propagating fundamental errors

The left – from mild to far left – have an ideology to propagate. The ideology is central. Propositions that are contrary to the Marxist vision of 99% of the left are simply rejected. This causes anxiety or embarrassment among some when they appear to be defying reason or plain observation, but little concern for most. They simply skip over the blaring problems when applying their ideological vision to the major issues of our time. Louise Milligan is a good example of this blissful evasion as Professor Gans pointed out recently.

Other common ways for the leftist mind to deal with objections rational people raise are to distort, misrepresent or create a myth. In the issue of the day – the Voice – mythmaking is running out of control. Gerard Henderson in an article in today’s Australian brings up a favourite. In this case, he was responding to a claim made by ABC journalist Dan Bourchier about the 1967 referendum. Here are the relevant paragraphs.

‘However, my interest was sparked as Bourchier wound up the segment [on the Drum]. He stated that Australians “don’t like changing the Constitution” and added “there have been 44 attempts, only eight successful”. Correct. And added: “Coincidentally, the most successful (referendum was) in ’67 to count Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as Australian ­citizens.”

‘This is wrong – and is one of the many myths of Australian history. Two referendum proposals were put to Australian electors by the Holt Coalition government in May 1967.

‘The first concerned the nexus between the number of parliamentarians in the House of Representatives compared with the Senate …

‘The second proposal sought to give the commonwealth parliament power to make laws with respect to Aboriginal people wherever they lived in Australia. And also to make it possible to include Aboriginal people in the national census. This was a great success, with 91 per cent of Australians voting “yes” across the nation and obtaining majority support in all states …

‘The 1967 referendum had nothing to do with citizenship. All Indigenous Australians were classified as citizens – along with all other Australians – by no later than 1948 when Australian citizenship was introduced. Formerly, Australians were classified as British subjects.

‘In 1962, commonwealth legislation provided that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders could vote in federal elections. Before that, Indigenous Australians who had voting rights in some states were also able to vote at the federal level but their number was limited. Both changes were in place before the 1967 referendum …’

I suppose I could not blame Bouchier in one way. He was repeating a long propagated myth. I remember the 1967 referendum well. I was present at one of Charles Perkins’ rallies. (I was twenty-one.) The impression I had from Perkins’ fiery performance was that for Australia Aboriginal people were invisible. They were of no account. They weren’t even citizens. Of course, I voted ‘yes’.

If one wants to have an idea of the body of myths that Aboriginal activists are spreading, I refer you to Keith Windschuttle’s comprehensive The Break-Up of Australia: The Real agenda behind Aboriginal Recognition.

Australia, Culture, History

Welcome to Country ‘virtue signaling’

Aboriginal Elder of the Narungga People Kerry White says the Aboriginal Welcome to Country used to be a ceremonial process and the overuse of it is “virtue signalling”.

She said Acknowledgement to Country, which is Aboriginal Welcome to Country, was only used when Aboriginal elders welcomed other Aboriginals onto their land for negotiation talks.

“They didn’t use it every day, it was a ceremonial process, so they’ve taken our ceremonial process and demeaned it by throwing it out there every day in every aspect of what Australian people do,” Ms White told Sky News Australia.

Australia, Australia Colonial history, Culture, radicalism

Traitorous Andrews and his traitorous government

On 7 June 2022, The Guardian reported that the Andrews Government was establishing ‘an independent authority to help oversee the nation’s first treaty negotiations between a government and First Nations people. They were to introduce the Treaty Authority Bill after they ‘struck an agreement with the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria, the body elected by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to help develop a treaty framework.’ In the meantime, one must assume that the authority is in full working order and the Bill is making its way through parliament.

The Guardian also reported that ‘First Peoples’ Assembly co-chair, Marcus Stewart, a ‘Nira illim bulluk man’, said the creation of the authority ensures treaty negotiations aren’t restrained by western concepts.’

Below is a photo of ‘Aboriginal’ Marcus Stewart. Now one would be struggling to find a more European-looking white skinned man than Marcus. Marcus evidently has no problem with the disjunction between his appearance and his claim to be an Aboriginal man. Unblushing, he presents himself everywhere with an animal skin draped around his shoulders. Of course, I’m assuming the animal skin is genuine and not fake like his pretensions.

But the disjunction between appearance and claim is not the only one. There is an even greater disjunction in his rhetoric about decolonization and treaty that leads into betrayal and treason by the Andrews Government.

Marcus explained: “This is about stepping outside of the colonial system. We’ve said to government, if you’re serious about treaty, you’ll do it our way, and to their credit, that’s what they’re doing. This is decolonisation in action.”

“The government is relinquishing some of its control and power and together we are creating new institutions that will be guided by Aboriginal lore, law and cultural authority that has been practised on these lands for countless generations.”

Marcus is guilty of spouting arrant nonsense. First, he invokes the categories of Western/European political discourse to justify the incoherent demand to regard his political faction as a separate nation. Second, there is no existing colonial entity in Australia. Australia (see my definition of what constitutes a nation) ceased to be a colony, de facto in the mid-19th century, and formally at Federation in 1901.

Third, Australia, whose development had absolutely no input from the sparse Aboriginal tribes pre-settlement, is a fully fledged nation with the complex of laws, government, science, technology, and so on, that one understands under the concept nation. Whereas the groups of Aboriginals (a European designation) pre-settlement were primitive tribes that continually warred with each other. Violence was a way of life within tribes and between tribes. Traditional tribal aboriginal life ceased in the 19th century – except perhaps for small groups in Northern Australia.

Finally, the is no direct line of development from pre-settlement Aboriginal life to a group like Marcus’s. Marcus, and those pretend Aboriginals like him, are engaged in crude cultural reinvention and mythmaking. And the Andrews government is supporting it – supporting a virtual insurgency.

Australia, Australia Colonial history, Conservatism, Culture, History, Law, Political

Stolen generation – part of the far-left Marxist narrative

The ‘stolen generations’ claim is a constant refrain in the Marxist narrative, despite not one case succeeding at law. And why wouldn’t it be? It is a massive weapon in the extreme left’s goal to create chaos and destroy the nation that was founded in Sydney Cove on 26 January 1788 and endured whole until the 1950s. Sure, Aboriginal children, full and mixed blood, were removed from their parents, but they were removed for the benefit of the children, as the authorities then judged. In most cases, it was the right action. Tony Thomas provides some background to the political issue of ‘stolen generations’ with a review of Nicholas Hasluck’s book, Bench and Book.

*****

The Unsinkable Child-Stealing Myth

Tony Thomas, Quadrant, 12 October 2021

A bit of judicial biffo goes on all the time as appeal courts rule on whether a trial judge got it right or wrong. A case in point is the High Court’s unanimous critique last year of two Victorian appeal judges who sent the innocent Cardinal Pell to prison. Such court language has a polite veneer. But do you ever wonder what judges really think? To find out go buy Nicholas Hasluck’s Bench and Book,  (Arcadia, $44), published a month ago. It’s his two-year diary from 2000 when he became a WA Supreme Court judge. He reitred in 2010.

Barrister Nick, also novelist, memoirist and poet, took crimson while continuing as chair of the Literature Board of the Australia Council and finishing a Jacobean-era novel, Arbella’s Baby, writing as “Margaret Martin” in a post-modern identity twist.

Book and Bench publishes for the first time his private biffo with ex-High Court Judge Sir Ronald Wilson over the latter’s Bringing Them Home Report of 1997, source of the “stolen generations” story and alleging government-administered “genocide”.

Hasluck’s father, Paul, was Commonwealth Minister for Territories running Aboriginal policy and administration in the Northern Territory from 1951-63, and Governor-General 1969-74. Paul Hasluck, with his devotion to Aboriginal welfare, didn’t actually spend his time stealing part-Aboriginal kids from their wailing mother’s arms.[1] Equally absurd is that Paul’s bureaucrats did the stealing behind his back; Paul was fanatical about portfolio detail.

Yet if Bringing Them Home were true, Paul had to be a genocidal monster. Paul’s son, Nick, was not having any of that.

The intra-judicial explosion detonated when Sir Ronald wrote effusively to Nick congratulating him on becoming a judge (their Perth homes were only 7km apart as the crow flies). Sir Ronald doubtless expected a grateful reply. But Nick was stewing over Sir Ronald’s telling the National Press Club in 1999 about NT ‘genocide’ in the Hasluck era. Nick blasted Ron; Ron lashed back. They banged heads to mutual exhaustion. And later, Ron admitted to Patrick Carlyon of The Bulletin (June 2001) that his ‘genocide’ claim was a crock (p258) – which hasn’t stopped the Australian wokerati spraying the term around regardless.[2]

Read the rest here…

Australia Colonial history, Christianity, Culture, History, radicalism, Religion

Noble savage – or just savage

Propagation of the picture of the noble savage in the lands the European powers colonised in modern times is a vastly important part of the Marxist effort to create a body of myths to demoralise people in the white west and destabilise their society and government. Bruce Pascoe’s DARK EMU is an eminent case.

Powerful forces went into promoting this shameless fantasy about Aboriginal culture until self-respecting academics on the left could not bear the shame of supporting something so academically outrageous. But like true Marxists, many on the left refused to relinquish its power of indoctrination – foremost among them the government funded ABC and SBS.

I have provided links to many articles demonstrating how violent and uncivilised the Aboriginal tribes were pre-settlement (see tab Aboriginal violence pre-settlement). Such violence and savagery was found in all ‘First Nations’ peoples.

*****

The North American Martyrs and the Myth of the Noble Savage

PAUL KRAUSE, Crisis Magazine, 19 October 2021

October 19 is the feast day of St. Isaac Jogues in the General Calendar. He was a Jesuit missionary working and living among the Mohawk Indians in the 1630s and 1640s before being tortured and beheaded on October 18, 1646. Few Catholics, especially Catholics in America, even know of the story of the North American Martyrs. Why?

In an age when we are meant to weep and cry over the tragedy of the Native Americans due to European settlement and Christianization, none are told to weep over the Europeans who were brutally butchered at the hands of the indigenous populations that routinely warred and killed each other prior to the arrival of European settlers. The Mayans were active sodomites, and some of their surviving artwork celebrates sodomite lust and violence. The Aztecs engaged in human sacrifice, cannibalism, and a slavery far worse than the Atlantic slave trade. The mound-building Native Americans in the interior river basins of North America also engaged in ritualistic human and child sacrifice. These were hardly noble and peaceful people before the arrival of Europeans.

The defenders of these horrors argue that the Christian (predominately Catholic) sources overexaggerated the brutality of the natives to justify conquest. This is typical among the Christ-hating intellectual establishment. Dismiss all the evidence that doesn’t conform to your presuppositional ideology. If facts don’t fit the theory, dismiss the facts as fake.

It is important for Catholics to have the memory of the North American martyrs for several reasons. 

First is that the story of the Catholic martyrs suffering from the hands of the Native Americans dispel any illusion that the natives were peaceful victims of supposed European aggression. On the contrary, it was often native aggression toward Europeans that sparked the wars between the settlers and Native Americans. Why weep for Native Americans when holy saints were flayed alive and had their skulls crushed by tomahawks? Eradicate that memory and the tragedy of the Native Americans can be weaponized for contemporary political goals.

Read the rest here…

Australia, History, Political Correctness

First nations – NOble savage or just savage?

Bruce Pascoe’s book DARK EMU strove to paint a picture of Aboriginal culture before European settlement that was all peace and harmony and in many respects superior to the hated white man’s culture. His bestselling work was swallowed greedily by Australia’s woke/PC class (particularly the ABC) no matter how much it contradicted previous scholarly findings.

One aspect that historians before Bruce found common to all Aboriginal tribes was the mind-numbing violence they inflicted on each other, externally with other tribes and internally where the men murdered each other and beat the hell out of their women.

In the age of (European) exploration, the most developed countries of Europe settled mostly in lands where First Nations people lived: Australia, North and South America, Canada, Africa. Again, what was common to the primitive tribes on those lands was the violence. The tribes warred with each other, sparring no extent of brutality, many indulging in cannibalism. Some First Nations people had elaborate religious ceremonies during which all manner of people were sacrifice to the gods. The Spaniards could not believe what they witnessed among the Aztecs, for example.

Just an few hundred miles to the North of the Mayan tribes (today’s Mexico) were the Indian tribes on the Southern Plains (Texas). They included the Apaches and the Comanches. Before white people settled in the area, the dreaded Comanches had driven all the other tribes from the plains, their natural homeland, some hounded to the point of extinction. The Comanches spared no one. Men, women and children were slaughtered in their raids, Women were led away as captives to be gang-raped. The video Comanche War Raids gives a look into the delightful culture of that First Nation tribe.

Bruce Pascoe has turned out to be a fraud and DARK EMU a political work of nonsense.

Australia, Conservatism, Culture, Law, Left, Political Correctness, radicalism

The truth about Aboriginal disadvantage

Loudest voices come from the cities, not the bush

Jacinta Nampijinpa, The Australian, 5 January 2021

Despite Closing the Gap, there remains a seven-year difference in life expectancy between the cities and the bush.
Despite Closing the Gap, there remains a seven-year difference in life expectancy between the cities and the bush.

Our political leaders don’t live in the bush, they live in cities. Heads of Aboriginal organisations don’t live in the bush, they live in cities. Policymakers don’t live in the bush, they live in cities. Those with the loudest voices pushing to change the date of Australia Day — or for a voice to parliament — don’t live in the bush, they live in the cities.

The cities are where the activists and their credulous supporters live among some of Australia’s most privileged. The cities are where the “progressive” media lives and the frame through which it views and reports to the rest of Australia. The cities are where the universities indoctrinate with much of their politically correct ideological teachings, delivered by academics who’ve never lived in remote Indigenous communities yet who bombard parliamentary inquiries and grant application channels with recommendations that fail to even grasp Indigenous disadvantage.

This is part of the reason decades of attempts to address Indigenous disadvantage have fallen short of accomplishing the outcomes needed to fix the ongoing raft of problems. Indigenous Australians in regional remote areas still face dire circumstances.

Read the rest here…