Gordon Barlow

Migration out of Africa 60,000 years ago, maybe 10,000 years wandering across Asia to what became Australia after the rising seas made it an island... Then 49,700 years - more or less - either being pushed around Oz by other earliest settlers or oozing their way past them, to the places they called "home" when the Europeans landed 49,700 years later..

Very little is known of their specific movements during that 49,700 years. Or even speculated on. Or even researched, as far as we can tell. Ah well, nobody is absolutely sure who the aborigines of Britain were either! After all, we only know about ancient events from written records. No writing, no knowledge - only legends that were orally passed down for generations. Not for 49,700 years, though, usually! The most recent aboriginal arrivals on Fraser Island don't know what it was called by their immediate predecessors. Or, they're not telling... They only remember their grandparents' name for it: "Kagari". It doesn't make much sense to me, to call a place by a name used by the second-last residents. Why not let the current residents give it their own name? Either that or put some effort into finding the place's original name.

Bring on the storm!

Beoz

I have read in some scientific reports, prior to approx 4000 years ago gene testing aligns with PNG. In the past 4000 it aligns with India. If correct it appears new migration occurred 4000 years ago.

Gordon Barlow

All very interesting, Beoz. Thanks for that. So the question is: who were Australia's real aboriginals, and how do we tell the difference between them and later arrivals? 4000 years ago is a long while, of course; it's 3700 years longer than the Europeans have lived here. BUT... 4000 years ago only makes that bunch the Second Settlers - and maybe not even that. I wonder how many earlier waves of invaders there have been, not yet discovered. Only the First Settlers are the aboriginals, right?

4000 years from now, all Australians will be mixed-blood. Who will be reciting the Welcome to Country, then? And what will Fraser Island be called then?

Retirednow

Fraser Island doesn’t exist.

Gordon Barlow

Over a long period of time, all of the earliest settlers of Australia would have been nudged southward and westward by newcomers. It is impossible to identify which clans or tribes lived where, and when, over the course of thousands of years. A lot of blood would have been spilled, as they jostled for the more comfortable places. From Cape York to Tasmania, Melville Island to Ayers Rock, there was little peace between the contenders. It might be politically convenient today to claim peace and love among the brothers and the sisters for the past 50,000 years, but it's a lie.

The only way any group could resist forced evacuation would have been to hide in a forest , and perhaps - perhaps - that's how a few pygmies survived in North Queensland.

Gordon Barlow

Wikipedia has a map showing that almost all of the aboriginals alive today speak an Indian-derived language. The languages are all related. All the older languages, the out-of-Africa ones, must have become extinct. The Africans' DNA would have continued, of course, because male invaders throughout history have always left their seed in native females; and that's how the African DNA continues to this day. Today's representatives probably are indeed descended from the first settlers as well as the Indian invaders that followed them 46,000 years later.

Well, who knows? I took one of those $75 DNA tests the other week and learned that I am 0.013% Colombian/Peruvian. Who knew that? (It's not enough to warrant applying for citizenship down there, but still...)

Beoz

Personally I don't really care who we're the "real" aboriginals and who were the "invader" ones. We are all people who live in this country "NOW" and the past shouldn't matter. But it does for a minority who like resentment.

Pollyana

Beoz

I think the referendum is going to highlight something special. The majority of people just want to be people without being put into a category.

Gordon Barlow

I'm with you, Beoz. I agree too that Jacinta Price is right on the money. "The Voice" would be divisive. Once a country starts treating one ethnic group differently and meaningfully from the others, it risks ending up with apartheid. That's what happened in South Africa and Israel.

I don't live in Australia, but I still follow what goes on there, and I would vote NO if I could!

Beoz

I think Apartheid and Israel are very different things but both have similarities to the requests here. If you read the Uluru Statement its very much about what Indigenous can claw back regarding "Stolen Lands". The wording may be a little bit more gentle than the way I put it. It talks about Treaty and even for Thomas Mayo says himself, Treaty could take 40 years to work out. What does that actually mean for the majority? It talks about "The Gap" and we know that the money spent has not closed the gap quick enough for a very small minority of indigenous but for many others the gap has closed very quickly over the past 30 or 40 years. Is the Voice, a representation to parliament, going to close the remaining few? Or is it just going to continue to create drama for the majority due to the underlying tones of Treaty contained within the Uluru Statement. Its a mess quite frankly.

Gordon Barlow

"Treaty - a process of agreement-making between governments and First Nations peoples that acknowledges the historical and contemporary cultural rights and interests of First Peoples by formally recognising sovereignty, and that land was never ceded." That's from the Uluru Statement, and pretty much sums up what is wrong with it. (I speak as a longtime Human Rights advocate for the past thirty years or so, here in Cayman and at a British Commonwealth conference in Gibraltar a while back.) The Uluru Statement presumes that the aborigines lived in perfect peace for the 50,000 years before the British came, and that is an outrageous presumption. Weaker groups (families, clans, occasionally tribes) would from time to time have been chased out of their homes to less comfortable places; that's human nature, and historically true for every human group ever... except for the Australians? Not likely.

No, it's sheer nonsense, and it harms the cause. If I were advising the aborigines' leaders I would strongly, strongly, recommend that they abandon the pretense of peace and love for those 50,000 years, and abandon the pretense that there would have been treaties among the various groups. Actually, no; I'm wrong about treaties. There would have been treaties - but oral ones, not written - just as there were between every European settler and his aboriginal neighbours. Harsh treaties, negotiated at gunpoint, and never committed to writing. More like unconditional surrenders, really. I've just checked my dictionary, and it confirms that treaties don't have to be written. The Statement's demand for a treaty should be taken out immediately. I think the word "treaty" alone, will always be a stumbling block to amity.

Beoz

During the colonisation period a treaty usually occured at the time, with those indigenous peoples that lived and occupied lands, "at the time".

This did not occur in Australia at the time, possibly due to the intention that Australia was to be a penal colony.

The important point is a treaty occurred at the time, not 200 odd years later when those who were there at the time are long gone. Owing land to indigenous many generations down the track does not bring harmony to the majority. In fact 16% of Australia is already owned and controlled by indigenous. There are 5% of MPs in parliament of indigenous decent. 3% make up the indigenous population.

Australians of all backgrounds are not going anywhere nor are they going to be made to guilty for what didnt occur (a treaty) 200 odd years earlier. The majory do acknowledge history, but want to move on. That will be reflected in the referendum result.

Gordon Barlow

Might A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) be helpful in exploring how Australia was first settled? Probably not yet. Wikipedia says that most of Australian aborigines' languages belong to a family called Proto-Pama-Nyungan [PPN] which may have come from India around 4000 years ago, although I couldn't find a link with any known Indian languages, alive or extinct. A.I. ought to be able to identify the relationship of today's existing languages to the PPN original, and to each other. But that would only bring us back to the year 2000 BC, and Australia is reckoned to have been first settled at least 50,000 years before then! It's a historical dead-end. And all a dead-end is good for is to allow enquirers to speculate wildly on what might have happened before. Did any of the original settlers survive the invasion of the PPN speakers? If not, were they all killed by the invaders, or at least diminished to such a small number that their original language(s) disappeared?

What to do? It's an important topic for Australians these days. Because if the direct descendants of the original settlers were slaughtered - without any kind of Treaty or Voice to save them - it would rather take the ground from under the descendants of the alleged slaughterers who are seeking a Treaty and a Voice today. Right? The alleged slaughterers would be mere Johnny-come-latelies, cursed with the exact same label as the British invaders of nearly 300 years ago. Why isn't anybody seeking a Treaty for that theft of the sacred soil? Too long ago? I guess. But many people are saying that 300 years is too long ago.

I really don't think Australians should even think about paying reparations to the descendants of suspected slaughterers of Australia's earliest (first) settlers. That wouldn't be fair, and fairness is at the top of the agenda, these days.

scotty9000

There is no way Australia would not have been colonised. John Howard mentioned that if you had to choose a colonial power Britain was the best choice.

Look at Indonesia invading West Papua in very recent history. Indonesia is an Islamic state and is not very far away.
East Papua.. PNG is also worth looking at as somewhat indicative of how tribal politics work out in a modern world.