Wednesday, February 13, 2008

[aboriginal homogeny] koori simply don't exist


Let me make it clear that I'm no Irving. The holocaust most certainly existed and was one of the most disgusting testaments to man's inhumanity to man ever. However, not every situation which exists in the popular mind is necessarily as portrayed by the revisionists.

Was there anything so ridiculous as this National Apology Day? As expected, once the thing was done, in they came for the cash:

But some Aborigines say it should have been accompanied with compensation for their suffering.

Exactly - the big handout to people who are only tangentially connected with the so called "Stolen Generations". Within Australia, even the existence of a concerted campaign to remove children from families is still hotly debated:

Some conservative journalists, such as Andrew Bolt, have publicly questioned the very existence of the Stolen Generation. Bolt considers that it is a "preposterous and obscene" myth and that there was actually no policy in any state or territory at any time for the systematic removal of "half-caste" Aboriginal children.

The Australian Governments of the time acted on field recommendations, which saw half-caste children rejected by aboriginal tribes and left to die. It was not the removal of full-bloods, as has been suggested - the tribes themselves were discriminating against the half-castes. Just as Social Services today will put abused and abandoned children into care, so it was then.

The very fact that the children were placed with white families, though muddled and showing not a great deal of understanding of aboriginal culture, nevertheless reflected the basically altruistic outlook of later white society, an altruism which eventually resulted in Sorry Day.

What's at issue here is that authorities of the time saw a situation and opted for a solution which, in hindsight, doesn't look too good. Why ascribe beastly motives for this policy when the motives really were altruistic at the time, albeit with some ignorance?

Either way, why on earth would a current government need to apologize? This modern habit of taking responsibility for the crimes of others in the past really needs to be examined.

Now to this business of tribal land and cash compensation for that.

Interesting how that only happens near national monuments like Ayer's Rock and where the oil companies want to drill. There's so much greed and hypocrisy among the aboriginals.

To portray the aboriginals as innocent sufferers is to rewrite history in a new PC light. Waves of tribes came in, warred with the incumbents and then were themselves pushed further inland. Negritos, Murrayans and Carpentarians are three that spring to mind.

Some 250 Aboriginal languages have been identified in Australia and more than 800 Papuan idioms are thought to exist in New Guinea.

This means different tribes and their offshoots and they fought [click to read]:


So to suggest that the aborigines:

1. are one people, the Koori;

2. never visited atrocities on each other or were peaceful and "soft"

... is revisionist history which can most charitably be described as muddled.

The various aboriginal tribes are chalk and cheese. There are peaceful elements, as there are with all peoples and then there are other elements. I suggest that those who are trying to differentiate on the basis of skin colour for the purpose of dragging money out of another skin colour are the true racists.

A non-racist would say all people are equal, with the same right to compensation as any other people. So who is trying to perpetuate these racial differences and for what ulterior motive?

Could it possibly be for the good old payola? Useful thing, racism.

11 comments:

  1. James I know nothing on this subject. But the appology concept is ridiculous.

    A. Because you can't change history.

    B. History, as you point out, is never as simple as those in power like to make out.

    C. It makes no difference to the position of the people you are appologising to -- so what's the point?

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  2. I was just going to say that there, I think the apology concept is a highly cynical thing.

    There is no sincerity in it at all.

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  3. We were talking about apologies and tribal warfare in work yesterday. Maybe I'll do a serious post on it on my blog for my homely and silly readers. (Not about the Aboriginal situation as I know nothing.)

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  4. I hate this being sorry. I'm sorry for many things that have happened to others. However I only apologise for things I have personally done. If it is illegal the law gets me and if not I can still feel guilty because of my moral upbringing.

    Nowadays of cours,like everything else,it is the first slice andis used as an admission of guilt.

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  5. You have said all I have been thinking for a while.

    Of course anyone would feel sympathy and sorrow for wrongs inflicted on people in years gone by, and strive to ensure history is not repeated. But quite why people who played no part in those events feel a need to apologise is beyond me.

    An apology is worthless unless made sincerely by the person who committed the act deserving of an apology. The whole thing is utterly self serving and does nothing more than seek to court attention for being supposedly virtuous.

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  6. I also think "apologies" of this sort are useless. As your first commenter says, you can't change history. You can't bring people back, either. Acknowledging what has happened is a different matter, though - as is trying to ensure that mistakes won't be repeated. We are all products of our time, as you suggest.

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  7. I agree with all this and the last one of Welsh too about learning from the error - far more important.

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  8. In completely a different context recently I heard an author saying: 'The heirs of the victims are doing their best to keep the guilt complex of the heirs of the cuprits sustainable."
    No, it was no German, it was a Jew.

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  9. I found this interesting and contrasted it, although perhaps unfairly, with when I was in Australia at the time the verdicts of the court came down in the cases of abuse in residential schools. No compensation for abuse, both sexual and physical. Whereas, here in Canada, similar abuse has brought heaps of compensation both from the government and the Catholic church orders who ran the schools. When I asked people there about it they felt no compensation was due these people who had been forcibly removed from their homes and suffered abuse as a result. I don't know if the law is different there but I found it hard to understand.
    Another huge issue for compensation here is the land claim problems. We are on the hook for millions and millions over that as 110 percent of this provence is under native land claims and the government cannot sell any land under claim without a huge outcry from the bands plus they lose in the court.

    Recently the BC provincial government sold a nearby golf course it owned for eleven million dollars. The Indian band on whose land I live (99 year lease) immediately went to court because the land is under claim and they won. Not only did the government have to give the land to the band but it had to give back the money with interest to the University who bought it! Also they had to give another nearby parcel of land to the band plus a monetary settlement and there is still no treaty in place which will cost another bundle.

    I wonder if there are land claims in Australia, I know there are in NZ. I'll have to google it.

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  10. Same thing happens here in the US; revisionist history abounds that depicts the aboriginal people of the US as peaceful, gentle, friendly people who lived in harmony with nature until the evil Europeans came to conquer them. Nothing could be further from the truth, other than the fact that the Europeans moved in on them.

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  11. I am still waiting for my apology for the Highland Clearances. James? Anyone?

    I think that Kevin Rudd struck a chord with the nation (or most of it) with this one. He is on the high ground. Many many years of bitterness swept away. What lies underneath now that sorry has been established is the hard part. Many many intractable problems. First up, how do you train and recruit 1200 pre school teachers to go and work in some of the most inhospitable places in the world. Much much more, but at least Australia can focus on solutions to the health/education/wealth divide between native and non native Australians.

    If saying sorry was not so important, why was it almost universally accepted as the right thing to do?

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