Talk:Indigenous Australians/Archive 3

Racism, Political Inertia, Lack of representation etc

I've added a couple of sections because I find it frankly bizarre that these have not been covered as significant problems that face Aboriginals/Torres Strait Islanders in this article, despite how common it is for people (including prominent politicians like Pauline Hanson and Amanda Vanstone, the so-called minister for immigration and indigenous rights and widely read newspapers such as the Herald Sun) to openly express anti-Aboriginal sentiment, often to strong public support. It is well documented academically that racism and racial stereotypes adversely affect the Aboriginal people of Australia, as wide range of articles on Google Scholar will attest to.

Snipergirl 0628 (aust pac time), 4th March 2006.

I don't know about some of you guy's and girls but the racism section to me appears to be a cheap shot at the government, find an example of how its still institutionlized by the government. (anonymous comment by user from IP 60.224.25.204 _{contributions})

Dear Anonymous: My comment was not meant to be a partisan remark, but rather a reflection of general attitudes in parts of the community (and of politicians on both sides of the political fence). As shown in the link above, racism (institutionalised and otherwise) is a well-known and documented problem facing contemporary Aboriginal Australians. Institutional racism occurs in terms of government policy towards Aboriginals- it is certainly arguable that disbanding the representative body for Indigenous Australians, refusing to apologise for previous atrocities, and a series of statements stating that they are responsible for their own problems (thus justifying government apathy) are racist in intent. I do not mean in any way to suggest that Labor may be any better if they were in government ;). Once again, this is arguable. Feel free to edit the relevant sections if you think they are biased. Snipergirl 12:32, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Referendum

I was a bit surprised to notice that the article mentions that the republican referendum was defeated by a "huge majority". To my recollection, it was a fairly narrow majority, considering how difficult it is to change the Australian constitution (a feat which I think has only been achieved twice, once to attribute Aboriginal citizenship).Sumthingweird 18:26, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Actually, eight of the forty-four referendums to date have succeeded. As for the republic referendum, the national "yes" vote was 45%, hardly a massive margin. That reference seems to have been removed now though. --bainer (talk) 22:06, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Also the 1967 referendum had nothing to do with Aboriginal citizenship, as you would know if you read the article. Adam 00:07, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

The article states that the 1999 referendum had nothing to do with Aboriginal citizenship, which it certainly didn't, but the 1967 referendum certainly did include counting Aboriginal people as Australian citizens (in censuses etc). You're right, Thebainer, it was eight referendums, my bad memory...Sumthingweird 12:45, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Not counting in censuses, counting in reckoning for the apportionment of electoral Divisions etc. And it wasn't about citizenship either, they already had citizenship, although giving the federal government power to legislate for Indigenous people effectively led to the end of the reserve systems run by the States, which effectively ended the controls which State governments had put on Indigenous people's freedom of movement, etc. The referendum facilitated the exercise of citizenship rights, rather than actually granting citizenship. --bainer (talk) 13:15, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Once again, you're right, although one might ask what kind of citizenship it is without the actual rights of citizenship.Sumthingweird 17:28, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

1949

The Timeline_of_Australian_history#1940s has at 1949 "Indigenous Australians who are eligible to vote in State Elections in New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania are also given the right to vote in Federal Elections." but we don't mention it in this article. We probably should. Any references?--A Y Arktos 00:27, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Citizenship

Please stop writing nonsense about Australian citizenship. There was no such thing until the Citzenship Act of 1947 - before that we were all British subjects who happened to live in Australia. The 1947 Act contained no racial exclusions and thus all Indigenous Australians were citizens from that date. Of course they remained subject to the various restrictions imposed on them by state legislation (and by Commonwealth regulations in the NT), but that is another question. The 1967 refrendum had nothing to do with citizenship or with the right to vote, or with the census. The repeal of the "Aboriginal natives shall not be counted" clause was purely symbolic and had no practical meaning. And the plural of referendum is referendums. Adam 02:51, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

According to British subject, Aborigines would have been seen as British protected persons before 1947, not as British subjects. -- Astrokey44|talk 05:17, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

That article actually says: "Within the Empire, the only people who were not British subjects were the rulers of native states formally under the "protection" of the British Crown, and their peoples. Although their countries may for all practical purposes have been ruled by the imperial government, such persons are considered to have been born outside the sovereignty and allegiance of the British Crown, and were (and, where these persons are still alive, still are) known as British protected persons." Indigenous Australians were not part of "native states." They were therefore British subjects. Adam 05:57, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

ok fair enough. I found this [1] which backs up what you said "In the first century and a half of European settlement Aborigines were British subjects. Between 1949 and 1969 they were Australian citizens and British subjects." -- Astrokey44|talk 09:47, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

As I pointed out earlier, the reason people get confused about the referendum is that although Aboriginal people may have officially been citizens before then, some of them (the ones who lived on the reserves, which were managed by the states) often had restrictions on their movement, employment etc. and so once the state systems were effectively ended when legislative power was transferred to the Commonwealth, many Aboriginal people were able to exercise their citizenship rights for the first time. --bainer (talk) 09:55, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

"By the end of World War II, many indigenous men had served in the military. They were among the few Indigenous Australians to have been granted citizenship" - this sentence will have to be changed since no-one was an australian citizen before 1949, and all Aborigines were australian citizens after '49 (if I understand that correctly) -- Astrokey44|talk 03:05, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

No, because the article is, at least I would assume, referring to State citizenship. Aboriginal people started off as British subjects, but the states passed Acts around 1900 which changed their status to that of wards of the state. As such they did not have full citizenship rights, but only those rights which the various State Aboriginal Protection Boards chose to give them. In the 1940s it was made possible for an individual to be granted the 'dog license', a citizenship certificate, which removed them from the jurisdiction of the relevant Act by making them, legally, no longer Aboriginal. At the Federal level, Section 51 of the Constitution empowered the Commonwealth to make laws with respect to the 'people of any race, other than the Aboriginal race in any state'. Section 127 (xxvi) of the Constitution directed that "in reckoning the numbers of people of the Commonwealth, or of a State or other part of the Commonwealth, aboriginal natives shall not be counted.' There's a fair bit of detail on this at [2], some of which should be inserted into the article. Dougg 06:30, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

There has never been any such thing as "state citizenship." Adam 07:01, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

While it's true that no Australian state has ever legislated citizenship, this is not the only criterion for citizenship as it still exists administratively (essentially, the people who choose the government are the citizens). You'll notice that WA (for example) started issuing 'citizenship certificates' in the early 1940s to some Aboriginal people, which removed them from the jurisdiction of the 1905 Act and provide them with full 'citizenship' rights. Dougg 00:52, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Aborigines and Aboriginæ

I'm curious about the claim that

Until the early 19th century, the word ['aboriginal'] was often seen in its original Latin form, aborigines in the singular and aboriginæ in the plural, but some authors used 'aborigines' for both the singular and plural.

I've read a fair bit of 19th century material on indigenous Australia and I've never seen this usage. Can anyone point to a publication where this occurs? I thought the original Latin form was ab origine and my Latin dictionary indicates that ab origines and ab originæ are not correct forms. Dougg 00:11, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

That's not right at all. Aborigines is a distinct word in Latin, meaning original inhabitants, but it is already plural and there is no singular form. And even so, the word had already entered English on its own by the time of Australian settlement (ie. it didn't use the Latin forms anymore), and all of the early documents use Aborigine for the singular and Aborigines for the plural. --bainer (talk) 01:22, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Whether aboriginæ is / is not grammatically-correct Latin would seem to be rather beside the point for this article- if it was used at all to refer to indigenous Australian peoples it can only be an anachronism today. The brief note about the etymology of the word aborigine which was there previously was sufficient- there's no need for this article to go into a deep lexical analysis when this is not what the topic at hand is about - I think it should be removed.--cjllw | TALK 01:52, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

'ab origine' is a phrase, meaning "from the beginning", referring to the fact that the Aboriginoids were there from the beginning. However, the folk-designation "Aborigines" was derived from this phrase. The suffix -es is a common Latin suffix used to form demonyms. It is declined according to the first declension, and so the plural is -æ. It is one of only two morphemes in which -es exists as the nominative suffix in the first declension. The other is the suffix -iades, used to form patronyms. It is the ancestor of the modern-day spanish -ize patronymic suffix. In all other cases, first declension nouns take -a, -as, -e, or -am in the nominative singular.

If, as has been said, Aborigines is already plural, then the singular would be Aboriginis not Aborigine. And if the singular, in Latin, is Aborigine, then the plural would be Aboriginæ, the same as it is in the case of my claim that "Aborigines" is the singular.

The cases in which I have seen the use of "Aborigines" singular and "Aboriginæ" plural are turn of the century American texts. I do not remember specific references at the moment, but I do remember my surprise at the odd usage -- I did not know Latin at the time -- and I looked into it and found many other similar forms in Latin. I can, however, easily think of one of many examples of a Latin demonym using this form--Hilotes. The singular form Hilotes takes the plural form Hilotæ, and in all respects except the nominative singular conforms to the Latin first declension. This word is translated into English as Helots and refers to the slaves of the ancient Spartans. Many names that refer to classes of folk ending in -ot or -ite ultimately derive from Latin words of this form, although they frequently come by way of Mediæval forms in which the declension has been levelled, producing forms like Hilota and Aborigina. As these suffixes do not occur in any of the basic classical vocabulary, I think they were probably influenced by ancient Greek.

The reason you may have not seen these forms could be that they were forms resurrected by eighteenth century Purists and not used by less pedantic authors that you have read.Arrabbikum 07:38, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, so Arrabbikum if they're turn of the century American texts are they actually about indigenous Australians? If not then they aren't relevant to this article. Dougg 03:51, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Furthermore, the point made in the paragraph in question appears to be original research. Better to remove it, in the absence of a citation. Certainly the OED has Aborigines in use in the appropriate sense since 1789 Banno 04:31, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Since noone has found any sources, I've taken it out, for the time being at least. --bainer (talk) 04:59, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Neanderthal?

I don't see one mention in this paper justifies a long paragraph in both Indigenous Australians and neanderthal. Does anybody else think this borders on original research? The full paragraph containing the only reference in that paper to Aborigines is

Anthropologists and geneticists disagree on the genetic relation of the human to the Neanderthal. Some believe that Neanderthal was simply another race of humans, perhaps most similar to aborigines from Australia. Others believe Neanderthals were a completely separate species.

--Scott Davis ^Talk 10:47, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Removed:

Scientists have speculated that Australian Aborigines (and especially Tasmanian Aborigines, now extinct) have a background more in common with Neanderthal man than with Cro-Magnon. "Some believe that Neanderthal was simply another race of humans, perhaps most similar to aborigines from Australia."[3] Physical similarities between Neanderthal man and Aborigines are striking, and include prominent browridge, short bowed shoulder blades, and large noses.

The conclusion goes beyond the somewhat vague reference, too. --Scott Davis ^Talk 13:08, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Good call to remove it. I find it very difficult to imagine credible scientists proposing any such thing, the presented evidence flimsy indeed and not mentioned by the (questionable) source provided. One can only wonder whether the contributor's intent was not in fact mischievous, based on their few other edits - I've removed their similar insertion to the Neanderthal article.--cjllw | TALK 13:44, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. I didn't remove it along with the rest of JettaMann's edit because it did include a citation, but it's still more like original research than anything else. bcasterline t 18:36, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Roderick Flanagan 'First text on Australian aborigines 1888'

Is this really intending to claim, as it appears, that this work by Roderick Flanagan was the first text on Australian Aboriginal people? If so, it's incorrect. Dougg 01:36, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

I've removed the (apparent) claim and inserted some publication details. Dougg 05:19, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Palm Island

Hello, I was hopeful some persons could check the wiki Palm Island and add/correct information

thanks

agriculture

"All Indigenous Australians were hunter-gatherers" + "very few practised agriculture" = contradiction (M)

It is. The second statement is wrong: so far as I know none practised agriculture. Adam 12:47, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Didn't they? What happened with yam sticks, eel and fish farms, dubosia hopwoodi gardens, etc? What were grindstones used for if not to grind the end result of grain growing?

You guys need to stop making stuff up, and to access some recent archaeology/anthropology academic papers or recently published Australian Aboriginal Archaeology texts and cite them. NOTE: Archaeology is a very dynamic discipline so get very recent publications or what you put here will be out of date before you post and cite it.

If any Indigneous people can post stuff here, that will be expert knowledge if it is content they are truely experienced in. Not many Indigenous people will do that as its not encouraged culturally to hand their information over, especially not without reciprocity. Anyone else who posts stuff here that is their own material isnt qualifed to do that.

The best thing would be to write an "almost" before "all". And to discuss it further. Quote (Prehistory_of_Australia): "Small scale agricultural developments occurred with eel farming in western Victoria and yam planting e.g. in Geraldton."(M)

I don't think it's a contradiction. My understanding is that it is correct that all indigenous Australians were hunter-gatherers, but this does not mean that some did not also practise some form of agriculture, though at most this was ancillary to their hunter-gatherer activities (of course they were in a bad place for agriculture as there's virtually no domesticable indigenous plant species). Dougg 00:30, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

I have no reference to back this up, but it seems implausible that at least some indigenous Australians did not perform agriculture in some way or another. Note also the contradictory statement in the same paragraph that "very few practised agriculture" (which implies that at least some of them must have practised agriculture).--Ezeu 03:22, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

I've changed the passage--Just needs a ref for the 'incipient agriculture' phrase. Dougg 06:36, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

What does "incipient agriculture" mean? "Agriculture" has a precise meaning - the planting, cultivation and harvesting of food plants. To my knowledge no indigenous community practised this. Food stock management is not agriculture. I have left the reference to "incipient agriculture" but have distinguished it from agriculture. Adam 06:43, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Per your defination, agriculture includes everything from basic stone age cultivation to volvo tractors. Once again, it seems implausible that some indigenous Australians did not perform cultivation in some way or other. But you probably have litterature on your side.--Ezeu 07:44, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

It's only implausible to those who insist on imposing their eurocentric views about what non-European peoples "ought" to be doing. Indigenous Australians didn't practise agriculture because they didn't need to. Why would they, when they made an abundant living from hunting and gathering? Adam 08:57, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Your are probably right. My argument is based entirely on my point of view, and my knowledge of the issue is limited. I wouldn't agree though that my point of view is necessarily eurocentric, one can be "blamed" for eurocentrism both ways - after all you are the one supporing the conventional eurocentric ethnological viewpoint.--Ezeu 10:09, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Indigenous people of Victoria did indeed practise agriculture — planting, cultivation and harvesting of food plants — according to at least these two sources: Levitt, D. (1981) Plants and People. Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, Canberra. Berndt, R.M. and Berndt, C.H. (1993) A World That Was. Melbourne University Press, Parkville. The plants were tuberous vegetables such as the Murnong, Lilies and Orchids, and they were gathered selectively to reduce competition, without clearing any patch completely. The discarded tops were apparently then replanted into turned-over (cultivated) soil, which was soft and ideal for such crops. European farming practises introduced hard-hooved animals which compacted the soil, and these plants are now rare. Fire was also used as an agricultural practice; this has been noted as far back as Curr, E.M. (1883) Recollections of squatting in Victoria, 1841-1851. Robertson, Melbourne. ntennis 10:52, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

(the following was intended to go above the preceding comment, but I got an edit conflict so I'm putting it here) The question of 'incipient agriculture' in Australia has been a debate in Australian archaeology for quite some time. The term is used to describe a set of practices that resemble agriculture, such as: yam re-planting, eel farming and firestick farming. Perhaps the paragraph in question needs to be expanded and some of these practices described? (ntennis, nice to see mention of Edward Micklethwaite Curr, he's a famous guy in linguistic circles) Dougg 11:07, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Selective gathering is not agriculture, land clearing and soil-enrichment with fire is not agriculture. Placing yam tops in suitable soil could probably be classified as "incipient agriculture." Noel Butlin's Economics and the Dreamtime discusses indigenous food management and is clear that they did not constitute agriculture. There is a very good discussion in After the Ice: A Global Human History 20,000-5000 BC by Stephen Mithen on the distinction between food resource management (which all hunter-gatherers practise) and true agriculture. He makes the point that the development of agriculture was a response to climate change and population pressure - hunter-gatherer peoples turn to agriculture (which is much harder work) only when they are forced to by scarcity. The indigenous Australians did not experience scarcity, they lived in material abundance and therefore had no need for agriculture. I am puzzled by this insistent desire to "promote" the Australians from a hunter-gatherer people to an agricultural people, on the basis of extremely thin evidence (a few yams, a few fish farms). It seems to spring from a view that hunter-gatherers are "primitive" and we cannot be seen to be classifying the Australians as "primitive", plus a rather old-fashioned false-Darwinian view that people "naturally" evolve from hunter-gatherer to farmer and there must be something wrong with peoples who don't. Adam 11:27, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Adam Carr, what about dubosia hopwoodi then? Of course agriculture was practiced as the end results were traded. It was when the Euros arrived seeking to establish that the requirements for the indigenous inhabitants of this land to not be recognised as belonging to a civilisation so invasion could be justified that people began to describe agriculture as anything but to extingiush the pre existing civilisation's status.

True, it's not what is usually meant by 'agriculture', that's why the term 'incipient agriculture' is used: it's stuff that indigenous Australians did (well, some did) but which doesn't fit into the definition of 'hunter-gatherer'. BTW, firestick farming is not just about land clearing and soil-enrichment, but about creating a mosaic of plant and animal communities at different stages of development to provide a varied and robust source of food (and other stuff). But yes, it's not really true 'agriculture' (although I've heard Western Desert Aboriginal people make the comparison). As far as the 'thin evidence' goes, it's true that I am talking about some practices amongst some people, and not about everyone everywhere, but that's what I tried to reflect in the article. To me the point is really about trying to have the article show something of the diversity of lifestyles and practices of indigenous Australians. It seems to me that you're insisting on the discrete categories 'agriculturalist' or 'hunter-gatherer' when the reality is not necessarily so clear. You go on to say that indigenous Australians did not suffer scarcity, but this is simply not true. People in different parts of Australia had differing situations and while some may have had 'material abundance' this is not true of all, at all times. My familiarity is mainly with the arid areas, espec. the Western Desert, and these people often talk about how hard desert life could be. I'll ignore your offensive final comments (well, almost). Dougg 12:25, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

I am sorry but if someone is growing a crop to be harvested and traded, retaining some for personal use - that is agriculture.

Yes of course people who live in deserts experience scarcity, but of they don't have the option of turning to agriculture, do they? I'm talking about the people who lived in the areas where agriculture is now practised, and where the great majority of indigenous Australians then lived. They didn't experience scarcity, because they had evolved a style of life that regarded what the land provided as sufficient to their needs. Equally to the point, they didn't experience population pressure, because they regulated their population (through infanticide) to keep it at a level which the land would support. My concluding comments were not intended to be offensive, merely to express my puzzlement at the repeated attemps here and elsewhere to redefine the word "agriculture" to fit the food management practices of the indigenous Australians within its ambit, as if this was a great victory for indigenous people. My view is that they deserve recognition for evolving a stable and sustainable society which didn't involve either the drudgery or the environmental damage of subsistence agriculture. Adam 12:37, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Good points Adam. It seems like the sore point here is what "incipient agriculture" entails. Isn't land clearing, soil-enrichment with fire and "placing yam tops in suitable soil" at least a form of agriculture? If some Indigenous Australians practised basic agriculture, why should it not be mentioned? That hunter-gatherer peoples turn to agriculture only when they are forced to by scarcity seems fallacious. People who live in the most abandaunt ecological systems have often turned to agriculture. I disagree with you that the counterarguments are driven by contempt for hunter-gatherer societies, au contraire.--Ezeu 18:49, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

I think it makes no sense to change the definition of agriculture by using "incipient agriculture". What about the Eel farms? Building fish ponds and taking care of them is agriculture ("systematic raising of plants and animals"). http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s806276.htm, http://www.aboriginalartonline.com/newsletter-december-2003.html, http://www.flinders.edu.au/news/articles/?fj15v13s01, http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/03/12/1047431092972.html?from=moreStories, http://www.eniar.org/news/stones.html Has anyone academic sources for eel farming? (M)

I don't know why I bother with this argument. One more time: Agriculture (from the Latin ager field, and colere to inhabit: "The science and art of cultivating the soil, including gathering in of the crops and the rearing of livestock." (OED). Indigenous Australians did not cultivate the soil, they did not gather in crops and they did not rear livestock. Food resource management such as "eel farms" (which were actually sophisticated traps - they didn't actually farm eels) is not agriculture. Indigenous Australians were nearly all nomadic or semi-nomadic, they did not settle permanently in one place and farm. They domesticated no plants, and the only animal they domesticated was a hunting dog. I am mystified as to why there is such stubborn resistance to this simple fact. In response to Ezeu: agriculture did indeed orginate where food resources were most abundant, because the abundance of food led to a growth in population which then outstripped the available resources, particularly when climate fluctauations caused a contraction in supply. In Mesoptamia the specific trigger was the Younger Dryas, a cold snap which began in about 10,000 BC. Incidentally the yam is not indigenous to Australia. Adam 13:15, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Here is a Source about eel farming today (non indigenous):[4] it says:"The next barrier in eel aquaculture Professor Forteath wants to break is one that several other aquaculture research teams around the world are also trying to break. It's to spawn eels in captivity." Just look at the sources I gave you. They were doing the same thing as others do today.(M)

Crops were gathered in.

Actually I don't think the issue should be about what 'agriculture' means, but rather what's the best terminology to use to describe the practices found in Australia that don't fit neatly into the classic 'hunter-gatherer' model. I don't want to claim that indigenous Australians were agriculturalists: I want to point out that they can't be neatly squeezed into the pure 'hunter-gatherer' category. It's true that 'incipient agriculture' is not a good term for this as it implies that there's an ongoing development in the direction of 'true' agriculture, but nevertheless that's a term that has been used and so should be discussed in the article, as also should be the criticisms of that term.

Now as far as the claim that they had 'material abundance' everywhere but the deserts, well that's also incorrect. Certainly, in some rather small parts of Australia (the south-west corner, Victoria, the eastern coastal strip, Cape York, Arnhem Land, and a few other pockets) this might have been the case, but across the majority of Australia there would normally have been no 'material abundance'. And also the implied claim that agriculture in Australia now occurs in the places of former material abundance: if you look at a map showing where sheep/cattle stations are you'll find that they extend throughout the arid zone and into semi-desert areas (and even into real desert in some places).

Incidentally, the yam Disocorea hastifolia is indigenous to Australia (I've eaten them). There are also various species of Ipomoea which are indigenous and which are often referred to as yams. Dougg 01:03, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

i think its confusing

Kava

Regards the statement that:

'Some communities have introduced kava as a safer alternative to alcohol...'

I'd like to see a citation in support of this as my understanding of the history of kava in the NT is that it was originally introduced to make money, and then spread to the extent that laws had to be introduced to regulate it (as seen in the image). While it's true that some (perhaps many) see it as preferable to alcohol I don't think it's correct that it was purposely introduced as an alternative to alcohol. Dougg 10:36, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Long-term contact

Under History:Origins it is said that:

...there has been long-term contact between Australians in the far north and the Austronesian peoples of modern-day New Guinea and the islands,

Is this referring to contact with Macassans (and perhaps Bajau)? If so, this is not long-term but only goes back a few centuries (well, maybe that's longish-term), and it didn't involve New Guinea. Or is it referring to contact across the Torres Strait? In that case it's not Austronesians but Papuans (e.g. Kiwai). Dougg 05:30, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

I guess Melanesians were ment here. Since Melanesia is an outdated term the more proper one Austronesian was used.

How do you know that timeframe Doug? Archaeology tells us it was just a few centuries but Lore says somethign far different. Is here going to reflect the Euro/Scientific view of Indigneous Australia or the Indigneous view of Indigenous Australia? Cultural value has higher value than scientific. Mulvaney can tell us a few centuries is the timeframe, but I lived at Bartalumba Bay and thereabouts so can tell you it is immensely longer than that.

Population figures are wrong according to:

[5] --Greasysteve13 07:51, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

No, not quite. The particular 2001 ABS Census file you link to is a tabulation of responses to the "ancestry of parent(s)" question. In any case, if you look at the last row, you will see that very nearly 1.3 million total responses were 'Not Stated', and really could be anything. This particular table cannot be used to ascertain census numbers of Indigenous Australian persons (or really, any other group).--cjllw | TALK 12:25, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

What sources are used for this page?--Greasysteve13 00:24, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

I believe the 458k figure comes from ABS sources, as per 'external links', see for eg here. To be pedantic, any figures given should directly show when and from where the estimate dates from, as even the ABS has a number of different methods of estimating population in use at any given time, each with their own caveats.--cjllw | TALK 08:27, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Okay. I think its interesting how both sources are from the same censes though. --Greasysteve13 11:40, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Ultimately these two are estimate-adjusted counts of the responses to two separate questions on the same census form -the first asked (paraphrasing here) 'are you Aboriginal / TSI', while the second 'what is your parental ancestry'. Multiple answers could be given to the second question, and as mentioned a large number of responses did not specify an answer here at all. They are counts of different things.--cjllw | TALK 23:58, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I know they are counts on different questions. I just thought it was odd. On the other hand I dont remeber a box for Aboriginal on the Ancentry question... so many probably would have just chosen Australian instead of wasting time wrting it in.--Greasysteve13 06:08, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Did the Australian aboriginals arrived from Africa by air?

I am basically interested in India and Hinduism. The mention in the article of the older than 30,000 years (the more conservative dating) human occupation of Australia and similar old dating only in Africa intrugues me. Did humans passed through India, etc. on their way from Africa to Australia, or they travelled by air? If not by air, then many lands should have a dating older than 30,000 years, it is just that these have not been found? Aupmanyav 08:55, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

What the christ? Trjn 10:22, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, they flew by pterodactyl. Adam 10:34, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

File:Human mtDNA migration.png

They are believed to have passed through India before reaching Australia. See the map on the right.

Trjn, Adam: Not nice. --Ptcamn 10:38, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Ptcamn. Trjn, Adam, it was a simple confirmation that I wanted, I got the map in bargain. Flying in on pterodactyl must have been very smooth. Aupmanyav 11:13, 18 June 2006 (UTC)