Creating a confection of the past has hurt Aboriginal people.... the truth may hurt but it also heals

 This sort of propaganda, as depicted below in image and words, doesn't help Aborigines who have more rights and as much freedom as any other Australian - it just maintains the fantasy that they were somehow pure and innocent and all blame rests with the evil colonisers. This confection of the past has done nothing to help Aboriginal people, in fact, quite the opposite.

Once again, as anyone who does ancestry research finds out, do some reading of Trove and records from the times - not the fanciful propaganda churned out by the Aboriginal industry, and you will quickly find that the colonists were far more enlightened than the propagandists would have us believe and the Aborigines far more violent and criminally inclined.

In a clash of cultures one side will have more power, for that is the reality of colonisation, but both sides are human and that means both sides share the best and the worst of human nature.
A little bit of perspective and knowledge goes a long way.

http://trove.nla.gov.au/result?q=Aborigines+in+chains


"Until the mid-60s, indigenous Australians came under the Flora And Fauna Act, which classified them as animals, not human beings. This also meant that killing an indigenous Australian meant you weren’t killing a human being, but an animal.

To this day, Australia breaks every code of the Geneva Convention when it comes to indigenous Australians and their human rights. The “public housing” that the government has given them are one-bedroom shacks with no running water, no electricity and no gas, that entire families are forced to live in. These shacks are in communities in the outback, as far away from “civilised” society as possible. Out of sight, out of mind.

What needs to be said about this since it is being sent around as propaganda is that the post mostly contains lies and these Aboriginal prisoners do have chains around their necks, but if you look through Trove, the source for this, you will find white prisoners with chains around their necks. It was what they did with criminals of the time.

http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/history/2012/08/the-neverending-hunt-for-utopia/convicts-in-chains/






In addition, Aborigines were never classed under the Flora and Fauna Act because Australia has never had a Flora and Fauna Act. Neither were aborigines classed as 'animals' who could be killed at will.

The early settlers, as newspaper reports and official records show, sought to befriend the Aborigines and planned to do what they could to improve their lot. One might argue that cultural arrogance was destructive, but the intentions were good. And that remained the case.

As in colonial settlement in the Americas and New Zealand, in some areas Aborigines and settlers lived together relatively amicably and in others, they fought for the land. Newspaper reports from the earliest times talk about sheep and cattle droves passing through Aboriginal lands and the reception they received - sometimes welcomed, sometimes attacked. They also record the Aboriginals stealing stock wherever they could, as no doubt one would, and preferring sheep to cows because they were easier to run away with. Most droves would take into account some of these losses as 'par for the course.'

The earliest governments of the new colony recognised their need for Aboriginal help and knowledge and treated those who provided it well. In many instances strong bonds were formed between settlers and Aborigines.

The original English view of the Aborigines, as it was in their other colonial ventures, was that these were backward people and in need of help. This view remained a constant and if one looks at the $3billion spent on the 200,000 Australians who claim Aboriginal heritage every year, still is a constant.

Where intervention took place it was with missionaries, selling their 'stories' and seeking to improve the health and education of Aborigines. Which they did. More than one person of Aboriginal heritage would still offer words of praise for what the missionaries did. Their work finished in 1967 when the law changed to equality, as indeed it should have done, but to the detriment of Aborigines who were no longer helped in this way.

The change in the law also meant equal pay for Aborigines and this also had a devastating and detrimental effect. Previously a station owner would employ a number of Aboriginal people from the local community and it would take into account that out of a dozen, perhaps six would work at any given time. In essence the stations supported entire communities. When they were forced to provide equal pay, and no-one says this should not be so because it is just, it meant that a few of the reliable regulars were employed and the community as a whole was no longer supported.

And the Stolen Generation fantasy has arisen from the fact that yes, part- Aboriginal children were taken away, and they were taken for their own good in the same way that non-Aboriginal children were removed from their families at the time. Aboriginal culture, like many, does not always look kindly on half-castes and mixed blood children were often neglected. The official view was that with half Aboriginal and half European (or Asian) blood they could be brought up in either culture and if the Aboriginal culture would not or could not care for them properly, then the other culture would. This reality is recorded and reported from the times but has been denied and distorted to create an emotional and erroneous view of what really happened. It certainly makes a good story but casting those who experienced this as special victims is as misleading as pretending that only followers of Judaism suffered at the hands of the Nazis and ignoring the fact that Romanies, Poles and Homosexuals were treated in the same way.

Non-Aboriginal children were just as easily taken from their families up until the early 1960's as were part-Aboriginal or Aboriginal children. The irony of course is that in recent years it is Aboriginal leaders who are calling for Aboriginal children to be sent away to boarding school, 'taken from their families in essence,' so that they can be properly educated and separated from the dysfunction at work in their community and their families.

And as to the idiot comment above about public housing, written clearly by someone who has no idea of Australia or Aboriginal communities, the reality is that the Australian Government has tried to work with the 'nomadic' nature of Aborigines and built communities where they choose to live. These homes, perhaps foolishly, were built to a general standard not taking into account that Aborigines are likely to put an entire kangaroo on top of a gas stove, thereby ruining it very quickly; have no interest in or capacity for maintenance so what is broken remains broken; tend to live in shared housing with no-one taking responsibility for the home itself; and, when someone dies in a house, that home can no longer be inhabited. Hence the advantage of the traditional humpy, built of branches and grass and leaves, in an instant and left behind when it could no longer be lived in.

The only Aborigines who live 'out of sight and out of mind' are those who have chosen to live in isolated areas. CHOSEN TO LIVE. Many of them actually live on land which has been returned to them, land I might add, onto which non-Aborigines cannot step without permission. Only Aborigines have this right in Australia, to deny entry to others. And only Aborigines can claim royalties and financial compensation for resources found on their land. Non-Aborigines have no such rights.

The plight of Aborigines, and indeed it is a serious plight, is no different to that of indigenous peoples in Canada, the United States and New Zealand and perhaps for similar reasons. In the past century the ridiculous idea of 'preserving culture' which really means, non-assimilation, has come into being and has resulted in indigenous people being pinned like moths to some mythical board; trapped within a paradigm which no longer exists and probably never did.

The fanciful idea was that they would 'retain their culture' and yet the reality is that no-one can remain a nomad in the modern world and Aborigines do not want to anyway. Sure they are happy to accept large slabs of land, welfare, or 'sit down money' as they call it and royalties from mining companies and extra benefits from the Government, but they expect the Government to build them homes wherever it takes their fancy to live and to provide the Flying Doctor Service to remote communities, and to use guns, motor boats and cars when they go 'hunting' so there is nothing traditional about their life anyway. It is all a farce and an expensive farce for Australia and a thoroughly destructive farce for many Aborigines.

Those Aborigines who do not live out of sight or out of mind are many and there are even more who simply call themselves Australian and accept their Aboriginal heritage in the same light they accept their Asian, African, European or Arab ancestry. 

The Aboriginal Industry, for that is what it is, which spews out such dishonest and distorted garbage as that above, has done and continues to do irreparable harm to Aborigines. Having said that, it is only the Aboriginal people themselves who can stop it and change their lives for the better.