Talk:Squatting (Australian history)

message: Interesting read! I think that this page would better be called Squatting (Nineteenth century Australia) or suchlike because it has been split off from Squatting which deals with the better known type of squatting ie occupation of empty buildings. I will leave it as a suggestion for now, since it is true that most of the latter squatting is urban. Mujinga (talk) 18:44, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Name

message: I thought I'd point out that the term squatter was also used in New Zealand. The Squatters Club, which later became the Dunedin Club, is an example. Schwede66 10:12, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Not just in Australia 

message: The article repeatedly refers to "runs" with no explanation of what they are.  It would be good if somebody with knowledge of the term could explain it in the article. Kevin McE (talk) 10:33, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: i found a useful definition in a book and added it to the article - a run is "land claimed by the Squatter as sheepwalks, open, as nature left them, without any improvement from the Squatter." Mujinga (talk) 14:56, 15 May 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Runs? 

message: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Squatting is a collaborative effort to improve Wikipedia's coverage of topics related to squatting. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks. Everyone is welcome, from beginner to experienced editor. Feel free to pass by with suggestions. Let's get it going again! Mujinga (talk) 18:44, 20 April 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  WP:SQUAT 

message: This article used to be called Squatting (pastoral) and is about the history of colonial squatting and the squattocracy in Australia. I don't think it's a good idea to have changed the name to Squatting (Australia) since at the moment the article is purely historical and does not include the information that is at Squatting#Sydney and Squatting#Melbourne. I am wondering what the best way forward is...
the info at Squatting#Australia is approaching the size to spin it off into Squatting in Australia but then how to rename this page?
 you put a tag saying "The neutrality of this article is questioned because it may show systemic bias" - would it be possible to explain what your intention was? Because there's no discussion on talk and i'm a bit baffled. Would the perceived bias be removed if the article was renamed Australia's colonial squatting history for example? Mujinga (talk) 18:40, 13 May 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Squatting on agricultural land is not an exclusively Australian phenonemon, and at the time, the article title did nothing to restrict its claim to any one country, although the content was thus restricted.  Doesn't seem to be an issue anymore: I have no real opinion on the suggested name change. Kevin McE (talk) 21:40, 13 May 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks, that's grand then. I have created Squatting in Australia as an offshoot from Squatting and have requested this page becomes Squattocracy Mujinga (talk) 15:27, 14 May 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Improving this article  

message: This page is developing a chequered history for name changes but i really don't think Squatting (Australia) works very well. Squatting (pastoral) was objected to above since it was seen as discussing a phenomenon which isn't specific to Australia, my suggestion of Squattocracy was shouted down by two people who have so far suggested: squatting (pastoral), squatter (pastoral) or squatter (Australian historical pastoral landholder). I suggested Squatting (Nineteenth century Australia) some time ago. None of these options seem very good. In any case now we have a situation in which there are two pages talking about different aspects of squatting in Australia, one called Squatting (Australia) and one called Squatting in Australia. My further thoughts on the matter are here, interested to hear what other people think, I've dropped a line to WikipediaProject:Australia. Probably best to continue the discussion here, because at least in my opinion this is the page that needs its name changing. Cheers! Mujinga (talk) 09:12, 16 May 2019 (UTC)
replies: text:  Interesting to see who turns up - the squatter links given looks like they both be merged. JarrahTree 09:26, 16 May 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Name 

message: Hi , I saw your recent edits and I also remember you were proposing Squatter (pastoral) as a page to describe the worldwide phenomenon which I though was a good idea. At the moment that page redirects here, which as others have already said isn't ideal since it makes the term peculiar to Australia. So I thought I'd ask what you think this page should be called. Regarding the taxonomy, in my opinion Squatting is the mother page, then there are daughters defined by country (eg Squatting in the United States, Squatting in England and Wales) or theme (eg Athens refugee squats), possibly Squatting (pastoral) would fit there. Then below that in the hierarchy we have movements, individual squats, squatters and squatting in literature and culture. So then the question is where does this page fit and how to name it. When we discussed this before, for some reason people blew in and blew out again and didn't seem to have read the discussion above on this page, leaving us with Squatting (Australia) and Squatting in Australia, which isn't optimal since they are very similar names. I would suggest Squatting (Australian history), what do you think? If we (and others) can settle on a new name, then it can be proposed. Mujinga (talk) 10:40, 4 August 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Squatting (Australian history) would be my choice. Kerry (talk) 20:22, 4 August 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: I am OK with Kerry's suggestion (or Squatter (Australian history)/Squatter (Australia)), which makes the scope narrow and clear. The Australian scope seems to have been an issue for the title Squatting (pastoral) or Squatting (historic) as Australia's colonial history was not unique. I would prefer to tease out the overlap between the two similarly-named articles. Squatting in Australia is about occupying urban land and buildings for political or residential purposes. Squatting (Australia) is about colonial practices of pushing beyond the boundaries of colonial settlement, and is the precursor to modern pastoral leases that cover much of outback Australia. A broad coverage of the topic could extend into Terra nullius and Aboriginal land rights. --Scott Davis Talk 23:06, 4 August 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: great since we had three votes for Squatting (Australian history) and none against after several weeks, i moved the page Mujinga (talk) 15:12, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Return to naming discussion 

message: I have reverted an edit by 194.193.130.179 (talk) with the edit summary . The reason I have reverted the edit is that it seeks to perpetuate the myths that Aboriginal people did not occupy the land, that Australia was unoccupied and that all land was owned by the crown. These myths, encapsulated by the phrase terra nullius, was emphatically rejected by the High Court in Mabo. --Find bruce (talk) 01:31, 14 May 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: I think we need to find a better way to deal with this. At the time the squatting was taking place, the prevailing belief  was that it was Crown land for them to deal with as they chose. And when the government decided to open that area up for settlement, squatters were often given first option on formalising their occupation of the land (which suggests that the squatters also believed it was Crown land or why else would they negotiate with the government?). It was not until 1992 that this view was officially changed by the Mabo case. Should we not explain this to the reader (particularly for the non-Australians who probably won't know about Mabo)? Maybe something along the lines of
Squatting is an historical Australian term that referred to someone who occupied a large tract of land in Australia for the purposes of grazing livestock.
-- and the para below is a short version of terra nullius#Australia (but introducing the term Crown land)
Although Aboriginal Australians inhabited Australia for over 50,000 years before European settlement commenced in 1788, the colonial governments believed that Australia was Terra nullius at the time of settlement and that Indigenous Australians did not own the land they occupied but rather that the colonial governments possessed the land as Crown land and could sell or lease that land to settlers. The belief in terra nullius persisted until 1992 when the High Court of Australia found in the case Mabo v Queensland (No 2) that the Mer people had owned their land prior to annexation by the colony of Queensland (1872–1879). The ruling overturned the doctrine of terra nullius in Australia and had far-reaching significance for subsequent land claims of both Torres Strait Islanders and other Aboriginal Australians.
-- then write the rest of the article in terms of Crown land as that is how the situation was understood by the government and settlers at that time
Your thoughts? Kerry (talk) 04:04, 14 May 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks Kerry. I could debate belief v justification re terra nullius, but that's for another time & place. What's missing from what you propose is how the situation was perceived & experienced by the Aboriginal people at the time - for those outside the Nineteen Counties, squatting was the process in which they were removed from exclusive possession of that land. That didn't happen all at once nor was it the same at every place or time, but how can an article about squatting have a neutral point of view without including the point of view of the people whose land was being squatted on? Even from the squatters perspective, part of their challenge was in their interactions with the aboriginal people. See, for example Reynolds & Dalziel Aborigines and Pastoral Leases - Imperial and Colonial Policy 1826-1855 --Find bruce (talk) 07:02, 14 May 2021 (UTC)
replies: text:  Point taken and that point is also missing from Terra nullius#Australia which I was summarising. What about
Although Aboriginal Australians inhabited Australia for over 50,000 years before European settlement commenced in 1788, the colonial governments decided/claimed/assumed [best word choice here??] that Australia was Terra nullius at the time of settlement and that Indigenous Australians did not own the land they occupied but rather that the colonial governments possessed the land as Crown land and could sell or lease that land to settlers. As Indigenous Australians were the traditional owners of their lands, the arrival of settlers upon their land was often resisted leading to the frontier conflict. The justification of terra nullius persisted until 1992 when the High Court of Australia found in the case Mabo v Queensland (No 2) that the Mer people had owned their land prior to annexation by the colony of Queensland (1872–1879). The ruling overturned the doctrine of terra nullius in Australia and had far-reaching significance for subsequent land claims of both Torres Strait Islanders and other Aboriginal Australians.
I am trying to not overload this article with the broader issue of land ownership in Australia but to give enough of an introduction to the issues with appropriate links to the articles that do (or should) cover it in more depth. This article exists because we needed to link the term "squatter" from other articles, to explain what the term "squatter" means in the Australian colonial sense (as opposed to "settler" and "selector") but the article got re-oriented into contempory urban squatting issues and it's ended up a bit of a mess in the attempt to disentangle it. Kerry (talk) 05:23, 15 May 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Aboriginal or Crown Land