Talk:Indigenous Australians/Archive 3

message: 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)
thread_title: Racism, Political Inertia, Lack of representation etc

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)

text: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Referendum 

message: 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)
thread_title:  1949 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)

text: ok fair enough. I found this  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)
replies: text: 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)

text: "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)

text: 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 , some of which should be inserted into the article. Dougg 06:30, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

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

message: 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)
replies: text: 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." 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)

text: 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)

text: 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)
thread_title:  Neanderthal? 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Roderick Flanagan 'First text on Australian aborigines 1888' 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Kava 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Long-term contact 

message: --Greasysteve13 07:51, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: What sources are used for this page?--Greasysteve13 00:24, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

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

text: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Population figures are wrong according to: