Aboriginal Issues

       Despite being an Australian, I have a significant library on the North American Indians, mainly because they had a wider variety of lifestyles to those of our own Aborigines. They were hard done by by the Americans. However, that does not mean that their lifestyles were idyllic. The tribes tended to break down into two categories: the predators and the prey, the latter being the smaller tribes. Constant warfare was the order of the day, sometimes with unimaginable cruelty.

     The Australian Aborigines were also hard done by by white Australians. But that also does not mean that their lives were idyllic.

Blackfellas - and Not-So-Blackfellas

     My tour leader in Kakadu and related areas of the Northern Territory in 1986 was half Aboriginal. "Because my mother is Aboriginal," he told us, "I am able to relate to them. But I would never be considered one of them. I'm khaki coloured."

     "Yellow fellow" is another term they used for mixed bloods. (I myself don't.) Aboriginal society makes distinctions which we whitefellas in the coastal zones fail to see. Nevertheless, in the interest of clarity, I shall now show you what Australian Aborigines look like.

     And in case anyone objects to my use of the term, "blackfella", kindly note that they use it for themselves, and call us "whitefellas", a term which causes no offence. I regard these words as informal terms, like "paleface" and "redskin" - not derogatory, but more likely to be used in informal conversation than in formal essays. Nevertheless, someone was taken to task recently for using the familiar word, "Aborigines" on the ABC. It is getting harder and harder to keep up with political correctness. In any case, here is a series of photos of what Aborigines look like. Make sure you scan down to the end, to see the significance.

Race and IQ

     Jared Diamond expressed the view that uncivilised people are more intelligent than civilised ones, but didn't actually provide any evidence. Now, I am a zoologist, not a psychometrician, but two things are pretty obvious to me. The first is that intelligence is not a social construct; some people really are born smarter than others. The second is that race is real. We may be all brothers under the skin, but my blood line separated from that of the Aborigines about 2,000 generations ago, and from Africans nearly 3,000 generations ago. A lot can happen in that time. Therefore, I find it extremely unlikely that the various races can differ in (say) average height, but be exactly the same in average intelligence. On the other hand, some of the extremely low racial IQ I have seen quoted make my baloney meter light up.

The Riddle of the Amazonian Amazons

      Imagine, if you will, that beyond your towns and farms - the only world you know - dwell large settlements of aliens from outer space, of which you know very little, except that they are completely different, and incomprehensible. You see their flying saucers passing overhead, and more and more frequently they themselves are intruding into your domain. But you keep your distance, because oral tradition tells how they once committed terrible atrocities against your kind, or that once there were friendly relations, but then they brought the plague upon you.

     This, essentially, is the experience of thousands of Indians who are literally hiding from the outside world in the fastness of the Amazon jungle. Every time it is announced that the last uncontacted tribe has been discovered, another turns up. But once there were millions of them - only to be wiped out by massacre and enslavement, but mostly, as in North America, by infectious diseases which could devastate whole communities before any white man arrived. And somewhere in this maelstrom of destruction there was lost a community which most people now relegate to mythology: the women warriors after which the Amazon River was named.

The Philosophy of an Aboriginal Tribe

     One of the advantages of being a compulsive book buyer is that I tend to have a book available for every occasion. Thus, when I learned that on my visit to Alice Springs in 1997 I would have the chance to attend a demonstration of the customs of the Warlpiri tribe, I thought it was time I read the book I had purchased twenty years before: Desert People, a Study of the Walbiri Aborigines of Central Australia by M. J. Meggitt. Written in 1962, it had the added advantage of describing the tribe as it existed in the 1950s, before they had picked up the worst parts of our civilisation.
     "Alice Springs is not the homeland of the Warlpiris," explained our white guide. "Their territory extends from Yuendumu and Mt. Eclipse right up northwest to Hall's Creek in Western Australia."
     "So," I said, "they have further extended their range in the last fifty years."
     "What do you mean?" he asked.
     I then explained how Meggitt had recorded that, originally, they lived south of Winnecke Creek. Nevertheless, with the decline of other tribes, they managed to extend their range - at one stage by force, at another by ceremonial purchase - north to the headwaters of the Victoria River and southeast to Teatree. But by 1962, they still had not expanded to Hall's Creek.
     "Well, we were told they had always lived there," the white guide replied.
     Don't believe everything an Aborigine tells you, my man.