And I'm saying the place to have that fight is with the putative Aboriginals and not here on HN where everyone is just talking about the science.

I mean, I get it. People are mean. People are unreasonable. Lots of good discussion can't happen because people are mean and unreasonable. But you're not making things better by assuming bad faith and throwing shade at everyone else preemptively. That's just being mean and unreasonable.

No reason to say that though. The person you replied to was saying it is a shame it is an emotionally charged discussion and he is right. That one particular discussion on HN might not be emotionally charged doesn't negate his point.

Were you just pretending not to understand?

The best way to get an emotionally charged discussion on Hacker News is to put a caveat that it's unfortunate that a topic is emotionally charged. It's a lightning rod and discussion bridge for people who just want debate controversial issues. I certainly have been on both sides of it.

It was very insightful for me to know that its common amongst Aboriginals there to have that view. I will corroborate it elsewhere now what I know what to look for.

Suggest you look at most popular mastheads in Australia, in particular the state funded broadcaster to see the phenomenon play out in reality.

Got a source for this fact? Generalising opinions to a whole race is rarely wise. Perhaps like anyone else with religious beliefs, those who are offended simply want their culture respected.

some of them may not want their legal privileges backed by historical narratives compromised by scientific findings; this is very common with native american tribes, for instance the lipan apaches in texas. additional science can only hurt their position with respect to the BIA.

no:

The (only recently created) legal privileges of native title are severely limited and can be effortlessly extinguished. These limited privileges are based on (belated) recognition of prior occupation, but irrespective of how long people were here before colonisation.

on the other side of the ledger, significant legal harms are imposed on predominantly Indigenous regions, including apartheid-style laws that are applied on the basis of race, and lower standards of basic services provided through dedicated streams again predicated on race.

there are reasons to believe that some groups with legal claims have no legitimate grounds and only point to fragmentary records of prior occupants that they can provide no evidence of connection with. perhaps if you can manage to think past the scary words you can recognize that some people exploit systems to their advantage.

what reasons, what legal claims, and most of all: what advantage do you imagine Indigenous Australian people might gain on the basis of the extent of their heritage?

the sustained deficit of public housing? the lack of safe drinking water? the big blue signs slandering entire communities as drunken perverts? the mass sackings to force people onto quarantined welfare? the draconian star-chamber powers granted to the ACC? the systemic theft of hard-won social infrastructure?

because all of these 'advantages' are granted to anyone living in predominantly Indigenous postcodes of the NT, regardless of how long you dare to admit their ancestors were here.

i agree those are tragic, but those are not the people i am talking about

lol, what even is this comment? It's not generalizing to a race, it's generalizing to a culture that happens to be synonymous with a race.

And yes, it's fine to generalize in this sense, sense it's the general opinion.

My source is growing up there. If you want something else, you can find it yourself while continuing to doubt me.

>My source is growing up there

Where did you grow up that simultaneously had a large Aboriginals and Native American population?

I never claimed such a thing. What a ridiculous takeaway.

>He's talking about the fact that Aboriginals, not unlike Native Americans...

They presumably asked for a source for both claims, your only provided one says you lived among them. Either you grew up among both populations or have provided no source for one of your claims.

You presumed wrong.

I don't see where that person specified which claim they wanted a source for, but I'll ask for a source for both claims.

I still have no idea if you grew up among Aboriginals or Native Americans, or what makes you so confident about the other race/culture's beliefs.

Just curious, but are you on the spectrum? Or an ESL speaker?

Context makes it clear which claim they were asking for.

In any case, I'm not providing a source. This is a somewhat commonly known thing, and I was speaking from personal experience. If you're still really unsure where I grew up, you can probably figure it out from my other comments.

Feel free to search for whatever you find sufficient to corroborate my claims, or continue to be skeptical (as you should). I don't mind either way.

Really? Replying to a request for sources with personal attacks?

No.

> This is a somewhat commonly known thing, and I was speaking from personal experience.

Which makes you Speaker for the Religuous Beliefs of the Bulk of Aboriginal Australians?

Yeah, right .. just keep digiging that hole deeper Kartiya.

Its not doing X to Y, its doing X to Z which is synonymous to Y is…a contradiction.

IF Z is a synonym for Y, doing X to Z is doing X to Y.

Trying to map natural language statements to formal logic doesn't work well, unless you make a ton of assumptions as you have here...and then it still doesn't work well.

Growing up where?

Australia? (big country) .. Western Desert (kind of specific) .. Redfern (very urban) .. etc.

Can you roughly indicate on a map?

There's a lot of different language groups and cultures, a lot of religuous beliefs, and a broad spread of skills both old and new.

https://mgnsw.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/map_col_high...

( FWiW I grew up in the Kimberley not far from the Mungalalu Truscott Airbase and am currently on Ballardong land )

So just so I understand, your source is growing up in one of the several hundred separate Aboriginal nations of Australia, most of whom have completely different languages and are dispersed across a vast nation as big as the continental United States and he speaks for all of them. Got it.

  Got it.

Do you though? I doubt it.

I just read your comments, and you seem to be saying your subjective experience amounts to evidence (for you, which is fine)

But the argument was that this was an emotionally charged topic and you displayed that while appearing to argue the opposite.

As a fellow Australian, I understand the over sensitivity, especially due to the Voice crap that's going on atm.

As for generalizing racially, I agree, it makes no sense. Which is why the voice thing sounds stupid to me.

I feel like there are two groups of indigenous peoples growing in Australia. What I call the 'technically aboriginals' and 'actual aboriginals' and I realize this might marginalize those with partial ancestry.

I often wonder if the voice is just being pushed by super liberal very light skinned aboriginals (that to me probably never suffered real discrimination) or outback dark skinned tribal bush aboriginals (that are discriminated against on site). I feel like the more bush you go, the more conservative you get...idk

No, I'm not talking about subjective experience at all.

ALL that happened was that I made a generalization, and other people wanted to contest it because, well, they could. It's not more complicated than that.

It's basically if I said most action movies have a car chase or gun fight, and someone wanted to die on the hill claiming that that generalization is inaccurate and not all action movies have to have a gun fight or car chase.

I agree though that the discrimination of aboriginals is politicized though, and it shouldn't be.

Based on my (very) subjective experience, a lot of the noise around the Voice + Invasion Day is being created by people with extremely tenuous links to indigenous heritage - which I think is maybe shifting away from what could be much more positive outcomes for truly marginalised Aboriginals.

Basically white people who - to their delight - realized they are "aboriginals".

> those who are offended simply want their culture respected

Even more so, in this case, considering my country's historical "handling" of ATSI culture, and the mobs in general.

> Aboriginals, not unlike Native Americans, reject any attempt to explain their origin via science as they stick to the story of their origin that comes from their religion, and see the science based origin as disrespectful.

No, they do not all do this, and I'd caution you on speaking for a people that aren't a monolith within their mobs in the first place.

Aha I thought about replying to the parent comment.

(Long time no see)

Haha hows it going mate! There's a lot of sweeping generalisations in this thread. Should be expected considering the audience, I guess, but it's still disappointing

Oh hush. It's a generalization, not an absolute. Pearl clutch elsewhere.

Right, so you're allowed to spout whatever idiocy you want, but others aren't allowed to call you on it. Sounds about right.

You grew up in Aus apparently, but seem to have very little understand of ATSI culture and how diverse it is. Come work with my partner at IUIH and then generalise the way you have been.

Generalise disparate groups of people elsewhere. And shove off with your thought terminating cliches: it's not pearl clutching, it's educating you, because you apparently require it.

Sigh. It's not idiocy buddy. It's a generalized statement. Maybe read up a little more on what that means, because you don't seem to understand.

It's funny, people that make the comments like you do are the people that never have anything actual to contribute, but just want to feel good about spotting a 'mistake' or some trivial shit.

You're not educating anyone, just arguing nonsense and pearl clutching in lieu of any real points.

Your point was hardly "real" either bucko, you ascribe a large group of people with a specific belief (without any citations) and then try to skip out of any culpability by saying its a generalisation.

lol, ok champ.

Another informative and education comment. Clever as roo shit you are.

You seem like one of those insecure types who need to have the last word, so it's all yours buddy. Enjoy, and I hope you get whatever feeling it is you're seeking by doing so.

Best of luck to you in life kiddo. Cheers.

Thanks mate, I'll happily take the last word. After all, how else would I heal those insecurities your have so poignantly diagnosed?

You seem incapable of doing anything other than dismissing anyone who raises any flaws with your logic. I sincerely hope you grow as a person.

Best of luck to you in life, Ole Fella. Cheers.

Would assume you're of or closely affiliated with Aboriginal heritage given the phrasing. My assessment of this is that if this were to become part of the established history of indigenous Australians, quite a bit of the narrative around 'ownership' changes dramatically.

I doubt it, either way they were here before Europeans who declared them non-human and assumed ownership of the landmass based on that declaration.

For the international audience, that UK assumption of "Terra Nullus" was knocked back and overturned by the Mabo decision of 1992:

    In Mabo v. Queensland (No. 2), judgments of the High Court inserted the legal doctrine of native title into Australian law.

    The High Court recognised the fact that Indigenous peoples had lived in Australia for thousands of years and enjoyed rights to their land according to their own laws and customs.

https://aiatsis.gov.au/explore/mabo-case

I'm sorry, did all Europeans declare them non-human? What a sweeping weak sauce generalization about an entire group of people.

Ahh, sweet gotcha you found there fella. I don't think I need to explain to you the difference between members of the British government declaring Australia Terra-Nulius (with approximately 0 outcry from their citizens) and some bozo deciding that all Indigenous Australians don't believe in science. If you cant see the difference it's only because you choose not to.

It doesn’t, though. It doesn’t matter if they’re genetically intermixed with Indians at some point in the last few thousand years. They were still here before White Australia was. And where I live, we still fought wars to eradicate the local mobs. We still stole children from them, not that long ago.

> Aboriginals, not unlike Native Americans, reject any attempt to explain their origin via science as they stick to the story of their origin that comes from their religion, and see the science based origin as disrespectful.

I mean, if we are going to make these kinds of broad generalizations and comparisons, could we at least change “Native Americans” to “Christian fundamentalists”.

It’s not any less true.

You got to try extra hard to come up with this idiocy lol.

* * *

Thanks for your input.

No problem, I'm sure it's not just me who felt that. Also, please consider that even if you were totally right about everything and everyone you interacted with totally wrong, that would be no justification at all for the way you've carried on on this page.

Thanks for letting me know.

Sure, let's change it to that. Does talking about "Christian fundamentalists" make you more comfortable than talking about "Native Americans"?

It doesn't seem difficult to find groups that reject science when it conflicts with their beliefs. Doesn't this make a stronger case for the person to whom you're replying? Humans are far from avoiding appeals to emotion, and that's doubly true for politically charged topics, which this very much is.

Actually Indians are also extremely wary of this, given the deep history of Europeans trying to appropriate Indian history for their own ends ('Aryan' anyone ?), and the way this has been used to destroy the anti-colonial movement in India.

Currently there are many in India, incl. Chief Ministers of large states who wants to 'kill off' (yes, genocide) a large section of the population, whom they see as a more 'insidious' colonizer than either the Islamists or the Europeans before.

Ironically, these self-anointed 'adivasis' consider so-called 'aryas' as more European than Europeans; and contrarily Europeans as more Indian, and indeed welcome all the destruction of the past 1000 years (technically, they want to also destroy whatever has survived of the Indian civilization).

Basically everything Indian is turned into a part of this fictional violence based on the Aryan-invasion theory, and hence everything 'Indian' is worth destroying. This is basically the calculus by which much of Indian and Western academia works.

You can see why Indians and Westoids disagree deeply on issues like Hindutva etc. The latter of course are illiterate douchebags with the consciousness of the same.

I didn't know that, but yeah that makes a lot of sense. Thanks for sharing that, that was interesting to learn.

Please give a 'tight slap' to all these straw men.

what I've noticed in my lifetime is that the attempted narratives of mainstream science continue to edge towards original local knowledge.

if locals abandoned their knowledge and accepted the 40,000ya story told when I was a kid, they'd be out by just as much given the 80,000ya now indicated by artefacts at M2, Madjedbebe; the oldest site of continual human habitation.

If I'm understanding you correctly, there are some things revealed by science that seem to match some kinds of ancient knowledge, but that could easily just be coincidence.