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Why do Aussies give Aboriginal Aussies a hard time? (3 Viewers)

When will an Aboriginal Australian become Prime Minister of Australia?

  • 0-5 YEARS

    Votes: 4 1.6%
  • 5-10 YEARS

    Votes: 3 1.2%
  • 10-15 YEARS

    Votes: 14 5.7%
  • 15-20 YEARS

    Votes: 18 7.3%
  • 20-25 YEARS +

    Votes: 64 26.1%
  • NEVER

    Votes: 142 58.0%

  • Total voters
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Plenty of animals capable of being domesticated in Australia, as evidenced by our domestication of them. What was lacking was not availability of animals, but their ability to build fences.
Katie, if you feel out of an Aboriginal woman's vagina three hundred years ago, do you think that you would be personally able to figure out how to build a fence or develop the economic practices of agriculture that underpinned Western civilisation?
 

katie tully

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Katie, if you feel out of an Aboriginal woman's vagina three hundred years ago, do you think that you would be personally able to figure out how to build a fence or develop the economic practices of agriculture that underpinned Western civilisation?
I'd be too busy chasing dinner with a stick.

Which is the crux of the issue.
Why hadn't they figured out animal husbandry? Forget the crops even, momentarily (which btw, other nations had outsourced due to their ability to build boats and voyage across the oceans), why why why?
 

Kwayera

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Plenty of animals capable of being domesticated in Australia, as evidenced by our domestication of them. What was lacking was not availability of animals, but their ability to build fences.
Like what?

EDIT: I lie - the only native Australian animal yet domesticated is the Zebra Finch.

That and they were too busy burning shit, which (i'll find the link), has been studied by scientists as contributing to the destruction of land and the extinction of several species of native animals/plants. Will find links, but you'll have to excuse me, this Baileys on the rocks is delicious
Yup, "firestick farming".
 

scarybunny

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Agriculture is hard work. It gets really fucking hot in Australia. The less work you have to do, the better.
 

Kwayera

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Dingoes? Well, not really. They're almost as wild as wolves are, and it took thousands of years to domesticate them. Hybrids can be domesticated, depending on the generation, but pures? Not really.

Horses: held. :p
 
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GinoIs

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The day the Aboriginal community accepts the fact that the wider Australian community has apologies and let history be just that, history - will be the day Aboriginal Australians gain my honest and full respect.
 

katie tully

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Dingoes? Well, not really. They're almost as wild as wolves are, and it took thousands of years to domesticate them. Hybrids can be domesticated, depending on the generation, but pures? Not really.

Horses: held. :p
No dice, dingo's can be domesticated (as with most wild animals) if socialised from birth. The Aboriginals routinely stole pups from dens and socialised them into domesticated animals. Hybrids are much the same, cannot be domesticated fully unless socialised from birth.

Dingo - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Handbook of Applied Dog Behavior and Training By Steven R. Lindsay also has a big snippet on the relationship between dingoes and their Aboriginal captors. More so for warmth apparently, rather than hunting because dingoes are poor hunters.

Forgetting domestication for a moment - we farm several native animals now (crocs, emus, roos), apart from their apparent lack of ability to build fences, what stopped them from farming animals? I know they were nomadic, but plenty of civilisations started off as nomadic before developing farming techniques.
 

katie tully

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Ok thats impressive but
1. he wasnt president
2. he isnt fully native?
Nor are most Aboriginal Australians pure blood.

Which I have asked before, if there was nothing to gain from being Aboriginal, would so many people still identify with it, knowing that it makes up for maybe 1/2 or even less of their genetic make up.
 

Kwayera

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No dice, dingo's can be domesticated (as with most wild animals) if socialised from birth. The Aboriginals routinely stole pups from dens and socialised them into domesticated animals. Hybrids are much the same, cannot be domesticated fully unless socialised from birth.

Dingo - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Handbook of Applied Dog Behavior and Training By Steven R. Lindsay also has a big snippet on the relationship between dingoes and their Aboriginal captors. More so for warmth apparently, rather than hunting because dingoes are poor hunters.
Tch, that doesn't count as domestication, however. You can do the same with, say, a cheetah cub with much the same result (actually cheetahs are ideal candidates) - they can be tamed, but that isn't the same as domestication.

And that dude may say dingoes are poor hunters, but they aren't. Dingoes are extremely important apex and mesopredators in Australia, responsible for regulation of the kangaroo population (Caughley et al 1980, Glen et al 2007, Newsome et al 2001, Pople et al 2000, blah blah blah.

Forgetting domestication for a moment - we farm several native animals now (crocs, emus, roos), apart from their apparent lack of ability to build fences, what stopped them from farming animals? I know they were nomadic, but plenty of civilisations started off as nomadic before developing farming techniques.
Your point :)
 
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Kwayera

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Yeah okay the dingo thing wasn't my best argument anyway, because as I've just read, they're actually quite a useless animal by all accounts.
Maybe domestically, but not ecologically. *quotes self*

And that dude may say dingoes are poor hunters, but they aren't. Dingoes are extremely important apex and mesopredators in Australia, responsible for regulation of the kangaroo population (Caughley et al 1980, Glen et al 2007, Newsome et al 2001, Pople et al 2000, blah blah blah.
 

scarybunny

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Out of curiosity, what would Aboriginal people have gained from farming?
 

katie tully

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Out of curiosity, what would Aboriginal people have gained from farming?
We're discussing the merits of diet in brain development. They had a diet rich in protein and red meat, which was often a better diet than those in more developed countries had access to.
I'm more asking why they hadn't developed farming techniques, which may be a throw back question due to their nomadic lifestyle.
 

katie tully

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Maybe domestically, but not ecologically. *quotes self*
Well, well. It's quite contradictory out there on the internets, I've been reading that as hunters they were quite poor, and that the Aboriginals would follow them to find wounded animals (apparently because they were scavengers or something, idk).
 

Kwayera

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Well, well. It's quite contradictory out there on the internets, I've been reading that as hunters they were quite poor, and that the Aboriginals would follow them to find wounded animals (apparently because they were scavengers or something, idk).
They probably do scavenge, but they don't rely on it. They're efficient predators, and they're extremely important in controlling the kangaroo population west of the dingo fence (and farmers are starting to regret that fence as the roos eat the crops east of it) as well as feral foxes and cats.

EDIT: It occurs to me that that situation may be altered to Aboriginals following local dingo packs to rob them of their kills, which makes a lot more sense.
 

rasengan90

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Ok thats impressive but
1. he wasnt president
2. he isnt fully native?
I just put that down to throw shit up. Native Americans are nothing like the Aboriginies. Native Americans had a far more complex social system than the Aboriginals and they had worked out methods of farming buffalo and other critters without harming the environment like Aboriginies cry about. And also you must remember, people say Obama is the first Black president but he is only 1/2 so he does not count as a black president by your standards? And no, he wasn't president but not far off. There have been few Aboriginies even in parliament, let alone in a position of real power.
 

rasengan90

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Are you thinking of Mal Brough? Aboriginal Affairs minister in the Howard govt. but not actually Aboriginal.
 

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