It does not matter whether one believes that mankind evolved from some primitive creature that crept from the primeval slime millions of years ago or whether one believes that God created heaven and earth in seven days culminating in the creation of mankind.
Either way, there has been a process of evolution to produce the variety of races among human beings. 20th century "political correctness" would have us believe that the only difference between the peoples of various races is the colour of our respective skins. If the colour of our skin has evolved because of the environment in which our ancestors lived for thousands of years, it is not unreasonable to assume that differences in behaviour also evolved in a similar way.

According to scientific studies, the indigenous population occupied Australia for tens of thousands of years with practically no interaction with people from other parts of the world until about 200 years ago.
They evolved as hunter/gatherers for the simple reason that Australia possessed no animals or plants suitable for the purpose of farming.

The process of evolution cannot be changed arbitrarily or in a generation or two. It is grossly unfair to all Australians, including aborigines themselves to pretend that aborigines lived an idyllic lifestyle prior to 1788.

Clinical Psychology.

The relatively recent science of Clinical Psychology has studied the question of whether there are fundamental differences between races apart from the obvious one of skin pigmentation. One such study was conducted by the first Australian born Clinical Psychologist, Professor Stanley Porteus of the University of Honolulu.

In 1928, he was invited by the Australian National Research Council to "carry out a series of investigations on the mental status of the aboriginals of that continent". In 1931, he published the results of his studies in a book entitled "The Psychology of a Primitive People".

This book was not intended to be a bestseller. The photographs of full frontal nudity which it contained would most likely have caused it to be banned in the era when it was written if it was anything other than a scientific study.

Porteus's book was intended for other researchers and scholars; not for the purpose of making any political statement or pleading any particular cause. He makes frequent references to earlier research in this field and no doubt, was very much aware that his methods and conclusions would be open to academic scrutiny.

Porteus invited an old friend and well-known Melbourne identity of the day, R. H. Croll, "an Australian nature writer of note" to join him on his journey to Central Australia.

In the 1930s, there were still groups of aborigines that had little or no contact with Europeans. Describing one group that he met when they arrived at Finke River Mission, Porteus wrote ,
"I was indeed fortunate, for otherwise I would never have seen a completely primitive set of aborigines existing in their original way of life. There were 38 of them, men, women, and children, with not a shred of clothing among the lot. This tribal horde was equipped with spears, spears throwers, boomerangs, stone knives, adzes and spear points. But their arrival put a heavy strain on food resources at the Mission." He described how the missionary selected those who were best able to forage for food from the desert and fed the others at the mission. The groups were changed over when the latter group had gained strength. "It was a plan to distribute, not supplies, but the great hunger more equitably," he added.

When the Australian Constitution was framed over 30 years previously, aborigines were not required to complete census returns or compelled to vote as it was not practicable to do so. It is ignorance of history that this is seen in some quarters today as evidence of racial discrimination.

In 1933, a panel of scientists selected Porteus's book for the Scientific Book of the Month Club and he was offered a visitor's grant by the Carnegie Foundation to carry out similar studies in South Africa. His interest was in the Bushmen in and around the Kalihari Desert and Okovango Sanctuary. He travelled extensively by native canoes on the rivers of what are now the countries of Zimbabwe and Botswana.

Given his background, Porteus's account of the living conditions of aboriginals can be taken as objective and credible. He deliberately sought out those least affected by the influence of Europeans.

The following extract from The Psychology of a Primitive People explains why the environment affected far more than the colour of their skin.

50 ABORIGINAL ENVIRONMENT
The mere fact that a man has attained a ripe old age entitles him to great respect, for this alone proves that he is proof against the evil intended by his enemies. For the ordinary individual who has no proof of immunity it is well not to move away from the camp after dusk has fallen in case the spirits may be abroad on the look-out for the lonely wanderer.

To the white man these superstitions and fears may seem unreasoning and proof of the black's extreme suggestibility and lack of common sense. Yet when one considers the peculiar conditions under which they live this belief in magic and spirits is not so extraordinary. Few people can realize the emptiness of this continent even during these days of white occupancy. In the centre you may travel a hundred or five hundred miles without seeing a soul, while in the North-west a road is a mere ribbon of travel, and settlement nothing but a chain of stations, on either side of which lie vast empty territories.

It is an interesting speculation to consider to what degree men's fears are a product of loneliness or, conversely, how much courage a man draws from crowds. The number of persons present is in some strange way a denominator by which fear is divided. A man's terror when alone may be cut in two when a companion is present, and diminishes proportionately with every addition to the company. The strange, the mysterious, unless it contains the threat of catastrophe, is so much less terrifying to a crowd or to a large assemblage. Only in the woods or the country is there room for spirits and ghosts. To a city-bred population, where people always live cheek by jowl, woodnymphs, elves, werewolves, witches and goblins are merely fairy-tales. In the great towns there is hardly room for your own shadow, let alone incorporeal shades. Electric light is the great dissipater of superstition. Spirits may abide the rushlight and candle, even the kerosene flame but never the arc-lamp. How different it is when all the light you have is a flickering camp-fire, all the company a few dozen at most of your own kind, and outside the circle of the camp a vast waiting darkness. It is not strange that superstitious fears abound where population is thinnest and shadows most numerous. People who dwell in the lonely places of earth will imagine spectres of fear, and forest-dwellers are shadow-haunted more than people of the plains.
If this is so, and there seems to be very little that tells against the theory, then we need not take so much credit to ourselves that in the last few score years we have cleared ourselves of some of the grosser superstitions that haunted our great-grandparents. May we not truly reflect that this desirable result has come about as much through a physical as an intellectual enlightenment? At one time the fear of ghosts was almost general, then quite suddenly nobody believed in them. But who can point to the instantaneous accession of knowledge or the discovery of new stores of common sense that brought about this remarkable change in vulgar opinion? It seems that two things are responsible, more light and more company, and that, literally, the fear of spectres has been crowded out of our minds. When one considers the foolish cults and credulities of modern society it is hard to believe that people have, rather suddenly, become less tender-minded; one is forced to suspect that the exorcizing of ghosts has merely left room for some other foolish belief to enter. Yet we pride ourselves on enlightenment and have pity to spare for the savage who is still governed and tormented with childish night-terrors. Those who have felt the loneliness of the Australian bush, who have experienced on some misty moonlight night the eerie spell that the shadows of the forest impose, will understand how a simple-minded, untutored people cradled in such conditions would most readily become, and fixedly remain, a prey to all the fears that darkness engenders. The Australian aborigine may seem to be overhaunted and terror-driven; but the psychologist interested in the motivation and total background of human conduct cannot help regarding this attitude of mind, not as something phenomenal, but as entirely natural and to be expected. If we can realize the intense loneliness of the blackfellow's world the fact that he is governed on every hand by unreasoning fears is entirely explicable. We shall no longer impute his faith in malevolent magic to stupidity but rather to an ever-active imagination working under the most extraordinary conditions, unsobered and uncorrected by the criticisms of the crowd.

19th century settlers.

To put the whole Australian aboriginal issue into perspective, it is essential to also to take into account the physical and the psychological environment of the Europeans who settled in Australia in the early 19th century.

Early pioneers would have had similar fears brought on by extreme isolation, tempered to only a small degree by more secure homes and superior means of defending themselves.

Less than 100 years before the arrival of the first fleet, people were being executed for witchcraft in Massachusetts. The electric light, which Porteus describes as the great dissipater of superstition, was not invented until the 1860's and few people living outside cities and towns enjoyed its benefit until the 1930s and later.

Fear of the dark may be hard to understand by the vast majority of present day Australians who have never had the experience of being far from a switch that will immediately illuminate their surroundings.

Living standards and human rights for most people even in progressive countries like Britain were vastly different from those of today. Some people in Britain considered they were doing their convicts a favour by "transporting" them to the other side of the world in flimsy cramped sailing ships for such minor indiscretions as stealing a handkerchief.

Teenage children worked stripped to the waist in coalmines of Britain hauling skips of coal for 12 hours a day by means of chains around their waists. Many adults could not read or write.

Fundamental difference.

The fundamental difference between aboriginal and european culture is that the former were hunter/gatherers and the latter were farmers. Hunter/gatherers require larger areas of land over which to forage for food resulting in low population density.

In Australia, the lack of animals suitable for domestication and plants for cultivation meant that the inhabitants needed to range over extensive areas of land to survive. They were nomadic and their time was occupied almost entirely on the imperative of finding food for their immediate family or tribe.

Farmers on the other hand produced the food for more and more people and enabled the development of cities, the inhabitants of which could devote their time to other pursuits knowing that food would always be available.

Porteus describes how the dependence of aboriginal people on the land and how the seasons influenced how their whole society was organized, with a remarkable degree of uniformity over a very large continent.

Light and enlightenment.

About the same time that the electric light was invented, the theory of evolution first challenged the theory of creation. To the first settlers almost a century before, the nakedness of Australian aborigines was clear evidence that they were 'savages' and 'heathens' and they all knew the fate that awaited those who did not believe.

Porteus points out that nakedness was common across the whole continent and explains the logic of it.
Nakedness, as a matter of fact, is a condition partly of choice and partly of necessity. In the centre the winter months are a succession of days of almost absolute cloudlessness, the day temperature often rising to 95 degrees and more in the shade. As we have already seen, on account of the scarcity of food and the absence of oases, a wandering habit is enforced on these people. This not only means moving their more permanent camps at frequent intervals, but also increased activity in the daily search for food. It is no uncommon thing for a woman to cover ten or twenty miles in the endeavour to get enough food in her coolimon to supply the needs of her family for a single day. On several occasions in the north-west I had the opportunity to examine the contents of a woman's coolimon or pitchi, and as representing the day's search for food the result was usually remarkably poor, consisting sometimes of a small piece of native honeycomb and a few roots. In periods of drought the members of the tribal group, old and young, forage from dawn to dark. Loaded with digging sticks, coolimons and possibly a young child, clothing under these circumstances, especially the furs of animals, would be a most uncomfortable burden, impeding movement and, from the standpoint of health, having a decidedly injurious effect. When clothes are worn the tendency to pulmonary troubles seems to be positively increased, a fact that Spencer and Gillen remark. Even at this time the semi-civilized savage will accept the gift of a government blanket with pleasure, but after wearing it a day or two will discard it or give it away. Where the blacks are in touch with whites they will wear clothes, but merely in deference to the white people's prejudices on this point. When no whites are near, these rags are quickly discarded. From these facts it is quite evident that nakedness is the result of preference, not of ignorance. Going unclothed has also become firmly set in the folk ways of the central and northern tribes and is no more an indication of low intelligence than adherence to fashion is in civilization.
Both as regards the matter of building shelters and also the wearing of clothes as a protection against cold it should be noted that it is wet rather than cold that appears to be most inimical to the health of the aborigines and consequently most dreaded by them. In the infrequent wet spells that sometimes visit the centre of the continent the native shows that he is quite capable of protecting himself by building a hut if he needs one. Under the conditions of his wandering life, to construct permanent camps of wood or stone would argue not intelligence but the reverse. It should be noted that the magico-religious beliefs of the natives also interfere with any tendency to occupy permanent camps. Immediately a death occurs the group desert that camp spot for another. They dread the return of the spirit of the deceased to the place of his former abode, and when there is a spirit wandering round, even though it be that of a former tribesfellow, the natives take no chances and remove themselves from his influence.
There are spots, of course, to which the natives return for more or less transient periods, but these camps are only comparatively permanent. In the far north-west the coastal natives build well-thatched huts of grass, not because they are more intelligent but because they live near constant sources of food supply and can thus afford to make a permanent camp, Plenty of long grass is available and in the rainy season mosquitoes are so plentiful that the natives require shelter much more than those of the centre. Notwithstanding the fact that they can build houses that are comparatively mosquito-proof, yet as regards clothes these north-west natives are just as naked as the blacks of the centre. In the country east of Lake Eyre, where the seasons are more variable than in the centre, huts are built by the natives, and in fact hut-building is quite an art. Horne and Alston record that the services of those skilled in the matter were much in demand by other members of the tribe.
It is true that night temperatures fall very low. One night that we spent in the Amphitheatre near Palm Valley in September was well below freezing, and under these circumstances the warmth of the clothes would be naturally appreciated. But it must be remembered that while there is no way to become cool if you are hot, a fire will mitigate the cold at night. Hence the native deliberately chooses to depend on his small camp-fire at night rather than to burden himself with heavy clothing or furs during the day. In order to be an adequate protection from the cold, the furs would need to be heavy. In our camp we had no less than five blankets each and a big fire, and it was so cold that I came to the conclusion that one blanket was of little more use than none. In the native camps that we visited the blacks very frequently lay on, rather than under, a single blanket. This was surely not a matter of ignorance. Fortunately we had camels to carry our supplies, otherwise I am afraid that if we had been forced to carry our blankets on our own backs we should have discarded most of them. It was, of course, the winter season when we were there, but in the summer in these parts, clothing, even for white men, is an almost intolerable burden. With steamy, tropical heat up to 100 degrees in the shade in the day and falling not below 88 degrees at night, clothes are useful merely as protection from sunburn, from which the natives do not suffer.
In short, it is not at all certain that "a people's progress in the material arts" is a good measure of its intellectual and social progress, as Frazer would have us believe. We must certainly take into account the environmental handicaps, and nowhere, with the possible exception of the highest latitudes of the earth, are these greater than in Australia.
In considering the poverty of the Australian's material possessions we must also take into account the absence of animals that could be domesticated and serve not only as sources of food supply but as beasts of burden. This deficiency of domesticated animals has been referred to by several writers on the subject but without apparently the proper emphasis on the fact. Thus Spencer, for example, mentions that the absence of higher animals suitable for domestication is significant, but he says that the question as to how far this accounts for the backward state of the aborigines is merely a matter of speculation. To us, considering the fact in conjunction with the * intermittently arid nature of three-fourths of the continent, its bearing on the progress of the natives is definite and plain.
The kangaroo is the only animal of large size, and being saltatory in its habits could not serve as a beast of burden. One can hardly imagine the Australian yoking up a pair of kangaroos to a sled to draw his possessions while on the march, in the same way as the Esquimau uses dogs or the Laplander his reindeer. Hence the Australian native is limited as regards material possessions to those which his wife is able to carry for him. On the march she bears the burdens while he carries the weapons. He must be free either for defence against hostile groups or to hunt the larger game. Hence, as the individual family is nearly always on the move in search of food, the material possessions are exceedingly scanty; even the grinding-stones are left behind at camps to which the natives may not return for several months. Such is the respect that one native has for another's possessions that the owner is perfectly sure that on his return the stones will be where he left them.
The kangaroo, being a marsupial, whose young are very immature at birth and are attached for some time thereafter to the nipple in the pouch of the mother, is useless as a milk producer. So the natives are deprived of a staple article of food supply such as is available to many other desert-dwelling nomads. The goat, the cow, the camel, the mare, the donkey or wild ass, each of which has been domesticated by other races as milk-producing animals, are lacking in Australia. The dingo, which is domesticated among the wild tribes, is also useless as a burden-bearer. It is in cold climates rather than in the hot dry countries that dogs can be used to pull a sledge. Hence, considering all the circumstances, the absence of useful mammals in Australia seems to be an insuperable bar to progress, as far as the accumulation of material possessions is concerned.
But in addition to other handicaps we must also take into account the fact of the extreme isolation of the Australian continent which has prevented its native inhabitants from profiting by the experience of other peoples.

The foregoing facts contradict the words of Australia's National Anthem. Our land does not 'abound in nature's gifts' - it lacks rainfall, and consequently the rivers and streams, to the extent that it is the driest inhabited continent. It lacks animals that were adaptable to domestication, a significant civilizing factor. It lacks extensive areas of good quality soils despite the lack of farming or intensive grazing of livestock. Its native plants have provided no nutritional foods of general interest.

In the following extract, Porteus spells out the close association that aboriginal Australians have with the land. It demonstrates the folly of judging others by our own standards instead of trying first to understand the reason for their beliefs.

PRIMITIVE BELIEFS AND CUSTOMS
In addition to nakedness, houselessness and ethnographic poverty, there are two other proofs frequently adduced of the low and degraded mental status of the aborigine of Central Australia. One concerns a belief and the other a practice, and both of these circumstances at first sight indicate a stage of mental development and a state of society that is decidedly primitive.

The belief in question is that sexual intercourse is unrelated to conception; the practice is that of allowing almost full control of the tribe to lie in the hands, not of the strongest or most warlike or most able man, but of a council of elders who direct tribal affairs with unquestioned authority. We shall now consider each of these supposed proofs of lowly intelligence in turn.

With regard to the Australian's explicit denial that children are the fruit of the commerce of the sexes, Frazer says: "So astounding an ignorance of natural causation cannot but date from a past immeasurably remote." Elsewhere he proceeds to comment still further on this supposed ignorance of the savage. He points out that this belief among the Arunta "is the first case on record of a tribe who believe in immaculate conception as the sole cause of the birth of every human being who comes into the world. A people so ignorant of the most elementary of natural processes may well rank at the very bottom of the savage scale."

It is proper to inquire to what degree this nescience of the facts of generation is general in Australia. Those most authoritative observers, Spencer and Gillen, say: "The idea of spirit children entering women and that sexual intercourse has nothing of necessity to do with procreation, is a very widespread belief amongst the Australian aborigines."

This observation is confirmed by Roth, who found the belief prevalent among the tribes of North Queensland. It is still to be met with among the older blacks, as Horne and Aiston record the same idea in the Lake Eyre region. They remark, "that the father has anything to do with conception is absolutely foreign to the native mind." It may or may not be of significance that in Spencer's latest publication, The Arunta, while the manner in which an individual receives his totem is described as being determined by the place where the woman knows she has conceived a child, the ignorance of the part of the father in generation is not so definitely emphasized. Basedow, who was acquainted with the Luritcha and also the northwestern tribes, makes a reference which throws doubt on the subject of their supposed ignorance.

One often reads, and I was under the same impression myself until I became better acquainted with the tribes, that the Australian natives do not connect the knowledge of conception with any intercourse which might have taken place between the sexes. This I find is not altogether correct, although usually the younger people are kept in complete ignorance on the subject. No doubt strangers are treated similarly when they put any pertinent questions to the old men on matters of sex. The old men believe in the duality of human creation, the spiritual and the material: sexuality is regarded as the stimulus of corporeal reproduction, but the spirit quantity is derived through mystic and abstract influences controlled by a totem spirit or Knaninja.

In considering this alleged belief in "immaculate conception" as Frazer calls it, we must not forget that it is bound up with practically all the magico-religious ideas that the aborigines possess.

Once they are imbued with the belief that rocks and trees and other natural features are filled with the spirits of their ancestors and that these spirits are all awaiting a chance to reincarnate themselves, what is more reasonable than to ascribe to those spirits the main part in the generation of the individual? Yet what is affirmed as a matter of magico-religious belief is no proof of lack of commonsense observation of cause and effect.

The native is so anxious to make clear and emphatic his affirmation of what is to him a most important belief, that his very insistence may appear to constitute an explicit denial of the ordinary and obvious facts of generation. To the aboriginal mind he himself possesses a dual nature. Here, for example, stands Wambll and over yonder is his father Lungtarkna; but in accordance with his most cherished belief he is not Wambil , but one of the alcheringa ancestors of the tribe, nor is his father Lungtarkna, but another reincarnated ancestor. Wambil knows his own secret ancestral name, which must be spoken in whispers and only before the members of his own totem.

Unless his father has the same totem he may actually be unaware of the spiritual identity of his son. In order to make his philosophy consistent with itself the native assumes the dual relationship, one to his actual father who is responsible for his corporeal life, and the other to the knaninja to whom he owes his spiritual existence. This latter relationship is to him the important one, and so his sense of consistency leads him to minimize, or deny, the paternal relationship.

As a matter of fact all the practical implications of paternity follow in the same way as they would do if the relationship of the intercourse of the sexes to generation were freely admitted. For example, the Inkata, or headman of the totem, upon whom devolves the carrying out of the totemic ceremonies and the guardianship of the pertalchera, or churinga storehouse, receives his office from his actual father, provided, of course, that he is a man of maturity and belongs to the right moiety and totem in the tribe. This is only one of the many ways in which the relationship of father and son is directly acknowledged.

In the case of daughters the father is forbidden by custom to speak to them after they have reached puberty, a prohibition that is extremely important and one whose implications seem to have been overlooked in the discussion of Australian relationships. It is, in fact, no less important than mother-in-law avoidance or, as is observed in some tribes, mutual avoidance of son-in-law and father-in-law. This whole system of avoidances seems aimed at dissolving or at least diminishing the natural family ties that might affect the right that the aboriginal husband acquires over the woman he marries.

Possibly we could understand the aborigine's viewpoint better if we were to imagine that the positions were reversed and that he was investigating us and our beliefs. He would find among the whites some millions of people who are ready to state their belief that immaculate conception can and has taken place. The essential difference between his belief and ours would lie in the fact that he affirms it takes place generally, while Christians believe that it occurred but once. In fact the aborigine is more consistent in his beliefs than the white man; he at least affirms the universality of the occurrence.

Leading Questions.

Porteus makes a point several times in his book in the following terms.

"In matters that do not seem important to him, the native is ready to affirm any view that he conceives to be in the mind of the inquirer, especially if he thinks the latter's interest is merely casual or transitory. If he can find out what he is wanted to say, he says it."
And later
The guileless blackfellow is sometimes just a little too anxious to impart information and he is so obliging that if he can possibly discover or guess what it is you want him to say he will oblige by saying it. Leading questions are useless because they will always be answered in the affirmative.

This trait among Indigenous Australians has led politicians, journalists and others to misinterpret the facts and produce theories such as "The Stolen Generation" and "Native Title". Porteus found this a problem in his research conducted more or less on a one to one basis. How much more likely is it to occur when a political leader surrounded by reporters and television cameras descends upon an aboriginal community; or an inquiry with all the trappings of the legal profession tries to establish what aboriginal people really think by asking leading questions?

Both the above mentioned theories have built false hopes among aboriginal people because when the theories are tested in practical situations they are found wanting. In the case of the so-called "Stolen Generation" the following account gives convincing evidence why aboriginal people sought a better life for their children.

Water.

Porteus observes on several occasions the state of the water upon which Australian aborigines depended and also the observations of others.
Here the natives in their hunts for food must depend upon hidden rock wells to which, like themselves, the creatures of the wild have access. In times of drought it is only in the deepest or most secret of these that water is found, and as a result the precious fluid becomes stagnant and befouled with the bodies of the wild animals which attempt to reach the water. One final description from Giles will give sufficient idea of what this means when the traveller is dependent on such a supply. He was at the time making one of his dashes from his base camp in a vain attempt to discover a practicable route westward. "I found," he says, "the hole was choked up with rotten leaves, dead animals, birds and all imaginable sorts of filth. On poking a stick down into it, seething bubbles aerated through the putrid mass, and yet the natives had evidently been living upon this fluid for some time; some of the fires in their camp were yet alive." These isolated wells are characteristic of this region and in the drought seasons are usually in the state described. When the members of the Horn Expedition were making their way to Mount Olga they visited one of these wells called Unterpata only to find the water stinking with the bodies of five dingoes who had ventured down its fourteen-foot walls and were too weak to clamber out.'

In times of drought the natives of course must move about the country in search of food, and hence the location of all these rock holes must be accurately known to them. As season after season goes by without replenishing rains one can imagine how anxiously the natives watch these diminishing supplies and how dependent they must be in planning their movements upon the guidance of the old men who have lived through many droughts and who alone know, from past experience, whether or not permanent water is to be found in a given area. With the daily temperature 110 degrees and more in the shade--if there were any shade-an expedition into one of these great waterless areas would mean that the tribe would perish miserably. When there is only one chance for life, it is not to be carelessly expended.

Is it possible for us who are so far removed from conditions such as these to realize with any approach to accuracy what the life of this people must be?

It is understandable that some aboriginal mothers sought to give their children the chance to escape these unforgiving conditions by allowing them to be brought up in missions or employed in white households where they might have a better life. It is a perfectly normal reaction and not confined to people with dark skins for parents to give their children a chance to live a better life.

It is equally understandable that children torn from their families and all that was familiar to them would have been traumatised by the experience. They probably were unaware of how precarious an existence they were escaping.

Mission stations were in something of a dilemma. They wanted to alleviate the hardships of the native population but they ran the risk that the natives would become totally dependent upon them and loose their ability to cope with extreme conditions.

Admittedly the temptations are great, for once having tasted the white man's provender they prefer it to their own bush supplies, and the ease with which a can of meat is opened or a lump of damper baked helps to commend such food to the lubra as well as to her husband. Her work in providing for the family wants is greatly lessened as compared with the days when she had to "look out yelka," as the blacks call the gathering of the tiny bulbs of a weed like onion grass which grows in sandy places. Another of their tasks was to dig deep trenches in search of the honey ant, whose abdomen, distended by honey or "sugar-bag" fed to it by the other ants, is bitten off by the blacks like a succulent cherry. The fat white witchety grubs found at the root of the witchety bush or other trees are still a delicacy whether raw or roasted on the coals. The white man's "tea leaf" is much in demand, and no wonder, if it serves to mask the taste of the water which the blacks must drink.

Generally speaking, it is the women whose burden has been lightened most by the association with whites.
Porteus recorded other factors that should dispel any thought that aborigines lived an idyllic existence until European settlement.

This was the sacred meeting-ground which only initiated men could visit. The direst penalties at one time were enforced against a woman who even by accident set eyes on one of the sacred objects stored there, blinding with a fire-stick or death by spearing being the commonly exacted penalties, though no doubt under missionary and police control these are now somewhat relaxed.

Discussing the process of subincision and a theory that it was intended as a form of birth control, Porteus makes the following observation.

Here again was an instance of whites ascribing to the natives an extremely roundabout way of gaining an end when a much more direct means was at hand and constantly used. It certainly would be crediting the native with poor insight to suppose that he would voluntarily submit to this extremely painful operation to diminish the number of his offspring when infanticide was easy and generally resorted to. We have already referred to the commonness of this practice. When a child is unwanted, usually because there is another older one who still requires the mother's attention, or because the labour of providing for the existing children is too great, the aborigines do not hesitate to expose the child, or may take a much quicker means of getting rid of it, either by choking it with sand or knocking it on the head immediately it is born. This practice, although it may argue an absolute lack of the so-called "maternal instinct," must not be so interpreted. As we have already indicated, aboriginal parents are kindness and indulgence itself to their children, and except in rare instances the children are not disciplined in any way. When a tribe is more or less constantly on the move it is impossible for the parents to look after more than two small children. Among the Luritcha the husband may do his part by carrying one of the younger children but for the most part he keeps his arms free for hunting or fighting. Under these circumstances it is inevitable that if an additional baby is born it will be sacrificed for the good of the family. It must also be remembered that the native believes that the spirit of the child will return to the knaninja or totemic centre, the place of the unborn, and that it may have many other chances to reincarnate itself. Under the circumstances infanticide is not considered wrong.

Given these facts, it is difficult to comprehend why these children would have been "stolen" under any reasonable interpretation of the word. The argument for 'Native Title" is equally flawed because a Title is not land, it is a piece of paper. It can be bought and sold or used as security to borrow money. It is not a concept of hunter/gatherers but of farmers. It does not meet the needs of aborigines who seek right of access to land on which to live or that is sacred to them. This is probably becoming increasingly irrelevant as aborigines become more urbanized but that is no reason for denying rights of access to those with a genuine claim.

If the millions of dollars spent on legal fees and inquiries ($31 million on just one) had been applied to setting up a department to negotiate access rights to land for aborigines with a genuine claim, most of these cases could have been resolved decades ago. Owners of private land would, in most cases, be happy to negotiate appropriate access.

Facing the truth.

Nobody likes being accused of shortcomings or failures, whether it is their ability to play cricket or win football matches. Aborigines are no different and most of them are uncomfortable with so much concentration on their 'problems'.

It is unfortunate that what was written by Porteus over 70 years ago needs to be restated simply because denials that these things ever occurred have gone unchallenged.

It is inferred that, had the British government not taken possession of this continent, aborigines would still be living in some kind of Utopia. It is likely to be wishful thinking that Australia would have escaped occupation by some other powerful nation or that any such occupier would have been more benign. That situation is purely hypothetical and no useful purpose is served by contemplating possible outcomes.

Australia's aborigines had adapted to living in a harsh and unforgiving environment just as its flora and fauna had done. They were hunter/gatherers who literally lived hand to mouth off the land. This involved the honing of skills quite different from those of the europeans who took over their country.

It is not surprising that an aboriginal mother would want her children to have the chance to enjoy a better lifestyle. The vast majority of Australian parents hope that their children have a better life style than they themselves enjoy and some are faced with sending their children away from home at an early age to get that opportunity.

Throughout nature, there are species that could inter breed but rarely do so because it is natural to favour one's own species. That is why Australia has such a wonderful array of parrots for example.

Aborigines evolved special skills to survive on this harsh continent. They survived where europeans could not. That does not make them inferior - just different.