Indigenous Australia: It's all the White Man's Fault -> William Dampier

[Rev.Cambeul]

How explorer and pirate William Dampier's comments on Aboriginal people in 1697 set the tone for future sentiment

Ben Collins | ABC News (Australia) | 4 November 2018

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-04/william-dampiers-terra-nullius-set-the-tone-for-australia/10420338

Extract: While William Dampier is lauded as the first Englishman to set foot in Australia, he published a popular book with a derogatory description of Aboriginal people that would influence the foundations of our nation.

"The inhabitants of this country are the miserabilist people in the world," Dampier wrote in his 1697 book A New Voyage Around The World.

In describing how the Aboriginal people he met could not be induced to collect water for his ship, he said they instead "grinned like so many monkeys staring one upon another".

Dampier's first book shot him to fame and elevated his status from a pirate, likely to be jailed or hanged, to the commander of subsequent Royal Navy voyages of global exploration.

A New Voyage Around The World described his circumnavigation as a privateer, attacking mostly Spanish ships and colonies for personal profit, while making questionable claims to be an emissary for England at war with Spain.

But he also made detailed descriptions of the people and places he visited, including two months spent in north-west Australia in 1688.

It was there, in what by today's standards is a strikingly beautiful shallow bay with white sandy beaches, that English eyes first took in an Australian vista.

The location on the northern part of what is now known as the Dampier Peninsula, north of Broome, has been home to the Bardi people for tens of thousands of years, and it was Bardi people who Dampier described with such derision in his subsequent book.

"Setting aside their human shape, they differ but little from brutes," Dampier surmised.

Dampier needs to be better understood

The description of miserable people, blighted by heat and flies, were words which maritime archaeologist Michael McCarthy says echoed through history.

"Interestingly with respect to Cook and Banks on the other side, you see the effect Dampier had, and those words had," Dr McCarthy said.

James Cook and naturalist Joseph Banks came more than 80 years after Dampier, but Dr McCarthy points out that Dampier's words framed their first view of Aboriginal people.

While surveying the east coast in what we now call New South Wales, Banks wrote:

"Five people who appeared through our glasses to be enormously black, so far did the prejudices which we had built on Dampier's account influence us, that we fancied we could see their colour when we could scarce distinguish whether or not they are men."

Former director of the National Museum of Australia and the Western Australian Museum, Dawn Casey, said Dampier's racism and the influence his words had on the perspectives of Cook and Banks set the tone for the colonisation of Australia.

Bad timing and book sales

There is some evidence that Dampier's private descriptions of Aboriginal people were more respectful than his published work.

Dr McCarthy said Dampier's journals show he initially described Aboriginal people with some admiration, and the derogatory words were written later under the influence of his publisher to reflect popular attitudes and improve book sales.

"Dampier's book and Dampier's journal are two different things in many respects," Dr McCarthy said.

He pointed to a passage in Dampier's journal:

"They are people of good stature but are very thin and lean, I judge for want of food.

"They build their weirs of stone across the bay, they search those weirs for what the sea has left behind."

Dr McCarthy argues that Dampier had an innate respect for people and cultures foreign to him which drove his fascination and record keeping.

But when he returned to England with tales of an exotic world, a publisher saw the opportunity for a bestseller — if it better reflected popular attitudes.

"A publisher named James Knapton had only just published a journal about buccaneers and he sees in Dampier's work a bestseller," Dr McCarthy said.

"But he looks at society's attitudes at the time, he looks at what people want to hear, and he changes, it seems, the words that Dampier gives."

But Dr McCarthy and Dr Casey agree that Dampier should still be judged by the description published under his name.

"He published a popular side of what he saw as this country and the inhabitants of it," Dr Casey said.

"You can't totally absolve Dampier from that because he allowed that to happen."

The words of Dampier shaped attitudes, laws and actions that Dr Casey said led to some of the issues she deals with in her role as deputy CEO of the National Aboriginal and Community Controlled Health Services.

"The way Aboriginal people have been treated since the arrival of Western civilisation has impacted all the way through to what we find today in terms of health issues, and particularly chronic diseases," she said.

Blame William Dampier
 ... Blame Captain Cook
 ... Blame Blame Blame Blame Whitey!

[Br.IanVonTurpie]

Blame Blame Blame Blame Whitey!

...Tasmania should've come up and completed the job so there would be no blame now!

Tired of these pricks, I just went on a bike ride only to return to my bike to see some little boong shït stole the headlight off it! If I had have seen him I would've smashed him!

[Br.IanVonTurpie]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6751627/School-students-soon-taught-Aboriginal-English-learn-phrases-sista-brutha.html

School students will soon be taught 'Aboriginal English' under new state regulation slammed as 'absolutely ridiculous' by Indigenous leaders

The controversial curriculum change will see students who are learning foreign languages be taught phrases such as 'sista, brutha, bro and cuz'.

The newly-created syllabus, which is being implemented by the NSW Education Standards Authority, aims for Indigenous culture to be included in every subject

The curriculum has been reviewed for the first time in 30 years and will see changes for students from Kindergarten to Year 10.

Children learning languages such as Chinese, Spanish and French will need to be able to compare speech sounds, slang and 'loan words' from from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander �languages.

Loan words are words that are adopted from another language with little or no modification.

However the idea has been slammed by indigenous leaders who claim some of the words the state say are official Aboriginal terms are patronising

Councillor for Alice Springs Jacinta Price has dubbed the idea as 'absolutely ridiculous'.

She added it 'didn't make sense' to link foreign languages which have 'no association' to the indigenous culture. 

'It's an absolutely ridiculous idea, and it's almost an �insult to indigenous culture to shoehorn it into the curriculum in this superficial way,' Ms Price told The Daily Telegraph.


'Indigenous culture is very complex, and it is hard enough to learn about it in �English, let alone in a foreign language,' she concluded.

Dr Kevin Donnelly, a senior research fellow at the Australian Catholic University, dubbed the idea as 'tokenistic'.

'It gives a very superficial and fragmented view of Aboriginal culture and history,' Mr Donnelly said.

The new lessons have already been taught to Year 7 and 8 students this year

De-evolution at it's finest! What a valid skill to learn at school ?! Boong slang!?!?!