AUSTRALIA'S STONEHENGE TALK
ISSUES OVER OWNERSHIP
The History of Genocide of the traditional owners of the site and how this contributes directly to the disputes over ownership can not be overstated.
It is a nice to imagine that a circle of lore-makers and elders somehow, survived the European invasion and continue to protect Australia's Stonehenge. Sadly, the murder of more than 99% of the original inhabitants by invaders is the number one reason why the traditional people were unable to go about holding ceremonies and passing down all the necessary sacred lore.
To assume that there survived an unbroken line of custodians dismisses the very meaning of the word 'genocide'. It ignores the devastation done to the People of Country by introduced disease, bullets, deforestation, displacement, massacres, and state-enforced terrorism.
In light of the death toll, interpreting the meaning of the site and determining who to ask for guidance now is almost impossibly complex. We could understand why some people would rather forget about the site and its need to be Protected.
We should be mindful of the 2015, the National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee (NAIDOC) declaration that: - “We all Stand on Sacred Ground”.
In solidarity with this sentiment we can endeavour to speak respectfully over aspects of Australia's Stonehenge.
Article 19, of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, states everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media, but that does not preclude respectful dialogue. Anything else would be an insult to each other, the site and its creators.
There exists no national standard that determines Aboriginality - No National body, no government register - Aboriginality is determined on a case by case basis by various local community committees that government websites suggest can be found by googling the word aboriginal and a place name and hoping for the best.
This holds true when determining the rightful owners of Australia's Stonehenge. This is why, before it's rediscovery in 2013, the site was forgotten and going to ruin through disturbance of cattle, erosion from the elements and neglect and destruction from the farmers.
It was the rediscovering and revealing of it to the public that pressured the Australian Government to list the site as sacred and provide it some measure of protection.
It was only through raising awareness of the site across the broader community that enabled elders to know of it and come together, in October 2013, and hold a smoking ceremony of purification. It was the first ceremony to be held at the site in almost 200 years.
When deciding on ownership three layers of the community need to be considered.
Beyond this are other stakeholders, such as the property owners, who may hold specific legal and commercial rights.
Engaging with any group in dialogue risks alienating and offending the remaining groups and makes it easier for that group to be accused of bringing undue pressure to be recognised as the rightful owners.
The History of Genocide of the traditional owners of the site and how this contributes directly to the disputes over ownership can not be overstated.
It is a nice to imagine that a circle of lore-makers and elders somehow, survived the European invasion and continue to protect Australia's Stonehenge. Sadly, the murder of more than 99% of the original inhabitants by invaders is the number one reason why the traditional people were unable to go about holding ceremonies and passing down all the necessary sacred lore.
To assume that there survived an unbroken line of custodians dismisses the very meaning of the word 'genocide'. It ignores the devastation done to the People of Country by introduced disease, bullets, deforestation, displacement, massacres, and state-enforced terrorism.
In light of the death toll, interpreting the meaning of the site and determining who to ask for guidance now is almost impossibly complex. We could understand why some people would rather forget about the site and its need to be Protected.
We should be mindful of the 2015, the National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee (NAIDOC) declaration that: - “We all Stand on Sacred Ground”.
In solidarity with this sentiment we can endeavour to speak respectfully over aspects of Australia's Stonehenge.
Article 19, of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, states everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media, but that does not preclude respectful dialogue. Anything else would be an insult to each other, the site and its creators.
There exists no national standard that determines Aboriginality - No National body, no government register - Aboriginality is determined on a case by case basis by various local community committees that government websites suggest can be found by googling the word aboriginal and a place name and hoping for the best.
This holds true when determining the rightful owners of Australia's Stonehenge. This is why, before it's rediscovery in 2013, the site was forgotten and going to ruin through disturbance of cattle, erosion from the elements and neglect and destruction from the farmers.
It was the rediscovering and revealing of it to the public that pressured the Australian Government to list the site as sacred and provide it some measure of protection.
It was only through raising awareness of the site across the broader community that enabled elders to know of it and come together, in October 2013, and hold a smoking ceremony of purification. It was the first ceremony to be held at the site in almost 200 years.
When deciding on ownership three layers of the community need to be considered.
- Some people feel that the owners are only those Sovereign People who were born or have a family connection to the the very small area of land, bordered between two and a ridge of a hill, that the site is on.
- Some people hold that the site, being within the, 6,000 square kilometer, territory of the Bundjalung people is under their control.
- Some people believe that the site, being made by multiple tribes across the eastern coast of Australia as a meeting point for all the ancient people of the world, is for everyone to share, regardless of race, nation or culture.
Beyond this are other stakeholders, such as the property owners, who may hold specific legal and commercial rights.
Engaging with any group in dialogue risks alienating and offending the remaining groups and makes it easier for that group to be accused of bringing undue pressure to be recognised as the rightful owners.
Open disputes over which aboriginal people have rights to the area surrounding the site adds to the confusion.
Tweed Daily News- News Article.Rewriting region's history
by Peter Caton . 18th May 2010. MURWILLUMBAH farmer and descendent of one of the district’s oldest pioneering families James McKenzie has taken to battle to change what he and some Aboriginal Elders believe to be false history to neighbouring Byron Shire Council.
Mr McKenzie and Harry Boyd, who have been trying to get Tweed Shire Council to ditch references to the Bundjalung people as early custodians of the shire, last week took their argument to Byron councillors. |
Mr McKenzie told them the Aboriginal nations known as Arakwal and Bundjalung are a fiction, based on racist European versions of history and language.
He said the true identities of the people of the region had been removed as a result of this “false cultural information” and the Byron Bay Arakwal have assumed a false identity, based on an historical fabrication. The Arakwal people never existed, Mr McKenzie said, an argument which would invalidate agreements signed with the Arakwal people by NSW National Parks and Byron Shire, which he said “rub out the Ngaraakwal, Nerackbul and Gindvul people”. Mr Boyd told Byron councillors said the term “Bundjalung” was made up by white men, misconstrued from linguists’ descriptions of the Banjalang dialect chain. McKenzie claimed there was no Bundjalung nation, tribe, people, language, culture, clan, nor horde. “No Bundjalung anything,” he said. The two men want to see a parliamentary inquiry “into the scandals and the politicians involved”. |
Letters to the Editor of the Tweed Echo – 02/04/2009. Disputing claims of rights by certain Aboriginal groups
There is further dispute on who can claim to be the traditional owners of the land that Australia's Stonehenge sits upon.
The article Details why many local Sovereign People believe that the Bundjalung of Byron Bay Aboriginal Corporation (Arakwal), established in 1996, is fictional and made up by whites.
Image taken from an Article 'First People of Brunswick' by the Brunswick Valley Historical Society.
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Here is the PDF of the article. 'First People of Brunswick' for download.
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Today, Norman Tindale, the Anthropologist whose work gave government recognition to those who claim heritage to the land that holds the stones, is widely recognised for making several errors which have negatively impacted the land rights of tribes across Australia.
Tindale's outdated attitudes to Sovereign People have meant that government websites, such as that for The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) to urge visitors treat his work with caution.
This is what is displayed at https://aiatsis.gov.au/
"WARNING: Tindale, like many anthropologists/scientists from the 1920s and 30s was very interested in ‘caste’, the ‘admixture of Aboriginal and European blood’, and therefore his notes may contain racist and offensive language."
Aboriginal woman Ali Gumillya Baker has recently, in the article, 'Camping in the shadow of the racist text' described Tindal's racist theories that aboriginal's personality could be determined by bumps on the head, (phrenology) Baker has asked the plaster casts of her relative's skulls, made by Tindal in the 1950's and taken without permission, be returned to her. Despite Tindal's disrespectful practises upon the dead, who has rights over Australia's Stonehenge, and what is thought to be 28,000 words of language built into its formation, rests on his determination of language boundaries.
Tindale's outdated attitudes to Sovereign People have meant that government websites, such as that for The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) to urge visitors treat his work with caution.
This is what is displayed at https://aiatsis.gov.au/
"WARNING: Tindale, like many anthropologists/scientists from the 1920s and 30s was very interested in ‘caste’, the ‘admixture of Aboriginal and European blood’, and therefore his notes may contain racist and offensive language."
Aboriginal woman Ali Gumillya Baker has recently, in the article, 'Camping in the shadow of the racist text' described Tindal's racist theories that aboriginal's personality could be determined by bumps on the head, (phrenology) Baker has asked the plaster casts of her relative's skulls, made by Tindal in the 1950's and taken without permission, be returned to her. Despite Tindal's disrespectful practises upon the dead, who has rights over Australia's Stonehenge, and what is thought to be 28,000 words of language built into its formation, rests on his determination of language boundaries.
The Dispute & Tindale's Aboriginal Invaders Theory.
Ironically, Norman Tindale, whose studies on Aboriginal racial distribution and language, is what is cited when the government determined which Sovereign people could claim ownership of local land, is partly responsible for the The Barrinean hypothesis.
This is the highly controversial theory that Aboriginal people invaded Australia and wiped out an pre-existing population. If the theory is valid then these Pre-Aboriginal people may have been the original owners and builders of Australia's Stonehenge, particularly if the site is more than 50,000 years old, as some experts have suggested.
Of the contentious theory, that interested Tindale and brought him to Queensland to research and measure tribes, Wikipedia says it was one,
"which posited that Australia had been populated by 3 successive waves of peoples. Supposedly these were the remnants of the hypothetical first wave of peoples to enter Australia, who were then thrust aside by further immigrations, successively undertaken by two distinct peoples with a superior hunting technology."
Bizarrely, the very same expert, that was used to determine land rights for the Arakwal People over where Australia's Stonehenge is located, also argued that the Aboriginal People invaded the continent and eradicated a prior race of Australians.,
Further details can be found in the paper, Out of Australia not Africa? by Theodore Braidwood Irwin, at this Facebook website. Irwin's paper tells the following about the tribes, found not far on a continental scale, from Australia's Stonehenge that Tindale examined,
"Tindale and Birdsell concluded they were not just small but were radically unlike any other Aborigines in Australia. They named them Barrineans, after nearby Lake Barrine. Tindale later said:Their small size, tightly curled hair, child-like faces, peculiarities in their tooth dimensions and their blood groupings showed that they were different from other Australian Aborigines and had a strong strain of Negrito in them."
This is the highly controversial theory that Aboriginal people invaded Australia and wiped out an pre-existing population. If the theory is valid then these Pre-Aboriginal people may have been the original owners and builders of Australia's Stonehenge, particularly if the site is more than 50,000 years old, as some experts have suggested.
Of the contentious theory, that interested Tindale and brought him to Queensland to research and measure tribes, Wikipedia says it was one,
"which posited that Australia had been populated by 3 successive waves of peoples. Supposedly these were the remnants of the hypothetical first wave of peoples to enter Australia, who were then thrust aside by further immigrations, successively undertaken by two distinct peoples with a superior hunting technology."
Bizarrely, the very same expert, that was used to determine land rights for the Arakwal People over where Australia's Stonehenge is located, also argued that the Aboriginal People invaded the continent and eradicated a prior race of Australians.,
Further details can be found in the paper, Out of Australia not Africa? by Theodore Braidwood Irwin, at this Facebook website. Irwin's paper tells the following about the tribes, found not far on a continental scale, from Australia's Stonehenge that Tindale examined,
"Tindale and Birdsell concluded they were not just small but were radically unlike any other Aborigines in Australia. They named them Barrineans, after nearby Lake Barrine. Tindale later said:Their small size, tightly curled hair, child-like faces, peculiarities in their tooth dimensions and their blood groupings showed that they were different from other Australian Aborigines and had a strong strain of Negrito in them."
Up till today many Aboriginal people debate the boundaries between the tribes decided on by Tindale. Aman who not only was known for racist views but propagated the idea that Aboriginal people were not the original people. His legacy of arbitrary decisions still lingers in local Aboriginal culture.