ABORIGNAL NATIONS - NEVER WAS, NEVER WILL BE

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A common language or dialect does not constitute a nation.  Aboriginal nations - never was, never will be.

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The Aboriginal peoples lived in bands..  A band or horde was a small, kin-based group of perhaps 10–50 people. A band society, sometimes called a camp, or in older usage, a horde, is the simplest form of human society.  A collection of bands that speak the share a common dialect do not and have never been seen to constitute a nation.

 

Bands/hordes are distinguished from tribes in that tribes are generally larger, consisting of many families.   Whilst the Aboriginal bands lived in specific areas or regions, these hunter gatherer bands lived independent of each other on a day to day basis.  There were events such as a corroboree where bands came together for short periods of time.

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The boundaries between band/horde territories may be changing over time, in some cases they overlap at places along the boundary, and some bands can have totemic or Dreaming centers in a neighboring bands territory, which they are considered by both tribes to own.  There was also over time the reality that inter band/group war would change boundaries and conflict for food [in drought] would cause boundaries through force to change.

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Upon European settlement, it is estimated that there were over 300,000 Aboriginals speaking over 250 different languages and over 800 dialect - any dialectal grouping could have had less than 300 - 500 people living within its lands or boundaries.  This would mean that you would have possibly 10-15 kin based groups in any one language grouping - moving across a vast land area on the continent to gain food to survive.

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When the British colonised the Australian continent in 1788, neither they nor the international law of the time recognised aboriginal kinship relationships as constituting a legal nation or a state.

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American Indians and New Zealand Maori lived in tribes, were able to organize effective opposition to occupation and were sufficiently politically organized to affect a polity which could be recognized and negotiate a treaty.  The Aboriginal had not attained that level of civilsation.

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American Indian Tribal nations have been recognized as sovereign since their first interaction with European settlers. Aboriginals correctly have not. 

 

The United States and Canada continues to recognize this unique political status and relationship but the history of the American Indian is vastly different to the Australian Aboriginals.  Even during the American War of Independence, Indian tribes fought alongside the British whilst others fought alongside the US confederacy and French troops.  It was often efficient and effective for the colonies to enter into treaties with the Indians.

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Aboriginal activists have incorrectly embraced the term First Nations.  First Nations as a term became used in the 1980's in Canada to replace the word Indian which some Canadians considered offensive.  The term has seeped into government institutions.  The term is attempt to describe some form of unique sovereign Aboriginal nation that does not now nor ever has existed. It has been 240 years since the First Fleet, 120 years since the creation of the Australian nation and just now the activist have found the concept of an Aboriginal nation which they have stolen from another country and does not fit the historical context.

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The Aboriginal peoples lived in stateless bands.  This simply refers to the segmented Aboriginal societies, which lack a centralized state authority and therefore lack a clearly defined state apparatus.  There was no central government or co-ordination of the peoples in the operation as a nation, state or other co-operative and managed community.  An amalgam of stateless bands does not constitute a nation.

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Such an opinion was provided in the Full Supreme Court of New South Wales in R v Murrell.1838 Justice Burton stated "Although it be granted that the Aboriginal natives of New Holland are entitled to be regarded as a free and independent people, and are entitled to the possession of those rights which as such are valuable to them, yet the various tribes had not attained at the first settlement of the English people amongst them to such a position in point of numbers of civilisation and to such a form of government and laws, as to be entitled to be recognised as so many sovereign states governed by laws of their own."

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Justice Burton concluded on the following statement : "the several tribes have never owned any common superiority or any common bond of union, but have ever lived in a state of enmity with one another - their practices are only such as are consistent with a state of the grossest darkness & irrational superstition and although in some cases being a show of justice - are founded entirely upon principles particularly in their mode of vindication for personal wrongs upon the wildest most indiscriminatory notions of revenge."

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A nation is a country, especially when considered as a society with its own government, economy, social infrastructure .  Aboriginal societies had no government, no economy or trade and no infrastructure of any kind.  Aboriginal activism has tried to reflect the status of the American Indian nations despite the fact that the Aboriginal hordes never attained the level of civilisation of the American Indians.

 

In the case Coe vs Commonwealth 1979, Justice Gibbs stated : However, the history of the relationship between the white settlers and the Aboriginal peoples has not been the same in Australia and in the United States, and it is not possible to say, ...... of the Cherokee Nation, that the Aboriginal people of Australia are organized as a "distinct political society separated from others", or that they have been uniformly treated as a state. The Aboriginal people are subject to the laws of the Commonwealth and of the States or Territories in which they respectively reside. They have no legislative, executive or judicial organs by which sovereignty might be exercised. If such organs existed, they would have no powers, except such as the laws of the Commonwealth, or of a State or Territory, might confer upon them. The contention that there is in Australia an Aboriginal nation exercising sovereignty , even of a limited kind, is quite impossible in law to maintain.