I wonder if there are any about the Aboriginals in Tasmania ??They were totally wiped out by white settlers,I believe, the very last one,a Princess I think,dying in the 1920s or thereabouts. If there isn't a song about such an appalling act of genocide as that,then there certainly should be one written !

The myth/contention that they no longer exist has been a sore point among Tasmanian Aborigines for more than a century.

The women among them who went off, voluntarily or kidnapped, with sealers and lived out of view of officialdom were only some of the Tasmanian Aborigines who survived and kept their Aboriginality alive; it still flourishes on the Bass Strait islands and went as far away as Kangaroo Island, off South Australia. [For nonAussies, this would be like Poms finding Gibraltar unoccupied and settling there, which they did but as a result of conquest.]

Whitefellas, with their agricultural approach to ancestry, have often maintained that the only "real" member of any ethnic group (pick any American Native Peoples, Maori, "Englishness" as examples) are those that are "full blooded"; that is to say, their ancestry contains no other outgroups as far back as the ark. In US legislation (if I understand it correctly), this is set in concrete to the extent that, to be legally describable as a member of an indigenous group you must have at least 1/32 of your ancestry in that group. [For some of the smaller groups it is no longer possible to marry within the group to maintain such a definition and thus the group (as so defined) is destined for extinction. SOme might argue that as an example of genocide by administration.]

Australian legislation now accepts other criteria, including one's own identification as Aboriginal and one's acceptance by the group as a member of the group; ancestry has a role but it is not the sole criterion. On that basis, Tasmanian Aborigines are thriving.

While I'm on a roll, I suppose I could mention that the "tribe" concept was brought to Australia by British (some educated and some not) from Africa via North America. While it had some application in North America it had almost none in Oz, where decisions made by groups were (more often than not) made by negotiation. Sometimes the negotiation was more violently lethal than "consensus" but negotiation seems to have been "the go." The British, however, were keen on notions of leadership where one person was regarded as boss cocky and often regarded that person as "a king". They even handed out engraved "King Plates" to selected individuals to be worn as token breast plates.

The notion of Truganinni as "Princess" fits into that aspect of Britishness and had no functional relevance to Tasmanian Aborigines other than accepting her status as a seriously "senior person" and thus keeper of the traditions and lore.

End of rave.

But if you ever get a chance to see "Bran new dae" jump at it!

Cheers, Rowan