[ExI] "an aboriginal human from 70,000 B.C."

[Damien Broderick]

At 08:38 PM 3/23/2008 -0700, PJ wrote:

>I can guarantee that
>those who implemented the policy couldn't have imagined nor cared less
>what the Aborigines were thinking or feeling, because they were not
>regarded as fully human and therefore not capable of the same thoughts
>and feelings.

Probably wrong there, PJ, unless "less evolved" equals "subhuman" 
which I doubt was the belief. This was going on in the 20th century; 
the reasoning seems to have been that they were a "dying race" and 
this was part of a snobbish attempt to "smooth the pillow" under 
their doomed heads (as a phrase from 1938 put it).## Of course they 
were supposed to have no culture worth mentioning, and they needed 
Xian salvation, so it wasn't as if the abducted kids weren't getting 
a great heavenly and worldly bargain, whether they were to be adopted 
or raised in orphanages to be servants. As I understand it, the 
stolen kids had to have, or look as if they had, a white parent or 
grandparent (Thomas Jefferson, as it were, having dropped his seed). 
There's still a huge controversy about all this among historians of 
different political stripe in Oz, but nobody seems to think there was 
any denial that Aborigines were fully human (of a lowly and debased 
kind) and deserving of a decent Christian upbringing. If it broke 
their mothers' hearts--well, hearts and omelettes.

Damien Broderick

## A review that looks useful: 
<http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20080303/ai_n24370292>