Talk:Aboriginal Tasmanians

Passages removed

• Recent research by the late linguist John Taylor suggests that there were four successive waves of migration over 40,000 years, classified by languages cognate with continental australian aboriginal language:

1. c39 000 BP - first migration commenced from the Otway/Murray River estuary via the King Highlands
2. c17 000 BP - new immigrants from South Grampians region enter Tasmania and displace Palawa
3. c17 000 BP - third wave of immigrants enter via the Furneaux highlands from Gippsland
4. c17 000 - 5 000BP - final wave of immigration via the King highlands from Mt Gambier/Warrnambool region

This is unsourced (b) Taylor never completed his PhD (3) I don't know where he got that from but it is prima facie an extremely improbable conclusion (4) we have 3,000 words (out of perhaps an original wordstock of upwards of 1-200,000) of different Palawa languages, whose independent profiles we cannot determine, and (5) making inferences from these ill-transcribed remnants as to topologically and temporally differentiated migration patterns going back 40,000 years is impossible. Ask any linguist.Nishidani (talk) 16:31, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

• In 2010, following protests that the construction of the Jordan River valley bridge that was part of the new Brighton Bypass would disturb a traditional Aboriginal meeting place that had been identified in 2008, the government agreed to an archaeological investigation, although stating that while artifacts would be protected, the construction would go ahead. Archaeologists excavating a 600 metre long section of river bank found a large number of stone tools and later estimated that the bank contains up to three million artifacts. Preliminary dating indicates that the site was continuously occupied from 40,000 BP to 28,000 BP making the site 6,000 years older than the Warreen cave, if confirmed.

Politics should have no place in prehistorical sections. Johnson and Mcfarlane's discussion 2015 states that this was media hype, that the guesses ignored rabbit borrowing and erosion that can confused levels, and that the Jordan river area was virtually in inhabited until 6,000 years ago.Nishidani (talk) 17:05, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 10 February 2019

Please change "Premighana" in the Visual Art section to "Preminghana". 114.76.102.54 (talk) 04:56, 10 February 2019 (UTC)

 Done Gulumeemee (talk) 09:40, 10 February 2019 (UTC)

Population in 1833 & 1835

From the lead section, paragraph 3: "by 1835 only some 400 full-blooded Tasmanian aborigines survived."

From the lead section, paragraph 4: "By 1833... George Augustus Robinson... had persuaded the approximately 200 surviving Aboriginal Tasmanians to surrender themselves."

I doubt that the population doubled in size in two years. Axl ¤ [Talk] 11:48, 13 April 2019 (UTC)

conflict in the information, isolated until british colonisation ? yet named `Tasmania` after the Dutch explorer, Able Tasman, Dutch, not british

`isolated until british arrival`, yet, later paragraphs say, it was named Van Deimans land by the DUTCH explorer, Able Tasman, after which, the state is now named, TASMANIA, why the impression the british were the first here (or the rest of the globe), there is likely other explorers to visit Lutrawita, but never made it back to europe to tell of it/maps of it (possible Chinese exploration also), perhaps this needs addressing and not so pro british — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:8003:1424:4C01:5499:1F59:CAE7:D634 (talk) 06:29, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

Good observation. I've changed the wording of the second paragraph to say "European" rather than "British". While Chinese visitation possibly happened, it's not well enough documented to incliude it here at this stage. HiLo48 (talk) 06:51, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

Palawa/pakana used as way to say 1st peoples of Tasmania ?

For those peoples who do not know our true, and Original,one and only universally used Language, I point out that these two words were extracted from the books, Robinson by Plomley & Joseph Milligan, & they knew nothing, so why are these words being used today ?

Here is the truth:

Palawa = Its mine, and these peoples ! Kani = It belongs to us I tell you ! Pakana = Its mine, I own this ground !

I ask my peoples to please use "The true words" for Tasmanian Aborigine's - "Jiwa,Mehopeha'na" First Peoples Of Our Beautiful Big Heart Ground, for anything less than that is "Popi,mehaber' disrespectful to the memory of our beloved ancestors;

Definition of Aboriginal

I am the last Tasmanian Aborigine with our peoples Original, True and Universal Language, and what is curious is that besides this fact, and my registered family DNA links, it seems that I remain unrecognized by the Hobart Aboriginal hierarchy that decides it. in fact in seeking recognition, I was deliberately diverted to the minister for Aboriginal Affairs in Victoria, {evidently a common practice} before being reconnected with the very person who diverted me at the Hobart office, I have been told that this individual will contact me shortly, and that was about 3 months ago,this is not the first time I have contacted this Office and been ousted; The reanimated language is heavily based on Melukerdee words - huon river area - there WAS NOT ONE LANGUAGE IN TASMANIA- WRONG! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 101.178.198.124 (talk) 02:50, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Palawa

This is a name used by a very small minority of Tasmanian Aboriginal people. There was never one name for Tasmanian first nation people. This has been created by a few to gain funding. Greed is the motivator. Check out "Palawan" on Google. You will find a pacific Island. My ancestors were Tasmanian Aboriginal people, not palawa people. 2001:8003:163E:4700:ED0A:48B7:B6B8:1B0C (talk) 11:49, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Extinct?

There are no full-blooded Tasmanians since the 1870s, their language is gone, their culture is gone, their artefacts and skeletons are in museums. What remains other than a few claiming Cherokee princess-like descent? I have read around on the subject but I am not sure whether it is even appropriate to not call them extinct, as it would downplay the severity of this genocide. See this btw. Synotia (moan) 08:11, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

As mentioned in the article (in addition to people with more remote or tenuous Aboriginal links) there is a community of people on/based in the Furneaux/Bass Strait islands off Tasmania, especially Cape Barren Island, mostly descended from Tasmanian Aboriginal women and European men. They are not full-blooded but many do have substantial Tasmanian Aboriginal ancestry, some being descended from several generations of half Aboriginals and one-quarter Aboriginals who married each other on those islands and developed a distinct identity. (Photographs of modern Tasmanian Aboriginal people of that island community and their way of life can be seen in the work of Ricky Maynard the Tasmanian aboriginal photographer, namely those depicting them in the activity of muttonbirding). It is not accurate to characterize them as having only "Cherokee princess-like descent". It is true that much of the culture died out, but some aspects survived and were remembered. (One interesting document of this is the "Westlake Papers" which contains the product of early 20th century interviews with mixed-race Furneaux islanders of the aforementioned community who describe some of the customs and elements of language they know from Aboriginal mothers/ grandmothers/relatives.). (The descendants of Fannie Cochraine Smith in mainland Tasmania also have documented Aboriginal ancestry but to a lesser extent.) There is in addition, as covered in the article you linked, the more recent phenomenon of people, from elsewhere in Tasmania, with more tenuous claims to Tasmanian Aboriginal origins, identifying and being counted as Aboriginal, likely inflating measured numbers. Skllagyook (talk) 11:40, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for this interesting reply.

There is in addition, as covered in the article you linked, the more recent phenomenon of people, from elsewhere in Tasmania, with more tenuous claims to Tasmanian Aboriginal origins, identifying and being counted as Aboriginal, likely inflating measured numbers. Yep, that's indeed why I had linked that article. That blonde blue-eyed woman Sonya Searle looks whiter than me, and she is supposed to be Tasmanian Aboriginal? I thought to myself that if even people like her are accepted as aboriginal, it's a sign of desperation of sorts. Synotia (moan) 13:22, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

I wouldn't necessarily say it's a sign of desperation. As mentioned, for a long time there was (and still is) a - though small - core community of mixed-race Aboriginal descendants in Tasmania who were sometimes referred to pejoratively or semi-pejoratively as "half-castes" by the local whites in earlier decades (and who often have a perceptibly mixed Aboriginal/European physical appearance, though to significantly varying degrees - as you can see in some of Ricky Maynard's photos such as these here [1], this [2] and in Ricky Maynard himself, and elsewhere including among the crowd of Aboriginal descendants in the first photo of the article you linked and here [3]). Common surnames in that community include Mansell, Maynard, Green, Brown, Beeton, Thomas, and Everett (inherited from their white male sealer ancestors).

I would guess the increase in self-identified Aboriginals could be partly due to the lessening in stigma associated with Aboriginal ancestry and the new discovery or suspicion of that ancestry by some, the possible existence of a sort of cache or romanticism linked to indigenous descent, and the existence of government programs and benefits for Aboriginal people in Tasmania that likely did not exist before, among other factors. But, as discussed in the article, some of the people with more substantial and well-founded and documented Aboriginal connections are suspicious of/worried about this new influx of claimants. And previously, as the article mentions, it was more difficult to officially qualify as Aboriginal in Tasmania. Skllagyook (talk) 15:02, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Another source is the work of Norman Tindale, who interviewed mixed-race Tasmaniamln Aboriginal descendants on Cape Barren Island around the 1930s-40s, particularly what was told to him by a member of that Aboriginal community named Cliff Everett (including a brief Tasmanian Aboriginal language song taught to him by his full-blooded grandmother) - having discovered this after a mistaken initial impression that nothing was remembered. Some of this (along with some information from Westlake) is discussed in a book called "Into the Heart of Tasmania: a Search for Human Antiquity" by Rebe Taylor. Skllagyook (talk) 19:01, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

As Skllagyook says. In Peter Conrad's memoir of growing upè in Tassie, he mentions that such was the racism about that people of aboriginal descent went to considerable ends to hide it (a bit like hidden Christians in Tokugawa Japan. It was a grave social stigma, now gone. The husband of a niece, with an iconic surfer's appearance, heard recently that his paternal grandfather was of aboriginal descent. A late 'admission' which enabled the wider family to celebrate the acquisition finally to a mug Irish-English settler lineage of seriously Australian 'royal blood'. The phenomenon of asserting an exclusive identity over all the others one has in one's ancestral lines is not peculiar to tribes. The B'nei Anusim for example, to cite one of numerous cases. Identity is not genetic, but a complex set of cultural constructs.Nishidani (talk) 22:06, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand the connection between the example of Tasmania and the B'nei Anusim, but I think it is important to recognize the different ways in which identity is constructed and expressed in different cultural contexts. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to understanding or defining identity, and we should be open to learning from a wide range of experiences and perspectives. Infinity Knight (talk) 12:39, 3 April 2023 (UTC)