They’d have carried on with life
WHAT IF COOK HAD SAILED PAST?
IN reference to the question poised by reader Jack Tims (Letters, February 13) — where would Aborigines be today if James Cook had sailed past and Australia had not been discovered? — one can see that he is still living in the myth of Terra Nullius. Many of us have been fortunate in having knowledgeable parents and the teachers of history and science who all taught us that one cannot discover a subject matter if that subject matter is already in existence.
That covers one aspect. The other, should the Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander peoples be not dispossessed of their land, that is to say, without any agreement, treaty or payment, then they all would have carried on with their lives in their own rich culture, unlike the present hybrid culture thrown upon them.
Of course, they would have had their own political, educational, medical, social and other structures as helpful guides to prosper themselves in similar fashion that has been in their practice for over 65,000 years.
Donald Ramritu South Hobart
LIFE LIKELY AS BAD
EITHER folks do not know their history or distort it for their own political agenda. I refer to reader Mike Diamond’s answer to reader Jack Tims’s question about life without Captain Cook, where he suggests the possibility life would have been rosier had he not discovered Australia. I put it to readers that if it was not Captain Cook, then it would have been the French, Dutch, Portuguese or Chinese who would have claimed Australia for their own, and life may not have been any rosier under their flag. All one has to do is read their colonial histories.
History is not what you make it, or what you would like it to be, regardless how many professors regurgitate it, but based upon what really happened and provable facts.
Robert Cassidy Bothwell
RIGHT WHERE THEY ARE
REGARDING reader Jack Tims and his question about the Aborigines and if Captain Cook had not stopped in Australia.
That is a very easy question to answer. They would be in Australia ... right where they are now.
Rod Cooper Blackmans Bay
HERE ABOUTS
I THINK I may have an answer to Jack Tims’s question — Here.
Liz Webster Hobart