Abostraya, a hotbed of science

The seriously silly science of making stuff up

When you are constantly being told your country is not yours, it’s because they are preparing to take it from you.

This is not South Africa in the 80s or USA in the 50s. This is Australia now. Bondi Beach, Noosa, Surfers or your local park could be next. Our politicians are weak.

Enough is enough. Enough of  this rubbish. Australia is for ALL Australians.

Aboriginals do NOT own the land. They did NOT purchase the land. Aboriginals are NOT a nation; they are family tribes.(Mobs)

Aboriginals do NOT have a culture; they have tribal traditions that include domestic violence and murder.

Every freedom-loving, patriotic and proud Australian needs to get behind this. Native Title is now clearly out of control and not in line with what was promised at the time. Well done to Pauline Hanson and One Nation https://t.co/7XmLsZXjUi

— Rowan Dean (@rowandean) August 12, 2024

Our peak science bureaucracy wants these “Indigenous scientists” to pair with their Western counterparts and, in the testimony of Indigenous academic Professor Bradley J. Moggridge, “have their knowledge seen as equal”. Each team should share their insights, “benefitting the scientific community more broadly, and Australia”.

But whatever involves the Aboriginal team must also be “culturally safe”. If you ask me, the process should also be culturally safe for the Western science team. Astrophysicists and cosmologists might need trigger warnings and a safe space if Bruce Pascoe gets going about Dark Emus.

The Department of Science sympathises with Aboriginal claims for their know-how to be “reflected throughout the [science] priorities, rather than as a stand-alone area.” This echoes the “Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals” of 2008, led by PM Julia Gillard, for schools to have three cross-curriculum priorities including Aboriginality. Some say the priorities accelerated Australian teens’ slide down the Naplan/PISA rankings of international student excellence, but that must be misinformation. The Department says,

To achieve the best outcomes, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples should guide research.” Aboriginal knowledge is to be incorporated into development of emerging technologies, “particularly digital and data technologies“.

How this ‘blak’ digital technology would work I’m not sure. Traditional Aboriginal maths typically involved counting to five, after which any larger number (e.g. of kangaroos or constellations) were just “a big mob”. I learnt that in the 1960s from linguist Dr Carl Georg von Brandenstein, who had mastered four Pilbara dialects.[1] If Australian scientists are to achieve a breakthrough towards a quantum computer, they might need enjoy the insight that they need to deploy “a big mob” of electrons.

Apart from Aboriginal input, the Department sees the Australian science sector much in need of climate change brainy-work and, of course, coddling by authorities against any mis- and disinformation. All us Australians are lamentably susceptible to mis- and disinformation, don’t you know, and need Big Science Department to protect us from it.

The departmental urgings were not derived lightly: the bureaucrats and helpers spent “more than 1,300 hours to shape and refine these priorities in workshops and meetings. This does not count the time devoted to considering and writing submissions and other feedback.” The feedback was “intended to re-energise conversations across the Australian science and research sector.

The far-left Academy of Technology, Science and Engineering (ATSE), with 900 members, is thrilled with the department’s program, which it helped generate. It likes especially the impossible net-zero targets and elevating the mysterious Indigenous knowledge systems, which “positions Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as leaders”. Its sister group the green-left Academy of Science (620 members) put out a statement by president Chennupati Jagadish which curiously didn’t single out Indigenes for acclaim although it’s geared up for years to affirmative action for Aboriginal scholars.[2] The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation came to the party with all atoms blazing, saying with a straight face

ANSTO recognises Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as Australia’s first scientists, navigators, mathematicians, and engineers. 

The Department of Science authors don’t spell out who exactly is an Aborigine these days (in South Australia a stat dec will now do the trick), nor what comprises this unique Aboriginal knowledge. To help “energise this conversation”, I’ll now provide some snippets of culture concerning our ancient land’s First Scientists.

PHARMACOLOGY AND ENERGY-SAVING

The Rev. George Taplin (1831-79) was Missionary to the Aborigines at Point Macleay, South Australia. He began outreach and education there in 1859 to the 18 groups of the Ngarrindjeri (he learnt their language) and “published invaluable anthropological studies which were much superior to contemporary work on South Australian Aboriginals. His papers on philology and ethnology were acclaimed in Australia and abroad.” The Ngarrindjeri were already dispossessed and persecuted when he arrived, “and by helping them become literate and numerate and to acquire trades he enabled them to survive and flourish briefly in European society. Today hundreds of their descendants remain in various districts of Australia; their durability can largely be attributed to Taplin.” Exhausted by toil at the mission, he died there of heart disease.

Read More