Most of the arguments about Aboriginality collapse under any single definition, so it is convenient for those who label themselves as Aboriginal activists to prevent such a definition being made. Loosely the term is related to
The following definition is suggested
Of course over time, inevitable inter-racial breeding will mean that virtually everyone will be an Australian Aboriginal by this definition, but that doesn't stop it being a useful definition now.
Aborigines have been treated over time to genuine discrimination, theft, murder, and affirmative action.
Anyone has the right to give special treatment to any group at all. However problems arise when people are forced to pay taxes to do so. Some people consider it is their right to tax subsidization due to their religion or race. They feel that helping disadvantaged children is not to be judged at an individual level, but on the child's race.
It is difficult to understand the morality of someone who advocates a government organization or policy to help a needy child of one race, but turn their backs on another equally needy child because of the color of that child's skin.
And while Aboriginal people arrived before whites, this is hardly relevant to the modern day.
Every people, every nation, every village, every person and even every creature is there because their ancestors have defeated others. Before our modern concepts of morality, survival was for the competitive, and the fittest. Where competition was through war, then survival was for the victors of that war. Even the Aborigines were competitive, and the less successful tribes were wiped out, leaving the strong and the fit.
Examined through the view of modern morality dispossession, along with murder and theft, are wrong. Arguably this morality should have applied to the white settlers of this country, but in that case it is to also be applied to every nation, and to every group of people on this planet - including the Australian Aborigines, who were as guilty of any group of theft, of exploitation of their people - particularly their women - and of genocide of their weaker neighbors.
There was a war, and the Aboriginal tribes lost.
There are three factors which have created the Australian Aboriginal political situation: the war happened recently enough to be well documented; there were a large number of survivors of that war, and the descendants of the losers of the war are statistically poorer than the descendants of the victors.
If the Australian people are guilty of genocide, then so too is every person in every nation on earth.
Let us judge the perpetrators of that war harshly if we wish, but remember that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the sons only by the gods. Only the most racist of societies would expect a race to inherit the guilt of their forefathers.
If injustices exist to the current day then they can be addressed, not because of the sins of people who are dead, but to solve the problem. If we are to help Aborigines, then let us help them if they are poor Australians, and because we want to see equality for all Australians, not equality for all and more equality for some.
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