The ‘Aboriginals Were Here First’ argument
by TheRealists ~ October 19th, 2009
I’m always confused when discussing immigration when someone says “Well, the Aboriginals were here first”.
My first reaction to this statement is to think ‘What does the fact that Aboriginals came here 40,000 years ago got to do with a debate about modern day immigration? Should I retort back that we were here 2nd?’
Facile statements such “the Aboriginals were here first” are often used to shut down legitimate debate, but what planet are the people living on that say these kind of things? The argument just doesn’t make sense.
Do these people presume that the opinion of people whose ancestral ties to this country date back generations should count more than the opinion of people who have settled here more recently?
Well, I have a little story for you. People’s opinions in Australia aren’t given more weight because they might have longer ties to Australia than another person. The Minister for Climate Change and Water, Penny Wong, wasn’t born in Australia; yet her opponents don’t run around saying ‘we were here first’. Why the hell then say “Well, the Aboriginals were here first”?
Secondly, are these people arrogant enough to presume that Aboriginals naturally support continued mass immigration? Do they presume that Aboriginals naturally support ever increasing numbers of people coming to this country? The person making the statement will often say that we ‘invaded’ Australia. Think about that for a second.
If we invaded Australia then I say STOP THE INVASION ALREADY!
How the hell is it in the Aboriginal people’s interest to continue this ‘invasion’ that began 200 years ago with ever increasing numbers of people?
Saying that the Aboriginals were here first is one of my pet least-liked statements. It’s usually said by someone who purports to have aboriginal causes close to their heart. They should get real and think about what they’re saying.
October 25th, 2009 at 7:26 am
The most obvious comeback to the ‘you stole this country’ line, when one’s interlocutor is not an Australian Aborigine himself is to ask: do you think your presence here is immoral? Would you be willing to leave this continent and go back to wherever your ancestors came from? Not one in a million, of course, would ever agree to that. If they were honest and consistent, they should pack up their belongings, give any real estate they own to the nearest Aboriginal they can find, and depart to where they belong. After all, anything they and their ancestors have acquired in this country is ill-gotten, stolen from the ‘Indigenous Australians.’ But none of these lefties proposes to renounce their Australian citizenship and relinquish their loot to its rightful owners.
No; instead they simply enjoy using the ‘you stole this country from the Aboriginals’ line on those they disagree with. And I think they are taking a perverse pleasure in seeing this country overrun by Third World immigrants and the culture they despise being destroyed. This is childish schadenfreude.
The next inconsistency in their ‘argument’ is that they imply that the Aboriginals were within their rights to fight tooth and nail to keep this continent to themselves. They imply that the British colonists and settlers were invaders, interlopers, trespassers, and that the Aboriginals were wronged. Yet when present-day Australians resist their dispossession, the Left calls them ‘racists’, ‘xenophobes’ and ‘bigots’, and the modern-day invaders are now the poor victims, not interlopers and trespassers.
Make up your minds, leftists: either the Aboriginals were wrong, racist and xenophobic in objecting to the colonists’ presence here, or they were right — but then so are modern day immigration restrictionists. You can’t say one is right and condemn the other — or perhaps you can if you are a left-wing relativist; they are guilty of holding double standards all over the place. Logic? Never heard of it; don’t touch the stuff.