It's a waste of time becoming a medieval historian

Originally posted by Reginmund I'm confused; the Aboriginies you mean? Prior to contact with the Europeans they were mainly hunter-gatherers, who hunted with spears and booomerangs. They did domesticate the dingo, but that's about as far as they got from the stone age level. As you may well know the stone age level is transcended with the adoption of agriculture, domestication of animals and the production of metal. All of this should be familiar to the Aboriginies of today.

People are not that linear. When a stone age culture suddenly comes into contact with an industrial one, it doesn't mean that the stone age aspects disappear. The two people are so different that niether side has an chance of understanding the other.
Both sides consider their way of life to be superiour and attempt to teach it to the other, both sides adopt aspects of the others (for example, your croc dundee sterotype is Aboriginal influence on the European), but niether side actually changes very much. The industrialised culture remains industrialised, with a liking of 'going bush', the stone age culture remains stone age, despite the face they ride horses around cattle stations they work on.

The biggest misnominer is the use of 'stone age'/mediaeval/industrialised society. It implies that one follows the other, and it does not recognise that culture is independent of technology, and does not end up in the same place.

The biggest problem with Aboriginal communities is lack of self-esteem, lack of purpose, and terrible moral. Caused by the invasion of their land, attempted genocide*, past and present injustice. Higher crime rates, including higher rape rates, are symptoms which cannot be solved without addressing the underlying issue.

*Literally. Under the Geneva convention the 'Stolen Generation' is well in the catagory of a genocide. It can't be claimed that there were different standards at different times either, because stolen generation policy continued up to the 1970s. Well after the Geneva convention was ratified by Australia.