Fiat Lux

Now, let's ponder today's Implausible History, shall we? 40,000 years ago early humans arrived on Australia. It was a continent without placental mammals, of which Homo sapiens was for the longest time the premier example of. So....the ancestors of the Arrente and the Pama-Nyungan and the Palawa get here. They survive 40,000 years and form about 500+ languages, sui generis, with the unique reality of inventing the nation-state long before Europe ever decided that was a brilliant failure to try. These Australian tribes are everywhere....when along comes a floating island on the sea, and Australia's version of Christopher Columbus starts the American process with Aboriginal Australians.

What makes this so implausible is that 1) they survived with cultures that date 40,000 years. No other culture on the planet, with exceptions for the Andaman Islanders and the Negritos of Southeast Asia, is a potential rival for these guys, and 2) nobody actually stopped to wonder if they mattered. Indians were different, people did negotiate with them, and promptly stole the land before the ink was dry, but still....even in South Africa, Terra Nullius could not quite have happened. But Aborigines were the victim of racism and dispossession, and now they've a good grievance, but nobody cares. Sad, ain't it?

While the inauguration of Barack Obama as the next leader of the United States is an awe-inspiring moment, and hats off to the new POTUS, BTW....I would like to remind people of a few realities we often tend to forget:

All inhabitants of all continents are not truly "native" as such. The Native Europeans are groups like the Mari and the Udmurts and the Euskera and the Sami. The Native Indians are the Adivasi such as the Sora, the Onge, and the Jarawa. The native East Asians are groups like the Ainu, the Ati, the Kavalan, and the Paiwan, and the native North Asians are the groups such as the Nenets, the Tuvans, the Samoyeds, and the Yukhaghirs now under Russian rule, as they have been for quite some time. Then, there are the indigenous African peoples who speak languages such as Efe, Twa, Juu, and Hoan. And of course, there are the more familiar Indigenous peoples such as the Wurundjeri, the Arrente, and the Yolgnu of Australia, and groups like the Jivaro, the Lumbee, the Klamath, the Lakota-Dakota-Nakota, the Najavo, the Muskogees, and the Apaches, and further south, the Yanomamo, the Quechua, the Nahua, the Mapuche, and the Fuegians.

Effectively, all continents have been stolen from others. That the Australian and American continents should have been stolen as blatantly and recently as they were is horrible and cruel, but all the same....it is just one of an endless series of stolen continents. When people start talking about giving the Basques their own countries...or the Nenets and the Ainu theirs...then might justice be done for Natchez and and the Nez Perce. It's shameful to say that it will hardly be done otherwise....