legal doctrine outlined above whereby, in Mr Justice Kirby's
words, 'it was considered unthinkable that any specific
recognition and enforcement should be given the societal
rules of the Aboriginal people of the continent', may be
significantly modified.

The history of the white settlement of Australia has been one
of systematic oppression of the Aboriginal peoples of this
country. Three beliefs, taken for granted by the white
colonists, powerfully influenced early European attitudes to
the Aborigines. First there was the nineteenth-century
anthropological belief that the Australian Aborigines were the
most 'primitive' of all human peoples. Nineteenth-century
thought was pervaded by evolutionary metaphors and all
aspects of Aboriginal life--social organisation, religion, art,
language, etc.--were seen as belonging to the most
elementary stage of human development. Even as late as
1927, Baldwin Spencer, the founding father of Australian
anthropology, could write:

Australia is the present home and refuge of creatures, often
crude and quaint, that have elsewhere passed away and given
place to higher forms. This applied equally to the Aboriginal
as to the platypus and the kangaroo. Just as the platypus
laying its eggs and feebly suckling its young, reveals a
mammal in the making, so does the Aboriginal show us, at
least in broad outline, what early man must have been like
before he learned to read and write, domesticate animals,
cultivate crops and use a metal tool.

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