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’thoroughly human*. The people of Pt. McLeay of 1914 were well
educated in comparison with white people of those times, and were
avid newspaper readers (Jenkin,: 1979:240, photographs, South Australian
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Archives). They would have been well aware of the ’scientific'
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decisions being made about them .
Such ’scientific' knowledge, that Aborigines were less than
human could be seen as supporting not only conceptual nihilation,
but also physical nihilation.
8.42 Physical nihilation
*
(i) Extermination
The countenancing of individual killings and massacres was
supported by the 'scientific' findings at the turn of the century.
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Ted Docker (in Reay, 1964:9-10) documents the attitudes of
the white population to AboriginesjWhich allowed the dominant
society to categorise Aborigines as less than human.
S1
The Advertiser, Adelaide 13th December 1909 commented on the
speech of David Ngunaitponi, one of the Pt. McLeay Aborigines,
in Adelaide,in the following way:
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But it was when the 'adult, David took the platform
and spoke of the tradition of his people, of their
knowledge of astronomy, their intimacy with the science
of botany, their bushcraft and folklore that the
audience gave most attention ... this civilised native
spoke of the similarity of Greek mythology and the
Aboriginal fiction (Jenkin, 1979:226) .
’David has astonished the professors of Sydney and
Melbourne by the breadth of his intelligence and
his capacity for absorbing knowledge, and he has
been a recognised authority on that branch of knowledge
known as ballistics ... He has always been interested
in mechanics. He made an improvement on ordinary
sheep shears which proved very promising (quoted
in Jenkin, 1979:234-5).
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Ngunaitponiwasnot alone in his achievements.
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