January 26 marks the colonisation of Australia and the grief, heartache and pain that this has inflicted on First Nations people for generations. It is also a moment to recognise the ongoing survival of the oldest existing culture in the world today.
On January 26, 1788, Captain Arthur Phillip raised the British flag at Warrane, marking the beginning of British colonial rule on Gadigal land. This date, originally commemorated as Foundation Day, has evolved into Australia Day. However, this day also represents the start of the invasion, suffering, and dispossession for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The true history of these lands spans over 60,000 years, far preceding colonial times.
When British settlers began colonizing Australia in 1788, between 750,000 and 1.25 Aboriginal Australians are estimated to have lived there. Soon, epidemics ravaged the island’s indigenous people, and British settlers seized Aboriginal lands.
Though some Aboriginal Australians did resist—up to 20,000 indigenous people died in violent conflict on the colony’s frontiers—most were subjugated by massacres and the impoverishment of their communities as British settlers seized their lands.
Between 1910 and 1970, government policies of assimilation led to between 10 and 33 percent of Aboriginal Australian children being forcibly removed from their homes. These “Stolen Generations” were put in adoptive families and institutions and forbidden from speaking their native languages. Their names were often changed.
For many Aboriginal and Torres Trait Islanders, January 26 is a day of mourning, symbolising the loss of their ancestors, their land, and their rights. It recalls the devastating impact of the Frontier Wars, the ongoing trauma, and the systemic injustices that continue to this day, including disproportionate rates of Black deaths in custody, health inequities, and the desecration of sacred sites. Celebrating on this day overlooks these painful realities and the resilience of First Nations peoples in the face of ongoing colonisation.
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The truth about white Australia: The genocide few talk about
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The killing times: the massacres of Aboriginal people Australia must confront
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Indigenous kids are still being removed from their families, more than ever before
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Links To Resources (Aid and Theory):
Aid:
Theory:
I swear all evolutionary biology winds up giving you chicken-and-egg conundrums
Are the bees able to recognize faces because of their ability to discern flowers from one another, or is their ability to recognize faces why they can tell the flowers apart?
Did humans develop their robust cooling systems to support big brains, or for endurance? (Both at once? Too advanced)
Do social animals get big brains because of social living, or do animals getting big brains make them more social over time?
Don’t you dare give me some wishy washy “let’s find out” or “perhaps it’s more nuanced.” My big human brain wants BIG ANSWERS
Biology is dialectical pretty sure there’s a book on it
Only problem is that unlike human history, evolutionary history is so much bigger than human experience. It can be so hard to even know which opposing forces are most determinant in the history of a species, much less how they interact.
Edit: not saying I know better, more just that different fields of study in the sciences can involve very unique flavors of material analysis
It is probbably all simultaneously all the time. Bees are a social species so learning to recognize things is important. It helps them find sick bees and imposters. We also did domesticated them so that probably plays a roll as well. Flowers also would specialize over time alongside the increased skill of their polinators.
Yeah this is where my brain has to sit to get any reading on the subject done but I am only human, I am always searching for neatly packaged answers
The get bigger brains cause they are more social, evolution is a process not a static.
Ps egg is obviously the first
See I know that but it’s not clear which arrives first. It’s all about positive or negative feedback loops, so it’s hard to know where it starts. All we can reveal through observation and testing is the fact that social animals seem to have big brains compared to closely related animals of similar size
Material reality drives it (necessity is the mother of invention after all)
If you are a dumbass solo fishie, and couple hundred of your neurons cross that following other fishie of small size is a pog behavior, cause you don’t get eaten that often, you’ve done and gotten yourself evolutionary advantage.
So what you are describing is basically the evolutionary advantage that is altruism; it usually takes at least a few generations for it to really take root but when it does it’s like a cheat code that completely outdates the competition non-altruists represent.
However, what I’m still wondering about is what evolutionary conditions lead to altruistic tendencies appearing in the first place. Plenty of animals have existed in solitary lifestyles for a very long time without showing any altruistic tendencies.
So again I arrive at the question: Did they become social after getting bigger brains for unrelated reasons (lots of evolutionary change isn’t the result of direct competition) and become more altruistic as a result, or did these animals became altruistic first and develop their big brains as a result of that? After all, there’s a lot of evidence that a lot of the big brain of a social animal is dedicated to social behaviors, so it gets really muddy and frustrating
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Its not altruism, where did i say altruism?
Its collective behavior which appears in fish first without any care for other fishies, they just follow each other, and those who do such get advantage.
Pack of predatory animals get pack advantage due to hunt unevenness (random results may mean you on average eat every three days, but if you are solo, you can be starving for two weeks in that average - like snakes). Comparatively every lioness is a shit hunter, but by averaging out their successes and then further reinforcing by taking on bigger prey social behavior grows. Same for plant eating animals, social behavior provides protection at first (material reality of sabertooth tigers fucking you up)
You are right, I jumped to altruism, I’ve been using “social” a lot when I maybe should be saying “eusocial” instead, social to the degree that they become part of “superorganism” and “group level selection” study, my bad.