Backbencher

Robert Meland
In my opinion Lecture one was mainly about the history of the native peoples of Australia and New Zealand both culturally and physically. It began with explaining how the Aborigines are native to Australia and the Maori are native to New Zealand. Following this, we also discussed the possibility of Aborigines immigration to Australia possibly 60,000 years ago or the fact that they may have actually always been there. On the other hand the Maori are much more recent inhabitants of this country they arrived in New Zealand about 1000 years ago. The Australian Aborigines are a nomadic culture, whereas the Maori are much more agriculturalists. When the Aborigines of Australia came into contact with the Europeans, disease swept through them with a catastrophic impact. (In some areas eliminating entire tribes of people.) This first contact with the Europeans came to be known as "fatal contact". This was the belief that just being in contact with the white people would curse the local population. This often was due to the less powerful immune systems that the Natives, had compared to the more resistant European ones.
This little fact that Fatal Contact can actually exist makes makes me look at the similarities that arise between all countries and their Native Peoples and analyze our mentality at that time. I personally found it intriguing how in such a short period of time a disease can conquer a civilization. Both in Australia and New Zeeland the people were hit with a powerful experience of death and destruction. I know that this is a fairly common phenomenon today because of my study of Native Americans and how they were affected by the European diseases and the ever so infamous “Fatal Contact”. For example, the Native American population was almost made extinct with the threat of disease such as smallpox and measles in North America. I think all of the material we went over in class brings up many important points and ideas that us as academics should acknowledge. One question I would like to share is do you think that the elimination of the weak immune systems was a good thing or a bad thing? My example being that if we hadn’t infected them when we did, eventually someone would have and then the same results would have arose just in a different context. Proving that the strong really do survive and those who adapt to their environments are the ones who will be successful in man or animal.