1907 telegram: "Send arsenic...exterminate aborigines"

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Christ, what an asshole.

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Fun fact: Aborigines were originally classified as animals. See, the trouble was that when Britain ‘discovered’ Australia, there were already plenty of people living there; their laws prevented them from just taking over. The easy workaround was to classify the natives as animals rather than humans.

This leads to the terra nullius issue. It’s a bit tricky to admit that Australia should actually belong to the people who were originally there when the Europeans moved in.

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Did protector mean something different a hundred years ago?

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That would be easy, if humans weren’t also animals…

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So who’s Charles Morgan? Does it matter?

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You know what I mean, of course; non-human animals. Non-sentient animals as opposed to sentient human animals. They saw people walking around who didn’t have permanent houses, didn’t wear clothes, didn’t use money, ate bugs, and looked very different from them, and found it easy (at the time) to say “those aren’t humans.”

Also, apparently, “let’s give them arsenic and be rid of them.”

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There’s an enormously influential piece of literature that explicitly distinguishes humans from animals-- and animals from birds and fishes. Even if you, rather wisely, avoid using it as a scientific text, repeated exposure will reinforce this classification.

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More sad irony that the people who classify and treat others as animals only prove themselves to be animals.

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Forget it Jake – it’s Popotown.

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deconstructed that for you

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#I, object!

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In 19th century law (and probably current law too) they weren’t…

In the game of “what people got screwed the most” the Aborigines of Australia are definitely in the running for the top spot.

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Well, once they’re dead they’re safe from being harmed any further…

You should know, that since popo is from another planet, popo doesn’t recognize your silly laws any way.

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Wasn’t he the guy who played the Wizard in The Wizard of Oz?

Definitely up there with TaĂ­no of Hispaniola

The first recorded smallpox outbreak in Hispaniola occurred in December 1518 or January 1519.[7] The 1518 smallpox epidemic killed 90% of the natives who had not already perished.[8] Warfare and harsh enslavement by the colonists had also caused many deaths.[9] By 1548, the native population had declined to fewer than 500.

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All these stories are horrible. I hate hearing about them. The Dutch, I had read, were much less into conquering the natives - they were there to make money, not take over necessarily. Not sure if that was true everywhere - this was about New Amsterdam specifically.

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