  Just one generation ago, schoolkids were taught that Aboriginal people
couldn't count beyond five, wandered the desert scavenging for food, had no
civilization or religion, had no agriculture, couldn't navigate, didn't build
houses, and peacefully acquiesced when Western Civilisation rescued them in
1788. How did we get it so wrong? Here I show that traditional Aboriginal
people knew a great deal about the sky, knew the cycles of movements of the
stars and the complex motions of the sun, moon and planets. I argue that school
students studying science today could learn much from the way that pre-contact
Aboriginal people used observation to build a self-consistent picture of the
world around them, with predictive power and practical applications.
