Subtle joys of Indigenous cultures are lost on Hanson

Perhaps the good Pauline Hanson should read (or have someone read to her) the observations of the noted Belgian anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, who regarded Australian Aboriginal societies as having some of the most intellectually complex and elegant kinship and social systems in human history, famously admiring the “crystalline beauty” of their structures (“ Jacinta Price turns on Pauline Hanson over ‘primitive’ Indigenous comments ” September 15). He also noted that while Western observers often misjudged Aboriginal groups as “backwards” in their material economy, their marriage rules and social category systems represented an advanced form of “social mathematics”. Ryszard Linkiewicz, Woolooware

By erroneously labelling Indigenous Australians as “primitive”, Pauline Hanson exposes her own ignorance. Aboriginal peoples developed sophisticated lightweight technologies adapted to the Australian environment and their particular survival needs. The absence of wheeled transport was not evidence of primitiveness: there were no large, domesticated animals in Australia to pull wheeled vehicles, making the wheel impractical for transport. I learnt this basic fact in primary school. John Berry, Cammeray

No doubt Barnaby Joyce will come out and explain that Pauline didn’t mean anything racist or nasty and that she’s been misunderstood again – just another “good cop, bad cop” show put on by these two. Hanson makes the outrageous, often racist statements, sometimes coloured with blasphemy and always insulting, then good old Joyce (who is not Jesus) has to step up, attempt to calm the waters and explain what Hanson really meant to say or how she has been misrepresented. If it wasn’t all so nasty, ugly and serious, it would be laughable, and yet these two could in theory be our PM and deputy PM in 2028. Please, all of you decent people out there, see and recognise what these two politicians and their One Nation party really stand for, the danger they represent for our nation, then call them out and reject them outright. Ken Butler, Mount Colah

Hanson’s comments about Indigenous Australians shines a light on her and her party’s white supremacist ideology. Firstly, the Sumerians of the Middle East are accredited with inventing the wheel, not “white” Europeans like she seems to think. Many civilisations didn’t have the wheel. Secondly, Australia’s Indigenous people had a complex understanding of aerodynamics for thousands of years, evidenced by the boomerang, something European science didn’t understand until the 20th century. So should First Nations Australians consider us whites backward? The racist diatribe of Hanson and the like must be dismantled with facts before it becomes considered a truth. David Schmidt, Fairy Meadow

Aboriginal Australians invented the boomerang, a remarkable object that returns to the thrower. Thousands of years later, US aircraft manufacturers studied it in amazement and used some of its aerodynamic properties in their designs. Then there was the innovative woomera, which allowed the user to throw a spear three times the distance achieved by hand. The didgeridoo is quite possibly the first wind instrument invented.