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The number of those identifying as Aborigine in Tasmania rapidly rose in the late 20th century.

My grandparents would never admit to being Tasmanian, but I think it's really great and funny. But I guess, in the past, Tasmanians just weren't quite accepted. You had that lazy reference to them being felons.

Nothing seemed to offer more striking proof to the late Victorian mind of the infernal truth of social Darwinism than the supposed demise of the Tasmanian Aborigines.

Since woodchipping began 32 years ago, Tasmanians have watched as one extraordinary place after another has been sacrificed. Beautiful places, holy places, lost not only to them, but forever.

Australia's arid western region, from the town of Alice Springs to the Indian Ocean coast, is a beautiful, haunting, but largely empty land. Dominated by the harsh, almost uninhabited Great Sandy and Gibson deserts, the region is known only to Australian Aborigines, a handful of white settlers, and the few travelers who motor across it.

I lived for a couple of years when I was 9 years old on beautiful Aboriginal sacred land in a town of a thousand people in northwestern Australia. It's where the Aborigines are still very connected to their culture, the Dreamtime culture. It was really quite a special experience.

Well, I think indigenous peoples have ways of living on the Earth that they've had forever. And they've been overrun by organized religion, which has had a lot of money and power.

Most Australians live in the cities on the east coast, where contact between black and white occurred as much as 200 years earlier than on the west coast - and where 95 percent of Australians are able to live 95 percent of their lives without ever seeing an Aboriginal face.

Australia has embraced migrants from all different races, making us one of the most multiracial nations on earth. Most have assimilated and are proud to call themselves Australians, accepting our culture, beliefs and laws. I welcome them from the bottom of my heart. As they integrate and assimilate, the disruption caused by diversity diminishes.

Do Tasmanian devils really exist?