blairbar: << You have no evidence CJ, otherwise you would have had great delight in revealing it to me >>

I'm in a similar position as Aka, though for different reasons. Through my professional position at the time, I came to know several TSI people in NQ in the 1980s who had been removed from their communities and relocated to Aboriginal missions on the mainland and Palm Island. Obviously, I can't name them - however, that's why I'm so certain that such cases exist.

You ignore my point that the PM's Apology had to include TSI victims of the Stolen Generations, even if they are relatively fewer in number than Aboriginal people. Of course, in the first half of the 20th century when the LMS was busily indoctrinating Islanders, the Queensland government made no distinction between Aborigines and Islanders.

I don't think Aka's responses to your denialism are "impertinent" or "spiteful". Rather, I think your comments to her are very paternalistic. Do you talk to your wife the same way?

Joe Lane/Loudmouth - thanks for explaining your position and motivation. However, even if your claims about Raukkan are true, that doesn't negate the experience of Aboriginal victims of the Stolen Generations from hundreds of other missions and communities. Yes, there have been several instances of exaggeration and embellishment by Indigenous advocates, but they don't negate the veracity of the majority of claims.

individual: << I do understand, I understand it all very well >>

No, you think you understand, apparently with next to no knowledge of the circumstances under which the benighted communities from which you earn your living came to be. I've met many racists like you in NQ, who claim to be experts in Indigenous matters because they visit Aboriginal communities regularly, but when you scratch the surface all they have done is to find confirmation of their own prejudices.

For example, what do you understand by the term 'wrong marriage' and how it pertains to families in Aboriginal communities?

Also, what remedies have you proposed? I can't recall any.

Further, all this denialism by non-Indingenous people of the Stolen Generations reminds me that I've always thought that, while the PM's Apology is a positive step towards reconciliation, it didn't go far enough.

The Apology should have been for the wholesale expropriation of Indigenous lands and the destruction of their way of life. Every non-Indigenous Australian has unquestionably benefited from the invasion of what is now Australia, while the vast majority of Indigenous Australians have been relegated to the status of an underclass by the dominant culture.

To have limited the Apology to the Stolen Generations opened the door for the kinds of mean-spirited revisionist denialism that is exemplified in Windschuttle's disingenuous 'analysis'.

Well there does seem to be some confusion regarding the Apology by the PM in 2008. Firstly let me inform you I was sitting in parliament when the Apology was announced and it was a truly uplifting experience particularly as being one of the Stolen Generations. The Apology was not only for Stolen Generations for all Indigenous people. In the apology it stated that "We apologise for the laws and policies of successive parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians". So this includes the assimilation policy and other such policies.
Debra Hocking

Thanks Debra and CJ (and those others who have approached this topic with an open mind -- I can count them on the fingers of one hand.)

It looks like we've got the denialists on the run. No-one here has any counter to my charge that Windschuttle's scholarship is less than second-rate. But, they're a stubborn lot, aren't they?

Cheers,
Cameron Raynes

Cameron - not everyone who agrees with you is intelligent, nor is everyone who disagrees with you an idiot

That's the fabric of our society, some believe some do not and some are undecided - you seem to want to label the undecided with the "do not believers" as being stubborn or whatever.

Good luck selling your message to the ones who already believe as insulting the non believers and undecided is surely not going to help your case.

Windshuttle can defend himself, have you tried writing to him personally?

He may not want to do battle with you on your terms or grounds

Hey Amicus,
Windschuttle knows of me and my work. He cites from The Last Protector in his latest book.
He doesn't want to engage with me because he knows he can't win against me. I've done the historical work and he hasn't. It's as simple as that.