Well written and explained Graham.

Unfortunately , it doesn't fit in with 'Black Armband" history that comes from our educational system and is then repeated by their ABC , Fairfax and fellow travellers .

Great piece, Graham. I'll add a link to my post tomorrow.

Yes let's get all the history out there, replete with the (supported by archival pictorials) cannibalism tribal wars and genocide.

Yes there was a clash of cultures and attempted extermination of often very warlike and incredibly easy to offend folk, who presented a very real threat! And were all but annihilated because of that?

Yet in the midst of this endlessly gone over, dissected and embellished history, are some good news stories where people learned to live in harmony and goodwill.

Today cannot be about settling old scores or black armband history or future generations paying compensation, to the descendants of slaves!

I mean, Australia started its modern phase as a penal colony, people transported here in chains and forced to make the best go of their circumstances as they could, as disendorsed exiles in a strange terrifying foreign land!

Others came as indentured servants (slaves) and because they had no other choice!

Yes that has had a profound effect on the original inhabitants, who often came as second or third wave aboriginal settlement! Brought mass genocide and color code killing with them, forced marriage and child brides. And with fire sticks and hunting dogs forced those here first, and able to survive the (ethnic cleansing) onslaught, to flee all the way to Tasmania!

By all means let's get all the history told warts and all as a means of creating racial harmony! If that's all it takes?

Let's erect some statues of resistance fighter warriors, particularly those who served as diggers in WW1, WW11, And Vietnam! And conclude with a solemn smoking/broken spear ceremony that could be annualized on January 26th on Bennelong point!

And let's not forget, that many of our Aboriginal brothers and sister have more white ancestors than black! Then ask the sh!te stirrers to go back to where they came from!

We just don't need their (hidden agenda) divisive input/manipulation!
Alan B.

Refreshing and overdue, this article deserves wider distribution.

Both the Colonial and Black Armband versions of history lead to sterile dead ends, especially when so many of us were born overseas.

Britannia no longer rules the world.

Advance Australia, where?

It's out of fashion these days, but I'm a bit of a United Nations fellow, at least in concept.

Great article, Graham

For more information, see this article by Steven LeBlanc, Professor of Archaeology at Harvard and the author of "Constant Battles" and "Prehistoric Warfare in the American Southwest".

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2009/07/01/war-and-human-nature/

It is a safe bet that everyone on Earth, including the so-called First Peoples, is living on stolen land, with the exception of a few extremely remote islands. In "Constant Battles", LeBlanc shows, just from the distribution of language families among the California Indians, that there were at least 4 major waves of invasion into California before the arrival of any Europeans. And, of course, there is no evidence that the oldest group really were directly descended from the first humans to set foot in California.

Prof. LeBlanc is not an outlier, as there are plenty of other archaeologists saying the same sorts of things. Steve Pinker discusses quite a few of them in "The Better Angels of Our Nature".

'It puzzles me why we simply can't tell a history that
has never been adequately told in the first place.
Why are we as a nation so reluctant to face up to our past'

you mean some of the barbaric practices of the native people before the British arrived? Oh I did not think so Foxy. Some are to revolting to repeat.