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Windschuttle, history warriors and real historians : Comments
By Dirk Moses, published 11/4/2005Dirk Moses offers a riposte to Keith Windschuttle's essay 'Tutorials in Terrorism'.
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A recent book I recommend for an idea of attitudes during settlement is “My Dear Spencer the Letters of F.J.Gillen to Baldwin Spencer” http://www.biblio.com/books/2699507.html
Gillen, a decent man who says he prefers the Indigenous (he calls them ‘nigs’) to many of the white settlers, knows a policeman who participates in ‘turkey shoots’.
Gillen is an educated man who corresponds with a respected anthropologist. He was only mildly critical of these ‘turkey shoots’, and did nothing. The anthropologist did nothing.
This is entirely consistent with the way my father described attitudes of the outback people toward the Indigenous in the 1930’s. They detested the Indigenous people, thought they did not deserve to be on the land and thought it a cryin' shame that they hadn't all been shot.
These were not bad men and women. That was just the way it was and even more so back in the 19th century. Think about it.
Perhaps the problem is that you are imagining too much, that the settlers were good blokes just like you. They were good blokes but were still happy to see the Indigenous people die out, or be killed by not so good blokes