Agreed Foxy,

In retrospect I regret starting this thread. That's why I am making no further comment on the main issue.

LOL DreamOn,

Supporting the Libs is not actually a criminal offence.

However, just for the record:

I have no particular attachment to any political party. If an election were held today I would hold my nose and vote Green since I think global warming is the number one issue facing us.

But who to preference?

I agree with the Greens that Rudd's ETS is worse than no legislation at all. So I guess I would have to give my second preference to the Libs.

So you're half right but the reasons have nothing to do with "race".

Well as awkward as it is I'm glad this thread is here. I think that for the sake of historiography that this painful issue needs exploration.

I didn't need any conversion but when I read Henry Reynolds and co. many years ago. I became deeply dismayed to read the scale of wrongdoing perpetrated by our ancestors against Aboriginal people. My heart was heavy with it for a long time. Years later I read some of the results of Windschuttle's investigations and I was angered because I felt that I'd been manipulated. I was annoyed too because I care about ethics and the practice of history.

However we look at it, many of the points raised by Windschuttle have not been refuted - many facts are beyond refutation.

http://www.sydneyline.com/Use%20and%20Abuse%20of%20Sources.htm

The fact that the Aboriginal people are here now is inarguable testimony to their endurance, struggle and the triumph of adaptation. There is no need for untruthful recording of facts and quotes or attributing motives that didn't exist.

If we consider the large number - like upwards of 500 - different clans or groups, spread over many geographically varied areas altered yet again by different patterns of settlement and so on - there would have to have been more ways of surviving than warfare. The drive to portray a warrior or victim interaction I think is a continuation of injustice. It seems to me to be somewhat like saying that someone hasn't been raped unless they've put up a fight.

The way the story is being argued now is one of over valuing conflict. No doubt there was conflict, but there were also adaptive responses like extending generosity to newcomers, quiet resistance; endurance in the face of overwhelming odds or individual threat and fear; integration; separation; attack; retreat ... persistence; acceptance and so on. I believe that the MANY ways of achieving survival have not yet been told. Not by historians anyway.

Maybe anthropologists have done more useful analyses of the methods and impact of colonization and the ways in which Aboriginal people - their societies and cultures, have survived it.

YOU WEREN'T AROUND WHEN GALILEO said the world was'nt flat,so I'll excuse you if you still think it is. However I went to school with aborigines who lived in flattened-out kerosene tin shacks on the river bank.And I knew black kids who could only get jobs when they left school, at the meat works.Some were ahead of me in intellegence.But I could be a Doctor or Lawyer or whatever.The church meant well and trained girls to be housemaids.Old Priests told me they had the kids taken from their mothers but they forgot to give them back!Skeptics can be good people but many have blind minds!

DIPLOMAN,

A point of order.

By the time of Galileo the rotundity of the Earth had long been accepted. In the third century BC, about 18 centuries before Galileo and about 17 centuries before Columbus, Eratosthenes had already calculated the circumference of the Earth. His estimate of about 250,000 stadia approximates to around 40,000km. This is quite close to the modern value.

See:

http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Eratosthenes.html

I am at a loss to know why so many people believe that educated Europeans thought the Earth was flat before Columbus or Galileo.

They didn't. They knew it was at least approximately spherical.

Thanks stephenmeyer, you are better read than I am!For the sake of a telling phrase many of us use doubtful facts in argueing our opinions. The point I'd make to those on both sides of this issue is:"Remember your Humanity, forget the rest!"Someone may be able to attribute that to the author.To be human is to be fallible.

Steven,a well argued case. I share you views on this subject and note the typical response of your detractors.

Interesting that people are happy to accept the Bringing Them Home Report without question knowing that those involved were not required to even remotely prove their cases..I pricked my ears up when Paul Keating told us not the question the findings. Louise O'Donohues admission under questioning by Andrew Bolt is a perfect example of why we should be wary.

One could go on.

Like you, I do not doubt that many hapless indigenous people had terrible lives for all sorts of reasons some of them directly resulting from actions of the white man/state BUT that does not make the "stolen generations", as currently defined, true. Many people suffered terribly in the old days just look at the kids who had their babies removed from them at birth because they were unwed - hell I was belted with a cane every day at school....where do you stop?

I have no interest in winning the argument, I am only interested in the truth because what we did or did not do IS IMPORTANT....history based on current political discourse is useless history. Why do people suspend their objectivity on this matter?

I am looking forward to Windshuttles next book which will be a forensic examination of the record, and I hope the standard of the debate improves, again in the interests of getting to the truth.

That said I do not dismiss some of the arguments of for example, Manne and Read who claim that you cannot rely only on the record...this is fair enough..not everthing is written down, but when they rely on anecdotal evidence it needs to stand up to scrutiny - they can't just make it up and expect enquiring minds to accept it.....I thought they came a poor second in their arguments last time.

Double