Listening to Robert Manne on Q & A last night, it seems that there are different sorts of historians: from what I have read of Manne, he seems to base his authority on passion and stance, rather than evidence – the ‘Stolen Generation story’ for instance. 'Feel' the rage, and you won't need evidence.

Talking to a young Aboriginal student a few weeks back, it seemed that he also dispensed with evidence, relying on what I think they are calling ‘narrative theory’ – that if a story hangs together, and seems plausible, therefore it is true. Again, you don't need evidence.

But what if historians also relied on evidence – in fact, worked with the evidence first and foremost, THEN tried to put together a story which accounted for all of it ?

After all, we’ve all watched enough movies and TV shows to realise that yes, all of those stories are plausible –otherwise we wouldn’t bother with them – but that doesn’t make every one of them ‘true’: we’re pretty sure, in fact, that the events in a Die Hard movie or Katherine Heigl romance haven’t actually happened.

So surely evidence is what counts ? Even if, ESPECIALLY if, it is hard to make sense of ? If it contradicts what we have always assumed ?

And if something did actually happen, we surely have to ask ourselves ‘What would we expect to see, if this story WERE true ?’

And if there is no evidence, surely we should suspend our belief, until some can be found ? Surely students have to have a more solid, reliable foundation for understanding history than passion, stance and plausibility ?

[TBC]

[contd]

For example, the Rabbit-Proof fence story: IF it were true, that three little girls walked a thousand miles, in late-Winter-to-early-Summer in inland Western Australia, in 1931, what might we expect to see in terms of tangible evidence ? How were they fed, for instance ? How did they pass those bitterly cold nights ?

Well, at the time, there was a Conservative government, but the West Australian newspaper was strongly pro-Labor, sniping at the government all the time. If anybody was helping those girls, they may have let the local newspaper, or the West Australian, know and they would have had a team of reporters up there like a shot.

As well, a very left-wing observer of Indigenous affairs, Mrs Mary Bennett, was always on the back of the Protector, that nasty man played by Kenneth Branagh in the movie.

So, if news of this miraculous escape got out, from the back-blocks of WA to Perth, shouldn’t we expect to see something in the West Australian ? They had a brilliant young reporter at the time named Paul Hasluck, very pro-Aboriginal. So is there anything in the West Australian of the time ? Any reports of Police or Rabbit Department (yes, there was) staff moving up along the fence, staying st this hotel, then that one ?

Nothing.

Labor won the elections in 1932 and set up a Royal Commission into Aboriginal Affairs (the Moseley commission). It reported in 1934, but nothing about this ‘story’ appears in its final report. Mrs Bennett never wrote anything about it either. Neither did Hasluck in his memoirs.

[TBC]

Dear Loudmouth,

There seems to be a growing awareness that some with influence in the public domain embrace a different type of intellect. That intellect has nothing to do with real life and is more to do with how they feel life should be. Their key attributes seem to be precisely as you describe, they “feel the emotion” rather than the reality, every issue needs to be seen through their perception and their ideology.

This is manifest in a huge range of pseudo-realities that much of our society has previously not observed. This has resulted in much of our political debate being promoted by those for whom we never voted.

The pseudo-intellectualized argument behind many academics is a classical attribute of those who try to “socialize” everything. This is just another example of academic “narrative theory”.

For good or ill, the major intellectual and social events of recent centuries, has been the progress of science and education in the transformation of the world. This has produced much anxiety and possibly some vocational envy amongst the humanities academia and the products of their doctrine, the political elites and regulating class.

Humanities academia, political elites and today’s pseudo intelligentsia (copy cat wannabe’s) are naturally unhappy to recognize the centrality of these developments to our culture, to be constantly reminded of the importance of the unattainably different level of rigor and sophistication prevailing in subjects they don’t understand.

“The socialization of our culture and our perceptions requires the assumption that these are a part of our life that must be re-interpreted or criticized by humanities as part of the view that their educated minds may inspect on our behalf and pontificate for the benefit of lesser minds and humanity itself.

The process of socializing adopts a strategy of “narrative theory” which treats philosophy, sociology, science, history and literature, as simply a different mode of story telling and therefore opened these topics up by rhetoric to “interpretation” or the creation of objective truth.” The Eunuch at The Orgy, Raymond Tallis.

I hope you get more traction than I’ve been able to get with this.

[contd]

I've been typing up the correspondence of the Protector of Aborigines here in South Australia, starting in 1840 and going up to 1908 - eight thousand letters so far.

So far, I have found no unambiguous evidence of 'herding people onto Missions', or 'driving people off their lands', or 'stealing great numbers of children'. Of course, one may say, you wouldn't expect him to write anything like that, would he. Indeed, but he DOES often write counter-factually, advising or recommending what would go right against these notions.

For example, on many occasions, an old man or woman on a station needs to be looked after - he asks the lessee to ask the person if they want to go to a Mission to be better cared for there, but they say no, they want to stay on their land, so he arranges for the station-lessee to provide him/her with rations.

He provides dozens of boats, and fishing gear, to people on the Murray and in fact all waterways, even the Cooper's Creek, so that they can 'stay in their own districts'.

He advises a woman who has been living on a Mission but whose husband has been knocking her around that he can provide her with rations at a town near her own country.

He sends rations to one major Mission, but advises the Superintendent there that the rations are not for the local people - they have twenty thousand acres of good country and are expected to make their living from that - but the rations are for 'travelling people', people going up and down the country to and from the major town - they are to be provided with rations to help them get where they are going.

He arranges for orphans and foundlings to be sent to Missions, but if they know their own country and wish to go back there, he arranges for their travel home. One boy at one Mission is unhappy and wishes to do that, so he arranges for him to travel up to Oodnadatta and then to his own country.

[TBC]

[contd]

In the early days, up to 1845 or so, there are references to 'outrages' on both sides, and he investigates - the Protector at the time was a doctor - one reported massacre near Mount Bryant, which turns out to be the murder of two Aboriginal people, but he finds only one body. Deaths from such 'outrages' worked out at roughly equal numbers on both sides. One major massacre of twenty eight people on the Coorong results in two Aboriginal men being hanged.

How do we 'know' anything ? Surely evidence has to play a major part, not just plausibility and passion ? This raises an interesting question: why do we believe stories like the Rabbit-Proof Fence story, or stories about stolen children, or massacres ? What is the basic premise that drives belief in these cases, if people believe so strongly without evidence ?

The shocking answer is: because white people are b@stards. But surely, without evidence, this is a somewhat racist assumption ? After all, white people then are no different from white people now: we are them then, and they are us now.

My wife and I made the first Aboriginal Flags, a couple of hundred of them, back in 1972 and 1973. We were factory workers and spent our own money on sending the Flags all around the country. If you saw one back then, and noticed how wonky the gold disc looked, that was one of ours.

So I'm not some racist hick writing the above. I really want to know what happened in our history. Maybe then, once that has been done properly, we can get on with the business of reconciliation.

Dear Loudmouth,

Historic evidence depends on documents, archives and eye witness accounts. It is then informed by prejudices of the historians. Government archives are the most reliable source since governments need to know what’s really happening. They often are destroyed and are generally not available until years after the fact. Chinese traditionally wrote a dynastic history after a dynasty had been overthrown. Scholars of the old dynasty would get together with scholars of the new dynasty to write a dynastic history. I understand that China has carried on that tradition by having scholars of the current government get together with Nationalist Chinese scholars to write a history of Nationalist China. The history has been written, but I don’t think it is available. However, only the Chinese have that tradition.

Book burnings, tearing down temples and churches of previous religions, destroying archives and other means try to deny the past. Both Islamic and Christian countries have tried to deny or destroy evidence of their pre-Islamic and pre-Christian past. The Bible is a propaganda document – Hebrew propaganda in the Jewish Bible and Christian propaganda in the New Testament. None of the miracles could have happened, but including them casts doubt on the other material.

I took a history course in nineteenth century English protest movements in . We read two eye witness accounts of the Peterloo massacre. The accounts differed so widely that the two observers didn’t seem to be witnessing the same event.

Unlike scientific experiments history cannot be rerun. Sometimes archaeology or natural observations of such things as tree rings may give a clue.

IMHO since the evidence is so unreliable plausibility is usually a better guide than most evidence. In looking for explanations in general we can employ Occam’s Razor. That which requires the fewest assumptions is the most likely. Plausibility can be used in analogously in history. We cannot be sure in many cases what happened in the past because of the unreliability of the evidence, but it seems reasonable to assume that the most plausible is also the most likely.

However, reliable evidence should override plausibility.