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.

Now I seem to recall that I've got a bunch of literature of myth verses fact in Australian history somewhere around here in some books left over from My History units at uni (a long time ago)...I will look them up.

I seem to recall amongst them was one of the "Simpson and his Donkey" - not that it was completely a myth, but that both Simpson and his exploits were embroidered for the benefit of the Aussie collective psyche.

David is right, that historians should always try to go to primary sources - and there's a lot of checking and cross-referencing involved to validate claims. Most "honourable" historians wouldn't dream of promoting something merely on the hearsay from "one" source, but seek corroboration from various sources and outcomes....and yes, there is always some prejudice (to a greater or lesser extent) inherent in any account or explanation - part of the human condition, I'm afraid.

Dear Joe (Loudmouth),

To study the past properly, it is
usually best to go back to what we call "primary
sources," that is, the original documents from
which historians gather together pieces of
information which they use to compile a theory
about the past.

Of course, the historian can establish that an act
took place on a certain day, but this, by historical
standards, constitutes only chronology. The moment
the historians begins to look critically at motivation,
circumstances, context, or any other such considerations,
the product becomes unacceptable for one of another
camp of readers.

We need to study not only what is in history books but
also what has been at times left out. If you find a
text book that is supposed to report the history of
Australia, and starts with the European exploration of
the Pacific Ocean, you will notice that a significant
group, the original Australians, the Aborigines, are
overlooked. Naturally, no history book can cover
everything that happened in the past, so the best thing
to do is to pick out what is worth learning and try to find source
material that gives the information required.

It is now possible to explore the past by means of a large
number of books, articles, films, novels, songs and
paintings. We can know a great deal about the history of
the Indigenous-Settler-relations.

But knowing brings burdens which can be shirked by those
living in ignorance. With knowledge the question is not
longer what we know but what we are to do, and that is
a much harder matter to deal with.

It will continue to perplex us for many years to come.

State and National libraries and their collections are a good
place to start investigating this subject. Amazing what
one can learn when one starts looking into archival
material.

David,

The point about letters and journals is that they are not 'revised' long after the event, not tidied jup - they are written and that's it, the writer moves on.

I've typed up the 600-page of the missionary, George Taplin, at Pt McLeay 1859-1879, and the same phenomenon can be observed - he writes, sometimes with obvious frustration, sometimes jubilant, and he can't take it back, whatever he writes,he' just too busy. No revision. What is written stands.

Similarly with the thousand pages or so of Superintendent's letters from the same place. Similarly, school rolls and birth and death records - no revision, no changes. There it is, and there it stands.

I was doing some work on letters IN to the Protector, which of course roughly correspond, in his responses, to his letters out. One letter in 1876 from a missionary in the extreme Far North complained about a new pastoral lessee who announced his intention of driving Aboriginal people off 'his' run. Immediately the Protector writes to that bloke, Mr J. Lewis, reminding him that he may be in breach of his lease conditions, which specify that Aboriginal people have the complete freedom to use the land as they had always done, to gather food and water on it, hunt on it, camp on it, carry out ceremonies on it, 'as if the lease had not been made'. That seemed to be the end of the matter.

Those lease conditions, by the way, were still in pastoral leases well into the 1990s in SA, and perhaps in other states as well: a recognition of use-rights, not ownership, to be sure, but full rights to use the land as they always had done - as also suggested in George IV's Letters Patent, 'to occupy and enjoy' the fruits of the land.

I'm not a historian, but I love the surprises that these original - unrevisable - documents throw up.

Joe

[continued]

By the way, pastoral lessees were often happy to act as issuers of Aborigines Stores, one bloke for forty years. They didn't get paid for it, but it ensured a ready supply of labor around the ration depot, sine rations were for the 'sick, elderly and infirm', and occasionally young mothers, while the able-bodied were expected to hunt and gather, or work on stations. In bad seasons, of course, even the able-bodied were provided with rations.

One little story: in the 1860s, people from around Lake Hope near the Cooper's Creek used to travel down to the Flinders for ochre, raiding shepherds' huts on their way back and forth. The Protector's solution: send two tons of ochre up to the Lake Hope people every year.

Hi Lexi,

In SA's State Archives, are some forty metres of primary documents. I've looked at about six inches of them. The Public Library also holds perhaps as much, as does the SA Museum, maybe much more. So there really is no excuse not to delve into them, if someone wants to hold themselves out as some sort of expert or teacher.

It's all there: do those 'experts' and teachers have the courage to check some of it out, or would they prefer to stick with their prejudices ?

Cheers,

Joe

Well you've certainly convinced me david f, that we should cut funding to all university history departments by at least 50%

Dear Hasbeen,

I am sure I convinced you of nothing but merely prompted you to restate a previous prejudice.

Dear Loudmouth,

If you can get an original unedited document that’s great. However, as we go back further back in the past that becomes more difficult. An example of that is the writings of Josephus who chronicled events in ancient Israel. Since there was no evidence of the existence of Jesus outside of the Bible Christian scribes supposedly added such evidence to the writings of Josephus as they copied them. Then other Christians would cite Josephus as evidence for the existence of Jesus.

Loudmouth,

I think its helpful on the issue of Aboriginals and their historic treatment to examine the mindset during Australia's early years.

We already acknowledge that history is written by the dominant caste - the victors. Therefore, it's not so surprising that written documentary evidence of massacres, etc would be thin on the ground from indigenous people at the time.

From Henry Reynold's "Dispossession. Black Australians and White Invaders (an excerpt of which was included in my uni reader in the course "Different Histories" which examines the very subject you raise here)

"The single most important feature of British appropriation of Aboriginal land was the belief that Australia in 1788 was a "terra nullius", a land without owners. This enabled the settlers to convince themselves that they had a legal and moral right to the land because Australia had never actually become the property of the resident Aborigines. This idea had become accepted legal doctrine in the first generation of settlement and it has played a central role in relations between black and white ever since."

"To Earl Bathurst, Secretary of State for the Colonies, from Law Officers of the British Government - 15 February, 1819:

"That part of New South Wales possessed by His Majesty, not having been acquired by conquest or cession was taken possession of by him as desert and uninhabited and subsequently colonised from this country...."

Starting with a mindset like this, it's not surprising that those "people" who did reside here, and who were discounted as inhabiting this land, would have met with grief in their dealings with settlers.

In the case of Wilson v. Terry - N.S.W. Supreme Court - 1896:

"The circumstance of newly discovered and unpeopled territories claimed by and vested in the Crown, on behalf of all of its subjects, are so widely different from those of a populated and long-settled country, in which the lands never practically belong to the Crown....have for centuries been owned and cultivated by its subjects, that a moment's reflection would present then to the mind of even a stranger. The lands in new territories are unoccupied and waste, until granted by the crown to some individual willing to claim them from a state of nature."

Again, why is it so surprising that their is little narrative or "written primary evidence" from Aborigines on what went on?

They were apparently invisible......

Dear Joe,

I can’t add anything to the history to which you refer, like many Australians, this history has been the subject of so much post modernist deconstruction and socialization that most Australians have become disenfranchised from the debate, which is what was intended in the first place.

What I can recognize is the way this topic has been treated by socialization and the narrative theory. Whilst it is not new it is increasingly recognized by many Australians.

The regulating class has adopted a stance that declares that Australians cannot be trusted with our history, likewise philosophy, sociology, science and literature. It’s interesting that we have social elites, academics and the regulating class who seek to re-write these topics in accordance with their perspectives and now they have assigned themselves the grand and imposing title of the “intelligencia”.

It’s also interesting, as evidenced by many of the responses you have received on this thread, that there is a similar under-class of those seeking to align themselves with what they perceive to be intelligent people, the pseudo-intelligencia.

This is an attempt to be seen as intelligent by parasitic referential alignment. They are so impressed with what the intelligencia has to say on almost every topic, that they wish to be “seen” as and respected for, their alignment with the regulating class. It gives them an intellectual “hit”. They are so impressed at being told what they already believe.

The defense of the “narrative theory” by which they seek to influence the proletariat, is nothing to do with reality, it is all about being “seen” to support something they perceive to be intelligent but cannot explain why they have become victims of it.

It is the association with the intelligencia that makes them feel righteous. It is classic fellow traveler by proxy and I doubt you will convince them that there is any reality outside their adopted ideology.

I think you are spot on however, I doubt you can convince the copy cat intelligencia on this thread, they don’t understand where you are coming from, let alone recognize the problem.

Thanks Joe for your balanced approach.

I have met some of the old timer missionaries who sacrificed heaps to help the aboriginal people. They were not paid like the Government workers of today. In fact many served for a pittance. I would like to have just a small amount of their sacrificial and servanthood attitudes. Often they have been grossly misrepresented by well paid Government academia.

Poirot,

Henry Reynolds had a finer take on land-use in:

http://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?collection=journals&handle=hein.journals/swales19&div=23&id=&page=

The British recognised Aboriginal people's right to use the land as they always had done, from the outset. This does not signify gthat they recognised land-ownership, whatever that may mean, and therefore the term 'terra nullius' - an absence of a system of land ownership - was used later, but perhaps not at that time.

But that raises the question: how did Aboriginal people relate to the land apart from their land-use of it ? They did not have any sort of system of selling and buying land, although I think there are instances of 'lending' their land to related family groups, and of exchanging land, i.e. exchanging land-use rights between groups. They certainly had notions of who could, and who couldn't, come onto gtheir lands to hunt and collect and gather.

Land law is an immensely complicated field, I wish I knew more of it. But use-rights are one thing, this fuzzy thing called 'ownership' may be quite another. What is 'ownership' ? Of land, by a person or group ?

There is a fascinating book by J.K. Meek on British Colonial Land Systems from which it seems clear that the British recognised people's perception or concept of land use and land ownership in the forms that they customarily perceived them, across Africa and in Fiji and India, etc.

So maybe the British, viewing how Aboriginal people seemed to relate to their land, concluded that customary land-use rights were about the only rights they had to recognise. Which they did, and their Australian successors, up until just a few years ago, by the way.

Certainly, in George IV's 'Letters Patent' for South Australia, he specifies the rights to 'occupy and enjoy', which it seems the authorities here observed until recently. Unless, of course, somebody has evidence otherwise.

[TBC]

Dear Joe,

Like I said, there are so many on these threads who seek to align themselves with the defense of socialization.

They have no idea why they “adopt” a perspective, they do not know why they have become captive victims of it, nor do they understand the lack of reality in the opinions they promote. For them it is just an opportunity to proselytize something that “sounds” plausible. They are not required to think it through, they are not required to develop their own opinion and they are certainly not required to offer a reasoned case for views of their own, mostly because they don’t have any.

This is the problem with socialization, it’s a comfort zone for those who cannot, will not and refuse to accept that they do not “own” the opinions they promote. I don’t know if it’s just plain laziness, lack of intelligence, bloody minded contrarianism or simple ideological brain washing. In the end it won’t really matter because all the re-writing of history, economics, philosophy, sociology, science, and literature are nothing to do with the subject matter, the only thing that counts is “their opinion of it”.

You will have already noted that you are “wrong”. You have been “offered” a completely plausible alternative reality, failure to accept this of course, puts you outside the norms of social justice and equity.

Cont’d

Cont’d

The pseudo-intelligencia is always right because they have the “most” and the “best” links. They have well thought out and best constructed defense because someone else gave it to them, the real intelligencia.

It would be interesting to see you challenge the pseudo intelligencia to argue their case based on their “own” thought processes rather than the ones they have adopted.

Why don’t you ask david f, Poirot, Lexi if they would be prepared to set aside their referential “narrative theories” such as;

Documents, archives and eye witness accounts, that have been informed by prejudices of the historians, Chinese dynastic history, book burnings, tearing down temples and churches, biblical propaganda, the Peterloo massacre, proxy tree ring evidence, unreliable plausibility, Occam’s razor, plausibility and analogously in history, corroboration from various sources and outcomes, prejudice, the human condition, primary sources, “theory” of the past, Josephus and the chronicled events in ancient Israel, writings by the dominant caste and written primary evidence, just to mention a few narrative theories.

If they could set aside these adopted narrative theories, I wonder what would be left or what sort of gobbledygook they would produce. At least it would be original, whacky but original. Well, when I say “original” I mean a sort of well constructed but borrowed, easy to promote, ideologically based, canned interpretation of the sort of reality that few can understand, except of course the professional borrowers of someone else’s opinion.

Dear runner,

"The Lamb Enters the Dreaming" by Robert Kenny tells of the first Aboriginal convert to Christianity. The missionaries mentioned in the book were caring. They believed in the biblical myth that all humans were descended from Adam and Eve and regarded Aborigines as human contrary to much of the scientific thought of the day which thought different peoples had different origins. After the publication of Darwin's work scientific thought mostly changed to accept that all humans had a common origin.

However, you are right. Many of the missionaries were decent people who did what they could to stem the slaughter.

[contd]

So I don't really believe any more that, at least in SA, people were 'driven off their lands' - far from it, the Protector is always insisting that local coppers strive to keep people in their own districts and he spends a lot of time organising free travel for people to 'return to their own districts'.

And if not 'driving people off their land', then maybe 'no massacres' either.

If one asserts, then one must prove. Evidence. Proof. Not just passion and stance and plausibility, not when there are immense amounts of primary documentation slopping around.

I would love to believe that the most terrible things happened to Aboriginal people (no, not really) because whites are, after all, so evil, to be one of the mob, but I have this failing of wanting to rely on evidence. Now that there are Aboriginal archaeologists, maybe they can organise a 'Time Team' to investigate notorious massacre sites, to see if they are genuine ?

I would love to know about vast numbers of children being taken away, for God knows what reason, (ah yes, because all 'whites are b@stards') but the genuine evidence is a bit thin.

God, I'd like to see all that. And if I'm wrong, wouldn't you like to see me climb down, to grovel for forgiveness, Poirot :)

Cheers,

Joe

Loudmouth,

You really do display an immature sarcasm.

"...but the genuine evidence is a bit thin."

I don't know why those Aboriginal girls at the mission were there being looked after by white missionaries (and I did sleep in rooms with them and do work with them and go to school with them - so they weren't figments of my imagination).

I don't know why the Aboriginal boys were in a dormitory in town being looked after by white missionaries - but they were there because we used to socialise with them.

Is that genuine enough for you?

( Btw, it was in 1974, probably at the blunt end of the practice)

Hi Poirot,

Thank you for your observations.

Maybe I'm not as bright as you think, but I don't know what you mean by 'sarcasm'. I'm trying to be fair dinkum.

I don't know the circumstances (or even the state or territory) that you are referring to. Give me a clue :)

1974 - I'm wracking my brains to even grasp where that might have been.

Kids in dormitories in 1974 - I'm sorry, I don't even understand what you point might be, I'm tempted to say 'Duh ! So what ?' - I think there may have still been a dormitory at Koonibba at that time where kids were looked after during the week while their parents went out to work on local farms and stations. Is that what you are referring to ?

So what are you getting at ? What are you suggesting that was so out of the ordinary ?

Joe

Dear Joe (Loudmouth),

Have you read anything by the historian Henry Reynolds?

I've read, "Why Weren't We told?"
and found it to be a must-read.

He went on a personal search for the truth about our
histor His primary research interest has been the
history of Aboriginal-white relations in Australia.
His publications include:

"Aborigines and Setters," "Frontier," "The Other Side of the
Frontier," "The Law of the Land," "Dispossession,"
"With the White People," "Fate of a Free People," and
"An Indelible Stain."

"Why Weren't We told?" was the Winner of the 1999 Australian
Human Rights Award for the Arts.

It is crucial reading on one of the most important debates
in Australia in the twenty-first century.

Joe,

You said...."but the genuine evidence is thin".

All I'm saying is that in the Goldfields in Western Australia in 1974, I lived in a mission run by a religious group which housed Aboriginal girls - not a vast number, probably around twenty when I was there. They were housed in houses, a few girls to each family. In our family the Aboriginal girls (for which I counted amongst, even though I'm not Aboriginal) did "all" the house work. However, the place seemed fairly well run, although there seemed to be no Aboriginal cultural input whatsoever.

In the town nearby (we were slightly out of town at the "mission") there was a dormitory for the boys, which would have housed perhaps slightly more boys than there were girls at the mission. from what I can remember, that was run fairly well too.

These children were looked after full time. While I was at the mission, I can't recall any family of the girls being involved in their lives, save for one day when a lot of Aboriginal people turned up for some sort of gathering - memory is hazy on that one as I was away in town for part of the day.

My sarcasm reference was in response to your "grovel for forgiveness" line.

The discipline of history is about teaching people values, not facts.
Just as one example take British History, most of what the layperson accepts about the origins and achievements of the British people is completely false, there were no "Celts", there were no Anglo Saxon and Danish "invasions" and agriculture developed there independently and perhaps slightly before it did in the middle east. The people of the British Isles and Ireland are all from the same genetic stock as the people who settled there after the last ice age, they are a remarkably homogenous race of people, not a "mongrel race' diluted by constant "invasions" from the continent.

All these stories about a "mongrel race" who were invaded and assimilated over and over and who gained all their knowledge from outsiders then set about pillaging the world were born of a particular set of values and political principles which originated in Christianity, they have nothing to do with facts.

Perhaps a bit of both, Jay, facts and values, and a bit of passion as well.

But the appreciation of history, 'what happened', surely can't rely just on gut feelings alone, or oral history alone. Otherwise, we are forced into the ridiculous position that whatever someone says is true, no questions asked, and that - in the big, wide world - nobody ever lies, or gets things wrong. Or forgets anything. No-one drops detail from an account, and nobody embroiders.

But after all, we do that every day, get a name wrong, or misunderstand what a story might be getting at. We add details, to make a story more meaningful, and drop out details which we can't really make sense of. Chinese Whispers.

At my advanced age, I'm aware of the power of forgetting and distorting, and I have to go back to the original to check and double-check details, and I still might get them wrong.

Another point: Aboriginal people may tend to believe that there is nothing, absolutely nothing, written about them 'out there'. They may not realise that especially back in the Mission days, their ancestors were registered, and recorded, and monitored, and tabulated, up hill and down dale, that there are references to their families and ancestors in many, many documents - Protector's letters, monthly ration returns from sixty depots down this way, missionaries' journals, birth, death, marriage, police, school and hospital records.

Down this way, for example, the massive work on the Ngarrinyeri by Ronald and Catherine Berndt included a hundred pages of annotated genealogies, incredibly useful and informative.

So, David, there is no need - in Aboriginal history - to rely on inference and 'maybes', or on secondary interpretations - the primary stuff is there, if people will only look for it.

Thank you, Poirot. What does it mean ?

Joe

Joe,

I have no idea what it means. I was merely giving you alittle first-hand evidence that it was still happening in 1974.

I ask again....why do think written evidence might be missing from the record of wrongs committed against the Aboriginal population?

It is of no surprise a all that these things were recorded merely in oral history, as Aboriginals had no recourse to writing it down and their culture had always relied on oral transmission.

Albeit that this sort of transmission is never going to be as accurate in an historical sense as that recorded in writing.

Seems we're still at it. Now we are to apply the Western standard of "evidence" to dismiss our invader/possessor past.

Fascinating.....

Poirot,

Sorry, WHAT was happening ?

I don't get your next point, that "... why do think written evidence might be missing from the record of wrongs committed against the Aboriginal population? "

Possibly because what you suspect happened, didn't happen ? That there is no evidene of something if it didn't happen ?

How do you know something has happened without evidence THAT SHOULD BE THERE if what is asserted is true ? What evidence should be available somewhere, if something did actually occur ?

I have a paranoid friend who won't believe evidence of something which conflicts with his suspicions, AND asserts 'evidence' to back up his position, which he claims has been suppressed. (I wonder if he's Arjay).

But on the contrary, one must take account of what may be 'evidence', and not rely too much on what might have been suppressed, or destroyed, i.e. isn't there. Of course, we have totake accounts - from either side - with a grain of salt, but there is a word for denying evidence in front of us, and asserting that missing 'evidence' has been deliberately hidden- and that word is 'pfrejudice', pre-judging without evidence, and ignoring what may be counted as evidence.

'Denial', if you prefer, Poirot.

Oh well, off to the Archives.

Joe

Joe

I have spent time listening to elders pass on 'chinese'whispers in some communities in WA. I have been told that 'massacres'have taken place in certain areas. Generations of people now believe this despite not one bit of evidence except for the pass down story. If I was to pass on some of the factual acts witnessed by missionaries in some communites I would quite likely end up in gaol. I can't see how anyone thinks that they can help to aboriginals by passing on myths.

Joe,

I get where you're coming from.

That Aboriginals in the early days of settlement couldn't record events in writing.

And that the white settlers certainly wouldn't have recorded anything that threw a dark light on them.

So....yeah, as far as white history goes, unless a white European descendent recorded it - then it obviously "didn't" happen.

Back here later....

Poirot,

on the other hand Poirot everything the white man does is bad and everything the blackman says is true. The reason the Prisons are full of aboriginals is because they don't commit domestic violence, don't abuse the children, are not drunk and disorderley. This is all in the white man's head. Just ask the blackman in prison. They will all tell you they are innocent. Your loathing of the white man is not very well balanced.

Grow up, runner,

I'm not saying that every story that emerges is true.

What I'm saying as that if they did happen, then they most probably weren't recorded in writing by the caste who could record them in writing and who was dominant.

And since there is now no written evidence, it's a simple procedure to dismiss any question of impropriety or bad behaviour on the part of the invading parties.

White people have been recorded as carrying out some pretty savage behaviour when colonising "undeveloped" societies.

But I'm sure it didn't happen here.....

: )

Poirot,

My point in all this is that if there is no evidence for something which is supposed to have happened, like Runner's mythical massacres, then you suspend your belief, until you can establish some evidential base, somehow.

But so much of what passes for Aboriginal history is precisely base-less assertions, which allows all manner of accusations to be made which really do need to be challenged - and which so much written material actually does serendipitously challenge.

And of course, there are other ways of establishing whether something may have happened besides having to have it, chapter and verse, in writing. As they demonstrate so well on 'Time Team', you can dig it up: if there was a massacre at a particular place, for example, we know from 'Silent Witness' etc. that there MUST be some evidence present, OR - so the forensic people say - something should be there which isn't.

More likely the first: that if a massacre has been carried out of, say, thirty people (the usual quantity), then that's around one and a half tonnes of bodies to dispose of. If they were all burnt, at a tonne per body, that's thirty tonnes of timber from the surrounding area, which would leave a lot of charcoal. In the drier parts of the interior, that's a lot of trees to chop down and use, maybe a hundred acres, and if they are mallee and grow again, then there is a hundred acres of fairly fresh mallee out there in one place, all about the same age. And most likely, the obvious thing to do would be dig somewhere in the middle of all of that new timber.

If a massacre was carried out, then - as Arthur Upfield showed in his first novel - bits and pieces, teeth, stone ornaments, etc. will be present in the remains, evidence of disordered burials, children's fremains, old people' remains, men and women, all jumbled together.

So evidence can be many things besides the written word. Either way, why believe anything without any evidence of any kind ?

[TBC]

[contd]

I guess I was bitten once too often by the Hindmarsh Island 'secret women's business' scam, by some of my own wife's people - in country so lush and bountiful that nobody every needed increase ceremonies.

Observing how people lied their way through that debacle, people I knew and had respected, observing them attacking their own relations on the 'other' side, for manifestly a white audience, and so viciously, disabused me of any pure and innocent holiness about each and every Aboriginal cause.

Not to mention that, in order to believe in the BS about women's business, people had to put aside all the stories and legends that had hitherto been the cornerstones of Ngarrindjeri culture. In that sense, the scam actually has hindered, perhaps now destroyed, the proper transmission of the stories about Ngurunderi, Waiungeri, Nepelle, how the world of the Ngarrindjeri came into being, and so much else.

Evidence, one way or another, written or material - not just hearsay and assertion and anti-white stance - is vital. Otherwise why should anybody believe or not believe anything ? What are the foundations of belief and truth other than evidence of some sort ?

Cheers,

Joe

Poirot, many Native Americans, though not literate in English were able to draw pictures of their lives, traditions and interactions with Whites
Here's a pictograph made by Sitting Bull:
http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2477/3597250709_d3d8b6a37a_o.jpg

We in Australia also have artifacts like Oscar's Sketchbook:
http://www.nma.gov.au/interactives/oscar/oscar_online.html
I'd be speculating of course but I'd wager the indigenous collections held by the various state and national archives are full of these types of documents. The reason we Whites know so little about our history with Aboriginals is down to what I call the ideological "force field" around the issue, not malice or lack of interest on our part.

Hi Poirot,

The problem - which many people on both sides, I suspect - have exploited, is that without evidence one way or the other of some dreadful atrocity, one cannot say yea or nay. We can suspect, but we can't be conclusive about anything, without some sort of evidence.

Take massacres, for example: we know one occurred at Myall Creek in 1839 in northern NSW - and nine white men were hanged for it. One occurred here in 1840 or 1841, 28 Europeans killed, and two Aboriginal men hanged on the beach on the Coorong for it.

Maybe people were pushed over cliffs all around Australia, and therefore there is no evidence - washed away, all gone. There are a couple of rumoured sites here in SA, at Moonta and Elliston. But how do we know ? How do we know it's not just some boogey-man story used to frighten Aboriginal people into submission ? That sort of thing happened, on Yorke's Peninsula around 1867.

Now that there are Aboriginal archaeologists, they may be persuaded to identify some notorious site and actually do a thorough search of it. That sort of thing is certainly not impossible now.

But without 'proof', evidence, something tangible that stands up to scrutiny, then it's all idle rumours which people are free to believe as they wish. But that's as far as it can go. It's not 'proof'. It's not 'history'. And invariably, in order to believe it, it has to depend on a prior assumption of motive, and usually in these cases, of fundamental white evil. But I don't believe anybody's fundamentally evil, not me, not you.

So I start from there, in my suspension of belief, and look for evidence :)

Love,

Joe

I have actually witnessed history being invented very subtly in my many Years on Cape York.
It is achieved by a community funding some integrity-devoid academic to write history. One was so blatant that even an indigenous academic friend of the academic denounced the writing.

Hi Individual,

That's amazing ! You mean that an Indigenous academic had some integrity ? I think I may need some evidence of such a rare phenomenon :)

We have to be sympathetic towards academics, anthropologists, etc. - they work with particular groups, and become captive to those groups, in the sense that they dare not say anything which puts the group - i.e. the elite, the 'leaders'. the 'elders', of that clique - in a bad light. So they become that group's bitch, sluts for hire. Well, how do you keep a lifelong career in those fields ? So we can't blame them for being sluts. They have to bend data, ignore others, invent some, to keep their careers going.

There is an interesting to-and-fro on this topic on

http://www.linkedin.com/groupAnswers?viewQuestionAndAnswers=&discussionID=251249296&gid=3451857&commentID=146009994&trk=view_disc&ut=0cg9hJBiZlURM1

All great fun !

Loudmouth,
It is my experience that indigenous people are selectively targeted for positions which enables slimebag bureaucrats to manipulate them to end. I see it all the time, some presentable, eel spoken character is picked for a top position to make it look like they attained the position on merit & bingo ! Suddenly all policies & decisions are made & approved by indigenous leaders as is portrayed in some glossy pamphlet & the manipulated & indoctrinated poor sods actually believe it all. Well, why not, after all the money comes with it.
Meanwhile this Labor originated idiocy is costing the rest of us more than we'll ever be able to afford & most of that money goes to ALP govt appointed consultants not even from Australia & is invested outside Australia. Thank you Labor for ruining the future of so many of us.
See at the election!

individual,

This doesn't pertain to you personally, but have you noticed, and it's something that I find strange, is that often the people who trumpet indigenous participation and success in accessing higher learning at places like universities, are the first ones to sling mud at academics and academic learning and practice.

Surely that must be a contradiction in terms.

the first ones to sling mud at academics and academic learning and practice.
Poirot,
I think it is extremely poor character to not speak up against wrong simply because one has benefitted from that wrong. The reason why people do speak up is because they have seen what's going on AFTER they have been exposed to those circles. As the old saying goes it takes one to know one. Without experience one should not remark but sadly too many do.
Some decent indigenous do get a gut full of the manipulation just like I do. Just because they pay you so they can continue the rorts doesn't make the rorts any less.
You say education but I call it indoctrination. Educated people don't say the things you say here quite often.

individual,

It makes me wonder why the people who criticise academic institutions and practices would trumpet indigenous participation in them as some sort of milestone or measuring stick for indigenous development and indigenous advancement.

(I'm not saying that you do that - just that I've noticed that some here do)

Poirot,
The only time I trumpet indigenous achievement is when I see achievement due to indigenous ingenuity & effort.
Placing some indigenous on a pedestal for one's own agenda is not achieving anything, in fact it's a down-right tragedy that costs us too much in every which way. The worst offenders are Academia & bureaucracy & they go hand in hand.
I have seen it too many times when some white bureaucrat uses an indigenous to pave the career path for them until they get their Super. The most despicable I have witnessed were in the Health System.
These "achievements" are then plastered onto glossy paper & become "History" in our times.
I recall talking to a Main Roads foreman who found some Cave paintings many years ago. In comparing his photos from the early 50's with high grade photos of recent it is astonishing to see how many more cave paintings are in the same picture area now.
Some of these became thousands of years old in a matter of decades.

Thanks for those kicks up the @rse, Poirot :)

A little learning is a dangerous thing, dearie. Indigenous politics can be very complex and very dirty. Let me try to explain - this may take my four postings for the day:

Over the past forty years, Indigenous students were able to enrol at universities without standard entry requirements in two ways _

* enrol in a specially-adapted, lower-level Aboriginal-focussed course, and move out into Aboriginal-focussed careers; OR

* participate in a one-term or -semester preparation course and then enrol in stgandard courses of their choice, at first usually teaching courses, then nursing and eventually all mainstream courses.

Staff teaching Aboriginal Studies of course favoured the first model. My wife and I worked for many years in programs of the second type.

Funds came from Canberra for student support - the Ab Studies people always took their 'share' even though they didn't actually run any support programs.

Early on, it became clear that, to Ab Studies staff, Aborigines were objects of study, and to support programs, they were the subjects in their own lives and careers.A sort of undeclared civil war has ensued ever since which teaching has won, for the time being.

Support programs which did not have any major Ab. Studies component -because such courses were not offered at their particular campus - were down-graded and staff 'let go', in the interest of more 'radical' policies.

In the late nineties, as the numbers of Indigenous staff built up at universities, the decision was made to phase out sub-degree courses and to switch over to focussing on teaching Aboriginal Culgture etc. to non-Indigenous students. It was seen, after all, as a step up for Indigenous staff to move on from working with blacks to working with whites: an Aboriginal academic may start in student support but aquickly move into 'higher' levels working with non-Aboriginal students.

[TBC]

[continued]

From about 2002-2005, suppot programs were woundcdown, destroyed and their funding merged in with that for the treaching of Aboriginal Culture etc. to non-Indigenous students.

Coincidentally, out there in the Indigenous population, a massive rise in the birth-rate - and of children of working parents, not welfare parents - was occurring, mainly through inte-marriage. From about 1999, Year 12 numbers started to rise rapidly. So by 2005, just when Indigenous enrolments in Indigenous-focussed courses were being decimated, indigenou enrolments in mainstream courses started to rise rapidly. Between 2006 and 2011, commencements in degree-level courses rose by about 60 %.

Since Indigenous STAFF at universities are concentrated in, and concentrating on, the teaching of Ab Culture etc to non-Indigenous students, and Indigenous STUDENTS at universities are enrolled mainly in mainstream courses, the twain seldom meet these days. Hallelujah.

But the upshot is that the vast bulk of the Indigenous student population - these days, likely to be standard-ntry students - will be trying to go on to mainstream employment, once they graduate. The Indigenous-oriented positions are already taken up.

Higher education is a vehicle for class mobility. What we are witnessing is the rapid development of an Indigenous class structure, which usually means the betrayal of the 'lower' classes by the rapidly-rising 'upper' classes.

The great majority of Indigenous students go into the system as the children of working-class, and lower-middle-class parents, and potentially can come out the other end a few notches higher on the SES. Their destinies may be quite different from those of the current elites.

[TBC]

[continued]

I know that a meeting was held during this past week of highly qualified Aboriginal graduates who are having great trouble finding and keeping work.

It seems that, thanks to the elites who have so much control over Indigenous employment and policy, an Aboriginal person or graduate can never be anything else than Aboriginal, not a person. They must want to work in the Aboriginal arena or they can go to buggery. But many Indigenous graduates want to be people, working with other people, and to use their expertise as if - gasp ! - they were actually qualified people.

We've got a hell of a long way to go before we can claim not be racist country, thanks to the self-serving dealings of the Indigenous elites.

I hope this helps.

Cheers :)

Joe

"Thanks for those kicks up the @rse, Poirot."

My pleasure, Joe.

...........

(Btw, posters get eight post per day on the general threads)

Hi Poirot,

Do you ever actually read what people write, or do you just look to make smart-@rse comments, for your own ego ?

Anyway, to get back to topic: one problem with Aboriginal organisations and government-funded programs and Aboriginal professional employment - I'm sure Individual would agree - is that such employment isgrared to MAINTAIN an elaborate welfare system, rather than to REDUCE it and assist people to move on to better life-paths. So the only jobs, often, are precisely those helper-role jobs, which people expect to have for life.

i.e. they expect that Aboriginal people - at least, their clients - to remain stewing on welfare for life. They don't expect to ever help to Close the Gap.

That's why, like Individual, I'm pinning my hopes on Indigenous graduates coming through mainstream courses, and not particularly interested in working in Aboriginal programs. Aboriginal teachers who want to be teachers. Aboriginal doctors who want to work throughout their lives as doctors.

Maria wrote an article back in 2007 and sent it off to Noel Pearson, and he used it in his essay "Radical Hope" just after she passed away. Her thesis was that the Inigenous population was differentiating very broadly into two populations, a work-oriented population and a welfare-oriented population. But that even within the working population there was a rapid class differentiation process going on, with an elite rapidly building up its power in Indigenous-focussed programs, and a rapidly growing population of working Indigenous people who were in, or seeking, mainstream employment, and that there were traces of a growing antagonism between what you might call the upper and lower segments of the working population.

[TBC]

[continued]

It's very likely, since social processes are working so rapidly, that those divisions have intensified since 2007. One problem may be that the Indigenous elites have, on the whole, shown themselves to be so bankrupt and bereft of any ideas about the Indigenous Predicament, and so clearly serving only their own interests. Larissa Behrendt's contemptuous remarks about Bess Price would be a good example of that.

Indigenous futures are extremely indeterminate - what may be going on in ten or twenty years is impossible to predict, except that it won't be just more or the same - by 2025, there could be sixty or seventy thousand Indigenous university graduates, two-thirds of them women, overwhelmingly with mainstream qualifications, demanding their rightful place in the sun. And their major adversaries, obstacles, enemies, will be the Indigenous elites.

Back to topic: 'evidence'-based research. I've been trying to observe what passes for Indigenous research at universities over the past fifteen years or so, and it strikes me that - in their devaluation of 'whitefella' methodologies, i.e. evidence, testing of hypotheses - that they don't seem to get past what would be the first chapter in any genuine thesis - the highly-selective literature review, the assertions of hypotheses, but they never seem to go beyond that, on to what counts in the real world as genuine 'research'.

So we have little more than feel-good assertions, usually based on the notion of Indigenous superiority in every way, and white evil and ignorance in every way. But not real research.

Maybe that will come in the next few years too :)



Joe

Thanks for that Joe, it is much as I expected, but is much clearer now.

I'm afraid many of these aboriginal graduates of main stream courses are likely to find suitable employment in their area of training quite hard to find, just as their European fellow students are finding.

I would hate to be advising kids as to what area of study they should invest 4 years of their lives today. My & I think most peoples crystal balls are becoming more heavily clouded by the day. Trying to predict what area of study is likely to be useful in 15 or 20 years is today like throwing darts at a dart board.

Finding better ways of harvesting hydrocarbons would be a good one, if you have the math, but whether running a supermarket, farm or steel mill will prove a good choice is anyone's guess.

Health care could be a good one, if governments are still paying for it, which is by no means certain, & I think even the bureaucracy is by no means a safe choice today.

I do believe any bet made on continuing high levels of government funding in any area is likely to be a loosing one.

With any luck we might by then, be more interested in some ones ability than their colour, all though that is only a small part of aboriginality. Fortunately I have always preferred the look of a good dark suntan, to the pasty European appearance.

I mentioned in a recent post to you, Joe, that I think it's pointless to engage you in any depth on the issues we usually discuss.

You lull people into a false sense of security, when sometimes you wax lyrical on subjects.

As I mentioned, you come out all decked out for debate like an honourable opponent like a professional boxer....but it's not long before you start biting and scratching and pulling hair.

So I'll read what you are saying, but I would be stupid to try and engage you on its content.

Thanks, Hasbeen,

Yeah, the future is going to be very difficult for young people, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, 'old' Australians and 'new' Australians, Black and white and everything in between.

In fact, I have hopes that the social and ethnic boundaries between those groupings will become blurred over the next generation or two. Our grand-kids and great-grand-kids are going to be beautifully mixed - as Darwin wrote, they will inherit the strongest, 'fittest', most beautiful, of all of their ancestors' biological characteristics and cultural practices.

Towards a coffee-coloured world ! Yay !

Jo

Poirot,

Ah ! So it IS all about you ?

I stand corrected :)

Joe

PS. Curses ! I've wasted a posting. What devilish cunning, Poirot !

Joe,

Well yes it is "all about me" finally realising what a pointless exercise it is to engage "you" in-depth and on subject.

Your style is interesting, however, when someone hits a target with you, and the "strategies" you produce to counter them.

I'm all for debating in a fair and honourable manner.

Come off the high horse Poirot I have never seen you debate a single point yet. Your bag is always like this last post, going for the person with posts totally devoid of facts.

Talk about practice what you preach.

I'm all for debating in a fair and honourable manner.
Poirot,
Good to see., when will you start doing that ?

Mind yer own beeswax, Hasbeen.

You would of course be favoured by some on OLO who espouse similar odium....I can understand why you would defend them.

Now back to subject......

Dear Poirot,

I apologise for whatever dreadful odium I have poured on you, it was all in a fit of rage at your superior discussing skills, and I promise never to do that again.

Now, can we get back to topic:

I am respectfully suggesting that there is a dire need in Indigenous discourse for some, perhaps minimal, attention to be paid to evidence, 'facts', what actually is the case, rather than rumour, hearsay and fabrication. This may require a thorough revision of their prejudices.

Take for example Deaths in custody. Currently, around 28 % of people in custody are Indigenous. Deaths in all forms of custody seem to be around 22 % Indigenous. Facts. Evidence.

i.e. much less than one would expect: one would expect 28 % of all deaths in custody to be Indigenous.

Three things:

(1) there shouldn't be anywhere near that proportion of people in custody who are Indigenous, since they make up only about 2.8 % of the total population.

(2) the suicide rate of Indigenous people OUTSIDE OF CUSTODY is far, far higher than the national average - in some remote settlements, it could be thirty times higher than the national average.

(3) On the whole, Aboriginal 'leaders' haven't got a clue what to do about it. So they tend to blame colonialism, which seemed to have impact on people in the remotest settlements, far more than on people in the cities, somehow: the more remote, the more colonialist impact. Yeah, right. Anyway, it's not their problem, they're Indigenous.

Individual would know far more about this than me. That's the beauty of OLO - the vast range of expertise of its contributors.

Evidence is a hard mistress, Poirot.

Cheers :)

Joe

Hey-de-ho, Loudmouth,

My son and I were doing a little study on early WA history this week, and we came upon something called the Pinjarra Massacre.

I haven't looked into it too far, but just came up with this:

http://www.pinjarramassacresite.com/content/witnesses/

Evidence - from Governor Stirling and others.

Hi Poirot,

Yes, of course, that battle is well known. 1829, i think ? Whether it was some sort of unprovoked massacre of innocent, defenceless people, rather than an all-out battle between two groups of armed people, should be thoroughly investigated.

As we know from all of the TV shows we've watched, a massacre leaves traces. If remains could be found, and they are of an entire population, young, old, men, women, babies - then maybe we can begin to talk about an unprovoked massacre. If the remains turn out to be all of young men, then perhaps we can begin to suspect a battle, unequal as it may have been.

There was a similar battle here up on the Murray in 1841 - a large group of men had ambushed a party of overlanders, killing some, wounding others, and stealing around a thousand cattle, the remains of which were followed for some months across the landscape by the party of police sent to retrieve them. Finally, the two sides met at Lake Bonney, thirty police on one side, around three hundred warriors on the other, and the warriors lost. A couple of Aboriginal women were brutally treated afterwards on the way back to Adelaide, by both black and white men.

The only other documented massacre would have been of the crew and passengers of the shipwrecked 'Maria' on the Coorong in 1840, when twenty eight people were killed by the Milmenroora (Milmendjuri) clan of the Tangane.

If something actually happened, then there should be evidence, either in the form of written accounts and/or in the form of concrete evidence. Obviously, the more the better, on the whole. Otherwise it's just blather and hearsay, and God knows, there's enough of that in Indigenous 'history'.

Thanks for showing an interest, Poirot :)

Cheers,

Joe