Dear Individual,

With all due respect you have no way of knowing
anything about Mr Reynold's private life and income.
And you even aren't in a position to comment on his
work - not having read any thing the man has written.
Therefore your statements sound like those made by
a vacuous, unthinking person. They lack credibility.
No offence intended.

So Jay Of Melbourne how would you feel if someone came and destroyed your culture and language and way of life and called you a problem?
mikk,
you know this question is impossible to answer without instigating a stir of massive proportion. Can you please re-phrase that so that we can answer without causing more never ending feigned indignation ?

Historian Henry Reynolds tells us -

"Like practically all Australians of my generation I
found that at school, national history was
overwhelmingly about explorers. We read or were told
of the crossing of the Blue Mountains; we heard of the
noble Sturt and his voyage along the Murray, of Eyre's
epic journey across the Nullarbor and of the tragic fate
of Burke and Wills. We wrote projects and drew pictures
and charts. On national maps we marked the assorted
expeditions as they uncovered the mysteries of the inland.
In the back of my primary-school atlas was a series of maps
illustrating the progress of exploration. In the beginning
the map of the continent was black apart from a pinpoint
of yellow representing the settlement of Sydney Cove.
As the expeditions ventured forth by land and sea, the
area of yellow grew and the black contracted away into
the most remote corners of the continent."

"By these means we learnt that the explorers were the heroes
of our history. The achievements of each expedition were
always seen as those of the leader. I'm not sure we even
knew how many other people accompanied Sturt or Mitchell or
Oxley. We were told of of the faithful 'black boys' who
travelled with Eyre and who tried to save the hapless
Kennedy in the jungles of Cape York, but we had no idea
that Aborigines were the advisers, the consultants, whose
skill and knowledge made all the difference between success
and failure."

"Coming back to the history of exploration many years
later and reading systematically through all the
published accounts of expeditions, I saw the whole scene
with new eyes. I quickly appreciated that the often
nameless 'black boys' played a critical role in almost
every expedition and that this had been so from the very
beginning."

Enough has been said to show how grossly unfair it is
to say that Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders had
no part in the pioneering and development of Australia,
that the European settlers did it all themselves.
With knowledge - tolerance, and understanding
broadens out.

Foxy,
How watered down in a genetic sense can a person be before they should morally stop describing themselves as a member of a particular ethnic group.
Are you merely judging their ethnicity by their complexion, by their claims or are you actually taking their family tree into consideration ?
In case you're wondering why I'm asking, I'm asking because I see many who are lighter than me, have been in the area for a short time only yet they claim indigenous status on every Govt form. Then there are those whose roots are from New Caledonia or Samoa but they claim indigenous status. Then there are those who denounce their white tradesmen fathers & claim indigenous status. There are those of Malay or Chinese or Philipino or Indonesian background but they claim indigenous status.
Tell me Foxy how the community should view such people when claiming indigenous status yet those of european descent can not despite the fact that they can prove much longer residency in remote area.
I see people awarded some indigenous achievement when even their grand parents aren't indigeous but they're of the complexion of the indigenous.
Doesn't integrity account for anything anymore ?

Foxy,
That's...err.. a weird quote, are we seriously expected to believe that there were so called "educated" people who were unaware of the level of co-operation between Aboriginals and the early settlers and the friendships they formed while droving or exploring?
From the excerpts you've given us this Reynolds character remained plug ignorant until adulthood and was unaware of aspects of history that the rest of us learned as children. How could anyone be "amazed" to learn about Kennedy or Eyre and their "trackers", or for that matter the stories of Truganini, Aeneas Gunn and Eliza Fraser?
I don't know where most of you went to school but we were taught about Aboriginal culture and their place in colonial history. There were plenty of Aboriginal kids at both my primary and tech schools and there was never any teasing or "Racism", there were no special programs for them and in many cases I had no idea they were from an Aboriginal background until much later on, it just wasn't an issue.
As Morgan Freeman famously said when asked in an interview what we need to do to stop "Racism" he snapped back "Stop talking about it":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeixtYS-P3s

Foxy, as someone over 60 I can attest to what you say above as being the truth as to how Australian history was portrayed in our schools at least till the end of the 1960's. Australian history began in 1770 with Captain Cook. Oh yes, there were a few foreigners like Able Tasman who sailed by beforehand, but were too dumb to know what they were looking at. Until Albert Namatjira started painting those landscapes of his, there were only ever 2 Aboriginals of note on the Australian continent, Bennelong who hung around with Governor Phillip, and Jackey Jackey who was like an Australian Tonto, hung around with the Australian Lone Ranger Edmund Kennedy.