Dear Loudmouth,

Here is the thing mate, this letter was reproduced in Pilkingtons's book, the one you claimed to have read.

Therefore you previously have had the evidence before you, but you chose to ignore it and claim repeatedly this was a myth. Willfully ignorant doesn't quite do it justice. Either that or you never did read the book.

If you are going to claim something is a myth you at least need to have made some effort to appreciate what evidence substantiated the body of work. You did no such checking but instead let your ideology dictate your position. It was shoddy and shameful.

And look, even in your last post you are insinuating the girls did not walk much of the distance but were carried by camel. Pilkington relates they rode with Joey their cousin on a camel from Station 594 to cover just the last four days.

I think you owe the author an apology, she did painstaking research for this book only to be dismissed as a myth peddler by yourself. The authority you claimed your transcriptions, essentially secretarial work.

I make the point again, this really does cast a pall over the veracity of your work and its completeness which is a pity.

It also makes a complete mockery of your claim that there are no children who can rightfully claimed to be part of the Stolen Generation. Who would take you seriously?

Perhaps I have been harsh on you but this kind of thing really pisses me off. I have inlaws who are 100% convinced that the moon landings were staged. No matter what evidence is laid before them they always have an answer. Ultimately though their disbelief does not disrespect the lived experiences of thousands of mainly vulnerable children who had their lives dramatically impacted by racist policies.

Yours does.

Perhaps you might now bring yourself to at least acknowledge the girl's 'most wonderful walk home' and the sheer courage and tenacity it took to complete it. It would be decent and show at least a modicum of generosity of spirit.

Hi Steele,

I'm glad that you recognise that evidence has to be provided for any assertion. I guess the Romans got that right.

Get something straight: I'll NEVER believe any assertion without some reasonable, plausible evidence. Pass it on.

As long as anyone can demand evidence for any assertion, and not take anything on faith, without evidence, and without question, we can hopefully minimise the con-jobs that might be floated.  After all, to throw your support behind a cause is pretty serious, so you have to be pretty sure of its genuineness. 

I certainly don't mind sowing the seeds of doubt about anything - I've become even more of a 'Marxist' in that way than ever (just kidding) - if it forces people to come up with evidence, and encourages others not to believe until they see some. It's a long time since I was religious (I hope), so belief without question is a meaningless concept.

And no, I don't believe the moon landing was staged. In fact, I've tried to point out often that successful conspiracy theories are probably very rare.

Oh well, back to my secretarial work.

Cheers,

Joe

Dear Loudmouth,

What self serving rubbish. This was never about being a skeptic, rather it is about your toxic ideology, one that takes the default position of utter rejection of any stolen generation story.

You sir had read the bloody book, you had laid eyes on the very evidence you had so stridently claimed was not there, yet you repeatedly impugned Molly, her cousins and her daughter as untrustworthy, untruthful, and purveyors of a myth.

You response once you are finally dragged squirming across the line? No apology to the author, no proper stepping away from your myth assertions, nothing, just a 'look at me what a good boy am I' while you pat yourself on the back. For what?

You really need to ask yourself a few questions. Did you believe in their story when you first read the book? If not why not? Or did you osmotically absorb the far Right's decrying of the movie and conflate that with the book, deciding it was a myth? Whatever it was it is unpleasant.

I ask again; will you at least now, without any further qualifications, acknowledge the girl's "most wonderful walk home" and the sheer courage and tenacity it must have taken to complete it?

SteeleRedux wrote: “What self serving rubbish. This was never about being a skeptic, rather it is about your toxic ideology, one that takes the default position of utter rejection of any stolen generation story.”

As anyone on OLO who has taken even the most cursory of glances at some of my comments would know, there is no one here who expresses an appreciation for evidence, or prides themselves on their scepticism, more than I do (even if I do say so myself). (I even had someone try to mock me for it recently, as if it were a bad thing.)

However, a demand for evidence must be proportionate to two things:

1. The extraordinariness of a claim, and;
2. The extent to which the acceptance of a given claim would be worldview-altering.

For example, if someone were to tell me that they owned a dog, I would quite happily take their word for it that they did, because people own dogs and I would not have to alter my worldview if it had turned out that what they were saying was not true.

That being said, I don’t buy this supposedly-virtuous display of scepticism from Joe. It doesn’t add up. Something else is at play here, and it sounds purely political to me.

Sure, be sceptical about claims of gods, creation stories, holocaust denial, and the suggestion that every one of the world’s climate scientists is in on a hoax the size of which would be impossible to conceal. But to so adamantly require such irrefutable evidence for a *relatively* unremarkable story - while placing a disproportionate and unreasonable level of value on documentation for a field of study as reliant on personal accounts as history is - to me reeks of motivated reasoning.

Dear AJ Phillips,

Thank you for a more sober, even handed appraisal than I am capable of at the moment. I realise I might be laying it on a bit thick but reading some of the deep injustices that were inflicted on half-castes and their families during that period has not left me in the mood for niceties.

Joe is just part of a trend of contrariness. Perhaps there is a measure of anti-intellectualism, with a pinch or two of racism, and a dram or two of absolutism, but it is a heady and worrying mix.

Oh no, SteeleRedux, I wasn’t suggesting that you should tone it down. I’m one of the last people on OLO in a position lecture others there. On the contrary, I think you have done a stellar job remaining as cool, calm, and collected as you have, given the circumstances.

No, I quoted you as a lead in to something that I have been thinking for a while now, as I read the discussion that has been taking place here. You were my excuse to jump in. I also agreed with your apparent doubts that Joe is simply exercising a healthy scepticism here, and thought I’d expand on why I think it is that you’re right, from a fresh perspective.

Finally, as someone who is on record as being one to accept that the stolen generation happened, and who is always banging on about scepticism and the need for evidence, I felt obliged to comment on what I think is an important difference here between a healthy scepticism and a toxic denialism, and why I think it is that Joe’s supposed scepticism actually tips over into a more toxic denialism.

There are many things we could justifiably be sceptical about and demand evidence for. But given that most reasonable people would at least sometimes accept, at face value, stories that are far more incredible than the Rabbit Proof Fence story as being an accurate-enough depiction of what had really happened, I find the fervour with which Joe expresses his scepticism of this particular story (and any stolen generation story, for that matter) a little strange and obsessive.

Whether it is driven by a dislike for indigenous people (which is unlikely, given he was married to an indigenous person); a simple anti-intellectualism; a black-and-white view of the situation; or the desire to view the treatment of indigenous Australians, by the British settlers, in the best possible light due to the discomfort that accompanies the thought of what one’s own ancestry did to the first Australians brings, I don’t know.

Continued…