"Please take a look at your post to me at the
end of page nine "

Well this is that post in full....

"Yes Foxy, I agree that you can find many historians who have written articles and essays and even books trying to debunk Windschuttle's finding. Almost all of these have a vested interest in doing so.

One such is Robert Manne who wrote the article in your link. Robert Manne who is utterly convinced of the stolen generation story but unable to name even one proven member of that group. (He has resorted to going back into the deep past where records are dim and then claiming that the lack of records proves his point.)

But again we find people saying with great certainty that Windschuttle is wrong and not offering any evidence for the claim.

Did Reynolds falsify his quote? Yes. Did Ryan make up evidence about a massacre? Yes. But those of a certain leaning will just pretend not to notice and then rely on others to tell them its OK to not notice."

So Foxy, please advise what word, phrase, clause or sentence in that post caused you to think that I didn't know Manne's book was a collection of essays from other historians. For that matter what word, phrase, clause or sentence in that post caused you to think that I was even talking about Manne's book?

OTOH you can cut and run. There's an old saying "When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging". It might be apropos here.

Indy,

It's simple.

Their voices should be heard.

Accepting the Uluru Statement from the heart would
have been a step in the right direction.

mhaze,

Did you read the link I gave by Manne?

cont'd ...

mhaze,

The link written by Manne that I cited on page 9
is worth a read and raises questions about Windschuttle's
research.

The subject of our Indigenous history exemplifies the
arguments of those who insist that there is no such thing
as "objective history."

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

Dearest Foxy,

Of course, there is such a thing as 'objective history' - it may be beyond anybody's reach, but it's there. The task is to get as close to it as possible, to develop the most accurate picture of 'what happened', with the least (fewest?) equivocations. Karl Popper wrote that reality exists, but we'll probably never grasp it 100 %. I think, from memory, that Marx and/or Engels said something similar.

I typed up around five thousand pages of primary documents, about two million words. Yes, I realise that that's nothing like what's available - there must be many tens, hundreds, of thousands of pages of primary documents in State archives around Australia, in private journals, diaries, etc. But I do get pissed off with 'historians' who wouldn't know a primary document if it fell on them from a great height (I wish), who wouldn't recognise one if they saw it, even if they have vaguely heard of such things.

They're there. Even you could find them in your State Archives with little trouble: find out where they are (Victorian Archives Centre, 99 Shiel Street, North Melbourne; phone 3 9348 5600), register, check out what they have archived on the computer there, apply for what you want to look at, have a coffee while you wait half an hour for someone to get it off the shelf, and bingo. You don't have to rely on any historians' interpretation alone, even in the unlikely event that they themselves have actually perused primary documents and not, in turn, relied on somebody else's interpretations. Of someone else's interpretations.

Give it a go. It can be quite transformative :)

Love,

Joe

Dear Joe,

The beauty of history is that it is written by so many
different people. We get so many different perspectives.
No one has the time or the resources to look at all
dimensions of an event. Not to mention the lenses we view
the events from.

That's why when you ask a scientist, a researcher, a
professor, their answer is - "It depends..."
Because it depends on how you look at that fact.

History, from any angle you look at, will teach a lesson, it
will give you an experience - something for the future,
and hopefully will make you wiser. Yes, it can be
transformative. I learned that while meeting people like
Thomas Keneally, Barry Jones, to name just a few when I
worked at the State Library of Victoria and also catalogued
part of the Oral Indigenous History Collection.

It'd be a great exercise to get an academic, a business manager, a tradesperson, a farmer, a labourer, a lawyer & a soldier to witnes a set-up situation & get them to write down the events as they see them.
My guess is that there'd be at least three different stories.