I'm not sure whether the accusation of being gullible
is an apt description of my findings and research on
the subject of our Indigenous people. Those who buy
what Keith Windschuttle was selling could also be accused
of being gullible. However the number of historians who
disagree with the man far outnumber those who agree. There
are so many references and documentation available - to
get clarity on the subject these days that I frankly cannot
understand why anyone would want to deny or lie to themselves
about Australia's Indigenous past.

http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/jan/24/massacres-protest-australia-day-undeniable-history

http://www.australianstogether.org.au/discover/australian-history/get-over-it/

There's also plenty of references listed in the Bibliographes
given - enabling further research on the subject.

Dear Foxy,

Re Windschuttle: the truth is not a beauty contest, with the 'winner' of historical documentation being the one who - gosh - a lot of people agree with. The truth is what it is, and has to be sought out, it's not just what we would like it to be.

I typed up the 8,500 letters of the SA Protector, 2.500 pages of it, 1839 to 1913 [all on my web-site: www.firstsources.info]. Yes, there were killings, on both sides, entire families, and entire ship's crew and passengers, overland parties - and individual killings on both sides as well. Probably it worked out as two or three Aboriginal people for every white fella.

No, there is no evidence (from the Letters) of people being driven off their land - it would have been illegal anyway (they had the right, sanctioned by London's Colonial Office, to carry out all their traditional practices under English common law), and after all, pastoralists needed labour (which is why so many offered, for free, to act as issuers of rations). If you have evidence to the contrary, I would be happy to consider it.

No, there is no evidence, during that period, of children being 'stolen' - in fact, I'm amazed how few children seemed even to be neglected or otherwise put into care: a handful of young orphan girls, usually the children of single mothers who had died. After all, this is back in the days before single mothers' benefits, old age pensions, unemployment benefits, etc. You sort of wonder how anybody got by unless they had property or savings behind them.

The last Aboriginal bloke executed was in 1862, 25 years after 'settlement'; the last white fella hanged was in 1964. 102 years later.

These are facts, the truth, the evidence, the outcomes of policy, one way or another. Like so many virtuous people, I should wish that many more Aboriginal people were killed, but I can't.

[TBC]

Dear Foxy,

[continued]

I'm very uneasy about a sort of triumphalism amongst whites, now, on the left AND the right: a smug (if much regretted) belief that whites were so powerful, so almighty, yet so brutal (they were not us, after all: really ?) that they could do more or less whatever they liked [yeah, we were bastards all right, but so efficient, so superior in every way];

-while on the Aboriginal side, a similar belief, that they themselves were so powerless, so innocent of all evil, so put-upon, so down-trodden, by the all-powerful, brutal whites of yesteryear, that they should do nothing but throw themselves on the mercy of whites now. I don't buy either side of the story.

Sorry.

Love,

Joe

Dear Joe,

I realise just how passionately you feel about this
subject and how much research you've done. Compared to
you I'm probably just a novice. However I do try to bear
in mind that there is more than one side to every story.
And it is not wise to accept any one interpretation of events
as your only source of information. I find it important to
listen to various points of view in order to try to detect
the bias that authors might have. After all history books
simply tell us how the authors have interpreted the past.
And as we've both admitted previously - to study the past
properly it is best to go back to the primary sources.
If they are available. From these sources we can try to look
at many different persons' viewpoints and
draw our own conclusions.

Sometimes as you know it is very difficult to find primary
sources on all topics. We then turn to history books and
writing by historians - but even they are never completely
"gospel." We need to ask questions and we need to look at
as many history books as possible to get a fair picture of
the past.

Also we must be able to ask the relevant questions and listen,
not only for the answers, but for the silences. When we ask
a question about the past and cannot get an answer, that
too tells us something - it could mean that what we asked was
not considered worth writing about or that that aspect of the
past was not relevant to people of that time.

I don't mean to waffle on here - but I don't want you to think
that I don't respect your point of view. I do.

My viewpoint just happens to differ from yours.

Thank you, dear Foxy, I wish so much that I could adopt your viewpoint, without any more angst. But fifty-odd years wanting to believe and having - bam ! bam ! bam ! - those beliefs kicked in the guts, crapped on, laugh at, betrayed really - there comes a point where you stand back and demand evidence for every hitherto-unquestioned assertion.

The Hindmarsh Island Secret Women's Business probably did it for me. No, years before living in a 'community' did 'community' for me. And 'self-determination' too. All a complete fraud. And some research I later did on that community in 1982 on poverty levels, in which, try as I might, I found that average income there was equal to the Australian average. Suicide was contemplated, but clearly I wimped out on that.

Deaths in custody ? Even before the Royal Commission began, its staff admitted that deaths were lower than would be expected: 22 % of deaths Indigenous , but 23 % of people in custody Indigenous. I stood back a bit from the 'Stolen Generation' stuff since I didn't know anybody who had been 'stolen' - taken into care for a short time, yes; neglected, yes; abused, yes. Kids who I knew who should have been protected by being taken into care. I recall one woman stuffing herself with a whole chicken, her son trying to get a bit, but she rebuffed him with, "F. off, you black ape." Charming. So tell me about loving, self-sacrificing parents.

Before I looked at the Protector's letters, I assumed that I would find all manner of rationales for this brutal policy or that, but found none: I don't think there was any sort of brutal policy, apart from the obviously inconvenient one that whites were now here and hopefully people would get used to it. Pretty much the same dilemma as you and I face today, like every other white fella. I found myself, over and over again, asking: would I have done anything very different from what the Protector did ? No, came the usual answer.

Love,

Joe

Foxy,

Joe posted, ''I typed up the 8,500 letters of the SA Protector, 2.500 pages of it, 1839 to 1913 [all on my web-site: www.firstsources.info]. "

Those are what are called primary sources, I would have thought that you'd know that.

How're you going on the First Nation concept?