War between Colonists and Aborigines

Cultural reflections - Cowboy battles Indian for America. Convict escapes and lives with Aborigines

" During the intervals of duty, our greatest source of entertainment now lay in cultivating the acquaintance of our new friends, the natives."Watkin Tench - Complete Account of Settlement

Around the world, there is a presumption that during the colonisation of Australia, white people swept across the land shooting Aborigines on sight. People just presume that since colonists in South Africa, New Zealand, Canada, South America and the US raped and pillaged the natives that things must have been the same in Australia. In reality, a unique mix of environmental and historical influences resulted in the relationship between colonists and Aborigines being one of misplaced paternalism instead of war. Instead of trying to kill the natives and take their land, the colonists remained trapped in coastal areas and saw Aborigines as people to be helped, or people that could help them. Furthermore, much like two feuding parents use their child to attack the other parent, internal conflicts in colonial society led to Aborigines being used as pawns that could help respective sides in their conflicts. Paternalistic sentiments, such as the fabrications of stories of violence against Aborigines, have largely grown out of this conflict and the continuation of this conflict.

Ironically, a form of misplaced paternalism, and the continuation of that misplaced paternalism, has resulted in a far worse outcome for Aborigines than has been suffered by indigenous groups in other colonial countries.

Environmental influences reducing the need for war

Australia's unique environment is one of the main reasons why Australia never had the wars seen in other colonial countries. Australia's poor soils and frequent droughts made the land unsuited to high-density farming communities. As a consequence, most colonial farmers lived an isolated existence with only sporadic contact with nomadic Aborigines for human company. It would have been unwise for these farmers to pick a fight with Aborigines when they didn't have strong communities to back them up. Furthermore, the Aborigines offered these farmers their best hope for some friends, sexual partners, or farm hands. Friendship was more in their interests than conflict.

As well as not being conducive to high-density farming communities, the Australian environment also contained a host of native animals that increased as a result of farming. The kangaroo was one such animal. The farmer's dams gave kangaroos permanent water supplies that helped them survive drought. Likewise, the cutting down of trees increased available pasture that kangaroos could graze upon. Even though farmers wanted to kill the kangaroos as pests, or build fences to keep them out, the kangaroos simply jumped the fences, drank the water, ate the grass, and then hopped back into the bush where they remained a valuable food source for Aborigines. Consequently, the colonists and natives never had to fight over food as they did in other colonial countries.

The Ruins: An Aborigine stands over the failed attempts of colonists to expand inland

The influence of the environment left a legacy in many aspects of Australian culture dealing with the colonial experience. One influence can be seen in the paintings of Russel Drysdale. In The Ruins, Drysdale showed the futility of the inland expansion with an Aborigine and his son standing over the remnants of the pioneering dream. In a way, there is a certain peace in the scene. No war between colonists and Aborigines was needed as the colonists were wiped out by the environment before they had the chance to truly encroach upon Aboriginal lands. The twisted iron forms a barrier between the viewer and the Aboriginal man, and seems to indicate that both have destinies in directions different from the other.

Aboriginal rock art also fails to record evidence of conflict. When white people were depicted, they were usually depicted with big hats and with their hands in their pockets or on their hips. There is no known depiction of settlers firing guns at Aborigines.

The relatively harmonious relations between colonists and Aborigines were also reflected in the naming of rural Australia. Instead of using the names of British dignitaries, much of rural used Aboriginal names like Wagga Wagga, Canberra, Ulladulla, Bombala, Wollongong, Yakadanda, and Joondalup.

The environment of other colonial countries was very different to Australia and this helps explain why the countries developed different cultural expressions relating to the contact between colonists and indigenous people. At the opposite extreme to Australia, New Zealand was conducive to high density farming communities. The land was very fertile, and rainfall was reliable. In addition to almost perfect farming conditions, New Zealand lacked any pests that would interfere with farming. No kangaroos, no wombats, and no possums. Although this meant higher productivity for Kiwi farmers, and higher density communities, it also meant that the hungry Maori saw the colonist's farming produce as a food source for themselves. High density colonial communities thus fought with indigenous tribes looking for food. This war culminated in the signing of a treaty. No such treaty was ever signed in Australia.

In America, the environment led to competition between colonists and Indians. The colonists found that the buffalo hunted by the Indians was a commercially viable product, and they came into competition with the Indians for it. Owing to the buffalo's tendency to herd in the thousands, it was a product that was quite easy for the colonists to decimate in a short period of time. In addition, the Indians, unlike Australian Aborigines, also had some farming communities. As these farming communities were located in fertile areas, the colonists naturally wanted to take over them. When nomadic Indians found their prey being taken away, and settled Indians found their land taken away, they had no where to go except into battle.

Historical influences

Just as relationships between the colonists and Aborigines were shaped by the environment, they were also shaped by 80 years of Convict transportation. Due to a large number of Convicts and Emancipists in the colonies, firearms were restricted. Furthermore, as the Convicts were forced to Australia against their will, they lacked the civilising ethic of a true colonist. Finally, mutual dislike between Convicts and authorities kept the colonial population divided. Consequently, instead of Aborigines being seen as a common enemy, different strains of colonial society used Aborigines as allies in their conflict with other sections of colonial society.

Unlike America, Australia was never flooded with guns. Had Convicts been given guns, they could have used those guns to shoot the guards. Likewise, if free settlers, or Emancipists had been given guns, they could have used those guns to initiate an American style revolution. As most of the population lacked guns, colonists wanting to fight Aborigines had to use hand-held weapons. Some Convicts did in fact try to do this, but an account by Watkin Tench illustrates that they faired poorly against people who had been engaging in hand to hand combat for 40,000 years:

"March, 1789. Sixteen convicts left their work at the brick-kilns without leave, and marched to Botany Bay, with a design to attack the natives, and to plunder them of their fishing-tackle and spears: they had armed themselves with their working tools and large clubs. When they arrived near the bay, a body of Indians, who had probably seen them set out, and had penetrated their intention from experience, suddenly fell upon them. Our heroes were immediately routed, and separately endeavoured to effect their escape by any means which were left. In their flight one was killed, and seven were wounded, for the most part very severely: those who had the good fortune to outstrip their comrades and arrive in camp, first gave the alarm; and a detachment of marines, under an officer, was ordered to march to their relief. The officer arrived too late to repel the Indians; but he brought in the body of the man that was killed, and put an end to the pursuit. The governor was justly incensed at what had happened, and instituted the most rigorous scrutiny into the cause which had produced it. At first the convicts were unanimous in affirming, that they were quietly picking sweet-tea (2), when they were without provocation assaulted by the natives, with whom they had no wish to quarrel. Some of them, however, more irresolute than the rest, at last disclosed the purpose for which the expedition had been undertaken; and the whole were ordered to be severely flogged: Arabanoo was present at the infliction of the punishment; and was made to comprehend the cause and the necessity of it; but he displayed on the occasion symptoms of disgust and terror only." (1)

As a legacy of firearms being restricted, Australian kids never grew up playing Stockmen and Aborigines the way American kids grew up playing Cowboys and Indians. Likewise, the Australian movie industry never developed a Stockmen and Aboriginal genre like the American movie industry developed a Cowboy and Indian genre. The Mad Max series is the closest that Australia came to developing the classic western style story of a lone warrior protecting the civilised against marauding savages. However, the movies don't have any Aborigines. Instead, it is set in the future and has white people fighting white people.

Technically, the Convicts weren't true colonists because they had been forcibly sent to Australia against their will. They had no desire to civilise the world, no desire to glorify England, and they definitely didn't feel as one with the rulers that put them there. If they had a true colonising mentality they probably would have tried to teach Aborigines the bible, or shown them the virtues of British culture. However, without a civilising ethic, the Convicts were relatively open-minded. For example, when explaining the unusual culture of Aborigines, the Convict J.F Mortlock wrote,

"How clearly does the behaviour of that unlearned heathen prove that shame is an artificial sentiment resulting from education alone; and that different communities measure propriety, nay even right and wrong, by various standards established under the operation of dissimilar circumstances. " (4)

Instead of assimilating Aborigines to a European way of life, some Convicts assimilated themselves to an Aboriginal way of life. Such Convicts include William Buckley, John Casor, and John Wilson. For many authorities, the defections of Convicts represented somewhat of a regression in values - even though their defections were helping to build relations. In regards to John Wilson, Judge Collins recorded that:

".....he preferred living among the natives in the vicinity of the [Hawkesbury] River, to earning the wages of honest industry for settlers. He had formed an intermediate language between his own and theirs, with which he made shift to comprehend something of what they wished him to communicate."

On South Australia's Kangaroo Island, some escaped Convicts even formed tribes and lived like Aboriginal tribes. The report, The New British Province of South Australia, described the new tribe in less than complimentary terms:

"They are complete savages, living in bark huts like the natives, not cultivating any thing, but living entirely on kangaroos, emus, and small porcupines, and getting spirits and tobacco in barter for the skins which they lay up during the sealing season. They dress in kangaroo skins without linen, and wear sandals made of seal skins. They smell like foxes. "

Later, whites with a weak affinity to Britain became swagmen and roamed the countryside like an Aborigine on walkabout. They learnt Aboriginal techniques for finding food, and gained status in the eyes of those who saw the bush as the representation of the Australian identity.

As well as lacking a civilising ethic, colonial society was never united in a way that allowed Aborigines to be seen as a common enemy. Instead, colonial society was fighting itself, and each side saw Aborigines as a potential ally in the conflict.

One strain of Australian culture celebrated the bush as the stomping ground of the true Australian. For this subculture, an association with Aborigines helped build an identity distinct from England. In a famous example, Aboriginal words were incorporated in Australia's unofficial national anthem, Waltzing Matilda. The song utilised Aboriginal words like jumbuck, coolibah, and billabong as the words helped build a uniquely Australian feel.

Right up until the 1980s, those who positioned the bush as representative of the Australian identity continued to use Aborigines to affirm the status of the bush. In the 1986 iconic movie Crocodile Dundee, a good natured larrikin gained status by assimilating aspects of Aboriginal culture. He joins Aborigines at a corroboree, and is depicted in traditional tribal paint. More status comes when he detects that a woman journalist has violated cultural taboo by secretly watching. His serious stare affirms his respect for traditional practice.

While one strain of Australian culture gained status by assimilating elements of Aboriginal cultures, another strain gained status by civilising Aborigines, or defending them against injustice. This tradition commenced under Arthur Phillip, the first governor of Australia. In Phillip's words:

"I shall think it a great point if I can proceed in this business without having any dispute with the natives, a few of which I shall endeavour to persuade to settle near us, and who I mean to furnish with everything that can tend to civilize them, and to give them a high opinion of their new guests."

Christian activists picked up on Phillip's ideology. They gained status by assimilating Aborigines to a Christian way of life. Christians also removed the half-caste offspring that were produced as result of the contacts between the immoral Convicts/lower classes.

To reinforce the moral status of their work, the missionaries deliberately fabricated stories of violence against Aborigines. According to the historian Keith Windschuttle:

"These missionaries took any rumor about violence towards Aborigines, no matter how unreliable or vague, and propagated it without checking its accuracy. Why would they do such a thing? They wanted to show the need for their own institutions. By portraying colonial society as awash with violence towards the blacks, they justified their policy of separating Aborigines from white society. They wanted their missions to appear as havens in a heartless world. This fulfilled the Protestant evangelical theology on which their actions were based: the everyday, material world was full of evil and corruption and the only road to salvation for Aborigines lay in a closed religious community. Here they could be kept apart from the modern world and separated from white society. It also meant the missionaries would keep their funding and their jobs. They hoped to be seen by their peers in the colony and their sponsors in London as the saviors of the Aborigines. They have also influenced policy ever since. Those who claim to be the friends of Aborigines have long supported separatism—from the missions and government reserves of the nineteenth century down to the proposals for a treaty and separate state today." (5)

Today, the same mentality of assimilation and fabrication of victimisation is still a defining feature of one strain of Australian culture. Some of these views can be seen in the 1994 movie Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Like Crocodile Dundee, the movie showed a corroboree; however, instead of a white assimilating the culture of Aborigines, an Aborigine assimilates the culture of white homosexuals. Meanwhile, smiling Aboriginal faces punctuate the scene like testimonials in a sales campaign.

In addition to assimilating Aborigines, modern historians have manufactured stories of violence towards Aborigines, just like missionaries of days past. In his book, The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Windschuttle used empirical research to show that left-wing historians had fabricated statistics, and misrepresented evidence in order to achieve some kind of self-interest. On national television, Windschuttle landed a telling blow on Lyndall Ryan - Head of the Women's Studies Program at Flinders University. Ms Ryan had cited the diary of John Oxley when revealing the deaths of 100 Aborigines at the hands of colonists. Upon checking the diary, Windschuttle found mention of only four deaths. On national television, Ms Ryan confessed:

Despite the lack of evidence, the white historians want to believe in genocide because it gives them the chance to insult an Australian subculture they dislike. This desire to believe the worst, despite the lack of evidence, can be seen in an emotional and sarcastic opinion piece by Phillip Adams, the leading media voice promoting the genocide version of Australian history. According to Adams:

"Moreover, we will do our best to deny that they happened. Enter the historical revisionism of a Keith Windschuttle. Massacres of Abos? Where? When? Show us the documents! Show us the receipts for the corpses! If there's no paperwork, it never happened. Oral histories of Aborigines? Vivid, detailed accounts of slaughter and atrocities can be discounted. They're not worth the paper they're not written on. No need for sorries there."

Like it was for missionaries in days past, the genocide version is lucrative for those who support it, and for journalists that promote it. Aside from gaining moral empowerment, proponents also gain access to $3 billon in annual federal government funding "intended" to alleviate disadvantage. (This funding is roughly equal to what Australia gets from beef exports.) Thus far, the funding has proved lucrative for whites, but destructive for blacks. Statistically, in 2005 Australian Aborigines comprised just two percent of the population, but made up 12 percent of the homeless, 19 percent of the prison population, 31 percent of people living in "improvised dwellings", 41 percent of child abuse cases and 50 percent of inhabitants of dwellings with 10 or more people. On average, Aboriginal babies were more than twice as likely to die at birth than babies born to non-Aboriginal mothers. Aboriginal children were massively over-represented in the juvenile justice system; comprising 40 percent of all children in corrective institutions. At around 23 percent, Aboriginal unemployment was nearly three times higher than the national average.

Aboriginal disadvantage: A picture used by "well-intentioned" welfare workers to define the stereotype of Aborigines

Aborigines remain disadvantaged because those getting paid to "help" them refuse to define them with any other kind of criteria. Both historically and in the present day, Aborigines are disempowered with victim stereotypes and with victim histories. The stereotypes give Aborigines sympathy, but deny them respect. The stereotypes convince Aborigines that they are destined to fail before they have even tried. The stereotypes keep Aborigines trapped between two worlds; disconnected from the traditional, but unwilling to embrace the modern. Worst of all, the stereotypes keep money flowing to white people wanting to "help", while keeping Aborigines in a state of despair.

Although some Aborigines have allowed the stereotype to be put on them, others have become sick of it. As Yarralin elder George Campbell said:

"FED up with accusations that they are dysfunctional places riddled with child sex abuse and domestic violence, some remote indigenous communities are fighting back. ‘I'm proud of what we are doing here. Look around — my people are happy and they are doing things that give them pride as well.'"

Contemporary accounts of Tasmania's "black line" provide food for thought on how historians have distorted the few historical facts that are known, and in so doing, manufactured a perception of history that is more in their own interests, than the interests of Aboriginal peoples. The line was an "Aboriginal hunt" in 1830 that cost £30,000, involved 5,000 men, and lasted for seven weeks. Genocide historians have seized upon the figures to portray Tasmania's colonisation as a holocaust of European savagery. One of these white historians is Jennifer Isaacs, a self-defined expert on Aboriginal culture who has set herself up as a consultant to government. According to Ms Isaacs,

"In Tasmania the white invasion and occupation was complete and the whole Aboriginal population was systematically annihilated. A few children survived to be secretly reared as stockmen on the mainland, but the survivors of the ‘Black Line’ led an isolated and heart-rending existence in forced exile in a small white supervised community on Flinders Island where they died one by one. Today a small stone church marks the spot on a cliff where the last of the Tasmanians sat in their Victorian costumes looking over the sea towards Tasmania." (3)

As a result of historians such as Ms Isaacs, an oral tradition has developed around the world which communicates the lie that the black line involved Aborigines being shot on sight. The oral tradition also communicates the lie that the Tasmanian Aborigines became extinct as a result of the line.

In reality, the black line was a complete failure. Despite the cost, the time, and the manpower invested in it, the line only netted one man and one boy. In that regard, it was a bit like America spending billions of dollars on the invasion of Afghanistan, yet failing to eliminate Al Qaeda or catch Osama Bin Laden. In the context of war propaganda, America's failure was demoralising for themselves, but inspiring for their enemies. Likewise, the ability of the two tribes to outwit their adversary is potentially far more inspiring history than that of a weak race passively going into oblivion.

In addition to ommitting the fact that the line failed, the historians have omitted the true purpose. It was not designed to exterminate Aborigines, rather, it was designed to relocate two of the nine tribes on the island to uninhabited country from where they would no longer be in conflict with the whites.

As it was a policy of relocation, rather than eradication, it had more in common with the partition of Palestine that led to the creation of Israel than it did with the Nazis' final solution for the Jews. Maybe the people in the UN who divided Palestine were selfish, and facilitated the cultural loss of the Palestinians by depriving them of access to sacred sights, but that doesn't change the fact that they believed they were doing the right thing.

Today, around 16,000 Tasmanians define themselves as Aborigines, which is significantly more than the estimated 5,000 that existed at the time of colonisation. Admittedly, none of the present-day Aborigines are full-bloods and none live a lifestyle even remotely resembling the Aborigines at the time of colonisation. In that regard, the Tasmanian Aborigines are extinct, as Ms Isaacs declared in 1987.

European diseases and interbreeding best explain the reasons for the Aborigines' extinction. As the Aborigines had been cut off from the mainland for 10,000 years, they had become inbred with little genetic diversity. This lack of diversity was disastrous when exposed to new diseases. Tribes also suffered breakdowns due to women being traded to white men, or choosing to live with white men. In a very short period of time, the loss of members to disease and loss of women to whites resulted in the tribes losing the ability to reproduce themselves in both the cultural and physical sense.

Tasmania just wasn't the hotbed of conflict that it was made out to be. There were conflicts caused by cultural differences and cultural misunderstandings. There were also conflicts caused by Aborigines breaking white laws on the mainland and being sent to Tasmania along with other Convicts. However, these conflicts resembled the criminal activity that inevitably occurs when two groups with different laws find themselves sharing the same patch of land. The only people served by portraying the conflicts as war have been whites that want moral status, funding and who want to denigrate an alternative strain of Australian culture. In many respects, their attitude reflects the continuation of a cultural divide that commenced in 1788. The true conflict has never been between whites and blacks. It has always been between those who are pro-Australia and those who are anti-Australia. Aborigines are simply pawns in the battle.

Aborigines in politics

Aborigines have had an ambigouis status in the political system. In the 19th century, colonial leaders were strongly in favour of Aborigines. Consequently, when Tasmania, Victoria, South Australia and New South Wales framed their constitutions in the 1850s, they gave Aborigines the vote. (The American Indian was not given the vote until 1924. The Indigenous South African was not given the vote until 1994.) However, when the six different colonies became one colony in 1900, the Aborigines were denied the vote in the federated colony. Amongst the educated class, support for Aborigines had waned because they were being used by those with a pro-Australia ideology to undermine the British identity.

With paternalistic sentiments reining, Australia has never produced a black leader in the vein of Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela or Ghandi. Instead, the heroes of black politics are white men like Gough Whitlam, Paul Keating and Henry Reynolds.

1)Watkin Tench A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson. eBooks@Adelaide 2006.http://www.fullbooks.com/An-Account-of-the-English-Colony-in-New10.html

2)J.F Mortlcok, Experiences of a convict. Sydney University Press 1965. (First published 1864-5.)

(3)ISAACS, Jennifer, Australian Dreaming. 40000 years of Aboriginal history.Sydney: Lansdowne Press, 1987

4)J.F Mortlcok, Experiences of a convict. Sydney University Press 1965. (First published 1864-5.)

5) Keith Windschuttle, The fabrication of Aboriginal history
http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/20/sept01/keith.htm