In Australia, agreeing upon the fable has proved more difficult that it has in other countries. One of the problems is a lack of an inspiring event, such as the building of a glorious pyramid or triumphant battle, to unite people in praise, or anchor a degree of consensus. Another problem is that most of the written records were completed by the literate class. Consequently, the written records largely excluded the perspectives of influential groups such as Aborigines (the first rural Australians) and Convicts (the first urban Australians.) Because the written records were not complete, they have been easy to criticise as being politically biased, or lacking the whole picture. A final problem is that Australia is a multicultural society of a diversity of values and beliefs, and always has been. This diversity of values and beliefs has naturally influenced how interpretations have been made, as well as the attitudes to other people’s interpretations.
Because so little of the fable is agreed upon, an eclectic range of individuals have stepped up to imagine the gaps, and subsequently used some kind of emotive angle to rally people around their story. With so many different stories being created, the study of Australian history has descended into a battleground of ideologies, and competing self-interests. It has also become a field where it is not clear what is fable, and what is fact. Finally, it is a field where the label of "historian" has become meaningless. Not only are the leading historians not qualified as historians, they are also inclined to just fabricate history as if a novelist. As Lyndall Ryan, Head of the Women's Studies Program at Flinders University, confessed when it was shown she had lied about her citations,
“historians are always making up figures.”
Kate Grenville – History by a novelist
In her novel, The Secret River (2005), Kate Grenville imagined the life on the frontier of colonial settlement where the colonists battled with Aboriginal tribes.
Although Grenville’s work is clearly fiction, she has raised the ire of historians by referring to her writing as a form of historical inquiry. She has described herself as "up on a ladder, looking down on the history wars". She has also said that although the historians are “doing their thing”, as a novelist, she can come at the issue from a way of “empathy and understanding.”
Keith Windschuttle – A focus on the known facts, not the imagination
Keith Windschuttle completed a BA (first class honours in history) in 1969, and an MA (honours in politics) in 1978. When he commenced his career, Windschuttle heavily relied upon other historians for his "facts". As he started to do more research of his own, and check the primary sources of other historians, he realised that many of the historians he had been relying upon were more like fiction writers than objective interpreters. In The Killing of History (1994), he argued that historians on both sides of the political spectrum have misrepresented history to support various political causes or ideological positions.
In 2002, he narrowed his criticism to the left when he released The Fabrication of Aboriginal History. In the book, he used empirical research to show that left-wing historians had fabricated statistics, and misrepresented evidence in order to achieve some kind of self-interest. Windschuttle landed a particularly 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:
“historians are always making up figures.”
Hitting back at his criticisms of them, the left have accused Windschuttle of being a heartless historian. They have also said that just because something was not written down doesn’t mean that it didn’t occur. In their view, imagining the gaps is therefore a legitimate form of historical inquiry. While imagining a gap may indeed be a legitimate form of inquiry, citing the guesses as facts is not.
Louis Nowra – History by a playwright
In academic circles and in the media, Aborigines are defined by statistics of disadvantage. It is generally argued that the disadvantage is a consequence of cultural loss. In his book, Bad Dreaming: Aboriginal Men's Violence Against Women and Children (2007), playwright Louis Nowra takes a different view. Nowra argues that the statistics have resulted from a combination of cultural loss and an outgrowth of traditional cultures.
Nowra explores some of the inconvenient truths about the role of women in hunter gatherer societies. He notes that in hunter gatherer societies, women were exchanged to settle disputes, that women of other tribes were kidnapped and gang raped, and that young girls were promised to older men.
Nowra doesn’t judge Aborigines negatively for such customs. He merely points out that hunter gatherer societies had to function in such a way in order to survive.
After colonization, Nowra argues that aspects of the hunter gatherer lifestyle evolved in ways that were not conducive to the tribe’s survival. Women were offered to white men in payment for food, blankets or axes. Furthermore, much of the ritual that surrounded sex broke down, and when it did, children joined women in being subjected to abuse.
According to Nowra, cultural traditions then started being used as an excuse by men to literally get away with murder. The justice system was reluctant to interfere with customary law for fear of being called racist. Even if it did show an interest, women were unlikely to lodge complaints. According to Nowra, their identity as Aborigines was often stronger than their identity as females. Consequently, when they were victims of violence, they did not report it, or speak out against it, for fear of damaging Aboriginal identities. In effect, whereas non-Aboriginal women have been free to criticise their own culture, and therefore bring about change, Aboriginal women have been denied the same freedom. As a consequence, Aboriginal women remain shackled by customs of centuries past.
Nowra’s book has elicited criticism. Professor Judy Atkinson, head of the College of Indigenous Australian Peoples at Southern Cross University, has expressed concern that Nowra portrays a stereotype that all Aboriginal men are violent rapists. According to Ms Atkinson, it is an unfair stereotype because white men are also perpetrators of violence and sexual abuse. While that may be the case, white men do not have access to traditional cultural stereotypes to justify their actions.
Ms Atkinson’s comments are quite contradictory in light of the fact that she doesn’t seem to be concerned about creating a stereotype that all Aborigines are disadvantaged. Ironically, her criticisms give weight to Nowra’s theory about women lacking the freedom to bring about change in Aboriginal cultures.
Robert Manne - History by an Arts graduate
Robert Manne typifies just how meaningless qualifications have become in Australia. Although Manne is considered one of Australia’s leading intellectuals, has received significant funding to write about history, and is a professor at La Trobe University, he has no qualifications in history. In fact, he doesn’t even have the post-graduate qualifications usually required to work at university. He did a Bachelor of Arts at Melbourne University then a Bachelor of Philosophy at Oxford. He then did some work in the media and became useful for the public relations of the left, which in turn led to his university appointment.
Manne's appeal was that he wrote about Aboriginal history in genocidal terms. As a "historian" that advertised that he was a child of Jewish refugees, his input seemed to be a moral stamp of approval to those who had been unsure whether it was appropriate to liken Australian history to that of the holocaust.
Aside from his Jewish ancestry, perhaps Robert Manne’s appeal could be attributed to the political edge he infused into his work. Robert Manne wasn’t solely concerned about history, he was also concerned about the right-wing’s approach to history. With his media background, he knew that the way to trigger people's emotions was to stir up conflict and get readers to take sides. The dual aims of exposing the “truth” and vilifying the "deniers" could be seen in titles of his works such as:
In Denial: The Stolen Generations and the Right (2001),
Whitewash. On Keith Windschuttle's Fabrication of Aboriginal History (2003)
Robert Manne’s attacks upon the right, or those perceived to be on the right, made his study of history more of a battle ground than a search for the truth. Naturally, this made his work emotive, interesting, and enabled his words to be a rallying cry for followers seeking a sense of moralistic belonging. They didn't; however, make his work worthwhile pieces of historical inquiry. Arguably, Manne's talent was public relations, not academic inquiry.
Geoffrey Blainey – An economic historian with a focus on the pragmatic
Blainy commenced his career as an economic historian, and perhaps his focus on economics made him more of a pragmatic historian when compared to his more emotional colleagues. He wanted to understand, instead of demonise. His early work included:
The Rush That Never Ended: A History of Australian Mining ( 1963)
Tyranny of Distance: How Distance Shaped Australia's History (1966)
Triumph of the Nomads: A History of Ancient Australia (1975)
Although his books were influential, arguably it was Blainey’s comments on other historians that brought him the most fame. In 1993, he coined the phrase “black armband view of history”. The term referred to those historians who seemed to be writing about Australian history while wearing a black arm band of mourning, grieving, or shame. Blainey contrasted the black-arm band view to the Three Cheers view of history that was common in most countries around the world.
Blainy’s black arm band comment elicited the antagonism of his colleagues. He was subsequently redefined as a kind of heartless right-wing ogre.
Manning Clarke – The conflict of values in a multicultural society
In the mid 1950s, Clark conceived a large multi-volume history of Australia, based on the documented sources but giving expression to Clark's own ideas about the meaning of Australian history.
The main theme in Clark's history was the interplay between the harsh environment of the Australian continent and the European values of the people who discovered, explored and settled it in the 18th and 19th centuries. Other themes included the clash of European belief systems imported into Australia, and those value systems created in Australia.
Ironically, many of the conflicting values that defined the urban foundations of Australia still existed in his time. As a consequence, Clark was targeted by those people who didn’t like the values demonstrated in his version of events.
Historians researching Clark have unearthed a peculiar aspect in his own history. In Clark’s memoirs, he wrote of arriving in Bonn on the on the morning of Kristallnacht. This was the massive, coordinated attack on Jews throughout the German Reich on the night of November 9, 1938. Almost 1,000 synagogues were burnt, and almost 30,000 Jews were arrested. For Clark, it was a hugely influential event, and shaped his thinking throughout his life. In reality, historians have discovered that Clark didn’t on the morning of Kristallnacht – he arrived several weeks later.
Clark’s misleading use of history illustrates that, in regards to Australian history, the image of the story teller is often as important as the story itself. It also raises questions as to whether someone who couldn’t get the details of his own life correct, should be relied upon to get them correct for others.
Stuart Macintyre - All historians are equal, but some are more equal than others
As a former Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne, and member of the Communist Party of Australia, Stuart Macintyre’s interpretation of Australian history has been extreme left-wing. Although left-wing means different things to different people, Stuart Macintyre’s brand of the left does seem to smell of all historians being equal, but some being more equal than others.
In his book, the History Wars (2003), Macintyre argues that history is a branch of knowledge that is governed by rules of evidence, so that historians create history but they are not free to invent or falsify it.
Macintyre then declares that those who have challenged the left-wing orthodoxy obey only Rafferty's rules. In the opinion of Macintyre, they caricature their opponents and impugn their motives. They appeal to loyalty, hope, fear and prejudice. In their intimidation of the history profession, they act as bullies.
The perception that Macintyre weaves is that the left-wing orthodox strain of history has been governed by love, and an objective quest for the truth, while all those who have challenged it, or have kept the left honest, have been governed by a mean spirit, and/or falsification of evidence.
To launch the book, Macintyre enlisted former Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating. Keating used the opportunity to belittle John Howard - the man who replaced him as PM.
The personal attacks in the book, as well as its launch by a Labor politician famous for his personal attacks, do seem to indicate that there remains a significant gulf between what Macintyre preaches, and what he practices.
Henry Reynolds – The school teacher that became a revolutionary historian
Henry Reynolds commenced his career as a school teacher, and finished it as one of Australia’s most revolutionary historians. A research professor at the University of Tasmania, in books such as Why Weren't We Told? (2000), Mr Reynolds conceived the nature of contact between colonists and Aborigines as a battleground. He wrote of frontier wars in Queensland that resulted in the loss of 3,000 Europeans and 20,000 indigenous Australians. He wrote of guerrilla warfare in Tasmania that threatened the very viability of the English colony.
No historian in the preceding two centuries had conceived history in such a way. It seemed that, until Reynolds, there hadn’t been any idea that there had been wars between Aborigines and Colonists. Most of the myth-building conflicts were presumed to have been confined to bushrangers and miners rebelling against authorities. Conflicts between Aborigines and colonists were believed to have been between individuals and/or small parties that was deemed to be criminal conduct - not war.
Reynolds' fellow historians have since criticised him for fabricating statistics, and/or omitting evidence in order to create a perception of war. Such criticisms indicate that perhaps the main reason for why no other historian ever wrote of Reynold's-style warfare was because history just didn’t happen in the way that Henry Reynolds conceived.
Robert Hughes – History by an art critic
Art critic Robert Hughes was interested in how features of the Australian character, such as iconic support for the underdog and the bushranger, could be traced to the Australian penal experience. His 1987 book, The Fatal Shore, became an international best seller. It detailed the period 1770 to the 1840s, and explored bushrangers, Convicts and conflict between the English and Irish.
Hughes was one of the few Australian historians to have escaped criticism. Perhaps this was because his chief subject matters, Convicts and their cultural legacy, was a topic that most other historians were quite uncomfortable with, and therefore didn’t want to touch. Alternatively, perhaps it was because he was more concerned with understanding instead of demonizing.
Greg Melluish - Turning the museum's curators into its exhibits
A very unique historian, Gregory Melluish strayed from the safety of the flock as he made intellectuals his chief subject matter. As a result, intellectuals, who had been inclined to see themselves as curators of the museum, found themselves to be the museum’s chief exhibit.
Melluish has argued that, instead of wishing to contribute to national life, many intellectuals, especially in the humanities and social sciences, have come to understand their role as being in perpetual opposition to the mainstream. He explains this opposition as the reason for why intellectuals are widely disliked by the wider Australian community.
Melluish has also noted the irony of the humanities field being extremely vocal in its support for diversity, while being the least diverse institution in Australian society. In that regard, Melluish can not be faulted. Not only is there is an absence of pluralistic views in the humanities field, it is so racially uniform that it could be legitimately seen as the last bastion of the White Australia Policy.
Just as mainstream Australia has not always appreciated the intellectual's analysis of them, intellectuals have not always appreciated Melluish's analysis of them either. As a consequence, they have defined him as a right-winger.
Andrew Bolt - history by a journalist
Journalists define news as something that someone does not want you to know. While some news indeed takes that form, it also manifests into something that can cause the red ants to fight the green ants in a way that gives the journalist a great opportunity to give running commentary. Media consumers take sides, gain a feeling of belonging, give an opinion and feel an emotional work out. More importantly, they keep buying newspapers or watching the news. The desire to provoke and cover conflict has attracted journalists to the history wars.
Most journalists have supported the black-armband side because it has been framed as the story that someone (dead colonists/ catholic missionaries/ right wingers) don’t want you to know. Another journalist, Andrew Bolt, has taken the other side by raising awareness of the history that the black-armband historians don’t want you to know. Specifically, he has scrutinised the stories of the ‘stolen generations’ to check if they are consistent with what white historians say happened. He asked Robert Manne to name 10 children stolen because they were black. He has also asked his fellow journalists to name 3 of the 100,000 children stolen because they were black. He never got his names.
Bolt has made plenty of his enemies and admirers alike with his approach. From a media perspective, he also sells a lot of newspapers.
Graham Walsh – Operating outside the funding system
For more than 30 years, Graham Walsh studied a collection of rock art in the Kimberly known as the Bradshaws. The paintings depict slender figures with strait hair, ceremonial tassels, and boats with up to 20 people on board. Walsh also recorded the oral history of local Aborigines. These tribes declared that the art was ‘before their time’ and explained them as being created by birds.
The combination of the pictures themselves, and the oral history of the local tribes, led Walsh to conclude that they were painted by an unknown Asiatic race before the last ice age. Walsh has explained his theories in a series of lectures, and in books such as:
Bradshaws: ancient rock paintings of north-west Australia (1994)
Bradshaw Art of the Kimberley (2000)
For decades, Walsh’s theories went unchallenged. This was largely because he was one of the few people to take any interest in the paintings. Things changed, however, after the 1992 Mabo vs Queensland judgement. Archaeologists saw the potential for funding by helping Aborigines use the art for a land claim. Walsh’s theories of an unknown Asiatic race before the last ice age thus undermined a potentially lucrative project. As the archaeologists had little knowledge of the Bradshaws in comparison to Walsh, a political approach was undertaken. On the 18th December 1995, the Australian Archaeological Association issued a media statement declaring that Walsh’s interpretations were
“based on and encourage racist stereotypes.”
The Archaeological association argued that the paintings were created by the direct descendants of the local Aborigines and couldn’t have been more than 4,000 years old. The Association ended up with egg on its face in 1997 when La Trobe University scientists dated a fossilised wasps' nest found on a Bradshaw at 17,500-years-old; thus giving strong scientific support to Walsh's theories.
Perhaps it should be stressed that Walsh has no formal qualifications as a rock-art expert. Conceivably, he could have done a Ph.D in the subject sometime in the last 30 years, and thereby gained a qualification. The only real obstacle to completing formal studies would have been finding a supervisor that knows more than him.
Even though Walsh lacks a university qualification, arguably his ability to operate outside the university system has given him some freedom that university scholars lack. In order to gain funding, or persuade their peers to accept their theories, academics in the humanities are often forced to take moralistic positions, instead of scientific positions. The Australian Archaeological Association’s hostility to Walsh, and their methods of discrediting his views, illustrate that this has definitely become a problem in Australia.
Aboriginal history for political purposes
History can be used for many different purposes. It can be used to understand the mind by considering human behaviour in a variety of different circumstances. It can be used to understand a culture by considering the influences that shaped it. It can also be used for political purposes. For example, it can be used to justify a moral code, inspire a people to feel good about themselves, to build bridges of friendship between warring peoples, or continue a war between peoples. When used for political purposes, compromising the truth is sometimes justified on the grounds of achieving the greater good.
For a variety of reasons, many white Australians want to use history to "help" Aborigines. If history were to be used to benefit Aborigines, there are numerous political angles that the historian could choose from. One angle would be to portray the Aborigines as strong warriors who used ingenuity, knowledge of the land, and fighting prowess to make life difficult for the colonists. This angle could be served by focussing on the story of Pelmuwuy, or the failure of the Black Line to achieve its objectives. A second angle would be to portray Australian history as one in which colonists and the indigenous population got on much better than they did in other countries around the world. This angle could be served by focussing on colonists using Aboriginal words for place names (Canberra,Wollongong, Illawarra, Wagga Wagga), using Aboriginal words in songs of rebellion such as Waltzing Matilda (coolibah, jumbuck, billabong), and the absence of holidays, or children’s games celebrating whites killing blacks. A third angle could be to portray Aborigines as very adaptable people. This angle could be served by focussing on their knowledge of the land, hunting skills, early reports of adapting to colonial customs, the extremely impressive performance of the Aboriginal cricket team that toured England in the 19th century, and David Unipon's concept plans for a helicopter using aerodynamic principles of the boomerang. A final angle would be to portray Aborigines as victims who suffered at the hands of the whites. This angle could be served by focussing on racist policies implemented by the white authorities.
It is the victim history angle that has most been favoured by Australia’s white historians over the last thirty years. The victim history has subsequently been incorporated in the oral tradition of Aborigines, and forged their identity.
Whether the victim history has actually benefited Aborigines; however, is open to debate. Thus far, the victim history hasn’t stopped Aborigines from being defined by statistics of disadvantage. If anything, defining Aborigines using stereotypes of disadvantage has a way of keeping Aborigines disadvantaged as the stereotypes become self-fullfilling prophecies. Admitedly, the stereotypes help Aborigines gain the sympathy of others, but they don't help Aborigines gain the respect of others - or even the respect of themselves.
The unsavoury outcome can be seen as an inevitable consequence of white individuals deciding to write the history for groups that they are not part of, and compromising the integrity of the history in the process. One of the problems of writing for other groups is that there is a risk of applying labels onto others that the historian wouldn’t want applied upon themselves. Specifically, few Australian historians see themselves as victims. As a consequence, perhaps they would feel uncomfortable with foreigners highlighting their Convict heritage in order to give them a victim label. Furthermore, they would be uncomfortable with boganism being used to define Australians, and would be even more uncomfortable if the international community used drug users, criminals, or battered women to define Australians as a whole.
Yet despite being uncomfortable with personally being defined as a victim and disadvantaged, they are not uncomfortable with portraying others as victims. To compound matters, the white historians have compromised the truth while defining the victim identity of the Aborigines. Once that historians are seen to have deliberately compromised the truth, they elicit the hostility of others. Unfortunately, because white historians have compromised the truth when writing about Aborigines, it is not whites that suffer, it is the Aborigines.
What Aborigines Say?
Successful Aborigines
1) George Campbell, Yarralin elder:
"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’”
2) Warren Mundine: "Freedom to do the things we want to do; freedom to make the choices that will enrich our lives. Aboriginals are capable of making up their own minds, you know. They don't need the guiding hand of the white fella at every turn."
"There seems to be buried in every government policy of every major political party this basic idea of preserving a mythical noble savage ideal of indigenous Australia"
3) Noel Pearson: “the introduction of passive welfare into Aboriginal communities was a disaster”
4) Galarrwuy Yunupingu
“ONLY when we are empowered to take full responsibility at a local level will change occur.”
