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The Fabrication of
Aboriginal
History
Reviews of Keith
Windschuttle's new book
Paul Sheehan
Our
history not rewritten but put right. Accusations of genocide
have been based on guesswork and blatant ideology. SMH, 24
November 2002 http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/11/24/1037697982065.html
At a ceremony in the Kimberley district of Western Australia,
Sir
William Deane, then governor-general, apologised to the Kija people
for
an infamous massacre by whites at Mistake Creek in the 1930s. He
told
the assembly: "I'd like to say to the Kija people how profoundly
sorry I
personally am that such events defaced our land, this beautiful
land."
While the brutal dislocation of Australia's indigenous population
has
rightly become an acknowledged chapter of national shame, the
accusation
of genocide is something altogether different.
Deane, for one, might one day reflect on his role in defaming the
Australian people on the basis of shabby evidence. Mistake Creek
indeed.
As the historian Keith Windschuttle points out in his landmark new
book,
The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, (Macleay Press,
2002): "... Deane
got the facts of this case completely wrong. According to the
Western
Australian police records, the incident took place in 1915, not
the
1930s. It was not a massacre of Aborigines by whites and had nothing
to
do with a stolen cow. It was a killing of Aborigines by Aborigines in
a
dispute over a women who had left one Aboriginal man to live with
another. The jilted lover and an accomplice rode into the camp of
his
rival and shot dead eight people. This is not the kind of incident
for
which the Governor-General of Australia should be apologising.
"Even though he had been using the same incident in speeches for
at
least two years, Deane never bothered to do the most elementary
research
to find out the facts."
Deane has qualified his accusations by stating, as he did in his
book,
Directions: A Vision For Australia (2002): "It matters
not whether this
particular story is accurate in all its details, for the elements
undoubtedly occurred in many parts of our nation in the 211 years
of
European settlement."
Windschuttle responds in his book: "But, of course, it does
matter
greatly whether stories about crimes of this magnitude are accurate
in
their details, and it is most surprising to find a former judge of
the
High Court thinking otherwise. If the factual details are not
taken
seriously, then people can invent any atrocity and believe anything
they
like. Truth becomes a lost cause."
Fabrication is the first of three volumes, with the other two to
be
published next year and in 2004. "I intended to do one book but
there
was so much material," Windschuttle said. The three volumes will form
a
frontal assault on the accusation of genocide which began with a
claim,
now accepted as fact around the world and taught in schools, that
the
Tasmanian Aborigines were exterminated by a policy of genocide.
Volume 1 is sub-titled Van Diemen's Land, 1803-1847. Windschuttle
found
a mountain of documentary evidence in Tasmania. He also found
plausible
evidence for only 118 Aborigines' deaths at the hands of Europeans
and
187 whites killed by Aborigines. He found the basis for the
genocide
argument to be speculation, guesswork, outright distortion and
blatant
ideology, an ideology which reached its crescendo in the Bringing
Them
Home report in 1997. Once this report's claim of genocide was
subjected
to the forensic rigours of the courts, it fell apart, a fact many
still
cannot accept.
This is not an exercise in denialism. As Windschuttle argues: "If
Australians of Aboriginal and European descent are to look one
another
straight in the eye, they have to face the truth about their
mutual
history, not rely upon mythologies designed to create an edifice
of
black victimhood and white guilt."
The strength of Windschuttle's book is in the mass of details. The
three
volumes of Fabrication will not be the last word on genocide, far
from it,
but
will provide what has been lacking for so long - a devil's
advocate view unintimidated by the prevailing ideological
orthodoxies
inside the academy and the media. Windschuttle follows paper
trails,
checks original sources and supplies names.
No one is named more than the historian Henry Reynolds. Among one
of
numerous examples, Windschuttle examines Frontier
(1987), a book
reprinted at least five times and used as a school text, which quotes
a
governor of Tasmania, George Arthur, in 1831: "Writing from his camp
at
Sorell to justify the famous Black Line, he argued that such was
the
insecurity of the settlers that he feared 'a general decline in
the
prosperity' and the eventual extirpation of the colony."
When Windschuttle quotes the original document we find that
Arthur
actually wrote something very different: "It was evident that
nothing
but capturing and forcibly detaining these unfortunate savages ...
could
now arrest a long term of rapine and bloodshed, already commenced,
a
great decline in the prosperity of the colony, and the extirpation
of
the Aboriginal race itself."
So Arthur was not expressing concern that the Aborigines presented
a
threat to the survival of the colony, as Reynolds clearly implies,
he
was concerned about the survival of the Aborigines themselves.
Questioned on this by the Herald's Andrew Stevenson last week,
Reynolds
dug a deeper hole: "Nowhere did I suggest that Arthur thought they
could
wipe out the colony. That would be a silly thing to say."
But that's what he does say in Frontiers. It's on page
29.
Another prominent target is Robert Hughes and his book The
Fatal Shore.
Given that Hughes's theory that Tasmania was conceived as the
world's
first Gulag has already been dismantled by Professor Alan Atkinson
in
The Europeans in Australia (1997), and now the paltry
sources of his
Tasmanian genocide theory are exposed by Windschuttle, the
enormously
successful Fatal Shore is fast becoming The Fatal
Flaw.
Windschuttle is not a lone dissenter. Other anthropologists,
notably
Roger Sandall, in The Culture Cult (2001), Professor
Kenneth Maddock,
Professor Peter Sutton and Dr Ron Brunton, have already written
about
ideology's incursions into anthropology. And another new book,
Sex
Maiming & Murder by Rod Moran (Access Press, 2002),
reveals the source
of much of the massacre mythology of Western Australia was the
Rev
Ernest Gribble, who Moran proves was a pathological liar. In an
introduction to the book, Professor Geoffrey Bolton gracefully
acknowledges that Moran's work has "contradicted the view
previously
taken by most historians, including Henry Reynolds, Neville Green
and
myself ..."
No doubt Windschuttle will be singled out for ritual abuse, but at
least
three more exposes are in the works. Finally, the accusers are going
to
be the accused.
psheehan@smh.com.au
Andrew Stevenson
The
170-year-old war: Academics are accused of lying in a new account of
colonial Tasmania. SMH, 22 November 2002
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/11/21/1037697804901.html
The Black War finished in Tasmania in 1832 but white historians
can't
put down their weapons.
Today sees the publication of the first volume of Keith
Windschuttle's
alternative history of the frontier, in which he accuses four
contemporary historians - including Henry Reynolds - of deception
and
mistruths.
Windschuttle claims Professor Reynolds misreported the words of
Lieutenant-Governor Arthur and misrepresented his views.
Professor Reynolds had also misrepresented the views of settlers such
as
Edward Curr in building a case that white Tasmanians had argued for
the
extermination of Aborigines, Windschuttle claims.
The most authoritative scholar of the Tasmanian frontier, Lyndall
Ryan,
fares worse. Yesterday, after reading sections of the book,
The
Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Professor Ryan said she
had been
accused of lying.
Windschuttle claims in the book that references cited by Professor
Ryan
do not support claims of massacres or killings of Aborigines.
"I conducted the research for these events 30 years ago, "
Professor
Ryan said. "I had no reason to fabricate them then and I am in no
position to check them now. I can't believe I would have made it
up.
He's accusing me of lying ...
"The truth or otherwise of these events do not destroy the
overall
argument of my book - that the Tasmanian Aborigines were
violently
dispossessed of their country as a result of the British colonisation
of
Tasmania but they were not exterminated."
Two other leading historians, Rhys Jones and Lloyd Robson, both
now
dead, are sharply criticised in the book. Robson, who wrote A
History of
Tasmania, included claims by a settler of having witnessed
Aborigines
killing 300 sheep at Oyster Bay in 1815, an action which led to
soldiers
killing 22 Aborigines.
But, argues Windschuttle, this would have been difficult. The
settler,
James Hobbs, was living in India at the time and there were no sheep
at
Oyster Bay for anyone to kill.
Lieutenant-Governor Arthur feared Aboriginal hostilities in the
1820s
would lead to the "eventual extirpation of the colony". These are
the
words Windschuttle claims are used by Professor Reynolds to support
a
policy of "ethnic cleansing". Arthur never made the statement,
wrote
Windschuttle.
Professor Reynolds attacked the claim yesterday. "I've never said
that.
That's quite, quite misleading. How could they [Aborigines
destroy the
colony]? I mean there were people who said that but Arthur never
did and
I've never, as far as I'm aware, suggested that he did," he said.
"Nowhere did I suggest that Arthur thought they could wipe out
the
colony. That would be a silly thing to say."
Sir William Deane (governor-general from 1996-2001)
Decrying
the memories of Mistake Creek is yet further injustice. Dismissing
indigenous oral history on the basis of 'no police record' ignores
cultural context. SMH, 27 November
2002
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/11/26/1038274302698.html
Paul Sheehan ("Our history not rewritten but put right",
Herald,
November 25) uncritically accepts and repeats historian Keith
Windschuttle's dogmatic denial of any non-indigenous responsibility
in
relation to the killing of Aborigines, including women and children,
at
Mistake Creek in the East Kimberley. In so doing, he conveys a
false
picture upon which he bases some criticism of me. I am led to
respond
only by reason of the hurt that Sheehan's article, if left
unanswered,
may cause to the Kija people of the region.
As regards details of the killings, there is conflict between the
Kija
oral history and local police records about the nature and extent of
the
involvement of a non-indigenous former police constable named Rhatigan.
Otherwise, there is a remarkable degree of common ground between
the
oral history and the police records. There was a killing by shooting
of
at least seven Kija people. Undoubtedly, two Aboriginal employees
of
Rhatigan were involved, riding Rhatigan's horses and presumably
using
his firearms. There was pre-existing enmity between some of the
Kija
people and one of the Aboriginal employees, Wynn, who was from
elsewhere
in Australia. Wynn was apparently killed by an Aboriginal police
tracker
in the aftermath of the massacre. The other employee, "Nipper",
subsequently surrendered to the police.
According to Kija oral history, recounted in some published
non-indigenous works and repeated with complete conviction by
present-day Kija people, Rhatigan had led the attack because he
mistakenly believed, presumably at the urging of Wynn, that the
Aboriginal victims had taken and killed (and were eating) his
milking
cow. In fact, the cow had merely wandered and was found after the
massacre.
According to police records, to which historian Cathie Clement
drew
attention in 1989, there was no basis for a conclusion of direct
involvement of Rhatigan, notwithstanding his employees, his horses,
his
firearms and, apparently, his presence in the vicinity. On that
version,
Wynn and Nipper had carried out the killings on their own and on
their
own initiative.
At one stage I accepted that the killings occurred "in the 1930s". I
now
believe that Clement's work leads to the conclusion that they took
place
in 1915. In these circumstances, as Clement has stressed, one
cannot
simply ignore the indigenous oral history to the extent that it is
not
supported by police records.
It is clear that there was throughout Australia, including the
Kimberley
at these times, often reluctance on the part of police to file
adverse
reports or to bring proceedings against white settlers in respect
of
extreme physical retribution against Aborigines for the killing
of
livestock on traditional lands. It needs little imagination to
conceive
that that reluctance could well be heightened in a case where a
former
police constable was involved.
At the same time, there would be few lawyers, at least of my
generation,
with relevant experience who are unaware of how misleading and
unreliable untested police reports of alleged verbal statements
by
illiterate, particularly illiterate Aboriginal, accused or witnesses
can
be. If one were to restrict acceptance of oral indigenous history
in
relation to the killing of Aborigines to those cases where there
was
confirmatory police evidence or action, the resulting sanitised
version
of the events of the dispossession would be contrary to plain fact
and
even commonsense.
In the case of Mistake Creek, the oral history is remarkably strong.
As
published and as recounted by Kija people, it lacks any dreamtime
element of the kind that can occasionally lead to confusion between
fact
and allegory. The foundation of that oral history presumably lies in
the
eyewitness accounts of three Kija people who survived the
massacre.
For another, the police initially arrested Rhatigan on suspicion
of
wilful murder. They did not proceed with the charge. Nipper, the
Aborigine who had surrendered to the police, was charged with
murder.
The charge against him was also eventually dropped when the
police
failed to produce any acceptable evidence. He was subsequently taken
to
Perth where he was employed in the police stables.
No one was brought to justice for the killings and the police version
of
events, in so far as it differs from the strong Kija oral history,
was
never tested in a criminal trial.
It is also relevant to note, as regards the police evidence, that
Clement, upon whose research Windschuttle expressly relied
(The
Australian Financial Review, June 18 , 2001), has dissociated
herself
from Windschuttle's use of her work in his efforts to discredit the
Kija
oral history.
The Sisters of St Joseph, who have selflessly served the
indigenous
peoples of the East Kimberley for many years, have erected a
small
monument at the foot of the old boab tree at Mistake Creek to mark
the
place where the killings occurred. There, on All Souls Day each
year,
representatives of the Kija gather in prayer and fellowship with
non-indigenous fellow Australians, to mourn those who were
killed.
"Theirs is", as I have pointed out, "the path of true
reconciliation".
Also see: Geoffrey Muirden's
Review
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