The Fabrication Of Aboriginal History Van Diemen S Land 1803 1847

This is the first volume in a series that re-appraises the now widely accepted story about conflict between colonists and Aborigines in Australian history. Beginning in Tasmania, and eventually covering the whole of the Australian mainland, the volumes find that the academic historians of the last thirty years have greatly exaggerated the degree of violence that occurred. In a close re-examination of the primary sources used by historians, Keith Windschuttle concludes that much of their case is poorly founded, other parts are seriously mistaken, and some of it is outright fabrication. The author finds the British colonization of the Australia was the least violent of all Europes encounters with the New World. It did not meet any organized resis­tance. Conflict was sporadic rather than systematic. The notion of frontier warfare is fictional. To describe the process as genocide is to use hyperbole that is unsupported by the historical evidence.

Argues against the widely held belief that in the 20th century up to one in three Aboriginal children were forcibly removed from their parents in order to put an end to Aboriginality. In 1997, the Human Rights Commission made the most notorious accusation ever directed against Australia. It accused this country of committing genocide against the Aborigines by stealing their children. The purported intention of governments and welfare officials was to institutionalise and assimilate the children into white society and thus rid Australia of its Aboriginal people. In 2008, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologised to Aboriginal people for these policies. This book is based on an exhaustive examination of the archival records of child removals and of government policies and laws. It also scrutinizes the work of the historians on whom the Human Rights Commission relied. It finds the historical research that created this interpretation was shoddy and untrustworthy. Aboriginal children were never removed from their families in order to put an end to Aboriginality or, indeed, for any improper government policy or program. The small numbers of Aboriginal child removals in the twentieth century were almost all based on traditional grounds of child welfare. Most children affected had been orphaned, abandoned, destitute, neglected, malnourished or subject to various forms of domestic violence, sexual exploitation and sexual abuse. The notion that this amounted to genocide came from creative interpretations of selected evidence taken out of context by politically motivated historians. There were no Stolen Generations. NB: Volume Three is published out of sequence. Volume Two and Volume Four will be published later.

In December 2002, The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Volume One by Keith Windschuttle was published. It argued that violence between whites and Aborigines in colonial Tasmania had been vastly exaggerated and sought to rewrite one of the most troubling parts of Australian history. The book soon attracted widespread coverage, including both high praise and heated critcism. Until now, Windschuttle's arguments have not been comprehensively examined. Whitewash collects some of Australia's leading writers on Aboriginal history to do just this. The result provides not only a demolition of Windschuttle's revisionism but also a vivid and illuminating history of one of the most famous and tragic episodes in the history of the British Empire - the dispossession of the Tasmanian Aborigines. Contributors include: James Boyce, Martin Krygier, Robert van Krieken, Henry Reynolds, Shayne Breen, Marilyn Lake, Greg Lehman, Neville Green, Cathie Clement, Peggy Patrick, Phillip Tardif, David Hansen, Lyndall Ryan, Cassandra Pybus, Ian McFarlane, Mark Finnane, Tim Murray, Christine Williamson, A. Dirk Moses and Robert Manne.

The history of Aborigines in Van Diemen’s Land is long. The first Tasmanians lived in isolation for as many as 300 generations after the flooding of Bass Strait. Their struggle against almost insurmountable odds is one worthy of respect and admiration, not to mention serious attention. This broad-ranging book is a comprehensive and critical account of that epic survival up to the present day. Starting from antiquity, the book examines the devastating arrival of Europeans and subsequent colonisation, warfare and exile. It emphasises the regionalism and separateness, a consistent feature of Aboriginal life since time immemorial that has led to the distinct identities we see in the present, including the unique place of the islanders of Bass Strait. Carefully researched, using the findings of archaeologists and extensive documentary evidence, some only recently uncovered, this important book fills a long-time gap in Tasmanian history.

This text is a comprehensive military history of frontier conflict in Australia. Covering the first 50 years of British occupation in Australia, the book examines in detail how both sides fought on the frontier and examines how Aborigines developed a form of warfare differing from tradition.

This book frames the Church of England's missionary outreach to Aboriginal people within the reality of frontier violence, government control, segregation, and neglect. As missionary control diminished, Aboriginal people responded more overtly and autonomously. Some regarded "white" Christianity as irrelevant while others adopted it in culturally satisfying ways. Through the Australian Board of Missions (ABM), the Church of England sought to convert Aboriginal people into a Europeanized compliant sub-caste. The separation of children from their families was the first step. The book also shows how the ABM found itself increasingly embroiled in emerging broader social issues and changing government policies, requiring it to rethink its own policies.

A greedy, vain and unscrupulous man bent on self-aggrandisment. This controversial study of George ('Black') Robinson, first Chief Protector of Aborigines in Australia, reveals a man long held to be the worthy civilizer and Christianizer of Tasmanian Aborigines to have been a monster of deceit and a betrayer of those it was his role to protect-a man who made perhaps the most repellent contribution of all to what was to become the decimation of Tasmania's Aborigines.