THAT AUSTRALIA was invaded cannot be disputed.
Britain seized the continent in order to expand its empire, just like it
seized colonies in America, Africa and Asia.
Its officials created the legal fiction of terra nullius-Australia as an
empty land. Their aim was to get control of the land without cost.
From the beginning, armed force was used to drive Aborigines from the land
to secure this imperialist outpost.
In 1790, Governor Phillip sent troops out to infuse a universal terror
among local Aborigines who were resisting the theft of their land.
In 1816, his successor Governor Macquarie sent three armed detachments of
the 46th regiment to attack the tribes on the outskirts of the settlement.
He wanted the heads of Aboriginal leaders cut off and their bodies strung
up in trees.
But the war against Aborigines widened dramatically with the expansion of
the pastoral industry.
The rise of wool production alongside Britains booming textile
manufacturing provided the foundations for a home-grown Australian
capitalist class with its own distinct interests.
During the 1820s in Tasmania, pastoralists spread a million sheep through
the midlands.
This expansion fuelled the drive to push Aborigines off the land.
Officially organised punitive expeditions-nigger hunts-butchered Aborigines
like they were pests.
The last recorded massacre was within living memory at Forrest Creek in WA
in 1926.
The Native Police set up in the 1840s played a vital role in the growth of
the pastoral industry. While they carried out dispersals, pastoralists took
control of the land.
In 1861, the Queensland government advertised that land was available in
the north of the state and guaranteed settlers the protection of the Native
Police.
Stealing Aboriginal children from their families was entwined with control
of Aboriginal land. It was another mechanism of dispossession.
Towards the end of the 19th century, Aborigines were rounded up and herded
onto missions and reserves for so-called protection.
But this was not for humanitarian reasons. It was thought Aboriginal people
were dying out. Governments were smoothing the dying pillow.
In the meantime, the missions and reserves were used as a source of cheap
labour for the pastoral industry.
However, a more subtle policy of extermination continued. Halfcaste
children were taken away as part of a process of biological absorbtion.
In May 1937. AO Neville, Chief Protector of Aborigines in WA, was reported
in Brisbanes Telegraph as holding the view that within 100 years the pure
black will be extinct.
But the half-caste problem was increasing every year. Therefore, the idea
was to keep the pure blacks segregated and absorb the half-castes into the
white population.
His Northern Territory colleague, Dr Cecil Cook, was also fixated on
-absorbing Aboriginal people.
His policy was breeding out the colour. Half-caste children who had been
removed to government homes were to be married to whites.
Generally by the 5th and invariably by the 6th generation, all native
characteristics of the Australian Aborigines were eradicated, Cook said.
The problem of our half-castes will quickly be eliminated by the complete
disappearance of the black race, and the swift submergence of their progeny
in the white.
After the Second World War, the policy changed from biological absorption
to cultural absorption-assimilation. But the aim was the same.
Liberal Party hero Paul Hasluck, minister for territories in the Menzies
government, insisted that Aborigines and their culture be dissolved
mainstream society.
Aboriginal people would not have special rights.
Why does Howard want to distort history?
To acknowledge the real history of Australia is to recognise the
dispossession of Aboriginal people and; therefore, their claims to the land.
Any recounting of stories of conflict and bloodshed, writes Henry Reynolds
in his book Why Werent We To1d?, ...raised questions of what the fighting
was all about, what its objectives were, its political purpose and what it
achieved.
It didnt take too much investigation to come up with the answer, he says
the ownership and control of land, about taking it by force from those who
had been in possession of it since time immemorial.
Whether Australia was settled or invaded and whether a generation of
Aboriginal children was stolen is not a mere question of semantics.
As historian Richard Broome puts it, To see Aboriginal-European conflict as
war exposes the myth of the peaceful and lawful penetration of Australia,
and also reflects on the current rights of Aboriginal people.
The needs of Australian capitalism-the profits of the wool industry in
particular-necessitated violent theft of land. Terror was justified by a
racist ideology which portrayed Aborigines as less than human.
The resulting dispossession has allowed the mining bosses of Rio Tinto,
Western Mining Corporation and BHP to continue to make profits into the
21st century.
It doesnt suit Howard to have the real history told as he extinguishes
millions of hectares of native title with the ten point plan to protect
those profits.
Understanding the real history of Australia leads people to question the
nature of our society today.
It reveals the racism that is at the core of Australian capitalism.
Right wing commentator Ken Baker who opposes black armband history argues
that to rewrite Australias past as a story of destruction and persecution
would ultimately work to undermine the legitimacy of existing institutions
inherited from the past.
Resistance and unity
THE REAL history of Australia is not only one of dispossession and genocide
but of Aboriginal resistance and black and white unity.
In Howards version of history, Aboriginal people meekly accepted settlement.
But more than 20,000 Aborigines died in more than a century of battles
against pastoralists and the state forces of troops and police.
For more than 200 years, Aboriginal people have fought to defend their
land, and have struck and rallied for equal pay and political rights.
The system that was transported here in 1788, however, was not only based
on racism but on the exploitation of the majority of white people as well.
From the outset, the agenda of the British invaders was to plant the seeds
of a capitalist economy at the expense of both the indigenous people and
the working class transported here for petty crimes.
White workers gain nothing from the oppression of Aboriginal people. Their
material interests lie in righting against the system that causes it.
That common interest has created the basis for what is a proud tradition of
workers support for black rights.
When Aboriginal stockmen in the Pilbara struck for pay in 1946 they were
supported by 19 unions in WA, seven federal unions and four Trades and
Labour Councils.
At the peak of solidarity, the WA branch of the Seamens Union placed a, ban
on the transport of wool from stations affected by the strike, winning
almost immediate concessions from them.
When the Gurindji stockmen in the Northern Territory launched their
struggle for equal pay and land rights in 1966, they received massive
support from white trade unionists.
The meatworkers union instructed its 40,000 members not to handle or treat
any stock from the stations hit by the strike.
Actors Equity sponsored a five-week speaking tour for the strike leaders.
which raised an incredible $15,000-equal to $250,000 today.
When Aboriginal activists set up their Tent Embassy on the lawns of
parliament house in 1972-sparking a national movement for land rights-they
received the support of thousands of white students and trade unionists.
NSW Builders Labourers Federation leader Bob Pringle addressed a
2000-strong Canberra rally to defend the embassy.
It was the spectre of black and white unity that forced governments to
begin to recognise land rights.
Today the same mining companies which benefited from the extinguishment of
native title under Howards ten point plan, like BHP, are involved in
extinguishing union rights.
The Howard government and the big pastoralists in the National Farmers
Federation joined forces to both push through the ten point plan and smash
the wharfies union.
As historian Humphrey McQueen explains, there are two versions of
Australian history-that upheld by the floggers and that by the flogged.
Howard wants the ruling class version of history to prevail-a nationalistic
fairy tale which expunges racism and exploitation from its pages and backs
up his attacks on workers and blacks.
The real history holds too many valuable lessons as we fight against the
racism and economic rationalism of the Howard government and the capitalist
system behind him.
