Friends, This article represents the notions of apologists, we see white men trying to euphemise the damage that was done by some of our forebears. An analogy for what should be done is a murder that happens twenty years ago and the police suddenly make an arrest. This action will assist the victims - relatives of the murdered person - no end. There will not be any talk about forgetting the crime just because it happened a long time ago, nor that some other person or persons went out of their way to help the victim at some stage, or the relatives of the victim after the event. This, for those like McGuinness and Windshuttle is a very comfortable argument and designed to make us all feel warm and fuzzy and not in any way remorseful. I have spoken personally to Aboriginal people who were relatives of the Barrow Creek massacre, also the Coniston massacre victims. In each case there is a canon of literature that shows beyond doubt that these events took place and that many Aboriginal People were killed in cold blood. In each case they were sparked by the killing of a white person by Aborigines. But in each case the circumstances that led up to those killings has been ignored and instead of recourse to legal processes events were taken into the hands of the whites. One of the stories I heard from an Aboriginal woman concerning Barrow Creek was appalling. Being a woman or a child was no protection against these white warriors rifles. Unfortunately, there is a policy of generalisation taking place at the moment - even in discussion of the current economic situation - which serves to hide the suffering of the individual members of the society. This is a significant political ploy. It is well known in statistics that the more general the discussion the more situation of individuals becomes obscured. This is the trap that people sympathetic to the Aboriginal Peoples are being sucked into by such as McGuinness and Windshuttle. They are continually talking Australian wide generalisations. A similar situation occurred with the stolen generation until the Bringing Them Home report appeared and numbers were converted to very real people with individual stories, stories we could to a certain extent relate to. The emergence of this report was 'tragic' for the conservative cause led by Howard, hence the extreme measures taken of late to devalue its contents and get back to the comfort of generalised numbers. Until someone, and there are some literary attempts - Coniston Massacre - where a human face is placed upon such events, then generalised statistics will remain. At Coniston between 30 and 100 people were shot by Constable Murray and his mates. At Barrow Creek about 68 were indiscriminately shot. At Forrest River I don't know but it was a considerable number and then their bodies burnt in an endeavour to cover up the crime. Debates similar to that outlined in the article from Trudy will never solve anything. It is only when individual stories are reported that McGinness and Windshuttle will be overcome. It would be interesting to know how much these people, including that 'brilliant mind' Samuels know of Aboriginal history or even Aboriginal culture yet their prognostications are taken as 'The Truth'. Particularly in the social sciences numbers are tending to be surpassed by qualitative values. Numbers are symbols, social values have identifiable meanings. Finally, yesterday my partner's book was launched containing stories of Asian women showing that they are not pliant individuals, rather ingenious subverters. This evidence has come from searching the fragments - in fact that is the name of the book - including men's writing about women, studying their artefacts and the patterns and pictures contained, oral history (not necessarily contemporary) and all sorts of bits and pieces of information. This methodology can also be applied to Aboriginal Peoples who have, especially among the peoples where the people are considered illiterate, they have prodigious memories. A contemporary example of a similar methodology is used in Diane Bell's Ngarrindjeri: a world that is, was, and will be. ______________________________________________ Ian Henderson Murdoch University 24 Harfleur Place Perth, W.A. Hamilton Hill Tel: 61-8-9418-3972 Western Australia, 6163 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ______________________________________________ > The Sydney Morning Herald > Aboriginal history: black and white views won't do > > Date: 16/11/2000 > > Hysterical claims of genocide serve only to hold back a sensible debate > about Aboriginal issues, argues PADRAIC P. > MCGUINNESS. > > For all his faults and his interminable Trotskyite harangues, the > Newtown bookseller Bob Gould has one great virtue: he believes in free > speech even for those he disagrees with, and he believes that even if > you disagree strongly with someone you have an obligation to find > out what they have to say. In this he is rare these days. So when he > asked Keith Windschuttle and me to participate in a debate at his > shop on the views that we have been expressing in Quadrant and the > Herald regarding Aboriginal history we accepted. > > The debate took place at his incredibly chaotic shop last Sunday > afternoon. As I expected, the overwhelming majority of those present > had fixed prejudices - Windschuttle and I are reactionary obfuscators > and Henry Reynolds's writings are absolute truth. Scattered among > the mouldering political books and the remains of the ancient > pornography on which Gould's present fortune, such as it is, was founded > there was an assorted collection of people difficult to classify, though > there were clearly quite a few inner-urban ferals. There was plenty > of shouting and interjection - a good speech demands such responses - > but, nevertheless, a remarkable and praiseworthy tolerance for the > expression of dissident views. We were not heard in silence, but we were > heard. ------------------------------------------------------ RecOzNet2 has a page @ http://www.green.net.au/recoznet2 and is archived at http://www.mail-archive.com/ To unsubscribe from this list, mail [EMAIL PROTECTED], and in the body of the message, include the words: unsubscribe announce or click here mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20announce This posting is provided to the individual members of this group without permission from the copyright owner for purposes of criticism, comment, scholarship and research under the "fair use" provisions of the Federal copyright laws and it may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner, except for "fair use." RecOzNet2 is archived for members @ http://www.mail-archive.com/recoznet2%40paradigm4.com.au/
