The Sydney Morning Herald Monday, September 25, 2000 The perils of political reinterpretation Henry Reynolds explains his estimate of 20,000 Aboriginal killings is based on a mountain of research supporting a violent frontier. IN A brief passage in his recent sustained attack on the past 20 years of historical work about frontier conflict, Keith Windschuttle inadvertently draws attention both to his naivety and his ignorance of the subject at the centre of the controversy. He explains that he had long been aware of existing estimates of Aboriginal mortality in armed conflict and had presumed they were based on a tabulation of reported and certified deaths. But anyone with any research experience at all in frontier history would have known that such accounting had always been impossible in Australia. It was so obvious it almost went without saying. What is more, the reason was clear. Killing Aborigines was murder - at least technically so. No-one involved in frontier skirmishing willingly provided evidence that might conceivably incriminate them. They might - and often did - talk and write about killing blacks but the number or location of the bodies was another matter altogether. Our recent experience of massacres in Bosnia and East Timor should have alerted Windschuttle to the course taken by perpetrators - to hide what they had done - and the concerted forensic effort needed to track them down, even a few months after the event. But for Windschuttle it seems that if there were no bodies, there were no killings. However, it is his lack of experience in Australian historical research which is most concerning. He has set out to write critical historiography without the knowledge or research experience to sustain it. Windschuttle pays particular attention to my 1981 estimate in The Other Side of the Frontier, that it was "reasonable to suppose" that 20,000 Aborigines were killed by settlers over the 140 or so years from 1788 to 1928. He wonders, quite reasonably, where the figure came from. But he never asked me. His interest was not elucidation but assassination, accusing me of gross public deception. He behaved more like a hit-man than a historian; was scurrilous rather than serious. I should point out that The Other Side of the Frontier was not about massacres, not primarily about the settlers at all. I considered the question of violent Aboriginal death in just over two pages. Windschuttle obviously paid them close attention. As he has pointed out, I referred to the cognate work of four other scholars who, up to 1981, had made some attempt to count bodies. He clearly thinks that is the sum of my evidence. If that was true there would be good cause for concern. But I mentioned them only in passing, having by then done my own work on the regions in question. Two pages later I explained where my estimate had come from. It should be quoted at length: "The figure of 20,000 Aboriginal deaths in frontier conflict will be thought too high by some, too low by others. However, the evidence concerning the ubiquity of conflict is overwhelming. It can be found in almost every type of document - official reports both public and confidential, newspapers, letters, reminiscences ... The evidence for a great loss of life is voluminous, various and uncontrovertible." I wrote that because I knew that to be the case - I knew it because I had done 10 years of research during which time I read every sort of document in every major library and archive in Australia. I listed my sources in a 25-page select bibliography. They included over 80 parliamentary papers, vast quantities of unpublished official material, over 50 collections of private papers, more than 50 colonial newspapers and 200 contemporary books and articles. During my research I collected hundreds of references to frontier violence. So abundant was the material and so convincing that I eventually stopped noting new references. I could have written a large and detailed book on frontier violence with copious documentation but it would have been a repetitive and ultimately depressing exercise. It is interesting to speculate why Windschuttle makes no reference whatsoever to my account of the great body of evidence that my work rested on. The easy answer is that in his zeal to discredit, he deliberately avoided any mention of it. But I think there is another explanation. Lacking any serious research experience of his own he simply read over the paragraph in question and failed to comprehend its significance. So, in answer to Windschuttle's question of where my "educated guess" came from I reply that it rested on a mountain of research which overwhelmingly supported the picture I drew of a violent frontier. Since 1981 there has been another generation of research by many scholars - much of it regional, detailed, meticulous. None of it has caused me to reconsider my original estimate. There is currently a serious debate about the Forrest River massacre. But it is far from over and I am willing to let it continue among West Australian historians before reviewing my assessment of the evidence. Windschuttle's lack of serious research in the field is shown up in other ways as well. He appears to take delight in the assertion that I can only come up with five Aboriginal deaths in Queensland. It is a truly extraordinary claim as anyone with the slightest knowledge of Queensland history would know. From 1840 till 1907 the Queensland Native Police ranged the Queensland frontier. For most of that time their instructions were to "disperse" large gatherings and punish any attack on Europeans or their property. In 1861 the Attorney-General told the local parliament that it was foolish to hide the fact that "disperse" meant to shoot at. So what does Windschuttle suppose this large paramilitary force was doing for 50 years? As far as I can judge they never made any arrests, never brought in a prisoner, never initiated proceedings resulting in a trial. Windschuttle's lack of acquaintance with the sources shows up in other ways as well. In his article (Herald, September 19) he arrives at the conclusion that most Aborigines were not killed in massacres but in ones and twos. But that has been obvious to anyone who has worked in the field. It should be known to secondary school history students. I have never suggested anything else. Indeed, that's the whole point. On the Australian frontier there was ongoing, sporadic, low-scale conflict which went on all over the continent for 140 years. It is therefore hardly surprising that the numbers killed mounted up. This was apparent to almost everyone who wrote on the subject in the 19th century - those who advocated shooting blacks (and there were many of them) and those who railed against it. Edward Cuir, the best-informed 19th-century observer of frontier conditions, wrote: "In the first place the meeting of the Aboriginal tribes of Australia and the White pioneer results as a rule in war, which lasts from six months to 10 years." We should welcome any attempt to reinterpret the past but to be credible it has to be based on more than a politically inspired canter through a small selection of secondary sources. Henry Reynolds is an author and historian. -- ********************************** 'Click' to protect the rainforest: Make the Rainforest Site your homepage! http://www.therainforestsite.com/ ********************************** ------------------------------------------------------ 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." 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