Windschuttle's Fabrication of Aboriginal History: A View from the Other Side

Abstract

Perhaps most disturbing is that [Windschuttle’s] position demonstrates a great ignorance about Indigenous people, society and culture, past and present, and the basis on which contemporary Indigenous people are asserting their rights. His appeal is to a constituency that shares such ignorance: he positions himself within populist racist ideologies rather than within the ongoing intellectual debate. The responsibility attached to the writing of Indigenous Australians’ histories is immense: no other history has the potential to impact on the present and the future and excite contention and debate to such a high degree. For myself, I approach the task with some misgiving as the fallout can be resounding ‐ my research interest, Indigenous family history with the reality of mixed race marriages and liaisons, is a potential minefield ... Why is the history of Indigenous Australians so difficult? As a people Australians have not yet come to terms with the past: the settler colonial society has not yet developed an interpretation of history that will wash the blood off their hands. Indigenous Australian individuals and groups are still overcoming the shock of colonialism and developing approaches to deal with the present and the past while trying to put in place strategies for the future. Moreover, Australians as a people have not yet come to terms with the dynamics of race in our society and how racism and colonialist attitudes manifest: they are so ingrained as to be a ‘natural’ response and an intrinsic part of culture. The ‘great Australian silence’, in Indigenous history until the last three decades, is testimony to the fact that Australian settler colonialism is overwhelmingly characterised by denial. Windschuttle’s interpretation of Tasmanian history from 1803-47 brings nothing new to the historiography of Indigenous Australian history: he has not written history as such but is attempting to critique the existing histories. This writing is a polemic, blatantly written from an ideological position, in order to prove a political point: that a conspiracy has existed amongst historians and others to prove excessive violence and brutality by the British in the colonial conquest of Australia and establish a case for Indigenous Australian reparations. It is a moot point, whether Windschuttle’s argument with Indigenous Tasmanians is incidental to his argument with those he perceives as left-wing historians. The attack on historians is part of his well-documented political agenda, publicised on his web-site www.sydneyline.com 1 where the term ‘left-wing’ is synonymous with idealistic, subjective and over-theorised. Windschuttle positions himself as the opposite: a realistic, objective, logical empiricist, who rejects rhetoric (my emphasis). 2