An Indelible Stain?

Unsettling the taken (for granted)

“…It was often genocidal – even though many of the so-called ‘civilised’ colonisers considered such a term unthinkable in relation to their own behaviours (Tatz, 2017). The genocidal nature of colonial expansion in Australia, for example, has been widely discussed (Barta, 2008; Bartrop, 2001; Fredericks et al, 2014; Haebich, 2017; Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, 1997; Maynard, 2017; Moses, 2000; Reynolds, 2001; Rogers and Bain, 2016), yet responsibility remains far from the forefront of current thinking in policy circles. In fact, policy initiatives into the very recent past retain echoes of past assumptions about the Indigenous Australians (Altman and Hinkson, 2010; Hunter, 2008; Macoun, 2011; Maddison, 2009; Short, 2010; Watson, 2009).…”

The ‘difficult heritage’ of the Native Mounted Police

“…Changes in Australian historiography since the 1970s, however, have highlighted a new narrative of Australia’s ‘coming into being’: nationhood was the achievement of British invasion. Australia’s leading revisionist historian, Henry Reynolds, has argued that what we call Binary One fails to acknowledge that the wars that formed Australia took place not only in overseas military expeditions but also, before and after Federation in 1901, on Australian soil, between the colonisers and Indigenous Australians (see Reynolds, 1981, 1987, 1990, 2001, 2013). Should the colonial conquest of Australia be called ‘war’?…”

A plethora of intentions: genocide, settler colonialism and historical consciousness in Australia and Britain

“…Murray's concern 'still confronts us' today, Reynolds warns, and accordingly his book will investigate whether Australia's history has left 'an indelible stain upon the character and reputation of Australian governments -colonial, state, and federal -and upon the colonists themselves and their Australian-born descendants'. 19 Reynolds provides a reassuring answer to Sir George Murray's fear: there was no genocide in terms of an intention, in Murray's words, to effect the 'extinction of the Native race'. Consequently, Reynolds suggests, Tony Barta's 'provocative' assertion that Australian society is founded on genocide is baseless.…”