‘The long shadow of remembrance’: Remembering the debate about massacre in the Black War in Tasmania

The Black War in Tasmania 1823-1834, is widely accorded by historians as one of the best documented of all Australia’s colonial frontier wars. Yet debate still rages about whether massacre was its defining feature and whether it accounted for the deaths of many Aborigines. As Keith Windschuttle pointed out in 2002, this is an important debate because it reflects on the character of the Australian nation and the behaviour of its colonial forbears in seizing control of Aboriginal land.To understand how the debate took shape and where it stands today, this paper reviews its origins in 1835 and then shows how it was played out over three historical periods: 1835- 1870; 1875-1939; and 1948-2008; by focussing on the key protagonists and how they used the available sources and methods and explanatory frameworks to make their case.The paper finds that in the first period, the belief in widespread massacre dominated the debate, drawn from oral testimony from the victorious combatants. In the second period, the belief in massacre denial took hold, based on the doctrine of the self-exterminating Aborigine. In the third period however, the protagonists engaged in a fierce contest for control of the debate. One side argued for massacre denial, based on the belief that more settlers than Aborigines were killed in the Black War while the other argued for the opposite case, based on the belief that the evidence for massacre was now too overwhelming to be dismissed. The paper concludes that the massacre debate today is a microcosm of the wider debate about the impact of settler colonialism on indigenous peoples; and in particular about the humanity of the Tasmanian Aborigines as a hunter gatherer people. Above all it reflects the reluctance of many white Australians today, to come to terms with incontrovertible evidence about our violent past and to seek reconciliation with the Aboriginal survivors

This is Not an Article: a reflection on Creative Research Dialogues (This is Not a Seminar)

This is Not a Seminar (TINAS) is a multidisciplinary forum established in 2012 at Edith Cowan University (ECU) in Australia to support practice-led and practice-based Higher Degree by Research students. The Faculty of Education and Arts at ECU includes cohorts of postgraduate research students in, for example, performance, design, writing and visual arts. We established the TINAS programme to assist postgraduate research students in connecting their creative practices to methodological, theoretical and conceptual approaches whilst fostering an atmosphere of rapport across creative disciplines. The pilot programme conducted for six months in 2012 comprised dialogues with experienced creative researchers; critical reading sessions on practice-led theory; and workshops in journaling, ethics and copyright. This article is a reflection on the strengths and limitations of TINAS and future projections. More than an additional teaching and learning service, the programme has become a vital forum for creative dialogue

Time-layered cultural map of Australia

Copyright © 2020 for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). This paper reports on an Australian project that is developing an online system to deliver researcher-driven national-scale infrastructure for the humanities, focused on mapping, time series, and data integration. Australian scholars and scholars of Australia worldwide are well served with digital resources and tools to deepen the understanding of Australia and its historical and cultural heritage. There are, however, significant barriers to use. The Time Layered Cultural Map of Australia (TLCMap) will provide an umbrella infrastructure related to time and space, helping to activate and draw together existing high-quality resources. TLCMap expands the use of Australian cultural and historical data for research through sharply defined and powerful discovery mechanisms. See https://tlcmap.newcastle.edu.au/

Race, nation, history: a conference in honour of Henry Reynolds, Canberra, 29-30 August 2008

On a cool, clear late August morning, about 150 people gathered in the Downstairs Lecture Theatre at the National Library of Australia, to attend the conference in honour of Henry Reynolds’ seventieth birthday. Organised by Tom Griffiths from the History Program, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University and Bain Attwood, from Monash University and sponsored by the History Program in RSSS at the ANU, the School of History and Classics at the University of Tasmania and the National Library of Australia, which was celebrating its fortieth birthday in its current location. The conference had two purposes: to critically assess Reynolds’ work in a national and political context; and to address new questions and problems that he had helped to pioneer in the field of Aboriginal history. Over the two days, a very interested audience heard about 14 papers, spread over seven sessions. The last paper was presented by Reynolds himself. This was a satisfying and thought provoking conference. It not only provided the opportunity to celebrate Reynolds’ enormous achievements, it enabled a new generation of historians to take up new directions. It is heartening to know that Aboriginal history is in safe hands and that consideration of the role of class is making a comeback

The long shadow of remembrance: remembering the debate about massacre in the Black War in Tasmania

The Black War in Tasmania 1823-1834, is widely accorded by historians as one of the best documented of all Australia’s colonial frontier wars. Yet debate still rages about whether massacre was its defining feature and whether it accounted for the deaths of many Aborigines. As Keith Windschuttle pointed out in 2002, this is an important debate because it reflects on the character of the Australian nation and the behaviour of its colonial forbears in seizing control of Aboriginal land. To understand how the debate took shape and where it stands today, this paper reviews its origins in 1835 and then shows how it was played out over three historical periods: 1835-1870; 1875-1939; and 1948-2008; by focussing on the key protagonists and how they used the available sources and methods and explanatory frameworks to make their case. The paper finds that in the first period, the belief in widespread massacre dominated the debate, drawn from oral testimony from the victorious combatants. In the second period, the belief in massacre denial took hold, based on the doctrine of the self-exterminating Aborigine. In the third period however, the protagonists engaged in a fierce contest for control of the debate. One side argued for massacre denial, based on the belief that more settlers than Aborigines were killed in the Black War while the other argued for the opposite case, based on the belief that the evidence for massacre was now too overwhelming to be dismissed. The paper concludes that the massacre debate today is a microcosm of the wider debate about the impact of settler colonialism on indigenous peoples; and in particular about the humanity of the Tasmanian Aborigines as a hunter gatherer people. Above all it reflects the reluctance of many white Australians today, to come to terms with incontrovertible evidence about our violent past and to seek reconciliation with the Aboriginal survivors

'Hard evidence': the debate about massacre in the Black War in Tasmania

The Black War in Tasmania 1823–1834, is widely perceived by historians as one of the best documented of all Australia’s colonial frontier wars. Yet debate still rages about whether massacres were a defining feature and whether they accounted for the deaths of many Aborigines. As Keith Windschuttle has pointed out, this is an important debate because it reflects on the character of the Australian nation and the behaviour of its colonial forbears in seizing control of Aboriginal land

The Black Line in Van Diemen's Land: success or failure?

The Black Line in Tasmania in 1830 was the largest force ever assembled against Aborigines anywhere in Australia. Tasmanian historians have dismissed the Line as an aberration by Governor George Arthur and a complete fiasco by virtue of the fact that only two Tasmanian Aborigines were recorded captured and two others killed. This article contests this view by locating the Line within British imperial policy at the time, and it makes three important new findings. Far from being an aberration, the Line was a common strategy employed across the British Empire to forcibly remove indigenous peoples from their homelands. Further, there was not just one but three Lines in force over the fifteen-month period of the entire operation, and they played a decisive role in ending the Black War. The article concludes that in making George Arthur the scapegoat, historians have overlooked the Line's significance as an important instrument of British imperial power in the early nineteenth century

Settler massacres on the Port Phillip frontier, 1836-1851

This article addresses the vexed question of settler massacres of Aboriginal Victorians on the Port Phillip frontier 1836-1851. It argues for a new approach to the question by combining the models of Aboriginal resistance and settler activism within a framework that considers colonialism as a dynamic, contested and ongoing process. It then applies the methods of massacre investigation devised by historical sociologist Jacques Semelin to analyse a range of printed sources from the period to identify the scale, pre-conditions, types, prevalence and evidence of settler massacres across the three major pastoral regions in Port Phillip. In analysing the data, the article finds that settler massacres were widespread and responsible for the deaths of more than 11 per cent of the known Aboriginal population in Port Phillip in 1836. The data also identifies three pre-conditions and four types of massacre and that most were perpetrated by settlers but that the various mounted police units also played a key role. The article concludes that settler massacres have played a more significant role in the dramatic Aboriginal population decline in Port Phillip than historians of the Aboriginal resistance school have estimated