Reply to post: Re: Invasion of Europe

Re: Invasion of Europe

Alienating land and resources without adequate compensation? Check!

You Black Armbanders really fucking piss me off! The Aborigines had a completely different concept of land and resources to the European settlers. The above quote would have been utterly meaningless to them. They did understand trade of course, which is why they so readily sold their women to (mainly) American sailors in return for flour and sugar.

Relations between Aborigines and white settlers in Tasmania were mostly cordial. There were however occasional and sporadic violent incidents, mainly the killing of isolated shepherds. Two exceptions to this were the notorious Aborigine bushrangers, Musquito and Black Tom. The former was not a Tasmanian and the latter had been raised by Thomas Birch, a white Hobart merchant. The predations of the two criminals have been elevated by Manne, Ryan, Reynolds and their ilk to a the status of a patriotic Black War. Indeed, Reynolds once claimed it was "the greatest internal threat that Australia ever faced". It's hard to reconcile this with the killing of exactly one soldier by an Aborigine. I quote Windschuttle again:

Let me finish by talking about reconciliation, which Manne claims my book tries to undermine. I cannot see how a story about violence and warfare between blacks and whites, if it is untrue, can help reconciliation at all. What good does it do Aboriginal people to tell them the whites wanted to exterminate them, when they never did? What good does it do Aboriginal people to tell them they were a conquered people, when they never were?

There are many Aboriginal people today who actually support my case, especially in Tasmania. I have been invited to attend a ceremony on September 12 which the Liah Pootah people will conduct jointly with other residents of Hobart to commemorate the bicentenary of the first British settlement in Tasmania at Risdon Cove in 1803. These descendants of the Aborigines are commemorating the British arrival because, like all Tasmanian Aboriginal people, they are also descendants of the British settlers. They are celebrating both sides of their heritage. Compare this with the contribution towards reconciliation made by the Henry Reynolds and Lyndall Ryan version of Australia history. The message Aboriginal people have taken from their books is that the British arrival was comparable to an invasion by the Nazis. The Reynolds and Ryan story, which Robert Manne's book tries to perpetuate, does not foster reconciliation, it only fans racial hostility and hatred. It is not only historically untrue. It is also racially divisive and politically inept.

Each of us is responsible for what we believe. By and large, we don't just believe anything merely for the sake of believing in something. We can be said to exercise intellectual responsibility by believing what is true and refusing to acknowledge what is false. The Git believes that to do otherwise shows profound contempt for the rights and liberties of others.

[Aside]

Before anyone takes The Git to task for plagiarism, he freely admits this. By the wildest of coincidences, never noticed by those making that accusation, the person he is plagiarising is also called The Pompous Git. The Git also freely admits to having stolen the handle he uses with considerable pride, though rarely if ever with decorum, from Stuart Littlemore when he became Stuart Littleless following one of the seemingly endless series of budget cuts at the ABC.