| THE
CONFLICTING BOUNDARIES OF AUSTRALIAN HISTORY.
Responses
to Frontier Conflict: the Australian
Experience. A forum at the National
Museum of Australia, Canberra, 13-14 December
2001.
Paul
Rainbird (University of Wales, Lampeter,
UK)
p.rainbird@lamp.ac.uk.
and
Stephanie
Garling (The Australian National University)
sgarling@coombs.anu.edu.au.
The
recent publication in Routledge’s One World
Archaeology series of Robin Torrence and
Annie Clarke’s edited The Archaeology
of Difference: Negotiating Cross-cultural
Engagements in Oceania (Routledge, 2000),
serves to confirm the growing role that
archaeologists are taking in elucidating
the history of encounters between locals
and foreigners. It was not surprising then
to find but a handful of archaeologists
amongst the large (150 or so) sell-out audience
for the forum on frontier conflicts held
at the new National Museum of Australia
(NMA) in the nation’s capital, Canberra.
The encounters discussed were often violent
and it is only in the last 30 years or so,
particularly through the writings of historian
Henry Reynolds, that the Australian public
has become aware of the conflicts that formed
part of the British invasion of the continent.
However, independent historian and critic
Keith Windschuttle has recently cast doubt
on some of the claims of Reynolds and his
contemporaries, suggesting that their revisionist
histories are little more than politically-motivated
guilt-seeking enterprises and arguing that
many of the ‘frontier conflicts’ which they
portray are little more than fabrications.
It is in response to these and other criticisms
advanced by Windschuttle that the forum
reported here was convened.
In this paper
we provide some background to the conference,
which we attended, and its initial outcomes
by providing a review by PR and responses
to this and further review by SG. It will
become clear that we do not hold completely
opposing views, but that our reactions to
the conference were markedly different,
and in this the value of public debate in
regard to academic concerns is a particular
issue at the forefront of our dialogue.
It should be noted that we attended this
conference without having a particular agenda:
PR has written on issues of ‘culture contact’
in the Pacific and conducted archaeological
fieldwork in western New South Wales with
the specific aim of elucidating Aboriginal
histories of the early settler period; he
also teaches on the Australian Studies degree
offered by the University of Wales, Lampeter.
SG is currently researching the archaeology
of the Tanga Islands in New Ireland Province
of Papua New Guinea, and she comes to this
research having spent six years since graduating
in archaeology from the University of Sydney
working as a consultant archaeologist in
Aboriginal heritage management in New South
Wales.
Review
– Paul Rainbird
Day
1
The
first session was grouped under the title
“Case Studies”. Geoffrey Bolton said in
his paper on “The history of conflict history”
that Australian historiography had been
slow to take up issues of the frontier when
compared to the US, NZ and elsewhere. It
was only with W. E. H. Stanner’s 1968 lectures
on “The Great Australian Silence” that these
issues came to the fore in both scholarly
and popular Australian literature. Although
some historical sources were, and perhaps
still are, suppressed by government policy,
the 1980s saw the welcome introduction of
oral history to historical studies. Bolton
concluded that Australian historians are
too reluctant to drawing on comparative
studies of colonial frontier experiences.
In “Encounters in the Western District”
Jan Critchett found that the detail from
Victoria points to multiple frontiers where
each pastoral run has its own frontier story
to tell. This means that frontier conflicts
cannot be glossed as conforming to any particular
model, but that each case took place on
a small scale with consequences dependent
on the actors involved.
Raymond Evans
looked “Across the Queensland Frontier”
and found that, after Tasmania, this was
the bloodiest of all the Australian states.
He believes that although in part this related
to State government policy it was also to
do with the speed that the frontier advanced;
in 1862 the frontier was estimated to advance
at 200 miles per year. This was much faster
than in the colonies of Western Australia
or South Australia and in consequence the
impact on Aboriginal peoples was much stronger.
Also important was the role in Queensland
of the Native Mounted Police, which was
led by White officers in a determined military
style. |
World
Archaeological Bulletin