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GUEST EDITOR Greg LehmanEditorialGREG LEHMAN is a Hobart-based writer and researcher. He is a descendent of the Trawulwuy people of northeast Tasmania. His essays and reviews have appeared in previous issues of Island.
We are often reminded more of where we don’t belong than where we do. Reminded by our own memory, or another’s, of times we might rather forget – if things were somehow different. Making things different by re-writing the past can hazardous. But can’t we all spin a yarn?! The problem with a good yarn is that for every winner, there are losers. Mostly the losers are the ones who don’t get to tell their story. ‘There was an immeasurable distance between the quick and the dead: they did not seem to belong to the same species; and it was strange to think that but a little while before they had spoken and moved and eaten and laughed.’ When W. Somerset Maugham wrote Of Human Bondage, a work about obsession and alienation, he could easily have been reflecting on the gulf between Black and White that has existed in Tasmania since the first few faltering decades of colonisation. The history of Tasmanian Aboriginal people over the past two centuries is a history of the quick and the dead. Mostly the latter. For Aborigines in Tasmania the period has been about defending a place called home, and then, following profound displacement, reclaiming that place. Keith Windschuttle’s The Fabrication of Aboriginal History has made it very clear that a good deal of the reclaimed territory is still contested, and much of our gain resented. Not that this is any surprise to Aborigines. It is exactly why much of Aboriginal life is called ‘the struggle’. But it is saddening that Windschuttle’s assertions of profound difference between Aborigines and the British should have fallen to such base levels – leaving my ancestors with an arguable claim even to humanity. The student of history will know that this is not a new tactic. But most have been surprised to find that Fabrication should resort to dismissing Aborigines so energetically. The past five years have been fervent ones for those of the Australian Right who concern themselves with the quality of history. With its September 2000 issue, Quadrant magazine became the flagship of their battle group. Prime Minister John Howard presided over the launch. One-time Governor-General and would-be drover’s dog, Bill Hayden, was on board, firing off about the Stolen Generations report being ‘driven by fiction’. A not-so-young, but aspiring midshipman called Windschuttle was there too. In his sights were Aboriginal self-determination and the claim that Aborigines had ever entertained (and therefore could ever entertain) a notion of nationhood. Howard himself – always keen to be seen on deck with his boys – fired one of the opening salvos, at nearly everyone who had been awarded an undergraduate degree since Jim Cairns was Treasurer. ‘Idle academics’, claimed Howard, had failed to provide a proper questioning of ‘political correctness’ and its difference from ‘common sense’. I did not appreciate at the time that all of this would presage such an energetic assault on the entire basis of Aboriginal history in Australia. And, like many, I have been swept up in the ensuing brouhaha as outraged Aborigines and academics alike have sought to put Windschuttle’s retrograde version of Australian history in its place. When Quadrant ran an article in its March 2004 issue attacking my contribution to Whitewash: On Keith Windschuttle’s Fabrication of Aboriginal History, I suggested to the Editor of Island, David Owen, that he might like to publish a response from me – as I have no desire to grace the pages of P P Mc Guinness’s magazine. Owen offered this space. So, briefly, to my response. The author of the Quadrant piece, ‘The Pentium Primitivism of Greg Lehman’, is John Dawson. He also appears in that issue as a letter writer, along with Windschuttle. As far as I can gather, this is the ex- Victorian Farmers Federation Industrial Association’s John Dawson. He also does a bit of union-bashing in the volumes of the H R Nichols Society – where he finds himself in the company of Peter Reith, Tony Abbot and Tasmania's own Eric Abetz. My pet theory is that, rather than being a serious treatise in historical revision (as is claimed by Windschuttle), the whole Fabrication project is really an exercise in post-Mabo damage control; attempting to cut the historical ground out from under potential Native Title claimants and minimising the potential for Aboriginal justice issues to encumber Australia’s economic development. Why else would Windschuttle insist on flogging his absurd claim that Aborigines do not have a recognisable connection to land? Dawson suggests I am ‘advocating that history should be created from imagination “either at its source or in its representation” according to a socially determined agenda that should take precedence over telling what in fact happened’. Like most of his critique, he nearly gets it right. But it is what he misses that defines, perhaps more than anything else, the ground upon which the current ‘history wars’ are being fought. I am not advocating that this should happen. I am pointing out that this does happen. To not get this is to miss what every first-year sociology student should understand when they read Weber. This is about legitimisation. It is about not just what constitutes legitimate history, but how that history is constituted. I understand the popular appeal in his suggestion that ‘truth’ is real and quantifiable. But I am unable to conceive that there is only one truth – and quoting Andrew Bolt on this subject doesn’t convince me! I know they’ll hate this, but for me truth is simply a result of social negotiation. We see the reality of this every day in every court of the land – at the same time reminding us that the authority of ‘truth’ is generated by power. The power of social status, of gender, of wealth. When James Bonwick commented in 1884 on the effect of the ‘socalled Mission settlements’ on Tasmanian Aborigines, he made the following observation: ‘We treat them as marionettes. When we pulled the string, they moved; without the pull they were still. And then, forsooth, when they did not move themselves, we pronounced them stupid and unimprovable.’ For all your effort Mr Windschuttle, you have achieved so little. This is an important edition of Island. At a tumultuous time in Tasmania’s history, the journal gives its readers a close encounter with stories that inform our minds on what Tasmania has become after two hundred years of European occupation. Contributors include James Boyce, one of Tasmania’s most humane students of history, who offers a lucid and pin-point accurate demolition of Windschuttle’s arguments. But, as with his fine chapter in Robert Manne’s Whitewash, even this is unlikely to impress much upon the Windschuttle camp. Andrys Onsman’s consideration of the iconic figure of Truganini illustrates powerfully how this Aboriginal woman’s life has been used to drive much of the mythology surrounding Tasmanian Aborigines – including Windschuttle’s dismissal of a hopeless and debauched race. Heather Rose contributes reviews of four new nonfiction offerings, including the latest instalment in Peter Read’s ongoing project of exploration of human spirit and the search for place in Australia. An extract from Robert Cox’s book published this month, Steps to the Scaffold, brings new realism to a horrifying story introduced to many for the first time by Jan Roberts in 1986. This issue also offers a particularly fine selection of reviews, poetry and fiction. GREG LEHMAN is a Hobart-based writer and researcher. He is a descendent of the Trawulwuy people of northeast Tasmania. His essays and reviews have appeared in previous issues of Island. EDITOR’S NOTE: 2004 is the official bicentenary of Tasmania. Island this year reflects upon aspects of the past two centuries, beginning with this issue examining Tasmanian Aboriginal issues past and present. Issue 97 will have an environmental theme, featuring an exclusive interview with Bob Brown, leader of the Australian Greens.
Last modified 22 June, 2004 |
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