Australian History X
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Pies4shaw
pies4shaw
Joined: 08 Oct 2007
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Ah, what rascally hijinx! It’s hard not to feel a certain affection for the pass-times of our forbears, isn’t it? |
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thesoretoothsayer
Joined: 26 Apr 2017
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^ Your forebears. |
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Pies4shaw
pies4shaw
Joined: 08 Oct 2007
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“Our” was a figure of speech. I don’t know, though, that it’s very useful for any of us to special plead on behalf of our ancestors. FWIW, mine were in Ireland until the potato famine. |
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thesoretoothsayer
Joined: 26 Apr 2017
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Fair enough.
I'm probably a touch sensitive about how the many, and varied, european ethnicities get lumped in with the Western European colonial project.
There's a tendency in some circles to attribute all the crimes of colonialisation, here and on other continents, to "us white people".
I'm not sure how many Balts, Fins, Romanians, Hungarians etc. etc. were involved in frontier massacres but I wouldn't think too many. |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003 Location: Andromeda
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While it's definitely interesting to unpack what we mean when we say "us" – in all contexts, not just this one – I do wonder if most people are talking less about direct blood ancestry than a kind of national heritage when we refer to our "forebears". After all, when you dig down into it, what difference does it make if your great great grandfather did or didn't personally do harm to an Aboriginal person, or wasn't even in the country at all in the first place? Where, exactly, does your inherited culpability begin and end? What if you're a descendant of violent colonisers and Aboriginal, for instance? And why are we even talking about this, and to what end?
At least with the Stolen Generations apology, the answer to these (much-raised) questions was relatively clear: the apology was from the current government on behalf of previous governments. Nobody was saying that Kevin Rudd or his ancestors were personally responsible for what had happened in generations past, but as an institutional leader, he was able to take ownership of previous institutional failings. That all makes perfect sense to me. Once you take that institutional backdrop away, however, things get murkier.
Some take these things literally to paint a narrative of inherited white guilt and black victimhood; many more still baulk at that dichotomy and push back against any acknowledgement of history as a result. I don't think either of those responses are particularly useful, to be honest. Certainly, if you care about the country you live in at all and feel anything toward it, you have to take the bad with the good, and recognise what it's been built on. I don't think there's actually anything wrong in concluding that these were different people operating in different cultural circumstances, and that "we" ourselves (descendants or not) are blameless. But, at least on some level, you can't understand the present without acknowledging this past, and one can't deny that it has played a causal role in the privileges that some of us – including those who have arrived relatively recently – get to enjoy. _________________ All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005 Location: In flagrante delicto
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Anything that happened prior to federation should be blamed on England _________________ Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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Pies4shaw
pies4shaw
Joined: 08 Oct 2007
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It’s not about blame, though - it’s mostly acknowledgement and regret. I would have thought that (whatever exculpatory narrative we adopt) we could all agree that the sorts of pointless massacres of defenceless people that went on here were tragic and awful. I’m in favour of apologising. To me, it’s no different to when the a Government compensates someone for, say wrongful imprisonment: I didn’t do it and I have no personal responsibility for it but I don’t object to the apology and the compensation. That which was done to our indigenous people should never have happened, irrespective of the how and the why. |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005 Location: In flagrante delicto
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^
Valid points, no disagreement from me.
I just generally like blaming England. _________________ Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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Pies4shaw
pies4shaw
Joined: 08 Oct 2007
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We retained the Ashes. |
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watt price tully
Joined: 15 May 2007
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"Forced to build their own pyres: dozens more Aboriginal massacres revealed in Killing Times research"
"...Aboriginal people were forced to collect wood for their own pyres in at least four cases of mass killing in Western Australia, a practice that was still happening as late as 1926, new research reveals.
The Killing Times – a collaboration between Guardian Australia and the University of Newcastle’s colonial frontier massacre research team – has found that some of the most violent episodes in our colonial past took place well into the 1920s, in the Northern Territory and Western Australia...."
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/nov/18/forced-to-build-their-own-pyres-dozens-more-aboriginal-massacres-revealed-in-killing-times-research _________________ “I even went as far as becoming a Southern Baptist until I realised they didn’t keep ‘em under long enough” Kinky Friedman |
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