Storming the pixels: New frontiers of race activism

Perhaps its a good thing that the human being never learns from history?????

History and myth - myth making for a purpose - often combine. I was interested to see on TV recently Simon Reeve interviewing an Irish historian in Drogheda, the supposed scene of a barbaric massacre of Irish by Cromwell. According to this historian, the battle there was between two opposing English armies and Cromwell gave specific instructions that noncombatants were not to be harmed. I was interested that, after the recent brouhaha regarding a statue of Robert E Lee in the USA, descendants of the Confederate general came out and said they understood why people would not like such statues in public places. They suggested that the statues be removed to museums so people could see what had happened in history, both the good and bad. The current defacement of statues of James Cook and Lauchlan Macquarie in this country strike me as bizarre and ahistoric. Neither was a racist. Cook was a real Enlightenment man and his relationship with the various native peoples he met were perfectly above board. I think these actions, whoever was responsible, do not help the Aboriginal cause.

The concept of "Discovery" of Australia was true for everyone involved, and was bound to happen within a decade or so of when it did actually occur. For the Europeans this involved confirmation of the Great South Land, and that there were natives there; for the Aboriginals it was discovery of where they fitted in terms of time and place, whether they wanted to know or not. But again inevitable. The only issue was about which European nation got in first; though admittedly biased I would say that the Brits weree probably as kind and well-intentioned as any of the competition and that it could have all been even worse. The "secret" instructions to Cpt Cook on how any natives should be treated bear this out. In reality disease, violence and death were then terrible, in spite of this, and have produced results the are still a challenge to Australia as a putatively civilised country, with a highly traumatised native population. But in reality there was no other likely way this could have played out. We now need national reconciliation driven by mutual respect. I don`t think that forgetting our history and smashing its relics will help much, but new ones celebrating what we have and who we have become inclusively, may do so.

Here in Canada, we are now at the beginning of a multi-generational process of re-understanding our history. As an indigenous scholar said to me, reconciliation between indigenous and settler peoples will require new story work for Canada. We cannot see at this point all that this work will encompass, but we do know it will change our understanding of the past, downgrade or disgrace past heroes, and create new narratives. There will be different stories told, some we will share and some will be distinct.

Marianne, I am intrigued by what you say about the rewriting of Canadian History requiring 'new story work'. British History had historians such as the late G.M. Trevelyan, the intellectual standard bearer of the now discredited 'Whig view of History'. His work was not what I would call History, but imaginative justification of the Whig (as in British Whig) cause. More like a historical fiction. In Australia we have recently had a respected journalist called Stan Grant questioning the fact that 'Captain Cook discovered Australia' (we have several memorials to that) as there were indigenous people here before Cook. Some Aboriginal people also object to the celebration of Australia Day which they term 'Invasion Day'. We also have a move to acknowledge our indigenous people in our Constitution in a similar way to which you acknowledge your First Nations people. There is also a move to have a body attached to Parliament to advise on legislation affecting indigenous people. We actually have two sets of indigenous people, Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders. The latter have a different view of first contact with Europeans and refer to the arrival of the missionaries as 'The Coming of the Light'.