The latest round of revisionist Australian history to be foisted upon the public was revealed in a joint media release by LaTrobe and Melbourne Universities on the 22nd of October, 2024:
$1 million to create Aboriginal-led history books – La Trobe University and University of Melbourne
“La Trobe University and the University of Melbourne have begun a million dollar project to compile a four-volume collection of key documents that tell the story of Australian history from an Aboriginal perspective, which will be sent to remote community schools across Australia and will eventually be in every school and public library.”1
What’s interesting about this latest announcement is the unashamed way they state their intent to re-write history:
“The Ngura Ninti project, meaning “knowing home”, will be accessible to Aboriginal communities as well as academics and the wider community. It aims to change the way Australians understand the history of their land.”
Gone too are English language names, increasingly being replaced by Aboriginal language names (which tribe?) which for the vast majority of Australians are simply meaningless, and therefore pointless. What is fascinating about this media release in particular is that every single paragraph is worthy of comment, as follows:
“This project is the first of its kind in Australia. No previous Aboriginal-focused documentary collection has ever been produced to this scale.”
Perhaps that’s true, and there’s a good reason for that: it’s not ever been necessary before, because all of the history is already there. This too then is a clue as to what the real agenda is:
“La Trobe Pro Vice Chancellor (Indigenous) Associate Professor Michael Donovan said the project would provide a record of Aboriginal people’s past policies, activism, and events. “It will empower Aboriginal communities with historical knowledge that may have been lost through generations, placing the Aboriginal voice and understanding at the forefront, and to educate non-Indigenous Australians about the country’s history before and after colonisation,”” Associate Professor Donovan said.
Firstly, why is it necessary to have “indigenous” academics? Why cannot they just be academics? Why do we have race-based apartheid-like staff? Secondly, clearly this new ‘history’ will be based on “policies, activism, and events” and will “empower” Aboriginal people; that’s not history, that’s, well, ‘activism’.
Further, if the ‘knowledge’ has “been lost through generations” (like language) how then is it to be ‘recovered’? Will it simply be made up, invented, like so much ‘language’ seems to be these days? Will the “Aboriginal voice and understanding” simply be more of the largely pointless reinventions foisted upon an unwitting public as we have already seen so much of?
“The project is co-led by University of Melbourne Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Indigenous) Professor Barry Judd, La Trobe University Associate Professor Katherine Ellinghaus and La Trobe Emeritus Professor Richard Broome. Professor Judd said a team of regional editors would consult with Indigenous communities so they could be in control of choosing documents, ensuring Aboriginal leadership and direction of the project.”
Oh really? ‘regional editors’ to ‘consult with Indigenous communities’ to control the ‘choosing of documents’ so that ‘Aboriginal leadership’ will direct the project? That’s not how real history works. Impartial researchers should make use of all documents, and such projects should be directed by qualified independent non-partisan academics. Otherwise, all that is left is selective tendentious story telling, not ‘history’.
“We want Aboriginal Australians to be in control of the historical narratives they share about their communities,” Professor Judd said.
More of the same – Aborigines to tell their stories of oral history, despite the fact that it was 230 years ago and nothing was written down by them. So what sources are to be used? Recent experience would suggest a selection of unreliable anti-colonist and ‘massacre’ documents.
“This is the first documentary collection that asked Aboriginal people and communities to select the documents they would find useful or appropriate.”
This statement simply demonstrates the gall the two Universities have in their open admission of selectively undermining and modifying Australia’s well-established and factual history.
“Associate Professor Ellinghaus said the landmark documentary project would respond to the critical need and public desire for truth telling about the experiences, lives, and actions of Indigenous Australians since British invasion 250 years ago.”
Before even commencing their project (and apart from the error of “250 years ago”, to be precise, the First Fleet arrived 236 years ago; not off to a good start in terms of accuracy) they are already using the pejorative language of ‘truth-telling’ (implying that history to date has been a lie) and ‘invasion’ (a gross distortion of Australia’s settlement). Also, there is no evidence at all for a ‘critical need’ or a ‘public desire’ for their project; this is just more propaganda fluff.
“Australia is a nation where two beginnings, two histories, and two knowledges about the past have existed separately,” Associate Professor Ellinghaus said.
This is of course simply not true. There are not ‘two beginnings, two histories, and two knowledges’ (sic – why do they persist in this abuse of the English language). There are simply ‘the facts’ of what occurred, with perhaps some different interpretations or opinions of the impact of those facts and events.
“This project will allow communities to document their history about what life was like before and after British colonisation.”
Again, oh really? Upon what will these be based, recent oral histories? The ‘facts’ of both pre- and post-settlement Aboriginal life are already well documented and well known, despite being mostly ignored by anti-West woke revisionist historians.
“Ngura Ninti’s team of three general and eight regional editors, six of which (sic) are Indigenous, include scholars with expertise in Indigenous Studies and historians with skills in archives and historical documents. The project will be published by Routledge.”
Why the pointless alleged Aboriginal name, and is simply being ‘indigenous’ a qualification for undertaking a project? This is simply a DEI (Diversity, Equity & Inclusion) hire with an additional ‘I’ for Indigenous!
Minsmere Pty Ltd has committed to providing $1 million for the project, and a further $290,318 was granted by the Australian Research Council.
Who is the ‘Minsmere’ company, and why would they donate $1 million for such a project? Apart from the tax deduction, what’s in it for them? And of course the question must be asked, where are the conservative individuals and companies funding other organisations to fight against this revisionist and clearly woke political activism?
The above joint university media release highlights everything about the ‘historical revisionism’ now surrounding Aboriginal people and the early settlement of Australia; it’s everywhere. ‘Historical revisionism’ (also referred to as ‘historical negation’ and ‘revisionist history’) is defined as “the distortion of the historical record such that certain events appear to have occurred and/or impacted history in a way that is in drastic disagreement with the historical record and/or consensus, and usually meant to advance a socio-political view or agenda.”2 Indeed, this is the very thing happening right across Australian institutions today. It is a malaise, a virus, a disease.
Along with ‘revisionism’, everyday Australians are increasingly being subject to what is known as the ‘fallacy of presentism’. “‘Presentism’ is a term for the introduction of present-day ideas and perspectives into depictions or interpretations of the past.”3 It’s a fundamental error (of which academics are fully aware) to attempt to make judgements about the past using a modern-day lens to assess what occurred over 230 years ago. Presentism lacks ‘contextualisation’, one of the many flaws of modern-day revisionist history. ‘Contextualisation’ argues that “knowledge attributions are context-sensitive”4 meaning that judgements about the past should not be made in isolation on the basis of modern thinking or ethics but in consideration of the historical times in which they took place.
The corollary to ‘presentism’ is ‘atavism’ whereby modern-day societies may have “a tendency to revert to something ancient or ancestral.”5 Atavistic tendencies are complex to explain, yet in this case may correlate to romantic notions of the primitive past and the trope of the ‘noble savage’ who has been overwhelmed and treated badly by the ‘evil invaders’. The revisionists seek to focus upon debasing early settlers, portraying them as aggressive invaders, this with the goal of making British settlement seem like the violent Spanish conquistadors in South America, when in truth no such comparisons can be made. Political agendas and collective guilt can also form a part of this seemingly irrational yet purposeful atavistic behaviour.
Revisionist history undertaken by political activist academics has four obvious goals, the first being the debasement and delegitimisation of the British settlement of Australia, the second is that of reparations; compensation for allegedly ‘stolen land’, the third is land claims for property ownership, and the fourth, the creation of an independent separate ‘Aboriginal’ country within Australia. All of these are entirely illegitimate claims. They are based upon falsifying the history of settlement in an attempt to justify their socialist political agenda to gain personal wealth and to split Australia and Australians.
Revisionist history describes the motivations of early settlers as being intrinsically evil; the extermination (genocide) of Aboriginal people. All of the available evidence clearly indicates this is not the case; indeed, factually, the very opposite is true. The salient facts are simply these:
- The first great reduction in Aboriginal population was disease, much of it introduced and occurring well prior to British settlement.
- Tribes often sought shelter and protection from the British against violence from other tribes.
- Tribes often sought food and goods from the British, who in most cases were happy to provide them.
- Natural interbreeding occurred with the new settlers, often encouraged by tribes in exchange for food and goods.
- Aboriginal women sought shelter with the British from violent Aboriginal males.
- British settlers often put a stop to Aboriginal inter-tribal violence and to common yet cruel ‘cultural’ practices.
- The revisionist narrative completely neglects the shared humanity, natural human behaviour and often shared goodwill between settlers and Aboriginal peoples.
True knowledge and accurate history is that which is written at the actual time it occurred; these are ‘primary sources’ by those who witnessed the events. Oral history is not a primary source unless the person providing the oral history was a participant in the events being described. Later oral histories are not even secondary or tertiary sources. They’re merely a story that one person may have told another, so becoming little more than ‘Chinese whispers’. The same can be said of ‘lived experience’ sources, so often on trend these days. A ‘lived experience’ is just that (noting that the word ‘lived’ is superfluous), simply a person’s personal experience, which is not necessarily a fact. One person standing next to someone else may have an entirely different experience of the same event, hence the need for multiple accounts.
The above $1.3 million project will undo the time-honoured processes of studying real history, attempting to replace it with a woke politically motivated modern-day agenda. Nevertheless, projects such as this being undertaken by LaTrobe and Melbourne Universities could be done well with the right motivations. Alas, that is probably not going to happen. More correctly, this project should be rightly condemned as ‘more-of-the-same’ revisionist propaganda.
Sources:
1 https://www.latrobe.edu.au/news/articles/2024/release/$1-million-to-create-aboriginal-led-history-books
2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revisionist_history
3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presentism_(historical_analysis)#:~:text=In%20literary%20and%20historical%20analysis,or%20interpretations%20of%20the%20past.
4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contextualism
5 https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=0c814c2424608e41&sxsrf=ADLYWIIKOrS3B8xPuXAHHFmzaGFDyhjX3Q:1732355343096&q=atavism&si=ACC90nypsxZVz3WGK63NbnSPlfCBt6O3SRhbU9xyRWYPZH8qFIz1_HlCenbWXhZOy4RT0oi1BY8-ES5vTplSlsvVRXKoyYTRVQ%3D%3D&expnd=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwifiebGlvKJAxUEXmwGHUpcLmAQ2v4IegQIIRAY&biw=1366&bih=568&dpr=1
1 comment
My god! Is this really happening! How on earth has it been left to get to this point. Thank god there are still some people left like you that have the intelligence and foresight to keep us all informed of the truth. Don’t ever give up!