Ponderance

Friday, February 27, 2004

Windshuttle Attacks Aboriginal Communities

Right-wing Australian historian Keith Windshuttle is at it again. After his book The Fabrication of Aboriginal History claimed the number of Aboriginal people killed in Tasmania had been greatly exaggerated, he is now defending AO Neville (dramatised in Rabbit Proof Fence), and arguing the remote Aboriginial communities should be disbanded. The Australian reports:

Remote Aboriginal communities are a "failure" and their inhabitants should be moved to mainstream towns for their own good, historian Keith Windschuttle has claimed. ... "On every measure of human wellbeing - employment, health and education - remote communities are a failure," he said. ... Windschuttle has already courted controversy over his views on massacres of Tasmanian Aborigines, the numbers of which he claims are wildly exaggerated. His 2002 book The Fabrication of Aboriginal History has been attacked by fellow historians and indigenous leaders. Yesterday, addressing a convention of the West Australian Pastoralists and Graziers Association, he mounted a spirited defence of the state's 1930s chief protector of Aborigines, AO Neville. Windschuttle said Neville was portrayed in the film Rabbit Proof Fence as a heartless, calculating bureaucrat, but he in fact was the opposite of racist and had properly supported the integration of Aboriginal people into the wider community.

It seems Keith Windshuttle is intent on adding even more starch to his bleached-armband view of Australian history!

[Posted by Unknown] [9:16 am] []