Ribnga's Corner   

The New South Wales Parents and CitizenÆs Federation has sparked a debate (August, 1999) in the printed media after it decided to use the word ôinvasionö in its school syllabus as opposed to ôsettlementö to describe Captain CookÆs landing on the shores of this country in 1770.á Spokesman for the Federation, Mr Rod Molesworth said that children should not be taught lies û what happened was an invasion and thatÆs what it should be called.á The state teachersÆ union supports the view of the Federation.á In contrast, a conservative politician in NSW said labelling Cook as an invader was offensive.á Captain Cook hailed from the North Yorkshire town of Whitby and so another party coming to the defence of Cook is the Whitby Cook Museum.á (See The Advertiser p42, Saturday 21 August 1999 and The Age p23, Saturday 21 August 1999.)

This initiative by the NSW Parents and CitizenÆs Federation is to be given the highest praise; and I am heartened by the Union support for the bold move by the Federation.áá I cannot for one moment accept that Cook did not see that he was the forerunner of a massive invasion force to this continent, England being the power it was at that period in history.á He may not have seen the way the forces of invasion were to unfold and the raw brutality that was to go with it.á The arrival of the First Fleet was no small event û the lives of Aboriginal people were to be changed forever.á CookÆs part was inextricably bound with these events and they could not have taken place without CookÆs reconnoitring exercise and subsequent reports back to authorities in England.

I want to make some observations concerning the historical treatment of Aboriginal people.á These observations have no small bearing on the discussion but they rarely get mentioned:

╖        The first point is the act of colonial authorities declaring all Aboriginal people citizens of the British crown.á This had the effect of making all acts of resistance to a foreign incursion, mere acts of criminality and not a defence of sovereign rights against invading forces.

╖        The truth is that Aboriginal people were never even counted as part of the Australian population until 1971, the first national census after the 1967 referendum.á That referendum made certain amendments to the Federal constitution to enable Aboriginal people to be counted in the national census. 

╖        Next, the legal system for many many years refused to accept evidence from Aboriginal people.á They were regarded as heathen and therefore incapable of giving credible evidence in a court of law. 

╖        And finally, compelling evidence in favour of the invasion perspective comes in the form of a body count of the Aboriginal fallen.á The following map gives a picture of the wide spread location of killing places.

A map of inter-racial massacres ⌐ 1999, Healing the Land

"Healing the land Volume 1" By Judith Monticone is now available.
For more information please vistit Healing the land

These are difficult things to talk about û for the relatives of the dead.á You scuff the earth and hope that time will heal.

Let me say further that nearly every Aboriginal person can probably go back 3 or 4 generations to make a direct connection with a massacre somewhere in Australia.á They used to call massacres ôdispersalsö which is a clinical term not unlike modern day terms like ôcollateral damageö û they somehow make the killing of other human beings somehow more acceptable.á Trouble is that if it was your own forebears who were the victims, memories take a long long time to fade away.

If itÆs a terrible thing to sully the reputation of Captain Cook then I ask what about all those people who were killed died because someone else wanted their land.á Many have left descendants who are now living in abject circumstances.á Blacks were nothing more than a feral nuisance.á It would also be worth asking for the period 1788 to 1967, how many convictions were made in criminal charges where the victim was Aboriginal?á The tarnished reputation of Captain Cook pales into insignificance.á If Captain Cook was so good, how come so many Aboriginal people died in the wake of his coming?á Perhaps his gruesome death on that Pacific Island was expiation for the sins of whomever.

I do not have any particular abhorrence towards the person James Cook.á There are historical materials that suggest that his personal disposition towards Aboriginal people had nothing of the brutal negativity of social Darwinism that was to come not too long after his departure.á If there is a problem I have with Captain Cook itÆs the fact that he was the forerunner to a whole mob of people whose landing here was to have a devastating effect upon Aboriginal Australia.á The social and governmental structures of Aboriginal peoples were never geared towards war.á Here was a whole continent of people who never saw the need to establish standing armies for war against unfriendly neighbours.á Yet our systems of government were to be gutted and we were treated no better than animals û worse in some cases.á People still carry the psychological scars of war, a war that was never officially declared.á The incidence of mental illness through non-treatment, indeed non-recognition is frightening.á The authorities carried on the same way with Vietnam veterans and it didnÆt work did it?

So, when people like Rod Molesworth take the bold steps they take, I say within myself that here Australian people are being honest and are calling the events as they see it, without sanitising it with officially acceptable terms like ôsettlementö.á Such an approach is critical in this countryÆs growth and maturity in coming to terms with history and ôowningö its history in its entirety, warts and all.

Previous Articles

• She's gone: Pauline Hanson - Nov. 98

• Apology Before Reconciliation - Dec. 98

• The Divide Between Two Cultures -Feb 98
  

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