Just So Stories

Allen & Unwin

April 2024

ISBN:9781761066344

Imprint: Allen & Unwin

RRP: $34.99

The great Australian silence

In 1968, anthropologist W.E.H. Stanner talked in his Boyer lecture After the Dreaming about the “cult of forgetfulness” practiced on a national scale in Australia, which he termed “the Great Australian Silence”– where Australians do not just fail to acknowledge the atrocities of the past, but choose to not think about them at all, to the point of forgetting that these events ever happened.

A different history arose in the Australian memory and it formed negative stereotypes of First Nations peoples. These stereotypes entrenched the ongoing experience of the marginalisation and systematic discrimination of First Nations peoples in Australia.

Listening to and learning from First Nations peoples about their cultures and histories can allow avenues for us to start to remember differently, in ways that heal instead of harm.

Did you know?

Australian Museum, July 2024

This is, I think, the most important book I’ve read this year. It is deeply disturbing, very confronting and incredibly heart-breaking. If you have been watching any of the ABC’s fine documentary series ‘Stuff the British Stole‘ you may have been distressed by some of it, but surely nothing is as distressing as the knowledge that ‘gentlemen’ of the 19th century who were callously collecting the skeletal remains of First Australians, in this specific instance Indigenous Tasmanians.

It’s one thing to recognise that the customs and whims, particularly of the gentry, in the 19th century were peculiar, bordering on eccentric, but to come to understand that this perverse and vile activity was not confined to a handful of more extreme morally corrupt individuals but rather a systematic and endemic trade in the (very dubious) name of ‘science’ is quite sickening.

There were moments in my reading of this that I had to close the book and take some time to read on, because it really is just so terrible to fathom. That being said, it’s a book that demands to be read (and I will be going back to read the earlier ones by this author) and, quite frankly, every time I go into classrooms STILL and am faced with the continual HASS units on the arrival of the First Fleet and so on, but so scanty attention paid to the dispossession and literal slaughter of First Nations people, I am so angry that this conspiracy of silence still prevails.

Not one of my First Nations family or friends blames contemporary Australians for the atrocities of the past, but you can be very sure that we are all heartsore over not just the lack of empathy but the refusal to acknowledge exactly how much wrong was done in the past.

Who didn’t, and doesn’t still, learn about the ’eminent’ botanist Sir Joseph Banks in their history at school? But who learns about the fact that he not only collected plant and animal specimens but requested, often forcefully, to be sent skulls of Aboriginal people from the new colony?

There can be no real knowing just how many remains were taken, often stolen, and shipped to ‘collectors’ in England, America and Europe but it is well into the thousands. It’s an appalling and sickening history, and one that must be faced and addressed by those who continue to pretend that our First Nations people continue to make a fuss for no good reason.

I would exhort you to get hold of this meticulously researched book and delve into a very murky and unsavoury chapter of Australian history, in order to be not only a better informed citizen but a better informed ally. #keepthefireburning a 5 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 rating from me.

Table of Contents:Maps
Preface

PART ONE
1 Desire lines
2 Not ignorant of evil himself, he learned to pity the wretched
3 King Billy is dead

PART TWO
4 Mr Hunter’s collection of human miseries
5 The land is good . . . well calculated in every degree for a settlement
6 Well-watered, beautiful country

PART THREE
7 It was more as specimens of natural history that they were regretted
8 One of the remnant of a people about to disappear from the face of the earth
9 An intelligent man and one who knows natural history

PART FOUR
10 The last one of a doomed race
11 Pacificator of the Tasmanian Aborigines
12 Why in the name of Christianity cannot her wish be granted?

Appendix 1 The Worshipful Society of Body-Snatchers
Appendix 2 First People at Oyster Cove Station
Sources

Friday essay: the ‘great Australian silence’ 50 years on

The strange career of the great Australian silence

WEH Stanner and the Great Australian Silence

In 1968 this anthropologist called out Australia’s ignorance of history in one phrase

ABC Conversations: Cassandra Pybus

England was once claimed by an Aboriginal man. Burnum Burnum. January 1988. 200 years since the First Fleet arrived in so-called Australia.
These where his words:
Transcript: “The Burnum Burnum Declaration England, 26th January, 1988
I, Burnum Burnum, being a nobleman of ancient Australia do hereby take possession of England on behalf of the Aboriginal people. In claiming this colonial outpost, we wish no harm to you natives, but assure you that we are here to bring you good manners, refinement and an opportunity to make a Koompartoo – ‘a fresh start’. Henceforth, an Aboriginal face shall appear on your coins and stamps to signify our sovreignty over this domain. For the more advanced, bring the complex language of the Pitjantjajara; we will teach you how to have a spiritual relationship with the Earth and show you how to get bush tucker.
We do not intend to souvenir, pickle and preserve the heads of 2000 of your people, nor to publicly display the skeletal remains of your Royal Highness, as was done to our Queen Truganninni for 80 years. Neither do we intend to poison your water holes, lace your flour with strychnine or introduce you to highly toxic drugs. Based on our 50,000 year heritage, we acknowledge the need to preserve the Caucasian race as of interest to antiquity, although we may be inclined to conduct experiments by measuring the size of your skulls for levels of intelligence. We pledge not to sterilise your women, nor to separate your children from their families. We give an absolute undertaking that you shall not be placed onto the mentality of government handouts for the next five generations but you will enjoy the full benefits of Aboriginal equality. At the end of two hundred years, we will make a treaty to validate occupation by peaceful means and not by conquest.
Finally, we solemnly promise not to make a quarry of England and export your valuable minerals back to the old country Australia, and we vow never to destroy three-quarters of your trees, but to encourage Earth Repair Action to unite people, communities, religions and nations in a common, productive, peaceful purpose. 

How did this Aboriginal girl’s doll from the1800s end up in an archives box in England? Another tragic history from Tasmania. Watch this episode of Stuff the English Stole on ABC iview.