True Lies

One question which keeps coming up over and over is just what many of us actually learned in Australian schools about Australian/ or Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history.

The answer is what we learned depends on where we went to school in Australia, and when we went to school. For those of us who are baby boomers, or our parents, the official line was that a) there was no one and nothing here before white people b) if we must think about "the blacks" let's forget them cos they achieved nothing and they are a dying race anyway. Today's examples show just how subtle that message was. [Trouble is they also prove just how boring school was back in the day!]
 
Primary and Secondary Education in Australia are, under the Constitution, State responsibilities. This means that for most of new Australia’s history there has been a different curriculum for each state. Different states have always had different Aboriginal Protection policies and agendas, so we might expect some differences in curriculum material, but it seems a lot of material was fairly standard from one state to another.

This post looks at what was current in Victoria in the 1960s.

I’ve a variety of stuff I’d like to share, but for now I’ll start with the State School Readers, and specifically the 8^th Grade Reader, because it goes straight to the question of whether or not we were lied to, or fed a distorted version of history. And also, the content was directed at an age group most likely to be soon leaving school and heading into the work force if they did not have a professional future or advanced education planned for them.

Victorian State School Readers

The particular set of readers I used at school were standard in Victoria between 1927 and 1968. This means I read pretty much the same poems, essays and stories at school that my mother’s generation read – stuff that might have influenced Victorians who voted in the 1967 referendum. [On the plus side, large families saved a heap of money by passing the same old text books from one kid to the next.]

 

While looking for hints for this post, I stumbled across an essay by Clare Bradford, which talks about the 8^th Grade Reader. Some of the articles she refers to were omitted from the second edition of the reader [which is the edition I have] but the most noteworthy article is called On Pyramid Hill, Victoria, 1836. [In the second edition the article appears on pages 2 and 3, as shown in my scans:]

 

 

 
In her essay, Clare provides 3 examples of an original account by explorer Thomas Mitchell, and how his text was edited for inclusion in the School Reader. [Edited versions of Charles Dickens or noted writers normally have “adapted from” or “abridged from” in the credits at the end of the article in Readers. At the end of the Pyramid Hill article, as you can see in the scans, there is no acknowledgment at all that the text has been edited.]

I.

As I stood, the first European intruder on the sublime solitude of these verdant plains, as yet untouched by flocks or herds; I felt conscious of being the harbinger of mighty changes ....
Thomas Mitchell, Three Expeditions (159)

As I stood, the first intruder in the sublime solitude of those verdant plains as yet untouched by flocks or herds, I felt certain of being the harbinger of mighty changes there....
Victorian Readers: Eighth Book (4)

II.

We had at length discovered a country ready for the immediate reception of civilized man; and destined perhaps to become eventually a portion of a great empire.
Thomas Mitchell, Three Expeditions (1839: 171)

We had at length discovered a country for the immediate reception of civilized man, and fit to become the abode of one of the great nations of the earth.
Victorian Readers: Eighth Book (4)

III.

Of this Eden I was the first European to explore its mountains and streams-to behold its scenery-to investigate its geological character-and, by my survey, to develope those natural advantages, certain to become, at no distant date, of vast importance to a new people.
Thomas Mitchell, Three Expeditions (171)

Of this Eden it seemed that I was the only Adam; and, indeed, it was a sort of paradise to me, permitted thus to be the first to explore its mountains and streams, to behold its scenery, to investigate its geological character, and, finally, by my survey to develop those natural advantages, all still unknown to the civilized world, but yet certain to become, at no distant date, of vast importance to a new people.
Victorian Readers:Eighth Book (4–5) 

Clare draws her own conclusions about the significance of these changes – it would be hard to look at them and not conclude something negative. But what I am keen to do here is look beyond those deliberate changes at the very question of “why this particular part of Mitchell’s work?”  
 
On page 21 of Dark Emu, Bruce Pascoe quotes a passage from just a few pages further [p194] on in Mitchell’s Three Expeditions;

“…some huts… being large, circular; and made of straight rods meeting at an upright pole in the centre; the outside had first been covered with bark and grass, and the entirety coated over with clay. The fire appeared to have been made nearly in the centre; and a hole at the top had been left as a chimney.”

The Pyramid Hill article in the 8^th Reader provides an extreme example of pretending “no human being has ever been here before us great white bwanas”, completely ignoring the evidence Mitchell and others provide of pre-1788 agriculture, aquaculture, housing, villages and more. It’s as if saying the houses and the activities did not exist means the people did not exist either.
 
Until, in my fifties, I set out to answer questions about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Australia, I always assumed that if there had been any evidence of more than my poor “knowledge” and set of stereotypes allowed me to believe, I would have been told at school. Or heard about it from somewhere. I was wrong, and the information has been a long time emerging.

If you are in search of truth in Australian History, there is no better place to start than with a copy of Dark Emu. If you haven’t already, throw all of your old assumptions out the window, and prepare to re-visit Australia’s history starting from scratch.

 

If you are in search of more than what Dark Emu offers, explore the Sovereign Union website. If you want interesting discussion about relevant issues, follow the Blackfulla Revolution page on Facebook.

While I can hardly reproduce an entire 8^th Grade Reader here, there are a few more articles to share in this post which relate directly to what “we” learned in school about Indigenous Australia. It’s worth remembering that these are situated in a book of more than 200 pages; a book that uses words like “Australian” or “our” to refer to whitefullas – as in John Howard’s dreadful proposed Constitutional Preamble, Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders are always “other”. I guess if any blackfulla kids going to school had to read this stuff “they” [sorry] were probably supposed to squirm, renounce their black heritage and identify exclusively with the white part of themselves, (assuming they were lucky enough to have some).

In the article The Old Inhabitants, CEW Bean has nothing complimentary to say about Australia’s FNPs. Even their ruins are not as good as the ruins in other countries. The people are spoken about in the past tense.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nardoo is rubbished as “the blackfellow’s poor equivalent for flour”. The surviving members of the Burke & Wills expedition had been kept alive with gifts of fish and nardoo from the Yandruwandha people at Cooper’s Creek, but when the explorers tried to harvest nardoo for themselves they did not know how to process it properly, and it made them sick. I wonder if this coloured Bean’s assessment of the plant?

The doom and gloom continue for Indigenous Australia with The Last of His Tribe. Even more Eurocentric than average, and sexist claptrap to boot: - the poet was born in NSW and published 3 volumes of poetry – spare me days, there must have been slim pickings at the local library. The illustrator did not know about Aboriginal housing.

 

 

Finally – cos all the racist, imperialistic, sexist twaddle in this Reader is doing my head in – the first verse is more than enough of The Nation Builders, by George Essex Evans. If you are not beginning to see the party-line emerging from this book by now, you never will, i.e. it’s an anthem to white pride:

A handful of workers seeking the star of a strong intent -
A handful of heroes scattered to conquer a continent -
Thirst, and fever, and famine, drought, and ruin, and flood,
And the bones that bleach on the sandhill, and the spears that redden with blood;
And the pitiless might of the molten skies, at noon, on the sun-cracked plain,
And the walls of the northern jungles, shall front them ever in vain,
Till the land that lies like a giant asleep shall wake to the victory won,
And the hearts of the Nation Builders shall know that the work is done.

Next time: A bit more from other Grade readers, and an extract from The Victorian Education Department’s masterpiece Arithmetic for Grade V.






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