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If you have sources that you can cite showing that comparative genocide scholars have been using Tasmania as a defining example of a genocide "ever since" the 1940s, i.e. they were saying it in the 1950s, the 1960s and all the way through to the present day, let's see them. Not just vague phrases like "repeated in several sources" but give us verifiable citations, otherwise, how about you just admit you can't support your preferred wording with appropriate sources and we go on from there. [[User:Webley442|Webley442]] ([[User talk:Webley442|talk]]) 13:24, 12 July 2009 (UTC) |
If you have sources that you can cite showing that comparative genocide scholars have been using Tasmania as a defining example of a genocide "ever since" the 1940s, i.e. they were saying it in the 1950s, the 1960s and all the way through to the present day, let's see them. Not just vague phrases like "repeated in several sources" but give us verifiable citations, otherwise, how about you just admit you can't support your preferred wording with appropriate sources and we go on from there. [[User:Webley442|Webley442]] ([[User talk:Webley442|talk]]) 13:24, 12 July 2009 (UTC) |
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:: Listen, those sources don't google, and I'm not about to go do ''research''. But I know the general picture, because I read references to this in popular books many times over. This statement is designed to comply with undue weight. I am not adressing my comments to you, because it is not possible to convince people like you of anything, you must be suppressed by force of numbers.[[User:Likebox|Likebox]] ([[User talk:Likebox|talk]]) 14:26, 12 July 2009 (UTC) |
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== Genocide debate section Should Read Thusly == |
== Genocide debate section Should Read Thusly == |
Revision as of 14:26, 12 July 2009
Australia: History / Indigenous peoples Start‑class Mid‑importance | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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DO NOT ARCHIVE
Archiving is not a technique to remove discussions. These discussions are still very relevant.Likebox (talk) 14:22, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
- Likebox, the talk page was 419 kilobytes long before I archived it and, there had been no conversation on it for a week. It was long overdue to be archived, and the break in the conversation was a good time to do it. Nothing has been removed all the discussions are archived. If you think that there is a relevant discussion that we need to continue then we can copy the section headers of the active discussions onto the new page and provide a link to the same section in the archive. --PBS (talk) 16:49, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
- 200K is way to big for a talk page they should not be over 32k in size. I have placed the most recent section from the archive below to show how it can be done without excessive copying. If anyone (including you) wants to add a comment to the section they can do so. If you think that there are any other sections that are relevant and still active. --PBS (talk) 13:08, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
Maaka: The indigenous experience
- See /Archive 2#Maaka: The indigenous experience for earlier discussions on this topic.
Problem with intro
The intro currently says: The Australian debate centres on whether the history of European settlement since 1788 was:
- humane, with the country being peacefully settled, with specific instances of mistreatment of Indigenous Australians being aberrations;
- marred by both official and unofficial imperialism, exploitation, ill treatment, colonial dispossession, violent conflict and cultural genocide or;
- somewhere in between.
This is surely too simplistic a breakdown. Every argument has at least 2 extremes and a spectrum of views in between. So obviously (c) is the correct answer, before you even know anything about the topic, regardless of the spectrum of views.
Can we rewrite this so that the history wars are framed as ongoing attempts by certain people/academics to set the record more firmly in one direction or the other? Not as a kind of multiple choice test with 3 distinct positions. Exactly the same thing happens in analysing the negative and positive effects of the British empire. Generally the more recent and mature the writings the more clearly the "somewhere in between" is elucidated. Donama (talk) 01:20, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
- I like the this, which incorporates the above:
The Australian debate centres on whether the history of European settlement since 1788 was:
- humane, with the country being peacefully settled, with specific instances of mistreatment of Indigenous Australians being aberrations; or
- marred by both official and unofficial imperialism, exploitation, ill treatment, colonial dispossession, violent conflict and cultural genocide.
In general the history wars are framed as ongoing attempts to set the record more firmly in one direction or the other, for broadly "political" reasons. Every argument has examples of these two extremes and a spectrum of views in between." regards, Keepitshort (talk) 13:59, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
- NO NO NO!
- The current wording is made to look like a multiple choice with "two extremes" and option c looks the best, because people (stupidly) believe that the truth usually lies between two extremes. The truth is NEVER between two extremes. This idiotic idea is only social convention to allow people to come to compromises, and it is the reason that academics do not trust the general public.
- Anyone who believes that the truth lies between two extremes can be easily manipulated by a propagandist. For example, suppose I want to make you believe that the moon is made of cheese. I say, there are three positions:
- The moon is made entirely of cheese.
- There is no cheese on the moon at all.
- The moon is only partly made out of cheese.
- Anyone who believes that the truth lies between two extremes can be easily manipulated by a propagandist. For example, suppose I want to make you believe that the moon is made of cheese. I say, there are three positions:
- And then, of course, option 3 looks most correct, and you will believe that the moon is partly cheese. Similarly, in the 16th century, there were three options:
- All the planets go around the earth.
- All the planets go around the sun.
- Mercury and Venus go around the sun, mars, jupiter and saturn, around the Earth.
- And then, of course, option 3 looks most correct, and you will believe that the moon is partly cheese. Similarly, in the 16th century, there were three options:
- Option 3 was the majority opinion among academics for a long time. The truth NEVER lies between two extremes. This is a rhetorical trick designed to brainwash gullible people into partly believing odious lies.
- In this case, the introduction is framing the debate to make it look like some of Australia was peaceably settled. Option b is what nearly all historians believe. The history of Australia is marred by genocide and disposession. These "history wars" should be labelled what they are, a propaganda campaign to deny genocide. This is not an extreme, it is just the accepted historical record.Likebox (talk) 15:48, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
- Every topic is different. Some hypotheses are falsifiable so are capable of objectively shown to be either A or B. This is not such a case though. The dispossession of Australian aborigines, like most social issues, is a hugely subjective issue. The preposition that the settlement of Australia was "humane, with the country being peacefully settled, with specific instances of mistreatment of Indigenous Australians being aberrations" is unfortunately not falsifiable. Classifying the examples of mistreatment as either aberrations or the general case is a matter of opinion. Individual actions and events within the whole process of settling Australia could probably be shown to be either true or false, but I hope you can see that how these events and actions as a whole reflect on the whole process is subjective. Donama (talk) 02:05, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
- Actually, I agree with you. History has a lot of subjectivity. But these comments are not about the subjective/objective distinction. They are about this article which was written from a single point of view by conservative Australian partisans who would like to keep out any reference to the well documented massacre of the Aboriginal inhabitants of Tasmania.
- To be fair, the Australian conservative viewpoint is not totally outrageous--- I am sure that there were some instances where the natives were not treated like animals by the settlers and murdered for sport. But the debate that is being presented here is presented in a slanted way using a favorite tool of the propagandist: create a false dichotemy to make a denialist position sound like a compromise. This is not good for history or for Wikipedia.Likebox (talk) 03:28, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
Genocide debate
- See /Archive 2#Genocide 4 for earlier discussions on this topic.
Likebox I do not agree with many of the changes you recently made to the section "Genocide debate". Do you need me to list them, or are the previous discussions enough to cover my objections? --PBS (talk) 13:35, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
The problem with the section on genocide is that the position of Windschuttle, which is a fringe minority position is being treated with respect. Let us be clear:
- The Natives in Tasmania were murdered by settlers. They were hunted down with intent to exterminate.
- There is no debate in the mainstream literature: this was a genocide.
- There is a fringe minority in Australia which denies the genocide.
In this article, the majority position about the Tasmanian genocide is not given any weight at all. This must be rectified.
A long discussion occured regarding this. Since it has been archived, I will make every single point I made before once again, going over every source in excruciating detail.Likebox (talk) 15:38, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
- Sure I do not mind going through the issue one by one. Here is the first sentence you replaced:
- "After the introduction of the word genocide in the 1940s by Raphael Lemkin, Lemkin and most other comparative genocide scholars..."
- with
- "Ever since the introduction of the modern term in the 1940s, Raphael Lemkin and most other comparative genocide scholars have considered the events of the Black War on Tasmania as a defining example of a genocide."
- What is your source for the change from "After" to "Ever since"? Do you have a source to back up that statement? --PBS (talk) 19:38, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
- Yes it was mentioned in /Archive 2 see Revision as of 12:10, 19 June 2009 -- PBS (talk) 20:13, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
The source says exactly what PBS has said it does and is easily found via the link PBS provided. There is no need for PBS or anyone else to provide you with that information yet again. We have been over this issue before and your preferred wording still has no support from any other users. Webley442 (talk) 03:34, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
- You are LYING. Stop LYING. There never was a source provided, you are just hiding that behind a wall of text called "archive two".Likebox (talk) 14:18, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
- Please follow the link (Revision as of 12:10, 19 June 200) I provided --PBS (talk) 16:22, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
- I did follow the link, and it ends with an Anne Curthroys quote which is not apropos. The question is: Has the Tasmanian genocide been classified as a genocide within genocide studies consistently since the 1940s? I say the answer is "yes", and I have given you sources that support this position (at least for recent years). You are claiming that the position has changed, and there is no source to support the position.Likebox (talk) 18:21, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
OK, try this: Saying “Ever since the introduction of the modern term in the 1940s, Raphael Lemkin and most other comparative genocide scholars have considered the events of the Black War on Tasmania as a defining example of a genocide.” implies that they were using Tasmania as a defining example of genocide in 1950, 1955, 1960, 1965 and so on. They weren’t. Tasmania wasn't even on their radar at that time. Genocide scholarship was almost exclusively focussed on the Holocaust in those days with some (not much) attention given to the Armenian Genocide and very little else got mentioned.
As the text in the links say, Lemkin never published his work on Tasmania.
In the linked page of Genocide and settler society by Dirk Moses it says: “in one of the first major works on the subject, published in 1981, Leo Kuper referred to the “systematic annihilation” of Aborigines in Tasmania.” It then goes on to discuss work published in 1985, 1986, 1990, 1995 and so on.
In the linked page of Empire, Colony, Genocide also by Dirk Moses, it says that: “Genocide scholarship had really got underway in the 1970s, and grew dramatically in the 80’s………”
So we are looking at a period AFTER the introduction of the word ‘genocide’ in the 1940’s but the period in which ‘comparative genocide scholars’ start referring to ‘Tasmania as a defining example of a genocide’ starts in the 1970s and really takes off in 1980s.
Can you cite works by ‘comparative genocide scholars’ in use in the 1950s or the 1960s in which they say anything like Tasmania is a ‘defining example of a genocide’?
If not, please let's move the discussion on to your next sentence. Webley442 (talk) 08:09, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
- There is no real field of "genocide scholarship" in the 1960's as you say. But the "genocide" notion introduced by Lemkin, and repeated in several sources does include Tasmania. All your denialism is very irritating. It is difficult to talk to people like you, and I wish you would go away.Likebox (talk) 13:05, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
If you have sources that you can cite showing that comparative genocide scholars have been using Tasmania as a defining example of a genocide "ever since" the 1940s, i.e. they were saying it in the 1950s, the 1960s and all the way through to the present day, let's see them. Not just vague phrases like "repeated in several sources" but give us verifiable citations, otherwise, how about you just admit you can't support your preferred wording with appropriate sources and we go on from there. Webley442 (talk) 13:24, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
- Listen, those sources don't google, and I'm not about to go do research. But I know the general picture, because I read references to this in popular books many times over. This statement is designed to comply with undue weight. I am not adressing my comments to you, because it is not possible to convince people like you of anything, you must be suppressed by force of numbers.Likebox (talk) 14:26, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
Genocide debate section Should Read Thusly
There has been debate among certain Australian historians as to whether the European colonisation of Australia resulted in the genocide of groups of Aborigines, and in particular the Tasmanian Aborigines.
Tasmania
Ever since the introduction of the modern term in the 1940s, Raphael Lemkin and most other comparative genocide scholars have considered the events of the Black War on Tasmania as a defining example of a genocide.[citation needed] During the Black War, European colonists in Tasmania nearly completely annihilated the Tasmanian Aborigines.[1] From a population of approximately 5,000 individuals, they were hunted down and killed until only a few hundred individuals were left. These were then relocated to Flinders Island, where disease and neglect reduced their numbers still further, until the last full blooded native Tasmanian died in 1876.
Most Australian historians don't dispute the historical events, but some of them don't agree that it should be called a genocide.[2][3] Some of the debate is over to what extent the governing body of the settler outpost had the goal of complete extermination in mind[4]. What is known is that in 1826, the Tasmanian Colonial Times declared that "The Government must remove the natives -- if not they will be hunted down and like wild beasts and destroyed."[5] Governor George Arthur[6] declared martial law in November 1828, and empowered whites to kill full blooded Aboriginals on sight. A bounty for was declared for the head of a native, £5 for the killing of an adult, £2 per child.[7] Journalist and publisher Henry Melville[8], described the results in 1835: "This murderous warfare, in the course of a few years destroyed thousands of aborigines, whilst only a few score of the European population were sacrificed” [9][10]
While accepting that most of the natives were killed by exterpationist settlers, Henry Reynolds has nevertheless rejected the label of genocide, because he believes that the settler's goal of extermination did not include every native, and that the governor of the island did not intend annihilation. Tatz has criticized Reynolds position as follows:
Genocide of a part of a population is still genocide... criminality is inherent in incitement participation and complicity [11]
Mindful of these disputes between genocide scholars and Australian historians, Anne Curthoys has said: "It is time for a more robust exchange between genocide and Tasmanian historical scholarship if we are to understand better what did happen in Tasmania in the first half of the nineteenth century, how best to conceptualize it, and how to consider what that historical knowledge might mean for us now, morally and intellectually, in the present.[12]
The political scientist Kenneth Minogue and historian Keith Windschuttle disagree with the mainstream historical narrative, and believe that no mass killings took place on Tasmania.[13][14] Minogue thinks Australians fabricated this history out of white guilt,[15] while Windschuttle believes that most of the native Tasmanians died of disease. Disease is not believed by other historians to have played any major role in Tasmania before the 1829 relocation to Flinders Island.[16]
Mainland
Regarding events on mainland Australia, there have been occasional accusations of genocide, but no clear consensus. Many of the deaths on the mainland were due to smallpox, which is commonly believed to have come from Europe with the settlers. Many historians, like Craig Mear, support the thesis that the settlers introduced smallpox either intentionally or accidentally.[17] Intentional introduction would be considered a form of genocide.[18]
Historian Judy Campbell argues that the smallpox epidemics of 1789-90, 1829-32, did not start with the Europeans. She believes that the smallpox was not a result of contact with British settlers, but instead spread south from the far North of Australia, and was due to contact between Aborigines and visiting fishermen from what is now Indonesia.[19] While this has always been the accepted consensus about the source of the later smallpox epidemics of the 1860s, for the earlier epidemics this view has not met with widespread acceptence[20], and has been specifically challenged by historian Craig Mear.[21] Mear writes:
They had been coming to this coast for hundreds of years, yet this was the first time that they had brought the deadly virus with them.
He also argues that the scientific model that Campbell uses to make her case is flawed, because it modelled the smallpox at significantly higher teperatures than those recorded at the time. It has also been argued by Lecture in Indigenous Studies Greg Blyton that smallpox did not reach the Awabakal people north of Sydney in 1789-90 and that non-genocidal violence including massacres accounted for depopulation there after 1820[36] [37]
Genocide in a broader sense
In the April 2008 edition of The Monthly, David Day wrote that Lemkin considered genocide to encompass more than mass killings but also acts like "driv[ing] the original inhabitants off the land... confin[ing] them in reserves, where policies of deliberate neglect may be used to reduce their numbers... Tak[ing] indigenous children to absorb them within their own midst... assimilation to detach the people from their culture, language and religion, and often their names."[22] These questions of definition are important for the stolen generations debate.
- ^ Colin Martin Tatz, With Intent to Destroy p.78-79
- ^ A. Dirk Moses, Genocide and Settler Society: Frontier Violence and Stolen Indigenous Children in Australian History, Berghahn Books, 2004 ISBN 1571814108, 9781571814104. Chapter by Henry Reynolds "Genocide in Tasmania?" pp. 127-147.
- ^ A. Dirk Moses Empire, Colony, Genocide,: Conquest, Occupation, and Subaltern Resistance in World History, Berghahn Books, 2008 ISBN 1845454529, 9781845454524 See the chapter entitled "Genocide in Tasmania" by Anne Curthoys pp. 229-247
- ^ http://www.history.ac.uk/ihr/Focus/Migration/reviews/atkinson.html
- ^ Colonial Times, and Tasmanian Advertiser, Friday 1 December 1826
- ^ http://[George Arthur biography adbonline.anu.edu.au/biogs/A010034b.htm]
- ^ Runoko Rashidi, Black War: the destruction of the Tasmanian aboriginals, 1997.
- ^ [Henry Melville biography: http://adbonline.anu.edu.au/biogs/A020188b.htm]
- ^ Melville, 1835, p 33, requoted from Madley
- ^ http://www.yale.edu/gsp/colonial/Madley.pdf
- ^ Colin Martin Tatz, With Intent to Destroy p.78-79
- ^ Moses (2008)
- ^ Debates on Genocide - Part Two Debates on 'Genocide' in Australian History. Australian Government Department of Education Science and Training
- ^ Windschuttle, Keith
- ^ Debates on Genocide - Part Two Debates on 'Genocide' in Australian History. Australian Government Department of Education Science and Training. Citing Kenneth Minogue, 'Aborigines and Australian Apologetics', Quadrant, (September 1998), pp. 11-20.
- ^ http://www1.american.edu/ted/ice/tasmania.htm
- ^ http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-34755365_ITM
- ^ Flood, Dr Josephine, The Original Australians: Story of the Aboriginal People, published by Allen & Unwin, 2006, p125.
- ^ Invisible Invaders: Smallpox and Other Diseases in Aboriginal Australia 1780 - 1880, by Judy Campbell, Melbourne University Press, pp 55, 61
- '^ However, in separating European presence and Aboriginal disease, Invisible Invaders is not entirely convincing. Untying Aboriginal disaster from European activity ... becomes a mantra almost uncritically repeating official documents and settlers' and explorers' memoirs. Here Campbell's examination moves from scientific to somewhat naïve from from this API review by Lorenzo Veracini
- ^ [Craig Mear The origin of the smallpox outbreak in Sydney in 1789. Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, June 2008;Vol.94, Part 1: 1-22 http://www.abc.net.au/rn/ockhamsrazor/stories/2009/2557307.htm]
- ^ David Day (2008). "Disappeared". The Monthly: 70–72.
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DO NOT COLLAPSE
There is no need for a "collapse box". The text above substitutes for the badly broken text in the article. There is no need to hide it.Likebox (talk) 21:17, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
In particular--- the text above is no longer than the corresponding text in the article, and allows a reader to visually diff the two to see where the biases in the current text are. In addition, the sources must be clearly visible, as I will be refering to them again and again and again.Likebox (talk) 21:23, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
Large Changes/Incremental Changes
When a page has awful, offensive material on it, it is difficult to only make small edits. A small edit sort of implies that you agree with the stuff you didn't touch. When the rest of the stuff is a racist fiasco, this can be very discouraging. So we need a big edit, and it needs to stick.
The same mechanism prevents well meaning readers from adding new things, like the massacres on the mainland, because to do so would be to implicitly support the rest of the nonsense on the page. This means we need to have a big change, and go on from there. I have made an attempt at a big change. I will do so periodically until it sticks.Likebox (talk) 20:34, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
- Are you satisfied with the last explanation given in the section #Genocide debate or can we move onto another sentence? --PBS (talk) 14:19, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
- You are not explaining anything. You are dogmatically repeating yourself, with no support from any literature.Likebox (talk) 19:31, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
- See this edit and this edit the explanation of why the fist sentence you wish to include is not acceptable and that it has been explained to you with cited sources several times. Here is another link to a previous conversation on the same issue from Archive 2 from 13:37 on the 6 June, (see the first paragraph). Do you have any sources that contradict those sources? If so please include them at the end of the conversation in the section #Genocide debate above. --PBS (talk) 14:05, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
- You are not explaining anything. You are dogmatically repeating yourself, with no support from any literature.Likebox (talk) 19:31, 11 July 2009 (UTC)