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Historical Inquiry : Case Study 1Contact History Diversity of Contact Experiencesby Kate CameronHistorians try to understand the big picture of what happened in the past and why it happened, and they construct this understanding of the big picture by looking at the small details: the physical remains, the written and pictorial evidence, the oral histories and so on. The final picture they present of the past is coloured by many things - their selection of evidence, their methodologies, their values and beliefs and motives, and the times in which they live. These factors determine what elements are given prominence in their depiction of the past. So it is entirely possible for a number of historians to look at the same period of history and come up with different views about what happened. Hence the recent debate about the Œblack armband‚ view of Australia‚s history and the opposing Œwhite picket fence‚ view attributed to our former and our current prime ministers. „Which one is the truth?‰ students often ask when confronted with historians‚ opposing interpretations of events. The answer history teachers often give is „It depends‰, and we train our students to consider the factors on which Œthe true history‚ depends. It depends on who is doing the interpreting, when it was done, how it was done (ie. what materials and methodologies were used), and why it was done. In other words, histories exist within particular contexts, contexts which have many dimensions - temporal, social, political, psychological and intellectual. The topic 'Diversity of contact experiences' is such a case. Many histories have been written about the period of culture contact in our country. If you studied from histories and text books written and used in secondary schools from the first half of this century, even into the 1960s, you could be forgiven for believing that when Europeans arrived in Australia, most Aboriginal people turned up their toes and died and the remainder gathered themselves onto reserves where they lived on the benevolence of church or state. There were a few renegades over the mountains who speared intrepid explorers and settlers, but largely the diversity of experiences of Aboriginal / European contact were simply left out of the picture. The Story of Australia, by Frank Driscoll, published in 1946 is such a book. I like to think of this book as a ŒBoys Own Adventure Book of Australian History‚ - there are no women at all, when you scan the pages looking for references to women you won‚t find any. I do exaggerate, there‚s one short paragraph on women convicts, but apart from that the only Œshe‚ you are likely to see will refer to a ship. But that was consistent with the views held at the time about what history was. Men were the Œdoers‚, the makers of events. But to return to the diversity of contact experiences. In Driscoll‚s book, Aboriginal people are peripheral to the great achievements of the British. Governor Phillip‚s Œwise and humane treatment of the aborigines‚ is mentioned as Œone of the brightest pages in our history‚. The Black War in Tasmania is included, but the conclusion is naive: ŒIn 1832 Robinson was instrumental in removing some 200 natives, the remnants of the race, to Flinders Island in Bass Strait. This was to be their haven. But the blacks did not like their new home, and soon sickened and pined and died. - p.86 The heroic deeds of the explorers, Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson, Oxley, Hume and Hovell, Sturt, Mitchell, Leichhardt, Kennedy, McDouall, Stuart and Burke and Wills are described, as are their encounters with Aborigines - both peaceful and hostile. In the chapter on ŒPioneers and Squatters‚, Driscoll does mention Aboriginal resistance as one of the hardships of the pioneers. His description of settlement at Peel in W.A. offers a particularly sanitised version of events: ŒTo add to the woes of the settlers, the blacks, who had been treated badly by the white men, now took vengeance whenever the opportunity presented itself. Poor unfortunate settlers, living in lonely isolation, were often killed without warning. Whole families were wiped out, and others fled from their holdings in terror...‚ - p.148. To be fair, in other places Driscoll does attempt some explanation: ŒOften the blacks opposed the coming of the white men, quite naturally, for the invasion of the blackfellows‚ hunting grounds meant the destruction of their source of food. - p.133 He also mentions the atrocities committed by whites, such as the shooting of women and children and the poisoning of porridge and dampers. He states that Œmurdering innocent people under the pretence of kindness was a most horrible sin‚ and naively concludes that all conflict could have been avoided if only the Œfine beginning made by Governor Phillip had been fostered . . . settlers and blacks might easily have lived in harmony. As we read our history stories we realise how a little common sense, a little more thought for others, a real attempt at a better understanding of our neighbours, and the observing of the common decencies of life, could have prevented tragedies that are grim and hateful. If we do not learn these truths from history, then history is not worth studying.‚ P.134. ŒThe Australian Story and its Background‚ by Bruce Mitchell is another example, a very popular history textbook which first appeared in 1965 and was reprinted almost every year until 1970. Aboriginal people aren‚t mentioned at all in the early chapters dealing with the initial contact period such as the First Fleet and the problems of settlement. They make an appearance in the chapter on the pastoral age where the ŒEffect of pastoral expansion on the Aborigines‚ is given one page and seven lines (in a book of almost 300 pages) between droughts and bushfires and the conflict between squatters and the government. Mitchell‚s history is of particular concern because he quotes extensively from primary sources, in many cases from primary sources which also describe in considerable detail relations between Aborigines and the British in the early years of contact. In his ŒAustralian Story‚, Mitchell made a deliberate choice to leave Aboriginal people out. It reads as if Governor Phillip took possession of an empty land. He also leaves out women, although Caroline Chisholm gets a paragraph. Like Driscoll‚s Story of Australia, it‚s a males‚ story - a white males‚ story. How many thousands of boys and girls had their perceptions of our country‚s history shaped by books like these? We can only imagine that there were lots of grandmothers, aunties and mothers who told of the part that women played. As for Aboriginal children, those who actually got to a classroom must have had great difficulty reconciling what they knew from their families‚ oral histories, and from their own experience, with what they were being taught about their country‚s history. At the time Mitchell was writing, a different type of history emerged. It was called Œnew history‚ or Œhistory from below‚ and it blossomed in the 1970s and 1980s. People started looking at history from perspectives other than the achievements of great men and a different picture of the past emerged. In fact multiple pictures emerged and our attention was drawn to the experiences of ordinary working people, women, children, immigrants and Aboriginal people. Aboriginal history became legitimate history - not just a passing reference. At the same time, many primary sources were published, journals, diaries, letters, reminiscences of people who kept records of their experiences and reflections on the contact period. The Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies in Canberra became an important publisher, but also the various historical societies and the major commercial publishing houses became interested in these new accounts of our country‚s past. These histories, and others like them, tried to redress the balance of previous histories, to put in what had been left out, to emphasise the devastating effects of contact and to stress the widespread resistance of Aboriginal people to the invasion of their lands. From these histories emerged a different picture of the contact period - or should I say different pictures. Although the experiences of dispossession, disease and frontier violence were common to most Aboriginal communities across Australia, and many thousands of people were killed, Aboriginal people did not simply Œdie out‚. There were different patterns of contact and different strategies emerged for dealing with the invaders. So, having established the idea that there can be no simple picture, no uncontested single story of the past, I want to explore the complex experience of culture contact from a range of different perspectives. I would like to start with the stories of a few individuals, then to trace the pattern of their experiences across the larger canvas. These people all lived in the Sydney basin in the early years of contact and their experiences will give you a better understanding of the nature of culture contact. Moving from history to historiography, we will then compare what we learn about contact experiences with the ways this period of our country‚s history has been portrayed in school history textbooks. We will then consider the potential of such books to shape the thinking and understanding of generations of Australians about our country's history. SYLLABUS CONTEXT: PRIMARY HSIE K-6 SYLLABUS Stage 2 Content Overview - Subject Matter Change and Continuity CCS 2.1 Describes events and actions related to the British colonisation of Australia and assesses changes and consequences.
SYLLABUS CONTEXT: SECONDARY Stages 4 HISTORY SYLLABUS Indigenous peoples, colonisation and contact history Inquiry questions:
SAMPLE LESSON SEQUENCE The following lesson sequence addresses part of the Stage 4 History Syllabus topic: Indigenous peoples, colonisation and contact history.
LESSON SEQUENCE: EXPERIENCES OF CONTACT CONTENT / CONCEPTS: LESSON OUTCOMES TEACHING / LEARNING STRATEGIES: RESOURCES Students should be able to:
Contact experiences Questions read aloud, students answer individually in writing Groups complete: source based task Œgallery‚ picture & key word contact experience summary Contact Experience folders: smallpox victims, Bennelong, Pemulwy, Hawkesbury boy, Farm workers, Maria Lock Contact experiences:- diversity
Contact experiences:- the Œbig picture‚
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