So Capn Cook didn’t discover owt – he just mapped it. And Oz was conquered, not colonised. Mind you don’t offend any sensitivities then by suggesting England had any positive role in the history of Downunder.
Or is that a term no longer acceptable to the new NSW academics?
Boadicea's Chariot 
To be fair Captain Cook was hardly the first to see Australia. Other than that, there is a tendency among many — largely on the left — to conflate virtue-signalling and PC language with actually doing something useful. The indigenous Australian groups have done poorly since Botany Bay. Some were collapsing from within prior to Settlement, others declined directly as a result.
What is ignored in all this is the fact that indigenous Australians are worse off now than they were in the past. Drug addiction and alcoholism are out of control as are domestic violence and social break-down. It is worse now than it was a hundred years ago, a time when indigenous Australians could be raped, murdered, effectively enslaved and used as unpaid free labour with impunity. This, however, is inconvenient as it would force the admission that social programmes have failed, that self-loathing produces nothing and achieves nothing.
Well if we hadn’t invaded, conquered, stolen or colonised Australia these little pr1cks probably wouldn’t be around to set up their PC whining.
But you can see why the white tribes of Africa get a little hot under the collar at the world-wide condemnation we have received over the past 60 odd years (ever since the US Civil Rights movement gave America a conscience.). We never committed genocide or put the native tribes into slavery. Instead, under our civilizing influence, Africans have prospered hugely.The black population of Zimbabwe grew from 500,000 in 1890 when the pioneers arrived to 13 million today. Australia’s Aboriginal population has remained pretty much the same. But even then you have to include those who only possess a tiny fraction of Aboriginal blood.
Any suffering in Africa is down to the indigenous people and their own who govern them. The same cannot be said of Australian suffering.
Having said that, rewriting history is silly and as far as I am concerned Ayers Rock is still Ayers Rock.
Sipu, it will be a shock but I agree!
Naturally, history was first written by the colonisers – the locals would have seen it differently. Academics should encourage objective assessments without favouring a particular point of view.
The same institution seems to have banned the use of gender specific words like Mr or Mrs… and has to teach that the aboriginals (aborigine is also banned!) have inhabited Oz since the Dreamtime… how very specific and scientific…
The left-wing idiots have done the first settlers no favours, When you get a white magistrate virtually dismissing the case of a grandmother holding her 14 year old daughter down while the ancient traditionally-betrothed raped the young woman on the grounds that this is ‘traditional law’ – give up. A number of very respected aboriginal women condemned the whole procedure and demanded a review of the case.
It might sound a great idea to give aboriginal people the running of their own medical clinics – until it emerged that those running the clinic refused to treat people from other tribes…
It might seem a great idea to give autonomy to aboriginal communities – but all that has happened (in the time that I’ve been here) is that they have become ‘closed communities’ and the violence and abuse of women and children has escalated.
It might seem a great idea to give money to the aboriginal leaders to sort out the problems in their communities – but, that’s right, guess where the money goes…
I had a lot to do with aboriginal education when I arrived here 28+ years ago. Money was thrown at the problem – but no one bothered to see where the money went. It went to fund the ‘aboriginal industry’ – ie white know-it-alls whose sole aim (as far as I and a number of people who were genuinely interested in the problem) was to preserve the aboriginal ‘culture’ and ‘people’ as museum pieces with no chance whatsoever of joining and participating in modern Australia.
There are aboriginal leaders who are trying to lift their people out of the welfare trap – but, as far as I can see, the problem is becoming more and more complicated as the PC brigade and those elders who so not want to lose their power silence any attempts at common sense answers.
Mandawuy Yunupingu was often quoted as saying that in former times aboriginals were lucky if they went to gaol – they had to learn. They were lucky if they got leprosy and went to hospital – they had to learn. And they were lucky if they lived near the mission schools – because the nuns beat them out of the bushes and got them into the classrooms and made them learn.
Boadicea: “Dreamtime” is also being phased out now and is no longer fully PC. We’re supposed to say “the Dreamings” as “Dreamtime” supposedly insinuates that indigenous Australian cultures are stagnant and consigned to the past.
One reason why so many indigenous women were so eager to tag along with squatters, miners and other roughish settler-types is that they were treated better by them than by their own people. Yes, indigenous women were often better off as camp whores than wives, sisters, mothers and daughters in their societies. These attitudes die hard, whatever the PC Brigades argue otherwise.
These white know-it-alls are mediocrities who are really only able to make names for themselves by profiting off the suffering of others. They pretend to be selfless and caring, but if these problems went away they would be out of a job and would have to compete with everyone else. They remind me of old, Soviet-era officials or Ancien Regime sinecure holders who could never compete in any world less dysfunctional or demanding of intellectual honesty than their own.
Supu, Janus, amazing, I agree as well, I found another very similar example, when we visited Georgia in 2012, all the history books, monuments and museums are full of reports, books, memories and artefacts invented, improved and made by the Yankees. It is very easy to ‘correct the bad’ and ‘report the good’ from an intellectual, powerful and winning environment, when you are not responsible for ‘local cleaning up jobs’…