Talk:History of Australia (1788–1850)

Aboriginal resistance and accommodation

Hello all I have added some information on the Protection system, missions, and Aboriginal accommodation to British settlement. I have changed the title of the section to reflect this. I have also made some edits to existing information to make it more concise and focused on the period up to 1850. Happy to discuss. Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 10:59, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

Hey Aemilius great work. I'm just making a note of this here so I can have a look at it later.

"Many Aboriginal people, however, sought an accommodation with the settlers and established viable communities on missions, cattle stations and the fringes of towns where many aspects of their traditional cultures were maintained."

I feel this is a bit misleading. In most cases I've read of, though I'm mostly familiar with the south-east, missions, reserves, and often cattle stations as well were forced communities. Either through violence or through destruction of traditional food supplies. Notable cases include the missions and reserves in Melbourne like Nerre Nerre Warren and Corranderk, and Wave Hill Station and the Wave Hill Walkoff. Those missions and reserves were then closed under the assimilation policy and Aboriginal children with white heritage were forcibly removed from those communities. Poketama (talk) 05:58, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

Most of the events you refer to are outside the scope of this article (1788-1850). No one is arguing that the reserves, missions and pastoral stations before 1850 were paradises for Indigenous people, but the most recent scholarly research emphasises the extent to which Aboriginal people used them as places of refuge from conflict and continued to practice their traditional cultures - often to the frustration of missionaries and Protectors. The section on early missions and reserves can certainly be expanded, with due attention to balance and recent research. I should add that in 1850 most of Australia was still occupied by the traditional owners who were doing what they had done for tens of thousands of years, blissfully unaffected by the newcomers clinging to the edges of the continent. I might add a sentence to this effect. Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 07:43, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

Can you send some of those articles through for me to have a look? Thankyou. Poketama (talk) 06:53, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

The best place to start woud be the sources for this article. Then go to the sources they use. Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 03:32, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, there's quite a few sources is there any you'd recommend on this particular topic? Poketama (talk) 04:03, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

Broome and Flood are good introductions. If you're particularly interested in early missions this is a good site: [1] Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 02:45, 6 July 2022 (UTC)

Re: Many Aboriginal people, however, sought an accommodation with the settlers and established viable communities on missions, cattle stations and the fringes of towns where many aspects of their traditional cultures were maintained.

I've had a read over those sources and essentially agree with your points; but don't agree with the way its written. As it is written, it portrays a slant of Aboriginal movements into missions being a benign and positive phenomenon, rather than by force. While there are some cases of happy interactions and times on missions and other sites (Flood describes one); the sources account the Aboriginal people who stayed on missions were largely there by force. That force being either forcibly removed, like in Tasmania, Bathurst, Melbourne, or to hide from European attacks, or by the scourge of disease and destruction of their food sources and family lines so that they needed to rely on European food supplies and medicine to survive. As you said, it was a persistent problem to the Europeans that Aboriginal people were practicing their traditional cultures, and the aim of the missionaries was to assimilate.

As such, I've made an edit to reflect a more balanced view of the situation.

"The stations lured people—as did Melbourne town—by food, the novelty of

European things, and by being a refuge." -Brown

"The contact history of indigenous people is strongly shaped by missions and reserves, the breaking up of families and removals of children from their parents. Missionaries played a prominent role in modelling and managing such regimes so that the history of missions is highly contested." - Griffith

"Nomadic Aborigines were unwilling to settle in one place and frequently deserted the missions, as attendance was voluntary. Missionaries saw indigenous people as ‘children of God’ in need of salvation, education and training, whereas Aborigines saw no point in white men’s drudgery and little in education, although white medicine and hospitals were appreciated. The gulf was too wide, even though both Christians and southeastern Aborigines believed in an afterlife and an all-powerful Father in the sky. Once their traditional culture was undermined, tribal Aborigines became ‘the people in-between’—they couldn’t continue to live their old life and didn’t fit readily into white society." - Flood Poketama (talk) 14:25, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

The problem I have with your changes to the lead is that it reads like an unsourced essay arguing your own point of view. The lead should be a summary of the article. If you want to add well sourced information about the early missions, reserves and protectors to the article from a neutral POV, please do so, as it would certainly improve it. Then we can all discuss making appropriate changes to the lead. However, I think the lead is currectly an accurate reflection of the article as it stands. The early missions is an interesting topic. Once again, I recommend to you Ganter's The contest for Aboriginal souls: European missionary agendas in Australia as a good place to start. Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 22:35, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

Ok I want to spend time working on this but I am not finding it effective to work on something a lot and have it reverted. How would you suggest editing this section to address my concerns? Poketama (talk) 14:25, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia:BOLD, revert, discuss cycle attempting to work within this framework. Poketama (talk) 14:26, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

I have already explained that the lead is supposed to summarise the article, and shouldn't contain information which isn't in the article: MOS:LEAD. if you want to add more information about the early Indigenous experience of missions and reserves then you should develop an appropriate section in the article and then seek consensus to change the lead to reflect the new content. I don't want to seem patronising, but the nature of the comments you made above suggests you need to do a lot more reading on the topic in order to make a contribution which reflects the relevant research and presents this in a balanced way. I have already suggested that you start with Ganter's book. As for your particular concern that the current lead "presents Aboriginal movements into mission as a benign and positive phenomenon", it does no such thing. The article and the lead already makes clear that the accommodations Aboriginals made with the settlers was in the context of frontier violence and dispossession of their land. However, there's a lot of recent research with highlights Indigenous peoples as agents in their own histories rather than mere victims. They used the missions and reserves for their own purposes and were able to maintain many aspects of their traditional cultures (the Christian missions were entirely voluntary at this stage). It's obviously a complex area which is impossible to adequately summarise in one or two sentences but I think the lead as it currently stands is an accurate summary of the article and makes the important point that despite violence and dispossession many Aboriginals were able to maintain continuing connection with their cultures, often on (parts) of their traditional lands. Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 23:48, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

@Poketama. In the meantime, would you be happy with the following: "Many Aboriginal people, however, sought an accommodation with the settlers and established viable communities, often on small areas of their traditional lands, where many aspects of their cultures were maintained." I think the entire article needs a lot of work and our time would be better spent fixing its glaring deficiencies rather than arguing over the wording of the lead. Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 01:29, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

Yeah that's a good start. Thanks for the feedback. Poketama (talk) 12:48, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

Changes to lead

Hello all I have expanded the lead to better reflect the policy in MOS:LEAD. In particular, I have tried to make it stand on its own as an overview of the article and to present information from a neutral POV. Happy to discuss.Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 11:28, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

Unsourced editorialising

I reverted this for the reasons given in my edit summary. Perhaps the editor involved could find a reliable source? We can't just say stuff we think is okay. Even if it is. --Pete (talk) 21:51, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

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Terra Nullius

The concept of "terra nullius" is an important one in the history of Australia and is referenced already in the Timeline section ("1835 - the Proclamation of Governor Bourke, issued by the Colonial Office and sent to the Governor with Despatch 99 of 10 October 1835 implements the doctrine of terra nullius upon which British settlement was based."). I think it's important enough to mention in the lede and made this WP:BOLD edit[2] which was promptly reverted with the comment "Australia was never officially proclaimed to be terra nullius.". This is semantics - "terra nullius" means uninhabited land (literally "land of nobody") and Australia (well the New South Wales colony - which at the time included everything bar WA and Tasmania) was declared previously uninhabited, officially, in 1835. The reference used in the timeline section states: "This document implemented the concept now known as terra nullius upon which British settlement was based".... so even though the document didn't use the exact phrase "terra nullius", it formally established the same concept. The term "terra nullius" for this kind of land claim only came into common use in the late 1800s, so it's an unreasonable requirement that documents before that time must use that exact phrase. Tobus (talk) 10:26, 18 September 2022 (UTC)

The problem is trying to fix a date in which the doctrine of Terra Nullius was "officially proclaimed". The doctrine was never officially proclaimed, it was just a post hoc justification used by some legal scholars to explain the fact that the colonial officials simply assumed that the Crown had given them the right to dispose of the land of the NSW colony as they saw fit. It's true that the commentary from the Powerhouse Museum states that Bourke's 1835 proclamation "implemented the doctrine of "terra nullius". But this is demonstrably wrong. The governors of NSW had been issuing land grants since 1788 without asking any Aboriginal Australians whether it was ok by them. It you want an authority for this look at the Mabo decision per Dawson par 36: "Upon any account, the policy which was implemented and the laws which were passed in New South Wales make it plain that, from the inception of the colony, the Crown treated all land in the colony as unoccupied and afforded no recognition to any form of native interest in the land." Bourke's Proclamation was just another in a long line of executive acts regulating land use in the colony. It's real significance is that Bourke was trying to give Aboriginals some protection against squatters. (A battle he lost). If you want the first proclamation of a notion which was later turned into the idea of Terra Nullius have a look at the instructions to Governor Phillip. I've been meaning to add this to the articles about Terra Nullius in Australia for some time. Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 12:16, 18 September 2022 (UTC)

I have corrected and summarised the information on the Proclamation of Govenor Bourke in the timeline section. I have added Banner's Why Terra Nullius? Anthropology and Property Law in Early Australia (2005) as a source.--Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 10:07, 20 September 2022 (UTC)