Telling The Truth About Aboriginal History

Once upon a time disagreement among historians was a matter for genteel debate in lecture theatres. Now claim and passionate counterclaim spill over into newspapers, radio talkback shows and pubs.

Bain Attwood takes us to the heart of the 'history war' in Australia, arguing that controversy over interpretations of our Aboriginal past has never been so intense, and never mattered more. He presents some of the most vexed issues in Aboriginal history, showing how they raise fundamental issues about the nature of historical knowledge, truth and authority:

How many Aboriginal people were killed in frontier conflict and was this genocide?

Was there ever a massacre at Risdon Cove in Tasmania?

* Does Aboriginal oral history count as real history?

Telling the Truth About Aboriginal History also tracks the development of Aboriginal history as a legitimate field of study over the past three decades, explaining the public impact of historians' work on frontier relations, the 'stolen generation' and 'terra nullius'. This work is now under attack from revisionists who are anxious to claim a benign colonial past. What is at stake is nothing less than Australia's identity as a nation.

the work of Windschuttle as a lynchpin in his discussion. Most other historians and critics have been reluctant to consider Windschuttle's work seriously, preferring to dismiss the man and his history. Attwood treats Windschuttle and his work respectfully but critically, arguing that it can provide a window onto the ways in which historical knowledge, truth and authority are established by history-tellers. Identifying a dozen keywords central to the controversy over Aboriginal history (from 'genocide' to 'myth' to 'objectivity'), Attwood analyses the way in which Aboriginal history has been researched and written, and uses it to shed light on wider matters, crucial to Australian history, and to the Australian present.

Telling the Truth about Aboriginal History will itself cause much debate and it will be seen locally and internationally as a major work in Australian history.