The Australian Education Minister says students should learn about Aboriginal history, but adds that the current curriculum has not sold the ‘benefits of western civilisations’. Tell that to Indigenous Australians

By Paul Daley theguardian.com, Tuesday 14 January 2014 15.45 AEST

Sometimes it’s difficult to tell if education minister Christopher Pyne is genuinely torn about Australia’s bleak and violent colonial history, trying to be politically pragmatic or just confused.

Last week when he announced a supposedly independent review of the national curriculum by experts clearly hostile towards the status quo, it was framed in terms of competing aspects of Australia’s past – Indigenous history and “western civilisation”. Of course, these two elements of Australian history have been inextricably linked since 1788. Good history teachers and scholars know that they are not mutually exclusive and should not be treated as such.

Here’s part of what what Pyne said:
There are two aspects of Australia’s history that are paramount. First of course is our Indigenous history because for thousands of years Indigenous Australians have lived on this continent. The second aspect of our history is our beginnings as a colony and therefore our western civilisation, which is why we are the kind of country we are today.

Students should, he said, learn “the truth about the way we’ve treated Indigenous Australians” but also the “benefits of western civilisation”. The problem with the current curriculum, he added, was that it had “not sold or talked about the benefits of western civilisations in our society”. By inference, then, there was an imbalance in favour of the Indigenous story.

The truth is that since 1788, the “western civilisation” of this great southern land has come at the profound expense of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander inhabitants. There is Indigenous history pre-1788, and an Indigenous history post-1788, that is indelibly shaped by white settlement, extreme violence, resistance and continued activism. By conservative estimates 20,000 Indigenous Australians were killed by British troops, colonial militias, police and vigilante settlers as the colonial frontier expanded across the continent. At least 2,000 new Australians also died in such battles, often in ugly reprisal attacks.

Then, of course, there was the disease and the poverty that accompanied banishment from traditional lands, not to mention the cruelty of state-by-state, territory-by-territory and later federal policies and ongoing denials of human rights.

For some years now, Pyne has been agitating for the repatriation from London’s Natural History Museum of the skull of Pemulwuy – an Aboriginal warrior of the Eora people who fought the settlers and soldiers of early New South Wales. The colony executed Pemulwuy in 1802, cut of his head and dispatched it to England. The collection and export of Aboriginal body parts is another abhorrent element of Australia’s white settlement inextricably linked to the oppression of the continent’s Indigenous people. The desecration and export of Indigenous dead has ensured the violence of the frontier continues to resonate in some communities today.

Shamefully, such practises continued well into the 20th century – but then again, so, too, did the massacre of Aboriginal people. Thousands of Indigenous bodies and body parts were exported to medical and cultural institutions across Britain, continental Europe and America. Many – including Pemulwuy’s – are yet to be returned.

In 2011 Pyne wrote to the Duke of Cambridge, Prince William, who had vowed while in Australia in 2010, to help repatriate Pemulwuy’s head:
Pemulwuy is a hero for modern day Indigenous Australian and a rare example of recorded Aboriginal resistance. The return of his remains would be an important symbolic recognition of Aboriginal culture and history. It is also an important step towards reconciliation with Indigenous Australians. I am quite eager to know whether His Royal Highness would be interested in helping to expedite the matter.

Notwithstanding that Pyne guilds the lily with his claim that Pemulwuy’s resistance was “rare” (Indigenous history post-1788 is replete with resistance heroes), Pyne indicates his familiarity with the disturbing reality of the violence that characterised the Australian colonial frontier. More conservative thinkers might dismiss this “black armband” preoccupation with an element of Australia’s past that has been exaggerated.

But hang on. That seems – or at least seemed – to be Pyne’s attitude too, barely a year ago when he flagged from opposition his curriculum review that would reconsider elements that presented a “black armband view”. He said: “we think that of course we should recognise the mistakes that have been made in the past. But … we don’t want to beat ourselves up every day.”

Then, as with last week, Pyne argued more emphasis should be given to the importance of Anzac Day, which is central, he insists, to understanding Australian character.

It’s hard to argue against a proposition that students should explore precisely how, when and why Australia’s politicians settled on the birth of nationhood at Gallipoli – rather than at Federation in 1901 following, as it did, the violent struggle across the colonial frontier. But that’s not really what Pyne seems to be thinking. Though sometimes it’s pretty hard to tell.