The question of "genocide" in Australia's past is one that will not go away. A fortnight ago, the Courier-Mail published a substantial extract from An Indelible Stain?, an informative new book on the issue by the distinguished historian Henry Reynolds.
As well as discussing such notorious 19th century cases as Tasmania's "Black Line", and Queensland's "dispersals" of Aborigines, Reynolds presents the appropriate historical context for certain later policies which, while easy to condemn now, seemed altruistic and progressive when introduced. This should serve as a warning that future generations, seeking to denigrate the past as a painless way of establishing their own virtue, might similarly think that programs favoured by today's moral elites were reprehensible.
Unfortunately however, Professor Reynolds couldn't resist the unwarranted and partisan concluding comment that, without self-government and constitutionally guaranteed indigenous rights, the "disappearance of the Aborigines may yet come to pass". And while An Indelible Stain? is worth reading, it suffers from some of the same evasions that characterise nearly all the writings from Australia's burgeoning genocide studies industry.
There are two important matters that must be addressed by people who wish to argue that the Convention on Genocide may have been breached in this country, either on a retrospective basis, or after its adoption by the United Nations in 1948. Unless these matters are dealt with properly, it is reasonable to assume that the real objective of those who raise the spectre of Australian "genocide" is to deliver a metaphorical kick in the guts to the usual objects of fashionable loathing -- conservative Anglo-Celtic nation builders.
The first is whether any of the indigenous inhabitants of Australia have ever committed acts that might possibly be seen as genocide. In the Convention this is defined as the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such", through any one of five different actions, the first of which is "killing members of the group".
Given the small size of Aboriginal groups, Professor Reynolds' contention that some white massacres of Aborigines were "genocidal" is plausible, because they resulted in the effective destruction of people with distinctive traditions, the equivalent of Western nations or ethnic groups. But if we accept this point, it may be necessary to accept that certain massacres perpetrated by one group of Aborigines against another should similarly be seen as "genocidal".
One example might be the Irbmangkara massacre, which occurred just before the white settlement of Aranda country in Central Australia. As recounted by the anthropologist T.G.H. Strehlow, in his book Journey to Horseshoe Bend, over 100 men, women and children from a particular group were killed by members of another group because of an act of sacrilege that had supposedly been carried out by one of the victims.
Other kinds of killings might also be thought of as coming under the definition of genocide. The initial response of different Aboriginal groups towards mixed race babies varied considerably. But in a number of areas they were killed, as the writings of some Aborigines themselves attest -- such as the memoirs of the Yorta Yorta woman Theresa Clements, From Old Maloga. The infants seem to have been killed only because elders saw them as being members of a different racial group.
If, as Professor Reynolds and others argue, pre-war Aboriginal affairs officials such as A.O. Neville and Cecil Cook who spoke of "breeding out the colour", were guilty of "genocidal objectives", how should we view Aborigines who tried to "remove the white" through infanticide? One prominent Melbourne academic to whom I put this question responded that it was only modern intellectuals who had genocidal thoughts, not tribal elders.
This leads to the second matter which the genocide industry needs to address. Another of the five actions defined as "genocide" by the Convention is "imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group".
On this basis, radical Aborigines, together with their counterparts in America and the Third World, have long argued that family planning programs directed at them are motivated by "genocidal" attitudes. As they see it, these programs have little to do with providing disadvantaged women with new opportunities for reproductive choice, and a great deal to do with limiting the number of non-whites in the world.
As fanciful as this may seem, there are actually some grounds for their suspicions. The intellectual foundations of the post-World War II concerns about the "population explosion" are quite unsavoury. Many who promoted these concerns had been involved in the earlier eugenics movement, which tried to discourage people of "inferior stock" from breeding, and which successfully campaigned to introduce sterilisation laws in many countries.
It is not hard to find objectionable racist notions in the seminal texts on "overpopulation". In the enormously influential 1948 book, Road to Survival, William Vogt wrote that it would be a tragedy if China experienced "a reduction in her death rate". And Paul Ehrlich's 1968 description in The Population Bomb of how he first gained an emotional understanding of the "population explosion" as a result of experiencing the crowded streets of Delhi, expresses what can only be called a revulsion towards Indians.
So if it is reasonable to suggest that Australian bureaucrats like Neville or Cook held "genocidal objectives", we should also seriously consider whether similar objectives motivated many of the prominent advocates of the population control movement. Or perhaps we would all be better served by giving the whole debate on Australian "genocide" a dignified burial.
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