Tony Koch’s findings indicate that Reynolds, far from exaggerating his figures, sug-gested an estimate which was well and truly on the conservative side. It may be added that the very same officer was later promoted to Police Com-missioner of Queensland and that he was later put in charge in a semi Governor posi-tion in Northern Territory. Moreover, that the officer was applauded for work well done in one of the cases. It is equally clear that this officer’s superiors treated his reports as a matter of simple routine. Mr Richards ought to take note that this work was performed by officers and troopers employed to do this work by the government of Queensland, and that we are dealing with a force that was operating in that colony for a period of about fifty years. Certainly if this was the norm we would be looking at figures minimum 5 times higher than those originally estimated by Rey-nolds and 17 times those put forward by a resent article in the Quadrant. Two whites were killed by Aboriginals one in 1884 the other in 1889 - and all indica-tions presented suggests that perhaps hundreds of Aboriginals, certainly no less than fifty was shot in retaliation in each case. Now, Tony Koch document just two cases of this kind, none of which figures promi-nently in Queensland history. A recent article in the Quadrant follows up on this, claiming that the right figure for Aboriginal casualties caused by whites in colonial Queensland were probably somewhere around 3 000 as opposed to Reynolds 10 000)
(source: The myths of frontier massacres in Australian history Part II Keith Wind-schuttle/ The fabrication of the Aboriginal death toll Quadrant November 2000
This, Windschuttle added ‘…are not claims that should be treated seriously by histo-rians.’ Indeed, such figures are nothing, he wrote, but ‘unsubstantiated guesswork.’ This is the origin of the book's claim of 8,000-10,000 Aboriginal deaths….’ ‘When he came to write The Other Side of the Frontier, Reynolds decided to combine the figure of 800-850 white deaths with his footnoted guess that the ratio of black deaths to those of whites "may have been" ten to one. Historians and primary sources gives evidence to the effect that somewhere around a 1000 whites were killed by Aboriginals in colonial Queensland so Reynolds roughly calculated ratio would give a minimum of 10 000 Aboriginals shot in Queen-sland alone. Reynolds held that minimum 10 Aboriginals were killed in retaliation for every white person. This attack centred on Reynolds estimates for the frontier death toll of Aboriginal people in Queensland. Mr Richard ignores the fact that Windschuttle's claim about ‘historical standard’ being ‘lower in this field’ centred on a large scale attack on Dr Henry Reynolds.
0 kommentar(er)
