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FAITH and SCHOLARSHIP IN ABORIGINAL and ISLANDER HISTORY: A REPLY TO RALPH SHLOMOWITZ
Author(s) -
Windschuttle Keith
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
australian economic history review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.493
H-Index - 16
eISSN - 1467-8446
pISSN - 0004-8992
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8446.2005.00141.x
Subject(s) - scholarship , faith , toll , frontier , white (mutation) , work (physics) , sociology , history , political science , law , theology , engineering , philosophy , medicine , mechanical engineering , biochemistry , chemistry , immunology , gene
The Fabrication of Aboriginal History , does not, as Shlomowitz contends, circumvent standard criteria of traditional historical enquiry. In fact, it insists upon them. It applies those criteria to the work of historians who have exaggerated the degree of frontier conflict and the Aboriginal death toll far beyond what the credible evidence supports. Shlomowitz should have applied those standards to the works that Fabrication critiques. He also misrepresents Windschuttle's case about Melanesian labourers in Queensland's sugar industry, which is based on the same sources that Shlomowitz uses himself. The article argues those labourers were genuine victims of the White Australia Policy.