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Computer Science
Modeling and Simulation

A brief introduction to Recollections of a (homicidal) frontier

Profile image of ray gibbonsray gibbons
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X24000323
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8 pages

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Abstract

Much of Australia's frontier history is based on myth and oral tradition. What remains of written accounts-such as recollections and reminiscences from early settlement to the late 1900s-are fragile, increasingly lost to time, out of print, behind a digital paywall, fading from our collective memory, protected by denialism, or dismissed by some as 'black armband', contributing to what the esteemed Australian anthropologist EH Stanner once called 'the cult of forgetfulness' and the 'great Australian silence'. The rise of settlerism was a defining legacy that has shaped our migrant society, and its impact can only be acknowledged by confronting the past and seeking reconciliation, truth-telling, a Makarrata, which, without majority political and electoral support, seems perpetually elusive. A brief introduction to Recollections of a (homicidal) frontier Australia was born in violence. But what happens after? More violence? Or another path. Over the millennia, human history has too often devolved to competitive tribalism: Hindu v Muslim; Canaanites v Israelites; Bedouin v Druze; Shia v Sunni; Christian v Muslim; Israelis v Palestinians; communism v capitalism; British v Aboriginals; us and them. 1 What, then, is history? The study of past events, often triggered by tribal interactions? Is history, among other things, a record of territorial disputes around land ownership, or the contest between races, or the war on Nature, or the survival of corporations? Or can it be more?

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References (16)

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  2. G Hardin (1968), The tragedy of the commons. Science, 162(3859), 1243-1248 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.162.3859.1243
  3. J Sidanius, R Kurzban (2003), Evolutionary Approaches to Political Psychology. In D Sears, J Levy, Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology, OUP: 111-146 https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780199760107
  4. Elizabeth Leake (2024), The Construction of 'Tribe' as a Socio-Political Unit in Global History https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/historical-journal/article/construction-of-tribe-as-a- sociopolitical-unit-in-global-history/7435912C7D6FB5C08A6D979424BFD44E The Historical Journal , Volume 67 , Special Issue 4: Global Social History: Class and Social Transformation in World History , September 2024 , pp. 826 -849 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X24000323
  5. Francis Fukuyama (2020), Tribalism, Populism and Contemporary Identity https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntphEYElwzk
  6. Raewyn Connell, FK Rowley (1975), The Shape of Australian History doi:10.2307/27508165 https://theconversation.com/profiles/raewyn-connell-18926
  7. The rise of settlerism 12 was a defining legacy that has shaped our migrant society, and its impact can only be recognised by confronting the past and seeking reconciliation, a
  8. Makarrata, which, without majority political and electoral support, seems elusive. Genesis is an introduction to the first-hand recollections and narratives of Australian frontier society, Recollections, a society shaped by rapacious pastoralism, where land that is too dry for permanent cultivation is economically viable on marginal land. Ray Gibbons (2020), The Shape of Australian Post-contact History https://www.academia.edu/129593025/The_shape_of_Australian_post_contact_history_legitimacy_auth ority_sovereignty
  9. Ray Gibbons (2025), A brief introduction to the rise of settler sovereignty in Australia: 1770 -2025 https://www.academia.edu/129079202/A_brief_introduction_to_the_rise_of_settler_sovereignty_in_Aust ralia_1770_2025
  10. Fiona Paisley (2003), Introduction: White Settler Colonialisms and the Colonial Turn: An Australian Perspective, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History https://doi:10.1353/cc.2004.0008 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236797685_Introduction_White_Settler_Colonialisms_and_th e_Colonial_Turn_An_Australian_Perspective
  11. In Australia today, settler colonial history remains highly contested. Questions of apology for child removal, acknowledgement of Indigenous sovereignty rights, or treaty with Indigenous communities, have given way to the more recognisably assimilationist line of previous decades as a politics of denial has gained legitimacy. History has become a battleground between those wishing to reinstate a unified, progressive account of the past and those finding in its contested and fragmented present a way forward.
  12. Damien Short (2010), Australia: a Continuing Genocide?, Journal of Genocide Research https://doi:10.1080/14623528.2010.508647 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20941881/ Debates about genocide in Australia have for the most part focussed on past frontier killings and child removal practices. This article, however, focuses on contemporary culturally destructive policies, and the colonial structures that produce them, through the analytical lens of the concept of genocide. The article begins with a discussion of the meaning of cultural genocide, locating the idea firmly in Lemkin's work before moving on to engage with the debates around Lemkin's distinction between genocide and cultural 'diffusion.' In contrast to those scholars who prefer the word 'ethnocide,' the underlying conceptual contention is that the term 'cultural genocide' simply describes a key method of genocide and should be viewed, without the need for qualification, as genocide.
  13. Christina Twomey, Catherine Coleborne (2014), Australia: Present and Past Histories, Australian Historical Studies https://doi:10.100/1031461x.2014.950404 https://research.monash.edu/en/publications/australia- present-and-past-histories The Forum in this issue was prompted by exchanges about settler colonialism and history which occurred at the Australian Historical Association Conference in Wollongong in July of 2013. A plenary session about Indigenous History was framed by Professor Tim Rowse's discussion of the term 'settler colonialism', and whether it actually could be said, in its various uses, to partly occlude the histories of Indigenous peoples, thereby further silencing their lives in the past.
  14. Ann Curthoys, Jessie Mitchell (2018), Taking liberty: Indigenous rights and settler self-government in colonial Australia, 1830 - 1890 https://www.jstor.org/stable/27018616 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1031461X.2019.1633043
  15. Yoorrook Justice Commission, 2025, found that genocide was committed in Victoria. https://www.yoorrook.org.au/ Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) https://www.rcaanc- cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1450124405592/1529106060525
  16. Truth and Healing Enquiry, Queensland https://www.truth-telling-qld.com.au/truth-telling-and-healing- inquiry-releases-first-report In 2024, the incoming Crisafulli conservative government abolished the enquiry.

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