One Nation NSW leader Mark Latham has taken to Facebook to ask, “Who says Indigenous life expectancy has fallen?” Latham is referring to an ABC story which, if taken seriously, would suggest that some Aboriginal Australians live for a century or more.
The story was, of course, about the upcoming anniversary of James Cook’s world-shaking landing at Botany Bay on 29 April 1770. Being well-indoctrinated lefties, the ABC naturally cannot bring themselves to actually celebrate such a world-historic event. It’s all sackcloth and ashes over at the ABC – and, of course, wall-to-wall “indigenous perspectives”. No matter how fanciful or improbable.
First up is the rejection of contemporary written, eyewitness accounts in favour of handed-down ‘stories’ two and a half centuries later.
Sydney Parkinson, a young artist employed on the ship, wrote in his journal that local men made threatening gestures with spears and yelled the words “warra warra wai.”
He presumed that the words meant “go away,” and so for many years his diary entry defined the story of first contact between Aboriginal people and the British.
Now the Dharawal people are sharing their story.
Except that the Dharawal people who witnessed the event – whose story it is, in other words – are long dead.
They say the real meaning of those first recorded Indigenous words has been misinterpreted.
“Warra is a root word for either white or dead in our language,” said Ray Ingrey, a Dharawal man and La Perouse Local Aboriginal Land Council deputy chairperson[…]While those words might sound threatening or morbid, Mr Ingrey said it was likely just a warning to other locals at the time.
Firstly, there is the problem of even assuming that the words are even recorded accurately. As anyone who’s listened to a conversation in another language knows, trying to discern words in a language of which you have not even the foggiest grasp is extremely difficult. Reading Parkinson’s full statement (“Their countenance bespoke displeasure; they threatened us, and discovered hostile intentions, often crying to us, Warra warra wai”), it is clear that he is inferring meaning from non-verbal communication. Parkinson was under no illusion that he was being told to bugger off.
But what has really raised eyebrows is this:
Gweagal and Yuin woman, Theresa Ardler[…]believes she is the descendant of a Gweagal warrior, named Cooman, who was one of two men who defended his country from the British explorers.
She said the oral history of the event passed down by her elders was different to the one in the history books.
“I was in high school in Year 10 studying Cook, and we were reading a book that said the bullets were fired over their heads.
“I remember getting up in my class and saying, ‘this is wrong, this is not the true history’, because my grandfather was shot.
Um…what? Taken at face value, that bespeaks an extraordinary life-span. My own grandfather was only born in the 1870s, and the men on my paternal side seemed to have made a habit of marrying and having children very late in life for the times.
We must assume that Ms. Ardler is talking metaphorically (“ancestor” may be a better choice of word), but even so, the idea that written records should be torn up, just because of some “just so” stories and family legends is very bad history indeed. Even other Aboriginal representatives warn that, “We do not know the individual identities of any of the Gweagal population of 1770, and we certainly cannot link any individual Gweagal person of that time to any of the [artifacts] that were obtained by Cook”. Ardler is claiming the so-called “Gweagal Shield” from the British Museum, on the basis of her “very spiritual connection” with it – yet there is very good evidence that the shield cannot be the one from Cook’s encounter.
There is nothing wrong at all with trying to represent Aboriginal perspectives on Cook’s voyages – Trent Dalton’s Captain Cook Rediscovered is a worthy example. But it is a fraught historical exercise.
Playing a 250 year-long game of Telephone is not good history.
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