Cricket: the new history of Aboriginal Australia

It's more with despair than anger that I write this entry. The Canberra Times yesterday recorded the excitement at the National Museum of Australia in the purchase of a boomerang which was supposed to be used by the first Australian cricket team in Britain, which happened to be a (very successful) Aboriginal team. Well, it's an interesting story, and the purchase of a historical artefact like that is a good thing to celebrate. But it was obvious from day 1 that this is the new view of Australian history - the white blindfold view.

So, the history of Australian Aborigines will now be celebrated as one of assimilation of those poor deprived souls into an all-conquering and civilised European (specifically Anglo) culture. The merging of cricket and converted blacks appears to be just too, too much for the NMA to resist. It's the new, relaxed (and blind) view of Australia's history of mateship and a fair go. The Howard view writ large. Sad, but so transparent. And I can imagine the view of the much-revered Australian mainstream becoming relaxed and comfortable with the good deeds we have done, and continue to do, for our poor, backward cousins, as we offer tham a hand-up to our rich, civilised culture.

Several years ago, I could have been swayed, but the "Bringing them home" report on the Stolen Generations changed all that. I was a parent of young children at the time, and close enough to cry at the thought of children removed from their mothers and family and culture. Most defenders just attacked the report as overly emotive, and denied there really was a stolen generation. They called it "political correctness" to use such terms (despite having learnt so well the lesson of controlling thought through language). And there were even those defenders who recognised these events happened, but argued it was for their own good. Paternalistic, and confirmed to remain ignorant of their own thought processes. Look at LO'D, they'd say, or some other successful black who had made it good given a white upbringing and education. But listen to LO'D and you had a different view.

Remember, I was a parent of young children. For once, rationality could not overcome emotional grief at the stories of children being taken from parents. Too, too close to home. They lost me on that one. And the amazing thing it that it just confirmed my disbelief in so many of their other claims.

You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but not all of the people all of the time.

But I open today's Canberra Times (Doubts over tour boomerang's origin, by Robert Messenger, in Canberra Times, 21 July 2004, p. 1-2) to amusement with a front-page article on doubts on the authenticity of this very boomerang. Amusing and appropriate. Apparently there were two cricketers called Twopenny, and this boomerang may have been used by the wrong one! Trust some academic in Canberra to report this. As the local Canb Times editor (Jack Waterford) often states, there's an expert on every subject in Canberra. That's perhaps why we're not so easily fooled. (Although Howard's "mainstream" probably thinks that's why we are so easily fooled!)

This new ideological broom is sweeping political correctness from the National Museum, and I despair, but I can laugh at their little mistakes.