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that in killing the blacks we were violating the law...it was so frequently done
before’. (Logue et al., 1965, p. 352)
The inclusion of information of this event is justified (in the textbook) as it provides an
example to students of acts of justice against violent perpetrators. However, no historical
context or understanding is provided of the wider injustices that give weight to the shepherd’s
claim of other killings of the Indigenous population, leaving students with a very limited
exposure to and certainly inadequate understanding of the event.
Indigenous Australians are also represented as unprovoked perpetrators of violence against
non-Indigenous people, for example after providing information on numbers of “white
settlers” and “convicts” (Logue et al., 1965, p. 352) killed by Indigenous Australians, the
narrative concludes with “often the victims were themselves kindly disposed to the
Aborigines; they were paying a penalty for some injustice or misunderstanding on the part of
other white settlers” (Logue et al., 1965, p. 352). Representing Indigenous Australians as
perpetrators of violence could be done in order to demonstrate that the Indigenous population
did attempt to fight back against aggressors, or it could be to mitigate the actions of the non-
Indigenous Australians who committed acts of violence as a type of ongoing conflict where
neither party is either solely to blame or solely blameless. As this is not clearly expressed in
the narrative, only suppositions can be made regarding this. A third representation is through
giving voice to statistics of deaths of Indigenous people by non-violent means, as a direct
consequence of colonisation, which include fatalities as a result of illness, with the narrative
stating: “...the white man’s diseases and his food accounted for many more deaths. There
were probably about 300,000 Aborigines in Australia in 1788, now there are fewer than
40,000 full-blood natives and some 31,000 half castes” (Logue et al., 1965, p. 352).
Interestingly, after a three quarter page narrative on events of what is now widely known as
the Frontier Conflicts, the three questions under the sub-heading “For Research and
Discussion” that accompany this section of the textbook include no questions about
Indigenous Australians, focusing instead on experiences of, for example, squatters during the
19 th century. A conclusion that can be drawn from this is that Indigenous representations
remain on the fringe of curriculum content able to be included and excluded at any time.
Content is included only to provide students with a very basic level of knowledge and
understanding of Indigenous representations in historical events.
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