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6.7.5 Discourses of ignorance.
Moving back to topics of the early Australian colonial period discourses of ignorance draw
on examples that demonstrate the fierce disrupter of and disjuncture between official policies
and instructions by the British Government, to be carried out and supported by Governor
Phillip; and the actions of the first and early colonisers. Australia and the near north
(Connole, 1962) first provides an (unnamed) primary source of instructions from the British
Government, and then moves to an explanation of what factually occurred (see Source 6.34).
Source 6.34. The Coming of White Man extract from Australia and the near north
(Connole, 1962, p. 214).
Assertions made that explains the violence between Indigenous Australians and the British
colonisers includes lack of knowledge of Indigenous cultures and ways of life, as evidenced
in the statement “…neither Phillip not any of his party really understood what the white
man’s intrusion meant to the natives. This usurpation of his land was to the native a
fundamental interference with his way of life…that gave his life meaning” (Connole, 1962, p.
214). The narrative then explains that the weaponry of Indigenous peoples was overpowered
by the weapons of the colonisers, which contributed to high rates of deaths. However, the
narrative then moves to apportion blame for the reduction of the Indigenous population to the
Indigenous people, stating “…life quickly lost its meaning before the advance of the white
man with the inevitable result of the weakening of the black man’s will to survive” (Connole,
261