Don't dismiss nation's blemishes
Historians across Australia buried their faces in their palms again this week when, without warning, retro talk of ''history wars'' was revived. It was like being drawn back into 2001, when John Howard was prime minister, George Bush was US president and Vanilla Ice was in jail.
On Monday, the jaunty opposition spokesman for education, Christopher Pyne criticised the new national school curriculum for putting Aboriginal and multicultural commemoration days in the same league as Anzac Day.
This seemed to come partly from a preference for the festive over the sombre.
Pyne said a Coalition government would review the curriculum because it should promote a more cheerful version of the past: ''The Coalition believes that, on balance, Australia's history is a cause for celebration,'' he said. ''We must not allow a confidence-sapping 'black armband' view of our history to take hold.
''That history, while inclusive of indigenous history, must highlight the pivotal role of the political and legal institutions from England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales.''
Top marks for positive thinking. But wait, Wales? Isn't Anzac more of a solemn commemoration than celebration? Isn't cherry picking history for celebratory purposes distorting? And why must we insist on calling any truthful record of our ignoble history when it comes to white Australia's treatment of Aboriginal history as ''black armband''?
It is our past, we must own it, we have apologised, and moving forward does not mean eradicating it. We can quibble over the details - the precise number of deaths of Aboriginals at the hands of settlers in Tasmania, for example - but the facts of the dispossession of land, stolen children and lack of basic rights are just that - facts.
The conflicts hyped as the ''history wars'' that raged during the Howard era were not about history, but politics. These ''wars'' were public and polemic mostly because they centered on race, racism and the reliability of the claims of violence in Aboriginal history. Common disputes about sourcing and evidence were inflated into ''battles'' where conservatives flung mud at ''leftist'' historians, accusing them of ideologically driven fraud, and historians alleged amateurism.
Commentators tried to shame historians; politicians tried to shame each other.
Ugly things were said.
In February 2008, Kevin Rudd apologised to Aboriginal people and argued we should ''leave behind the polarisation that began to infect every discussion of our nation's past''. Since then, the ugliness has largely faded.
But we are now seeing strong signs the Coalition may reignite culture wars if it wins in September. According to this rhetoric, the Coalition represents basics, the Queen, calm, Britannia, cheer, Anzac, the constitution, freedom and the Bible.
In the Sir Paul Hasluck Foundation lecture given on September 27 last year, for example, John Howard - still the spiritual leader of federal Liberals - vehemently condemned the new school curriculum, due to be adopted after the federal election, as failing to examine our British heritage as well as ''the historic influence of the Judaeo Christian ethic in shaping Australian society''.
Tony Abbott has made powerful speeches about the need to acknowledge the shameful treatment of Aboriginal people, with words some might even call ''black armband'': ''We need to atone for the omissions and for the hardness of heart of our forebears, to enable us all to embrace the future as a united people.''
But he channelled his former leader in his speech to the foundation this month when he argued: ''There is a new version of the great Australian silence - this time about the Western canon, the literature, the poetry, the music, the history and above all the faith without which our culture and our civilisation are unimaginable.''
It's hard to discern in which ways the canon might be under threat. Why pick this fight now? We don't need to tinker further with the curriculum: that has been happening for decades and a new one is about to be adopted.
Have we forgotten how often, and easily history can be distorted by those seeking to make history simply a celebration, or quest for freedom?
Take, for example, the myth of the heroism of Simpson and his donkey. This was debunked recently, but you did not hear ''leftist'' historians slamming ''right- wingers'' for fudging history to make a war hero.
John Simpson Kirkpatrick's courage in rescuing the wounded at Gallipoli with a donkey, while under heavy fire meant he was lionised for almost a century. But when further research was conducted when assessing whether he should posthumously receive a Victoria Cross, it was discovered his legend had been substantially embellished and he had done no more than other stretcher bearers.
The story, wrote Mark Baker in The Age, was ''largely a myth inflated and exaggerated by the sloppy work of journalists, amateur historians and jingoistic politicians''. Oh, that. Sloppiness, jingoism and untrained historians.
This did not get splashed across papers as the beginnings of a ''patriotic history war''. Defence official Graham Wilson said: ''Just about every word that has ever been written or spoken about Simpson, apart from the bare facts of his civilian life and his basic military service, is a lie.'' At face value, it really does not matter: Simpson was there, he saved the wounded, and he was a brave icon of a bloody, disastrous campaign. His was the tale we told our children - human beings are capable of extraordinary, selfless acts, even in the midst of great danger.
But the story told about him was false. The tribunal was ''unable to find any witness accounts of a specific act of valour … which could single out Simpson's bravery from other stretcher-bearers in the Field Ambulance''. Every war - and country - has its myths. Historians are far more likely to be cautious, and correct, when dissecting them, than politicians. This is their job, and why they spend decades poring over details in forgotten, dusty archives.
History isn't a party, it's an honest pursuit of an accurate telling of the past - the whole past, not just bits we like.
The narrative we tell of our country should be one of great endeavour, nation building, and survival through war, but we can't gloss over mistakes and horror: history is crawling with fools propagating foolish ideas and Australia is no exception. It is also crowded with visionaries, whom we must also remember.
People usually want to redraft history for obvious reasons. Winston Churchill boasted: ''History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.'' The problem is, politicians aren't usually kind to history.
Julia Baird
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/dont-dismiss-nations-blemishes-20130426-2ijsd.html#ixzz2RpIxSOzf
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