Statement from Associate Professor Jon Willis, Director and Manager of Academic Programs, UQ Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit:
The University of Queensland does not have an official position on the use of such language, however we certainly do not teach that Captain Cook ‘invaded’ or ‘settled’ Australia.
Captain Cook was a navigator and explorer, and he neither invaded nor settled Australia, however we also teach that the English idea that Captain Cook ‘discovered’ Australia is inaccurate, even from the point of view of Europeans.
In the Indigenous Australian Issues course, for example, we present a selection from the ample evidence that Captain Cook was a relative latecomer even in terms of early European visitors to the continent. The Dutch, Portuguese and Spanish visited parts of the Australian coastline some centuries before Cook’s voyages. Similarly, Indonesian visitors from Makassar in Sulawesi were routinely visiting the northern Australian coastline and trading and intermarrying with Aboriginal people there from at least the 15th Century, and there is some archaeological evidence that Chinese seafarers were active along parts of the Australian coastline possibly during the Ming Dynasty, certainly well before Cook’s time.
When we talk about Indigenous perspectives on the European settlement of Australia, we of course talk about the fact that many Indigenous people in historic and contemporary times think of white settlement as invasion. Australia day is called Invasion Day by most Indigenous Australians, so this would hardly be a surprise to anyone. However there is quite a difference between offering a range of Indigenous perspectives on Australia’s history, and the kind of debate in the press recently.
Students are well aware that some Indigenous perspectives on these issues are very different from the views of other Australians, and certainly differ from international legal perspectives, although even these perspectives remain in contention.
The doctrine of native title in common law, as an example, was unthinkable in Australia when I wrote my masters thesis on the doctrine in 1989, yet now it is recognised both in common law and in legislation. The recent adoption by the UN of a declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People is also shifting international perspectives on the nature of Australia’s settlement history.
I note also that the non-Indigenous perspective that Australia was ‘settled’ rather than invaded is a relatively modern one.
Henry Mort, a local settler in the Brisbane region wrote to his mother in 1844:
“Fine clear day. Had a very animated discussion on the ‘Moral right of a Nation to take forcible possession of a Country inhabited by savages.’
John and David McConnel argued that it is morally right for a Christian nation to extirpate savages from their native soil in order that it may be peopled with a more intelligent and civilised race of human beings etc. etc. F. McConnel and myself were of the opposite opinion and argued that a Nation had no moral right to take forcible possession of any place. What is your opinion on the subject? Don’t you think it a most Heinous act for any Nation, however powerful, however civilised and however christianised that Nation may be – to take possession of a country peopled by weak and barbarous tribes, merely for the purpose of aggrandising the Christians at the expense of annihilating the unoffending and ignorant and perhaps less avaricious savages? Yet I would say, let England increase her Colonial possessions, let her commerce be extended, and let the ministers of her Church carry out the sacred torch of civilisation and religion so that the darkest and most remote recesses of heathen barbarisms may be illuminated thereby.”
Indigenous studies is a discipline informed by history, sociology, anthropology and archaeology among others, and in this discipline we are as bound by high standards of scholarship as in any other.
We are also informed by contemporary theoretical movements including settler-colonial studies and post-colonial studies that encourage us to challenge students to not simply accept status quo historical accounts, but to dig deeper, to explore a range of perspectives and to come to their own informed view that takes into account colonial power relations and the European-centricity of dominant world views.
These views of history are now commonplace in Australian Universities and in many high and primary schools throughout the country, and parallel accounts of the European history of the United States, Canada and New Zealand from their Indigenous peoples’ perspectives are taught in schools and universities in those countries as well.
Understanding the perspectives of Indigenous peoples is one of the hallmarks of a culturally competent global citizen, and something that is encouraged in policy documents from Universities Australia (e.g. National Best Practice Framework for Indigenous Cultural Competency in Australian Universities) as well as the Commonwealth Government’s Review of Higher Education Access and Outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People Final Report.
