Hollywood, Australia, and Historical Revisionism

That filmmakers take a bit of artistic license with their products is nothing new. It happens quite often. Indeed, films purporting to deal with historical events can often be radically skewed because of the filmmaker’s political and ideological stance.

Oliver Stone comes to mind as but one example of those who are quite happy to rewrite history – all in the name of art – in order to push a political agenda. And the political agenda of Hollywood – and most other Western filmmakers – is mainly that of the left.

Australians are not exempt from this. Consider the issue of Australia’s pre-European inhabitants. If a historian were to write a book about our indigenous population, and seek to argue that the Europeans only always treated them with the best of care, and all white policies toward them were pure, just and spotless, critics would be quite right to blast the book.

I would think in the same way if a historian were to write a book and argue that Europeans in Australia only always treated Aboriginals horribly and terribly, and their policies were consistently and uniformly evil and nefarious, criticism could also be made of this take on Australian history.

The truth is, as even a number of Aboriginal leaders have proclaimed, white policy was a mixed bag. Some Aboriginals were treated appallingly, others were treated well. For example, as to the so-called Stolen Generations, some aboriginal children were indeed stolen, and/or treated badly. But also, some Aboriginal children were rescued, and/or treated well.

So taking a one-eyed look at white treatment of Aboriginals – whether positive or negative – is not doing justice to the historical record. As with most of life, there is a blend of good and bad. Much of Western treatment of Aboriginals was harmful, oppressive and mischievous. But much treatment was also well-intentioned, benevolent and beneficial.

Which of course brings me to the recent Baz Luhrmann blockbuster, Australia. I must make a confession here. I went to see it last night – but I did so under duress. To be honest, I would rather have spent the $16.50 on something else. But the interests of matrimonial harmony had to be taken into account. (Indeed, I must say it was a rather magnanimous gesture on my part. Just hours earlier a box of books from amazon had arrived, and I was relishing the thought of a night of glorious reading. So a tremendous act of heroic self-sacrifice was undertaken here!)

Thus I sat through the film in a relatively empty theatre. I am no film critic, so I cannot make too many cinematic comments here. Obviously Australia is a very beautiful country, so any film that utilises breathtaking cinematography will have some major highlights indeed.

The film itself seemed to be a bit of a mixed bag. It was certainly cliché ridden. Hugh Jackman often sounded like a recent version of Crocodile Dundee. Indeed, it seemed to me that the entire film was one big cliché – but more on that in a moment.

After the film I mentioned to my fellow movie goers that it was certainly one big exercise in Political Correctness. One protested that I was viewing the film far too politically. To which I replied, “It seems that it was Luhrmann himself who was intent on being as political as possible with this film”.

Indeed, from the opening text statement to the closing text statement – both about Stolen Generations – it was clear that Luhrmann had a political axe to grind, as well as the intention of making an enjoyable film. And there was plenty of action, drama, romance and adventure; as such it was not a bad film.

But the stifling PC was all a bit much. As I mentioned, the entire film was a lengthy cliché, or set of clichés. Thus we had the myth of the Noble Savage. And the myth of rapacious White Men. And the customary Christian bashing.

As with other films, such as the 1990 Dancing With Wolves, the film more or less tried to make the case that indigenous peoples are pure, innocent, and always good, while the White Fellas are for the most part evil and devilish. Sure, the hero and heroine (Jackman and Kidman) were good guys, but only because they sided with the indigenous folks over against all the other bad whites.

The purpose of all such historical revisionism is to make Westerners feel guilty about just about everything, and to hold up some sort of pristine and uncorrupted Noble Savage as the true good guys of history. But as I say, history is always a mixed bag. There have been some very good Aboriginals, and there have been some very bad Aboriginals. There have been some very good Whitees, and there have been some very bad Whitees.

But films like this tend to be impatient with, and unappreciative of, the complexities and nuances of life. Instead, we have the typical black and white, good versus evil, approach, and often it is Western civilisation that is seen as the corrupting, baleful and malicious main character in the story.

I am not the only one who has seen the film in this light. Andrew Bolt has recently written several opinion pieces about this film, of which I offer a few excerpts. He complains, for example, about the many historical inaccuracies and misleading claims of fact:

“Typically, the racism Luhrmann attacks is a racism of cliches, and is illustrated with yet more cliches, each more fact-free than the last. So Drover [Jackman] complains, for instance, that he lost his first wife to TB because hospitals didn’t treat Aborigines – when in fact Darwin hospital did treat them, even if three small nurse-run private bush hospitals had not. Missions also treated Aborigines, and one pregnant nurse, a Mrs Taylor, even died of illness while working with tribes in Groote Eylandt in 1934. But Luhrmann shows no such sympathetic officials. Instead, almost every white character from the NT administrator’s wife down, other than our two heroes, is portrayed as a racist.”

“A recurring injustice Luhrmann keeps harping on is that ‘boongs’ were banned from pubs. In one of Jackman’s most emotional scenes, Drover finally forces a bartender to give his Aboriginal friend a drink – his biggest victory against racism. Nowhere is it acknowledged – as anyone can read in the reports then of the Northern Territory administrator – that serving Aborigines was forbidden because the booze and opium were devastating a people only just learning to deal with white society and Asian traders. Luhrmann, in particular, should know this ban was driven not by racism but deep concern for Aboriginal welfare. After all, Australia stars the great Aboriginal actor David Gulpilil, whose career and marriage have almost been ruined by his own drinking. And alcohol is now once again banned in many Aboriginal communities in the NT, and not because we’re racist. ”

The film makes much of a half-caste boy who is portrayed as a prime example of Stolen Generations: “But now note a few historical truths that Luhrmann overwrites to tell his story of white infamy. First, a Federal Court test case found no evidence children in the NT were ever stolen just because they were black, and no one has yet identified 10 anywhere who were stolen because they were Aboriginal and not because they needed help. Indeed, Colin Macleod, a NT patrol officer and later Victorian magistrate, wrote in his memoirs that the children sent to Garden Point were half-castes who’d often been rejected by full-bloods, and needed protection from ‘real danger and abject misery’. For instance, he wrote, ‘Brother Pye of the Catholic mission at Garden Point once saw a six-year-old part-coloured boy speared by a full-blooded Aboriginal, almost as a joke, just because the boy was a “yella-fella” . . . ‘Half-caste kids would now and again turn up at missions with spear marks and signs of horrific beatings. Babies were occasionally abandoned and young children left to fend for themselves’.”

Concludes Bolt, “This is the real history of Australia – there’s racism, yes, but more commonly there are people struggling, however imperfectly, to do their best, some bringing care and protection to Aborigines at great personal sacrifice. That’s the real Australia, and how sad that Luhrmann has sold the world his Australia instead – a ghastly cliche of the demons we never were.”

But if you can filter out all the politics and Political Correctness, the film makes for a few hours of mindless entertainment. It is not a bad film, and can be enjoyed on various levels. But if one is concerned about history, about truth, and about accuracy, then this film may not make for very much enjoyable viewing.

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,24742897-25717,00.html
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,24718189-25717,00.html

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22 Replies to “Hollywood, Australia, and Historical Revisionism”

  1. Bill one could be forgiven for describing this Historical Revisionism as a manifestation of demonic activity, the demon being the politically correct Spirit of This Age.
    Stan Fishley

  2. Bill, part of the film-maker’s art is to give us cause to ‘suspend disbelief’ and thus to embrace and empathise etc. (I hope I am making sense here…).

    However, the reviews I have read, including one or two from overseas, make me wonder if Baz Luhrmann has so over-egged the pudding that we can no longer suspend the disbelief.

    Given the huge budget, including a lot of our tax money, and apparently poor box office returns to date, it appears set to be regarded as a celluloid monument to a diseased idea, and a very expensive monstrosity.

    Can I get my money bacK?

    John Angelico

  3. Well! On that basis I’ll wait till it comes out on DVD.

    Do your kids let you go to their school plays?

    James Beattie

  4. Thanks James

    As far as I can recall, our kids’ plays were fairly bereft of any Political Correctness or leftwing agendas, making them safe and enjoyable viewing. Thus no lengthy, penetrating articles were written about any of them! But you are wise to wait for the video – you will save heaps of money that way.

    Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

  5. I liked that they included the young priest character in the film. Although like you said there are certain points of the film that were taken out of context, I felt that the genuine concern of that one character showed a little bit of the other side to the story, that not everyone who took children away did it out of genocidal malice.

    Natasha Sim

  6. Yeah, Bill. The “noble savage” really gets to me. As much as the Aboriginal’s religion gives them insight and power, because is it power from the Dark Side, it is a life of fear, utilising fear over other people and bondage that Jesus came to set us free from. Along with astrology, star signs and other “boxes” that bind us rather than set us free, as believing in Jesus sets us free. Voluntarily binding ourselves to Christ actually sets us free, free to be who we were created to be.
    This is another aspect to Obama that I have been wanting to point out, that his mother, being an anthropologist, would have been very much a proponent of the “noble savage” in those days, when she married a Kenyan man. I wonder if she left him because he didn’t turn out to be quite that noble. I wonder if we could dig into her archives and find an honest reflection from the experience, following on from preconceptions. From what I know of that tribe, it’s pretty savage, skip the noble.
    It’s sounds terribly harsh, but then, the untrue accusations of anthropologists of that time towards benevolent missionaries was pretty savage. Those of pagan religions who received the gift of life from Jesus through his sacrifice in their place for their wrong on the cross, were truly grateful to be set free from their gods of fear and bondage. The missionaries treated these people in other countries as truly noble, giving their whole lives out of love for these people who Jesus made and cherishes. They spent their entire lives nurturing these new Christians to be fully independent and empowered into this modern age, meanwhile giving every benefit, as well, to those who chose not to believe and receive the message of Jesus.
    It is so good that, to this day, our government allows us as Christians to give tax-free dollars to many, many extensions of Jesus’s love, with no strings attached, across the globe. Our church, itself, has a fund-raising goal over our six Christmas productions to raise $250,000 to empower people in one Asian country that has chronic poverty and devastation by bad weather. They don’t just give hand-outs, they give loans that keep being recycled so people can get on their feet with their own money-making enterprises. Jesus is the One who makes any person truly noble, if that person follows Jesus the way He is meant to be followed.

    Rebecca Field

  7. Rebecca:

    Andrew Bolt warns:

    I warned in March that Kevin Rudd’s decision to funnel aid to Burma through the United Nations, rather than Australian aid groups, was kissing goodbye to our cash. Claudia Rossett now shows that the truth is even worse than I feared. Some of our $12.5 million seems to have gone straight into the junta’s pockets…

    I suspect Rudd’s UN ambitions are interfering with wise decision-making on our aid money.

    Jonathan Sarfati, Brisbane

  8. Jonathan,
    Yes, that’s a worry. Always better, I say, to donate through a church and church agency, than a government. But that doesn’t excuse Rudd’s conflict of interest and temptations of money and power.
    Rebecca Field

  9. Bill, like you I find it hard to watch a movie these days that I really enjoy. Ever since I sat through a seminar demonstrating just how much influence is exerted by left-wing directors, I too find myself analysing the ‘sub-text’ of what is being said.

    Would I pay to go to a left-wing propaganda meeting? No! Would I pay to go to the same meeting if they showed some nice pretty photos of Australia? No! So why, I ask myself, do I want to pay to go to see the same propaganda just because it’s in a movie, promoted by Oprah and called ‘entertainment’ ?

    It really is getting difficult to be truly entertained these days by a world system that is hell-bent on destroying all vestiges of Christianity.

    Roger Birch

  10. Thanks again, Bill.

    I, too, saw the film under matrimonial harmony provisions on the weekend and must agree with all that has been said, though I did enjoy it because it doesn’t take itself seriously.

    But what saddened and angered me during the film was what has not been said. Have we become so accustomed that we fail to be concerned about the leading couple portrayed as living in a clear defacto relationship?

    I understand this is typical hollywood fare, (perhaps not very appropriate to a 1939 setting), but this tells us more about ourselves than the typical leftist slant.

    Jeremy Peet

  11. ‘no evidence children in the NT were ever stolen just because they were black’? No they probably stole a sheep they DID NOT OWN because white man was claiming land that they DID NOT OWN. If Aborigines demanded the market price for the land they lived on at the time white man arrived, the rental return would be fairly decent by now don’t you think?

    Next you will tell us that the English adored the Irish and arrested them for stealing that loaf of bread, failing to see the oppression created the hunger.

    And maybe you side with the lunatic who analyses the soil at holocaust sites to prove that no Jew was ever captured starved or murdered.

    Colleen McCormack

    As an Irish Catholic mother of a boy whose father is Russian Jewish I fear for the likes of our son in a world where cowards assert neither responsibility nor shame. You quote Bolt concluding ‘a ghastly cliche of the demons we never were.’ Surely any Christian who knows the devil’s desire is to have all believe that he does not exist, then NO ONE IS ACCOUNTABLE NOR CAN BE BLAMED.

  12. Thanks Colleen

    But to be honest I am not quite sure what you are getting at here, and I am at a loss trying to understand how the subject under discussion has anything to do with the other episodes you raise. What does concern about getting the full picture on Australian history have to do with the Holocaust, for example? You have me completely baffled I must confess.

    Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

  13. Thankyou Bill, I will elaborate.

    In the third last paragraph I quote ‘. ‘ “But now note a few historical truths that Luhrmann overwrites to tell his story of white infamy. First, a Federal Court test case found no evidence children in the NT were ever stolen just because they were black…” ‘ At this point you are still quoting Bolt. Why exactly I can’t imagine.

    My comments are regarding the fact that reasons CAN ALWAYS AND HAVE ALWAYS BEEN FOUND to bring guilty parties before court not because of their RACE, CREED etc but on TECHNICALITIES. Significantly Christ was one of these and their have been many more.

    If white man assumes that land is his to raise sheep on, land that once harboured food and sustenance for Aborigines and a sheep is STOLEN for food, white man perceives only the crime against him not that the first crime is HIS.

    If Bolt seeks to prove that NO CRIME nor HARM was ever done (that can be proven of course), then I see him as pitifully as I do past tyrants being the English against the Irish and Hitler’s treatment of the Jews, as just two obvious examples.

    It appears to me that the beauty of Indigenous spirituality in this movie has been sorely overlooked. Right throughout the movie was THE RAIN who in fact was a white person not an indigenous and there was acknowledgement that good could come from all of this and it did not have to be from within a tribe.

    Likewise, the fact that the holy stayed with the children rather than evacuate south with the rest of the CIVILISED was by no means an attack on Christianity. The boys singing as a choir (Somewhere Over The Rainbow) as the boat returned a further symbol of the harmony found between indigenous and newcomers.

    Why Rebecca would write off THE DREAMING as power from the Dark Side is completely lost on me. To believe in God is to acknowledge his omnipotence. Which means God kKNEW that for 1000’s of years one race would live quite unselfishly far from the rest of the world but not warring, raping and pillaging. Not building weapons of mass destruction.

    God knew that knowledge of the word made flesh would not reach them until then and surely God himself sustained them with a spirituality of their own until this point. To fail to acknowledge that THE DREAMING is God’s gift to a people HE TOO created is yet another form of spiritual arrogance that irks me to the enth degree.

    Walkabout sufficed as a holiday or journey, it did not require slaves and servants and summer houses. It didn’t even require shoes or a shirt on one’s back. All material needs were surrendered TO TAKE A CLOSER WALK WITH THEE.

    In contrast, Aboriginal spirituality, as it stood upon arrival of the first fleet, imitated Christ infinitely more than the Christianity of many followers for thousands of years.

    I struggle to find a single comment on this page, regarding the movie, that comes from the HEART of a believer rather than the MIND of one who professes CHRIST.

    I have seen the movie twice. I do believe it never advertised itself as a documentary and I pity really those who imagine that to worship God with their mind alone is sufficient. My understanding is, and always will be, that LOVE IS GREATER THAN ALL OF THESE, and to be honest I think that WAS the theme of the entire movie. LOVE was GREATER than the sum of the rest, every step of the way. Really, as a believer does anything matter more? Not by my understanding, my belief if that Christ fought day and night for those who were free from sin to THROW the first stone. Evidently, he did not find anyone.

    I hope this helps you understand why to me ‘the subject under discussion has EVERYTHING to do with the other episodes’ I raised.

    Colleen McCormack

  14. Thanks Colleen

    But misrepresenting what your intellectual opponents are saying helps no one here. I have never said, and Bolt has never said, that “NO CRIME nor HARM was ever done”. As I said, it was a mixed bag.

    And with all due respect, your implication that Aboriginal dreamtime spirituality is somehow equivalent to, or on a par with, Biblical Christianity, tells us that you do not know much about the one or the other, or both.

    All you are doing is exactly what I mentioned in the article – promoting the myth of the Noble Savage. Sorry, but Jesus died for sinful aboriginals just as much as anyone else. I have aboriginal friends who are Christians, and they would be the first to tell you that aborigines are sinners just like anyone else, and that they need Jesus just as much as anyone else.

    And while it is true that God may have built some cultural bridges into non-Christian societies (as Don Richardson for example argues in Peace Child and Eternity in Their Hearts, in which he shows that God has built into pagan nations redemptive analogies), it is always for the purpose of allowing the Gospel to more readily come in and be embraced when it is presented to them, and never with the view that people in non-Christian cultures are just fine on their own, and do not need the saving work of Jesus Christ.

    Sorry, but the Bible condemns everyone under sin and death, not just white Europeans. All indigenous people are also in need of the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ. You do them no favours by pretending otherwise. By your reasoning Jesus came to earth and died in vain, since the Noble Savage has no need of him and his work. If I have to choose between what the Bible says about this and your version of events, I know which account I will trust every time.

    BTW, the opening and closing texts that were flashed across the screen made it clear that Luhrmann did indeed think his film was factually based. No one is claiming it is a documentary, but Luhrmann wanted his viewers to know that it was based on historical reality – or at least his version of historical reality.

    Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

  15. My own thoughts on the film ‘Australia’ is that it has a noble aim to tell the story from an Aboriginal Perspective but unfortunately falls into the cliched story telling that besets most filmakers in the modern era. The stolen generation was mostly a media beat up. The destruction and killing of the original tribal owners of this land was not. Sadly the media are more interested in selling papers than printing the truth.

    I have worked extensively with Aboriginal people for over 20 years. I have played music and travelled to 100 different aboriginal communities in Australia. From the Kimberlys to the Cape. From Kalgoorlie to Darwin and most points in between. I was the coordiHouse in Canberra. Aboriginal people and those who worked with them have told me how Tribal people used to walk in from the bush and hand their children to the white missionaries for safe keeping. Aboriginal people have a much more collective approach to family than us “wadgellas”. I have heard of other stories of young children of 3 and 4 being removed from communities in the 1930s because they had Syphillis. They were being abused sexually at horrific rates. Children are now being removed from communities today for exactly the same reasons. The families are sadly disfunctional because of the Grog. Not much has changed in the last 80 years. When I was in Arhnem land I heard that often when a full blood gives birth to half caste baby (by a white man) that the full blood aboriginal elders take that baby out and kill it. You see they believe in racial purity. Yes there were some children stolen from there parents unjustly but for many it was a ticket to health and a good education. For many it literally was a life and death situation. So the Baz film is a caricture when it talks about the stolen generation. Having said that I think Baz has highlighted the deeply spiritual aspect of the Australian Aboriginal people well. I have travelled the world and they are the most spiritual people group I have ever met. Ps Ronnie Williams, an aboriginal elder and teacher who was a Father in the Faith to me, said to me “The bible is tribal Warwick”. He was right because the bible is not a western book but an eastern book. Ronnie told me many stories from the dreaming about God,the devil, the garden of eden, creation, the flood.

    There are more Christians amongst Aboriginal people even today than white people. For many Aboriginal Christians the bible is a fulfiment of the dreaming and their Law which has remarkable similiarities to the Mosaic law even down to circumcision ceremonies. We have much to learn from our aboriginal brothers and sisters if we were humble enough to sit at there feet for a few minutes. Our pride and western ego is too rampant for that.

    The simple reason Rudd said sorry for the stolen generation is that it is a lot cheaper from a compensation point of view to say sorry for what you didn’t do than to say sorry for what you did. We still have to say sorry for the devastation we have caused our aboriginal brothers and sisters in coming to this land and taking it at the point of a gun. The many massacres were simply horrendous. Many times it was the early christian missionaries who stood between the settlers’ guns and the orginal people of the land. This fact was ommitted in the film and much of the rehashed history that we are served today. Much of our history has suffered at the hands of the anti-Christian academic thought police. Much of the killing was excused by Darwinistic teaching on the survival of the fittest. This point was in the first draft of Mr Rudd’s speech but not the final version he gave on the day he said sorry. The simple fact though is we all need the forgiveness that comes through the blood of Jesus whether white or black. That’s what true reconcilition is all about and Mel Gibson told the story well but Baz Luhrmann is still yet to work on the script. It is my prayer that he will find the time to do just that. The God story in our history both white and black is still waiting to be told.

    Warwick Marsh

  16. Hi Colleen,

    I find it rather difficult to discover why the Aboriginals had a hard deal when the Europeans came and took their land. After all this is just what the Aborigines had done since they had come to Australia. One tribe pushed another out of an area and moved in (Usually using far more brutal methods than the Europeans).

    The main problem with buying land from the Aborigines was that it was not ‘owned’ by anyone. A whole tribe moved from place to place hunting as they went, different tribes usually had their own hunting grounds and generally though not always different tribes used the same hunting grounds.

    Of course, there are many harms and abuses on both sides because not all the Europeans were good Christians and all of the Aboriginals were not. After all one can’t expect convicts to start behaving perfectly decently as soon as they were released.

    On the whole the European inpact to the Aborigines ought to have been positive. It is only that many of the Aborigines have become addicted to alcohol and other harmful substances which has always been put to harmful use in the hands of those who did not have the self control to know that enough is enough. Many white traders were callous in the way that they sold them, but on the whole they were not more to blame than most innkeepers nowadays. If there is a demand, usually traders will find a means to supply it.

    Even if the white took over the land from the traditional owners, the traditional owners had the great privilege of employment opportunities and using the money from that employment to buy things which they had never been able to before. Of course they often used it to buy things that were not a benefit to them but one can scarcely blame the whites if the aboriginees abused their opportunites.

    On the whole, to get a balanced perspective one needs to not only read the current indoctination textbooks but also the proper historical narratives by the missionaries and the goverment in that day. Both of the sources have biases but only by reading both one can get a balance perspective.

    If you honestly think that the Aborigines culture was more ‘Christ like’ than the English culture surely you have not read a lot about what the aboriginals practices were. They had revenge killings, disgusting immorality and no legal system of punishing those who had killed. Usualy this ended up in massive interfamily wars that ended in countless deaths. Some tribes even practiced canabalism. In case you think I have been talking through my hat. I grew up in a culture that was very similar to the aboriginees before the Europeans and the missionaries came and totally transformed the society. There is still a lot of work to be done but there have been massive improvements.

    Refering back to the Irish, English debate, surely anyone who knows the facts and has read the case from both sides ought to be able to realize that neither were the Irish wholly in the right nor the English (or the Dutchman that William the First sent over to govern after the battles in Favour of James the Second) were perfectly in the right.

    Your Sincerly,
    Timothy Coombe

  17. Colleen, sorry, I just caught up with this conversation. Remember the Bible verses that explain that we are all on the Dark Side until we trust in Jesus to set us free. We have no power over the Dark Side, only Jesus has–not the church, not going to church, not doing all the good things. Only Jesus sinless sacrifice, and my receiving that gift sets me free from a world of fear, cursing other people, being cursed by other people, being a control freak, and all the other bondage of the Dark Side. That’s why I included star signs, etc, of the New Age. Any power that we look to for an edge in life, if it’s not Jesus we go to for that lift, that boost, ways to relate to people, protection, then we’re using the Dark Side. The Dark Side has repackaged itself in miriads of ways–any way will do, including religiosity, if it can just keep us from relying solely on Jesus, “the author and finisher of our faith.” The Church didn’t die for us; the priest didn’t die for us; only Jesus makes us right with God. The Church and the priest have important functions, to keep us on track with Jesus and to keep going deeper in our walk with Jesus, which includes reading the Bible for ourselves. We never stop growing, all the way through old age. I’m pointing out the Bright Side in contrast to the Dark Side, because this is how to be truly free.

    Rebecca Field

  18. If you buy into the evolutionary fable and time frame then ‘Mungo Man’ remains are said to be over 60 000 years old to 2 million years ! The stupid line in the song ” We are Australian ” contests for 40 000 years of Aboriginal occupation. School children are indoctrinated with this concocted myth and it doesn’t do Aboriginal people any favour to keep their shared close family relationship to all of us, a secret.

    http://creationontheweb.com/content/view/3791

    They too are related back to Noah and his 3 sons and the subsequent dispersal from the rebellion at Babel. We are indeed blood brothers as the Bible teaches we are one blood. We ‘have’ to be, for Jesus to be our kinsman Redeemer !

    http://creationontheweb.com/content/view/418

    Teaching in Cairns and Darwin and having the privelege to explain their true history was so liberating for them and they began to see how they fit in to the rest of the world.The truth of approximate numbers of indigenous people can be obtained by historical records and accounts.

    http://creationontheweb.com/content/view/2226/

    “Australian Aboriginal Flood Stories
    Collection by Howard Coates and W.H. Douglas

    Introduction: Unknown to most people, the Australian Aborigines have many traditions surprisingly similar to parts of the book of Genesis, especially those regarding Creation and Noah’s Flood. In fact, Flood stories which include the saving of only a few people and animals, are found in many cultures worldwide and provide fascinating circumstantial evidence that the common ancestor of Aborigines, Jews, and indeed all modern races of man was Noah. The Genesis account, however, is the most detailed and systematic of them all. ”

    http://creationontheweb.com/content/view/1468

    “The dispersion of people which would have followed the imposition of new languages at Babel, would have produced situations of cultural and environmental difference. These new conditions would have created a stress or pressure which would have acted on characteristics already present. With time, certain features, both physical and cultural, became associated with a particular group, and a separate race was formed. The races, in most cases, represent recombinations of pre-existent ‘created’ genes, with minor degenerate mutation. The origin of human races does not conform to the popular concept of evolution, i.e. from simple to complex. There has been no ‘evolution’ of genes which did not previously exist, only the recombination and degeneration of created genetic information. No race of the world today comes from a background of zero technology or of innocent, ignorance of God. All cultures which do not have a correct knowledge of God have got that way by deliberate rejection. They are not primitives in need of education and technical aid so that they can understand the Gospel, but spiritual degenerates in need of the Gospel so they can appreciate education and relevance of technology.”

    http://creationontheweb.com/content/view/1334/

    Jennifer Parfenovics

  19. Indeed Jennifer. Even KRudd’s apology included some kind of reference to the mythical 40 or 60 thousand years of previous Aboriginal history. An alleged ‘history’ that has no written record of course. The only reliable written history of the world (The Bible), allows for no more than about 6,000 years since the beginning of Creation.

    Ewan McDonald.

  20. Thanks Ewan, It is true that Aboriginal people suffered and at rare times were in danger of their lives and they continue to suffer greatly because of this false history. All the damage that has been wrought by the Darwinist views of so called primitive man and evolution is so sad. True Bible believing Christians so often stood and protected tribal people against those who would have massacred the aboriginal people. They knew we are all created in the image of God. All people are precious to their Creator and need to be reached with the good news of the Gospel. If anyone would like to investigate this further look up the missionary Albrect (he ‘introduced’ Njaminjira to painting!) from Hermansberg in Germany. Hermansberg is in the Centre near Alice Springs.

    http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v23/i3/people.asp

    This is written by Dr Don Batten;

    “Australian Aborigines — cultural traditions connect to Noah.

    In addition to population figures, there is much other evidence against the supposed long ages of Aboriginal occupation of Australia—the observed rapid deterioration of supposedly ancient paintings, for example.

    Furthermore, many Aboriginal tribes have stories, long predating their contact with Christian missionaries, of a global Flood, sometimes with startling similarities to the Bible’s account, but with sufficient differences to show that they were not recently incorporated into their folklore following contacts with missionaries. It is stretching credulity to suggest that these stories have been maintained by word-of-mouth for 40 to 60 thousand years, or that they were invented and just by chance have these incredible similarities to the Bible account.

    The Aboriginal population and their stories are much more in line with their having been a nomadic/‘gypsy’ people who found themselves in Australia relatively recently—certainly after the Biblical Flood.”

    Where are all the bodies?

    “Evolutionists also claim there was a ‘Stone Age’ of about 100,000 years when between one million and 10 million people lived on Earth. Fossil evidence shows that people buried their dead, often with artefacts—cremation was not practised until relatively recent times (in evolutionary thinking). If there were just one million people alive during that time, with an average generation time of 25 years, they should have buried 4 billion bodies, and many artefacts. If there were 10 million people, it would mean 40 billion bodies buried in the Earth. If the evolutionary timescale were correct, then we would expect the skeletons of the buried bodies to be largely still present after 100,000 years, because many ordinary bones claimed to be much older have been found. However, even if the bodies had disintegrated, lots of artefacts should still be found.

    Now the number of human fossils found is nothing like one would expect if this ‘Stone Age’ scenario were correct. The number found is more consistent with a ‘Stone Age’ of a few hundred years, which would have occurred after Babel. Many people groups could have used stone tools as they moved out from Babel (Genesis 11), having lost the technologies of metal smelting (Genesis 4:22) due to the Flood and the confusion of languages at Babel.”

    Australian Aborigines—how long have they been in Australia?

    “When Europeans came to settle in Australia in 1788, it was estimated that there were perhaps only 300,000 Aboriginal people. And yet today we are told that the people have been here for 60,000 years or more. Now there is no way that a mere 300,000 people had exhausted the plenty of this large country so as to account for a long period of very low population growth. If we allow for one-third of the land area as desert, it means that there was only one person for every 18 square kilometres (7 square miles) of habitable land area—hardly overpopulated, even for a subsistence existence.

    If 20 people had come to settle some time after the Flood, say 3,500 years ago, it would have needed a population growth of a mere 0.28% per year to produce 300,000 people. Such a minimal rate operating over 60,000 years could produce more people than there are atoms in the Milky Way Galaxy!

    The real history of the world is recorded in the Bible, the Word of the Creator-God who was there in the beginning. This record shows that the world was deluged and destroyed (Genesis 6–9, 2 Peter 3) so that all people living today came from those who survived aboard Noah’s Ark. A study of population growth clearly supports this Biblical record.”

    Why don’t people do the simple maths of population growth to debunk the nonsense of evolutionary Darwinist time frames? Why do people generally just accept this lie? Darwin believed and promoted the Aboriginal people as the ‘missing link’ and his cousin Galton developed eugenics as a so called science to justify eliminating certain people groups. (of course he would falsely call them different ‘races’) There is only the one race, the ‘human’ race.

    I guess it is the same reason that a huge majority accept the doom and gloom CC and AGW scenarios? Or even why a vast number of people believe in the religion of atheism and evolution. Just too lazy to investigate for themselves,easier to accept what some trumpted up pseudo scientist tells them about Origins? I guess it is the same with the issue of Australia’s history, easier to accept the’ experts’, Robert Manne, Baz Luhrmann , Kevin Rudd or Manning Clarke’s politicised agendas?

    Jennifer Parfenovics

  21. This is an interesting article and the comments it produced ! It reviews the film in an interesting way.

    http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/01/australia_whose_land_is_it_any.html

    “When Nullah’s grandfather says that they are now going to “my country…our country”, what he really means is Aboriginal land, separate from white land, which the Aborigines can still resort to especially at times like walkabouts. But Luhrmann pushes the message even further. I am certain that the several minutes of nihilistic (albeit magnificent) orchestration of the bombing of Darwin is his subliminal way of saying that we should get rid of this artificial, man-made (white man-made) civilization, and revert the land to its purity and naturalness, with the traces of the white man now destroyed, and return it to the Aborigines. Back to the long-time survivors and stewards. Nullah and his people can reclaim it all.

    Each colonized and settled land is facing the same questions that the Australians are dealing with. How much of their land should Canadians relinquish to the Indians (some without any records of treaties?) Should demands by American Indians for claiming “sacred” lands to be acknowledged? Are the Inuit, for example, really the fittest of our lot, given that they have lived in the harshest freezing points for far longer than any colonizer or settler has ever attempted? Should we entrust the land back to them?”

    Jennifer Parfenovics

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