Talk:Australian frontier wars/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

Title

I'm not sure that "Frontier Wars" should have capitals; this does not appear to be a well-known term, but rather a generic description.--Grahame (talk) 02:42, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

I just checked the source I used for the article's name (The Oxford Companion to Australian Military History) and they capitalised all words in headings as part of their formatting. I've just moved the article. Nick-D (talk) 11:45, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Disease and starvation

The opening paragraph refers to the devastating impact of disease and starvation due to displacement from traditional lands. The impact of disease is well documented however as far as I'm aware there is little or no evidence of starvation due to displacement from traditional lands. The few instances I've come across in the historical literature where starvation is mentioned it is either referring to cases where Aboriginal people were sighted still on their traditional lands starving as a result of climatic conditions, i.e. drought wiping out the game; or it's been people merely asserting or speculating that Aboriginal people died as a result of starvation with no supporting evidence cited. Webley442 (talk) 04:06, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Point taken - it was badly worded on my part anyway. I have reworded and added a ref. Let me know what you think. Cheers. Anotherclown (talk) 09:26, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

It's fine now, gets right to the point without excess wordage. Webley442 (talk) 04:50, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Yagan

I think Yagan should get some mention in this article in the SWWA section but not sure how it fits within the context of the article. Gnangarra 23:55, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree - the article is only the barest outline at the moment. I'd suggest that you drop some material in and not worry too much about whether this biases the article towards WA as the rest of it should - eventually - catch up. Nick-D (talk) 00:06, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Background: Most of "terra nullius" debate belongs in "History wars"

As far as I can see,in an article about "wars" as part of Australian military history, this section is largely irrelevant. "Annexation" by force of arms was never seen as the legal basis for settlement (even if it practice it was done), and whatever labels the media of the time put on the conflicts, they were never declared wars; neither did occasional proclamations of martial law make them so. Thus it makes no difference whether the pre-Mabo assumptions about "terra nullius" were valid or not, or whether in fact they were ever held under that label, because the official viewpoint is that the "wars" were police actions to restore order in territory already legally possessed, not to annex it by conquest. If a debate on "terra nullius" belongs anywhere, it belongs in History wars, and I propose moving most of it there, and leaving here only a statement that Australia was perceived that way through the period in question, so that the wars were not, in (British) law, of the same kinds as (say) the Xhosa wars or similar conflicts in other colonies at a similar period. That would also save space here for better coverage of the real clashes that occurred, especially those involving the formed bodies of personnel operating under some kind of military (or in the case of police) quasi-military authority. Opinions please. Keepitshort (talk) 14:37, 21 June 2009 (UTC) Also I quote: "The British claim that Aborigines were British subjects meant that frontier conflict was defined as civil disorders rather than as war against a foreign enemy. The British government would never accept that Aborigines had sovereign rights to their land as this would undermine the Crown’s claim to all of Australia. John Connor. The Australian frontier wars 1788-1838, p.58Keepitshort (talk) 14:59, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

I'd prefer to leave it in - the legal background to British settlement is briefly discussed in all the military histories of the fighting and the fact that there are different interpretations of it isn't a good reason to exclude the issue from the article. I don't have any strong feelings about the material though - something along the lines of that quote from John Connor would do a good job of explaining things. Nick-D (talk) 10:39, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

I did say "most', not "all". Those who want to go beyond Connor's two sentences can be referred to Mabo v Queensland (No 2) since the historical and legal reasoning of Australia's highest court is a VR that out-ranks weasel words like "annexation". They examined and rejected "terra nullius" - in all variants. That leaves "cession" - eg refer to Treaty of Waitangi - and conquest: see Xhosa Wars and Anglo-Zulu War. This unreferenced "alternative view" of "annexation" seems to be a stub for an argument about "conquest" that re-introduce "terra nullius" in disguise. That said, the views of belligerents at the time ARE relevant, and so far as Governors and the pre-Mabo law are concerned, it's quite clear that "terra nullius" was the name of the game, as the judges said. I quote their summary just before they dismantled "terra nullius":

"As the indigenous inhabitants of a settled colony were regarded as “low in the scale of social organisation”, they and their occupancy of colonial land were ignored in considering the title to land in a settled colony. Ignoring those rights and interests, the Crown’s sovereignty over a territory which had been acquired under the enlarged notion of terra nullius was equated with Crown ownership of the lands therein, because, as Stephen C. J. said, there was “no other proprietor of such lands”. Thus, a Select Committee on Aborigines reported in 1837 to the House of Commons that the state of Australian Aborigines was “barbarous” and “so entirely destitute ... of the rudest forms of civil polity, that their claims, whether as sovereigns or proprietors of the soil, have been utterly disregarded” (61). The theory that the indigenous inhabitants of a “settled” colony had no proprietary interest in the land thus depended on a discriminatory denigration of indigenous inhabitants, their social organisation and customs. As the basis of the theory is false in fact and unacceptable in our society, there is a choice of legal principle to be made in the present case. This Court can either apply the existing authorities and proceed to inquire whether the Meriam people are higher “in the scale of social organisation” than the Australian Aborigines whose claims were “utterly disregarded” by the existing authorities or the Court can overrule the existing authorities, discarding the distinction between inhabited colonies that were terra nullius and those which were not.

It over-ruled them. But at the time of these conflicts, the law was otherwise, which is the relevant point made succinctly by Connor. So, if some folk want to explain how the settlers saw things, it needs to be balanced by a serious account of how the Aboriginal people involved in each conflict saw things. Which no-one knows, in most cases, but that does not justify some of the POVs currently expresed in the article on what they were fighting for. After all, it's not hard to find VR's for settler motivations that didn't have a whole lot to do with sharing the benefits of "civilization". So it is best, I think, that we keep speculation about motives to the necessary minimum. regards Keepitshort (talk) 15:04, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Before someone beats me over the head with Michael Connor's long -um- blog in the well-known NPOV journal Quadrant about his book on "terra nullius", let me say that it simply reinforces my view that the "terra nullius" debate belongs under History wars not Australian frontier wars. The 2-sentence summary I like comes from John Connor. Keepitshort (talk) 16:44, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

I've changed some wording and added some material (esp a quote from Vattel) to try to better explain the 18th century attitudes towards rights of ownership of land and the 'right' to colonise. It wasn't so much as they 'disregarded' the rights of indigenous inhabitants to 'ownership' of land but that the philosophical basis to land ownership was rooted in actual use of the land esp by cultivation. If you didn't use the land in a manner understood by the European mind of the time then as far as they could see, you were not claiming any rights to it. An example of a 'survival' or relic of this sort of attitude is the law of 'adverse possession' which has lasted right through to the present day. You may own land, have registered deeds and the works but if you don't 'use' the land in some way and someone else comes along and does use it for a number of years (and you don't assert your rights over that land in some affirmative way by evicting them, stopping that use or some other measure), they can acquire a legal right to that land. Webley442 (talk) 13:28, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Michael Connor material

I've just removed the following three paragraphs from the background section as they're exclusively Michael Connor's interpretations of the legal status of Cook's orders and actions. This much material on one historians's (disputed) views on a topic which is of relatively little importance to the article is a clear WP:UNDUE violation - the remainder of the section is five paragraphs about the events which led to the fighting and is sourced to multiple authors. As such, a lengthy discussion of Cook's actions doesn't belong here as it isn't the appropriate article (British settlement of Australia, perhaps?) and in the articles where such a discussion is included needs to balance the different views rather than focus on a single historian's interpretation. Nick-D (talk) 23:53, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Historian Michael Connor argues that this is a misinterpretation of Cook’s orders, of the term terra nullius and of the prevailing European law. The section of Cook’s orders which dealt with the Great South Land ordered him to claim it with the consent of the natives or if uninhabited. However, Australia was not then thought of as the Great South Land. In Cook’s time, the Great South Land was believed to lie in an area to the south of Tahiti and east of New Zealand. The Great South Land was a myth and the appellation only began to be applied to Australia (New Holland) long after the voyages of Cook made that fact clear.

Cook’s orders went on to say “You will also observe with accuracy the Situation of such Islands as you may discover in the Course of your Voyage that have not hitherto been discover’d by any Europeans and take Possession for His Majesty and make Surveys and Draughts of such of them as may appear to be of Consequence, without Suffering yourself however to be thereby diverted from the Object which you are always to have in View, the Discovery of the Southern Continent so often Mentioned.” There is no mention in this section of his orders of either getting the consent of the natives or that the lands must be uninhabited before taking possession on behalf of the King. It was this section of his orders that Cook was obeying in taking possession of the Society Islands, New Zealand and the east coast of Australia (all of which were inhabited).

Connor argues that when Cook took possession of the east coast of Australia, he did so by annexation and not because it was regarded as terra nullius, at least not in the sense of being a land 'empty of inhabitants'. In European tradition, beyond the annexation of genuinely unoccupied land (like the Falkland Islands), territory could also be acquired by conquest, cession (including gift and purchase) and also by the annexation of inhabited lands. "Nations, incapable by the smallness of their numbers to people the whole, cannot exclusively appropriate to themselves more land than they have occasion for, and which they are unable to settle and cultivate. Their removing their habitation through these immense regions, cannot be taken for a true and legal possession; and the people of Europe, too closely pent up, finding land of which these nations are in no particular want, and of which they make no actual and constant use, may lawfully possess it, and establish colonies there." The concept of terra nullius, a term that was originally defined as meaning “land not under any sovereignty”, is not found in the writings of Cook (in particular the log and journal covering the voyage during which he took possession of Australia) and was never used by the British to justify their claim to Australia. Terra nullius has been confused by some historians with res nullius, a legal term, which means “a thing which has no owner”.

Well, OK then. I’ve removed the phrase “and that Cook disobeyed his orders against claiming possession of Australia without the consent of the native inhabitants” and the sentence “They claim that the British Government accepted this action without further investigation.”

Since the arguments and supporting evidence as to why these statements are factually incorrect are apparently too long and complex to be included in this article, it seems best to keep them out of the article entirely. We’ll just stick to the undisputed fact that Cook claimed the east coast of the continent for Britain on 23 August 1770.

Perhaps we should excise all mention of terra nullius at all, since it's a complex issue with multiple different interpretations which have changed over time, as was noted in the Mabo decision.

Where there are competing claims as to what happened or why, it may well be that the case for one view can be summed up in a very few short words, whereas the case for the other view may be more complex. If Wikipedia is restricted to reporting only on the views that have short simple explanations or the explanation of one view is cut down to the point it is unintelligible, Wikipedia runs the risk of being the encyclopaedia for those too dumb to understand complex arguments and it will serve only to perpetuate short, simple, but wrong ‘facts’. Webley442 (talk) 04:14, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Governor Arthur's Proclamation

While an art gallery is an appropriate source for the time, date and provenance of a painting I believe it an inappropriate source for legal commentary. I removed the additional sentence pending a relevant source. I also changed the wording of the first sentence from "implying" to "expressing" as the primary point of the proclamation was to show the equal treatment before; this is not a secondary "implication". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.191.185.151 (talk) 05:37, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

That material was sourced to this National Library of Australia website providing information about the painting. The NLA is hardly an 'art gallery'. I've restored the wording. Nick-D (talk) 06:37, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Aboriginal Death Toll

I strongly recommend that people purchase and read carefully the latest studies in regards to Queensland, the by far deadliest frontier in colonial Australia, a chapter authored by Raymond Evans and a book by Robert Orsted-Jensen, both are now listed here as sources. These figures for Queensland are by far better founded than those loose calculations once made by Reynolds.

What Evans calculation strongly hint is that at least 24,000 was killed by the NP alone during nearly 50 years of monthly dispersals. He says (quote, and you have seemingly not read this and this is the first proper calculation based on existing primary sources not a rough estimate based on a 10 blacks killed for every one white as in the case of Reynolds):

'Even if we once more play it incredibly safe here and suggest the extremely conservative figure of only two killed on average per dispersal, we find ourselves confronting an aggregate estimate of 24,000 violent Aboriginal deaths at the hands of the Native Police between 1859 and 1897 alone.'

Read the full article and then Orsted-Jensen's book, who very rightly points out, after having listed primary evidence all demonstrating that Reynolds loose ten to one calculation was by far too conservative, that the Native police i Qld was not the only source of killing. Indeed it was frequently said in the Qld legislature and in other contemporary sources, in defence of the native police, that white settlers 'when left on their own' devise were by far more murderous than their black 'police' force. 'So adding another 6.000 killed by settlers alone and without any assistance from a Native Police Force - in - we may add not a nearly fifty but a nearly seventy years period (from 1825 to 1900 (so seventy is actually low), can hardly be viewed as extreme.

If we keep, until better founded knowledge may emerge on the other states and colonies, the 10,000 Reynolds once loosely estimated for them combined, we are then facing, not a national 20,000 minimum, but a national 40,000 minimum, and we can only wait for poor Windschuttle to catch up with the grim reality that his criticism of Reynolds figures was his weakest point.

(copied from User talk:Helsned, where this discussion begain) There's no need to be rude, and it's hard to track where you're getting things from given that you're often not providing page numbers. I've written much of the article as it currently stands, so I do actually know a bit about this topic and I'd like to see this article improved as well - certainly the Reynolds figures are now pretty old, and are unlikely to reflect the most modern scholarship. Wikipedia takes a very conservative approach to interpreting sources, however, and we need to stick to what the reference says - especially on articles covering disputed topics such as this. Where did the extra 6,000 figure come from? I'm afraid that I don't have access to a copy of Ørsted-Jensen's book. Does it state that there were 40,000 deaths across Australia as you've claimed it has? By the way, am I right in reading your post to mean that you're also editing as User:Nevwik? If so, you need to be aware that Wikipedia doesn't allow editing under multiple accounts, and you're going to need to stick to a single account. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 00:29, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

(also copied from User talk:Helsned) Sorry if I came across as rude, this was certainly not the intention, but fact is that you could not find you say the 24,000 figure in Evans calculations and you have not yet read Orsted-Jensen, two sources you just deleted during the reversal you found yourself equipped to make? No, Orsted-Jensen is only dealing with Queensland and he only put forward that even 30,000 is a conservative estimate. the 40,000 just accept without further questioning the 10,000 Reynolds's previously estimated for the other colonies combined (meaning those others than Queensland). Orsted-Jensen concludes

'Yet still Evans’ calculations suggest an indigenous death toll from frontier violence which is 14 000 above the much maligned minimum hitherto used for this colony (Queensland), and the aforenamed additional circumstances confront us with powerful indications that we could well look at a total which by far exceeds 30 000 Aborigines killed in conflict with settlers in Queensland during the nineteenth century.'

page 181-82

So, Ørsted-Jensen doesn't provide the figure of 40,000 which I reverted? It seems that the best way to present this figure would be as something like 'Estimated at over 30,000 in Queensland alone' or similar, though we should discuss the range of different estimates. Nick-D (talk) 00:54, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

No because that would be you seriously diminishing the previously used and generally accepted 20,000 figure, which is based on minimum 10,000 for Qld and minimum 10,000 for other colonies. If you wish to state that all killings in Queensland was done solely by NP (equivalent of saying that no settler ever killed an Aborigine in Queensland, dispite the fact that there are much evidence to state that thousands, as indeed the hon WILLIAM HENRY SUTTOR Sen stated in NSW parliament in 1849 (LA 29 June 1849), had by then been killed by settlers alone and we still had half a century ahead of us) you will still with Evans revision land on a minimum of 34,000 for all of Australia. The 20,000 is certainly untenable.

I have now set the minimum to 35,000, which is the original 10,000 for states outside Qld added 25,000 for Queensland. Grey by the way is not the correct primary source for the original 20,000 estimate, Reynolds is. Grey is a secondary source of little or no value just a write up of other people research. Now this is still by far too moderate so will you please stop your deleting of references to primary sources that sustain the claim made and then read the sources instead. Helsned 01:22, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

I've just changed this to 'At least 30,000 in Queensland alone'. We really do need to stick to published figures (please see WP:OR), and it doesn't seem sensible to simply add Ørsted-Jensen's estimate to the non-Queensland component of Reynold's estimate given that they were calculated through very different methodologies. Nick-D (talk) 01:31, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Actually, according to it's record at the State Library of Queensland, Ørsted-Jensen's book was published by 'Lux Mundi Publishing', which is so obscure that it doesn't even have an entry in the Yellow pages or a website. The book's record at Amazon.com states that it's published by CreateSpace, which is a self-publishing firm. Whatever the book's virtues, it doesn't seem to meet Wikipedia's requirements for a reliable source (WP:RS) as it hasn't been published by a academic press or well-established commercial firm. Nick-D (talk) 01:40, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

So now you have managed to entirely remove the generally accepted estimates that a minumum of 10,000 was killed in NSW, VIC, NT SA and Tas? If you do not wish to accept sources that you have not read, then please at least accept the ones you have read, and they say 24,000 minimum for Queensland and 10,000 for the other states and territories - Queensland is not Australia! Helsned 01:59, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

No, I'm trying to avoid adding apples and oranges. Given the significant differences in methodologies, we can't just add those figures. Wikipedia takes a very conservative approach to referencing, and as this is a disputed topic we need to be very careful. Nick-D (talk) 02:05, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Well Nick, I can understand that, what I am saying though is that following this approach you need to keep the 10,000 everybody acknowledge for NT, Tas, Viv WA and NSW, and then add a figure for Queensland which is resonably in accordance with the latest generally accepted figure, and that is in fact minumum 24,0000, that will take you to 34,000 not 30,000. As for wheree books are printed this matters very little, but in this case it matters even less as this book only repeasts and confirms a figure released more than a year ago by Evans adding that this figure, 24,000 minumum, do not account5s for the killings done by others than the Native Police. This is pretty basic and not exactly adventurous or extreme. The correct source for the original 20,000 estimate is not as I sated Grey but Reynolds, H.; The Other Side Of The Frontier, Townsville 1981, p121-7 & Frontier – Aborigines, Settlers and Land, NSW 1987, p53, and it includes Loos, N.A.; Invasion and Resistance: Aboriginal-European Relations on the North Queensland Frontier 1861-1897, Canberra 1982, Appendix B pp.189. Helsned 02:14, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

I do not wish to waste more time on this but it seems to me resonable if you added to the sentence saying that it is 'estimated as at least 30,000 in Queensland alone,[3]' that 'and all scholars of note accept a minimum of 10,000 for the other colonies' and then add the primary source for this figure which is

With all due respect Nick-D - but this sentence

"Although a recent estimate of indigenous fatalities caused by the Queensland Native Police Force alone amount to no less than 24.000,[3] most scholars of note accept Reynolds' overall 20,000 for all the colonies[4]."

is entirely illogical. It suggest that the social science community have now all studied and rejected Evans 2011 calculation (the opposite is in fact the case, Reynolds and a number of other scholars has embraced Evans calculation, but it is not yet generally known).

The sentence needs to acknowledge the proper sequence of event. The 20.000 (with Queensland alone covering for 10.000) is what was put forward by Reynolds in 1982, since been accepted by all scholars in the field (this even includes the most prominent conservative historian Geoffrey Blainey who have used it several times). The 24.000, however, is a brand new calculation based on a section of Queensland native police monthly reports. It is in fact the first ever attempt to make a proper primary source based calculation of Aboriginal frontier fatalities to NPF alone. Reynolds estimates was just a roughly calculated minimum, and it says and should be stated as a rough ‘minimum’, of 10 blacks for every white killed at the frontier. We now have records of about 1300 whites and associated killed on the Queensland frontier whereas Reynolds belived that it was roughly a 1000, that ius how he came to 10.000, whereas it should in fact be minimum 13.000, on his own terms of calculating. I will politely suggest this sentence changed to: "Most scholars of note accept Reynolds' national minimum estimates of 20.000 (in which Queensland alone accounted for a minimum estimate of 10.000). However new minimum estimates were calculated in 2011 on the basis of Native Police monthly reports, suggesting at least 24.000 fatalities caused by the Queensland Native Police Force alone." Helsned 08:31, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

The article needs a list of the wars in a soap box in the chronological order like the American Indian Wars. --124.169.226.110 (talk) 11:36, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

A recent Australian History Association conference paper by Raymond Evans and Robert Ørsted-Jensen, arguing for much higher figures than those of Reynolds, is reported by Paul Daley in The Guardian, 15 July 2014. Wikiain (talk) 06:47, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

On 9 July 2014 at the annual Australian History Association conference at University of Queensland a paper by Raymond Evans and Robert Ørsted-Jensen presented the first ever statistical modelling of the Aboriginal death toll suffered on the Queensland Frontier from 1824 to 1900 calculated on the basis of a significant portion of primary sources (covering about 10% of the actual frontier collisions they argued). This calculation gave a minimum of 65 000 when all calculations were carefully stripped back. This is a minimum of just over 65 000 (nearly 67 000 if we include the losses on the settler side) for Queensland alone! If found to be true the consequences of this finding is colossal. It means that the Australian casualties during the frontier wars by far outnumber those suffered by the Australian forces during WWI. Indeed the combined casualties during the continental frontier wars is likely to outnumber the combined casualties in all other wars in which Australia has participated right up to Afghanistan. The mentioned paper and PowerPoint presentation can be viewed and downloaded from this site - http://orsted-jensen.weebly.com/index.html and the paper from the international Social Science Research Network http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2467836, see also articles in the Guardian http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/15/why-the-number-of-indigenous-deaths-in-the-frontier-wars-matters and Brisbane Times http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/australian-war-memorial-should-recognise-revised-aboriginal-death-toll-researcher-20140716-ztqr6.html#ixzz37urLyLBh Bebel (talk) 02:31, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

WA

The WA section focuses on the Battle of Pinjarra and Yagan because both are well documented but working on the article about Wonnerup_House#Background there was a massacre there in 1841 where estimates very between 5 and 300 aboriginals killed. Gnangarra 02:45, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

On this massacre, see also White, Jessica (2017). "'Paper talk,' Testimony and Forgetting in South-West Western Australia". Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature. 17 (1): 1–13. (And see her 2018 blog.)

White writes (p 2): "As I pieced together these documents and attended to their language, I realised that the massacre had been depicted in such a way as to obfuscate John Molloy’s role. I also came to understand that this role had been covered, uncovered and contested over the ensuing years." Like the bones at Mininup (it occurs to me). Wikiain (talk) 05:55, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

Frontier History Revisited by Robert Ørsted-Jensen - not a reliable source

I'm really concerned about the use of the book written by Robert Ørsted-Jensen in this article. In summary, my concerns are that the book does not meet Wikipedia's standards for a reliable source as:

• It was either self-published or published through a press that's so obscure that this is the first book it's ever published (according to the National Library of Australia's catalogue)
• Ørsted-Jensen's work in this field has not been previously published (per the NLA catalogue and a search of Google Scholar, and so the book fails to meet the criteria set out at WP:SPS
• I've read sections of the book, and it doesn't state that it's a PhD thesis or similar, so it needs to be evaluated against the criteria used to consider the reliability of professionally published sources.
• I also note that the editor who has been adding the content sourced to this book appears to be Robert Ørsted-Jensen according to his website in which he states that he started the Carl Feilberg article. Given that the book doesn't appear to meet the criteria for being considered a reliable source for Wikipedia's purposes, this is not in line with WP:SELFCITE.

Given that this is a controversial and much-debated topic, I think that we need to be very careful to ensure that the figures and statements in the article are supported by references that are fully in line with Wikipedia's policies. As such, I propose to remove all references to this work and claims that are cited to it. Nick-D (talk) 04:09, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

• I think you make a good case for removing the book as a source, Nick. Even if we considered the book reliable from a publishing perspective and so on, its employment in this article by an editor who appears to be its author seems to present a clear COI. As an aside, the Feilberg article you mention is hardly written in a neutral fashion either... Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 06:37, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
• Agree that the source shouldnt be used without further supporting citations, definately should never be included by its author for any reason without first having a discussion here about its use. Gnangarra 07:48, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
• I agree, it should be removed. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 08:39, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
• May I just quietly note that this book is not the origin of the only really 'controversial' statement in this article - which is the figures of minimum 30.000 Aboriginals killed violently at the Queensland frontier - 24.000 by the Native Police alone - during the 19 century. This statement is indeed not made by Robert Orsted-Jensen, he only repeats and cite it alongside other evidence to the same effect. The statement can be found in a recent book authored amongst others by the eminent Queenslæand historian Dr Raymond Evans. This book is published by a reputed Australian university. It is a very thorough calculation of estimates based on native police dispersals from a section of primary sources (Queensland police records) recently uncovered in Queensland State Archive. Besides, the actual line in the article here is in fact not - please take some note here - a statement of ultimate fact - it is simply a line saying - correctly - that it 'have been estimated' and it could be added 'in the most recent studies' which is entirely true. The general credentials of Dr Evans is there for everybody to study - so go ahead - he is by most colleagues viewed as the most prominent and knowledgeable Queensland historian in this particular field, but he has also written a number of books on other subjects and recently a new general history of Queensland! Indeed, Dr Evans is one of the most highly reputed historians in Queensland. The chapter is called 'The country has another past: Queensland and the History Wars', and it appears in the book 'Passionate Histories: Myth, memory and Indigenous Australia' Aboriginal History Monograph 21, September 2010. This book is edited by other well known historians Frances Peters-Little, Ann Curthoys and John Docker.
• returning to the book by Orsted-Jensen - then it will be noted that on Amazon it has supporting statements made not only by the mentioned Dr Raymond Evans but also by Stuart Macintyre, Professor of history at University of Melbourne, the latter is one of Australia's most eminent historians. Orsted-Jensen's book is indeed part of a PhD and the author is or was at the time of writing a Master of Social Science from a respected and reputed European University. Helsned 09:26, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
• The primary source for the mentioned figures is thus Evans - but if people who from all appearance know very little or nothing about Queensland frontier history - are in favour of burning books and new research the result of which they do not like or have not even read - then....
• for my part I will entirely accept that you bring down the figure from minimum 30.000 and instead simply say - in full accordance with Dr Evans calculations that - 'it has recently been estimated that indigenous fatalities caused by the Queensland native police force alone amounts to no less than 24.000.' - instead of the line - 'Indigenous fatalities from the fighting have been estimated as at least 30,000 in Queensland alone' - most people are clever enough to understand that NP was not the only killer of Aborigines in Queensland. Indeed NP was only operating from 1849.
• That correction of Nicks line (because it was in fact Nick and not I that wrote that sentence) is now done. This means that Orsted-Jensen book, is now cited only in support of Evans estimates. So if you wish to burn book you will have to start with Evans book. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Helsned (talk • contribs)

I independently evaluated the Ørsted-Jensen work. I did not find any academic reviews of the work in the usual journals (though as a 2011 work, there may be reviews forthcoming). As the press is a self-publishing outfit (per NLA deposit records), using WP:HISTRS we should not use this source. If reviews become apparent in the historical scholarly press, we should reevaluate the work based on the reviews, but at the moment the work is unusable. Fifelfoo (talk) 23:51, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

• May I just say to the gentleman above that the book he mentions 'Frontier History Revisited' was only released in December 2011, it is thus still on the reviewers desk. Yet its findings is supported with preliminary review citations by two well known Australian scholars - one of which is Professor Stuart Mcintyre. In other words this book has been peer reviewed on a scholarly university level as social science should be, as such it fully adhere to the criteria for reliability. Besides it is well notated, with all primary sources detailed, and thus easily checked for anyone who wish to do so. Something else is that the primary source to the much maligned correction to the death toll figures - comes from yet another book and this book is properly cited first, so as to ensure that no mistake should be made. The other and newer book, however, supports the argument in the first book by citing a number of primary sources all of which supports the claims made in the first book. That is all there is to this. Helsned 02:44, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

this book was reviewed by Dr Tim Bottoms in Aboriginal History' Vol 36 by professor Richard Broome in Australian Historical Studies, Volume 44, Issue 2, June 2013 – pages 301-302 and it was cited and otherwise referred to by Henry Reynolds in his book 'Forgotten War',Sydney 2013, pages 128-30.Bebel (talk) 03:01, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

When Did it end

The post says it ended in 1928 but the portrait says it took place in 1938. Can anyone confirm which year it ended and try to justify the year differences? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.206.76.42 (talk) 04:01, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Lead section

The Wikipedia guideline Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lead section specifies that the lead section of articles should provide a summary of the article's content, and not be used as a stand-alone platform for content. As such, I propose to re-write the second and third paragraphs of the lead which have been turned into an argument about the wars' casualties and geographic locations of the fighting. This material probably belongs somewhere in the article, but not the lead. Nick-D (talk) 04:39, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Also, Helsned if you want to advance the views in your book it needs to be expressly presented as your viewpoint, and not be written in Wikipedia's "voice". Given Henry Reynolds strong praise of the book in Forgotten War this now meets Wikipedia's criteria for a reliable source, but it needs to be treated as one book among an increasingly rich literature on this topic. WP:SELFCITE applies here. Nick-D (talk) 04:44, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

well I think this certainly needs to be presented in the beginning of this article, perhaps after the summary of the entire article. I agree that the first lines should summarise the entire content and will get to that point, but you are welcome to commences the effort and I shall then follow up. But this is not an 'argument' in any particular book, or a view presented in the same, it is simply factual information reflected in all population estimates as well as in the distribution of tribal land (two of each other independent sources)in any book or study you can think of. The only difference is that it is here summarised in what you are so kind to call 'your book'. Bebel (talk) 08:21, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

I do think your point of criticism is valid, however, and I shall endeavour to find a solution during the coming days, possibly by separating the introduction from the question of the continental wide distribution. This may be done by creating a new headline and paragraph dealing with specifically with the latter and related issues.Bebel (talk) 12:36, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Article was in dire need of seeing Australia being divided into Colonies

Frontier wars was mainly a colonial thing. Colonies were commonly self-governed and federalism emerged largely after the Frontier Wars had ended. To understand these wars we need to factor in colonial self-rule, we cannot describe this as if there were one common policy when reality is that not only were there no such thing but some colonies had a significantly larger indigenous population that others. Queensland was in fact number one colony/state when it comes to pre-contact population and her Frontier wars were domineered by a government funded semi-military death squad called the Native Police. No other colony had a force quite like this and certainly not as long lasting. To factor in such differences in policy one need to separate these wars in colonies and not write as if there were a federal Australia before 1901. Consequently I have broght the articvle into order following the concept and inauguration year of each of the coloniesBebel (talk) 07:18, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

Native Police Force

I've removed the addition of editorial-type material on the Queensland Native Police Force which was added today. The material is written as someone's opinion ("All signs are that" ... "The impression left in all studies is rather that we are here dealing with"), and isn't in line with WP:NPOV. The fact that it cites the editor who added the material's writings emphasises my concern. The Native Police were unquestionably a horrible outfit, but we need to write about them in an encyclopaedic disinterested tone. More generally Helsned, while I'm very grateful that you're contributing your expertise to this article, you need to be mindful that you're not placing undue emphasis on your works and interpretations. WP:SELFCITE provides a succinct overview of the issue here. Nick-D (talk) 11:41, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

Ok I accept that - but to say that the native police in 'infamous' is in fact an understatement if it is anything. It is certainly not POV. Anyone remotely well oriented in colonial Queensland history know that you cannot find as much as one single book or article describing this force as a positive. It is equally correct that the force was not a 'police force' - contemporary judicial experts among them several Premiers and at least two high court judges typically classified it as 'unconstitutional' and 'illegal' - it did not even attempt to operate as such except perhaps in the first five years at times. This force is not even remotely comparable to the Native Police Corps of Victoria. It would be very easy to take citations from these and other books saying exactly the same as I summarised here. Even easier to find primary sources saying it. It is rather important that people should be aware that the native police was never engaged in 'law enforcement', indeed it did not adhere to any law whatsoever. Bebel (talk) 13:01, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

also Nick, it is ok that you do not want a note in the first paragraph but you cannot write "However, recent scholarship indicates that Indigenous fatalities may be significantly higher." this "recent scholarship" is about Queensland, possibly the only colony with sufficient primary sources to make such a calculation, but the figures appearing from this effort are so high that it will demand a significant rewrite of not just Queensland but Australian history. So the impact has general consequences, the consequences cannot be isolated to Queensland as you do in your editing. This sentence at the very least should say that

"However, recent scholarship on the frontier wars in Queensland indicates that Indigenous fatalities may be significantly higher." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Helsned (talk • contribs)

English or Australian?

Nick - Australia did not exist as a nation in the colonial period - nearly anyone you asked on the streets of Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane would have told you that they were British English or in some cases Irish. It was the British govt that declared Australia terra nullius, it was the British govt that annulled Batman's treaty (British settlers were not allowed to make treaties with Aboriginal people) more than 90 percent of the settlers were British settlers, to the degree regular forces were involved they were all British troops. Even the native police in Victoria and Queensland were legally a British force. British settlers were engaged in fighting Aboriginal people, the responsibility for this was British colonial authorities and ultimately Whitehall in London. etc etc - it is formally correct to say that it was British and show a British flag - it is nonsense to say it was Australian settlers - they were British settlers, most of them born in Britain and nearly all of the rest of them British born in Australia - not Australians! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Helsned (talk • contribs)

I take your point, but given that neither the UK government or Australian Government (post 1901) actually directed the fighting it seems misleading to identify them as belligerents. As I understand it, most of the European fighting in the frontier wars was conducted by police/para-military units and groups of settlers operating under the control of local-level authorities. British military units were only very occasionally involved in the fighting (and even then only in the first decades of European settlement), and no Australian Government forces were involved that I'm aware of. Nick-D (talk) 01:22, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

Nick nobody generally directed the fighting in the strict central command military sense of this word. The fighting was sporadic, by some contemporaries rightly classified as guerrilla like warfare (later premier of qld John Douglas in 1869 was one). Yet still the British government of Queensland was certainly directing the Native Police Force and that often in great detail. There are plenty of evidence for that. They would not direct the fighting but they frequently ordered NP to go here or there to sort out this or that specific problem with "troublesome" blacks. Signs are, if we are to accept Evans and Orsted-Jensen's figures, that the government was heavily involved in Queensland. Yet this is not at all, as you seem to think, the normal state of affair of colonial Australia, in most other British colonies in Australia the settlers retaliated on their own (and this in observance of great quietness following the Myall creek in 1838). So it is hardly right to say that "most of the European fighting in the frontier wars was conducted by police/para-military units" or it may be right only for Queensland. May I then add that any "Police Force" is per definition a government institution. No other than government are in our political system allowed to classify a force as "police". This by the way is why Henry Reynolds and others have pointed out that Queensland may be the state/colony in Australia that genuinely has a case to answer re the UN definition of genocide. The government was certainly seriously involved in Queensland. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Helsned (talk • contribs)

I also disagree with use of United Kingdom and Australia in the infobox and have now reverted this being re-added. Use of "European settlers" seems to be a more adequate description to me. Use of nations as belligerents does not seem correct to me and as far as I can see the conflict has never been considered in such terms in any reliable source. Anotherclown (talk) 11:47, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

Anotherclown- What do you mean by 'also'. Nick seemingly ended up agreeing with me, if that is the case then you are in the minority. Besides I did not change anything, I only reversed it to what it has been for a few years now, and I explained why above. You need to argue your case and not just ponder around changing things. Will you please argue your case, adding some facts please and explain why exactly and on which point my statements above is wrongBebel (talk) 13:18, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

No, I don't agree with presenting the 'white' belligerents as being the UK and Australia for the reasons I explained above (eg, that these national governments had essentially no impact over the course of the fighting, beyond setting the broad parameters in which it took place) Nick-D (talk) 22:56, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

Well normal practice is too keep the original text until disagreement is sorted out - you act in defiance of this principle so I retire - anything else is a wate of time Bebel (talk) 07:21, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

Helsned - I've already "argued my case" and have nothing more to add to what I said above. I disagreed with you and stated why. Do you have reliable sources for your position? Is so pls provide them here so they can be considered. Anotherclown (talk) 10:25, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

No you have not argued your case at all, neither have Nick - but look I leave it to you to do what you like. However it does not change the fact that the treatment of indigenous people fundamentally is a matter of politics and government and there were no central government in Australia prior to 1901 and settlers were all firstly British citisens acting in accordance with British law or allowed to act in defiance of the same and for this Whitehall was ultimately the political responsible. Besides the latest research indicate that a "police" force set up and accepted by British authorities did most of the killing and furthermore accepted without interference the killing done by private people. Indeed no government financed police force or military unit protected citisens if they were of the "wrong" skincolour. This is British govt responsibility not individual settlers. Besides they were only ethnically seen Europeans - but legally and nationally they were all British mainly Englishmen - and it was people who not only legally were - but they also viewed themselves as British citisens - they were not Australian citisens - you could not be as no such thing existed. Now Anotherclown - reliable sources for what? - The statements I make and made are all common knowledge statement for anyone interested in Australian history. Australia was part of Britain, there were no nation called Australia and no central Australian based govt prior to 1901 - it is as simple as that. The British govt outlined the fundamental conditions on which settlers were allowed without government interference to dispossess indigenous people, they were the one saying that indigenous people were now living on crown land. Whitehall was the central govt of Australia prior to 1901, and they excersised their control by use of governors, at times given excessive powers. Also when you removed the April 1770 you again removed responsibility from the British govt. This is individualisation of problems - it is making individual settlers responsible for political problems beyond their control. It is also reading back in time political conditions of our time, so it is bad history. Fact is that the first collision between British people and Indigenous people took place in April 1770 (not in 1788) and it was by orders issued by James Cook. The key responsible for the murder of Aboriginal people were not individual convicts and ordinary immigrant settlers but upper middle class Englishmen and the entire British political establishment. Bebel (talk) 06:58, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

Provide some evidence for or to the opposite of the following: - “Australian governments before 1901” - sry but this statement is legally nonsense - Belligerents? Well, if government forces either are the main fighting force (that certainly was the case in Queensland who had the highest death toll of all colonies and seemingly the NP was responsible for the main part of the casulties) or if government forces accept without interference private parties fighting a war at the frontier – in both cases the problem remains a government problem/a problem of governing. The fights were allowed to continue either directed by – border police or Native Police forces or ordinary police (this is the government fellows) or under the protection of British authorities (no police interference - nothing done to end it or to protect the weakest part) the main belligerent remain in all cases the government – and the government was the British government. - Citizenship prior to 1901 - any non-Britisher gaining naturalisation – became not an Australian citizen but a British citizen and a subject of the British Queen. This is fact. Prove me wrong if you can. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Helsned (talk • contribs)

"Australian governments before 1901" - I didn't say anything of the sort. Re the issue of British subjects and your "Prove me wrong if you can" cmt - why would I? Its essentially correct - its just not relevant and once again I didn't even raise it as an issue. Cmts of yours like: "key responsible for the murder of Aboriginal people were not individual convicts and ordinary immigrant settlers but upper middle class Englishmen and the entire British political establishment..." are just rhetoric rather than serious discussion. This isn't the place for your opinion. I asked you for a reference which supports your assertion that the United Kingdom and Australian governments were active belligerents (which is the implication of them being in the infobox). Your response was "its common knowledge" - enough said I think. Anotherclown (talk) 11:43, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

Nick spoke of Australian govt before 1901 - I say there were no such thing - and this is important - were british govt onvolved in undeclared warfare - yes they were! The used border police and troops in NSW, they used a native police corps in Victoria troops in Tasmania and the Native police in Queensland. And they use police elsewhere either directly or indirectly - police is British police troops were British troops and native police troopers were dressed in the Queensland uniform paid for by British taxpayers.

I think we can agree that we are dealing with an undeclared war. Eey the settlers were all British settlers. The law is clear on this point because you had to be a naturalised British citizen to buy or lease ‘Crown’ land. The lease-holding squatters and land proprietors were all - British citizens. One could not be a European citizen, European is an ethnic term not a nationality, fundamentally all settlers were British nationals.

Now there is no doubt that most frontier settlers regarded themselves at war with Aboriginal people, yet the main participants is still their government it is not themselves. The governments of Queenslanbd were in no doubt on this point, they paid a semi-military force to do the job. And Queensland is number one colony/state in therms of Frontier warfare, there can be no question about that. NSW share of Indigenous people never exceeded 16% Tasmania had less than 2% and Victoria had 6% at the peak, Queensland alone had abt 38%. It is beyond question that Queensland government were engaged in an form of war with Indigenous people, they paid a force to do the job and that force killed more that 45 000 if we are to believe.

If you want to say that settlers were the only waring party, then you are certainly wrong when dealing with Queensland. The government of Queensland was a British colonial government like all colonial government flagging the British flag (there were no ‘settler’ or Australian flag to flag) and this government certainly was engaged in undeclared warfare. They paid a force to do the job and they were certainly “wearing her gracious Majesty’s uniform” as one settler rightly remarked in the Queenslander 23 Oct 1880, page 530c-d. Governor Bowen (Qld first gov) stated in letters to British Secretary of State for the Colonies in London, that the colony was engaged in ‘border warfare’ and he asked form British troops arguing that ‘military strength and disciplined organisation are essential preservatives to the settlers’(Orsted-Jensen 2011 page 40). This however was denied, so instead he regrouped the Native Police after the principles of the British Constabulary force at the time engaged a form of civil war with the republican forces in Ireland. In Queensland, the primary warfare state – it was certainly the British colonial authorities that were engaged in warfare. In any case it is British nationals at war – it is not European settlers – they are Europeans only in as an ethnicity – not as nationals and nationality is what counts here.

British government was involved and paid for an undeclared warfare in colonial Queensland, it is also a proven fact that it was the "British Secretary of War" that supplied the Native Police in Queensland with Snider riffles, this was no doubt also the case in Victoria and NSW. if this was a war at all then it was a war maid for by British government resource and fought by British citizens, mostly wearing British uniforms during this 'duty'.Bebel (talk) 07:56, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

Aboriginal Tent Embassy conference - Sydney, 18-20 March 2016

This article is drawn upon by the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, which is holding a Frontier Massacres Summit Conference at the National Centre for Indigenous Excellence, 160-180 George St, Redfern, Sydney, on 18-20 March 2016 (up-to-date information at sovereigntyparliament@gmail.com). Wikiain (talk) 10:42, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for the notification. Nick-D (talk) 10:43, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

British Empire as a combatant

G'day AusLondonder. Would you mind quoting the sentence from Connor, p. xii that describes the British Empire as being a combatant in the frontier wars? It seems to be an extraordinary claim. Thanks, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 08:47, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

AusLondonder I'm assuming it's the following sentence you are referring to? "The Australian frontier wars were fought on a much smaller scale than, for example, those of New Zealand, but they still should be put into the context of military operations elsewhere in the British Empire…" Page xii. Or is it something else? Nickm57 (talk) 07:31, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

I also obtained a copy of the book, and couldn't find anything else in the Introduction even vaguely relating the British Empire as a combatant. That passage doesn't make the British Empire a combatant, it is describing events in other parts of the British Empire. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 07:35, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

Agree.Nickm57 (talk) 08:03, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

• Comment I think the term "European settlers" is highly problematic and historically inaccurate. Firstly, the term "settlers" suggests Australia was not settled prior to 1788 which is unquestionably incorrect. Secondly, using "European settlers" ignores the real role the British government and the local colonial authorities played in the conflict which has been discussed in numerous reliable sources. The precedent in similar articles, such as American Indian Wars has been to mention the "British Empire" or other relevant European empires in the context of a belligerent. This excellent source from NITV discusses in detail the very active role played by British colonial officials in the conflict, beginning in 1788. This source, from the official government research institute the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies states that "First contact between Aboriginal Australians with British colonisers in 1788 quickly escalated into frontier conflict" and makes clear the conflict was an integral part of the British Empire's claim to sovereignty over Australia. The Australian Frontier Wars, 1788-1838 by Dr John Connor, Senior Lecturer in History at the University of New South Wales and published by UNSW Press makes clear even on the first pages the enormous official involvement of the British Empire and "both settlers and soldiers" in the conflict. British Army units continued to be deployed up until 1838, and police and settlers continued the conflict afterwards. It even discusses British tactics and weapons which were learnt from elsewhere in the Empire. I would interested to hear why we should ignore these facts and what sources say the British Empire was not involved in the conflict. AusLondonder (talk) 09:00, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

I see it has been changed to "British Army" and "Mounted Police". The army and police were entities of the British Empire! That's like removing "United Kingdom" as a belligerent and replacing it with "British Army" at Second Boer War. AusLondonder (talk) 09:02, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

Forgotten War by Professor Henry Reynolds is another excellent source discussing the war which makes clear the official nature of the conflict. AusLondonder (talk) 09:03, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

The belligerent, formally, was the United Kingdom—in those times the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland". All articles I have seen on modern wars refer to the state involved. I'm not sure that the term "British Empire" was used before the 20th century—or, indeed, whether it was ever formally adopted, apart from events and medals. "Settlers" is definitely wrong, as has been discussed elsewhere. The British Army and other armed units operated as instruments of British government. I think we should use "United Kingdom". Wikiain (talk) 10:59, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

I would be very happy with that, you make a fair point regarding terminology. Unfortunately the term "European settlers" was restored several times despite being disputed by myself and Dippiljemmy. My main objection here is the suggestion that this was some kind of guerrilla, civil war on both sides with no state involvement which is disproved in detail by several reliable sources. AusLondonder (talk) 14:11, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

Indeed, AusLondonder: continuing resistance to an invasion is surely not civil war; one might as well say that the French Resistance were engaged in a "civil war". Wikiain (talk) 21:28, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

In response to AusLondonder. We would include the British Empire if we had reliable sources that said it was a combatant. We don't at the moment, and extrapolating from Connor's mention of tactics learnt elsewhere in the British Empire, well, that is original research. Connor's introduction does not support what you say it does. It is clear that the various colonial administrations were involved in the frontier wars, they were the ones that sent the troops on expeditions, as Connor clearly shows. But they were not directed from London, they were directed from Sydney etc. Those same colonial administrations also controlled the mounted and/or native police where they were raised to do the same duty. Can I ask that we keep this thread on topic rather than drifting off into discussion of terminology regarding settlers/colonists etc, which would be better off being dealt with in a separate thread? Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 01:56, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

Those colonies, as you accept they were, were parts of the British Empire. Their administrations operated with Imperial authority. Who directed whom is a matter, overall, of the exercise of that authority. In discussions of local events, that may be too obvious to mention. The Aboriginal fighters were facing the British Empire. Wikiain (talk) 02:12, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

I think using a term like "Regular and Irregular colonial forces of the British Empire" would be both accurate and adequate but I won't change it until the information in the actual page reflects this. There is mountains of evidence that just needs to be referred to in the article itself. I will try and work towards this. Dippiljemmy (talk) 03:45, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

I can live with United Kingdom, as suggested above. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 06:01, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

Okay to be proud of one's heritage but we can not cherry pick, take only good aspect of British empire, enjoy the fruits of their evil villainous acts, and then even deny the right to truthful history to the victims. If British empire did not invade the "well populated by aborigines for several thousands of years" the empty terra nullius land, then who invaded it and who caused the multiple holocausts of aborigines in their homeland? Stop creating artificially high barriers against the placement of responsibility on the evil deeds of the heavily-armed (state of the art for that era) British empire against the barely fed and almost naked aborigines. No manipulation of wikipedia guidelines please with the aim to dilute/hide/exclude the direct responsibility of British empire. This is wrong, immoral, unethical. Gaming the wikipedia in a smart way by the use of wikipedia principals (excuse of this is not a credible source, blah blah) as ploys (tricks) to deny British empire's evil role in the "extermination" (a term used by the multiple British colonists of that era) of the poor aborigines. Wikipedia guidelines are clear. Just capture the "essence" of the source, do not harp on the other stuff. Numerous sources already cited in the article make it clear that it was all done by the British empire.
I am neither white nor aborigine. This is my first time ever on this article to read and pass through here. Reading this article shows, how some editors are desperate to justify all the bloodbath of British empire, by writing long paragraph from single source to explain how the poor British soldiers had to struggle to load their guns to kill the unarmed aborigines (just stones, and their spears were just tree branches plucked from the trees, they were not iron spears laced with poison). Despicable. Absolutely shameful.
It is impossible to feel any sympathy for the British killers. It is impossible for a person with conscience to not cry the tears for the aborigines while reading this article, even though article is out of WP:BALANCE (long single-source passages to justify/dilute the British killings and one sided power), with attempts to dilute British role (discussion above). Why not just rephrase everything and say "heathen wretched aborigines killed themselves, by being in the way of the divine empire of superior race."
Remedial enhancements: Please rewrite it. Write it clearly. Reduce the length of pro-British justification. Make the role of British empire in the aborigines' massacre/holocaust clear in the lead itself and keep that theme consistent. Maintain the due balance without diluting/hiding British responsibility (soldiers and convicts were all part of and were representing the same empire and race). Move the article namespace from Australian frontier wars to British holocaust of Australian aborigines Thanks. 202.156.182.84 (talk) 23:56, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

Oppose name change. First, a scholarly argument: a name needs to come from public debate, as a name by which the event is already known. "Genocide" might be a candidate, although I expect it would be contentious on grounds of both meaning and accuracy, but "holocaust" is not there. Second, as a frankly cultural and in part political argument: "the Holocaust" is the Shoah and the name should be reserved for that. Wikiain (talk)

Oppose name change for the same reasons. Also, Anon IP person 202.156.182.84, before you write here again, please note its Aborigines always with a capital A. Also please avoid comments like "barely fed and almost naked aborigines" and "their spears were just tree branches plucked from the trees." Such cultural stereotypes are simplistic, inaccurate and likely to cause offence. Nickm57 (talk) 05:28, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

Oppose Australian frontier wars is the term most commonly used. I agree with the comments by the two editors above. Nick-D (talk) 10:28, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

Invasion?

The military term "invasion" denotes a fully-planned armed incursion with a defined purpose and contingency planning based on the understood nature and capacity of opposing forces. It is ludicrous to postulate that the mostly unknown continent of Australia was "invaded" in 1788 by two Royal Navy ships (the ten-gun sixth-rate vessel HMS Sirius (1786) and the eight-gun supply tender HMS Supply (1759), or at any time thereafter. At the time, of course, the United Kingdom (with the newly one-armed Nelson but without the aid of imperial troops) was busily evicting Napoleon's forces from Egypt (v. Battle of the Nile). Our article covering early settlement and foundation of a penal colony states "the official policy of the British Government was to establish friendly relations with Aboriginal people, and Arthur Phillip ordered that the Aboriginal people should be well treated", but "Between 1790 and 1810, Pemulwuy of the Bidjigal clan led the local people in a series of attacks against the British colonisers". The notion of "invasion" is a hyperbolic 21st-century invention by supporters of the justifiable aspirations of Indigenous Australians to enhanced political significance. Bjenks (talk) 02:45, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

You say "mostly unknown": quite a few people had been living there for quite a long time. For them it was surely an invasion: no doubt they had an equivalent "military term". Wikiain (talk)

I take your point about the ancient Aboriginal presence, which we Europeans don't know how to adequately respect. But we need to distinguish between the claim of a systematic invasion and a series of vicious scraps over food and restrictions on passage, etc. Have you read the book River of Gold about the contest for territory, gold and survival during the Palmer River gold rush? Several nationalities of looters and squatters (notably Chinese), cannibalistic Aborigines, a real rough-house, but no systematic invasion by any particular group. Bjenks (talk) 16:38, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

That's just about a gold rush in the 1870s—within the Colony of Queensland, already founded as a separate colony in 1859. See particularly the section Frontier War, discussion above on "Native Police Force" and more broadly the article Australian native police. Wikiain (talk) 01:09, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

Well and good, but where is the verification that the United Kingdom invaded Queensland (and Australia as a whole) as against the establishment of tiny penal settlements followed by economic immigration and opportunistic privateering? Bjenks (talk) 02:17, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

It was a cumulative process, at all times with a military side, official administration and a claim to own most or the whole of the joint.

You wish to define "invasion" quite strictly: "The military term 'invasion' denotes a fully-planned armed incursion with a defined purpose and contingency planning based on the understood nature and capacity of opposing forces." I won't challenge that this may be the modern military meaning of "invasion", but I will not assume that we have to confine ourselves to military language. Yet, why would this process not be an "invasion" even in the military sense if the nature and strength of potential armed opposition was unknown or, as in 1788, estimated to be so weak that (I suppose) no special contingency planning was required? Wikiain (talk) 04:58, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

I don't believe it is possible to verify that there was "a claim to own most or the whole of the joint" in 1788. The joint was unmapped and "incognita" to everyone, including the Indigenes. The Union Jack was not planted at Albany until 1826, nor in the Swan River Colony until 1829. In the case of Albany, there was a military purpose and 21 soldiers--not mounted against the Indigenes but against the possibility of French prior settlement, in view of the mapping explorations of Louis de Freycinet. As I previously wrote, the term "invasion" (as applied to British settlement) is a hyperbolic 21st-century invention which deliberately overstates the situation and is incorrect (because of its exaggerated military overtones) in any encyclopedic account. Like all of us today, those who organised and led the various colony-building incursions were under official British instructions to respect and befriend the "natives" of the hypostatised Great South Land. Please let us be realistic and not allow Wikipedia to provide any form of justification for anti-British constructions of political origin in modern Australia. Neither the United Kingdom nor the Empire (i.e., the Crown) sanctioned the violence that eventuated with/against the historic earlier settlers. Bjenks (talk) 14:59, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

Just a reminder, we use terminology that is consistent with the academic consensus, not a term agreed upon here based on opinion about what an invasion is. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 02:35, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

Agreed, and that's where I have a difficulty--I've seen no reliable verification that there is "academic consensus" for the invasion thesis. If that can't be supplied, there is justification for seeking a WP consensus about whether or not we keep that emotionally-charged word. Meantime, I'll make an effort to review all the relevant citations in the article. It's problematic because of the heavy POV on both sides, per witness of much of the foregoing discussion. Bjenks (talk) 03:40, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

How about we start by putting together what has been written recently (and not so recently). Invasion and resistance : Aboriginal-European relations on the North Queensland frontier, 1861-1897 by Noel Loos, The Australian frontier wars, 1788-1838 by John Connor, and The other side of the frontier : Aboriginal resistance to the European invasion of Australia by Henry Reynolds, for a few. If we find that there is no academic consensus for the use of the word "invasion", then we point out that some sources refer to it as "invasion" (which they clearly do), but others do not. We create a section to discuss the range of academic views on it. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 04:10, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

That's a good idea and would improve the article. Does someone have access to Reynolds or Connor etc? Ordinarily I might try, except my whole library is in storage while I renovate and live in a mess.Nickm57 (talk) 08:21, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

I wholly agree. "Invasion" is not indexed in Reynolds, The Other Side of the Frontier (1981). But (of his other books that I possess) it is indexed in Aboriginal Sovereignty (1996), 95-107, and Why Weren't We Told? (1999), ch 11 "Arguing about Invasion". To Reynolds, that there was an invasion is obvious—though, as a scholar, he does not seek to impose his view. I agree with his view. Wikiain (talk) 13:03, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, Peacemaker67 and others. If there are opposed but equally respectable and verified viewpoints, we must accept both and balance them per WP:STRUCTURE and following WP policy. Also, it may require time for some of us to access sources which exist only in dusty major libraries and to understand how academic views may have evolved over time. Bjenks (talk) 14:36, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

Connor, who is a military historian and an author of a volume of the Official History, starts his book mentioned above with the sentence "The European colonial expansion between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries, including the British invasion and settlement of Australia, led to frontier wars on every continent." Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 00:50, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

From reviewing the sources I have to hand, "invasion" seems to be the common term for the entry of white settlers into Aboriginal lands from 1788 onwards. Note that two of these sources are dedicated military history works, where the authors can be assumed to know what this term means, and another of the sources is by a leading historian in this field:

• Early in his most recent book on this topic, Forgotten War, Henry Reynolds states that "conflict broke out between the invading settlers and resident Aborigines within a few weeks of the foundation of Sydney and was apparent on every frontier for the next 140 years" (page 49)
• The entry in the Oxford Companion to Australian Military History on the frontier wars states that "Frontier warfare was ultimately the result of the British invasion of Aboriginal land, but individual acts of violence had their own specific causes" (page 217)
• In his pioneering chapter in the 1988 book Australia: Two Centuries of War and Peace (which was published by the Australian War Memorial), Richard Broome states that the arrival of the British in Australia was an "invasion" and those who entered Aboriginal lands throughout the frontier wars were "invaders bent on conquest" (page 93).
• In his A Concise History of Australia (1999 edition) Stuart Macintyre calls the residents of early Sydney "invaders" when discussing the early fighting (page 33)
• There's some interesting discussion of the shift towards referring to the arrival of the British in Australia as an "invasion" in museum exhibitions in this article published by the National Museum of Australia
• This journal article also uses "invasion"
• The 2001 edition of The Encyclopedia of Australia's Battles, Chris Coulthard-Clark refers to the spread of the British as "settlement" (page vi)
• This NITV article refers to the "arrival" of the British, but also uses 'settlement' as a euphemism.
• Further to Peacemaker's comment, I'd note also that Connor's book is one of the leading works on this subject. Nick-D (talk) 10:32, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

• I'd also note that whether the word invasion is indexed is a poor indicator of whether the book talks about it as invasion. Invasion is a word that wouldn't necessarily be indexed, and given Reynolds uses the word in the title of his book, it would be surprising if it wasn't used inside the book. I've ordered a copy to take a look. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 10:21, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

• Agreed: I have a copy of the 1995 edition of The Other Side of the Frontier. The first sentence of the book states: "The Other Side of the Frontier examines the Aboriginal response to the invasion and settlement of Australia during the hundred or so years between the late eighteenth century and the early twentieth" (page 1). On the next page its noted that the book's scope includes covering how "the black response to the invaders" was complex. As the entire book is about the invasion of Australia, an index entry wouldn't be practical, I presume. Similarly, the first sentence of the 1996 edition of his book Frontier states that "This book is a sequel to The Other Side of the Frontier which dealt with the Aboriginal response to the European invasion and settlement of Australia" (page vii). Nick-D (talk) 11:09, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

I wasn't just talking about indexes, but was citing places where Reynolds presents arguments that what happened should be classified as an "invasion". The arguments (and I have the books that I referred to, as well as the others that have now been mentioned) are too long to quote. I am tempted to put into the article, with these references, something like: "historian Henry Reynolds argues that ...". But that would seem appropriate if there were another reputable scholar to the contrary. If there is, let us hear. Wikiain (talk) 14:00, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

Acknowledgement of massacres?

In yesterday's opening ceremony of the 2018 Commonwealth Games in Brisbane, there was a long segment by Indigenous dancers caked with ash and, at the end, streaming blood. I took this to be the most extensive official acknowledgement so far of the massacres (or quasi-official: anyway, the next British and Australian head of state opened the Games). It might be added to the article, if this can be confirmed. Wikiain (talk) 00:16, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

That distinction may belong to Paul Keating's Redfern Park Speech (eg, "We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life" and "We committed the murders"). The Aboriginal Memorial which has been in pride of place in the National Gallery of Australia since 1987 is also an important acknowledgement. Nick-D (talk) 11:17, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

New subsection under Background

I propose adding a new subsection under Background called "Aboriginal traditional warfare" to explain warfare as practised by Aboriginal groups before invasion, on which basis, frontier warfare developed. Based on Connor and Reynolds, I foresee this section explaining Horatio Hale's 1840 identification of four types of Aboriginal warfare; formal battles, ritual trials, raids for women, and revenge attacks. Also explaining that traditional Aboriginal warfare was both limited and universal. Limited by no. of combatants in any given group, by the non-hierarchical society, and by duration (due to the need to obtain food). Universal as the whole community was engaged, and every initiated male was a warrior. I then see this subsection explaining the weapons used, both melee and missile. The relevant bit of Connor is Chapter 1 and Chapter 3 of Reynolds has some additional points. Thoughts on other sources for this subsection and on the idea in general? Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 09:03, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

That sounds like a good idea to me (it would also be a good topic for a longer standalone article if anyone is interested in writing it) Nick-D (talk) 10:22, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

I've started working on a draft in my User:Peacemaker67/sandbox. The edition of Connor's book that I have is the large print one, and I'm not sure how the pagination compares to the normal print one, so once I've added citations, someone with a copy of the normal print edition might need to check the pages I've specified. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 07:08, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

NPOV: discussion of sexual abuse

A major factor that led to the Frontier Wars was sexual abuse of Aboriginal women by European men. That is widely agreed by historians: some relevant citations are given below.

Despite that, the article makes no mention of the sexual abuse. Even worse, the article explicitly misleads. For example, the section on Tasmania claims that “pastoral expansion caused conflict over land. This led to sustained frontier warfare (the 'Black War')”. The article on the Black War rightly cites the leading historian in this area: “Sex continued to be a central motivation for attacking natives until around 1828”.

It is particularly noteworthy that South Australia had substantial sexual abuse, because South Australia was not settled by convicts. (Some relevant citations are below.)

During roughly 1910–1970, in the telling of Australian history, the sexual abuse was deliberately covered up. That was long ago, but this article continues the cover up. Such a cover up is obviously wrong, as well as a serious violation of WP:NPOV.

FlagrantUsername (talk) 21:18, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

______________________________________________

People in nineteenth-century Australia generally acknowledged that much of the violence that occurred on the frontier was a consequence of the abuse of Aboriginal women by European men.

— Schaffer K. (2001), “Chapter 8: Handkerchief diplomacy”, Colonial Frontiers (editor—Russell L.) p. 134–150 (Manchester University Press)

Much early frontier violence in the [Northern] Territory took the form of punitive expeditions, which were the reflex reaction to the spearing of cattle and horses or attacks upon whites (which were themselves often in retaliation for the shootings or abductions of women and girls). Their purpose was to both “punish” the local tribe and “teach them a lesson”.

— Roberts T. (November 2009), “The brutal truth”, The Monthly

… most twentieth century local histories [of South Australia] identify Aboriginal attacks on settlers and their property as motivated by invasion of country and increasing starvation, or as retaliation against settler crimes such as sexual exploitation of Aboriginal women.

— Foster R., Nettelbeck A. (2011), Out of the Silence, p. 160 (Wakefield Press)

… in his second and longer report to [South Australian Governer] Grey after the August massacre, he [Protector Moorhouse] condemned the overlanders’ sexual use of Aboriginal women and their failure to fulfil promises of reciprocity, and concluded: ‘These breaches of moral rectitude on the part of the Europeans have, I fear, been the source of so many disasters to the overland parties’.

— Foster R., et al. (2001), Fatal Collisions, p. 146 (Wakefield Press)

Prior to settlement, numerous sealing and whaling ships visited the South Australian coast. Aboriginal women were kidnapped and there were violent clashes.

[Protector] Moorhouse issued commands and made threats but was powerless to stop the shepherds taking women to their camp.

In the Port Lincoln district, as elsewhere, disputes over women occasioned conflict between races.

In the south-east frontier, … as on the other frontiers, disputes over women were often the cause of inter-racial violence.

— Summers J. (1986), “Chapter 11: Colonial race relations”, The Flinders History of South Australia: Social History (Editor—Richards E.) p. 283–311 (Wakefield Press)

They raped the women ... sexual violence led to a lot of conflict … in Victoria and NSW.

— Chang C. (2018-01-25), “What life was like for Aboriginal people during colonization”, news.com.au

He [Lancelot Threlkeld] witnessed at first hand, on the mission, their aggravation by whites, particularly convicts and other men who made raids to steal Aboriginal women, which was ‘calculated to drive the Aborigines to madness, who retaliating upon the unfortunate unprotected settler, created a bitter animosity’.

— “Lancelot Threlkeld (1788–1859)”, Australian Autobiographical Narratives (editors—Walsh K., Hooton J.) 1: 144–145 (Australian Scholarly Editions Centre, 1993)

There are repeated references in the reports [by the Commissioner of Crown Lands] to settler men taking indigenous women—a pattern of sexual assault and kidnapping of which commissioners were well aware, and which they condemned in their reports, but with little or no evidence that they sought to repress or intervene in such behaviour.

— Woollacott A. (2015), Settler Society in the Australian Colonies, p. 163 (Oxford)

Understanding the interiorities of this colonial violence has to begin with its personal character. Indeed, violence frequently flowed out of such personal intimacies…. The most obvious example of this was the sexual exploitation of native women. When settlers were killed by Aborigines, it was almost always because there was a personal attachment or grievance, and frequently this was sexual. Settlers paid no attention to the indigenous ties of attachment and felt free to use violence to secure their sexual partners.

— Dwyer P., Nettelbeck A. (2018), Violence, Colonialism and Empire in the Modern World, p. 30 (Palgrave Macmillan)

Conflict over women was a constant feature of relations between white and black, an aspect of contact stressed by nineteenth century observers….

‘After that familiar [sexual] intercourse … the Natives seem to claim a liberal and constant supply of food, and in case it is not given, they do not hesitate to use violence in obtaining it.’

European men deliberately cheated, raped and abducted black women.

Sexual relations between white men and black women were, then, a major source of misunderstanding, bitterness and conflict.

At Hornet Bank and Cullinlarin-goe Aboriginal action was carefully planned and thoroughly considered and followed months of provocation–harassment by the Native Police on the one hand, sexual molestation by some, if not all, the young men on the station on the other.

Torres Strait Islanders told a government official in 1882 that the white men had so ill-treated their women in the past that when a boat was sighted the young women were buried in the sand and kept there until the Europeans sailed away.

— Reynolds H. (2006 republication of 1981 original), The Other Side of the Frontier (UNSW Press)

“Where is the man amongst ourselves who would not resist an invading enemy; who would not avenge the murder of his parents, the ill-usage of his wife and daughters, and the spoliation of all his earthly goods by a foreign enemy, if he had an opportunity?”   [extract from a letter to a Tasmanian newspaper, 1831, in response to Aboriginal attacks]

Another pattern of conflict developed around the Australian coastline, where maritime resources attracted sealers in the south and pearlers and bêche-de-mer collectors in the tropical north. The seafarers raided the islands and coasts seeking women for sex and young men for their labour. The coastal clans watched and waited and ambushed these white men as they came ashore…. In all these persistent skirmishes only small numbers were killed on either side but the cumulative death toll was far from negligible….

While discussing in 1898 the problem of dealing with the widespread kidnapping of Aboriginal women, the government resident in the Northern Territory informed the South Australian government that the white men in remote areas were a law unto themselves ‘as regards their relations with the natives’. ‘Considering the vast area of country, sparsely populated, over which it is utterly impossible to maintain any control’, he thought it was difficult ‘to suggest any remedy which would effectually cope with the evil’.

“This, in plain language, is how we deal with the aborigines: On occupying new territory the aboriginal inhabitants are treated in exactly the same way as the wild beasts or birds the settlers may find there. Their lives and their property … are held by the Europeans as being at their absolute disposal. Their goods are taken, their children forcibly stolen, their women carried away, entirely at the caprice of the white men. The least show of resistance is answered by a rifle bullet.”   [extract from an article in a Brisbane newspaper, 1880]

The earliest parties to advance into Aboriginal territory rarely included women. The men, often long on the track, were, by circumstance, avid sexual predators and took Aboriginal women by force if congress couldn’t be arranged by agreement. Conflict broke out everywhere sooner or later. As a tradition of violence matured, both sides expected fighting to take place and it often began as soon as the settlers rode into the chosen country.

— Reynolds H. (2013), Forgotten War (UNSW Press)

Note that some of the cited books are partially online. As an example, the book with the citation of  Schaffer (2001) can be found by googling for the cited sentence (with quotes around it).

Responses

Yes, you're right. Can you please add some material on the topic? A sub-section in the Australian frontier wars#General history section, which discusses key thematic issues related to the fighting, might be the best location for discussing this issue. Other material could be added in the subsequent regional/narrative sections. to more fully explain the context of specific fighting. Nick-D (talk) 21:26, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

I agree this is an area that needs attention as a motive for Aboriginal attacks. Feel free to add to the general history section along the above lines. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 00:50, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

I think that sexual violence (real and feared) was also the motivator for some colonist attacks on Indigenous Australians. Nick-D (talk) 02:21, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

I too support the addition of relevant material with all the due weight it diserves. Aoziwe (talk) 11:04, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

I am glad that there is support for this. I am, though, not wanting to add text to articles related to the topic of Frontier Wars. Recently, I made hundreds of edits to articles on the topic, but my edits added negligible text to almost all of those articles. Instead, almost all my edits just added/improved references, and added some wikilinks or improved punctuation. (I did add substantial text to Historical Records of Australia, but that was because I created the article; the article was created because HRA is referenced in nearly 100 other articles, and so creating it and then making those other articles wikilink to it improved the references in those other articles.) Adding/improving references is the main contribution that I want to make on the topic.
FlagrantUsername (talk) 23:19, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

Really do see your point. Any chance you be persuaded to change your mind and make the effort to add the relevant new content here? Not being anything approaching a historian it has only recently become clear to me personally that this was a significant aspect of SA's colonial period. Even all the kerfuffle about the Hindmarsh bridge relates back to this. It's certainly not really Wikipedia's job alone to make it better known but it would be really good for Wikipedia at least to present whatever the most recent published works on colonial history state. Donama (talk) 23:33, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

I agree with Donama - a couple of paras (or so?) on the topic drawing on the material you found above would be great. Nick-D (talk) 08:19, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

Removal of NPOV tag

I propose to remove the NPOV tag. The above discussion is totally stale, and it's frustrating that the editor who tagged the article and apparently has a good knowledge of the topic and access to the sources needed to address the matter hasn't done so despite everyone else agreeing that this should be included. The issue here seems to be that the article doesn't provide a sufficiently rounded perspective, not that it's not neutral. The article does discuss a range of factors which led Indigenous Australians to resist the Europeans, and various atrocities they were subjected to, so it's not like it has major problems with bias (Which no-one suggested above). The tag suggests that the article has much larger and somewhat different problems than what was discussed above, and isn't helpful to either readers or editors. Nick-D (talk) 07:49, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

I agree. Clearly the article could do with substantial improvement, but large topics like this stretching over more than a century and an entire continent are commonly difficult for WP to get to a high standard for a range of reasons. I don't think that the identified issue makes the article POV, and I don't see any evidence that there is any attempt to cover-up or whitewash this as a motive for Aboriginal resistance. Perhaps it isn't being given enough weight as yet, but no-one opposes it being included and I don't think that goes far enough to make it non-neutral enough to justify the NPOV tag. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 09:33, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

The article is not NPOV, for the reasons discussed above. All that is clear, and moreover was agreed by everyone earlier—including you. With regard to removing the tag, the only question that matters is whether the article is NPOV. Here is what the relevant Wikipedia policy says: "You need to be sure that the issue has been resolved before removing the template. That does require some effort on your part...."  FlagrantUsername (talk) 14:50, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

Why do I need to write material on something you have the sources and expertise to cover? I have neither. Rather than tag the page and edit war to prevent the tag being removed (which, to be frank, is obviously trollish behaviour), can you please just add material? It seems the best solution for everyone, and especially readers. In the meantime, the tag is not serving a useful purpose, as the article is not actually imbalanced - it just needs to be more comprehensive. Nick-D (talk) 09:54, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

As only the tagging editor has expressed support for retaining the tag and has still made no steps to resolve their concern despite being in a position to do so, while I and another editor have supported removing it, I have just removed it. As per the discussion above, there is consensus that the article needs to discuss the issue of sexual abuse in the Australian frontier wars. But I don't think that this is a NPOV issue - it simply reflects that the article is incomplete, with this being one of many examples which could be highlighted (instance, there is currently virtually nothing on the fighting in South Australia). I'd again strongly encourage FlagrantUsername to draw on the sources and expertise they have on this issue to add text to the article for the benefit of readers rather than to edit war a tag in. Nick-D (talk) 11:10, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

British and Australian governments' involvement in the frontier wars

Dippiljemmy has been adding British, Australian and Aboriginal flags to the infobox, along with claim that the Australian Government fought the frontier wars. I've been removing this on the grounds that this is unhistorical and inaccurate. Let's discuss the matter. Nick-D (talk) 06:42, 2 June 2019 (UTC)

To note my views, adding any kinds of flags encourages misinterpretations of the nature of this conflict for several reasons:

• The Indigenous Australians lived in large numbers of communities and nations, which did not use flags - and especially not the modern Aboriginal flag given it wasn't designed until 1971.
• The settler forces were also far from homogeneous. Some of the forces were elements of the British military, and others were the official police forces and similar of the colonies usually, but not always, following orders from various governments. The Australian Flag isn't appropriate for the pre-Federation colonies, and adding all the colonial flags would add a fair bit of clutter and confusion.
• But much of the fighting on the frontier involved loosely organised groups of settlers and individuals. In many (most?) cases, these groups were acting totally illegally, and in a very small number of cases they were brought to justice for doing so. Assigning these murderers flags implies that their actions were authorised, which they weren't. Nick-D (talk) 07:02, 2 June 2019 (UTC)

I concur with Nick on all points. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 07:25, 2 June 2019 (UTC)

It appears that the simple task of noting that various British and Australian governments were involved in the frontier wars is contentious despite the existence of ample literary evidence that this was the case. The British involvement is easy to demonstrate with the British Army, marines, paramilitaries and colonists being given clear instructions by British governors and military personnel to engage in conflict as required. Likewise, the participation of post-federation governments in the frontier wars can easily be shown with government police officers being involved in massacres such as the Coniston massacre and Forrest River massacre. Separate government enquiries and government royal commissions into these mass killings all proved that Aboriginal people were massacred but the perpetrators involved (government employees) were not punished and their actions justified. Details of these and other post-federation frontier conflict incidents can be readily found in numerous books, journals and newspaper articles. The Killing Times by John Cribbin would be a good place to start if you wish to expand your knowledge of the subject area. My suggestion to the self-appointed administrator(s) of this page would be to read them instead of accusing others who are trying to improve this page of vandalism. Evidently, the content of this page needs a fair bit of improvement to make the obvious more readily apparent. (Dippiljemmy (talk) 07:36, 2 June 2019 (UTC))

Flagcruft in infoboxes is not how to achieve that. I suggest you contribute to the body of the article using reliable sources. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 07:49, 2 June 2019 (UTC)

I concur with Peacemaker67 and Nick-D. BlackCab (TALK) 05:09, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

Origin of the name "frontier wars"

Since the article begins with the sentence, "The Australian frontier wars is a term applied by some historians" (my emphasis), the article should have something about the origin, and level of debate, of the term. There is a little bit in the "Historiography" section, but that is not on the term itself. Adpete (talk) 05:54, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

Requested move 29 May 2020

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. (non-admin closure) -- Mdaniels5757 (talk) 20:30, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

---

Australian frontier wars → Australian frontier conflicts – It wasn't really a war; most historians now use the term conflicts; wars is not really neutral Life200BC (talk) 10:14, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

• "most historians now use the term conflicts" Your move request is more likely to be supported if you provide evidence for your statements, rather than attempt proof by assertion. An analysis of the sources in the article in the current revision would be helpful. However, from what I can see it looks like "wars" is used more than "conflicts", so Weak oppose unless evidence is presented to the contrary. buidhe 12:43, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

• Commenthttps://aiatsis.gov.au/explore/articles/first-encounters-and-frontier-conflicthttps://www.nla.gov.au/digital-classroom/year-5/themes/frontier-conflicthttp://pressfiles.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p171001/pdf/article08.pdf and many of the books here https://australianfrontierconflicts.com.au/resources/books/ refer to it as frontier conflicts. Even if the name is not changed for NPOV the first paragraph should say Frontier wars also referred to as frontier conflicts. etc. Life200BC (talk) 04:08, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

• Comment - If the article is renamed, Category:Australian frontier wars should probably also be renamed. There may be merit in raising a CfD, but also see WP:AWNB#categories: People of the Australian frontier wars, People associated with massacres of Indigenous Australians. Mitch Ames (talk) 13:49, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose "Wars" is the common term in the literature I've seen - for instance, this is the term used in the entry in the authoritative The Oxford Companion to Australian Military History. The titles of the works cited in this article also demonstrate that "wars" is the common term. Historians tend to be in pretty firm agreement that what occurred was warfare. Nick-D (talk) 22:39, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
• Strong oppose - this based on the false premise of "most historians now use the term conflicts", which is completely unsupported above in this RM. It is an ambit claim, and frankly POV. See Nick-D's comment about the The Oxford Companion to Australian Military History and John Connor's The Australian Frontier Wars, 1788–1838, Stephen Gapps' The Sydney Wars: Conflict in the early colony, 1788-1817, the entry in Encyclopedia of the Age of Imperialism, 1800-1914 and many other examples of scholarly texts using the term. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 23:37, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
• Strongly agree because it is ridiculous to describe a bunch of soldiers with firearms and bayonets fighting with the men of a group carrying spears as war! Going back to first principles "war" is not the right word and "conflicts" is according to the dictionary definition (I like using Macquarie) of those words. Betterkeks (talk) 11:04, 30 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Yet multiple historians, including leading military historians, describe these events as a war the main works on the topic. The people with "spears" you deride gave almost as a good as they got for the first decades of European colonisation and sustained resistance for many decades after that. Nick-D (talk) 11:22, 30 May 2020 (UTC)
  • @Nick-D: I did not deride the people with "spears". I said it is ridiculous to call it war. Multiple historians can be wrong, even leading ones, and I think these are because they are not using the right words. Betterkeks (talk) 12:12, 30 May 2020 (UTC)
    • This is just your opinion, Betterkeks. Where are the reliable secondary sources upon which you base this vote? That is how we decide matters on Wikipedia. Nick-D and I have provided quite a number of such sources, yet those supporting this change have completely failed to provide any to support their position. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 10:38, 31 May 2020 (UTC)
    • @Peacemaker67: I also said going back to first principles, "war" is not the right word and "conflicts" is according to the dictionary definition (I like using Macquarie) of those words. I just checked the Macquarie Dictionary, dictionary.com and the Cambridge Dictionary again, and "war" is not the right word to describe what happened, whereas "conflicts" is. It is more than opinion. It is reasoning and judging what these words mean. Betterkeks (talk) 12:31, 31 May 2020 (UTC)
      • We don't "go back to first principles", your reasoning and judgement, or dictionary definitions. We use the name reliable secondary sources independent of the subject use for this subject. Which as Nick-D and I have demonstrated, is frontier wars. Please read WP:TITLE. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 23:42, 31 May 2020 (UTC)
        • Agreed. I'd also note that several of the works by military historians which class what happens as warfare include material in which they carefully consider whether the fighting met the definition of 'warfare'. Some of the commentary on whether the Australian War Memorial should cover the frontier wars does the same, with some leading historians judging that it the fighting meets the criteria for inclusion under the AWM's parliamentary act as a result. There's no need for Wikipedia editors to be trying to second guess experts given that this issue has been very seriously considered. Nick-D (talk) 00:48, 1 June 2020 (UTC)
        • @Nick-D: WP:TITLE also says inaccurate names for the article subject, as determined in reliable sources, are often avoided even though they may be more frequently used by reliable sources. The word "war" is inaccurate. Betterkeks (talk) 03:28, 1 June 2020 (UTC)
      • @Peacemaker67: Why are you saying we cannot use reputable dictionaries as sources for the meanings of the words we use? If we cannot, then we must instead rely on our unverified and possibly incorrect understanding of their meaning. You seem to be adopting someone else's incorrect use of words just because you accept them as a subject matter expert, without critical thinking going by your aversion to first principles.

Words have meaning. A reputable dictionary is a good source of these meanings. A lot of reputable dictionaries are excellent sources.

We use reasoning and judgement all the time. For example when we choose the words we use in our writing, when we string those words into sentences and paragraphs and articles, when we read and digest sourced material, when we choose who and what to cite for which bits as reliable sources and who and what not to cite for these same bits, and when we put it all together.

The sources you claim are reputable use words that do not describe what happened. These sources may be experts in their field, but that does not mean we have to adopt their poor use of the English language. Betterkeks (talk) 02:31, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

They are not "unverified", that is the opposite of what they are. See WP:V. It is pointless to discuss this with you if you will not engage with Wikipedia policies, but instead insist on your own interpretation of words in the face of specialist military historians who use them. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 02:41, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

@Peacemaker67: I have provided two excellent sources (and one not so excellent) of the meanings of the words "war" and "conflict". The use of the word "war" is verifiably inaccurate. WP:TITLE says inaccurate names for the article subject, as determined in reliable sources, are often avoided even though they may be more frequently used by reliable sources, and when there are multiple names for a subject, all of which are fairly common, and the most common has problems, it is perfectly reasonable to choose one of the others. Betterkeks (talk) 03:46, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

@Betterkeks: It might help your case if you quoted (with link to online source if possible) the dictionary definition(s) to which you refer, and explain exactly why that definition does not apply to conflict. For example dictionary.com defines war as "a conflict carried on by force of arms, as between nations...". Are you asserting that the Aboriginal Australians did not comprise a nation or nations? Are you asserting that the colonists were not acting on behalf of the British nation? Are you asserting that "force of arms" was not generally used? Mitch Ames (talk) 05:42, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Were any Torres Strait Islanders involved?

I'm wondering about the involvement of Torres Strait Islander people in frontier wars - were there any? Based on the brief bit of work I've done in that area, I remember missions on the islands... But were they involved in any skirmishes, murders or massacres? In Queensland perhaps? I'll google when I have time, but just thought I'd raise it here while I thought of it, because they're mentioned in the lead but not the body of the article. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 12:17, 1 February 2021 (UTC)