Henry Reynolds (historian)

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The Other Side of the Frontier, published in 1981, was ground-breaking in that it was the first major work by an historian to write Australian history from an Aboriginal perspective. [3]

In many books and academic articles Reynolds has sought to explain his view of the high level of violence and conflict involved in the colonisation of Australia, and the Aboriginal resistance to numerous massacres of Indigenous people. Reynolds, along with many other historians, estimate that up to 3,000 Europeans and at least 20,000 Aboriginal Australians were killed directly in the frontier violence, and many more Aboriginal peoples died indirectly through the introduction of European diseases and starvation caused by being forced from their productive tribal lands. [7]

Geoffrey Blainey and Keith Windschuttle categorise his approach as a black armband view of Australian history. In 2002, Windschuttle, in his book The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Volume One: Van Diemen's Land 1803–1847, [8] [9] disputed whether the colonial settlers of Australia committed widespread genocide against Indigenous Australians, and accused Reynolds of misrepresenting, inventing, or exaggerating evidence. Subsequently, in Whitewash: on Keith Windschuttle's fabrication of Aboriginal history (2003; edited by Robert Manne), it was argued that Windschuttle failed to meet the criteria that he used to assess "orthodox historians" and his accusations were thus flawed. [10] [11]

Friendship with Eddie Mabo

Reynolds struck up a friendship with Eddie Mabo, who was then a groundsman and gardener at James Cook University. In his book Why Weren't We Told?, Reynolds describes the talks they had regarding Mabo's people's rights to their lands, on Murray Island, in the Torres Strait. Reynolds writes:

Eddie [...] would often talk about his village and about his own land, which he assured us would always be there when he returned because everyone knew it belonged to his family. His face shone when he talked of his village and his land.

So intense and so obvious was his attachment to his land that I began to worry about whether he had any idea at all about his legal circumstances. [...] I said something like: "You know how you've been telling us about your land and how everyone knows it's Mabo land? Don't you realise that nobody actually owns land on Murray Island? It's all crown land."

He was stunned. [...] How could the whitefellas question something so obvious as his ownership of his land? [12]

Reynolds looked into the issue of Indigenous land ownership in international law, and encouraged Mabo to take the matter to court. "It was there over the sandwiches and tea that the first step was taken which led to the Mabo judgement in June 1992". [12] Mabo then talked to lawyers, and Reynolds "had little to do with the case itself from that time", although he and Mabo remained friends until the latter's death in January 1992. [13] Reynolds' 1970s oral history project however contributed to the High Court's recognition of land rights. [3]

Other activities

In September 2022, Reynolds appeared with filmmaker Rachel Perkins at a National Press Club of Australia address, soon after the airing of Perkins' SBS Television series, The Australian Wars . [14]

Awards and honours

Henry Reynolds has received the following awards and honours:

Conference

In tribute to Reynolds' seventieth year, the conference Race, Nation, History: A Conference in Honour of Henry Reynolds was held in August 2008. It was sponsored by the Australian National University's Research School of the Humanities and the Research School of the Social Sciences, the National Library of Australia, and the University of Tasmania. Larissa Behrendt of University of Technology Sydney was among the speakers. [2] [21] [lower-alpha 1]

Personal life

In December 1963 Henry Reynolds married Margaret Reynolds (née Lyne), [1] who served as an ALP senator for Queensland in Federal Parliament from 1983 until 1999. [15] Their daughter is Anna Reynolds, the Lord Mayor of Hobart. [23] [24]

Major works

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Selected papers from the conference were published in a volume by Australian Scholarly Publishing, but do not appear to be otherwise available. [22]

Related Research Articles

<i>Mabo v Queensland (No 2)</i> 1992 High Court of Australia decision which recognised native title

Mabo v Queensland is a landmark decision of the High Court of Australia that recognised the existence of Native Title in Australia. It was brought by Eddie Mabo against the State of Queensland and decided on 3 June 1992. The case is notable for being the first in Australia to recognise pre-colonial land interests of Indigenous Australians within the common law of Australia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aboriginal Tasmanians</span> Indigenous people of the Australian island state of Tasmania

The Aboriginal Tasmanians are the Aboriginal people of the Australian island of Tasmania, located south of the mainland. For much of the 20th century, the Tasmanian Aboriginal people were widely, and erroneously, thought of as being an extinct cultural and ethnic group that had been intentionally exterminated by white settlers. Contemporary figures (2016) for the number of people of Tasmanian Aboriginal descent vary according to the criteria used to determine this identity, ranging from 6,000 to over 23,000.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eddie Mabo</span> Land rights activist for Indigenous Australians (1936–1992)

Edward Koiki Mabo was an Indigenous Australian man from the Torres Strait Islands known for his role in campaigning for Indigenous land rights in Australia, in particular the landmark decision of the High Court of Australia that recognised that indigenous rights to land had continued after the British Crown acquired sovereignty and that the international law doctrine of terra nullius was not applicable to Australian domestic law. High court judges considering the case Mabo v Queensland found in favour of Mabo, which led to the Native Title Act 1993 and established native title in Australia, officially recognising the rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Black War</span> Period of violent conflict between British colonists and Aboriginal Australians in Tasmania

The Black War was a period of violent conflict between British colonists and Aboriginal Tasmanians in Tasmania from the mid-1820s to 1832. The conflict, fought largely as a guerrilla war by both sides, claimed the lives of 600 to 900 Aboriginal people and more than 200 British colonists. The near-destruction of the Aboriginal Tasmanians and the frequent incidence of mass killings have sparked debate among historians over whether the Black War should be defined as an act of genocide.

Keith Windschuttle is an Australian historian. He was appointed to the board of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in 2006. He was editor of Quadrant from 2007 to 2015 when he became chair of the board and editor-in-chief. He was the publisher of Macleay Press, which operated from 1994 to 2010.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Manne</span> Australian political scientist

Robert Michael Manne is an Emeritus Professor of politics and Vice-Chancellor's Fellow at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia. He is a leading Australian public intellectual.

The history wars is a term used in Australia to describe the public debate about the interpretation of the history of the European colonisation of Australia and the development of contemporary Australian society, particularly with regard to their impact on Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The term "history wars" emerged in the late 1990s during the term of the Howard government, and despite efforts by some of Howard's successors, the debate is ongoing, notably reignited in 2016 and 2020.

Stuart Forbes Macintyre was an Australian historian, and Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne from 1999 to 2008. He was voted one of Australia's most influential historians.

Lyndall Ryan, is an Australian academic and historian. She has held positions in Australian studies and women's studies at Griffith University and Flinders University and was the foundation professor of Australian studies and head of the School of Humanities at the University of Newcastle from 1998 to 2005. She is currently a conjoint professor in the Centre for the History of Violence at the University of Newcastle.

Margaret Reynolds served as an Australian Labor Party Senator for Queensland from 1983 to 1999.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Mansell</span> Australian lawyer and Tasmanian Aboriginal activist

Michael Alexander Mansell is a Tasmanian Aboriginal (Palawa) activist and lawyer who has campaigned for social, political and legal changes.

<i>The Other Side of the Frontier</i>

The Other Side of the Frontier is a history book published in 1981 by Australian historian Henry Reynolds. It is a study of Aboriginal Australian resistance to the British settlement, or invasion, of Australia from 1788 onwards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Australian frontier wars</span> 1788–1934 conflicts between settlers and Indigenous Australians

The Australian frontier wars were the violent conflicts between Indigenous Australians and primarily British settlers during the colonial period of Australia.

Marilyn Lee Lake, is an Australian historian known for her work on the effects of the military and war on Australian civil society, the political history of Australian women and Australian racism including the White Australia Policy and the movement for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander human rights. She was awarded a personal chair in history at La Trobe University in 1994. She has been elected a Fellow, Australian Academy of the Humanities and a Fellow, Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.

Norman James Brian Plomley regarded by some as one of the most respected and scholarly of Australian historians and, until his death, in Launceston, the doyen of Tasmanian Aboriginal scholarship.

<i>Mabo: Life of an Island Man</i> 1997 Australian documentary film by Trevor Graham

Mabo: Life of an Island Man is a 1997 Australian documentary film on the life of Indigenous Australian land rights campaigner Eddie Koiki Mabo, directed by Trevor Graham.

Margaret Susan "Peggy" Brock was an Australian historian and writer. Her major areas of interest were colonial and Indigenous history in Australia, the Pacific and parts of Canada and Africa, with particular interest in Australian Aboriginal women. Her work continues to be cited in national and international debates over Indigenous policy. Born in Adelaide, she took up academic positions and was at the end of her career emeritus professor at Edith Cowan University in Perth, Western Australia.

Lynette Wendy Russell, is an Australian historian, known for her work on the history of Indigenous Australians; in particular, anthropological history ; archaeology; gender and race, Indigenous oral history, and museum studies.

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 "Papers of Henry Reynolds". Trove . 17 July 1998. Retrieved 28 November 2023. Reference: Who's who in Australia 2001, pp. 1488-1489
  2. 1 2 "Race, Nation, History: A Conference in Honour of Henry Reynolds". Archived from the original on 24 October 2009. Retrieved 5 December 2017.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 "In Conversation with Henry Reynolds". Events - University of Tasmania, Australia. 2021. Retrieved 28 November 2023.
  4. ↑ Reynolds, Henry (1960), Some aspects of the intellectual and cultural life of nineteenth century Australia , retrieved 25 November 2023
  5. ↑ Reynolds, Henry (1963), The island colony : Tasmania, society and politics, 1880-1900, [Hobart], retrieved 25 November 2023
  6. ↑ "Writing History After Mabo: Henry Reynolds and Nick Brodie". Events - University of Tasmania, Australia. September 2023. Retrieved 28 November 2023.
  7. ↑ "The Statistics of Frontier Conflict". Kooriweb.org. Archived from the original on 9 October 2017. Retrieved 18 February 2014.
  8. ↑ Bowdler, Sandra. "Review of 'The Fabrication of Aboriginal History. Volume One, Van Diemen's Land 1803–1847′". Australian Archaeological Association. Archived from the original on 27 December 2020. Retrieved 11 September 2019.
  9. ↑ Ianziti, Gary. "Windschuttle at War: The Politics of Historiography in Australia. Paper presented to the Social Change in the 21st Century Conference" (PDF). QUT ePrints. Retrieved 11 September 2019.
  10. ↑ Manne, Robert, ed. (2003), Whitewash: on Keith Windschuttle's fabrication of Aboriginal history, Black Inc, ISBN   978-0-9750769-0-3
  11. ↑ Henderson, Gerard (7 December 2004). "The trouble with Keith Windschuttle". The Age. Retrieved 11 September 2019.
  12. 1 2 Reynolds, Henry, Why Weren't We Told?, 1999, ISBN   0-14-027842-7, p. 188
  13. ↑ Reynolds, Henry, Why Weren't We Told?, 1999, p. 191
  14. ↑ IN FULL: Rachel Perkins & Professor Henry Reynolds' Address to the National Press Club of Australia on YouTube (Address 23 November 2022; published on YouTube 15 September 2023.
  15. 1 2 3 4 5 "Guide to the Papers of Henry Reynolds – Biographical Note" (2018), National Library of Australia
  16. ↑ "1999 Human Rights Medal and Awards". Humanrights.gov.au Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. Archived from the original on 27 September 2007. Retrieved 11 August 2007.
  17. ↑ "Academy Fellow – Professor Henry Reynolds FASSA, FAHA". Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. Retrieved 4 October 2020.
  18. ↑ "Fellows: Henry Reynolds". Australian Academy of the Humanities. Retrieved 4 October 2020.
  19. ↑ "Australian Humanist of the Year", Humanists Australia
  20. ↑ "JCU graduation this weekend". JCU Australia. 11 April 2012. Retrieved 25 October 2023.
  21. ↑ Ryan, Lyndall (2008). "Race, Nation, History: A Conference in Honour of Henry Reynolds, Canberra, 29-30 August 2008". Labour History (95): 247–249. doi:10.2307/27516321. ISSN   0023-6942. JSTOR   27516321.
  22. ↑ Attwood, Bain, ed. (2009). Frontier, race, nation : Henry Reynolds and Australian history. Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing. ISBN   9781921509445.
  23. ↑ Beniuk, David (27 July 2012). "Historian's daughter takes on Wilkie". The Sydney Morning Herald . Retrieved 28 November 2023.
  24. ↑ "Lord Mayor Councillor Anna Reynolds". City of Hobart. Retrieved 28 November 2023.


Henry Reynolds

FAHA , FASSA
Born1938 (age 85–86)
Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
Awards Queensland Premier's Literary Award for Best Literary Work Advancing Public Debate (2000)
Queensland Premier's History Book Award (2008)
Prime Minister's Literary Award for Non-Fiction (2009)
Victorian Premier's Prize for Nonfiction (2014)
Academic background
Alma mater University of Tasmania (BA [Hons], MA)
International
National
Other
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