Many argue Samuel Griffith, twice Queensland premier and our first chief justice, is guilty of colonial war crimes. Raymond Evans searched for the evidence to nail him but found a different story.
A growing number of states have passed laws that restrict what teachers can teach about racism.
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By pushing the timing of approval back to April, likely just before the election, the government has put itself in a position to use the curriculum to score political points.
Stuart Macintyre was the prime target of the conservatives in the history wars. Our greatest historian of politics and society since the late 19th century, he was assiduous, dedicated and prolific.
Education Minister Alan Tudge has rejected the draft history curriculum. He wants students to learn that ‘we live in the greatest country on Earth’. That’s not history. It’s jingoistic nationalism.
What happens when the distant frontier takes up residence in the family home? How are we to remember our flawed ancestors? A new book grapples with these questions.
The Morrison government has committed $50million to celebrate next year’s 250th anniversary of Cook’s landing at Kurnell on April 29, 1770.
AAP/Marc McCormack
The government’s investment in a celebration of 250 years since James Cook’s voyage to and along Australia, if not done properly, will further inflame the history wars in Australia.
Politicians meddling in the history curriculum is nothing new, and it holds back progress in how history is taught.
Peter Rae/AAP
Australia has been having the same disagreement about what and how history should be taught. We need to move on and listen to the evidence so our children have the best history education possible.
Anzac Day, a celebration of the Anzac soldiers, pictured, has become a contentious issue in the “history wars”.
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The most popular history courses taught in Australian universities are still broad courses focused on significant historical events and periods, contrary to the recent IPA report.
Japan claims that the placement of “comfort girl” statues outside the Japanese legations in South Korea violates international law, but state practice and jurisprudence suggests otherwise.
Does this rock painting, featuring a long, white gun, depict first contact? Is it a work of history?
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Australian history is already a hotly contested discipline but is it time to broaden our definitions of the canon? Might an indigenous rock painting or a novel or a poem constitute a work of history?
Koori women Treahna Hamm, Vicki Couzens and Lee Darroch wear ‘Biaganga’, traditional possum coats at the Melbourne Museum’s Aboriginal Cultural Centre in Melbourne.
Julian Smith/AAP
Museums are cracking open the temperature-controlled, dehumidified display cases and inviting people in. Working with Aboriginal communities is reawakening cultural connections and ancient art forms.
There’s too much evidence of violence in Australia’s past to hide behind euphemisms.
The Founding of Australia, Algernon Talmadge, 1937.
Detailed historical research on the colonial frontier unequivocally supports the idea that Aboriginal people were subject to attack, assault, conquest and subjugation: all synonyms for the term ‘invasion’.
Drape ‘Anzac’ over an argument and, like a magic cloak, the argument is sacrosanct – even though it shouldn’t be.
AAP/Alexander Turnbull Library
Protests on Anzac Day, rather than being ‘utterly alien to Australians’, have a long tradition and embody the democratic right to dissent for which the troops fought.
In 2008, historian Dr. Anna Clark conducted a survey of the state of history education in Australian classrooms. The book that resulted from this study — History’s Children — presented a bleak image of…
It’s time for the National Museum to look to the future.
Sam Ilić
In an election year we need to remember that, in recent years in Australia, history has been the subject of fierce party politics, and we should spare a thought for our museum sector. In 1996, at the Sir…