Forgotten voices

Contention and disquiet never seem too far away when the subjects of Van Diemen’s Land and colonial warfare are raised. These recent books demonstrate that while the campaign by Keith Windschuttle to undermine the reputations of “revisionist” historians continues, the task of questioning both entrenched and emerging narratives in Australia’s account of its treatment of Indigenous people has not been diminished. Murray Johnson and Ian McFarlane’s Van Diemen’s Land: An Aboriginal History follows Henry Reynolds’s most recent volume, Forgotten War; while different in scope, the two books remind us that the details and consequences of colonial conflict with Australia’s First Peoples remain vitally important. This is no better evidenced than by the contestation that occurs over factual, source and narrative validity in recent historical literature.