Re: Awkward moment when extension history is in 2 days and you feel like you know not
Specifically, what are the history wars exactly?
It's the debate on what is Australia's colonial/indigenous history. The Black Armband vs. the White Blindfold. What actually happened in our past? What evidence is there to support the genocidal claims or the massacres that may or may not have occurred back then? Did the amount of violence reach the point of massacre or were there just merely small incidences between the colonials and tribes?
But that's just the 'history' of it. We also want to look at the 'historiography' of it. What evidence is there to support certain claims? Is colonial evidence sufficient to determine what happened? This evidence would be mainly consisting of written evidence, but what makes written evidence more authoritative than oral evidence, passed down by Indigenous elders? Are both mutually exclusive or is there a common ground in their "stories"?
As you can see, I've basically strung a lot of questions together, but that's because I don't exactly know what happened, hence why it's a debate - a historiographical debate. You have to come to your own conclusion about which side presents the more "truthful" and reliable "story", and it's your interpretation which becomes your historiographical viewpoint.