Here are some resources for a series of lessons on "Disasters".
This is a topic that should make it easy to engage your students. Who doesn't share a morbid fascination with things that blow up, fall down or cause mayhem?
First, let's make an inventory of catastrophes that might overtake us (Catastrophe, by the way, comes from a Greek word used in the theatre and simply means 'overturning' or a 'sudden turn'). We'll divide them into categories:
A range of activities can be undertaken to explore these phenomena. These resources are geared towards the Life skills section of the Year 7-10 NSW Science Syllabus, and will be suitable for presentation to lower secondary or mixed-capacity classes requiring special assistance.
Questions:
Students could view any number of the following video fragments and answer questions about those disasters, such as
Categorising them as natural or man-made,
Estimating its severity (by destruction or mortality),
Commenting on the rarity or repeatability of the disaster,
Describing the circumstances necessary for a person to be at risk (eg, living near a volcano, living near the coast, living in a certain climate or environment).
Engagement tasks:
Students could write a first hand account of a disaster, describing what happened and how it felt.
Students could construct a model of a volcano out of papier mâché or modeling clay and simulate an "eruption" with a variety of benign reactions. Sudsy vinegar and bi-carb soda is one option, potassium pomangenate (Condy's crystals) and Glycerine is another. Both would require an outdoor lesson to do safely.
Students could undertake an experiment to try and create a vortex. The simplest vortex experiment consists of two large soft drink bottles taped together, mouth to mouth, with one bottle filled with water. Another experiment is more elaborate, involving setting up a large flat indoor space with five or more pedestal fans in a circle, angled slightly inward. A smoke machine in the centre makes the vortex of spinning air visible, although some effect could also be demonstrated with any gossamer material such as a silk scarf, plastic bag or styrene pellets.
A third outdoor experiment could be done under teacher supervision as a companion to a viewing of the Hindenburg disaster. Two party balloons can be filled; one with Helium to demonstrate a non-flammable lifting gas, and another with natural gas (if Hydrogen gas is too hard to come by). Both balloons are placed at the end of long poles and brought into contact with a candle flame. The relative safety of flammable and non-flammable gases will become obvious.
Video material:
Flooding (especially relevant for Hawkesbury Nepean residents - footage is of local floods).
Earthquakes
Volcanos
Tsunamis
Hurricanes, Typhoons and Cyclones (you might want to spell out that these are the same)
Here you will find a humorous 4 minute summary of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet made using some animation software called "Videoscribe" from Sparkol.
This software is available as a free trial and provides an easy-to-use interface for the creation of multimedia content.
Not only does this video teach you about Romeo and Juliet, but it should inspire you to think about how your students could use this (or a similar tool like Prezi) to create multimedia.
This was created by myself and fellow teacher Zach Jones.
You can go directly to the video at YouTube HERE, or click the play button in the embedded video below.
This is a demonstration of the kind of text that a Year 10 Advanced English Class will need to produce as an assessment task. The
assessment task would require students to combine knowledge of their chosen text,
critical analysis and digital textual creation skills, specifically with a direction to compare
texts with similar themes or motifs.
The analytical skills developed throughout this task
and the teaching sequence leading up to it will begin to scaffold students towards the
level of text analysis required in years 11 and 12.
The assessment task will ask students to create a plot summary of a written text
of their choice, highlighting major themes or plot features. This could be recorded as a
voice-over, and accompanied by images highlighting popular texts (movie, T.V. show,
graphic novel etc) that share the identified plot devices or themes. The video will be
composed using VideoScribe, and should be between 3 and 4 minutes long.
Through this task students will achieve a number of the outcomes in the NSW 2012 English Syllabus: Outcome 1 (EN5-1A), as they compose
an informative text through digital media that draws upon both written and visual texts.
Students will also achieve Outcome 2 (EN5-2A), combining a range of skills and
processes to respond to texts and compose their own digital text.
Teaching Sequence
This assessment will occur at the end of a unit in which students study John
Boyne's 'The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas', and the film 'Rabbit-Proof Fence' through the
theme of barriers. This will have given the students an understanding of the principles
of intertextuality and analysis.
The teaching sequence leading up to the issuing of this task will begin with
showing the class a short video (for example the Tropfest 2011 finalist, 'Missing Her',
available on Youtube). The teacher would
then facilitate a class discussion in which students highlight the major plot devices and
themes of this video. A mindmap could link these plot devices and themes to other texts
the students suggest that utilise the same devices:
This in-class activity will scaffold students into the assessment task, familiarising
them with the identification of major themes and plot devices, and how these can be
linked to similar popular texts.
At this point in the lesson, the demonstration video will be shown to students,
modelling the type of text they will be required to create. The video will be explained by
the teacher, especially highlighting the use of particular techniques (such as transitions
and sound effects), in order to convey an understanding of the digital textual creation
skills that can be utilised to convey an engaging message. An explanation of the task,
and class discussion answering any questions will follow.
A lesson will then be devoted to familiarising students with the digital tools
necessary for the completion of this task, prior to work on the task itself. It is assumed
that the school has purchased a license for VideoScribe, which the students can log on
to and use the software. If this is unavailable, Prezi software is available for free, and
could be used to develop a comparable product. Students will be advised that several
programs will need to be used in combination to achieve the desired effect. The
demonstration text used Audacity (for sound recording), Garageband (for editing and
foley) and VideoScribe (trial version), with images and royalty-free sound clips sourced
online, and tropes researched through sites like the excellent http://tvtropes.org.
Rationale
This type of digital text offers a number of affordances, including engagement,
and the capacity to highlight relations between voice and images without specifically
explaining them. One benefit of this text type in the context of the task assigned to
students is that it requires the use of several different ICT tools to create a single
product.
This combination of ICT tools, text analysis and the comparison of texts required
in this task make for a rich learning experience, engaging higher order thinking skills
such as analysis, synthesis and creation, as identified in Bloom's revised taxonomy. This task will scaffold students
towards the higher levels of text analysis, comparison, and contrast required in stage 6
English.
The demonstration text highlights the intertextuality that forms a core
component of this task, and this will be explained to students in the teaching sequence.
Students are not only able, but are required to employ this rhetorical device, combining
images from visual texts with a voice recording, detailing the major plot devices and themes of a written text. They will learn to identify the common themes that run through
many works, even in different genres. Romeo and Juliet, for instance, evokes West
Side Story, The Notebook, Boy Meets Girl, Avatar, The Godfather, and many others
(feuding families, forbidden love, secret marriage, etc). If the text chosen matches the
archetype of the Hero’s Journey, reference could be made to Joseph Campbell’s TheHero of a Thousand Faces, and its identification of tropes seen in Star Wars, The
Matrix and so on (The chosen one, the sage, the refusal of the quest, etc).
The
demonstration text also highlights the useful use of humour in creating an engaging
narrative.
Similarly, the combination of written, visual and oral/aural texts required in this
task, cater to a variety of learning preferences in students. Students will not be
specifically informed of this affordance, but will benefit from it regardless as they
complete the task, and, to a lesser extent, simply in viewing the demonstration text
itself.
In this post, I'm putting some lesson plan information you might find useful to teach some lessons about a great, humorous science fiction short story by Terry Bisson called They're Made Out Of Meat. (<-- link takes you to the text of the story)
A still from the best adaptation of They're Made Out Of Meat.
The story was first published in Omni magazine in 1990. It’s the story of two alien beings conversing
about their discovery that the intelligent life on Earth, is made out of meat.
Flesh. Us. This is evidently a disturbing and nonsensical proposition, and the
beings decide to delete the records of their discovery to avoid further
discomfort. The story works because it’s punchy and brief,
with the dialogue between the two protagonists flowing and exuding variously
disbelief, bemusement and yet a very alien detachment to the hopes of mankind.
This story has been cited in sociological and philosophical contexts. One example is its
use to demonstrate “Carbon chauvinism”; the idea that intelligent life can only
“look like us”. This has an obvious analogue at a cultural level. Is our way of
looking at other ways of being, the only valid way? How do we feel at the way
the aliens treat us? This relates
directly to a number of cross-curriculum priorities stated in the NSW English syllabus,
including “Ethical understanding”, “Intercultural understanding” and “Diversity
and difference” (p9 of the 2009 Syllabus)
The original story gives
no clues as to the location or physical description of the protagonists. Bisson
has presented the story theatrically and provides this description:
The set is a deep space
galactic panorama projected on a screen--the Universe. Two lights moving like
fireflies among the stars on the screen represent the the TWO VOICES
Lesson 1 begins with the best adaptation of the
story, a short film made by Stephen O’Regan in 2005. As you can see, it
dispenses with Bisson’s setup, and demonstrates its wonderful malleability.
I wrote to O’Regan (now in New York) to ask about how
his version differs from the text (the flourishes with costuming, the behaviors
of the extras, the music, and his excisions from the original. He wrote back:
Regarding the
excisions...we shot all the dialogue...but simply put...it dragged too long on
screen no matter how clever the writing was on page. So I had to be tough on
it. Hah...at one point I cut it down to a 2 minute version.
The video is watched twice. Once in isolation so
it can be absorbed without preconception. Then again reading along with the text
to compare it to the original. Differences are noted. Students examine how the
choices affect the meaning of the story. Multiple discourses are evoked: How
are humans represented? How are the “aliens” (focus on “otherness”)? Does the
film exist in only one genre? Are there analogies between the aliens attitudes
to humanity and our attitude towards other complex life on Earth? (Dolphins?
Termites? Primates? Western culture vs other cultures?). How does costuming,
the music, or the pacing of the dialogue affect meaning? Could this story
suggest an answer to the “Fermi Paradox”? (the lack of evidence for intelligent
life in the universe when the scientific consensus is that, statistically, it
could be common). Why would the aliens be so averse to the idea of sentient meat? (Aside: our word meat
comes from old English mete, meaning
food generally. Are we food?)
As far as language
is concerned, we explore several features. It is vernacular (The use of “Omigod”,
“Nope”). Adjectives, exposition, in fact any context, are lacking. The
repetition of the word “meat” is so pervasive, the phenomenon of “SemanticSatiation” occurs (when a word is repeated so much, it loses its meaning. The
falling-apart of signifier and signified. Who knew there was a term for that?)
As the text is entirely dialogue, with no descriptive element or exposition, we
are left to infer the what/who/where. What effect to these choices have? (For
example, do we end up thinking of this meat as, say, a steak, than our own meat? Our own grey matter and
viscera?)
If time permits, vignettes from two other filmed
adaptations and one audio-only adaptation can be sampled (although I don’t
recommend watching them all in their entirety) for contrast. How do they differ? For example, in one, the alien kills a human. Do they use the "whole" text? Which one is best? I'll wager the one with the most changes. Can you cite other works that have changed in adaptation?What about the the “reboot” phenomenon in Hollywood? The
difference between the Tolkien books and movies, etc.
At the end of the lesson, students are grouped and
told in the next lesson(s) they will be creating their own interpretation of
the story.
In lesson 2,
students choose from some options to extend their exploration. They could
record an audio version of the dialog (in pairs) or a video version (groups of
3 or 4) using what are likely to be a plethora of student owned smartphones or
iPods. Students choose which role to play, and more importantly, what could be
added to their performance to make it distinctive. For those struggling for
inspiration, suggest: Being robots, speaking with an unnatural cadence,
deliberately mispronouncing words, emphasizing a particular emotion (disgust,
incredulity, amusement), wearing attire (sunglasses, hats?), dubbing their
dialog over footage of other animals or objects (Two dogs? Two rubbish bins?
Sock puppets?). As the aliens are evidently in “human” form, are they
phantasms? Have they “possessed” two bodies? Either assumption may change the
performance. Could intertextuality between this work and other texts (X-Files? Invasion of the Body Snatchers?)
inform or influence our understanding or representation here?
Post processing in a computer might alter the
pitch of voices or the hue of skin. Imagination is more important than mastery
in execution, and students should at least present some evidence of their
intent in development by the end of the lesson if the project will go on. Some
students may choose a representation that does not lend itself to a recorded
format, and has to be performed live. Some students may choose to re-write the
story in a different genre or perspective, or to write a sequel.
Enterprising students should be given leave to
develop their project in this lesson but not record it if they have
undertaken to film or record it elsewhere. These two lessons may be assumed to
be the first of 3 or more lessons on the subject (the assignment criteria
didn’t say they couldn’t be). Future lessons could be ICT lessons in video or
audio editing, podcasting or vodcasting the raw material accompanied with a
discussion about how the medium and technology enable new meanings or change
the perception of the text.
The textbook Charged with Meaning (p275)suggests that the principles necessary
to support students in creating screen or drama narratives are to encourage
collaboration, promote self-management, to express contemporary cultural
knowledge, employ flexible learning in space/time, permitting trial and error,
and utilizing intertextual knowledge. These activities are geared toward
applying these pedagogical principles.
Resources:
The freeloader adaptation (2005) directed by Stephen O'Regan. In my view, the best adaptation of Bisson's story there is.
Another adaptation, using the whole story, but the alien kills a human (definitely not in the original!)
Edgar Allan Poe's 1845 poem, The Raven is one of my all time favourites. This post is, unlike others on this blog, for students. Rather, I have collected here some resources you as a teacher may wish to use to present the poem to high school students. First, some audio visual links. The Simpsons version is wonderful (can you believe it dates from 1990?) There are no good versions on YouTube, but a passable one here:
It's far superior to other youtube renditions that are little more than readings with photos like those from Bob McGraw, John DeLancie or Christopher Walken I'm also a fan of the Interactive Raven web page, which allows you to select a stanza and have the poetic devices, and some difficult terms, explained. I've prepared some sheets with the poem, and some resources relating to the poem for you:
Click this thumbnail for a PDF of the poem
Click this thumbnail for a PDF of a glossary of likely problem words and phrases from the poem
Should your students ask about a Hollywood movie titled "The Raven" with John Cusack, you can disabuse them of the thought it has anything to do with the poem. It's a murder mystery that casts a fictionalised version of Poe as a sleuth in pursuit of a serial killer who is using Poe's own horror stories as inspiration. Sounds insipid. Here's all you need to know about Poe himself:
Born: Boston, January 19, 1809. Died: October 7, 1849 (aged 40)
Born as Edgar Poe. Orphaned young when his mother died shortly after his father abandoned the family.
Taken in by John and Frances Allan, of Richmond, Virginia, but they never formally adopted him.
Attended the University of Virginia for one semester but left due to lack of money.
Had a contentious relationship with his foster father John Allan, so hardly ever used his middle name. He always published as "Edgar A. Poe"
Published his first work, a book of poetry, at the age of 18.
In 1835 (at the age of 26), he married Virginia Clemm, his 13-year-old cousin. She died of Tuberculosis 12 years later.
By 1843, Poe was so broke that he found himself down to his last $4.50 and spent time stopping people on the street to ask for money for food.
When "The Raven" was published in 1845, it became an instant hit.
Poe was dead, two years later.
The cause of his death is unknown and has been variously attributed to alcohol, brain congestion, cholera, drugs, heart disease, rabies, suicide, tuberculosis, and "other agents"
In 2000, New York University announced plans to demolish the home where Edgar Allan Poe lived from 1841 to 1844 in order to make room for its law school. Outraged preservationists and Poe fans took to the streets in protest, leading to a compromise in which NYU promised to use the bricks from the original façade in the new building.
Every year since 1949, an anonymous fan known as the "Poe Toaster" has visited Poe's grave on the night of his birthday and has left a partially filled bottle of cognac and three roses.
As a student at West Point, Poe used to tell fellow cadets that his grandfather was the infamous traitor Benedict Arnold. Great story, not true.
Here are my edited lesson notes:
These are two lessons where we look in detail at Edgar
Allan Poe’s The Raven, in its context
as a “short text”.
Poe’s poem is iconic, and lends itself to being
examined in its original written form as well as appreciated also as a
performance piece (lesson 1), and even as parody (lesson 2). I chose it because
it’s a classic, cracking supernatural “scary story” (horror, always a winner),
because there are adaptations (eg the Simpsons version) that make an otherwise
fusty poem fun, because it will challenge students in terms of their vocabulary
and their knowledge of metaphors drawn from mythology, because the enquiry
questions force students to “take sides” and realize that meaning is
negotiated, not handed down, and frankly because there are lots of great
resources already out there on the poem.
Ambitiously, I intend to perform the poem, from
memory, in a setting easily created (a darkened room such as the school’s drama
room), by the light of a candle, with some thunderstorm effects playing softly
in the background. I’ve actually done this, the whole poem, from memory.
We spend some time talking about the metalanguage
of the poetic devices used by Poe (assonance, alliteration, trochaic octameter, etc),
but this is intentionally brief, and yields to a more detailed analysis of the
poem’s allusions, meanings, and themes. Students will be invited to make a
personal response by stating what they think, or how it makes them feel. What is its value as… a scary supernatural
story? A tragic tale of lost love? A study of the descent into madness? I will
encourage students to look deeper and to suggest that these, and other layers
can be simultaneously true and valid responses. Poe’s own essay on the
composition of the poem can be introduced, and his views of value of the poem
being in the “totality of its impression on the soul” (paraphrase), and the
almost mechanistic process he used to craft it can be cited. We can ask: Is the
only valid view of the poem Poe’s view, or do we create our own meaning arising
from the interaction of the text with our own minds, experiences and culture?
Lesson
1 builds the
scaffold: Present the poem in a theatrical environment isolated from
distractions. Demonstrate first hand its mood and pace. Examine the poem for
difficult words or phrases so meaning is not lost because of any ignorance of
terms. Begin to explore the allusions, the mythological and biblical
references, and comb the text for the phrases that set the scene, the time, and
the position and internal state of the narrator. The brief treatment of the
metalanguage can go here.
The enquiry questions may
be introduced, but not debated, since this is the purpose of lesson 2.
Lesson
2 begins with the
adaptation of the poem that appeared on the first Simpsons “Treehouse of Horror” episode in 1990, narrated by James
Earl Jones. Online versions are available, but not on YouTube (see my blog).
Not only is this good fun, but it challenges students to examine how texts
change in adaptation or parody (e.g note the Simpsons version excises Stanza 15
and 16), and we ask “Is this as valid as the unadulterated work?”, “Would it
matter if Poe would not have approved?” and muse on the phenomenon of the
“mashup”; blendings of texts, even between 168 year old poems and postmodern
pop-culture cartoons. What other blendings of classic works and pop-culture can
we think of (Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and
Juliet? How about the book Pride and
Prejudice, and Zombies?) When does an adaptation so depart from the
original it becomes… something else? (eg old vs. new Battlestar Galactica?)
Then I reintroduce the
enquiry questions and put the students in a fishbowl or debate format as they
argue for or against some key questions surrounding meaning. Was the Raven
actually speaking? Did the Raven have a message? Were the questions the Raven
was “answering” all in the narrators head? Was he going mad?
Here are some enquiry questions you can use (adapted from another source)
Do you
think the speaker, the narrator of the poem, is insane? Is there another
explanation for his behaviour?
How does
the narrator’s behaviour change over the course of the poem?
Is it
possible that the speaker is making up or imagining some of the weird events in
this poem?
Do you
think the Raven pushes our speaker over the edge, or does he do it to himself?
Is nature torturing him, or his own mind?
Why do you
think a raven was for Poe a useful symbol? What if, instead, the ghost of
Lenore had showed up?
Do you
think religion plays an important role in this poem? If so, where do you see
the evidence?
The speaker
half-suspects the Raven is an evil spirit. Does this seem reasonable to you?
What evidence can you muster for or against this theory?
Does the
talking Raven actually seem supernatural to you? Is it possible that there is
nothing going on here that can't be explained in a scientific manner?
Does it
seem like the idea of heaven provides any lasting hope in this poem?
And here are my links to my two lesson plans, in PDF format
Here are some resources that we will be referring to in class as we examine the topic Aboriginals and Indigenous Peoples, Colonisation and Contact History.
An important sub-heading for this unit of work could be "The History Wars". It is important both to be sensitive to the perceived history and identity of people, and also to ask whether the views being advanced are historically correct or serve a political purpose.
1. Governor Davey's Proclamation is a picture created in Tasmania in 1830. The idea was that it be shown to the local Aboriginal population, and convey to them the idea that the "white man's justice" applied equally to both populations. If a white man killed a black man, the same punishment would be meted out as in the situation where a black killed a white.
2. In the period ending Governor Macquarie's tenure, barely 3000 square kilometres had been officially granted to settlers. However, starting in the 1820s, land grants exploded, nearly doubling within the decade. Around 1826, the formal limits of the colony were set down as the "Nineteen Counties". It was deemed too hard to provide governance over the lands beyond these counties, such as police, schools or churches. Here are a couple of images showing the counties and their larger context within New South Wales:
Note this land extends up past Port Stephens in the north, out past Mudgee and Bathurst in the west, and down past the Shoalhaven river in the south. Have you visited any of these places. How many hours away are they, even by car? This total area was the extent of the "official" colony in the 1820s.
Aboriginal peoples certainly lived in these areas at this time. The government of the day did not consider that there was any obligation to compensate Aboriginals as they were pushed out of these areas, and in 1836 the Governor made first use of the term "Terra Nullius", meaning "land that belonged to no one".
3. When studying history, we can gain a lot by turning to contemporary accounts of life and attitudes. Such sources have value, but we should also remember that they are documents of their time. As well as containing truth, they reflect the attitudes and assumptions of that era.
A great source is a booklet written by two men in 1893.
Titled "NOTES ON THE ABORIGINES OF NEW SOUTH WALES". It was written by George Thornton (who was a Sydney Mayor and NSW Parliamentarian) & Richard Hill (a founding member of the Aboriginal protection board). Both men had had a long association with Aboriginals and spoke simultaneously with warmth towards them, and the condescension characteristic of the age. Click this image of the front cover to access a copy in PDF format.
In areas of settlement, and especially in the squatter lands beyond the 19 counties where the laws were loosely applied (or not at all), there were instances of conflict between Aboriginals and settlers. The degree of violence is disputed, and forms the basis for what are now called the "History Wars"; arguments among historians about both historical facts, and what they say about our national character, and relations between Europeans and Aboriginals. We must examine claims that at times seem completely contradictory.
We will watch in class one (possibly more) episodes of the SBS documentary series "The First Australians". Here is the first part of episode 2, and the SBS site has links to all the others.
What are the History Wars?
When approaching controversial topics, we should expect that there are opposing views. We should learn discernment. Is the view intended to serve a political purpose? Is the view supported by documentary sources? Is there genuine ambiguity about the motivations of people in the past because their inner thoughts are not recorded for posterity? To what degree can we infer historical facts and motivations?
There are some strident critics of the "orthodox" view that Aboriginals were deliberately massacred with the tacit approval of the governing authorities in the 1800s, and of the view that Aboriginal children were stolen from their families in huge numbers for no reason until well into the 20th century. One such historian is Keith Windschuttle. He has written a number of books where he claims stories of Aboriginal massacre are hugely over-estimated, and that the "Stolen Generation" story has likewise been overblown, for political purposes. He offers his own analysis of historical sources to back these claims.
Here is an important point: Where there are opposing views that both claim to be based on facts, we must evaluate each side properly. Reading histories that routinely claim that there was widespread genocide in early Australia (the worst possible crime that can be claimed) without evaluating opposing views is unwise.
Here is a website with some information about these opposing views:
Another controversy relates to the name adopted by Aboriginal people in North Western Sydney. You may remember an assembly or other civic function where recognition is given to the "Traditional custodians and inhabitants of the land, the Darug people."
A local historian, G.E Ford has advanced a theory that this term, Darug was invented by a (white) historian in Blacktown and first mentioned in a book in 1993, and that no Aboriginals in north west Sydney had used this term to apply to themselves before that time. Another people, the Dharug people (note the spelling), were from the Georges River area, but were unrelated. G.E Ford suggests that the correct name for the Aboriginals in the Hawkesbury and Blue Mountains areas is Darkiñung.Here is a link to Ford's analysis of historical sources and oral histories.
Questions:
What do you think about the growth of the Australian nation? Should we be proud of it?
What do you think about the treatment of Aboriginal people since the First Fleet. Should we be proud of it?
What might we say about the motivations (if not the outcomes) of many who formed policy towards Aboriginals?
Can historical controversies be hijacked by people with "an axe to grind"?
Why is it important to look at both sides of a story?
Discuss this statement: "Although we can argue about history, it is more important that we treat the people around us now with respect."
Some Definitions
Squatting:One
who occupied a large tract of land not formally granted by the Government in
order to graze livestock. Initially often having no legal rights to the
land, they gained its usage by being the first (and often the only) Europeans
in the area. These lands may or may not have been inhabited by Aboriginals.
Genocide:The
deliberate killing of a large group of people, esp. those of a particular
ethnic group or nation.
Massacre:In
indiscriminate and brutal slaughter of people
History
Wars: The
public debate over the interpretation of the history of the British
colonisation of Australia and development of contemporary Australian society.
Black
Armband View of History: The argument over whether accounts of
Australian history tend towards an overly negative or an overly positive point
of view. (The opposite is suggested to
be the “Three Cheers” view” – Geoffrey Blainey)
Black
War: Even though there were many conflicts between
Aboriginals and settlers around Australia, historians usually use this term to
refer to a period of conflict in Tasmania in the 1820s and 1830s.
Dispossession: To have one’s property, and specifically land, taken away without
compensation.
Treaty: A formal agreement between two peoples or nations to settle a conflict,
or to set out rights, obligations or compensation.
Question: Who is bound by a treaty?
Why was
there a treaty in New Zealand between the Maori and the settlers, the treaty of
Waitangi in 1840, but no treaty in Australia?
Comparing Texts
We need to learn to compare evidence and decide how persuasive it is. Sometimes this evidence is contradictory. We will be looking at this in more detail in class, but here are some examples relating to one part of Aboriginal History, the conflict between settlers and Aboriginals in Tasmania during the 1820s and 1830s.
Compare what these two sources are saying:
Source 1:The
first massacre of Tasmanian Aboriginal people occurred at Risden Cove in 1804,
when Lieutenant John Bowen and his troops fired on a group which included women
and children. By 1806 clashes between Aboriginal people and settlers were
common. The Tasmanians speared stock and shepards; in retaliation Europeans
gave them poison flour, abducted their children to use as forced labour, and
raped and tortured the women.
-->
Source 2: "[There is a claim that]
in the four years between 1804 and 1808 British
colonists killed 100 Aborigines in Van Diemen's Land .
However, if you look up her source for this, the diary of the colony's chaplain
Robert Knopwood, you will find he only recorded four Aboriginal deaths in that
period...
-->
[There is a claim]
-->Tasmanian settlers killed Aborigines by offering them poisoned flour. Their
sole source for this is a diary entry by George Augustus Robinson in which he
recorded a conversation between a superintendent of the Van Diemen's Land
Company and his convict shepherds. If you go back and check the original source
in Robinson's diary entry of August 8 1830 you find him recording that the
convicts asked the superintendent for some poison. He asked them why they
wanted it. Robinson's diary continues:
They
said: “Oh sir, we will poison the natives' dogs"
These two sources are at odds. They are interpreting what they both claim are the primary sources of historical data, which is documents, records, diaries and soforth. Which is correct? Our responsibility is to dig, to explore further, to see the evidence ourselves and to be persuaded by one side or another (and sometimes, both sides are wrong!).
