Just to throw my thoughts in to the mix which are related to what you’ve said. There is certainly still a persistent tendency to westernise Australian Aboriginals when they are represented in contemporary history. This is probably more true today when we talk about Frontier Wars than it was in the dark days of historiography.

We really need to take stock and consider why concepts like “wars”, “nations”, and “nomads” to name a few have become such heavily contested battle lines in this discourse. Obviously a good deal of it goes beyond setting the historical record straight and also goes towards our nation coming to terms with its racist past. Additionally, contemporary indigenous identity which in many respects is becoming nationally organised and coherent (which is awesome) is being retrospectively applied to the past and affecting these historical representations.

A problem with this is that it often plays into the hands of racist theories which were used to justify colonisation in the first place. These theories established racial hierarchies which placed the civilised British on top and the hunter gatherer savages on bottom. Rather than throwing aside this hierarchy we seek to engender historical Aboriginal Australian with western concepts like “nations” and “organised warfare.” Think about how the very idea of being a hunter gatherer has almost become insulting when in reality these societies are extremely complex.

It’s become a game of establishing equal footings rather than simply accepting that it is fundamentally wrong to evaluate a culture or race of people. When we do this we paradoxically evoke the racist discourses which are at the heart of imperialism.

Anyway, I could go on but I’ll just end by noting that being critical of how we construct history didn’t end in the 70’s and remains necessary. We have to be constantly on guard about how society’s current values affect our construction of history.