Lyndall Ryan

CONFERENCE REPORT

Race, Nation, History: A Conference in Honour of Henry Reynolds, Canberra, 29–30 August 2008

On a cool, clear late August morning, about 150 people gathered in the Downstairs Lecture Theatre at the National Library of Australia, to attend the conference in honour of Henry Reynolds' seventieth birthday. Organised by Tom Griffiths from the History Program, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University and Bain Attwood, from Monash University and sponsored by the History Program in RSSS at the ANU, the School of History and Classics at the University of Tasmania and the National Library of Australia, which was celebrating its fortieth birthday in its current location.	1
The conference had two purposes: to critically assess Reynolds' work in a national and political context; and to address new questions and problems that he had helped to pioneer in the field of Aboriginal history. Over the two days, a very interested audience heard about 14 papers, spread over seven sessions. The last paper was presented by Reynolds himself.	2
In his opening address, Tom Griffiths said that Reynolds, the author of 11 single authored books had influenced two generations of historians. He could be likened to the British social historian E.P. Thompson, who re-imagined the way historians could write history. Reynolds had inhabited his work sympathetically and then pushed the boundaries of the discipline.	3
Most papers addressed the themes raised by Reynolds' work. On the first day, Ann Curthoys and Elizabeth Elbourne used Reynolds' This Whispering in Our Hearts (1998) to offer new insights on the British Humanitarians and the Colonial project; Rani Kerin used Reynolds' With the White People (1990) to offer a fascinating account of attitudes to the emergence of 'half-caste' children in northern South Australia in the 1930s; Daniel Richter from the University of Pennsylvania used Reynolds' work on terra nullius to enthrall the audience with a well illustrated and detailed account of 'The Strange Colonial North American Career of Terra Nullius' and James Boyce used Fate of a Free People (1995) and An Indelible Stain? (2001) to argue that the Tasmanian Aborigines were ethnically cleansed from western Tasmania between 1832 and 1834.	4
On the second day, Lisa Ford from Law at Macquarie University extended Reynolds' argument in The Law of the Land (1987, 1992, 2003) about Aboriginal sovereignty; Russell McGregor from James Cook University focussed on Assimilation and Aboriginality, Warwick Anderson from Sydney University used Nowhere People (2005) to offer a brilliant exposition titled 'Ambiguities of Race on the Reproductive Frontier', while Tim Rowse presented a highly contested assessment of the same text; Marilyn Lake used Drawing the Global Colour Line (2008) to make a plea for more subjectivity in writing about race and ideology; and Miranda Johnson used The Law of the Land and Aboriginal Sovereignty (1996) to present a brilliant case for the significance of the Gove Land Rights Case for Aboriginal history. This was followed by a paper delivered for Larissa Behrendt on historians and lawyers.	5
Three papers however, stood out. Dipash Chakrabarty, Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Chicago, in 'Henry Reynolds and the Politics of History', argued that Reynolds was in one sense a postcolonial historian in that he lived in proximity to the survivors of the colonial story. This was apparent in his first book, The Other Side of the Frontier (1981, 1982, 2006), the product of the wider historical reassessment of colonisation that was taking place in the 1960s and 1970s. E.P. Thompson and Eric Hobsbawm promoted the idea of history from below and how the industrial revolution gave rise to the politically aware worker and the revolutionary proletariat.	6
In this narrative however, the peasant remained the pre-political person who had to learn to deal with the modern state and in the process become political. Postcolonial historians disagreed. They argued that all peoples, including peasants are always political. Reynolds also understood this critical point. In reconceptualising the Aborigines as political subjects, he could speak of Aboriginal sovereignty. In representing the Aborigines as displaced and dispossessed, he turned Australian history inside out rather than upside down.	7
Reynolds was the first Australian historian to challenge the belief that the Aborigines had no political rights. Imagining how the Aborigines thought, he stepped into the other side of the creative cultural frontier, but at the same time, he never claimed to write Aboriginal history. In the process, Reynolds registered a sense of uncertainty about the past and opened up the revolutionary subject.	8
Mark McKenna in a fascinating paper on the public impact of Reynolds' history, explored the public reception of Reynolds' work and how it resonated with the experiences of his readers. He noted that Reynolds' Why Weren't We Told (1999) sold more copies than any other of his texts. It was as if Reynolds' personal journey of seeing the country's past was the readers' own, as testified in the hundreds of letters he received when it was published.	9
Reynolds' work is based on three abiding themes: a strong internationalism drawn from the United Nations Charter on Human Rights; that the ghost of racism underlies modern Australia; and indigenous issues and justice should be at the centre of public debate. How does he do it?	10
According to McKenna, Reynolds is deeply influenced by his long sojourn in Townsville where he experienced Australian colonial attitudes first hand, and by his wife, former Senator Margaret Reynolds. When he expressed his anger and rage about the injustices experienced by Aborigines, she said, 'That's all very well, but what are you going to do about it?' Reynolds had a sense of the audience he wanted to write for and did so in the language of the common man. In this way Reynolds has played the role of public interpreter of Australia's past and the future.	11
In the last paper, Reynolds reminisced about some of his experiences to help determine what and how he wrote. As a student at the University of Tasmania in the late 1950s and early 1960s, he was a child of the radical nationalist tradition, anti-imperial and a republican. He read Marx with a great deal of attention and regularly returned to E.P. Thompson and the New Left Review but that his mind was more like a compost heap rather than a systematic thinker that a Marxist tradition requires. Above all he believed that equality was the defining ethos of radical nationalism. Two years in London confirmed his sense of being an Australian and his belief in equality.	12
On arriving in North Queensland in 1966 when the White Australia Policy was beginning to break down, Reynolds was horrified by the violent hostility from the citizens of Townsville towards Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders coming to live there, some from Palm Island. With his belief in Australia now deeply shaken, he began to search for understanding by reading widely in law, anthropology and race relations sociology in the United States of America. Put this with the English Left social historians and his world turned inside out. Was this a debate about caste? Was it about internal colonialism? Was it colonialism?	13
Reynolds gained some clues from E.P. Thompson's essay at the end of Whigs and Hunters (1975), which explained how the law was used by the ruling class to deprive the working class of their rights. It led to his books on 'Sovereignty' and 'Law of the Land'. He was also concerned to engage his audience with the importance of Aboriginal issues and sought the clearest possible language to explain them. He had no hesitation in using rhetoric – the language of persuasion – to make his case. It made me wonder how large a part class plays in the history wars.	14
This was a satisfying and thought provoking conference. It not only provided the opportunity to celebrate Reynolds' enormous achievements, it enabled a new generation of historians to take up new directions. It is heartening to know that Aboriginal history is in safe hands and that consideration of the role of class is making a comeback.	15
Lyndall Ryan is Honorary Conjoint Professor in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Ourimbah Campus, University of Newcastle. Author of The Aborignal Tasmanians (2^nd edition) she is currently investigating the incidence of massacre on the Australian colonial frontier. <Lyndall.Ryan@newcastle.edu.au>

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