Talk:Forrest River massacre

comments

The interesting thing about this massacre is that we really don't know if it did or did not occur. A Royal Commision concluded that it did, however the subsequent trial of the alleged killers failed to find fact that it ever did. There's also allegations about the persons involved in the crime and the reporter of the crime. A book written in the 1990's alleging it did not happen, and a extremist right wing organisation the IPA making a fuss over the book in their magazine Quadrant. I'm not a very well practised editor, so I hope that others can fill outthis article NPOV of course better than I.petedavo 01:15, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

counterpoint

See Neville Green: 'The Forrest River Massacres' (1993) for a far better treatment of the history of these events. Rod Moran's distortions and false claims are dealt with briefly in Bryce Moore's comments on Graham Milner's post of February 20th, 2005 to Marxmail, concerning Moran's political evolution. See also Ron Brunton's 1999 article in IPA (Institute of Policy Affairs)journal. Moore's and Brunton's pieces may be found by Googling 'Rod Moran'. 21:51, 2 September 2007 graham milnerPreceding comment added by petedavo 13:51, 5 September 2007 (UTC). I have now added the full links to those references within the article now. petedavo 13:51, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

WPBiography

The subjects - gribble and his contemporaries are now deceased - however writers of the articles/books/arguments are living - however the wpbiography tag is for subjects of the article. So the living tag is specifically for the subject - however in a readers perception Moran and Green are considered subject of the article as well- any comments to clarify appreciated SatuSuro 14:03, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Both Moran and Green have had two critiques each within Quadrant of each others works and the article is probably by default an article about that debate by default, however there is absolutely no reason to have any living nor bi tag associated with this article. PS The redundant links you took off are different articles within Quadrant than the two in the references. All told there should be four different Quadrant links not two.petedavo 14:20, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Beg to differ re WPBio - the article mentions writers (living people) and subjects (Gribble and Hay). - will revert the edit re the quadarnt links - it all looks the same :) SatuSuro 14:26, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

I bunged them in references and fixed their order. The bio thingy I don't think is important as the article is not a bio of either author nor deals with the authors other than to cite their work and opinions. Would be like having a bio tag on an article about physics beause it might cite Steve Hawking etc.petedavo 14:43, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Lumbia's testimony

The reason for Hay's assault is unknown as neither Lumbia nor the women with him could speak English. Hay had previously "used" one of the women (with Lumbia's permission) and it was believed that Hay had returned to get her as he was far from where he was supposed to be (the men who found his remains thought he must have been taking a short cut instead of following his assigned route). It was speculated that he became angry after she had refused to go with him this time. Lumbia himself originally believed Hay objected to him camping on the boundary of the property. The cattle killing and rape only came up at trial. It is inconsistent to include those where they are in the History section as they occured after the events and should be placed elsewhere.Wayne (talk) 10:04, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

The fact that the 'alleged' victims almost invariably spoke an aboriginal mopther-tongue which few, if any outsiders, could access at the time, constitutes one of the systemic biases which historians, save Windshuttle and a few others, must take into account in writing of these events. It's a bit like the Gypsies of Europe with the holocaust. They simply didn't have a culture of writing and recording, and though half of them appear to have been exterminated, evidence for the fact is extremely difficult to establish, so that figures run from 200,000 to 1.5 million. See Porajmos Nishidani (talk) 12:55, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

The History section now states at the top: "Although the reasons for the assault remain unclear two accounts survive, either Lumbia objected to Hay taking one of his women or that Hay objected to Lumbia camping so close to the property." 2 accounts survive? At the bottom of the same section it mentions that: "At trial, Lumbia testified that Hay had attacked him because Hay believed he had butchered one of the station's cattle." And in the section on the Royal Commission it mentions the rape claim made by Gribble. So, is it 2 accounts that survive or 3 or 4? I can see why the rape claim by Gribble can sensibly left for the section it is in, it was raised by Gribble at the RC and immediately discredited. Is there any good reason why the other 3 (not 2) accounts of the attack are not dealt with in the same paragraph in the History section? Webley442 (talk) 06:08, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

A couple of further points. Hay was co-owner of the Nulla Nulla station not a boundary rider and his body was found when they backtracked his horse, found covered in blood. The tracks of the horse lead them to a butchered cow with Hay's body being found nearby. As co-owner of the station, Hay had every reason to be investigating cattle-killing and any claim that Lumbia didn't know why Hay attacked him has to be considered in the light of the fact that the butchered cow and Hay's body were in close proximity. Lumbia was hardly likely to admit to the police or in court that Hay may have caught him red-handed, butchering the cow. Webley442 (talk) 10:40, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

According to Elder the first two explanations were the only ones given before the trial although the source does say there could be other reasons but the truth may never be known. Hay was riding the boundary and a search was organised when he didn't return that night. Hays horse returned without him in the early hours of the morning while the station hands were saddling their own horses. The source claims the station hands left at dawn and followed the route Hays was supposed to have been following but couldn't find him. Late in the afternoon they saw crows circling which they investigated, finding the remains. They speculated that he must have been using a shortcut back to the station after finishing his inspection. Elder states the women were collecting lilly roots growing by the billabong while Lumbia was in his camp. There is no mention of a butchered cow so it cant be considered reliable enough to include in surviving accounts unless we can find some other reliable source.Wayne (talk) 16:11, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Elder, a journalist, may not mention in his book that there was a butchered cow, however, Moran, another journalist, states on on page 3 of his book which focusses entirely on the Forrest River massacre and is based on his study of the source documents, the available accounts including the records of the Commission of inquiry, that the party backtracked Hay's horse, found the butchered cow, about 250 metres away they found blood on the ground and a little further on, Hay's body. So, why is the broader, more general book by Elder, a journalist, a reliable source and the book specifically about the massacre by Moran, a journalist, not a reliable source? Or are you simply unaware of the content of Moran's book? I'm getting the impression that I'm the only one here to have actually read Moran's book.

The fact that 2 explanations are supposed to have been raised before the trial and one at the trial is not a good reason to put 2 of them at the start of the History section and the other, the one that Lumbia testified to when on trial for his life, as an afterthought at the end of the section. Webley442 (talk) 22:13, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Moran

Per WP:UNDUE is there any need for an entire section on one journalists opinion when it's contrary to that of the historians? It might warrant coverage if many people noticed, but as it is it's only sourced to his book. Misarxist (talk) 12:35, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Oops, ok Loos has responded specifically, but still can it just be cut down to mentioning it? Misarxist (talk) 12:39, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Moran's book, and he appears to be a 'denialist', since he is cited as dismissing other 'alleged massacres' that is, massacres that are just vaguely alluded to in contemporary white documentation but recalled in Aboriginal oral history, is mainly important for the influence it had on Windshuttle. But still, he did write a full book on the massacre to which this page is dedicated. There's room for improvement and finessing, clearly. His conclusions as they were cited, were cited as though they were objectively established facts. That was the problem.Nishidani (talk) 12:50, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Hmm yes, that was the impression I got, didn't know he'd inspired Windy though. (Can you guess where I stand in that debate?;) The publisher ([1]) appears to be more or less a self-publishing outlet, and explicitly disclaims any responsibility for fact-checking. So possibly the whole thing can go unless it has to be mentioned (via 3rd party sources) as "there has been some controversty" etc? Misarxist (talk) 13:01, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Didn't check that. If it is a self-published book, one could raise that at WP:RS. Technically I dislike anything on wikipedia that doesn't come from quality presses or the specialist literature, i.e. things that, to get published, have to survive peer review. Encyclopedias are not supposed to be written from news reports. I think you are right that this sort of stuff should be accessed via secondary literature therefore, namely works by specialists who refer to his analysis. Loos is one such source.Nishidani (talk) 13:27, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Morans views are not accepted by most historians and should be confined to the section discussing the claims in his book. Interjecting his refutation of every claim throughout the artical makes it almost unreadable and implies that the account is significantly in dispute. Wayne (talk) 14:44, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Noble's testimony at Commission

I've restored the text "However, during the Royal Commission, conducted in the first half of 1927, the Rev. James Noble was asked (Question 1417 in the Commission record) by Commissioner Wood if "any of the natives told you about blacks being shot and burnt?" Noble replied that no-one had told him and said he had "merely heard the news brought into the station". Similarly, when". It is not irrelevant, in fact it is some of the most relevant text on the page. Immediately prior to this text is a long statement (recounted from memory in 1986) about things that were supposedly told to Noble, his wife and Gribble in 1926. How can it not be relevant that Noble, when expressly asked while under oath in 1927 about anyone telling him about Aborigines being shot and burnt, said that no-one did. It is a good example of how unreliable these tales told many years later are. Webley442 (talk) 23:26, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Nowhere in the artical is it claimed that an Aboriginal told Noble. It specifically says that his wife told him and that he then passed it on to Gribble. When Noble replied to Wood that "no one had told him" he was refering to Wood's question of if "any of the natives told you about blacks being shot and burnt?" which is made clear when Noble said in the same sentence that he had "merely heard the news brought into the station" ie: witness - interpreter - wife - Noble. To add the "disclaimer" is pointless, uneccessarily lengthens the artical and implies that he only heard unsourced rumours rather than a documented path to him from an eyewitness.Wayne (talk) 04:25, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Well, (a) his wife, Angelina Noble, was an Aborigine as was Noble himself: (b) I don't think it can seriously be argued that Noble, when specifically asked about being told about Aborigines being shot and burnt, is likely to have said that 'no-one told him' if the true answer was "My wife told me about just that kind of thing and she told me that she heard it from ....." It stretches credibility well beyond breaking point to suggest that anyone would have left that kind of crucial information out of their testimony unless they were deliberately trying to mislead the Commission and there is no reason to believe that Noble was; (c) the account that we have in the article is what someone is supposed to have told a reporter 60 years after the event. No-one has presented what Thomson is supposed to have recorded in the mission records, if it ever existed at all; and (d) saying that you heard a bit of news about the station is a long way distant from the kind direct path from an alleged eyewitness that you are talking about.

Leaving this sort of information, sworn testimony at the Commission, out of the article on the basis of it 'unnecessarily lengthening the article' while including a long rambling statement about a supposed eyewitness told 60 years after the event looks more like suppressing information inconvenient to a particular version of the story than keeping the article at a particular length. Webley442 (talk) 09:55, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

In the "Wood Royal Commission and subsequent trials" section it states: "Although the medical officer in Wyndham stated that some of the bone fragments from the three sites were human" and appears to cite a Quadrant article by Neville Green as the source for that. That article does not make the claim that the unnamed medical officer in Wyndham thought some of the bone fragments were human. Wyndham was a small place in 1926. There was a resident doctor, Adams, and it is extremely unlikely that there was anyone else there acting as medical officer except for Adams. Dr Adams is reported as being unable to say anything definite about the bone. So unless there is another source for the statement it should be removed. As far as I can tell, the only people who thought that any of the bone found was human were laymen, Gribble in particular but also at least one of the police officers. I am aware of a number of cases where police officers began murder investigations based on bones that had been dug up or otherwise found, only to be told by the medical experts that they were investigating the death of a dog, sheep, kangaroo or, as in one case, a wombat. People mistake animal bones for human all the time. Webley442 (talk) 23:50, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Even Moran admits that some human remains were found and explains them as having fallen out of trees from Aboriginal burials which he would know was very unlikely if he understood Indigenous tree burial practices. Even laymen can recognise human teeth and both expert witnesses at the Royal Commission admitted the teeth may be human but said that as they were damaged they couldn't make a determination. Much of the bone collected (ie: Douglas) was never examined by them because the commission was limited to three sites.Wayne (talk) 04:39, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Well, it is questionable how many laymen could tell the difference between a human tooth and an animal one and even more so if the teeth are damaged. A lot of people would never have seen an intact extracted human tooth and because we have a range of teeth, molars, incisors, etc with different shapes and sizes, people really do have a hard time recognising certain animal teeth as non-human even when intact.

Moran's explanation for the possibly human teeth isn't the only one. Aborigines did their own dental work which usually involved ripping a throbbing tooth out by the roots. Teeth can and do get knocked out in non-lethal conflict, say an internal fight in an Aboriginal group, and it is also a known practice for extracted teeth to be retained and carried around as a form of jewellry (until lost or discarded).

The problem is that no bone that were examined by any kind of medical person was identified as human by the experts, just by laymen. None. I can't see how if they found anything big enough and human-looking enough, they wouldn't have brought it in for examination as their killer piece of evidence. They were certainly eager enough to try and make a case, though Douglas, in particular, who seems to have started out a true believer, seems to have become increasing sceptical as he realised how far listening to Gribble had lead him astray from a cool, analytical approach to the evidence.

Along with the absence of human remains as evidence, they also didn't find bullets or melted lead amongst the supposed human bone fragments or on the sites of the fires, no cartridge cases unless I'm remembering incorrectly, just one bullet in a tree which could have been fired at any time by anyone. It is the total lack of any convincing physical evidence that I find striking. It would have had to been the most diligent clean up of a crime scene or multiple crime scenes ever. Webley442 (talk) 10:47, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

I've changed where it says "Kate Auty has shown that the date carved into a tree...." to "Kate Auty has argued ....." 'Shown' implies that this is proved, which it isn't, it is merely an argument she makes. For all anyone knows, after carving the date into the tree and showing his handiwork to the others in the party, one of the others may have commented: "Very nice work, pity you've got the date wrong, you are one day off, you idiot." Purely hypothetical, of course, but this sort of thing does happen. Webley442 (talk) 00:11, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Please note, per the previous section, that Moran specifically is an unreliable source as effectively self-published and not an academic historian. He therefore shouldn't be used at all for matters of fact on the massacre or the commission, trial or reputations of anyone involved. His opinions only need to be noted in the 'questions' section at the end; and that should be done through secondary sources. More generally the article shouldn't use primary sources such eg. the commission report to establish interpretations of the events. Everything should sourced to reliable secondary sources (ie academic historians) and go no further than the interpretations they make. Misarxist (talk) 11:02, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

I note your use of the term 'effectively' when referring to 'self-published' because WP:RS doesn't.

The link that you provided in the previous section regarding Access Press takes us to a page where it states quite bluntly that "Access Press is not a vanity press nor does it offer "Self Publishing" services." and also "Access Press chooses the books they publish very carefully because they must be able to sell them" as opposed to operations which will print anything because the author has to sell the books. Moran is not the only author cited on this page that has used Access Press (i.e. Brown Cavan) and he is not the only non-academic cited here (i.e. Elder). Wikipedia policy on the use of non-academic sources and non-academic historians is also broader than you suggest, if it wasn't no-one would be able to use material from non-academic writers of history books like Churchill. The fact is that Rod Moran is acknowledged as an expert on this area; virtually every paper or article written about Forrest River since has had to deal with the material he has put in the public domain. If Moran's work could not be used, while the work of Neville Green, principle historian on the opposite side, is used, we would wind up with a very unbalanced article and strong grounds for suspicion that information inconvenient to a particular version of the story is being suppressed.Webley442 (talk) 13:29, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

"Rod Moran is acknowledged as an expert" is laughable. Moran has been discredited on almost every point he has made in his book. For example, Moran stated he was able to account for all but one as not being killed in the massacre, from mission and police records. The police were charged with the murder of Boondung at Dala but there were in fact four Aboriginals with that name living in the area of which three were missing and one still living on the mission. No one today knows which Boondung was killed. Another problem with names was that culturally, Aboriginals were forbidden to identify the names of dead people which is why Gribble's list was the only one available. Relatives of the Forrest River victims are only refered to them as "uncle of..." or "father of.." etc. Then we have Morans ridiculous claim that there was not enough timber in the area to burn bodies and that even if there was a body could not be reduced to the small fragments found. In 2004 veterinarian Dr John Auty cremated a bull completely to ash using one tonne of dry timber collected in the area. He stated that "the same amount of firing would have disposed of five human bodies" (Quadrant Nov 2004). Another interesting point is that one of the government experts who testified that the bone fragments were not human retracted this statement and swore on oath at St Jack and Regan's trial that the bone may be human and that the teeth were human. Now we have your statement They were certainly eager enough to try and make a case. The year before the massacre Hays leading hand was charged with attempted murder and the multiple rapes of Aboriginals. Despite overwhelming evidence he was found not guilty. Chief Inspector Douglas later wrote to the superintendant that after the verdict one of the jurors told him that the verdict had been arranged two months before the trial began. One result of the trial though was that Hay's station lost their Aboriginal permit and were no longer allowed to use them as workers which meant that as it was a cotton farm it was no longer financially viable. The leading hand also had an order put on him that any station that employed him in future would automatically lose their permit as well.Wayne (talk) 16:50, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Whether Rod Moran is acknowledged as reliable source or an expert or not is an issue that I’m perfectly happy to take to arbitration, if you like. Generally I am not personally keen on most journalists’ attempts at writing history because they tend to read a few secondary sources and regurgitate a version of what they have read, making broad claims about issues they are not experts in. It seems to be a vanity thing, seeing their names on a ‘serious’ book rather than on the pages of a newspaper that winds up in the recycling bin.

Moran, however, didn’t write that kind of history. He investigated one incident in depth and went back to source documents to see if the evidence actually supported the claims being made. The facts that he wrote one of the two books specifically on the events at Forrest River, that the historian who wrote the opposing view has responded directly to him on more than one occasion rather than simply dismissing him as you do, that other historians have commented on or used what he has written (I have multiple citations for this), all support his work as a reliable source in Wikipedia terms. The fact that there are opposing points of view doesn’t undermine that. There are differing points of view and schools of thought on a lot of things. The mere existence of a different point of view is not proof that Moran is wrong and it does not make him an unreliable source in terms of Wikipedia policy. Wikipedia isn't here to airbrush points of view that some editors may not like out of existence.

I think the fact that you say: “Moran has been discredited on almost every point he has made in his book” is a good indicator that you haven’t read the book. If you had, you should be aware that much of what he wrote in the book has never been responded to. Many of his strongest points of evidence and argument simply haven’t been mentioned in critiques by his opponents. Instead, the now standard tactic of picking up on a few of the weaker points which can be disputed and not even mentioning the existence of stronger evidence and arguments has been employed. The tactic is designed to give the uninformed reader the impression that the weaker evidence and arguments are all there is as well as give intellectually dishonest supporters, who are aware of the stronger evidence and arguments but choose to disregard them, something that they can claim ‘proves’ the other side wrong.

As for “They were certainly eager enough to try and make a case”, Gribble, for one, was very eager to make a case against the police, so much so that he personally collected, or had Aborigines from the mission collect for him, bone fragments. If he had seen anything that he could have presented for examination that could have been identified as human, he would have done so. Douglas too would have presented anything he had to make the case. He was, as I said before, a true believer that there had been a massacre at first. It was only as the Commission hearing went on and he observed how poor the evidence really was in the cold light of day that he started to ask increasingly sceptical questions. It’s pretty clear that by the end of the Commission hearings Douglas had realized that he’d been ‘had’ by Gribble.

Lastly, “No one today knows which Boondung was killed” is something of an overstatement. No one today knows if any person named Boondung was killed, or if they were killed, whether it was by the police party, someone else or by the influenza epidemic raging at the time. And “may be human” is not “is human”.Webley442 (talk) 03:14, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

If you take it to WP:RS I think you will find that standard practice is for this kind of material, self-published by a non-historian, can only be quoted via reliable secondary sources discussing its thesis. There are numerous, are there not, secondary sources by historians who discuss his work, and therefore validate reference to it here, only however in so far as it is discussed in those sources. Direct quotation from him would run close to WP:OR.Nishidani (talk) 17:57, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes, well "would run close to WP:OR" isn't WP:OR. Once again, I repeat, not 'self-published', just some editor(s) arguing that it is "effectively" self-published. Wikipedia does NOT have a strict policy of accepting only material from academic historians and of rejecting anything from a non-academic. It would be ludicrous for it to do so as many of the major works of historical literature have been written by non-academics, see my comment about Churchill above. It is disingenious to suggest that it does have such a policy. So, not WP:RS either. The idea that history has to be written by someone with a Ph.D in the subject is a very late 20th century fallacy.

As I remarked above, much of the evidence and arguments Moran has included in the book has been quite deliberately omitted from the discussion by the historians who oppose his thesis, no doubt because they have no real answer for it, for example - the claims by Green that Hay demanded sex from and then raped one of Lumbia's wives in front of him stem entirely from an uncorroborated 1934 memoir entry by Gribble, a proven liar and fantasist, and are directly contradicted by the recorded statements of Lumbia and both wives taken in 1926. No mention of that is made because the only way to prove Moran wrong on that would be to prove that the records of interview do mention the sexual assault. Since they don't, no 'historian' wants to stick his neck out by falsely claiming that they do, so they just don't mention the issues they can't address at all and instead pretend that they are proving Moran wrong by picking on weaker, more disputable points in his case.

Try reading Moran's book as well as Green's instead of relying on what someone else tells you is in one or the other.Webley442 (talk) 03:37, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

You're dodging the problem. 'Anyone can create a website or 'pay to have a book published' which is the case here, since one pays to be published by Access Press. Secondly it has no peer review process. The author is essentially responsible for what he writes. 'self-published media—whether books, etc. . are largely not acceptable.

Access Press, while disclaiming it is a vanity press, has no conditions for peer review, and essentially stipulates that it chooses books only if they judge they can be sold. You have to pay to be published there, to cover their costs. You only have Access own self-serving declaration that it is not a variety of vanity press.

The exception is that largely, which is qualified thus:

'Self-published material may, in some circumstances, be acceptable when produced by an established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications. Self-published sources should never be used as third-party sources about living persons, even if the author is a well-known professional researcher or writer'.

If Moran's book has been previously published by reliable third-party publications' he can be used. If not, you're on very shaky grounds, since this is a vexed history topic, and he is not an historian.

I quoted one academic specialist/historian of the subject who simply judged that Moran had essentially recycled the defence's case. Anyone can do that are make an appearance of being serious. If you can find competent area specialists who review, appraise and cite his work, then you can use them, not Moran directly. That is the rule for quality editing, especially on a controversial topic. There are academics who work on this, and when you have such peer-reviewed sources, you should not prefer journalistic books.Nishidani (talk) 07:56, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Just an afterthought, but it would be extremely interesting to see what would happen if you did try to get a 'ruling' that history books by non-academic historians can't be used as sources. I suspect that those on high in Wikipedia would descend upon such an attempt like a ton of bricks. It would turn Wikipedia into a laughstock if it actually had such a policy and thus excluded the works of every non-academic historian as a reference, i.e. most of the works of recorded history for the past several thousand years. Webley442 (talk) 05:10, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Check my record. That is almost invariably precisely what I do, and I don't think the articles I and a few others who subscribe to the highest aims of the encyclopedia are thought of as slack jobbers patching up articles that are laughing-stocks, i.e. Barasana, Franz Baermann Steiner, Taboo, Shakespeare Authorship Question etc,etc. Controversy rages precisely on those articles where haggling over the use of poor sources occurs. And edit warring is avoided by sticking to quality, peer-reviewed, mainstream sources, where the chances of just nitpicking material agreeable to one's POV are drastically reduced.Nishidani (talk) 07:56, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

No one is saying you cant include material. You just need to place it appropriately. See the 911 artical for a similar example, what the majority of experts accept is the majority of the article with minority alternate views given their own section and summarised rather than presented in detail. If you feel you need to give more detail then do as was done for the 911 article....make a new page specifically for the alternative view. In this case there might not be enough support for Morans views to justify it's own article as it should already be in the history wars article.Wayne (talk) 07:47, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Summary: The Moran work is not a reliable source because it contradicts what the academic historians say about the massacre and it's effectively self-published (Access Press explicitly denies any responsibility for fact checking, "Will not take responsibility for the accuracy or validity of written work" [2].) Three other users agree with this straight-forward application of WP:RS, if you (Webley) still disagree with you you can try taking it to the reliable sources notice-board. Per Wayne just above it can be discussed in the relative section, personally not convinced, but everyone else thinks that's ok. On the other sources, yes, I think the other Access Press source should go too. But re Elder's Blood on the Wattle, unconvincing; from memory that book was well received, though may now be outdated and of course we should primarily use the historians. (Note the argument against Moran does not rely simply on his being a journalist.) Misarxist (talk) 08:10, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Style

It is grossly inappropriate to make bald statements of 'truth'in the text like "The Kimberley prosecutor refused to mention Lumbia's defence as, with the exception of the Rev. Gribble, no one wanted it known that Hay had raped a child." and "Gribble had expected the Inspector of Aborigines, E. C. Mitchell, to give the court Lumbia's account of the rape of Anulgoo on his behalf but he to had decided, along with the prosecutor, to suppress the claim stating to Gribble that he would keep anything unpleasant out of the evidence "for the sake of the fair name of my native state"." when there is only one source for it, which is Gribble's uncorroborated statement in his memoir related via Neville Green and particularly where a claim has been directly contradicted.

Mitchell protested a statement that Gribble had made to the Commission about Mitchell trying to keep out anything 'unsavoury' and wrote to the Commissioner wanting it struck from the record and Wood agreed with his point of view. He was extremely indignant about it as he knew from the interviews with Lumbia and his wives that Gribble had invented the rape claim. He wrote to A.O. Neville and directly accused Gribble of lying to the Commission. Any such statement in the text should be prefaced with something along the lines of "Historian Neville Green claimed that..." and in an honest representation of the facts where something is as strongly disputed as Green's claims are, the counter claims should be in the very next paragraph, not tucked away at the bottom of the article.Webley442 (talk) 05:00, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Several points come to mind. Whether the actual claim itself was true or not is irrelevant as it was documented. You cant delete claims just because some say the event didn't occur. The second point it that you must remember that Mitchell hated Gribble and went to great lengths to discredit him. When inspecting the massacre sites he intially dismissed them much as Moran does until he had no option but to finally admit something had happened. As for the wording. It was Mitchells job to defend Lumbia which should have been done by presenting the translations of his initial confessions. He didn't do this but went along with the prosecution claim of Lumbia spearing cattle which even the police didn't except until the Royal Commission was called because they knew for a fact that Lumbia was not involved in the spearing of Hays cattle, Lumbia may in fact have been involved but the police didn't even suspect him of it as they were searching for members of another mob that had been identified by their trackers. Wayne (talk) 08:05, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

If Neville Green has to be constantly qualified as a historian, which he is, with a doctorate, I suppose, were he an acceptable source, Rod Moran's views would have to be always qualified as 'journalist and poet Rod Moran', on your reasoning above, Webley?Nishidani (talk) 08:15, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Nishidani, would you prefer that we simply say Rod Moran and Neville Green and leave out all references to historian and journalist? I use the descriptors for the sake of accuracy but I can go with the alternative if you like.

Mitchell couldn't present statements about the rape if they didn't exist. Just the contrary, Mitchell was outraged by Gribble's behaviour and false statements because he KNEW that the claim of rape wasn't in the witness statements. All the evidence that I have seen indicates that the translations of the original confessions along with the statements of Lumbia's wives make absolutely no mention of a claim of a demand for sex followed by Hay stripping and raping Lumbia's wife. That claim, by all known evidence, comes solely from Gribble's 1934 journal and isn't contained in any of the other source material, ie the mission logs or the witness statements. The only person crying rape was Gribble. Webley442 (talk) 08:46, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

One further point. I didn't propose that the claims be deleted, just that they be qualified and presented for what they are: claims made by one historian that are strongly disputed. And that where a claim is so strongly disputed the counter arguments and evidence should be in an adjacent paragraph. A reader should not have to go all the way through to the very end of the article to find out that there are strong reasons to believe that what he/she read at the very beginning of the article is highly questionable. Webley442 (talk) 09:01, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Webley it's just a personal point, but try and imagine a conservative Japanese historian, in the aftermath of a counterfactual victory, reconstructing the Sandakan Death Marches from Indonesian and Australian testimony. I think of this because I think Moran's uncle died there, (as did, by the way Paul Keating's). In the Japanese wiki the death toll is put at 1,000, in the English wiki, including both Allied POWs and Indonesians, it is set at 6,000. The Japanese version scants the Indonesian death toll. Qualified and long practiced historians always take into account the systematic biases of the material that, often by arbitrary ways, survives for their perusal. Moran apparently doesn't. If he wrote a history of the Sandokan death march using official Japanese sources, he'd probably wake up to the problematical way he selectively privileges one version, and discounts those of the victims. But journalists, if they are not Robert Fisks, rarely trouble themselves in this regard. It doesn't make good copy. Nishidani (talk) 09:22, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

I am well aware of the arguments regarding overcoming the bias inherent using archival documents and what has been passed down by the 'winners' in any conflict. Many historians do try to compensate for these biases by using 'other' material, including oral traditions, etc. The problem in this approach is always that while it may feel good to give a 'voice to the those silenced' and so forth, it does not magically make inherently unreliable 'evidence' reliable. Consider this: Ernest Gribble was a proven liar and fantasist. He was caught out repeatedly making false claims about Aborigines and their mistreatment and he seems to have been a person with an unreasoning hatred of the police. Not only that but he influenced others; many of the claims made by Aboriginal witnesses for example, were only made after Gribble, the big man at the Mission, had made those claims to them first. All the evidence indicates that Gribble is the source of the claims of rape and that his claims contaminated the later stories told by others, particularly in the Aboriginal groups who visited the Mission. Now if that was the only evidence available, then fine, maybe you have to base your history on what he said. But when those claims are directly contradicted by statements taken from the witnesses in the presence of and translated by Angelina Noble, how much reliance would a responsible historian put on anything Gribble wrote in his memoirs. Bear in mind that Moran pointed out the existence and location of the original records in 1999 and directly criticised Green for using only Gribble's memoirs as a source. It is now 2010 and no-one that I am aware of, including Neville Green, has said Moran's portrayal of what is in the records of the interviews is not accurate. Now that is what we call confirmation or assent by silence. Webley442 (talk) 09:54, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

'Consider this: Ernest Gribble was a proven liar and fantasist'

You are entitled to repeat here what Moran believed, but his ipsissima verba are not, as your phrasing suggests, the truth. The Royal Commission thought otherwise and they have stricter criteria than that used by a journo and poet. It is a minority view not entertained by academic experts.

You are not entitled to edit a minority (WP:Undue) slant on the subject, by a journalist with no qualifications as an historian, from his self-published, un-peer reviewed book, as though it held equal weight with what academic area specialists, authorities in frontier and aboriginal history generally conclude, and their conclusions are those of the Royal Commission. If you wish to challenge the results of a Royal Commission, you need to be more than a journalist writing in part at the request of the son of one of the men fingered by that royal commission as involved in the killings. Leading academics historians or qualified historians (Neville Green has 2 Phds in aboriginal history), such as Green, Noel Loos, Christine Halse, Richard Broome, and Henry Reynolds are not only unpersuaded by Moran, whose work consists in denying, by personal review, the way a Royal Commission assessed the evidence for the defence while endorsing Gribble's charges, esp. when in reaction to his book, some of them saw no reason to think that Gribble was a 'proven liar' and 'fantasist' on this. Noel Loos thought Moran was 'grasping at straws' in his key attempt to undermine Gribble by alleging that Gribble 'was a monster who would send two young men to the gallows to protect his position as missionary superintendent, his reputation as the saviour of Aboriginal people, and his enormous ego’. Loos thinks of Gribble as having many bad traits, but does not accept that he was lying.

For these reasons, if any regular in here thinks this should be sorted out by requesting wider input about Moran as RS used in violation of WP:Undue, I will argue there that, while he can be used, on tolerance, his work is best referred to as a minority perspective, and as cited in academic sources. Nishidani (talk) 10:58, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

OK, I can see that this is going no-where so I'll be taking the issue of your opinions on academic vs non-academic historians and your claims that a press that expressly states that it will not provide a self-publishing service is a self-publishing service (it says it doesn't fact check, nor do a great many major publishing houses in reality) for resolution elsewhere. I think that the exclusion or restriction of the use of a non-academic historian's work (and I use the term in the true sense not the current pretence of someone who has a PH.D in the subject) is an important issue for Wikipedia. But a final point. Check your facts, the Royal Commission that you put so much faith in rejected the claims of rape that now feature so heavily in the Background section. Read Green's book if that is the one you prefer. No-where will you find in it a claim that the Commission actually endorsed Gribble's claims of rape. It was barely able to endorse the claims of killing by ignoring the fact that it hadn't been presented with convincing evidence that a single Aborigine had died, which is why the case failed at trial. Webley442 (talk) 12:34, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

It hadn't been presented with evidence because, to cite one of several reasons, Tommy Doort in the meantime had been bumped off. Nishidani (talk) 13:12, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

'Although he recorded several such reports as having been made to him, he denied having any record or knowledge of who made the reports'

That's from Moran. When Tommy Doort was known to have reported to Gribble, he was 'disappeared', i.e., murdered before his evidence could be heard. Does Moran think it unlikely that Gribble, with his background, would have, with this precedent, then named other aborigines and put them to risk, before a community, and before police, some of whom were involved in the massacre, and one of whom killed an earlier witness, as soon as he had been identified? It's okay to cite this, but investigating magistrates know the immediate contexts that explain certain behaviour, and Gribble's here is not evidence he couldn't name anyone, but simply evidence he would not name anyone, etc.etc.etc. Nishidani (talk) 16:57, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes. It doesn't check facts, i.e., there is no peer review or preliminary control on the reliability of the use of sources. Try to get a manuscript published at Yale or Chicago or Oxford, or many other Uni presses. It's quite a gruelling experience. You get questioned on every para by one and sometimes two editors. On controversial historical issues, that sort of process or its equivalent, academic peer review, must attend any sources that we use to make out articles.Nishidani (talk) 13:10, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Thin evidence

I don't want to get involved in what's going on above, but I do want to comment that some of what is being presented as evidence is pretty thin. For example, because Hays gun was found with a spent cartridge in it, it's evidence that he shot at someone? At that time it was pretty much standard practice to carry revolvers with only five live rounds and a spent cartridge under the hammer for safety. U didn't want a live round under the hammer because if U dropped the gun or it knocked up against something while U were riding or walking through the bush, the hammer could strike teh cartridge and shoot yourself or your horse. A spent cartridge was used rather than leaving the chamber empty because letting a hammer drop on an empty chamber can damage the hammer. It might mean something if there were 2 spent cartridges. The evidence of empty cartridge boxes is meaningless because it was standard practice to transfer cartridges from boxes to bandoleers or pouches asap. Boxes are awkward things to load from on horseback. The amount of ammunition taken is also meaningless as when U divide it up between the number of people with guns, it is about right for the standard amount carried per man on police and military patrols, specially if they supplemented rations with fresh game. Cheers. Pistol Pete.