Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Warrowen massacre

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. consensus is keep per WP:HEY (notability demonstrated per improvements in article since nomination) 78.26 _{(spin me / revolutions)} 22:29, 2 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Warrowen massacre

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User:Bacondrum nominated this for PROD on the following basis: "Nominate for deletion. Relies almost entirely on primary sources. These are sensational, colonial accounts, the language used in these primary sources demonstrates a strong bias and profound racism, secondary sources are needed. The office of the Protector of Aborigines is certainlty not a reliable source in this context. Boro Boro Willum, for example may not have existed at all, I can find no other source that mentions this tribe or one with a similar name, it's likely a colonial fiction."

The PROD was removed, but I strongly agree that it should be deleted. It's a thinly-sourced colonial rumour with offhand references on one or two pages in a couple of books, and it's telling that it needs to rely on a family's papers in a suburban library to flesh out its scant sourcing. The user who removed the PROD suggested that contrary sources could be added, but nobody's taken it seriously enough to argue with it: the rumour fundamentally lacks notability for a Wikipedia article. The Drover's Wife (talk) 02:11, 22 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I strongly agree with everything The Drover's Wife has said.

Delete Certain claims seem to have little basis in reality, there is no record of one of the tribes mentioned ever having existed at all. The Protector of Aborigines is hardly a reliable source in this context, these kinds of exaggerated and fantastic colonial rumors or fantasies about Aboriginal people are common during the era. There needs to be more evidence the events actually took place. Bacondrum (talk) 02:24, 22 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Crime-related deletion discussions. CASSIOPEIA^(talk) 02:49, 22 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Australia-related deletion discussions. CASSIOPEIA^(talk) 02:49, 22 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Delete We're stating something as fact, when there's just a single person's claim. Even if there was substantial coverage of Thomas's account, then that at most, that might, maybe, warrant a mention in his article, since the coverage is saying something about him. This article kinda shows why we shouldn't allow original research. The author of the article, has selectively gone through very old primary sources, and tried inserting selective "facts" from them, that disparage aboriginal Australians (in this article, and elsewhere). --Rob (talk) 13:05, 22 February 2020 (UTC) [reply]
- Update: Given changes in the article, I honestly don't know the answer. I'll leave it others with the knowledge and time to review the additional sources. --Rob (talk) 02:12, 2 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Comment He [Robinson] noted that because of the practical demise of the Yowengerre, their country had become scrubby because it was not periodically burned. This statement I suggest is very telling. It does not seem to me to be something that someone might make up to embellish a story ... I suggest this statement corroborates that something did happen to these people ... but what is another matter ... Aoziwe (talk) 12:48, 23 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- There is an extreme leap from "this group of people are no longer here and probably died" to "these people were murdered by other Aboriginal people at this specific location in Brighton". That it comes from a dubious source and makes claims that appear to be demonstrably false (that there's no evidence the group who did the alleged murdering ever existed) is further reason that that's a leap we shouldn't make, not least since it's not corroborated by anyone else besides vague later reports of local colonial rumour. The Drover's Wife (talk) 13:27, 23 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

an extreme leap agreed. Aoziwe (talk) 12:29, 24 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Can the claims being made be verified? Are they noteworthy? I think the answer to both questions is no. Look at the way the article is phrased: "The Warrowen massacre was an apparent killing of Boongerong people by a group of Kurnai people"...Apparent? Did it happen or not? and "The main record of the incident is a second-hand account written in 1836 by William Thomas, the Aboriginal Protector" A second hand account of an event that "apparently" may or may not have occurred? This is an article based on sparse, archaic, secondhand accounts of colonial rumours and original research. Bacondrum (talk) 21:27, 23 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I am regularly suspicious of "strongly agree" and other "strongly" !votes/assertions in AFDs, and have advised new AFD participants not to express themselves that way if they want to be taken as credible. Strong emotions suggest emotional involvement or other motivations. Here, I don't know the editors expressing their strong feelings, but the nature of their statements, plus the fact of this being about a "massacre", leads me to be skeptical. The term "massacre" is in fact one which often does evoke strong emotions, and I know that in other cases of true events that some term as "massacres", it has been a big issue whether to use the "massacre" version of name for a historical event, or whether to use a label avoiding the perhaps-judgmental nature of the term but perhaps white-washing the seriousness of a true event. --Doncram (talk) 22:38, 23 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- This really kinda suggests that your !vote below has more to do with your feelings about the nominators having strong opinions or some feelings about massacres in general than anything to do with the article, the topic or any arguments anyone actually made. No one is taking issue with the term "massacre" as you suggest here, but with the verifiability of the article given that the sourcing is extraordinarily flimsy, and trying to declare that 26 Google hits, with everything not already cited in the article being spam, as "a lot of hits" is real strange. The Drover's Wife (talk) 00:31, 24 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Lets stick to the article rather than whether you like the strength of other editors agreement, mate. Poor reasoning. Bacondrum (talk) 07:01, 24 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. I get a lot of hits when I search "Warrowen massacre -wikipedia". This is either a true story or it is an internet thing or it is something else, but it is something. There is factual information about this massacre event or whatever other term you want to use, including about whether it is regarded as a story which is possibly false in some ways, or whether it should be regarded as possibly or probably having occurred, or what. It is a reportable fact that historical coverage about this event exists (as some acknowledge above, setting aside whether or not it is secondary reporting or plausible or not). This is a story which has legs, in fact since 1834 or 1840 or so. Wikipedia should err on the side of reporting factual information, not on the side of suppressing information or avoiding uncomfortable ideas. It may be that the article should be refocused and renamed to focus more upon the history of the story of the massacre, through time since the event through present-day times, but that is a matter for editing not AFD. --Doncram (talk) 22:38, 23 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- I just did that exact search to see what came up and got a total of 26 hits (!), with everything not already cited in the article being things like Wikipedia mirrors and random unrelated spam. I'm not sure how one forms the opinion that that is "something". The Drover's Wife (talk) 00:25, 24 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

How many hits a search gets is irrelevant, look up Bigfoot, there will be lots of hits, doesn't mean Bigfoot is real. Sure, Bigfoot has a page, but Wikipedia does not claim the Bigfoot actually exists. We can't claim there was a massacre without significant evidence that it happened. Can the claims being made be verified? Are they noteworthy? Obviously not.

Also, I concur with The Drovers Wife (am I allowed to concur rather than strongly agree?), A google search turns up the primary source, the ANU work and a bunch of sites that mirror this article. There is a dearth of information relating to the claim. The claim is based entirely on one brief second hand account from the 19th century. Bacondrum (talk) 09:27, 24 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Re the Bigfoot comment - I think that's getting away from the issue of deletion (because a counter-argument from people who haven't read the sources might be that we should cover the "debate" as to whether it happened). Except that in this case there is no debate, because no one in reliable sources treats it seriously enough to bother, and one story from a questionable colonial source and a couple of passing mentions of an old rumour on one page of two books does not an encyclopedic article make. The Drover's Wife (talk) 09:29, 24 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

True, I find these arguments about search hits very silly. I'll try and stick to the topic. Bacondrum (talk) 01:31, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Editors may wish to consider:
- a battle with the Borro borro willum (the Boon wurrung named for the Bushy Park people of Gippsland), see Aboriginal Flora and Fauna Names of Victoria: As extracted from early surveyors’ reports page 16
- Bushy Park as in the squatter selection by Angus McMillan in Gippsland

FYI Aoziwe (talk) 12:29, 24 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Aoziwe: I'm not sure of the relevance of those? The Drover's Wife (talk) 12:36, 24 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

One of the issues being given as the basis for the AfD seems to be that the people referred to as "boro boro willum" (the alleged perpetrators of the apparent massacre) did not exist. The first reference above seems to fairly strongly indicate that they did, and were in fact the indigineous people associated with the squatter selection Bushy Park in Gippsland. The second point above, as per the relevant article, corroborates that Bushy Park people were indigineous people from Gippsland. Hence one of the primary concerns for the validity of the article, and hence AfD, seems to no longer stand? (I have not yet decided on how to !vote on this one.) Aoziwe (talk) 12:59, 24 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The first source is refering to claims made by G.A. Robinson, Thomas' boss and close friend, and again it's second hand information he is relaying as an unreliable primary source - colonial rumour, and there is no evidence he is referring to the same events as described in this article - this is why we don't allow original research. Angus McMillan was responsible for the coldblooded murder of up to 450 Kurnai people (maybe more), with one of his party stating that he would shoot Aboriginal people with as "little remorse as I would a wild dog" - there are serious issues with referencing these primary colonial accounts. It would be original research based on the claims of unreliable witness's (one of whom had a very good reason to lie about killing Aboriginal people and may have well been covering up his own crimes, for which he could potentially have been hung). Bacondrum (talk) 00:50, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The sole reliable secondary source we have barely mentions the events and is analysis of the dairies and reports by Thomas, it does not at any point claim his account is factual (if I recall correctly it warns against taking his account at face value). Where is the wider academic attention? Where are the academic claims that the events actually took place? Where is the historic and anthropological evidence? Where is the Aboriginal account? Aboriginal oral traditions have been shown repeatedly to be highly accurate. Why is it not mentioned in Bunurong histories, there are detailed histories of the Bunurong peoples - and the Kurnai? There are more than 3,000 Kurnai/Gunai people alive today with connections to this history, yet no one has ever mentioned these events. The scarcity of detail and evidence, the fact that the only people ever to have mentioned the Boro Boro Willum admit they are second hand reports, that those making these second hand reports all knew each other and had reason to lie about the subject (including the fact that what McMillan and his men had done was technically a capital offense) all make this look like a rumour rather than an actual event. There is a very real possibility that if there actually was a massacre it was more likely carried out by McMillan and his men. Bacondrum (talk) 01:17, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Weak keep The notes of the colonial recorders about the alleged incident have been written about in at least one secondary source. It there aren't enough sources it could easily veer over into Delete. Comments above along the lines of "the evidence is only some diary notes" is irrelevant.Boneymau (talk) 20:41, 24 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- One colonial source recounting a story, written about in a very brief passing mention in a secondary source, is enough for a Wikipedia article now? If people took that approach consistently it'd be the largest expansion of Wikipedia notability criteria in its history. The Drover's Wife (talk) 21:47, 24 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  - Lots of apparent massacres in the early 19th century only have very sketchy contemporary documentation, even something as much written-about as the Convincing_Ground_massacre. I'm focusing on the supposed event being discussed in reliable secondary sources as an indicator of notability. And after thinking more about it, I probably would flip over to Delete unless there were further secondary sources that discussed it. Boneymau (talk) 01:50, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Comment The entire basis for the article is a second hand account offered in 1836 by William Thomas, the Aboriginal Protector. The following are Thomas's retelling of a story that was told to him by an unknown party:

blacks remember the awful affair at Warrowen (place of sorrow) near where Brighton now stands, where in 1834 nearly a quarter of the Western Port blacks were massacred by the Gippsland blacks who stole up on them before dawn of day.

and

"no monuments whatever further than devices on trees where any great calamity have befallen them. On a large gum tree in Brighton, on the estate of Mr McMillan was a host of blacks lying as dead carved on the trunk for a yard or two up. The spot was called Woorroowen or incessant weeping. Near this spot in the year 1833 or 4, the Gippsland blacks stole at night upon the Western Port or Coast tribe and killed 60 or 70 of them.

So, the question is: Is Thomas's secondhand WP:PRIMARY account enough to WP:VERIFY that the events occurred? Bacondrum (talk) 04:17, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Questions and these are serious ones asked in the best of good faith. Yes, one can trace back the vast majority, if not all, of the secondary references to the single Thomas source (STS). WP does not allow OR in articles. However, there is no source that I am aware of that documents this STS provenance research outside of WP. Hence the first question is, "Are we allowed to use (our) OR to invalidate an article?" There are a non trivial number of secondary references to the STS, which do or do not explicitly mention the STS. Secondary references are normally used as a sign of notability, reliability, and verifiablity. So the second question is, "How do we go against this WP norm (without resorting to OR)?". There are invocations above of the unreliability of the "protectors". There is no mention of their unreliability generally in the article Protector of Aborigines, or specifically in George Augustus Robinson or William Thomas (Australian settler), and in fact the latter, if anything, paints a very good picture of the subject's legacy. Thomas went to the effort to learn two aboriginal languages. This would place him in much better postions to understand them and hear their stories much better than most at the time. So the third qustion is, "Are there IRS to show that either Robinson or Thomas are unreliable in reporting aboriginal matters at any time?" Aoziwe (talk) 12:24, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I shouldn't have focused on the primary source so much. We are really scrounging for secondary source here, there's no real coverage in secondary sources, just brief mentions. I don't think what we have is sufficient to demonstrate WP:NOTE or to WP:VERIFY the claims. To be clear, if there was more than a couple of sources or the claims stated in secondary sources were made more authoritatively I'd have no objection to including these "apparent" events. I certainly don't deny pre-colonial violence existed. Bacondrum (talk) 03:50, 26 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Comment, i note that one of the participants in this afd (hi Bacondrum :)) has had a bit of an edit war, removing this entry from List of massacres of Indigenous Australians, may be a little presumptous as this afd has not finished. i have reinstated it. Coolabahapple (talk) 04:13, 26 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, lol. I do reckon that notability and veracity should be demonstrated before it is added, rather than having to disprove in order to remove. But I'll leave it alone until the discussion is done. Bacondrum (talk) 21:26, 26 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

no probs:) as i thought would happen, another editor as re-removed the entry, i too will leave alone, salut. Coolabahapple (talk) 13:59, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. I've expanded the article and added more sources. For mine the only issue would be WP:SIGCOV, but I would give the article the benefit of the doubt given the significance and that there is enough material to build a decent article. If not the contents should be incorporated into various related articles. Ivar the Boneful (talk) 16:26, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep definitely now that the article has been essentially completely rewritten. There are also still more references to be had. Secondary coverage is sustained, at least from 1878 to 2014. One could also argue that the Thomas and Robinson were actually secondary documenters, of the indigineous oral record. To say they are primary is to discount any knowledge history of the first peoples. (Reliability or accuracy might be another matter.) Robinson does refer to the people who gave him the information by name. There is some doubt about the number of people it seems, with numbers ranging from 60 to 77, and Smyth 1878 possibly thinks Thomas exagerated numbers. However, none of the historians, academics, or researchers that I could find seem to have questioned that some degree of mass killing took place. Aoziwe (talk) 11:16, 28 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Per the re-write. Notability is demonstrated here, and the article does a good job of explaining the evidence for this issue. I note in particular that high quality sources discuss this event, with the fairly recent ANU Press work stating it occurred. If other reliable sources say that the massacre is a fabrication, this should be included. Nick-D (talk) 22:11, 28 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep rewrite has clearly established notability.--Staberinde (talk) 13:59, 29 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Change to keep I admit I was wrong about this, it looked like a highly dubious colonial rumor to begin with, but I'm happy to admit I was wrong - there appears to be more to it. The article is much improved, changes demonstrate notability. Nice work Ivar and Aoziwe. Bacondrum (talk) 00:31, 1 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

a thanks to Bacondrum, and for reinstating it to List of massacres of Indigenous Australians. Coolabahapple (talk) 02:23, 1 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Keep per WP:HEY. Passes WP:GNG.4meter4 (talk) 00:39, 1 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.