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OPEN LETTER TO THE DAILY TELEGRAPH “ White Australia has a Black History ”
UNSW students are disgusted by the recent allegation by the Daily Telegraph that we are not being taught history accurately because we are being taught that this land was “ invaded ” not “ settled ”.
Basic facts are not “ political correctness ”. James Cook did not “ discover ” Australia , because there were already around 750,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people living here , speaking around 700 different languages . Australia was invaded , not simply “ settled ”. A very deliberate policy of land theft and extermination was carried out . Here ’ s a word you really won ’ t like : genocide . That ’ s what it was . Indigenous people fought back in what are known as the Frontier Wars , where an estimated 20-30,000 people were killed resisting this invasion between 1788 and the 1920s .
What is outrageous is that these simple historical facts are still denied by right wing newspaper editors , shock jocks and politicians , who wish to cling to the lie of Terra Nullius in order to justify their ongoing racism today . It is not Aboriginal people who need to “ get over it ”, it ’ s the Daily Telegraph .