Telling the Truth About Aboriginal History

This provocative work grapples with some of the most difficult issues in Aboriginal history, showing how they raise fundamental concerns about the nature of historical knowledge, truth, and authority. Discussions of such controversial questions as How many Aboriginal people were killed in frontier conflict and was it genocide? Was there ever a massacre at Risdon Cove in Tasmania? and Does Aboriginal oral history count as real history? attempt to shed some light an Australia's historical make-up.

This provocative work grapples with some of the most difficult issues in Aboriginal history, showing how they raise fundamental concerns about the nature of historical knowledge, truth, and authority. Discussions of such controversial questions as How many Aboriginal people were killed in frontier conflict and was it genocide? Was there ever a massacre at Risdon Cove in Tasmania? and Does Aboriginal oral history count as real history? attempt to shed some light an Australia's historical make-up.

Bain Attwood is associate professor of history at Monash University and a professorial fellow at the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research at Australian National University. A leading authority on Aboriginal history, he is the author of numerous books, including The Making of the Aborigines and Rights for Aborigines.