John Dawson

Letters - September 2005

September 2005, no. 274

ABR welcomes letters from our readers. Correspondents should note that letters may be edited. Letters and emails must reach us by the middle of the current month, and must include a telephone number for verification.

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Letters - June-July 2005

by Hidden Author •

June–July 2005, no. 272

ABR welcomes letters from our readers. Correspondents should note that letters may be edited. Letters and emails must reach us by the middle of the current month, and must include a telephone number for verification.

Behold how low

Dear Editor,

Robert Manne’s review of my book Washout: On the Academic Response to the Fabrication of Aboriginal History (ABR, May 2005) avoids most of my criticisms of Whitewash: On Keith Windschuttle’s Fabrication of Aboriginal History, and misrepresents the rest.

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Washout: On the academic response to the fabrication of Aboriginal history by John Dawson

by Robert Manne •

May 2005, no. 271

Robert Manne reviews ‘Washout: On the academic response to the fabrication of Aboriginal history’ by John Dawson

In 2003, I edited a book called Whitewash, a critique of Keith Windschuttle’s revisionist account of the destruction of the Tasmanian Aborigines, The Fabrication of Aboriginal History (2002). Even before Whitewash was published, Windschuttle told a journalist at The Australian, D.D. McNicoll, that he was preparing a book-length reply. Nothing came of this promise. Rather than answer his critics directly, what Windschuttle seems eventually to have decided to do was to finance, through the Press he owns, Macleay, the publication of John Dawson’s Washout. By its publication, Windschuttle hopes, presumably, to have saved face.

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