The Wire

The black armband view of Australian history – it’s the dismissive comeback trotted out whenever anyone wants to talk publicly about how indigenous people suffered in the settling of this country. But when indigenous author Bruce Pascoe was researching an Aboriginal language dictionary a few years back he began to come across letters and documents which told a far more horrific story than he had ever imagined. In his newly released book “The Convincing Ground” he shows that there was an all-out war for land between black and white in the 19th century, a war now not mentioned in history books.