Australian history wars
The history wars is a term used in Australia to describe the public debate about the interpretation of the history of the European colonisation of Australia and the development of contemporary Australian society, particularly with regard to their impact on Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The term "history wars" emerged in the late 1990s during the term of the Howard government, and despite efforts by some of Howard's successors, the debate is ongoing, notably reignited in 2016 and 2020. The "history wars" are often regarded as a culture war and have involved key figures in the Australian political and media landscapes. The term largely refers to the extent to which the history of European colonisation post-1788 and government administration since federation in 1901 may be characterised as having been: a relatively minor conflict between European settlers and Indigenous Australians, and generally lacking in events that might be termed "invasion", "warfare", "guerrilla warfare", "conquest" or "genocide", and generally marked instead by humane intent by government authorities, with damage to Indigenous Australians largely attributable to unintended factors (such as the unintentional spread of infectious diseases from Europe) rather than to malicious policies; or an invasion marked by violent frontier conflicts and guerrilla warfare between European settlers and Indigenous Australians involving numerous clashes between Aboriginal people and the new settlers as a result of the former's food gathering practices being at odds with new land-use practices based on agriculture and capitalism, a situation which has been argued to have evolved into a pan-Australian "genocide of Indigenous Australians", which continues to affect Aboriginal people today.
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