I'm looking forward to reading all of the essays published this week over at Active History's commemoration of the Royal Proclamation of 1763. Tom Peace's first essay lays out what the series will look like, and the first essays are already coming out.
I do wonder about one point, though. Peace says that Active History is giving a variety of views of the Proclamation. The summary of each sort of shows this. But I can't help but see one glaring absence - any interpretation that might differ from what Tom Flanagan has elsewhere called the 'aboriginal orthodoxy'. It seems from what we can see so far that all of the opinions come from within this perspective. Maybe when all of the essays are out, this will prove not to be the case. Maybe.
Unfortunately this is one of those issues where academics aren't allowed to disagree. Even for a lot of us on the centre or centre-left, the intellectual homogeneity expected in the profession, especially on issues relating to indigenous people, is frustrating.
ReplyDeletePost-tenture, anyway, one can speak out. But it is difficult...
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