Xavier College staffer says Annaliese van Diemen’s James Cook tweet had ‘common mistakes’
Victoria’s Deputy Chief Health Officer copped widespread backlash after she compared COVID-19 to the arrival of Captain James Cook, but now a respected educator says there was something deeply inaccurate about the tweet that everyone missed during the saga.
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A tweet by Victoria’s Deputy Chief Health Officer, levelling blame at Captain James Cook for the “invasion” of Australia, contained a factual error commonly made by Year 9 boys, according to a senior Xavier College staffer.
The school’s spiritual leader Fr Chris Middleton told families late last week the tweet by Dr Annaliese van Diemen, which polarised the community, bore some “similarities to the Israel Folau case, though many appeared to reverse their positions in this case”.
In a newsletter sent to families of more than 2000 students at the top Kew school, the Jesuit Fr Middleton drew on the incident in a message about National Reconciliation Week.
He described Dr van Diemen’s provocative post as an unexpected distraction to mark the 250th anniversary of James Cook’s voyage to Australia.
A full-scale investigation was launched after Dr van Diemen tweeted; “Sudden arrival of an invader from another land, decimating populations, creating terror. Forces the population to make enormous sacrifices & completely change how they live in order to survive. COVID-19 or Cook 1770?”
In the past week she has been providing regular coronavirus updates at morning media conferences.
“I’m not sure whether Dr van Diemen was aware that Cook had no direct role in the British decision to send the First Fleet to Botany Bay, as he was dead when the decision was made,” Fr Middleton said.
“Cook is studied in Year 9 history, and the two most common mistakes made by students in assessing Cook’s contribution are to assert that he either discovered Australia (as distinct from the east coast) or that he initiated British settlement.
“Another issue around Cook centres on him taking possession of the eastern half of Australia (greater NSW as I tell the boys!) on behalf of the British Crown, under the legal basis of terra nullius.”
Fr Middleton said it was a “complicated story” but led many to believe that Cook, and therefore the British, wilfully ignored indigenous people in declaring the land empty.
“This was not the case, but rather Cook believed that the land was unowned, as distinct from being unoccupied. In part, this stemmed from a fundamental misunderstanding between two vastly different worlds. When our First Peoples said that they did not own the land, Cook and later British authority believed it was therefore vacant land that could be claimed, whereas the indigenous peoples believed that they belonged to the land, in the most important of connections, and that no one could own the land,” he said.
Fr Middleton said the controversy around Dr van Diemen was “short-lived but on the eve of National Reconciliation Week, it did serve to raise our awareness of the ongoing challenges of justice for our First Peoples and about the role of history”.
Dr van Diemen was cleared of any wrongdoing for the tweet, believed to have been posted on a work phone on a day off. She is understood to have been counselled about social media use. Her account has 6380 followers but the tweet received more than 11,000 likes, 2000 retweets and nearly 4000 comments. Her account says her tweets/views are her own and not those of her employer.
“We need to remember that Cook was a man of his times, and historical perspective is important. He demanded that his crew treat the natives of Tahiti with respect in a language seldom used by his contemporaries. He sought to establish good communications with indigenous peoples, but first contact in New Zealand led to Maori deaths. He was aware, more than most, of the adverse impact of European contact on native cultures. He would die at the hands of Hawaiian warriors in a clash that he bore some responsibility for,” Fr Middleton said.
He conceded Cook’s “discovery had inexorably led to the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788”. “The pandemic, from the introduction of smallpox alone, claimed the lives of more than half of the indigenous population in many parts of Australia. There were wars and massacres, mass dispossession, and in places, virtual genocide. Not all was intentional, conflict in many cases was inevitable, but the record is a terrible one. It is a record, furthermore, that reaches into the lifetime of some of us,” he said.
He said no part of the world had been spared, over the course of time, of tragedies on the scale similar to that experienced in Australia.
“The record about the treatment of our First Peoples is clear. The 160,000 convicts who were transported to the other side of the world experienced much cruelty and hardship, but, however, in the end, this land would prove a new beginning for them and their descendants,”
“Dr van Diemen’s comments, perhaps ill-informed and inappropriate in these times, nevertheless serve in this anniversary year of Cook’s voyage, and in the lead up to National Reconciliation Week, to remind us of a history that needs navigating truthfully and with perspective.”
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