Australia's Unthinkable Genocide

by Colin Tatz

"We are a moral people" and the very notion that Australians could have anything to do with genocide is unthinkable--so claimed parliamentarians when Australia was asked to ratify the UN's Genocide Convention in 1949. The reality is that even decent democrats and people who consider themselves good colonists are capable of doing just that--killing people because of who they were, forcibly removing their children in order to assimilate them and erase them from the landscape, and then, in the name of their protection, incarcerated them on reserves in a manner that caused them serious physical and mental harm. This confronting book addresses the whole issue of what happens to an indigenous minority who were considered other than human, an unworthy order of beings destined to die out.

272 pages, Hardcover

Published April 4, 2017

About the author

Colin Tatz, a Natal University and Australian National University graduate, has been Professor of Politics at the University of New England, Armidale, and at Macquarie University, Sydney. He became the director of the Australian Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

Colin Tatz was born in South Africa. In 1964 Tatz received his PhD from the Australian National University. He is an author of several books and published articles on race politics, genocide, the Holocaust and antisemitism, and racism in sport.

Reviews

[Dan Ryan]

Chilling, important read.