Killing For Country

Killing For Country is a remarkable, scorching book. Journalist David Marr was digging through his family history at the behest of a relative when he stumbled across a photograph of his two-times great-grandfather dressed in the uniform of the Native Police, a notoriously brutal group who specialised in 'dispersing' (ie slaughtering) Aboriginal tribes in Queensland in the latter part of the nineteenth century.

Marr forensically lays out the records, from official correspondence, newspaper reports, private diaries and letters, which bulge with proof of large-scale massacres and individual killings on the frontier -- a history we never learned or even suspected at school, a history that was silenced, covered up and ignored for far too long. There are no more excuses for ignorance. This land was brutally stolen, its inhabitants murdered.

David Marr says he doesn't feel guilt for the actions of his ancestor, but he does feel shame. And so should we all. The detail of this clear, intelligent account is incontrovertible. Many times while reading Killing For Country, I had to lay down the book to catch my breath in disbelief and horror. Anyone who still believes that the history of white settlement has suffered from a false 'black armband' view should be made to read Killing For Country.