Talk:Angus McMillan

Editing required

What does this mean?: "McMillan realized that Gabber was terrified of the strange country and then turn back to Omeo from a planned six-week trip after only nine days."? And what does "died without an inheritance" mean? If it is meant to mean "died leaving no inheritance to his family", why not say so?Royalcourtier (talk) 05:01, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

I agree this is badly worded - it's trying to say that McMillan's guide Gabber attacked him one night, but backed off when McMillan awoke and pointed his gun at him. What are (I think) contemporary newspaper reports claim Gabber was afraid of travelling through Gunai lands and attacked McMillan when he wouldn't agree to turn back. Those same reports have Gabber himself denying this, so the best we should do here is record the incident and note the differing views. Gardner recounts this incident, and trove.nla.gov.au will have the papers as primary sources - will have a look at this over the weekend when there's a bit mroe time, unless anyone else wants to set to it earlier.

"Died without an inheritance" presumably means died poor, but the entire sentence is unreferenced. Any takers for this? Euryalus (talk) 00:06, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

POV

The article, thanks largely to a series of anonymous edits, takes a wholly condemnatory approach to McMillan, calling him a butcher (of men) and a freebooter, whereas some people have obviously regarded him as worthy of monuments and honors. Any settler of already-occupied territory is likely to have been complicit in the dispossession, and possibly the genocide, of the previous inhabitants; and that fact (if it is a fact) is not trivial; yet this article makes that the single defining aspect of McMillan's life, while Australian society at large has honored him. Just from information contained in the article it's clear that McMillan was an explorer, a pastoralist, and a politician. Whether or not he was also a pirate and a murderer may depend on subjective judgment, or it may be a matter of indisputable fact; but the article does not supply enough information to settle the question: it starts from a presumption of guilt. An encyclopedia is not the place for moralistic retribution against the dead. J. D. Crutchfield | Talk 21:58, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

The Biography Dictionary calls him a friend and a protector of Indigenous People in Gippsland. Men who participated in the massacres were sworn to sercresy these stories need to be told. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.120.18.134 (talk) 06:32, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

These stories need to be told, but they need to be told truthfully and impartially in Wikipedia. If there is credible evidence that McMillan was in fact a friend and protector of indigenous people, or even if there is credible evidence that he simply wasn't a vicious and willful murderer of innocent people, it's highly inappropriate for Wikipedia to slander him as "the Butcher of Gippsland". At present, this article is a hatchet-job, not an encyclopedia article. J. D. Crutchfield | Talk 16:24, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Removed some unsourced additions and edited for a more neutral tone. Per the suggestion above that people were "sworn to secrecy" which is why there aren't any sources to support claims - please note Wikipedia is about verifiability, not truth. If a claim cannot be referenced to a reliable source - that is, one with a credible record of fact-checking - it cannot be included here. Euryalus (talk) 13:58, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

I've also reworded the "Later Life" sentence that attributes almost all of the Gippsland massacres to McMillan, because the attached reference (Bartrop, pp.200-203) only refers to Warrigal Creek. An alternative source - P.D. Gardner's "Our Founding Murdering Father" - makes additional connections but seems equivocal on Warrigal Creek, noting among other things that it is possible that McMillan was not actually there. I'll review Gardner more thoroughly in the next little while and possibly reword this sentence again.

Happy to discuss, as always. Euryalus (talk) 08:27, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

An opinion on the way forward

I've had a read of Gardner's work (mentioend above), which focuses in detail on McMillan's interaction with the indigenous population. Gardner covers McMillan and the massacres in some detail. However I'm not entirely convinced on reliability - a niche publisher, no support for these claims in more traditional sources, and the book's self-identification as an "altenative biography." There's also a synthesis at work, as follows:

• The killing and driving away of Gippsland's indigenous population did occur, and principally between 1840 and 1850;
• The whites at McMillan's pastoral stations were the only large, organised group of whites in Gippsland for most of the period;
• Many of these whites took part in the massacres;
• McmIllan was the employer or leader of many of these whites;
• Therefore it follows that McMillan must have organised and/or taken part in the massacres.

The last point is the synthesis. Gardner himself acknowledges there is little or no evidence that McMillan organised or even took personal part in most of the massacres. He generally uses the lesser word "implicated" to describe McMillan, rather than "involved" or "participating." Gardner also acknowledges that the evidence against McMillan comes from two pseudonymous contemporaries, neither of whom can be considered entirely honest or unbiased. By contrast the Bartrop source in the article bluntly states that McMillan organised the group that massacred the Aboriginal population at Warrigal Creek (but doesn't mention the other sites).

So where does all this leave us? The massacres occurred, there was involvement by McMillan's men, and in some cases (Warrigal Creek, Boney Creek, perhaps others) there's a case for asserting McMillan's knowledge and implication, if not personal involvement. These should therefore be referenced in the article, appropriately in the context of expanding pastoralism and indigenous resistance to dispossession. The sources (such as they are) cannot be ignored, but they cannot be exceeded either. That means on available sources we cannot suggest McMillan was personally co-ordinating a systematic genocide. And we cannot include statements like "Butcher of Gippsland" or "Occupation: freebooter," which are author/editor personal opinions and not part of the historical record.

I raise all this here for discussion, before I make an attempt at amending the article. The above is my view on a reading of the sources - all other views welcome, and let's see where consensus takes us. Euryalus (talk) 10:21, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks to Euryalus for this balanced and humane approach. I haven't read the sources, but the bias of the article in its former state was so patent that I felt obliged to tag it for POV. With Euryalus's revisions I would support removing the POV tag, but don't know whether or not I'm free to remove it myself. J. D. Crutchfield | Talk 15:42, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

You can remove the tag any time, but can I suggest it stay for the moment in case we have opposing views about the neutrality of the page.

Unrelated - I'm interested in the apparent absence of detailed biographies of McMillan. So far I have found significant mentions in colonial histories but nothing really full-length. That makes it hard to determine whether we are giving undue weight to individual aspects of his life. Primary sources give him greatest coverage as an explorer, Gardner focuses on his dispossesson of the Gunai, no one so far gives much detail on his role in pastoralism or establishing European settlement in Gippsland. Weird that someone so significant in Australian colonial history should be so rarely discussed by historians. Euryalus (talk) 00:19, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

Thicker Than Water: History, Secrets and Guilt: A Memoir Hardcover – by Cal Flyn

A new biog !

https://calflyn.com/book/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0008126607

195.137.93.171 (talk) 01:16, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

Appears to be not a scholarly biography but a subjective travel memoir by a modern "distant relative" with a decided POV. I suspect this anonymous plug is spam. J. D. Crutchfield | Talk 18:22, 13 June 2016 (UTC)

I fail to see why you would suspect the mention of this source to be a "plug" or "spam" -- i see no reason for you to not assume good faith about the IP editor mentioning this source in a discussion about sources. Nor do i see why you'd categorize this source as somehow less legitimate or "with a decided POV" as if that is (1) correct in that calling a murderer a murderer is a "POV" and not simply history, and (2) having a POV does not discount a source and most sources on social topics have a POV of some sort. SageRad (talk) 12:47, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

More POV

I note a good deal of back-and-forth POV editing of this article, apparently going back as far as September 2015, if not farther, and continuing down to the present day, so I've again tagged the article for POV. I don't have enough knowledge (or, frankly, interest) to judge who's right and who's wrong, but it would seem, at a minimum, that if a statement is to be replaced with a contradictory statement, then the authority cited ought to change as well. Otherwise, it's just some editor asserting a POV.

McMillan may well have been the brutal assassin some people want to portray here; but if he was, there will be reliable sources establishing a scholarly agreement regarding that fact. Existing public tributes to him create a presumption that he was a public benefactor, which must be overcome with evidence from reliable authorities. If the controversy over McMillan is significant (i.e., not just a small faction vs. broad agreement) and unresolved, then the article should recognize the dispute and discuss it without taking sides. The present text, with its reference to "hunting of Aborigines", "massacres", etc., cannot be considered neutral unless there is scholarly consensus as to the accuracy of such terms. J. D. Crutchfield | Talk 20:04, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

Sometimes there are different readings or interpretations of the same source so it's not a requirement to change sourcing to edit a claim.

It seems to me that sources with titles like Our Founding Murdering Fathers: Angus McMillan and the Kurnai Tribe of Gippsland, 1839-1865 and the Cal Flyn book do establish that he engaged in massacres and murder. SageRad (talk) 12:50, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

Even a basic Google search demonstrates fairly broad agreement that McMillan was not a good human being. The sources criticising McMillan seem to me to be fairly abundant, while the claim that "existing public tributes to him create a presumption that he was a public benefactor" (that don't date from White Australia Policy times) seem to me the one that's unproven in reliable sources. If Jdcrutch wants to claim such a presumption, he needs to prove it. The Drover's Wife (talk) 13:03, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

Yes, i agree. You said what i wanted to say but failed to say. Thanks. SageRad (talk) 13:33, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

Ancestry

I've replaced McMillan's "Australian" nationality in the infobox with "Scottish," as:

• Australia was not federated as a country until 1901, well after McMillan's death; and
• McMillan was both born in Scotland and referenced in ODNB as a "leader of the Scottish community" as late as 1857 - which suggests McMillan's own identification of nationality.
• A further source - the 1934 "Victoria's Centenary" lecture by James Barrett (http://www.jstor.org/stable/20629161 if you have jstor access) specifically refers to McMillan as a "Scotch farmer," in the context of making a point of difference from Australian-born explorers.

I can't find any meaningful discussions at WP:AWNB on the how to describe the nationality of pre-Federation figures, so have gone with what's above as a reasonable basis for using "Scotland." However I appreciate there may be disagreement, so am happy to discuss. Euryalus (talk) 14:52, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

Possible source

I removed this source from the end of the article, but post it here in case someone wants to integrate it into the article prose:

O'Mahony, Ciaran. Living on a massacre site: home truths and trauma at Warrigal Creek. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/mar/06/living-on-a-massacre-site-home-truths-and-trauma-at-warrigal-creek. The Guardian.

Ackatsis (talk) 11:53, 9 March 2023 (UTC)