by Ben Silverstein
In this book review, Ben Siverstein writes on ‘Breaking the Silence: Aboriginal Defenders and the Settler State, 1905–1939’ by Alison Holland and published by Melbourne University Press. In 1905, Alison Holland writes, the publication of the Routh report on the treatment of Aboriginal people in Western Australia was “the spark that ignited the humanitarian cause”, generating decades of furious contestation around what was often called “the native problem”
