I did not get your comment and I would like to understand it better. Isn't "whitewashing" the process of forgetting about the contributions or tribulations of non-white people in our history? Acknowledging atrocities committed by western civilizations seems like the opposite of that (and I do think we should hold ourselves to a very high standard and being aware of these atrocities is part of that).
What I mean is that Australians sweep the details under the rug about the genocide of the First Nation people that occurred in order to make their modern nation .. its not at all near as well acknowledged as it should be, and Australia continues to build tourist traps on sites of mass murder as if its nothing.
Australians prefer ignorance over acknowledgement, generally. Its not something we should be proud about .. in fact, there is a lot of shame in being an Australian with NO CLUE about the civilization that was swept away to make way for White Australia. Australia's first inhabitants were far more advanced than we care to admit.
EDIT: some things all Australians should know about the first people:
* They have been on the continent for at least 65,000 years
* The current biosphere is a result of their management of the land and wildlife for the duration of those 65,000 years
* They used cryptographic techniques to keep the peace between tribes
* They have the oldest confirmed oral history of any human society, ever - scientifically proven to stretch back 40,000 years. (We in the west can't keep our oral traditions sane for 100 years, by comparison..)
* They had a version of the Hippocratic Oath long before European medicine
* Their medical culture had an understanding of antibiotic and antiseptic materials in their environment and were using them to great effect at a time when European medicine still believed in miasma theory
.. and there is much, much more. Alas, the hubris around what has been done to the First Nation people (see for example White Australia policies continuing into the 1980's... forced castrations... forced re-settlement of children... etc.) has resulted in a general ignorance of the situation among current Australian culture...
