I’m a great fan of the TV show Vikings. The series is historical fiction – based on the real historical events of the early Viking raids of England and France, but with characters and storylines that are a mixture of fiction, myth and legend and historical facts.

Vikings’ characters aren’t modern heroes. They commit dreadful acts – they rape and pillage, keep slaves, kill and mutilate innocent people, cheat, lie and torture. And that’s not just the Vikings. The English and French are cut from the same brutal cloth. Yet the characters are engaging and even endearing, with stories full of complexity and moral ambiguities. The series simply depicts how people lived, interacted, thought and behaved in and around the North Sea over a thousand years ago. As they were. Warts ‘n all.

Last week saw another instalment of Australia’s ‘history wars’ with a mini-storm erupting over the University of NSW’s Diversity Toolkit. The toolkit sets out language guidelines for students and teachers when referring to Indigenous Australians and to events in Australia’s history. In particular, it recommends using the term ‘invasion’ rather than ‘settlement’ to describe the way the British came to control and govern the Australian continent. The ensuing uproar clearly demonstrates that describing British colonisation as an ‘invasion’ strikes a very raw nerve amongst non-Indigenous Australians, even more than two centuries after the event.

Let’s get real here. The indisputable fact is that my Bundjalung, Gumbaynggirr and Yuin ancestors experienced an invasion. Armed foreigners entered their countries and took possession of their lands through fear, intimidation, trickery and/or violence, all under the authority and blessing of a foreign government. Their choices were to flee or remain in subjugation.

How is it that learned minds can look at this scenario and conclude there was no invasion in a geo-political sense? The answer lies in the way Britain thought about Australia and its first peoples.

Britain assumed Australia’s first inhabitants didn’t claim ownership of the land. They saw nomads living in unstructured societies with no recognisable civic or legal systems; who moved seemingly randomly over vast areas but didn’t claim any particular territory for themselves. Britain designated the continent as terra nullius, the land of no-one; a territory no nation claimed sovereignty over.

This assumption was wrong. In 1788 Australia had hundreds of nations, each with their own languages, laws and governance. And each knew what was their country and what was the country of another group. These were Australia’s first nations. The British didn’t recognise or understand this. It wasn’t until 1992, through the Mabo decision, that the idea of terra nullius was finally rejected.

I accept that most of the British colonists didn’t see themselves as invaders. The First Fleet’s objective wasn’t to launch an attack; the British soldiers weren’t deployed to wage war. Their mission was to establish a penal colony. But to achieve this the people of the Sydney Basin had to disperse or be dispensed with. Taking land and subjugating its people was essential to this mission. And so it went on across the continent for well over a century.

The study and teaching of Australian history has evolved from mistaken assumptions and bigoted attitudes. Indigenous people have been absent or incorrectly portrayed and the facts, experiences and lived realities of Indigenous people have been largely excluded from history curricula. It’s right to remedy this oversight. And it can be remedied without the need for thought police or mandating politically correct language.

In an address to the House of Commons in 1916, Winston Churchill spoke of the success of Britain’s aerial forces in defending it against German bombing attacks in World War 1. In an ‘I told you so’ moment, he noted how difficult it had been to get the funding and resources to build this aerial capability, concluding with the now famous comment:

‘This truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it, ignorance may deride it, malice may distort it, but there it is.’

History, too, is incontrovertible; it cannot be changed or undone. The law of this land now recognises that in 1788 Australia was inhabited and those inhabitants occupied, possessed and enjoyed particular areas of land and sea to the exclusion of others which was inherited and succeeded to subsequent generations. They didn’t invite or welcome British colonists to occupy their lands. People may resent this, deride it or try to distort it but, in the end, there it is.

Calling British colonisation a ‘settlement’ is a euphemism to soften the reality of the past. But I don’t agree that educational institutions should mandate how students and teachers refer to it or any other past events. Students and teachers should be free to use any terminology they want, explain what it means and why they feel it’s appropriate or inappropriate. History shouldn’t be sanitised or edited to suit an agenda, to make people feel worse or to make them feel better. History is messy and brutal, with few pure heroes or villains. People need to learn about past events, in full and as they happened, without worrying about whether the facts might offend or upset someone. Teach the facts – and the ambiguities; and teach all of them. This should include both the Indigenous and European perspectives, the context in which all of these events took place and also the contribution that Europeans have made to building the nation of Australia. Portray all people of Australia’s history – its first peoples, invaders, colonisers, settlers and migrants – in their full depth, not as heroes and villains, but as real people who displayed a range of successes, failings, weaknesses and virtues.

I’m sure the Scandinavians, British and French can watch Vikings today without feeling grievances or guilt. Australians too should move past the emotion of historical events and see them as they are, not as they might wish them to be.