Race Relations
Unit 3: Power Structures
Cultural Aspects Historical Issues Race Relations Contemporary Issues
Unit 1: Cultural Mapping Unit 2: Racisim Unit 3: Power Unit 4: Reconciliation
Racist Ideology and power structures
3.01
Unraveling Colonised history
If we look at Australian history, then we have to note the profound silence of the vast majority of historians concerning not only our existence, but also our genocide. (Sally Morgan, 'The Art of Sally Morgan', Penguin: Ringwood, 1996, p 6.
Sally Morgan's painting, 'Greetings from Rottnest' shows the land in cross-section. Above ground a group of tourists waive gaily. beneath them are the bones of countless Aboriginal people. For the Nyoongar people, Wadjemup is their name for Rottnest, and it has a different meaning for them. The island was a prison for over a hundred years, where thousands of Aboriginal people were incarcerated, often thousands of kilometers from the traditional country.
3.02
Changing Histories
A stereotypical representation of a group does not only distort by way of characture, but generalises by automatically aplying the same rigid model to each member of the group...
Roy Preiswerk and Dominique Perrot, Ethnocentrisism and History: Africa, Asia,and Indian American in Western Textbooks,NOK Publishers International: New York, 1978, p 17.
When I was first learning about Australian history in the 1960's, we were told that Captain Cook had discovered Australia. Scant mention was made in the text books we read of Aboriginal people except as bit players, part of the backdrop against which white 'settlement' was forged. There was little or no mention of the Dutch or Portuguese, who had explored around Australia before Cook. However, I had enlightened teachers who filled in the gaps from their own research. Two text books widely used in New South Wales Schools in the 19960's and 1970's to teach Australian History, and pitched at year 7 students, were The Development of Man by Adams and Social Studies by Brooks. Adams refers to Aboriginal people as a 'Stone Age' culture, even though they 'have been in contact with white people for many years.' The assumption here was that white culture was superior, more evolved. Also, Adams fails to mention the nature of this contact, which was in fact not one of mutual respect and tolerance. Neither culture benefited much from the ancient wisdom of the other. Brooks depicts, in pictures and words, an impoverished Aboriginal culture, where women collect 'roots, insects and mall animals' and where the men search 'fruitlessly for days on end for the larger animals, such as the kangaroo.' He acknowledges but does not question the reason for their struggle: the 'type of country left to the Aborigines' by the 'coming' of the Europeans to Australia. Also, the word 'coming' is used rather than 'invading'. There was is acknowledgment of the injustices and violence involved which diminished the quality of lives for Aboriginal people.
Most material used today for teaching Australian history from an Aboriginal perspective has been made at the instigation of Aboriginal community groups, using the guidelines of today's world's educational 'best practice.' Consultation between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal educators is vital to its success. The written, sound and visual texts I am using to complete this Diploma of Aboriginal Studies are excellent examples. What distinguishes these from the texts used in schools in the 1960's and 1970's is their encouragement to read and respond to different points of view, and to compare these views with personal research and experience. They do not present just one voice, their tone is not patronising. The respect, knowledge and intelligence of the reader (Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal) is assumed.
3.03
Challenging Stereotyping
Get to know each other better. Encourage the study of each others cultures, and ban racist behaviour in schools.
3.04
Unmasking Whiteness
...since their first intrusive gaze, colonising cultures have had a preoccupation with observing, analyzing, studying, classifying and labeling 'Aborigines' and Aboriginality. Under that gaze Aboriginality changed from being a daily practice to being a 'problem to solve.'
M. Dodson, Wentworth Lecture, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission: Canberra, 1994, p 3.
The collage, 'Nulla Nulla, Australia's White Hope' is an ironic reference to the aspirations embedded within an Australian Government policy of educating part-Aboriginal people, in their belief that it was their 'whiteness' that would be their salvation. In other words, that thheir white blood was what would determine their chance of assimilation.
3.05
Conceiving non-racist words
Is language neutral? How are the words 'black' and 'white' defined by different cultures? I look up the two Dictionaries that are at hand:
The Concise Oxford Dictionary Adapted by H.w. and F.G. Fowler from the Oxford Dictionary, 1912:
Black, opposite of white, dark, gloomy, dirty, deadly, sinister, angry, sulky, threatening, implying disgrace or condemnation, persons suspect, tabooed
White, innocent, unstained, of harmless kind; of white man, white culture, white civilization etc.,
The Concise Oxford Dictionary Ninth Edition, 1998:
Black,very dark, having no colour from the absorption of light, of the human group having dark coloured skin, esp. of African or Australian Aboriginal descent, or or relating to black people (black rights), angry, threatening (a black look)
White, resembling a surface reflecting sunlight without absorbing any of the visible rays, of the human group having light-coloured skin, of or relating to white people, colloq.innocent, untainted,
The earlier Dictionary has more emotively loaded definitions, and the later one more scientific. Where emotive definitions appear, they are qualified as 'colloquial'.
3.06
Protection
The Protection policy was a complete misnomer, as white people acted to protect themselves against Aboriginal people by putting them down rather than giving them a helping hand into white society.
3.07
Stolen
Cecil Cook and other 'protectors' need to be viewed in context. 'His period of Protector of Aborigines was during a time of growing support for eugenics ideas and the rise of ultra-nationalist and fascist movements in Europe during the 1920s and 1930s...Eugenics was embraced in a country in which prevailing social attitudes regarded the White Australia Policy as a sacred text.' ( Hutchinson, F., 2003; Unit 3, p 33)
3.08
'Whitewashing our dark past'
In an address in Darwin in 1999, Meagher QC, the lawyer acting for the Federal Government) argued that child removal was a noble act of the government to assimilate Aboriginal people into white society. Robert Mann (Sydney Morning Herald<'i> 22 March 1999) countered that his attitude 'represents one of the crudest public restatemenys of the assimilationist philosophy this country has seen in recent years' and that 'Meagher's argument seemed genuinely innocent of everything that has been argued about indigenous matters in this country over the past 35 years.' ( Hutchinson, F., 2003; Unit 3, p 35)
3.09
Assimilation
Assimilation meant that Aboriginal people were banned from speaking their own languages.
3.10
Environmental Racism
...during the 1950s major tests of nuclear weapons took place on Yankuntjatjara land at Maralinga in South Australia...Australia's Cold War fears combined with racism and a continuing colonial mentality to allow the British to conduct these tests. The British named their test series 'Operation Totem'. ( Hutchinson, F., 2003; Unit 3, p 39)
...I heard this bang like thunder, the ground shook, and later on we saw this black smoke...We call it mamu (evil spirit), but people now call it 'black mist'. Later ona lot od us got sick, we had sore eyes and sore throats. I went blind n 1957. Even now people who were there at the time have something wrong with their eyes. ( Michael Rose, cited in Hutchinson, F., 2003; Unit 3, p 40)
3.11
Discrimination and the law
During the early period of colonisation, a key legal fiction was the claim that there was 'equal treatment under the British law.' A proclamation from 1816, issued by Lieutenant-Governor Davey in Tasmania is an example of such official propaganda. (Hutchinson, F., 2003; Unit 3, p 44)
1. In Extract 3.8:
Which UN convention has been breached by the Wik law, according to the article?
How does this law discriminate against Aboriginal people?
What was the advice of the Aboriginal Law Reform Commission?
2. In Extract 3.9, which UN Convention does the NT mandatory sentencing law break?:
3. What do the imprisonment figures detailed in Extract 3.11 reveal in terms of discrimination and the law? Would you describe this system as systemic discrimination? Why?
4. Look at Figures 3.4-3.6. As briefly as you can, sum up what each one is saying.
5. Comment on the case put for an Australian Bill of Rights in Extract 3.12 and Extract 3.13.
6. Where did each of these articles and cartoons come from and what do they tell us about general and Aboriginal community feelings about these issues?
3.12
Stolen Generations
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Hutchinson, F., 2003, Race Relations A Learner's Guide., Aboriginal Programs Unit, NSW DET, TAFE NSW, Open Training and Education Network (OTEN).
Fforde, C., 1997, Controlling the Dead: an analysis of the collecting and repatriation of Aboriginal human remains.
Muir, R. & Philip, G. 1939, Philip's New School Atlas of Universal History, The London Geographical Institute, London.
Bibliography
Sheridan, J. & Tranter, J. 2000, Aspects of Cultural Studies A Learner's Guide, Open Training and Education Network, Sydney.
Isaacs, J. 1987 Australian Dreaming, 40,000 Years of Aboriginal History, Lansdowne Press, Sydney.
Benterrak, Mueke, Roe 1984 Reading the Country, Freemantle Arts Centre Press
Ngankat-kalo: Aboriginal Education , http://www.vaeai.org.au/timeline/1901.html [Online accessed 21 August 2006]
