Aboriginal Culture

Police_Trackers

Figure 1: Trackers Peter and Stanley at Finke 1953

There is both ignorance and confusion about Aboriginal Culture. There are a number of reasons for this situation. Few Australians have any contact with Aborigines. There are also the deliberate distortions introduced by the ‘Aboriginal Industry’ and a lack of any general understanding as to the importance of culture. There is an even greater lack of understanding of what constitutes the essence of a culture.

I was one of a small number of non-aborigines in the 1950’s who had the opportunity to live and work with Aborigines who retained their tribal culture. I was one of an even smaller group who were fully accepted by tribal Aborigines, and invited by the elders to attend secret ceremonies, and to accept initiation – which I declined. I set out to understand them and their culture. At that stage I had a relatively slight understanding of Anthropology and Philosophy. One of the first books I had bought when I left school in 1944 was Elkin's [ half Jew ] ‘Aboriginal Men of High Degree’.

After 40 years of working life, I undertook Tertiary studies and Postgraduate research for 14 years, seeking to put my lifetime experience into context and to make sense of my observations in the field. I obtained my Doctorate in 1998.

In the April 2000 issue of Quadrant, Peter Howson, a previous Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, commented on the state of barbarism that is now apparent in every remote Aboriginal community. Unfortunately this reversion to barbarism is not limited to remote communities. Before anything can be done to try to repair this situation, we have to understand its causes.

Howson quoted a 1999 report by Boni Robertson of Griffith University, Queensland, which stated:

“The degree of violence and destruction in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities cannot be adequately described. The Task Force found evidence of all forms of physical, psychological, cultural and structural violence being perpetrated, and while many may consider the violence to be a characteristic of indigenous cultures there are other factors that must be considered.

"Appalling acts of physical brutality and sexual violence are being perpetrated within some families and across communities to a degree previously unknown in indigenous life. Sadly, many of the victims are women and children, young and older people now living in a constant state of desperation and despair.

“A majority of the informants believe that the rise in violence in Aboriginal communities can be attributed to the so-called ‘Aboriginal Industry’. When a community has to deal with three men raping a three year old child, who was raped by another offender ten days later, there is a crisis of huge proportions.”

The horrific tale told by Peter Howson comes as no surprise to me. I was privileged to work closely with tribal Aboriginals in the Northern Territory in the 1950`s, and have maintained my interest since then. While the reversion to savagery in Aboriginal communities, detailed by Peter Howson, has affected the situation from 1970 on, the seeds of that decline in the Northern Territory had already been initiated in the 1960`s.

The problem is essentially a problem of culture. The nature and role of culture has to be understood before we can hope to appreciate the genesis of the problem that Howson describes. It has its origin in cultural challenges with which Aboriginal society has not successfully coped. What follows is a diagnosis, which we have to get right before we can make any attempt to prescribe a cure.

To understand the extent of this problem we first have to understand the essential nature of a culture. The roots of a culture are to be found in the ideas, which the people of that culture take for granted, as to the meaning and purpose of human life. (Dix 1967,7)

Every culture is ultimately based upon a belief system, which tells the members of that culture who and what they are, and what the world is all about. This is the central role of a culture. Humans are made in such a way that they need a culture to complete them. We have an innate need of a culture, and we cannot live without one, nor without creating one. A culture provides the necessary matrix for each individual’s development. (Midgley 1978,286) A person’s culture is literally that person’s second nature.

In Australia, we currently have the opportunity to observe the effects of cultural breakdown in both the broad Australian society and in Aboriginal society. Aboriginal society has been subjected to an inevitable attack on its cultural foundations.

Western societies generally, including Australian society, have also been subjected to an attack on their cultural foundations. The attack on Aboriginal society came from the outside; the attack on Western society comes from within [ from Marxists which essentially means Jews - Editor ]. The consequences are similar, the differences in outcomes being primarily one of degree.

Already in the 1950’s, Central Australian Aborigines were experiencing the effects of the inevitable external attack on their culture from the mere presence of a Western culture. Many young Aborigines were reluctant to learn the belief system, which was the foundation of their culture. However, in the majority of cases, an effective accommodation between the two cultures had been reached. Every cattle station supported a homogenous aboriginal camp where Aborigines were able to maintain the cultural ceremonies, which were vital to the transmission of their cultural beliefs. The status of elders also helped maintain internal tribal discipline. At the same time the camp provided a source of labor for the cattle station.

The two main disasters that overtook Aborigines in the 1960’s, were the decision to apply Award standards to Aboriginal workers on stations, and the decision to remove the prohibition on Aborigines drinking. The Award ensured that the homogenous camps would be disbanded, with the Aborigines gravitating to towns or settlements; the second disaster, Alcohol, ensured their total demoralisation and the subsequent inability to preserve their culture.

The inability of Aborigines to handle alcohol is similar to the inability of Europeans to handle heroin. Their inability to handle alcohol had been recognised everywhere there was contact between the two societies, and prohibition was a universal consequence.

Europeans had been culturally and physically exposed to alcohol for thousands of years, and yet they still produce alcoholics who cannot tolerate alcohol. However in the 1960’s we were busy abandoning many of our own cultural restraints. So why should we continue to impose restraints on others, which earlier generations - who were clearly not as enlightened - had found necessary?

Traditional Aboriginal culture was not going to be able to survive indefinitely, but the inevitable passage into Australian society should have been eased, not made almost impossible by the dehumanising and de-culturing effects of these twin disasters of Alcohol and Award.

The Aboriginal belief system was already under threat from the mere presence of non-Aborigines. The fundamental Aboriginal belief in the importance of increase or maintenance ceremonies was challenged by the relative prosperity of other Australians who did not participate in the ceremonies. The other fundamental belief that all individuals were reincarnated from the land left the origin of non-Aboriginal Australians unexplained.

Both internal and external attacks on the culture of a society can result in cultural breakdown. As humans need a culture to complete them, successful attacks on their culture will reduce them as human beings. The state of nature adverted to by Hobbes, where the life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short, is the life of man without a viable culture. The obvious consequences of cultural breakdown include increased crime, increased suicide and increased substance abuse. We cannot understand these symptoms without first having an understanding of the nature and role of culture in a society.

There was a degree of truth in the old paradigm of primitive Aborigines as a proud, innocent and noble race. In my experience, initiated Aborigines, particularly the elders were self-confident and proud. They were convinced of the truth of their own cultural beliefs. By way of contrast, other Australians have largely lost sight of the cultural beliefs upon which their society was founded.

The pride of the initiated Aborigines came from their knowing who they were, what they were, and what their role in the world was. In contrast, other Australians do not now enjoy the same degree of confidence, as did the tribal Aborigines, in the belief system upon which their own culture and society was founded. [ See some Wild Abos and think, tough, upstanding, competent in their own milieu - or not? - Editor ]

The certainty enjoyed by earlier generations of Australians had faded over time. It had left behind many institutions and practices that it had influenced, but the heart of the culture, the Christian belief system which told Australians who and what they were, and what the world was all about, was failing.

In Western society there are potentially three main vehicles of cultural transmission. The first, the most important, and potentially the most effective, is the Family. The second is the school, and the third is the church. But the family often requires the cultural support of both school and church to be fully effective.

For various reasons the potential effectiveness of these cultural supports has been significantly reduced. Culture has its origin in the common cultus, the ideas which the people take for granted as to the meaning and purpose of human life. The ideals of Christianity, which underpin Western culture, had in earlier generations become so widely accepted, so much ‘part of the wallpaper’, that they were eventually taken for granted.

It was assumed that these ideals were part of our nature rather than part of our cultural nature, so in the name of liberty, one of the ideals that Christianity had fostered, the foundation of those ideals was removed from schooling. State education proudly became free, universal and secular some three or four generations ago. Most families are now into the fourth or fifth generation that has failed to get this essential cultural support from State education.

The categorisation of religion as unnecessary in the State education system, treating it as an optional extra, like piano lessons or ballet, has in turn diminished the church, and has reduced the church’s effectiveness as a cultural support of the family. I am not suggesting that this is the only reason for the diminution of the church’s role. The church has problems in the understanding and communication of its message, which I have considered elsewhere. (Rethinking Christianity, 1999)

The lack of support for the family, in its role as the primary transmitter of culture, places additional burdens on families. Many families do not have the cultural resources to cope. The situation can only get worse, as the vast majority of people get their mores; their pattern of behaviour, from what everybody else is doing, as Kohlberg has shown. A culturally deteriorating environment breeds further deterioration. Families everywhere are fighting the same losing battle.

In the Aboriginal context the situation is far worse than in the general Australian society, but the diminishing cultural standard of the Australian society means that effective help is certainly not on its way.

Without the cultural support of a credible belief system, a society will inevitably deteriorate. This deterioration begins in the families that lack support from church and school. The consequences in the broader Australian society are similar to those being experienced by Aboriginals, but so far the consequences are on a much smaller scale.

The cultural deterioration in Aboriginal society is far worse than in the broader society. There are a number of reasons for this. Aboriginal culture was transmitted through and beyond the process of initiation. The foundational myths were a male preserve. Only males were initiated. A non-initiated person was a non-person, with no rights.

Early contacts with Aborigines in remote areas were mainly made by European males. Aborigines were willing to ‘lend’ their females for a consideration. The result was a growing number of half-castes. While some early half-castes were initiated and so incorporated into the tribal system, it was soon realised by the elders that male half-castes presented the tribe with a problem. They were not the product of both their Aboriginal parents, so they could not be initiated or be fitted into the strict marriage system. In this system who a person could marry was strictly determined by the moiety or ‘skin’ of both parents. Once it was realized that half-casts were not the offspring of both Aboriginal parents, they became an anomaly. These half-casts came to be despised in the tribe. As a tribal elder expressed the position to me, ‘White fellow all-right, black fellow all-right, yellow fellow rubbish’. Aborigines always referred to themselves as black fellows. A retired Aboriginal Welfare Officer with whom I had been on patrol, was recently told by a black fellow in Darwin ‘There used to be black fellows, and there used to be white fellows, now there are black fellows and white fellows and there are all these Bloody Aborigines!’

Besides rejection by the tribe, half castes were usually abandoned by their white progenitors. They were in danger of having no cultural formation of any kind, and growing up savage. There were some notable exceptions. There were those who were acknowledged and brought up by their white father. There were others who were rescued, by Missionaries, Police or Welfare Officers, from the tribal situation in which their chances of survival until adulthood were remote. These ‘rescued children’ were generally fostered to white foster parents. In either case they had the opportunity of absorbing the culture of their white parent or foster parents. Those who were not rescued are seldom around to comment.

One of the symptoms of the present cultural deterioration of Australian society is the push to denigrate earlier generations. One notable feature of this trend is the development of an ‘Aboriginal Industry’, devoted to blaming earlier Australians for the poor circumstances of many present day Aborigines and half-casts.

A recent invention of the Aboriginal Industry is the claim that half-caste children were stolen from the tribe. In my experience, these children were rescued from a perilous situation. Male children were not likely to be left to survive until maturity. They were rejected as yellow fellows, and even if they had survived they would not be initiated or allowed to marry. Female children were not as readily killed, but they could look forward to a lifetime of use as the sexual playthings of all and sundry.

Half-castes generally could not be incorporated into the Aboriginal culture. Unless rescued by whites they had no hope of incorporation into any culture. As Hill records “Another tragedy was the fate of the half caste child, mother Aboriginal, father Asiatic or European. Belonging to no definite race, family or tribe, it was often enough at this time destroyed at birth or abandoned by the woman.” (1973,38)

I only ever knew one person who was stolen as a child. He was a full blood Aboriginal who had been stolen by the local Territory tribe from a Queensland tribe. The Aborigines practiced infanticide in hard times, and when the rains came they would raid other tribes for children, killing any adults who stood in their way.

One of the deliberate confusions introduced by the Aboriginal Industry into the discussion of Aboriginal interests is the blurring of the distinctions between Aborigines and pseudo-Aborigines, persons who claim to have some Aboriginal lineage. This strategy only developed when it became financially beneficial to be deemed Aboriginal. The real gulf between Aborigines and part-Aborigines was immense in the recent past. Except in some rare early circumstances, those that followed the initial contacts between white and black, half casts were generally rejected by Aborigines. Aborigines would always relate much more readily to whites. From a strict cultural perspective, the only people who are culturally Aborigines are initiated full-blood people and their full-blood family. The rest are pseudo-Aborigines.

Burnam Burnam, the Aboriginal philosopher, writer and actor, was a lot more Aboriginal than many who claim to speak on behalf of Aborigines. He suggested that the authorities should listen only to full bloods on Aboriginal matters, rather than those who claim to be Aboriginal but who have, as he put it, ‘a severe pigmentation problem’. Burnam Burnam’s view was that the attitude of the chromatically challenged to the real Aborigines, was that the real Aborigines exist to perform for the tourists, while the half casts were made to look after the money side of things. As Michael Warby has pointed out, the real Aborigines are now being used for the patronage opportunities of the Aboriginal Industry, and for the display of moral vanity by the politically correct. He identifies moral vanity as the force which attracts people to causes which provide a sense of moral worthiness but which have no regard to logic, evidence, cause and effect or consequences. A prime example of the triumph of moral vanity over common sense is provided by the story of Ngulupi Station [ destroyed by the Department of Aboriginal Affairs ] under so-called Aboriginal control, reported in the Weekend Australian of 22-23 July 2000. Aborigines are now suffering oppression by pseudo-Aborigines on almost every Aboriginal settlement in Australia.

Prior to the disastrous decision to make alcohol freely available to Aborigines, these pseudo-Aborigines had a motive to distinguish themselves from Aborigines. If they maintained normal community standards they could seek exemption from the prohibition on alcohol, but this exemption could be withdrawn if they abused alcohol. This system worked to the advantage of many individuals, and of their families. This incentive was removed when it became financially advantageous to be deemed Aboriginal, and alcohol was available to all. The Australian government provides financial benefits to Aborigines, real or pseudo, beyond those available to the general community. This policy, when linked to the policy on alcohol, is demonstrably counter-productive, but is persisted in because of the appeal of the Aboriginal Industry to the morally vain. Ironically, the Aboriginal Industry is also largely financed by the Australian government.

On many forms published by the Australian government, Universities and other Institutions, people are asked whether they are of Aboriginal descent. I know of people with no Aboriginal ancestry who have adopted the policy of always answering yes to this question. These people urge all Australians to do this so that an appropriate distinction will then have to be officially made between the real Aborigines and pseudo-Aborigines. Burnam Burnam’s wish would then become reality.

Let us return to our consideration of the broad cultural question. A culture will find its expression in the rituals and interpersonal relationships of a society. It will also be expressed in the institutions of the society, and in the artifacts and art of the society. These expressions are not the culture of the society, as some tend to believe. They are all cultural artifacts. The culture is the underlying belief system.

If the nature of culture is to be understood in greater depth, every culture has to be understood as a process. Every culture is a process of human self-creation. People make cultures and cultures make people. We are made in such a way that we need a culture to complete us. As our second nature, our culture provides the necessary matrix for our individual development. Our culture also determines the range of possibilities of that individual development.

Twelve thousand years ago Europeans, Asians and Aboriginals were all at a similar Paleolithic stage of material development. However while other cultures moved on to more highly developed stages, Aboriginal culture remained largely static. Why should this be? The answer is to be found in an essential cultural difference. The difference is in the underlying belief systems. Changes were wrought in the belief systems of Europeans and Asians while the Aboriginal belief system remained static.

A surprising feature of Aboriginal culture throughout Australia is its essential uniformity. There were no great differences in the culture throughout the country, despite vast differences in climate and physical resources. The belief system again accounts for this uniformity. We could contrast this uniformity with the diversity between belief systems elsewhere over similar large areas. The area of Australia is slightly larger than the area covered by the old Roman Empire at its maximum extent, for example, with its diversity of peoples and beliefs.

There were two fundamental Aboriginal beliefs. These were the belief in the importance of increase or maintenance ceremonies and the belief in reincarnation. When an Aboriginal was initiated he was told who he was, which Dreamtime ancestor he was the reincarnation of. He was told his secret name. His main role in life was then to ritually repeat the activity of that ancestor. The focus was therefore always on the past, on the Dreamtime, never on the future. There was no concept of progress, or even of a future where things could be different.

The other fundamental belief was in the efficacy of increase or maintenance ceremonies. A ritual relationship between man and the physical environment was thought to maintain that environment and ensure the supply of food sources.

If a source of food disappeared, the problem was in the performance of the ceremony, not in the failure to conserve the source of food, much less to attempt to conserve or propagate food. No such effort at conservation or propagation was ever made. Such an effort would have violated their fundamental belief. In my experience tribal Aborigines refused to be interested in the process of growing food, despite seeing it happen. I could not even interest them in attempting to grow pitjuri, a native tobacco of which they are inordinately fond. Needless to say this fundamental belief that everything was accomplished by ceremony, was contrary to the facts.

Captain Cook, in 1770, was surprised that despite the proximity to Australia of islands that produce coconut trees, these trees were not to be found in Australia. Coconuts propagate by sea, and they wash onto our shores today, as far South as Sydney Harbor. Coconuts are an ancient plant, and the tropical and subtropical coasts of Australia would have been covered with coconut trees when the Aboriginals first arrived. They must have all been eaten out and no new seed, which washed up on the shore, was ever allowed to regenerate. Cook must have realised the connection between the absence of coconuts on the mainland and the activities of Aboriginals, as he only planted coconuts on uninhabited offshore islands, for the survivors of shipwrecks.

The only vegetable food that was eaten by Aborigines and is now eaten by other Australians is the Macadamia nut. A small remnant population with extremely hard shells survived in Queensland. They now flourish as far South as Adelaide. There has been a report that the ancestor of the Macadamia was in Australia before the ancestor of the eucalypt. There should have been as many varieties of Macadamia as there are of Eucalypt – perhaps even soft-shelled Macadamias. Like the coconut, macadamias were a victim of the belief in the importance of ceremony rather than in action. The remnant saved can thank their hard shells, or rather; we should be thankful that the shells were so hard.

The Aboriginal culture was a culture doomed to eventual self-destruction as it destroyed the physical basis of its own survival. There is evidence that the numbers of Aborigines had been far greater in the past than they were upon the arrival of Europeans. They were rescued from their inevitable fate by that arrival.

As a process of self-creation, a culture is capable of being a cumulative process. In a progressive culture, each generation can build on the accomplishments of the previous generation. This is not to say that beneficial progress is inevitable. A culture can progress technically while regressing morally. Anecdotal evidence is that in Western cultures each generation is brighter than the previous one. This is supported by the objective need to continually lift the norm in Intelligence Testing.

This phenomenon appears to also occur at the family level, in the moral sphere. Families whose members tend to criminality tend to produce criminals and families whose members maintain high moral standards tend to produce moral children. How much of this is nature and how much is nurture is difficult to decide. But any Police Officer will tell you that his workload stems from a very small minority of the population. This minority is now growing due to the lack of cultural support to those families that most need it.

In a static culture, such as Australian Aboriginal culture, it is difficult to see the prospect of any progress. Change in a cultural pattern seems to depend primarily on initiatives from within the culture, rather than from outside. Everyone who has had contact with real Aborigines, particularly in those areas of Australia where there was no contact with other races prior to the arrival of Europeans, has described the Aborigines as childlike. Objective support for this anecdotal view has been provided by a series of tests, based on the work of Piaget, which were carried out in Hermannsburg, a remote Central Australian Aboriginal Mission, in the 1960’s.

Piaget is an educational psychologist who describes three distinct periods of mental development through which children pass. The first stage lasts until about age 2, the second to age 11 and then there begins the development of the final stage, where children begin to reason realistically about the future and to be able to deal with abstractions. The capacity to deal with abstract matters is the mark of mental maturity.

A paper by M.M. de Lemos, who carried out the Hermannsburg tests, is republished in The Psychology of Aboriginal Australians (1973) Kearney & Os. In the group of 80 children tested by de Lemos in the 1960’s, half the children were Aborigines and the other half were seven-eights Aboriginal, having had a white great-grandfather. The environment of both groups was identical. The children with a trace of European ancestry showed markedly better performances in the tests, while the general standard of the full-blood Aborigines implied ‘an inability to form logical concepts or to apply logical operations to the organization and systematisation of concrete data . . . affecting the level of logical thinking in all areas.’ Later studies appear to have avoided distinguishing between full blood and part Aboriginal subjects.

This is not to denigrate Aborigines. There is more to a person than measured mental development. A real Aborigine who is immersed in his own culture is in no way inferior as a person, but he perceives the world differently.

The remoteness of European ancestry in the Hermannsburg test group shows that it took some time for Aborigines to realise that those, who they would later categorise as yellow fellows, could not fit into the marriage structure of the tribe.

A Masters Thesis by Margaret S. Bain, published as The Aboriginal-White Encounter (1992) concludes that Aborigines are only capable of first-degree abstractions. These are abstractions that retain a direct link with empirical reality. Westerners regularly recognize and utilise second-degree abstractions, abstract concepts that have no direct link to concrete reality. Westerners understand the world differently from Aborigines. Bain also finds that while social processes in western society are both interactional and transactional, utilising both first degree and second-degree abstractions, Aboriginal social transactions are purely interactional, utilising only first-degree abstractions.

This analysis came too late to prevent a number of tragedies in the black-white encounter. When whites gave food or other gifts to Aborigines in early encounters, the Aborigines interpreted this as a duty. When the gift was not repeated this could be interpreted as a failure to obey a law, and the white man could be punished by spearing. A number of people speared during early contacts were known to be well disposed and generous to Aborigines.

In The Psychology of Aboriginal Australians, we find that Mathew had concluded in 1910 that Aborigines ‘were unreflective and averse to both abstract reasoning and sustained mental effort’. In 1872 Wake had suggested that to speak ‘of intellectual phenomena in relation to the Australian Aborigines is somewhat of a misnomer’ The explanations of these phenomena put forward at the time were all evolutionist, the assumption being that social development could be understood on the biological model.

I would argue that Aboriginal mental development is better understood as a function of their particular approach to human cultural self-creation.

Aboriginal Australians became locked into a non-progressive culture, which limited their possibilities of mental and cultural self-development. The fact that a small admixture of European genes has a significant effect on mental development seems to indicate a Lamarckian development in the progeny, rather than a Darwinian one.

These differences between real Aborigines and pseudo-Aborigines have to be taken seriously if Aboriginal policy is to be effective. Most Aboriginal policy is premised on the assumption that there is no difference between Aborigines and pseudo-Aborigines, or between Aborigines and Europeans. This is clearly not the case. Aborigines think, understand and act differently. They are not usually capable of the self-motivation we take for granted.

Aborigines find any contact with the white man’s law confusing. In their culture, punishment is immediate, physical and mandatory. There is no room for a plea in mitigation. The rituals of our law are largely meaningless charades to them. The approach of our law to offenders is constantly changing. Law enforcement in 2000 is different from what it was in 1950. It is more different from what it was in the 1890’s. It is vastly different from what it was in 1788. Is it reasonable to apply the latest fashion of such variable standards to people whose idea of law was set in stone thousands of years ago? It makes great business for the Aboriginal Industry, but it does nothing for the Aborigines.

The present day situation of real Aborigines is worse than it ever was previously. Most of the damage that has been inflicted on Aborigines was done with the best of motives, but in ignorance of the reality. The activities of good-hearted but ignorant do-gooders have hastened the passing of the Aborigines more rapidly in the last half Century than ever before. The cynical Aboriginal Industry is still hard at work. It is time for a rethink.

Aboriginal Policy
The primary cause of the disastrously mistaken policies that are applied to Aborigines is the failure to recognize how different they are, with the consequent projection of Western attitudes and concepts onto them. Their mind-set is fundamentally different from ours. Western man is oriented towards the future. Aboriginal man is oriented to the present and the past.

As we have seen, Aborigines think, understand and act differently from other Australians. In scientific studies de Lemos found an absence of the ability to form logical concepts, which affected the level of their logical thinking in all areas. Margaret S. Bain concluded that Aborigines are only capable of first-degree abstractions, abstractions that retain a direct link with empirical reality. Bain also found that Aborigines only ever utilize first-degree abstractions, those that have a direct link to concrete reality, even in their social transactions. These studies confirmed earlier, less rigorous observations, which had concluded that Aborigines were unreflective and averse to abstract reasoning.

Western thought is essentially abstract. There is a premium on clarity of thought, and on the making of distinctions, which comprise the essence of clear thought. However clear thinking can be impeded by faulty basic assumptions, lack of knowledge or by the `thought control` of political correctness. All of these factors are affecting and have affected Aboriginal policy. Aborigines have suffered and still suffer from mistaken policies.

The most basic distinction is the one that should be made between Aborigines and pseudo-Aborigines. This distinction is based on the distinctiveness of Aboriginal thought patterns, which does not apply to pseudo-Aborigines. Real Aborigines are in need of specifically tailored policies, which take account of their cultural base. Their cultural base is essentially Paleolithic in both material and mental terms.

That is not to say that there should not be appropriate policies for disadvantaged pseudo-Aborigines, but because the circumstances of Aborigines and pseudo-Aborigines are quite different, the policies should be different. There is no real reason for any difference between the policies that should be applied to disadvantaged pseudo-Aborigines and those applied to any other disadvantaged Australians. There are compelling reasons for quite different policies to be applied to real Aborigines. Such policies must take into account the real differences between Aborigines and other Australians.

The projection of Western thought patterns onto Aborigines is particularly evident in the projection of spirituality onto Aborigines and of sacredness onto physical sites. The distinction between the sacred and the secular is an abstract distinction that has never been drawn by Aborigines.

Aborigines maintain a barrier of secrecy around their foundational myths, which is extended to the memory-aids pertaining to those myths and even to the locations where ceremonies pertaining to those myths are usually performed. It is a Western projection to call these things sacred. There are no sacred Aboriginal sites. There are secret Aboriginal sites – secret from the non-initiated – but these are not necessarily fixed. I attended a secret ceremony that the Native Affairs staff knew was immanent, and which some of them intended to attend, but the location was switched by the Aborigines at the last minute.

It is often claimed that a site is sacred because it has a Dreamtime story attached to it. This is total non-sense. Every physical feature of any note had an explanation of its existence in terms of the activities of some Dreamtime agent, just as we explain such features in geophysical or biological terms. Being explained by a story does not make a site sacred, otherwise there would be no non-sacred sites.

The projection of Western thought onto Aborigines is also evident in the supposed spirituality of Aborigines. The concept of spirit only has meaning as the antithesis of matter. It is an abstract concept, which is not well grasped by many in the Western thought-world. A spiritual perception is the perception of something that has no material existence. Aborigines had no concept of anything that did not have a direct material connection. Spiritual perception is most evident in moral perceptions, particularly in the perception that some practice, which is widely accepted, is not moral. A classical example is provided by Xenophanes assertion that the Olympian gods could not be gods at all, because of the immoral actions that were attributed to them. As late as Hesiod these stories had not been challenged. The Aborigines were certainly not more spiritually advanced than were the Greeks of Homer’s time.

It is time we distinguished real Aborigines from pseudo-Aborigines, and treated them differently. They have to be treated as they are and not as they are thought to be, in some romantic projection of Rousseau’s concept of the noble savage. We have to realize the importance of culture. This entails the recognition that the roots of any viable culture can only repose in ideas about the meaning and purpose of human life that are not in conflict with empirical reality. This is a challenge we all have to face.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bain M.S. (1992) The Aboriginal-White-Encounter

Darwin, SIL-AAIB Occasional Paper.

Dix G. (1967) Jew and Greek Westminster, Dacre Press

Hill E. (1973) Kabbarli Sydney, Angus & Robertson

Kearney & Os (1973) The Psychology of Aboriginal Australians

Sydney, John Wiley & Sons.

Kelly A.B. (1999) `Rethinking Christianity in the Light

Of Process Thought` in Quodlibet, July 1999.

< http://www.quodlibet.net/kelly-process.shtml >

Kelly A.B. (1999) The Process of the Cosmos: Philosophical

Theology and Cosmology USA, Dissertation.com

< http://members.dingoblue.net.au/~abkelly >

Kohlberg. (1983) Moral Stages: A Current Formulation

Levine & Hewer and a Response to Critics Basel, Karger

Midgley M. (1978) Beast and Man Sussex, Harvester Press

Silencing Dissent Inside the Aboriginal Industry

As a mid-level Aboriginal bureaucrat working in various government and community sector agencies, I had for some time been feeling uneasy about the deference given to my opinions, the leniency around my work standards and the indulgence of my behaviour that did not extend to my “non-Aboriginal” colleagues to anywhere near the same degree. As an Aboriginal employee, I was a valuable acquisition—one that demonstrated my employer’s commitment to “reconciliation” and to “closing the gap” in Aboriginal disadvantage. Skilled and qualified Aboriginal employees are in high demand amongst organisations anxious to demonstrate this commitment, so my employers were competing against other potential employers for my loyalty. It was important to my employers that I was content with my role and satisfied with my remuneration, that I felt my Aboriginal identity was “valued”, and that my co-workers “respected” me not merely as a colleague, but as an Aboriginal person.

In a number of organisations I worked for, I noticed that my non-Aboriginal colleagues were not always free to fully apply their knowledge and expertise to resolving problems in Aboriginal policy and service delivery, as they were required to consult with and defer to the opinions of Aboriginal people such as myself. I noticed that “cultural respect” policies—designed to help me feel respected and valued—led my non-Aboriginal colleagues to hold a well-founded fear of causing inadvertent offence to Aboriginal people such as myself. I noticed that I and people like me had a great deal of power to dictate and enforce “appropriate behaviour” for our non-Aboriginal colleagues.

Not only is it important that organisations keep their Aboriginal staff happy in order to retain them, but it is important that organisations continue to please their Aboriginal stakeholders and external advisers. As a research officer working in Aboriginal statistics, I noticed that while we depended heavily on the guidance of Aboriginal “key stakeholders”, we were disinclined to subject their analysis and opinions to rigorous critical inquiry. I also noticed that, in following the advice of our Aboriginal steering committees and stakeholders, we did not always collect or report on Aboriginal statistics as accurately as we could have.

In my experiences of working in organisations responsible for direct service provision to Aboriginal people, I noticed that the continued satisfaction of our Aboriginal clients was a primary concern. When funding is allocated and an agency’s performance is measured by the number of Aboriginal clients it services, the satisfaction and retention of these clients take precedence over challenging them to make necessary changes in their lives. Rather than risk Aboriginal clients taking their business elsewhere—or worse, complaining about the service’s “cultural insensitivity”—the service provider simply provides whatever the Aboriginal client demands of them.

I began to realise that commodifying Aboriginality—placing a positive value on an individual employee, student, consultant, adviser or client purely on the basis of their “race”—was doing little to produce sensible policies and effective programs to solve the problems many Aboriginal people face, and was doing nothing to address the ongoing calamity of daily life in many remote Aboriginal communities. Instead, it was producing divided, fearful and risk-averse organisations where the subjective happiness of Aboriginal staff, stakeholders and clients took precedence over the wellbeing and effective functioning of the organisation overall.

As I read the works of American, Indian and African-born authors Thomas Sowell, Amartya Sen and Kwame Anthony Appiah, I realised that there was nothing unique about the mechanisms or the unfortunate effects of Aboriginal race politics in Australia; this was an international problem, a human problem that arises wherever people become emotionally and politically invested in one “identity” as separate and distinct from the “identities” of those around them. In Australia, our substantial emotional and economic investment in maintaining a separate Aboriginal identity has created an Aboriginal industry, made up of institutions and agencies with “expertise” on the distinct needs and wants of Aboriginal people.

In September 2012, the ABC’s online opinion website The Drum published a short article I had written, which briefly explained my experiences of working in the Aboriginal industry, and the shift I had experienced over time in my own views on race-based preferential treatment for Aboriginal people. I explained my decision to reject such preferential treatment for myself because I could not reconcile myself to racism, and I suggested that other Aboriginal readers consider doing the same. The article generated a substantial number of responses, with a number of commentators expressing support for my views. Other responses presented arguments in favour of preferential treatment for Aboriginal people, generating further debate amongst readers.

The Aboriginal industry has the power to swiftly dismiss the critical opinions of non-Aboriginal people as ignorant, paternalistic or racist. This leaves Aboriginal dissenters best positioned to critically engage with Aboriginal identity politics, which in turn creates an urgent need for the Aboriginal industry to suppress dissenting Aboriginal opinion by other means. A number of responses to my article provided useful examples of the kinds of suppressing arguments that the Aboriginal industry puts forward in order to silence and dismiss dissent from within. The silencing of Aboriginal dissenters is centred on the “legitimacy” and “authenticity” of the Aboriginal speaker, rather than the quality of the speaker’s reasoning and expression. Silencing arguments also point to the speaker’s unsavoury character, which is evident through the offensive nature of his or her ideas, as well as through his or her apparent pandering to a “racist” enemy force. None of these silencing approaches are unique to Aboriginal race politics; they appear in some form wherever the politics of identity take precedence over constructive political debate.

This unpleasantness may discourage Aboriginal people and others in the industry from expressing dissenting opinions, or may even discourage us from seriously considering dissenting ideas in the first place, given that the intensely prescriptive nature of identity politics—in dictating the ways an Aboriginal person is supposed to think and feel—can lead us to police our own thinking and doubt our own judgment. We may be especially reluctant to voice controversial opinions when we are unsure of our ability to respond confidently to the inevitable attacks on our credibility and character that will ensue; the more irrational the attack, the more difficult it can be to muster a coherent response.

Following are some examples of the common “silencing” arguments that were presented by commentators on the Drum website in the interests of suppressing and dismissing my dissenting opinion as illegitimate. The Aboriginal industry’s attempts to silence internal criticism can be welcomed as a useful opportunity to offer further critique, as every argument provides another illustration of the irrationality and bigotry upon which the industry is based.

Take a good look at Kerryn and notice how pale she is for an aboriginal woman that would make her somewhat more acceptable from non aboriginals ... you can’t ignore the thousands of other aboriginals who are regularly discriminated against on the grounds of their distinct aboriginality ...

Fortunately because of your appearance you would never have had to put up with the stares, abuse, rude offensive behaviour by shop assistants, harassment by the police etc that is part of everyday life for fullblood aboriginal people ...

It’s really easy to walk away from your heritage when it isn’t obviously stamped all over you. As a well educated young woman with only some aboriginal heritage in your mix (as you put it), you don’t face the racism reserved for more obvious Indigenous Australians.

Responses such as these were arguing that if I were a darker-skinned, obviously Aboriginal-looking person, I would probably experience a great deal of racist discrimination and I would therefore appreciate special assistance, support and compensation for such unfair treatment. They suggested I was unfairly criticising the system from a position of privilege—as an Aboriginal who can “pass” as non-Aboriginal—while others are not so fortunate.

I agree that my not-particularly-Aboriginal appearance may render me “more acceptable” to some, and that I may therefore be treated better in various aspects of daily life than a distinctly Aboriginal-looking person may find herself treated. I also agree that I cannot offer an informed view of the degree of discrimination and ill-treatment such a person may experience—how would I know? My argument against race-based preferential treatment is not based in a belief that racism is not a problem; I don’t doubt that racism towards Aboriginal people occurs, as it occurs towards people of other “races” and ethnicities in Australia and elsewhere. Yet how does the provision of special privileges to someone like me—simply because I can claim “Aboriginality”—ameliorate racist discrimination against other people Aboriginal people?

While there have long been grumblings amongst Aboriginal folk in some quarters over precisely the issue that Andrew Bolt notoriously raised—that entitlements and concessions intended for “Aboriginal people” are too frequently claimed by “white Aborigines”—the grumblers tend to shy away from the obvious solution, which would be to introduce a skin-colour requirement to the assessment process. A chart of Aboriginal skin-colour gradations with a clearly indicated cut-off point would provide much-needed guidance to selection panels for jobs, grants, awards and other Aboriginal-specific entitlements, ensuring they only go to properly “black” Aboriginal people.

Few would seriously consider such an obnoxious solution—yet even if it were adopted, it would still be merely an administrative adjustment and not a remedy for racism against people of Aboriginal appearance.

A system that responds to racism by implementing special entitlements and assistance for actual or potential Aboriginal victims of racism reflects an incredibly complacent, or perhaps defeatist, attitude to the problem it purports to address. Rather than rejecting racism as a backward belief that has no place in modern Australia, and promoting equal treatment and dignity for all and enforcing this wherever necessary, our governments simply create an alternative form of racism into which “vulnerable” Aboriginal people are shepherded for their own safety.

This is a state that has given up on its own citizens as irredeemably backward and ignorant racists, and has given up on Aboriginal citizens as incapable of survival in the nastiness of the world outside the sanctuary of the Aboriginal industry. To genuinely address a problem of racism against Aboriginal people, we must not tolerate racism in any form. Anti-discrimination measures must be clearly expressed and rigorously enforced, and an individual who experiences discrimination or ill-treatment on the basis of his or her race—whatever their “race” may be—should have the means to seek redress.

Some Aboriginal industry advocates may counter that a sole reliance on anti-discrimination measures would be insufficient because many Aboriginal people are too oppressed and marginalised to recognise the racism directed towards them, or to take formal action as people of other ethnicities may do when they encounter racism. This then justifies a need for special protective and compensatory measures for Aboriginal people, preferably delivered by other Aboriginal people wherever possible in order to avoid further traumatisation. Yet this is simply further evidence of the complacency and defeatism that pervades Aboriginal affairs; protection and compensation for Aboriginal people is regarded as preferable to the education and empowerment of Aboriginal people to take care of themselves.

Aboriginal people still do suffer discrimination on all manner of fronts. So, some positive discrimination probably isn’t all that bad. You seem to be in a position now where positive discrimination and access to education etc has given you the opportunities and voice you now enjoy. Others in this time are not so fortunate.

Kerryn would appear to have had a good education and agrees that she is equipped to operate on a level playing field and doesn’t need to play the “Aboriginal” card. However I think there are some indigenous people who don’t have the same opportunity to reach her level in the community.

Out of 699 responses to my article on the Drum website, not a single apologist for race-based preferential treatment tried to persuade me that I was, as an Aboriginal person, actually quite a disadvantaged individual whether I realised it or not. A number of comments, such as those above, pointed out how disadvantaged other Aboriginal people are, and some Aboriginal commentators talked about how disadvantaged they themselves were—but no one contradicted my own fairly obvious lack of disadvantage. If anything, my relative privilege was regarded as further evidence that I didn’t know what I was talking about.

Yet if people can readily accept that I am an Aboriginal person who is not particularly disadvantaged, then they must concede that disadvantage must rest in something more than simple “Aboriginality”. Therefore, bestowing concessions and entitlements simply on the basis of “Aboriginality” makes no sense as a means to address the problems many—but not all, and not only—Aboriginal people face.

The Aboriginal industry sidesteps this problem of individual difference by consistently framing discussion of Aboriginal people in terms of the Aboriginal population. When we define people by one variable, in this case “Aboriginal”, they become a homogenous collection of indistinguishable, interchangeable units, whose fate is somehow linked. As far as the Aboriginal industry is concerned, as an Aboriginal person I belong to a statistically disadvantaged Aboriginal population; therefore, I am “disadvantaged”.

In reality, there is substantial disparity in the Aboriginal population—a “gap”—between the poorest and most disadvantaged Aboriginal people and those such as myself who are doing quite well. The most disadvantaged are living in circumstances where their choices and opportunities are extremely limited, and where they have few incentives to change their geographic or social circumstances to pursue opportunities elsewhere. At the next level up, disadvantaged Aboriginal people live in circumstances where there may be somewhat more choices and opportunities, but many individuals do not readily take advantage of these opportunities to alleviate their disadvantage (although opportunities are often vigorously pursued at the collective level, particularly in the form of funding for community organisations). These Aboriginal people face powerful disincentives to personal advancement, not least of which is the inextricable association of “Aboriginality” with “disadvantage”.

While these Aboriginal communities are socially, emotionally and often economically invested in maintaining a distinct and separate Aboriginal identity, they exist in a society where Aboriginal “identity” and “culture” are increasingly nebulous and changeable concepts. As a consequence, disadvantage has become one of the most recognisable and cherished features of the Aboriginal sense of self, and a source of community solidarity. In such an environment, to pursue opportunities to move away from disadvantage is to reject one’s Aboriginal identity and one’s own family and community.

Then there are the relatively small but rapidly increasing ranks of middle-class Aboriginal “achievers” such as myself. Some people have suggested that perhaps there would be fewer of us if not for the special opportunities that were made available to us on the basis of our Aboriginality. I suggest that there might be more of us if the benefits of education, employment and a middle-class lifestyle were not anathema to those who treasure their disadvantaged “Aboriginal” identity.

As I discussed above, one (flawed) rationale behind the offering of race-based entitlements and concessions for Aboriginal people is to serve as a counterbalance to prevailing racism in the broader society. Another rationale is to provide Aboriginal role models, in order to demonstrate to Aboriginal people and to the broader community that is it possible for an Aboriginal person to “make it”. There are two logical problems with this reasoning, the first and most obvious being that, if my success had been dependent on special assistance, then I did not so much actively “make it” as passively submit myself to being “made”.

The second problem lies in the “role” the middle-class Aboriginal role model must play as a representative of the Aboriginal industry. Our mission is to model to those Aboriginal people lower down the socio-economic ladder that one can take advantage of opportunities to make a more comfortable life for oneself whilst retaining a recognisably Aboriginal identity. At the same time, we must reinforce the message that to be Aboriginal is to be disadvantaged, hence the need for an Aboriginal industry comprised of Aboriginal professionals—such as ourselves—to help “close the gap”. As an Aboriginal role model, I must downplay my own relative privilege and good fortune and instead display my “authenticity” as a disadvantaged Aboriginal person, despite outward appearances.

To display my “disadvantaged” credentials, I may do a number of things: I may recount my family’s experiences of deprivation, perhaps with anecdotes of unpleasant experiences from my childhood. I may describe my extended family’s ongoing disadvantage, complete with examples of my various relatives’ health, legal and financial woes. I may reveal my personal experience of racism, with stories of the offensive remarks, assumptions and slights that plague my daily existence—or conversely, if I am paler in complexion I can describe the emotional pain I feel when my Aboriginal identity is unrecognised, questioned or ignored by those around me. If all else fails, I can talk about my personal grief over the suffering of “my people”. In this manner I can demonstrate that I have “made it” and bravely continue to “make it”, despite the disadvantages I face daily as an authentically Aboriginal person.

As far as the Aboriginal industry is concerned, an Aboriginal person’s relative position on the socio-economic ladder is immaterial—we as Aboriginal people are all “disadvantaged”. While there are non-Aboriginal people living in poorer circumstances than me, Aboriginal people overall are statistically worse off than non-Aboriginal people overall, therefore I, as an Aboriginal person, have a greater claim to assistance and recompense. Also, while there are Aboriginal people living in far poorer circumstances than I am, directing assistance to me will be instrumental in improving their circumstances anyway, because improving the lot of one Aboriginal person (such as me) somehow contributes to “closing the gap” for the disadvantaged Aboriginal population as a whole. Assistance directed to me is also likely to produce greater returns on a smaller investment of resources and effort than assistance directed towards an alcoholic, illiterate, welfare-dependent Aboriginal person in remote Australia.

Some of my colleagues in Aboriginal policy have conceded that this blanket approach to resolving Aboriginal disadvantage tends to favour the least disadvantaged Aboriginal people, mirroring Thomas Sowell’s findings from affirmative-action policies worldwide. Some have expressed tentative interest in a modified approach, whereby assistance and opportunities are directed more effectively to those Aboriginal people who need it most. However, the practical and ethical considerations of implementing an eligibility criterion of “disadvantage” are yet to be seriously examined.

An honesty system in which Aboriginal applicants self-assess their eligibility for assistance is unlikely to work, given that even the most prosperous Aboriginal people may still consider themselves to be disadvantaged in some way. Perhaps Aboriginal-specific positions, awards, grants and scholarships could be subject to means-testing and skills-testing, whereby those Aboriginal people with existing assets, skills or qualifications may be ineligible to apply or may be ranked lower in order of preference. This solution would, however, make it difficult to hire the best Aboriginal applicant for a job, or award a scholarship or research grant to the most promising and talented Aboriginal candidate. It would also create disincentives for Aboriginal people to develop skills and acquire qualifications and assets, since these would render them ineligible for special assistance.

Perhaps Aboriginal candidates from postcodes with lower socio-economic index rankings might be given preferential consideration among the broader pool of Aboriginal candidates. It would, however, be difficult to explain to their equally disadvantaged non-Aboriginal neighbours why the Aboriginal people in their neighbourhood are receiving special assistance from which they themselves are excluded. “Because Aboriginal people are disadvantaged” is a rather lame response to give to people who are substantially disadvantaged themselves. “Because the Aboriginal population is more disadvantaged compared to the rest of the population” suggests to our audience that the “non-Aboriginal” population’s relative affluence overall, in which they themselves have very little share, is nonetheless a benefit they enjoy that their Aboriginal neighbours do not. Perhaps we would explain to them that Aboriginal people suffer from the additional burden of racism in ways that other disadvantaged people do not experience. While several in our non-Aboriginal audience could point out that they themselves experience the effects of racism, our entire audience may reasonably ask—“If Aboriginal people are being disadvantaged by racism, why don’t you do something about that instead of creating more unfairness for us?”

We know that discrimination on the basis of “race” is ludicrous and unjust, yet we are afraid to openly challenge preferential policies for Aboriginal people for fear of being regarded as callous, uncaring, ignorant and, of course, racist. Instead, we look for ways to make racist policies “more effectively targeted”, hoping to deliver sufficient benefits to justify our racism as a means to more noble ends. We look forward to reaching a point where such policies are no longer needed, though we have little idea how or when this point will be reached. We try to find ways to make racism “fairer”—which is even more reprehensible than simple, unreconstructed racism, because we do not have ignorance as an excuse.

The genuine traditional aboriginal people have to put up with people like yourself, who have no experience of traditional custom, language, law or tradition, making public representations on behalf of “aboriginal people” most of whom they know nothing about and don’t even have the basic respect of wanting to find out.

Central questions in court cases dealing with this tricky issue are upbringing and cultural identification. A witness in Eatock v Bolt last year testified about inculturation from early childhood by participating with his grandparents in hunting, fishing and producing the medicines, remedies and tools they needed. Traditional knowledge of sacred sites and stories of his people were passed down to him by relatives and other elders. He also testified to the racism he suffered growing up within a marginalised community. Was this Kerryn’s upbringing also? Or did she choose to identify as Aboriginal later in life, as she later chose not to? This would seem a relevant point.

I am Indigenous, worked in the public service too and never had the problem she mentions, but I think she lacks the type of childhood I had where I was brought up with a strong sense of cultural identity, which acts as a sort of buffer to the issues that appears to plague her. I place this article in the just another “Blame society it’s not my fault” rant pile.

When an Aboriginal person speaks out in criticism of the Aboriginal industry, or speaks in favour of policies that are unpopular with the industry, it is almost inevitable that at some point a venerable Aboriginal spokesperson will declare—more in sorrow than in anger—that the dissident has “lost her culture” or “turned her back on her culture” or is “ignorant of her culture”. The superficial attractions of “whitefella” culture have led the Aboriginal dissident to stray from the guiding wisdom of Aboriginal culture, which would have prevented her from forming such foolish ideas and voicing such dangerously naive opinions. In this particularly effective form of silencing and shaming, Aboriginal dissenters are simply ignorant, pitiable, uninitiated children—which means there is no need to engage critically with anything they say about Aboriginal policy.

This form of silencing suggests that if I had more “cultural” authenticity I would be disinclined to question or critically reflect on policies that provide preferential treatment to Aboriginal people. Or perhaps I might still reflect on the issue, but I would not be very concerned by the problems I see—or my special cultural knowledge would allow me to see justifications for this approach that I simply do not see from my present, culturally bereft standpoint. Or perhaps I would simply refrain from voicing any concerns out of loyalty to my “culture”.

In essence, this form of silencing suggests that to be “strong in my culture” is to be less inclined to think independently, less inclined to care about anyone other than myself and my immediate family, and less inclined to voice any opinion that conflicts with those upheld by my “culture”. If this is the “culture” that I am supposedly so sadly lacking, then I am glad I missed out on my indoctrination. I feel fortunate that I belong to a modern culture that encourages me to think for myself, speak for myself, to take an interest in ethical and effective public policy and to have concern for the welfare of those beyond my narrow kinship group or tribe.

On the other hand, it is possible that there is some mysterious element of “Aboriginal culture” that—should I be exposed to it—would radically transform my view of what I currently believe to be racist, nonsensical policy. If so, perhaps those advocates for race-based concessions and entitlements who are so fortunate to be “strong in their culture” would be willing to share this element of their culture with the rest of us, so we can all come to see rationality and justice in racism.

Much of the conceptualisation of Aboriginal identity rests on “belonging” and “acceptance”; an Aboriginal person is an Aboriginal person who thinks and behaves like “us”. When I was a part of the Aboriginal industry, I believed and expressed some very silly notions, and I was applauded by many of the people I met in the course of my work as a “proud Aboriginal woman”. At that time, I was considered acceptable as one of “us”. Now that my ideas have changed, some have suggested that I am not really an Aboriginal woman (proud or otherwise) and perhaps I never really was. Such is the capricious nature of Aboriginal identity that my “Aboriginality” can be historically revised and retrospectively erased in response to my present behaviour. Given that I do not crave the acceptance of a group that cannot tolerate dissent, any such rejection is not worth grieving over.

... due to the immense damage that occurred to the Aboriginal people of this land I can’t help but think some kind of restoration & compensation would be in order ...

Like a lot of Gen X and Gen Y’s, you might not really know how bad it used to be when there was absolutely no Aborigines in positions of responsibility in the community.

I’m not indigenous but I do believe anyone younger than me (44) shows an amazing amount of historical ignorance sometimes.

When a group is or has been discriminated against it is entirely proper that this group be targeted for redress of the injustice. This is not racism it is remedying racism.

To the latter comment, I would counter that targeting a present-day “racial group” for the redress of historical injustice against other people of that “racial group” is actually racism at its most insidious and contemptible. According to this notion, I am regarded not as an individual with my own personal history, aspirations and choices, but as a member of a historically mistreated “racial group” that is now “targeted for redress”. I have become a representative of all other Aborigines, past and present. This means that if you feel bad about what happened to an Aboriginal person in the past, you can simply compensate me, because we are essentially the same creature. The ill-treatment or misfortune of a past Aboriginal person, unrelated or very distantly related to me, is apparently recorded in my Aboriginal genes as a hereditary grievance, which can be remedied by providing me with material compensation and perhaps an apology.

An alternative, but no less loopy explanation could be that all Aboriginal people are so cosmically entwined that awarding special concessions to me somehow mollifies the aggrieved ghost of an Aboriginal person who I never met and who has been dead for quite some time. Such is the mysticism surrounding Aboriginality, I would not be surprised if some otherwise rational people actually believed ideas as silly as these. Like all notions that are premised on the concept of “race” as something real, there is no rational basis for this sort of thinking.

In reality, some people experienced hardship in the past. I was not one of those people. Why should I be “targeted” to benefit from another’s hardship, simply because a person who suffered in the past happened to be Aboriginal, and I happened to have an Aboriginal ancestor? It is not as though we consistently embrace this concept of redress for other historically marginalised racial groups in Australia; Chinese immigrants had a particularly hard time during the gold rush eras, yet there are no special benefits extended to Australians of Chinese background today to make up for their historical mistreatment.

Some Aboriginal proponents of “redress” may describe a direct personal link with historical injustice and deprivation (a great-grandfather’s unfair treatment on a cattle station; a grandmother of the “stolen generation”; a parent’s experiences of racism in the classroom and subsequent poor self-esteem) as a rationale for race-based concessions as a form of compensation for past wrongs. To this I would ask: “How does awarding entitlements to me make things better for you, your parents or your grandparents?” The aggrieved party would most likely indignantly respond that such entitlements are not rightfully mine—the redress should go to those people who have been hurt (that is, people like them), and people like me should keep our paws out of the compensatory cookie jar.

Given that the compensatory cookie jar is not an endlessly self-replenishing magic pudding, those who feel entitled to compensation for historical injustice would do well to establish some criteria on genuine cases for compensation, to ensure undeserving Aboriginal people like me do not fraudulently benefit. However, as soon as we begin to consider eligibility criteria for compensation for historical injustice, the issue becomes something more than a matter of mere “Aboriginality”, and introduces a greater burden of proof, along with thorny questions of who should have the authority to judge claims and order recompense.

It is understandable that, on further consideration, Aboriginal proponents of compensatory preferential treatment would prefer to maintain a “magic pudding” policy, whereby anyone who can claim to be Aboriginal automatically has a moral claim to compensation for historical injustice. Although this approach means some Aboriginal people, like myself, might get more than we “deserve”, it doesn’t really matter so long as there is plenty to go around and nobody makes a fuss about it.

I’m amazed that a person with aboriginal heritage should write such appalling things. This is playing into Andrew Bolt’s hands and giving him what he will assume is a licence to continue his racist attitudes towards our first citizens. You should not be proud of your disloyalty to your people.

As an Aboriginal woman who has worked all my life to get better outcomes and a better quality of life for our people, I find it puzzling why you would write such an article in a major daily newspaper, which most Aboriginal people don’t even read! Maybe you want to impress the red-necks. Let’s hope such naivety on your part doesn’t lead to another ill thought out debate ...

A number of responses linked my views with those of Andrew Bolt. Some expressed concern that I had inadvertently aligned myself with Andrew Bolt and other such “conservatives”—perhaps in the belief that I would never deliberately choose to do so. Many assumed that I would not welcome any association with Andrew Bolt and his expressed views on preferential treatment for Aboriginal people, either because I could not possibly share his views, or because I would not want to be seen to share them.

When I first saw Andrew Bolt’s now-notorious articles identifying a number of “fair-skinned Aborigines” as recipients of grants, job opportunities and awards for no clear reason other than their questionable “race”, I was sitting at my desk in an Aboriginal-identified government position. My first thought on reading the article and viewing those pictures was, “Holy shit—he could be talking about me!”

I am satisfied that fair-skinned Aboriginal people (or some of them) were reasonably likely, in all the circumstances, to have been offended, insulted, humiliated or intimidated by the imputations conveyed by the newspaper articles.
-- P.17, Eatock v Bolt [2011] FCA 1103 (28 September 2011)

In keeping with this finding of Justice Bromberg, I did indeed feel humiliated and intimidated by the implications of Bolt’s article; I felt hurt, shamed and vulnerable. But rather than simply complain about how the article made me feel, I understood I could only resolve my discomfort through first examining why it made me feel that way. I realised I felt vulnerable because there was no way I could defend my own position if it were to be challenged; it was indefensible that I should occupy an Aboriginal-identified position when I knew that race-based preferential treatment was misguided and unjust policy. I felt shamed because my position was shameful, and my choices were shameful; I knew I was a party to something very wrong, yet I chose to continue because complying was easier than walking away from my chosen career. I felt hurt because the truth hurts, and my comforting rationalisations about myself and my place in the world were already painfully dissolving.

Bolt questioned the legitimacy of claims to a predominantly “Aboriginal” identity amongst urbanised, obviously “mixed-race” people, and went on to question the legitimacy of such people’s claims to awards, grants and positions specially designated for Aboriginal people. The resulting court case and decision seemed to rest on how the injured parties felt; whether they felt themselves to be Aboriginal and had always felt that way, and whether they felt upset and offended by Bolt’s writing, and whether other fair-skinned Aboriginal people and other such “vulnerable” Aboriginal people would be likely to feel the same way.

With the decline of recognisably “Aboriginal” cultural practices and the disconnection of Aboriginal identity with recognisably “Aboriginal” physical features, the feelings of Aboriginal people (or more precisely, the feeling of being Aboriginal) has become an increasingly visible concern for the Aboriginal industry. In the urban and regional centres where most Aboriginal people live, Aboriginal people may not necessarily appear or behave very differently from the non-Aboriginal people around them, but we are assured that Aboriginal people feel different, and feel differently, and thus require special treatment. As Aboriginal people’s feelings—rather than appearance or practices—are increasingly the key point of difference between Aboriginal people and the rest of the population, Aboriginal feelings are increasingly regarded as instrumental to Aboriginal disadvantage and ill-health.

In response to the statistical “gap” in health and life expectancy for the Aboriginal population, the Aboriginal health sector has increasingly focused on monitoring, reporting and improving the feelings of the Aboriginal population. This is mainly pursued through the management of others’ behaviour towards Aboriginal people rather than through direct dialogue with Aboriginal people about their feelings and how they might manage them. “Cultural awareness” and “cultural safety” are important qualities for government agencies and service providers to develop and display towards Aboriginal people, while the broader community is encouraged to demonstrate “respect for Aboriginal people” by engaging in certain practices (acknowledgements, ceremonies) that help Aboriginal people feel good, and refraining from others (questioning, criticising) that might make Aboriginal people feel bad.

Such expressions of respect for Aboriginal people do not require a clear explanation of precisely what it is about Aboriginal people we are meant to be respecting. Instead, these expressions are a kind of shorthand to indicate that I want Aboriginal people to feel respected, because I care about Aboriginal health and wellbeing. In contrast, if I speak or behave in ways that are deemed to be disrespectful of Aboriginal people or inconsiderate of their feelings, this indicates that I do not care about Aboriginal health and wellbeing, and that I accept—or even endorse—ongoing Aboriginal disadvantage. Respect is conceptualised as an active form of caring for Aboriginal people, while disrespect is actively harmful to Aboriginal people—because making Aboriginal people feel bad is bad for their health.

An accusation of disrespect can very effectively shut down dissenting voices in Aboriginal affairs, particularly in a climate where “respecting the traditional owners of the land” is expressed as a key value of many government and community organisations, along with several in the corporate sector. A statement, an act or an omission that is deemed disrespectful—and which may leave Aboriginal staff, stakeholders or bystanders feeling disrespected—can be a deeply shaming transgression in an organisation that proclaims a “commitment to reconciliation”. Any association with the transgressor can be potentially damaging to an individual’s career or an agency’s reputation. Although the protocols and boundaries surrounding appropriately “respectful” behaviour are broad and indistinct, ignorance of these protocols and boundaries is no excuse for “disrespectful” behaviour.

It is reasonable to ask staff and members of organisations to behave towards each other in ways that the organisation endorses as “respectful”, so long as the demands are not too onerous or restrictive, there is a shared understanding of what respectful behaviour looks like, and so long as the expected behaviours are adequately expressed in cases where cultural protocols are more exotic or unfamiliar. It is not reasonable to demand that staff and members feel respect, or that they go out of their way to express respect, only that they comply with certain standards of behaviour as best they can. In contrast, the state has no business expecting or demanding that citizens feel respect, express respect or even behave “respectfully” towards each other; the state can only expect its citizens to behave lawfully.

Respect is a sentiment; we either feel respect for something or someone, or we do not. Increased knowledge and understanding may increase our respect for another’s particular culture and views—or we may find that our respect for another party diminishes the more we learn about them. As citizens, we should be free to express and explain our feelings of respect or disrespect for each other. These freedoms must include the freedom to express personal feelings of disrespect for Aboriginal cultural values (both traditional and modern), for Aboriginal popular opinion (if there is such a thing), and for the expressed opinions and behaviour of particular Aboriginal people.

Aboriginal people should not be insulated from “disrespectful” critique and commentary; not only is it infantilising, but it stymies the necessary self-reflection and debate that is a catalyst for change. Aboriginal people should not be afforded special legal protection from being “hurt” or “offended” by another’s critique of their values or behaviour, as such protection only discourages intelligent people from engaging with and critically examining Aboriginal problems. No Aboriginal individual in public life should be exempt from the scrutiny that others in public life are subject to—particularly those Aboriginal individuals with responsibility for substantial amounts of public funds.

Excessive deference to Aboriginal demands for “respect” has left many Aboriginal people unskilled in public discourse, with a tendency to conflate contrary opinion with oppression, criticism with abuse, disapproval with racism, and speaking about Aboriginal issues with presumptively speaking for Aboriginal people. Race politics and a minefield of “cultural sensitivities” have already rendered Aboriginal health, education and social services professional ghettos, discouraging many—too many—talented and compassionate professionals from pursuing careers in these areas. Excessive restrictions on “respectful” discourse in Aboriginal policy debate will only create an intellectual ghetto, where only those deemed to be appropriately respectful will be permitted to discuss an increasingly impoverished range of ideas. To attempt to govern and police “respect” for or amongst Aboriginal people is just another form of tyranny; and as with all tyranny and repression, it is the most vulnerable that suffer from the silencing of debate.

In the interests of encouraging free and open debate of Aboriginal issues, the obvious response to the question, “Who are you to speak?” is, “I am a person with an opinion and the right to express it. Who are you to stop me?”

When our legitimacy to speak critically is questioned on the basis that we are not dark-skinned enough, not disadvantaged enough or not sufficiently “cultural”, it can be tempting to respond with proof of our Aboriginal credentials by describing our “Aboriginal” upbringing and recounting our personal experiences of racism and disadvantage. (Similarly, non-Aboriginal people seeking permission to speak may point to their numerous Aboriginal friends, or describe their experiences of living and working closely with Aboriginal communities.)

While it may be momentarily satisfying to prove our legitimacy in this way, leaping through this hoop to demonstrate our credentials does little to encourage others to participate in debate on Aboriginal issues. When we do this, we are perpetuating the convention that only those with an acceptably authentic personal experience of Aboriginality can legitimately participate in discussion. If we want anyone with a rational and informed point of view to feel they are able to express it, we would do better to refuse to jump through hoops, and to simply insist on our right to speak on the understanding that our audience will judge our ideas on their merits alone.

Encouraging free and open debate may paradoxically entail some policing of the language we and others use. Too often, those concerned and committed enough to offer an opinion will apologetically preface it with, “Well, I’m just a whitefella, but ...” Aboriginal dissenters can play an important role in dispelling the convention that another’s views can be justifiably ignored or treated with contempt simply because of their “race” (or their postcode or political affiliation, for that matter). Apologetic “whitefellas” may for some time need consistent reminders that they are simply a person with an opinion and the right to express it, and that every time they apologise for their “whiteness” they are genuflecting to the silencing power of the Aboriginal industry.

Finally, we need to stop talking in terms of “closing the gap”. There are Aboriginal people whose social and material circumstances are virtually indistinguishable from those of other middle-class Australians, and there are some Aboriginal people who are quite prosperous. Other Aboriginal people, particularly many in remote communities, are living in desperate need, and at present they have limited options and incentives available for them to improve their circumstances. Their circumstances and opportunities—or at least those of their children—can be improved, although improvements in material circumstances and integration with the broader community will be necessarily accompanied by some shifts in their beliefs, values and self-perceptions.

There are other Aboriginal people living in remote, regional and urban Australia with serious—if not quite so desperate—problems and needs. These Aboriginal people have the same choices and opportunities available to them as their non-Aboriginal cohorts, though they face identity-driven social and cultural disincentives to make the choices that would improve their circumstances. Again, improvements in their social and material circumstances may be accompanied by transformations in their current ideal of what it means to be Aboriginal.

The problem is not the “gap” itself, but the notion of an inherently disadvantaged Aboriginal identity that inhibits Aboriginal people’s advancement. Kwame Anthony Appiah, in The Ethics of Identity (2005), notes that the contemporary notion of “identity”—in which race, ethnicity, sexuality and other social features are recognised and venerated as the defining elements of one’s sense of self—came into being in the social psychology of the 1950s. So up until fairly recently, people managed to function without such “identities” to tell them who they were and what they needed. Perhaps Aboriginal people will find they too are capable of flourishing in the absence of an Aboriginal industry to construct and represent them. The power of Aboriginal identity politics to suppress Aboriginal people’s advancement will diminish the more we challenge and “disrespect” its many absurdities, and the more we continue to speak about Aboriginal issues as though it is everyone’s business to do so.

In 1959, I arrived at the Eight Mile Field at Coober Pedy with two partners and as luck would have it, our first shaft bottomed on saleable opal. I was a callow, twenty-two year old dropout from Melbourne University Law School and I met my first Aborigines in their own environment on the opal fields. In those days before mechanisation, Aboriginal women and their kids “noodled” on the mullock heaps of the working mines, which involved picking over the mined earth coming up from down below and collecting any opal chips and full opals which were then stored in tobacco and cigarette tins. The law of “finders keepers” applied but at the end of the day Aboriginal men would arrive and claim the collected opal, sell it to the people who ran the Shell Service Station and then go and buy “metho” – these were the days before Aborigines were allowed to buy the white man’s “grog”.

I was made chillingly aware of the brutality that existed in the Aboriginal Settlement when I noticed a young woman obviously in distress, noodling on our mine. She had a filthy old singlet wrapped around her head and face and she was covered in flies. “Big trouble, Boss,” was the response from one of the women when I asked what was wrong. The woman’s drunken husband had assaulted her and forced her face into a campfire, burning out one of her eyes. I drove her into Coober Pedy in my 1936 Chrysler Model 66 Sedan and she was taken to the Bush Nurses at Port Augusta. I never saw her again.

In 1960 I left Australia for PNG and returned briefly to Coober Pedy in 1981, during a driving trip around Australia. I have just returned from my third visit to Coober Pedy and the plight of the Aborigines left me feeling as if I had been savagely headbutted and I thought a lot as I drove back to Central Victoria. Fifty years and billions of dollars on and the nightmare continues – worse than ever. Between 1959 and 2009 I have visited Aboriginal Settlements at Coober Pedy, The Western Desert, Papunya, Eumundu, Alice Springs, Tennant Creek, Katherine, Darwin, Kununarra, Mistake Creek and the notorious Palm Island. My trips to Papunya, Eumundu and Palm Island were courtesy of Channel 9’s 60 Minutes but the rest were at my own expense.

Using Whitlam as a starting point, the Aboriginal Industry got a good kick start from HC Coombs, an economist who became an idealistic and often impractical adviser to Labor on Aboriginal matters leading up to the creation of ATSIC by Labor’s Gerry Hand in 1990. Over the years, mainstream Australia has been hectored, lectured and abused by a variety of people from the Industry. Having two flags is a confusing and divisive element for a sovereign nation and many silly people play games with the positioning and flying of these flags. The “invasion” of Australia by whites and subsequent calls for a treaty and “reconciliation” are slogans that are used to constantly berate ordinary Australians and one wonders if our PM saying “sorry” really achieved much at all. As far as I know, the English have not yet gone to Rome and Copenhagen demanding compensation for the invasions by the Romans and the Vikings, which involved large scale massacres, rapes and extremely brutal conquest. Aborigines and their supporters are reminded that Captain Cook was a much better option than the French, Spanish, or indeed the Japanese. There is plenty of evidence that Aborigines and Papua New Guineans were doing terrible things to each other long before the evil white man and his “grog” arrived. The history of civilisation is littered with man’s inhumanity.

A Greek opal miner at Coober Pedy told me that “these people have never put one stone on top of another” – a concept I found interesting in its simplicity. Placing stones on top of one another would lead to a wall being built but Aborigines never took this quantum leap – remaining essentially nomadic hunter gatherers until Cook arrived, which prompts the understandable retort – “what the hell were they doing for sixty thousand years?” Aboriginal culture also has its difficulties with no recorded history in print or on stone tablets – apart from some images in caves – relying solely on oral history which can be flawed and extremely unreliable. On the other hand, the majority of Papua New Guineans were gardening, storing food, husbanding some animals and living in established, permanent villages long before white explorers came to their shores and despite also having no formal recorded history, their powerful culture in the form of dramatic sculptures and artefacts were stored in substantial and permanent men’s ceremonial houses.

Another serious aggravation for mainstream Australians are the constant reminders about the spiritual links between Aborigines and the land, which is exposed as a patently dishonest exercise when one visits most settlements. All my visits to Aboriginal settlements reminded me of my local tip and nothing much has changed. As at other settlements I saw the telltale sign of stones on the roofs of houses at the Coober Pedy Aboriginal Reserve, thrown there by drunks. Current TV footage and media images of outback Aboriginal camps remind one of Dante’s Inferno.

In 1996, Pauline Hanson declared that “all Australians should be treated equally”, that “welfare was killing Aborigines” and that “ATSIC should be abolished”. A hypocritical and hysterical media along with most federal and state MPs vilified her and branded her “racist”. In 2007, Noel Pearson came out and declared that “our outrageous social problems and our current widespread unemployability followed passive welfare”. The disgraceful and dysfunctional ATSIC is dead but many of its worst elements have merely been rebadged. Noel Pearson and Warren Mundine have changed direction on many issues and Australia urgently needs more men like these and women like the feisty Alison Anderson from the NT Government.

Aboriginal Industry activists continue peddling divisive mischief like the notion of a “Koori Nation”, recognition of customary law, reserved seats for Aborigines in our parliaments, a treaty and that “assimilation is genocide”. The policy of separatism is stronger than ever with black cartoon characters delivering the message on Imparja, the NT based TV station – “which way? – our way”. Community messages that warn of the evils of alcohol, tobacco and drugs are delivered in English and Pitinjarra. The lunacy of teaching English as a second language to Aboriginal kids continues and the July 2009 issue of “Shine”, published by the Victorian Government, canvasses the possibility of teaching Aboriginal languages in our schools. When Cook arrived we are told that there were 250 different languages. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders are given preference on government forms and Julie Gillard has decreed that employers in the building industry must take on a certain number of Aboriginal employees. The AFL is well on the road to reverse discrimination and preferential treatment of Aboriginal footballers. Just imagine the outcry if commentators were to start extolling the prowess of “white” players and referred to “all-white” teams.

Further lunatic fuel was thrown onto the Aboriginal Affairs inferno with the lecture given by the Anglican Reverend Peter Adam as reported on August 11, 2009. The Reverend said that all non-Aboriginal Australians should be prepared to leave the country if the indigenous people wanted that. “It would in fact be possible, even if very difficult and complicated, for Europeans and others to leave Australia. I am not sure where we would go but that would be our problem,” he said. I assume the good Reverend would switch off the lights, being the last man to leave. There is no doubt that radical Aboriginal Industry activists will quickly champion him.

“Passive welfare” has over the years of failed and, in many cases, disgracefully negligent and mismanaged state and federal government Aboriginal policies, unleashed the poisons of grog, tobacco, petrol, marijuana and other drugs and Coober Pedy is a stark microcosm of the dreadful cancer that affects less than 2 per cent of our population – bearing in mind that many Aborigines are in the mainstream and run businesses, turn up at their jobs and look after their families – just like the rest of us. Signs that proclaim “Dry Area – No Alcohol Allowed” and “Alcohol Consumption Banned” are posted everywhere in Coober Pedy but like some mad Monty Python script, drunken Aboriginal men and women are slumped on the footpath, crumpled VB cans beside them – within feet of these signs. One mid-afternoon in the main street of Coober Pedy, I watched a young Aboriginal stagger out of a bottleshop clutching a plastic bag in each hand containing a “bladder” or cask of wine. In a catatonic state, he meandered and circled back and forth as if trying to get his bearings before heading off to the settlement and I wondered if he was affected by something other than alcohol. Are there not laws that prohibit serving grog to a drunk? Dogs from the Aboriginal Settlement roam the streets unleashed and the larger ones search the rubbish bins. One morning in Hutchison Street, a large fierce-looking Alsatian cross mongrel was standing on his hind legs rummaging through a garbage bin while a hundred metres away an Aboriginal man was doing the same thing. At the main hotel a state of de facto apartheid exists with blacks and town whites drinking in separate bars by mutual arrangement and unwary tourists soon realise their mistake.

The police try and do their best but they are caught between the politicians and the do-gooders. I saw Coober Pedy police pick up drunken Aboriginals in the main street and drop them back at the Reserve, only to have them return an hour or so later. The town’s only ambulance is also co-opted to ferry drunks. Police didn’t join the force to provide a pick up and delivery service for drunken Aboriginals.

Coober Pedy sits astride one of Australia’s busiest north/south tourist routes and local and foreign tourists including many young backpackers pass through in great numbers seven days a week. Many will be appalled by what they see and will wrongly assume that the evil white man is entirely responsible. Coober Pedy Council and its Tourist Association should be making huge nuisances of themselves in Canberra and Adelaide – talking bluntly to the politicians and demanding urgent action.

“Scandalous”, “crisis” and “nightmare” are words that no longer have any impact given the reality of the indescribable horror of what is happening on remote Aboriginal settlements. What can be done? The question of how to deal with the grog and drugs appears to be frustratingly insoluble given our present tame laws and the influence of the civil libertarian movement. But who knows? A few courageous politicians may emerge and, working with men like Pearson and Mundine and, most importantly of all, Aboriginal women, new, but necessarily draconian, laws relating to the sale of alcohol could be passed. Years before native drinking in PNG, problem white drunks had their photos distributed by police around the liquor outlets and they were refused service under a legal provision known as “The Dog Act”. This “name and shame” process proved effective, but imagine the response if such a remedy was mooted today to deal with Aboriginal drunks.

One positive glimmer of hope exists, but it needs the State and Federal Aboriginal Affairs Ministers and their Opposition numbers to get off their well-polished backsides and start putting the bureaucrats back in their boxes and on notice. Over the years I have come to realise that far too many of the people that work in the Aboriginal Industry are totally unsuitable to be employed. They drink too much, smoke cigarettes and use drugs such as marijuana. Testing in the workplace for alcohol and drug use should commence immediately and only non-smokers should be employed. These people are essentially role models and mentors and they must set the example. It is obvious that many of these people are also only too willing to promote the cult of victimhood either subconsciously or deliberately and weeding them out must be a priority. I will never forget that girl that had her eye burnt out all those years ago.

John Pasquarelli is an artist and political commentator. An edited version of this article appeared in The Australian, 19 August.

Howson quoted a 1999 report by Boni Robertson of Griffith University, Queensland, which stated:

“Appalling acts of physical brutality and sexual violence are being perpetrated within some families and across communities to a degree previously unknown in indigenous life. Sadly, many of the victims are women and children, young and older people now living in a constant state of desperation and despair.

Western societies generally, including Australian society, have also been subjected to an attack on their cultural foundations. The attack on Aboriginal society came from the outside; the attack on Western society comes from within. The consequences are similar, the differences in outcomes being primarily one of degree.

Both internal and external attacks on the culture of a society can result in cultural breakdown. As humans need a culture to complete them, successful attacks on their culture will reduce them as human beings. The state of nature adverted to by Hobbs, where the life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short, is the life of man without a viable culture. The obvious consequences of cultural breakdown include increased crime, increased suicide and increased substance abuse. We cannot understand these symptoms without first having an understanding of the nature and role of culture in a society.

In Western society there are potentially three main vehicles of cultural transmission. The first, the most important, and potentially the most effective, is the family. The second is the school, and the third is the church. But the family often requires the cultural support of both school and church to be fully effective.

Besides rejection by the tribe, half casts were usually abandoned by their white progenitors. They were in danger of having no cultural formation of any kind, and growing up savage. There were some notable exceptions. There were those who were acknowledged and brought up by their white father. There were others who were rescued, by Missionaries, Police or Welfare Officers, from the tribal situation in which their chances of survival until adulthood were remote. These ‘rescued children’ were generally fostered to white foster parents. In either case they had the opportunity of absorbing the culture of their white parent or foster parents. Those who were not rescued are seldom around to comment.

Burnam Burnam, the Aboriginal philosopher, writer and actor, was a lot more Aboriginal than many who claim to speak on behalf of Aborigines. He suggested that the authorities should listen only to full bloods on Aboriginal matters, rather than those who claim to be Aboriginal but who have, as he put it, ‘a severe pigmentation problem’. Burnam Burnam’s view was that the attitude of the chromatically challenged to the real Aborigines, was that the real Aborigines exist to perform for the tourists, while the half casts were made to look after the money side of things. As Michael Warby has pointed out, the real Aborigines are now being used for the patronage opportunities of the Aboriginal Industry, and for the display of moral vanity by the politically correct. He identifies moral vanity as the force which attracts people to causes which provide a sense of moral worthiness but which have no regard to logic, evidence, cause and effect or consequences. A prime example of the triumph of moral vanity over common sense is provided by the story of Ngulupi Station under so-called Aboriginal control, reported in the Weekend Australian of 22-23 July 2000. Aborigines are now suffering oppression by pseudo-Aborigines on almost every Aboriginal settlement in Australia.

There were two fundamental Aboriginal beliefs. These were the belief in the importance of increase or maintenance ceremonies and the belief in reincarnation. When an Aboriginal was initiated he was told who he was, which Dreamtime ancestor he was the reincarnation of. He was told his secret name. His main role in life was then to ritually repeat the activity of that ancestor. The focus was therefore always on the past, on the Dreamtime, never on the future. There was no concept of progress, or even of a future where things could be different.

I would argue that Aboriginal mental development is better understood as a function of their particular approach to human cultural self-creation.

Aboriginal Policy

The primary cause of the disastrously mistaken policies that are applied to Aborigines is the failure to recognize how different they are, with the consequent projection of Western attitudes and concepts onto them. Their mind-set is fundamentally different from ours. Western man is oriented towards the future. Aboriginal man is oriented to the present and the past.