Indigenous Australia: Contemporary Issues - Essay Example

Indigenous Australia: Contemporary Issues The importance of providing all Australian students with an understanding of an respect for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander traditional and contemporary cultures. When white settlers reached Australia at the end of the 18th century it resulted in over two centuries of discrimination against the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander within its population. There were two causes of the discrimination against the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, their skin colour and the belief that they were culturally inferior to the white European settlers. That assumption of inferiority was based on the self-confidence of the settlers that their technical superiority and their Christian religion made them better than any indigenous people that they encountered on their way to fame, fortune, and land. Diversity of culture was not to be accepted let alone celebrated. By itself anti-discrimination legislation can not alter these causes, yet education arguably plays a key role in reducing discrimination. Australian governments did not try to counter discrimination or even start to see that there was a problem with racism against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders until the 1960s. Successive Australian governments did not want to admit that they were part of a multi-cultural society and even prevented non-white immigration into Australia until 1974. The emergence of an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander civil rights movement has meant that anti-discriminatory policies were finally introduced to tackle racism in Australia. However anti-racist and anti-discriminatory legislation will not change Australian society all by itself. Arguably a crucial element in making Australia a fairer country to live in will be to encourage the majority of the population to respect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture and to therefore respect Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders (Crystal, 2003 p. 64). Essential places to start the process of Australia becoming a thriving multicultural society is in all the class rooms and lecture rooms across the whole country. Schools, colleges, and universities are key places if a transformation of any society is desirable. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders had been put under great pressure to abandon their cultures, to reject their traditional values, beliefs, and practices. Instead many had to adopt Christianity and the transplanted white European culture of the white settlers. If the culture of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were mentioned to or taught to Australian students, it was from the perspective that they had been primitive people that had been civilised by the white settlers. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander civil rights movements regard the struggle to preserve their traditional and contemporary culture as being central to the countering of racial and ethnic discrimination. As will be discussed below providing all Australian students with an understanding of and respect for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander traditional and contemporary culture is highly important for a healthy multicultural society in Australia. Estimates vary as to how large the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population was before Australia was colonised by white settlers. The affect of white settlement upon the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population was devastating. Although, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were killed trying to prevent white settlement, it was the diseases, which came from Europe that decimated the indigenous population. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander resistance was fiercest in the Northern Territory, those that survived massacres and small pox faced the extinction of their cultures. Education in Australia taught all Australian students that the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture was inferior to mainstream Australian culture. That educational emphasis made it more difficult for the Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders to gain respect for their culture from the white Australian population. Logically therefore a means to generate respect for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture is to educate all Australian students about it. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture is a culture that should be rightly proud of and that everybody else in Australia should learn to respect (Macintyre, 2004, p.104). Teaching all Australian students to respect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures is a means of accommodating and acculturating that culture within Australian society. Previously Australian students were taught that the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture should be assimilated into the mainstream culture (Abercrombie, Hill & Turner, 2000 p. 1). That process of assimilation was similar to the policies adopted in other countries that had indigenous populations such as Canada, New Zealand, and the United States. The indigenous peoples of these countries had similar historical experiences. A white European culture, which, stressed the inferiority of the indigenous peoples and their cultures had challenged their cultures. Guns and disease decimated the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations, whilst the education system and popular mainstream culture paid little or no respect to their culture. If the Australian government and the majority of the Australian people wish to develop and maintain a multicultural society in which racism and ethnic discrimination have no place then teaching all Australian students to respect the traditional and contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture is essential. Multicultural societies thrive on mutual respect for the different cultures within them. Racial and ethnic discrimination are largely based upon ignorance of others and beliefs in the inferiority of any group that does not supposedly conform to the rest of society. Educating all Australian students to respect the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture is a way of preventing impressionable young people forming racist and untrue stereotypes of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders. Respecting diversity and other cultures would make Australia a better, fairer, and more tolerant country to live in. If that were to happen, it would make Australia a good role model for other countries with multicultural societies (Abercrombie, Hill & Turner, 2000 p. 252). The Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders as already mentioned were assimilated into the dominant white European culture. At least that was the intention of the Australian establishment. Up until the 1960s it could be argued that had largely happened, with some unfortunate results for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture (Abercrombie, Hill & Turner, 2003 p. 18). Although that assimilation supposedly civilised the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, it also meant that their traditional cultures went into decline. Not only did their culture go into decline, unfavourable social, economic, and health factors meant their population declined, for a while some in the Australian government even believed that the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people would effectively die out. Being made part of a civilised Australia did not bring any social and economic benefits, Aborigine, and Torres Strait Islander were the most disadvantaged people in Australia, a trend that continues today despite government attempts to reduce discrimination. Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders found it easier to find work in the North, yet they were usually the lowest paid jobs (Macintyre, 2004, p.104). Educating all Australian students to respect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture would be beneficial to Australia as it would increase support for measures to reduce discrimination against Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders. Discrimination is not fair, it is morally and ethically wrong whilst it disrupts social cohesion. Education can be a positive force in changing societies for the better as well as being a negative force that can reinforce uniformity and prejudice. Governments have known or suspected for a long time that what students are taught during their time at school, college or university can have a great deal of impact on students as individuals yet also collectively. It has to be remembered that a country’s young people shape its future. If it is considered that a country should be a diverse multicultural society then teaching students to respect all cultures within it is essential. If on the other hand you want to produce a society were ethnic and racial groups are discriminated against then governments would teach all students that one culture above all the others should be respected the most and other cultures should be treated with disdain (Abercrombie, Hill & Turner, 2000 p.252). Australian governments had hoped to fully assimilate the Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders into the Australian population as a whole. However, the Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders found that assimilation meant that their own cultures were threatened whilst they never felt any social, economic, and cultural benefits from having to adopt white European culture. In Australia the assimilation process worked in reverse the white European immigrants forced their culture upon Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders population. Assumptions that Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders culture had been inferior to white European culture began to be questioned in the post war period. Anthropologists started to study Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture and found it had been more advanced than previously suspected (Rickard, 1999, p.231). The anthropologists found that far from being primitive, the Aborigine, and Torres Strait Islanders cultural and economic development was sustainable and successful. Aborigine and Torres Strait Islanders were culturally and linguistically advanced, for around 40,600 years they had Australia to themselves. Unfortunately, for the Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders they could not match the firepower of the British settlers or match the conviction of those settlers, they were culturally superior (Macintyre, 2004, p.11-13). Australian governments had preferred to control Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, they had no desire to preserve or nurture. Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders were not allowed to marry white Australians, whilst all those under 18 had to have a legal protector. The Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders had few rights and were denied citizenship in their own country (Welsh, 2004, pp. 487-88). The change of emphasis of Australian governments started the process of officially combating discrimination, education is just as important as legislation in attempting to change society. Amongst today’s students are tomorrow’s teachers, civil servants, politicians, and parents. When that is considered teaching all students to respect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture is a way of passing respect on to subsequent generations. Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders were only formally allowed full citizenship rights following the May 1967 referendum that allowed all Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders to apply for citizenship and vote in elections. The 1960s were also the decade in which the government legislated for equal pay and to allow Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders to have property. Attempts were also made to end discrimination against Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders when they worked for or wished to use service industries. Moves were also made to improve the Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders access to public services such health and education (Welsh, 2004, pp.492-93). The Australian government the National Centre for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Statistics (NCATSIS) to collect data about the discrimination that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders experience. NCATSIS is there to assist communication between the Australian government and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. NCATSIS could also be used to collect data on the success of initiatives to improve the position of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people within Australia. The Australian government and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities would view the teaching of all Australian students to respect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture as essential to improving the position of Australia’s indigenous peoples. Teaching all Australian students to respect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture will have the benefit of keeping more Aborigines and Torres Strait Islander students in education for longer and help them to achieve more (Australian Bureau of Statistics). Therefore, it is highly desirable to teach Australian students about the traditions and contemporary culture of the Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders. Students would find it beneficial to learn about Aborigine and Torres Strait Islander culture so that they could understand and appreciate it alongside the white European based mainstream culture as well as the culture of the non-white immigrants that have settled in Australia since the 1970s. Education is a primary means of countering racism and discrimination against the Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders. The white population in Australia had for much of the time, since the white settlement of the country, believed that Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders culture was inferior to white European culture. The belief that Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders culture was inferior provided justification for racism and ethnic discrimination. Research has shown that although Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture was not as technically advanced as that of the white Europeans that settled in Australia, it was far from being a primitive society. Educating all Australian students to respect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture is essential if a thriving multicultural society is to be developed and maintained. Bibliography Abercrombie, Hill & Turner, (2000) The Penguin Dictionary of Sociology 4th edition, London, New York, and Victoria, Penguin Group Australian Bureau of Statistics, National Centre for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Statistics (NCATSIS) homepage Crystal, D (2003) The Penguin Concise Encyclopaedia, London, New York, and Victoria Penguin Group Macintyre, S (2004) A concise history of Australia 2nd edition, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, New York and Port Melbourne Rickard, J (1999) Australia – a cultural history 2nd edition, Longman, London and New York Welsh, F (2004) Great Southern Land – a New History of Australia, London, New York, and Victoria, Penguin Read More