Indigenous Culture and History: Australia Aboriginal - Essay Example

Indigenous culture and history The policy of ‘protection’ has been defined as the need arising from ‘the disparity of the parties, the strength of the one and the incapacity of the other, to enforce the observance of their rights”, (Aborigines Protection Society, [APS], 1837). The situation was such that it ‘constituted a new and irresistible appeal to our compassionate protection”. On closer observation, one understands that rights have been defined only as ‘the righteous and profitable laws of justice.’ Reynolds in points out, what Aboriginal people perceived as their own rights differed immensely from those that the British imagined for them, (Reynolds, 1998). Indeed, they perhaps did not have a concept of ‘rights’ in the sense that the British understood them. Thus, even a statement such as the APS’ claim that ‘as a nation, we have not hesitated to invade many of the rights which they hold most dear’ is problematic. It assumes that the APS are somehow privy to knowledge of that which Indigenous Australians call ‘rights’, and to which rights they apparently ‘hold dear’. The protection policy can be identified with the Aboriginal Protection Acts. These were policies in the late 19th- and early 20th-century Australia that placed wide-ranging restrictions on the human rights of Aboriginal Australians (McLisky, 2007). The first acts were first passed before federation of the colonies of Australia, supposedly to protect Aboriginal people from abuse and exploitation (Aboriginal Protection Acts). After 1901, the acts were continued and expanded by the individual states. The protection acts restricted the movement of Aboriginal people, prevented them from owning property, allowed the government to take their children, and controlled their job opportunities and incomes. In some states the acts controlled with whom they could have sexual relations, whom they could marry, and whether they could drink alcohol. Segregation was a key part of the policy. Aboriginal people were forced to live away from white Australians and onto reserves. This however did not work. These places were of control, and the rations they received were often withheld as a form a punishment. Children were often stolen away and raised as part of the white society, this also resulted in the concept now known as the Stolen Generation (Report: Bringing them home). The policies that were followed by Australia for the first half of the twentieth century have been called decidedly protectionist (Nobles, 2008). The manifestation of this particular policy was that the government allowed virtually no means or mechanism of self-governance for the aborigines under the control of the state government. States passed legislation that delegated considerable administrative and regulatory authority to Aboriginal Protection Boards. These Boards, known as the Board for the Protection of Aborigines in Victoria, The Aborigines Welfare Board in New South Wales and the Aborigines Protection Board in South Australia, controlled virtually all aspects of aboriginal existence including choice of marriage partners, employers, and the movement or the travel. In fact, the relocation from remote reserves to towns was severely restricted for the most part. The Queensland Native Affairs Department even had the authority of taxation and compulsion (Chesterman and Galligan). The usual practice implemented by the Board was to tax Aboriginal persons not living on Reserves a small percentage of their wage- this usually was five per cent- and forcing their Aboriginal charge to save a certain amount. The department then funneled the collected taxes from the non-reserve Aborigines to an Aboriginal Provident Fund, which was in turn open to other Aboriginal inhabitants. In general, separation, regulation, and assimilation were the hallmarks of the Australian Policy, with no real or tangible protection for the interests of Aboriginal Self-Governance. The protection policy gave the government’s ‘Board for the Protection of Aborigines’ extensive powers over the lives of Aboriginal people including regulation of residence, employment, and marriage. The Board’s policy was based on a belief that "protection" of Aborigines would lead to their "advancement" to the point where they would eventually fit into the white community.  In order to comprehend the rationale and purpose of the protectionist policy, it would first be interesting to understand the very nature of society and existence at this particular juncture of Australian history. Concerned with the growing population issues and the related problems of crime at home, policy-makers in Britain gave paupers a choice between the workhouse and emigration to the colonies. The result was mass deportation, particularly to Canada and Australia. Deportation however favored not just the paupers but the convicts as well (Westerman, 1997). It was seen as a solution to both, the domestic problem of poverty and the imperial problem of supplying labour to colonial settlements. Around this time, the APS was formed and the debate about bringing the sleg of British society in contact with aborigines and natives in this manner started to gain momentum. In 1838, the unfairness of the system of convict transportation was debated, in the Molesworth report. It was argued that the system was neither just nor fair and that convicts were ‘the pests of savage as well as of civilized society’, (Hooper, 1838) This movement, led by figures such as T. Fowell Buxton, William Molesworth and Sykes Bannister, challenged colonial orthodoxy at the time. It is important, however, to remember, however, that while the views of these individuals (and groups such as the APS) were progressive, they were still products of their time. The activists of the 1830s took for granted the idea that post-Enlightenment Western Civilization was the natural peak of human achievement. It was the duty of Britons such as themselves to uplift the ‘savages’ of the new world until such a point as they too could become ‘enlightened’ British citizens. Those who encouraged intervention in colonial administration may also have done so out of a feeling of powerlessness in the domestic political climate. The APS’ 1838 Report asserts, “The protection of the Aborigines … is not a trust which could conveniently be confided to local legislatures. In proportion as these bodies are qualified from the right discharge of their proper functions, they will be unfit for the performance of this office”. The Australian policy of assimilation was similar to those of many of the other civilized countries of the west (Flood, 2007). The difference in the Australian policy was the deliberate stress that was laid on the deliberate and permanent disenfranchisement of the Aboriginal people and the absence of the recognition of the pre-existing forms of aboriginal existence and governance. For the first part of the twentieth century, the policies of the Australian states were overwhelmingly ‘protectionist’, allowing for virtually no mode of self-governance between the aborigines under state government control (Moses, 2004). The Australian government’s conception of Aboriginal self-governance did not appear until the last decade of the twentieth century. It has been described as the boldest and the most controversial reform policy toward aboriginal people. The Robert Hawke government in 1990 for example, established the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), which permitted Aboriginal participation in policymaking and administration. If one were to understand the deeper roots of the issue, one would realize that the colonization and the policy of protectionism served to decimate the Aboriginal population (Bourke et al., 1998). It fragmented the indigenous people and their culture and challenged their identity and survival. The Aborigines had to adapt to the changes in order to ensure their survival as a people. The first Act was the Aborigines Protection act in 1869. this act and the subsequent ones were designed principally on the premise of the racial superiority of the British and the belief that the Aborigines were uncivilized. They were designed and affected to ensure that the designated Aborigines were alienated and excluded from many aspects of modernity evolving in Australia. The thrust of these acts has been to validate the idea of the ‘real’ Aboriginal people, thereby challenging the identity of the Aborigines in the more densely occupied European areas in Australia (Bandler and Fox, 1983). The Protection Acts, through the reference to blood quantum were used in order to affect divides between aboriginal people and to legitimize the idea that some were more aboriginal than others were. This formed in turn the basis of discrimination against the Aborigines and division among them. The policy of White Australia excluded the colored people inside the country. There are those that argue that the policy was a direct descendant and a logical result of terra nullius. Most of these laws were ultimately ineffectual. On of the primary reasons why this is the case is the fact that no one really accepts the fact that they would achieve anything that was useful or worthwhile. The method adopted by the colonizers looking for a new home was not different compared to the manner of subjugation in other colonies of the British world. The manifestation of the subjugation was different, but the policy was based on the single assumption of the white man’s burden. The Protection laws in Australia were rationalized on grounds of humanitarianism that served to conceal the political and economic ruthlessness underlying the accelerating thrust of overseas expansion. In conclusion one can summarily state that the underlying purpose of the protectionist policy were the same as the one for many other colonizing attempts and policies-greed and the will to dominate through the physical manifestation of the theory of the white man’s superiority. Reference: Aborigines Protection Society, Report of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Aboriginal Tribes (British Settlements), reprinted with comments, William Ball, London, 1837 Aboriginal Protection Acts, accessed July 20, 2009, < http://www.australianaborigines.net/aboriginal-protection-act/> Bandler, F and Fox, L, 1983, The time was ripe: the story of the Aboriginal-Australian fellowship, 1956-69. pub, Alternative Publicating Co-operative Ltd., Chippendale. N.S.W. Australia Bringing Them Home report, Victorian government, 1976 Bourke C, Bourke E, Edwards B, William H E, 1998, Aboriginal Australia, pub, University of Queensland Press, pp46-49 Chesterman J and Galligan B, 2007, Citizens without rights, pub, Cambridge University Press, pp31-35 Flood J, The Original Australians, pub, Allen and Unwin Publishers, pp208-210 Hooper H, Select Committee on Transportation, Report from the Select Committee of the House of Commons on Transportation together with a letter from the Archbishop of Dublin on the same subject and notes by Sir William Molesworth, London, 1838, p.15 McLisky C, 2005, ‘Due Observance of Justice, and the Protection of their Rights’:1 Philanthropy, Humanitarianism and Moral Purpose in the Aborigines Protection Society circa 1837 and its portrayal in Australian Historiography, 1883-2003, pub, LIMINA, Vol.11, pp57-66 Moses, A. D. (Ed.) 2004, Genocide and settler society: frontier violence and stolen indigenous children in Australian history, pub, USA, Berghahn Books Nobles M, 2008, The politics of official apologies, pub, Cambridge University Press, pp54-55 Reynolds, H., 1998. This Whispering In Our Hearts. St Leonards, Australia: Allen and Unwin. Ch. II, ‘Missionaries and protectors’, pp.22-46 Westerman T G, 1997, Social Policies affecting Aboriginal people in Western Australia, pub, Psychologically Speaking Read More