EXCERPT:
Introduction
The original aims of this book were to show the actual condition of Aboriginal people in Australia through their own testimony and from this to show how they think about themselves and their background. The interviews fulfil the second of these aims, but not the first. Aboriginals have been acutely aware of their white Audience for a long time now and the presence of a tape recorder and the knowledge that a book is to be written causes an automatic self-censorship which is understandable considering that the majority of Aboriginals are deeply ashamed of what they know is the truth about their people today. So, together with many sympathetic whites, they embrace and propagate a number of myths about themselves: that Aboriginals share freely; that they have a strong feeling of community; that they don’t care about money and lack the materialism of white society; that they care more deeply for their children than do white parents; and so on. Such fallacies are generally believed by both black and white people. Unbigoted whites believe them because the human desolation that is Aboriginal Australia is not yet understood in this country. The prejudiced lack understanding of, and honesty about, causes and in consequence they lack compassion, too. Those who are not prejudiced, but also not understanding, search for more favourable stereotypes.
Aborigines try to believe these fallacies about themselves because they won’t face the truth. But you only have to go to any Aboriginal mission or reserve to see the truth: the lack of community spirit, the neglect and abuse of tiny children, and all the rest of it.
The reality that I am talking about is only hinted at in these interviews. So, there are the uneasy musings of Elsie Jones, or Kate Lansborough will say ‘There were some other things I could tell you but I don’t think I’d better put them on tape. Personal things that happened when I was little.’ Or as Shirley Smith puts it ‘… there’s a loyalty … some things you can’t talk about.’ The experiences hinted at are what have created the thinking of people who, in the words of Betty Watson, can say of themselves ‘Actually you was nothing, an Aboriginal.’
The real horror story of Aboriginal Australia today is locked in police files and child welfare reports. It is a story of private misery and degradation, caused by a complex chain of historical circumstance, that continues into the present.
The original Aboriginal people lived in a delicate ecological balance with their environment. This balance allowed them to follow a way of life that set hem free from material burdens so that they could lead an extraordinary spiritual life. The traditional Aboriginal was drunk on religion, intoxicated by the metaphysics expressed through the physical features of his land.
The European invasion quickly destroyed the balance between Aboriginal and nature as the land was taken and the ecology altered by the introduction of cattle and sheep. Nomadic hunting became impossible and as the physical conditions of Aboriginal life altered so sickness increased especially as the Aborigines had no resistance to the diseases introduced by Europeans. The loss of land meant he loss of a metaphysics, too, because the two were inextricable.
As Aborigines began to sicken physically and psychologically, they were hit by the full blight of an alien way of thinking. They were hit by the intolerance and uncomprehending barbarism of a people intent only on progress in material terms, a people who never credited that there could be cathedrals of the spirit as well as of stone. Their view of Aborigines as the most miserable people on earth was seared into Aboriginal thinking because they now controlled the provisions that allowed blacks to continue to exist at all. Independence form them was not possible. White people’s devaluation of Aboriginal life, religion, culture and personality caused the thinking about self and race that I believe is the key to modern Aboriginal thinking. As Robert Kantilla said, ‘Suffering is that the white people class them as the lowest person on earth.’ Modern Aboriginals are victims of this chain of historical events. I believe that Aborigines should come to view their background a bit more realistically on the surface and with a bit less shame underneath.
I have also written this book in order to bring white Australia to some greater compassion through understanding and to enlighten it to its responsibilities in the areas of land and compensation for Aborigines.
It is my thesis that Aboriginal Australia underwent a rape of soul so profound that the blight continues in the minds of most blacks today. It is this psychological blight, more than anything else, that causes the conditions that we see on reserves and missions. And it is repeated down the generations.
The interviews show that some individuals have found a sense of purpose despite everything and that the numbers have increased since Labor came to power in 1972. Nevertheless I believe that for the majority of Aboriginals only a total approach that includes an emphasis on a particular style of education has any hope of working. This education, or rather re-education, of Aboriginal Australians must include a barrage of intensive positive propaganda about Aboriginal history, identity and culture to counteract the negative material that is constantly raining in on them from the major society at present.
Race relations legislation can officially decide that there will be no untouchable caste in society but such laws won’t make a scrap of difference to the self-perception of those who have already been conditioned to see themselves as untouchable. They have already been patterned into living that stereotype and they do live it. That is why the image of ‘dirty, lazy, bludging, alcoholic Jacky’ will take some shifting, especially as we have not yet created the images of some positive Aboriginal folk heroes. Ask white or black Australian kids to name a heroic Red Indian chief or a famous Indian tribe and most will be able to do so because of comics and films. Ask them to name an Aboriginal hero or a famous Aboriginal tribe and they will not be able to do so because Aboriginal history is either unknown or negative.
Aboriginals should be busy changing this situation. Aboriginals should be building a modern Aboriginal culture, something that is meaningful in today’s context. This radical re-education of Aboriginals by Aboriginals and at the direction of Aboriginals is vital. We know that a white Australian will never do it. What has been done is told in this book.
Kevin Gilbert