If you produce a booklet that is supposed to counter public ignorance and prejudice, your own information must be accurate, and you have to be candid about difficult and potentially embarrassing issues. Unfortunately, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission seems to think otherwise.
ATSIC has just published As a Matter of Fact: Answering the Myths and Misconceptions About Indigenous Australians. Even though it was almost certainly designed to influence the political outcome of the Wik/native title debate, in principle such a booklet is a worthwhile project. A lot of misinformation about Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders is widely circulated, not just in private conversations, but in the media, text books, and official reports.
As a Matter of Fact presents twenty-five "misconceptions or resentments" grouped into six categories: history, government funding, ATSIC itself, specific programs directed at indigenous Australians, land and native title issues, and social attitudes. Some of these "misconceptions" really are myths, and the booklet does a reasonable job of rebutting them.
For instance, non-Aborigines often wrongly claim that "most Aboriginal people have problems with alcohol". Using figures from the 1993 and 1994 National Drug Strategy surveys, As a Matter of Fact points out that the proportion of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders who are regular drinkers is considerably lower than the proportion for the general population -- 33 per cent as against 45 per cent.
The booklet also attempts to deal with the kinds of observations that have given rise to the stereotypes about Aborigines and alcohol. It acknowledges that the often public nature of Aboriginal drinking makes it much more visible, and that Aborigines who do drink, "are more likely to do so in excess" -- although it omits the important qualification that many Aborigines also enjoy alcohol in moderation.
While there might be grounds for quarrelling with specific details, As a Matter of Fact offers a legitimate response to a number of other prejudices and misconceptions, such as "Aboriginal history is not Australian history", and "There is no point in buying land for Aboriginal people". But in other sections, these constructive efforts are undermined by a much less acceptable approach, which pretends that some justifiable complaints are also myths.
In its response to the statement that "ATSIC is not representative of indigenous people" -- a well-founded criticism I have heard from many Aborigines themselves -- the booklet clearly attempts to mislead people. As a Matter of Fact claims that participation in ATSIC elections has increased in each of the three elections since an initial 29 per cent turnout in 1990: "In 1993, the figure increased to 31 percent. The most recent election, in October 1996, saw that figure increase once again by 8.7 per cent". These sentences have only one interpretation -- that voter participation in the last ATSIC election was almost 40 per cent.
In actual fact -- as opposed to ATSIC "fact" -- figures from the 1996 census indicate that the turnout was around 25 to 26 percent, a decrease of at least 6 per cent. This was despite urgings from a number of prominent Aboriginal supporters of the organisation that a high turnout would send the clear message that indigenous people were angry with government reforms and financial cutbacks to ATSIC. Perhaps "despite" in the last sentence should really be "because of".
What did increase by 8.7 per cent was the number of people who voted. But the number of people identifying as indigenous increased at a far higher rate -- 33 per cent between the 1991 and 1996 censuses.
As a Matter of Fact takes a less than candid approach to another supposed "myth"; that "sacred sites are made up to stop development". Of course, many sites are genuine. Yet it is equally true that others are not, a matter which the booklet simply ignores, to the detriment of its credibility.
In a few cases -- Hindmarsh Island is the best-known example -- sites have been deliberately fabricated to frustrate a particular project. But there are also cases where the invention has been relatively innocent, arising out of a belief held by some Aborigines that the discovery of precious minerals is itself proof that the place where they were found must be associated with Dreamtime beings.
Even more interesting are cases where a reverse process of invention has taken place. The anthropologist Christopher Anderson has recounted how Aborigines in the Bloomfield area of north Queensland opposed their land council and denied the existence of the very sites they had shown him five years previously. This occurred because the Aborigines were strong supporters of the Daintree-Bloomfield road, and did not want anything to stop its construction, much to the anger of conservationists, who questioned the authenticity of the Bloomfield Aborigines, claiming they had "lost their culture".
Indeed, such querying of the Aboriginality of particular individuals or communities because of their lifestyle or skin colour is common amongst non-Aboriginal Australians. In the section headed "Many of them are no darker than me -- the real Aborigines live in the outback", As a Matter of Fact provides a good response to these kinds of misconceptions, pointing out that Aboriginality is a product of history, upbringing and experiences, as well as descent.
Nevertheless, the booklet's justified criticisms of people who would confine authentic Aboriginality to those who fit certain stereotypes is undermined by its own attempts to do exactly the same.
Statements such as "all Aboriginal people have retained the core elements of our spiritual association to land and this association is an assertion of our Aboriginality" appeal to the religious hunger of many white Australians, and help to gain their support for the ATSIC position on native title. However, they also serve to deny the Aboriginality of the very substantial number of Aborigines who do not feel this way.
ATSIC and its supporters may pay lip service to the great diversity of contemporary Aboriginal life. But in its political campaigns, ATSIC tries to pretend that it represents a common indigenous point of view. It doesn't, and there isn't one anyway.
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