About five years ago, I was working through an Australian Bureau of Statistics publication about Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders in the 1986 Census. Struck by some figures on household composition, I did a few arithmetical calculations and produced what seemed to be an astonishing result. I was sure that either I or the ABS must have made an error.
My calculations showed that 54 per cent of Australia's indigenous population lived in households that also contained one or more non-indigenous persons. When I contacted the ABS, they were as surprised as I was, and they decided to re-examine their data. But they soon informed me that the result of my calculations was correct.
Reflecting about this statistic and its possible significance, I then remembered that the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody had commissioned a demographic study which was also based on the 1986 Census. This had shown that just over a third of Aboriginal families comprised an Aboriginal man or woman married to a non-Aboriginal spouse. Leaving aside single-parent households, this meant that around 1 in 2 Aborigines was married to a non-Aboriginal person.
This figure must have unsettled the Commissioners, committed as at least some of them were to a view of contemporary Australia as being torn by racial and cultural division. Apart from a single lame comment, it had been completely ignored in the Royal Commission's reports.
Even more importantly, the study produced for the Royal Commission showed that the pattern of intermarriages was reasonably symmetrical. In a society that was deeply divided and unequal, we would expect to find all or most intermarriages between men of the dominant group and women of the subordinate group. The fact that over forty per cent of intermarriages involved Aboriginal men and non-Aboriginal women seemed a positive sign.
I wrote an article about these figures, which was published in the Melbourne Age. I pointed out that the figures were consistent with other data which indicated that the majority of Aborigines rejected a separatist approach and wished to be part of mainstream Australia. The data also seemed to show that the gulf between Aborigines and other Australians might not be as great as many would have us believe.
If my interpretation was correct, it should have been welcome news for the supporters of reconciliation. I sent the material to a couple of members of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, including the then Deputy Chair, Sir Ronald Wilson. They made polite noises, but it was reasonably clear that they were not interested. Certainly, I saw nothing to demonstrate that they attempted to publicise the data on household composition and intermarriage, or to investigate it further. The information was simply ignored.
It would have been wrong to think that there was anything personal in this lack of interest. This was shown by the rather similar response to the even more astonishing findings by John Taylor, which were published in the journal People and Place at the end of last year. Taylor, who is associated with the Centre for Aboriginal and Economic Policy Research at ANU and who has written papers for ATSIC, found that the 1996 Census indicated that the intermarriage rate -- which includes de facto unions -- had risen to 64 per cent.
Certainly, a number of newspapers, including the Courier-Mail, wrote stories about Taylor's article. But once the brief flurry of interest had passed, it also seemed to sink into oblivion. On the face of it, this apparent unwillingness to acknowledge that these high rates of intermarriage are good news is rather surprising. One would think that those charged with furthering the reconciliation process would be delighted with such developments, and do all in their power to publicise them. Their seeming failure to do so only confirms my long-held suspicion that there is a fundamental contradiction involved in the process of reconciliation.
I believe that on one side of this contradiction stand the great majority of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians. I think that these are the people who genuinely accept the vision of reconciliation -- "a united Australia which respects this land of ours; values the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander heritage; and provides justice and equity for all". Their interpretations of this vision might vary considerably, and they may be deeply perplexed about solving the crucial problems of Aboriginal disadvantage and post-Mabo land ownership. But they all wish to see an inclusive, fair and harmonious Australia.
On the other hand, there are people, again both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, who, recognising the strong desire of most Australians to transcend a truly unjust past, use reconciliation as a powerful political lever. The effectiveness of this lever is undermined by suggestions that reconciliation may be bubbling along as a grass-roots process, independently of their attempts to direct and manipulate it.
These are the people who are prepared to threaten the end of reconciliation unless particular demands are met, and who pretend that they are speaking for Aboriginal people as a whole. If they were really committed to reconciliation they would acknowledge that some degree of conflict over land management and other matters is inevitable between sections of the Australian population in the post-Mabo era -- including amongst indigenous people themselves. Instead of using threats to exacerbate these conflicts, they would do everything possible to insulate such conflicts from the process of reconciliation.
If this contradiction at the heart of the existing reconciliation process is to be resolved in a positive and socially constructive manner, I believe that a number of requirements need to be met. The first is clear from what I have just said -- the need to quarantine reconciliation from local and national disputes to the maximum possible extent. This would involve widespread condemnation of anyone, Aboriginal or non-Aboriginal, who attempts to use reconciliation as a political weapon.
The second requirement is to abandon the collectivist approach which has characterised much of the reconciliation process to date. As its apparent unwillingness to publicise the intermarriage data suggests, the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation seems to think that people should see each other first and foremost as representatives of highly distinct Aboriginal or non-Aboriginal communities, rather than as individuals.
This only perpetuates the kind of thinking that has generated many of the wrongs that the reconciliation process is trying to rectify. In the words of the American psychologist, Daniel Robinson, "At the heart of racism is the rejection of the person; the assimilation of the individual to the collective; the assignment of praise or blame, reward or punishment, respect or contempt on the basis of some real or alleged, or imagined tendency of the collective as a collective".
One of the many harmful consequences of this kind of thinking is the reluctance of most of the media to publicise the diversity of Aboriginal views on important issues, and to seek out Aborigines who wish to present an alternative to the rather narrow range that is currently presented as "Aboriginal opinion".
The third requirement is to make significant advances in ending the social and economic disadvantage that many Aborigines suffer. An essential prerequisite is to understand the causes of this disadvantage and to change those which are within our power to change. If our understanding is wrong, all the money and goodwill in the world will not solve the problem. The conventional wisdom places most of the blame on dispossession, racism and the non-recognition of Aboriginal rights and culture. Even if this were true, it does not follow that the solutions which are widely promoted are going to be effective. Indeed, the thrust of many well-meaning contemporary enthusiasms may help perpetuate the very conditions that we condemn.
For instance, I do not think that native title is going to be the panacea that many people believe. Native title is a racist title. This is not because non-indigenous Australians cannot claim it, but because no rational non-Aboriginal person would want to have their own property under such title, which precludes them from transacting in their land or holding it as an individual. Native title involves the paternalistic and discriminatory assumption that Aborigines should not have the same ability to deal with their property that other Australian citizens take for granted. I think that the long denial of Aboriginal property rights has been shameful; but I want to see them obtain the kind of rights which are consistent with individual freedom in a contemporary economy. To those who say that this is "assimilationist", I would respond that many of the characteristics which are now promoted as essential aspects of Aboriginality also involve assimilation; assimilation to Western fantasies about indigenous cultures.
Finally, it has to be recognised that "reconciliation starts with the truth". One positive aspect of the past few decades has been the end to what the anthropologist Bill Stanner called "the great Australian silence" about Aborigines and what had happened to them in the course of Australia's development. Unfortunately, as the silence has ended another form of intellectual corruption has taken its place -- the culture of dishonesty that surrounds public discussion about many Aboriginal issues.
This is most evident in the willingness of most prominent Aborigines and a great many non-Aborigines to support the fraudulent claims about Hindmarsh Island. Or in the credulous reception the media, academics and the churches gave Bringing Them Home, the shoddy report about the "stolen generations", which treated a truly serious issue in a deceitful and morally frivolous manner. But it is also present in a widespread willingness amongst many who speak publicly on Aboriginal questions to distort history and anthropology in order to pass over matters which might be thought to cause embarrassment to present political causes. The unfortunate consequences are to encourage a widespread suspicion that everything the public hears about Aborigines and Aboriginal culture has to pass a "political correctness" test.
If there are any grounds for hope that we might transcend the wrongs of the past, they lie in the willingness of ordinary Australians, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, to develop an increasingly dense network of personal relations. This is manifested and fostered in many ways, one of which is the high rate of intermarriage. But I suspect that this is happening more in spite of many prominent advocates of the reconciliation process than because of them.
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