In May 1968, while campuses around the world were in open revolt against Western society, the Bulletin magazine wrote about a serious threat to New Zealand's tourist industry. Maoris were becoming so integrated into New Zealand life that "traditional colour" would soon be gone from the tribal regions. Ancient practices were losing out to rugby, television and the excitements of city life.
The industry's fears turned out to be groundless. Spurred by increasing disaffection with Western civilisation amongst sections of the educated white middle class, and the not-unrelated growth of political movements linking indigenous peoples across many different countries, a remarkable revival of tribal cultures has taken place since the late 1960s.
Aborigines, Maoris and other indigenous peoples who were once told that their only hope for health and prosperity was to assimilate to Western culture are now rejoicing in the assurance that it is their cultures that offer the real road to salvation. Greens urge us to adopt the indigenous attitude of reverence and collective responsibility towards Mother Earth. Social idealists enthuse over the egalitarianism, harmony, and "caring and sharing" ethic of traditional Aboriginal life. Jaded clerics whose faith has long ebbed away discover a profound spirituality in Aboriginal religious beliefs.
At first glance, this seems harmless enough, allowing Aborigines to regain a dignity that was long denied to them. Assimilation programs may have been well-meaning, but in practice Aborigines were often subject to humiliating restrictions and surveillance, which only reinforced the message of inferiority which assimilation was intended to overcome.
Now the key to Aboriginal well being is seen in revitalising moribund or declining cultures and ways of life. Various bureaucratic, legal and social incentives -- including requirements necessary for successful native title claims -- have induced the "retribalisation" of some previously assimilated Aborigines. Other people, whose traditions were more intact, have been encouraged to turn away from making effective adaptations to modern Australian life.
Certainly, some Aborigines have done well out of the widespread enthusiasm for all things indigenous. But at the same time, it is obvious that conditions in many Aboriginal settlements, particularly in remote areas, have deteriorated, with appalling levels of alcohol-induced violence, illness, and social breakdown.
Over ten years ago, Professor Colin Tatz, a long-time campaigner for indigenous rights, wrote despairingly of the "crisis of violence to self and to kin" he encountered during research among 70 Aboriginal communities across the country. Why was this occurring, he asked, when the external conditions for Aborigines seemed so much better than they had been 30 years previously?
Today it is becoming even harder to explain away the social devastation by invoking the undeniable injustices of the past. Nevertheless, the urgent question of whether the problems may result more from factors internal to Aboriginal culture and society than from racism and dispossession is virtually taboo amongst educated Australians.
According to Roger Sandall, whose book attacking "romantic primitivism", The Culture Cult, was discussed by Nicholas Rothwell in last Saturday's Weekend Australian, this is because spoiled and discontented suburbanites are loathe to shed cherished beliefs about tribal cultures. Those who challenge these beliefs are denounced as "assimilationists", and reviled for their wickedness.
And here there is a terrible irony. For those who condemn assimilation are blind to their own acts of assimilation, which have transformed the often brutal realities of traditional indigenous life and cultures into a fantasy projection of Western ideals and yearnings.
The much vaunted environmentalism, social harmony and deep religiosity of Aboriginal cultures says more about the dissatisfactions and spiritual hunger of many white Australians than it does about life in this land before European settlement. Even the "abiding reverence for mother Earth", supposedly a universal feature of indigenous cultures, has a Western provenance.
Australians are rightly told that the statistics for Aboriginal health, employment, education, incarceration and other social indicators are shameful. Little more than a generation ago, many anthropologists would have argued that traditional notions about such matters as violence, personal responsibility, social obligation, and disease causation would hinder significant progress in dealing with these problems. Even in the mid-1970s, Charles Perkins warned that traditional Aboriginal culture "is in some ways incompatible with western society. The two just really can't go together".
Don't get me wrong. I am utterly opposed to any form of coerced assimilation, or to the old paternalism. All Australians have the right to choose their own way of life within the confines of the law. But governments and opinion leaders need to be candid about the possibility that there are major contradictions at the heart of ameliorative policies, and to canvass the prospect that traditional lifestyles and institutions will not enhance the well-being of most Aborigines.
Roger Sandall may have portrayed the "big ditch" that separates tribal and modern worlds in starker terms than is really warranted. He himself would acknowledge the genuine creative advances that have come from bringing together modern and traditional Aboriginal expressive arts. But if his book encourages our intellectual elites to reconsider their illusions, he will have done more long term good for Aborigines than a sea of 100,000 hands or a million signatures in sorry books.
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