Supporters of Aboriginal rights are worried that the current round of revelations about the culture of violence that afflicts many Aboriginal communities will provide ammunition to the wrong kind of people.
Last week the co-chairman of Reconciliation Australia, Fred Chaney, said "there's this desperate ideological desire at the moment to trash the rights debate and promote assimilation". And Melbourne academic Robert Manne claimed that allegations against ATSIC leaders will give comfort to "the new assimilationists who are opposed to the idea of Aboriginal self-determination".
Unfortunately, many advocates of the Aboriginal cause see their commitment as an indication of their own moral worth. This prevents them from accepting that those who find fault with their favoured notions could be acting from decent motives. Criticism is taken as a sign of wickedness, or blind adherence to ideology.
Perhaps their contemptuous attitude to criticism would be justified if they could show that life was getting better for ordinary Aborigines -- rather than for a small and privileged minority -- as a result of the approaches they have been advocating since the 1970s and 80s.
But for over a decade a number of well-informed observers, both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, have been pointing out that things have actually got far worse for many Aborigines. Indeed, in an interview in The Bulletin this week, Noel Pearson even suggests that while the old mission days in Cape York "weren't bloody Club Med", they bore favourable comparison to today's nightmare of alcohol-induced violence.
So although the phrase was coined as a term of rebuke, I am one person who is quite happy to be called a "new assimilationist" -- as opposed to the old kind, who were far too patronising, coercive and insensitive for my liking. But despite what Chaney and Manne might think, "new assimilationism" is much more likely to ensure the human rights of Aborigines, as well as genuine self-determination, which must first be focused on the individual, not a collective.
And what is the creed of a "new assimilationist"?
It starts from the principle that Aborigines are Australian citizens, whose future is indissolubly linked to the rest of us, and to whom the same rights and responsibilities must apply. This does not mean that Aborigines should lose their identity, any more than I, or most of my fellow Jews, have lost our Jewishness because of our devotion to Australia. Indeed, although I can understand why some individuals in the past denied their Aboriginality, I find it difficult to respect such people, and much prefer those who were always proud of who they were.
"New assimilationism" also acknowledges that Aborigines suffered great injustices in the past, as a result of policies and practices that were sometimes malevolent, sometimes well-intentioned, and sometimes merely indifferent to their needs.
But while some of the harmful consequences no doubt persist into the present, the all-too-common tendency to invoke this history as an alibi for today's destructive behaviour only perpetrates further damage, ensnaring Aborigines in the trap of victimhood. In Noel Pearson's words, this takes away the last thing that people have, "their own power to change".
And as the anthropologist Peter Sutton has recently pointed out in a far-reaching paper called "The politics of suffering", some of the worst levels of violence and other social problems exist in places where Aborigines were long shielded from the worst impacts of the European presence. These were places where people were still able to make traditional use of their lands, and "where cultural assimilation forces were the least applied".
Dr Sutton, a respected and experienced anthropologist who is on the council of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, and who is friendly with many Aboriginal leaders, would not call himself an "assimilationist". He thinks that it has justifiably become "a pejorative description", and that "the arrogance of many manifestations of assimilationism in years gone by almost defies belief".
Nevertheless, substantial parts of his paper reinforce the most contentious feature of the "new assimilationism". This is the insistence that an understanding of the social pathologies that afflict many Aboriginal settlements must also consider the part played by traditional values, attitudes and practices that may still persist, though in variously modified ways.
These potentially harmful elements of the pre-European culture are not just confined to the most obvious, such as the very high levels of inter-personal violence, including violence against women. They may also include some of the more admired aspects of Aboriginal cultures -- such as the enormous emphasis that is placed on kinship, which can undermine any commitment to "the common good", and beliefs about the supernatural, which induce individuals to seek external explanations for misfortune, thus avoiding responsibility for their own actions.
Many of these cultural elements may have been adaptive under the conditions of a hunter-gatherer economy. But in their current forms, and under contemporary economic and social conditions, they can greatly impede the very objectives which most Aborigines seem to desire -- physical security, good health, prosperity, the ability to take control over their own lives, a viable future for their children. Without these, all talk of "self-determination" is a mockery, a recipe for perpetuating the thuggery and corruption that is prevalent in contemporary Aboriginal politics.
However, "new assimilationism" also acknowledges a fundamental truth. Governments and other sympathetic bodies can provide resources and assistance when requested; they can reconsider their promotion of a romanticised traditional culture; and they can be more candid about likely incompatibilities between ancient practices and contemporary aspirations. But the impetus for effective change can only come from Aborigines themselves.
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