Australia

Artifact One

Keith Windschuttle

Keith Windschuttle is, apparently, on the forefront of Australia’s “history wars.” I’m no expert in Australian history, but from Manne’s article above (and from Windschuttle’s response to the film Rabbit-Proof Fence) it seems that although Windschuttle does make some good arguments (including a provocative reading of the reasons for the girls’ removal as presented in Pilkington’s novel), he is motivated less by a concern for accuracy and more by a concern for ideological points. As he himself puts it in the response cited above:

The real Australia would never have stooped so low as to try to eliminate the Aboriginal race by stealing its children. The fact that the film has been a popular success is tell­ing. It shows that despite the best efforts of aca­demics and school­teachers to persuade us other­wise, Australia is not and never has been a country whose people would condone such practices.

Significantly, Windschuttle’s phrasing here separates “the real Australia” from “the Aboriginal race,” while simultaneously defining “the real Australia” as a country whose people would not and never have condoned racial kidnapping. The statement thus enshrines both racial inequality and European superiority in a manner reminiscent of the most enlightened Victorians. Unfortunately for Windschuttle, Victoria has been dead for some time.

Thanks to my research for this artifact, I was able to update the Wikipedia entry for Rabbit-Proof Fence (the film), which cited Windschuttle’s arguments without referencing any of their criticisms. (Bizarrely, the article also claimed that Pilkington’s novel shows the girls leaving their families voluntarily.) The before and after photos are below:

Before.

After.

Artifact Two

Let us sum up this aspect as leading to a metaphysical emphasis on abidingness. They [Australian aboriginals] place a very special value on things remaining unchangingly themselves, on keeping life to a routine which is known and trusted….The value given to continuity is so high that they are not simply a people ‘without a history’: they are a people who have been able, in some sense, to ‘defeat’ history, to become ahistorical in mood, outlook and life. — W.E.H. Stanner, “The Dreaming”

W.E.H. Stanner argues, in 1956, that the culture of the Australian Aborigines is just as metaphysical and theoretical as the West’s; it merely starts from vastly different metaphysical and theoretical foundations. Thus the concept of Dreamtime doesn’t map onto our understanding of time: “it was, and is, everywhen.” It’s a continuously existing dimension, if I can call it that, in which everything has its past origins, present existence and future. Thus an Aboriginal metaphysics is, as Stanner puts it, one of “abidingness” and constancy rather than the West’s concern with progress and eschatology. Additionally, rather than theorize life through the lens of religion or science, as the West does, the Aborigines theorize it through the lens of kinship relations, which define one’s relationship not only with family but also with strangers and with the natural world. Finally, as the video above makes clear, there is no mythological or religious center to Aboriginal thought, no sacred book or site of pilgrimage. Everything is radically decentralized.

All this is so foreign to a Western/British outlook that it helps me better understand why the British viewed Australian Aborigines as the “lowest possible” form of life on the evolutionary ladder: there was so little commonality between their mindsets that it was easiest for the British to assume there was no commonality at all. They didn’t realize that if the Aborigines lacked what the British would have called “civilization” and its attendent habits of thought, the British themselves lacked the particular virtues of Aboriginal thought.

As one old Aborigine said to Stanner, “White man got no dreaming. / Him go ‘nother way.” It’s this ability to imagine that there are, in fact, other ways beyond our most ingrained habits that fundamentally undercuts the attitude of the colonial project. We ought not, as the British did, notice a people’s customs and evaluate their humanity accordingly; we ought to foreground their humanity and study their customs accordingly.

Artifact Three

Is There a Place for Indigenous Healers in Australia's Health System?

I find it interesting to compare the two perspectives expressed by the Aboriginal groups Georgina Kenyon speaks to in the article. As Kenyon puts it,

While Panzironi’s group seem wary of outsiders visiting their lands but are calling for much greater inclusion in the health system, the NPYWC would like more people to visit their cooperative in Alice Springs but are proud to be separate from mainstream healthcare.

Both groups, in other words, want to preserve their sense of difference while also integrating into the larger community. Panzironi’s group seeks legal community and social difference, whereas the NPYWC seeks social community and legal difference. Do you attempt to make the regulators throw open the door to indigenous medicine, or do you ignore the regulators and try to convert the culture by word of mouth? The debate is, in fact, somewhat similar to the debate between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois in the Reconstruction American South: should recently-freed slaves earn social respect by working hard and developing skills, or should they fight in the courtrooms for their legal and constitutional rights? I’m not certain there’s a right answer. In the US, though, significant change only occurred thanks to DuBois’ legal strategy. Laws are easier to change than hearts.

It all boils down to the statement we’ve returned to again and again throughout the semester: there are no easy solutions. Is legal integration more important than social integration? Do you make the system bend to fit you, or do you bend to fit the system? Do you say, with Lucy Lurie, “I am prepared to do anything, make any sacrifice, for the sake of peace”? Or do you say that peace at any price comes at too high a cost?

All this theorizing is rather far afield, I realize, from the specific issue of Aboriginal medicine. But I find it fascinating how the legacy of colonialism ends up creating a contentious division between the legal and the social, a distinction that both colonized and colonizer must learn to navigate. We’ve seen the confusion between legal and social when the Ibo attempted to bribe Obi in No Longer at Ease; we saw the tension between them as Ashwin Rao struggled to find personal, social healing while legal issues remained unresolved. Perhaps there is a synthesis of these tensions somewhere, but if there is, it is by no means quickly apparent or easily obtained.