MULTICULTURAL AUSTRALIA. NARRATIVES OF CONFLICT, NARRATIVES OF RECONCILIATION: FROM POLITICIANS' SPEECHES TO STOLEN GENERATIONS NARRATIVES

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to bring to attention the problem of genuine reconciliation between the black native population of Australia and its (white) European settlers, who have been dominating the nation in terms of political, economic and cultural power since its foundation in 1901. The focus is on political speeches stemming from open conflict to a formal Parliament's apology for mistreatment of, especially, Stolen Generations of the later 20th century, which also has got its reflections in some prominent works of Australian literature, like Sally Morgan's My Place (1987) and Kim Scott's Benang (1999).

Headnote

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to bring to attention the problem of genuine reconciliation between the black native population of Australia and its (white) European settlers, who have been dominating the nation in terms of political, economic and cultural power since its foundation in 1901. The focus is on political speeches stemming from open conflict to a formal Parliament's apology for mistreatment of, especially, Stolen Generations of the later 20th century, which also has got its reflections in some prominent works of Australian literature, like Sally Morgan's My Place (1987) and Kim Scott's Benang (1999).

Keywords: Australia, culture, migration, conflict, reconciliation, Indigenous peoples

1. Introduction

The general crisis of the humanities, history in particular, stemming from the instability of meaning and the treatment of history as a narration of past events from a contemporary perspective, makes virtually impossible any serious debate on establishing a set of unifying national values and beliefs in most Western democracies in the world. The problem is far more complex in multicultural nations like Australia, which, to a large extent, do not share a common history or even if they do, it is predominately a history of conflicts. At the turn of the century, however, a renewed salience of Australian native history was observed in the public sphere, resulting, among other things, in the historic 1992 Mabo decision by Australia's High Court, which recognised the Aboriginal people's native title to land.

Therefore, one of the most fundamental problems multicultural Australia has to face in the 2010s is the problem of genuine reconciliation between the native inhabitants of the island and the descendants of white settler population, alongside the more and more disconcerting issue of increasing number of illicit migrants trying to enter the country as "boat people".

This paper, then, attempts to reconstruct some of the narratives of conflict and reconciliation between various late 20th-century Australian governments and Aboriginal people, starting from Paul Keating (1991-1996) and his introduction of land rights for Aboriginal people to the early 21st century Kevin Rudd's famous apology of February 2008.

2. The native title

In order to trace back the long way Australia travelled from the colonial to contemporary time in regards to Aboriginal rights to their land, one has to go back to the 19th-century prevailing views of the rights of the Aboriginal people. At the inaugural meeting of the Aborigines Protection Society in October 1838, Richard Windeyer, a lawyer born in England, proclaimed, with the Bible in his hand, that:

I cannot look upon the natives as the exclusive proprietors of the soil; nor can I entertain the ridiculous notion that we have no right to be here. I view colonisation on the basis of the broad principle laid down by the first and great Legislator in the command He issued to man "to multiply and replenish the Earth." The hunting propensities of the natives cause them to occupy a much larger portion of land than would be necessary to their support if it were under cultivation. And the only way to make them cultivate it is to deprive them of a considerable portion of it. The natives have no right to the land. The land, in fact, belongs to him who cultivates it first. (qtd. in Dale 2010: 101)

The decisive statement that the "natives have no right to the land" stands in sharp opposition to what Australia's High Court declared a century and half later - they have the right to land, thus paving a way to a genuine reconciliation between the former colonisers and the former colonised. But it took time and a plethora of victims.

Paul Keating, prime minister from 1992 to 1996, launching the Year of the World's Indigenous People at Redfern Park, Sydney, 10 December 1992, presented a vision of prosperous multicultural Australia that was supposed to seek reconciliation with the native inhabitants who had terribly suffered from the hands of the white settlers:

We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life. We brought the diseases. The alcohol. We committed the murders. We took the children from their mothers. We practised discrimination and exclusion. It was our ignorance and our prejudice. And our failure to imagine these things being done to us. With some noble exceptions, we failed to make the most basic human response and enter into their hearts and minds. We failed to ask: How would I feel if this were done to me?

As a consequence, we failed to see that what we were doing degraded all of us [...]. And if we have a sense of justice, as well as common sense, we will forge a new partnership. Ever so gradually, we are learning how to see Australia through Aboriginal eyes, beginning to see the wisdom contained in their epic story [emphasis added, RW]. I think we are beginning to see how much we owe the Indigenous Australians and how much we have lost by living so apart. (qtd. in Dale 2010: 114)

It is, indeed, a rare thing for a politician to speak the language of a literary critic, but the idea of changing the perspective of looking at Australia seems absolutely fundamental and practically unconditional for a genuine reconciliation.

In his Use and Abuse of Australian History, an acknowledged Australian historian, Graeme Davison, argues that

[t]he kind of multicultural, prosperous Australia Keating sought could be created, however, only by confronting "the problems which beset the first Australians-the people to whom the most injustice has been done." In perhaps the most quoted, and most controversial, passage in Keating's Redfern speech, the Prime Minister had acknowledged, more fully than any of his predecessors or successors, the moral responsibility of non-Aboriginal Australians for past injustices. (Davison 2000: 4)

Keating's narration of the centuries-long conflict is meant to be a narration of reconciliation, since, if one seeks a genuine reconciliation, one has first to admit one's wrongdoings and then apologise. The self-indictments are of the heaviest kind and uttered in short phrases to strengthen their impact power: diseases, alcohol, murders. In "Rum, Seduction and Death: Aboriginality and Alcohol", Marcia Langton addresses the issue of the "drunken Aborigines", saying that

[i]t would be not too far-fetched to suggest that alcohol was, from the very beginning of British settlement, a crucially important strategy in dealing with Aboriginal people. It must be assumed of the British that [...] alcohol was deliberately chosen as an effective way of keeping the truth from him [Bennelong, an Aboriginal], of keeping him too drunk to notice. But more importantly, alcohol was, consciously or unconsciously, used by the British as a device for seducing the Aboriginal people to engage economically, politically and socially with the colony. (Langton 1997: 87)

The then Prime Minister Paul Keating's speech was a clear sign of a complete withdrawal from the British colonial policy and, secondly, that Australia's political leaders had learnt the lesson of the Mabo decision made by the High Court on 3 June 1992, which granted Aboriginal people native title to land (N.B. the High Court is the highest court in Australia's judicial system). The Mabo decision was a legal case held in 1992. It is short for Mabo and others vs Queensland (No 2) (1992). The Mabo decision was named after Eddie Mabo, the man who challenged the Australian legal system and fought for recognition of the rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the traditional owners of their land. What is "native title" then?

Native title is the legal recognition that some Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have rights to, and interests in, certain land because of their traditional laws and customs. The rights granted by native title are not unlimited-they depend on the traditional laws and customs of the people claiming title. Other people's interests in, or rights to, the land are also relevant, and usually take precedence over native title. To have native title recognised under the Native Title Act 1993, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples must prove that they have a continuous connection to the land in question, and that they have not done anything to break that connection (such as selling or leasing the land) (reconciliation, web).

Why is native title important?

Native title is important because dispossession and denial of land was the first act in the relationship between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and Europeans; setting the tone for the events that followed. The Native Title Act 1993 is important because it determines how native title interests are formally recorded and recognised. It sets the rules for dealing with land where native title still exists or may exist. Today, native title has been recognised in more than 1 million square kilometres of land (about 15 per cent of Australia). Indigenous land use agreements set out arrangements between native title holders and others regarding who can access and use the land in question. These agreements play an important role in making native title work for all Australians. There are currently 629 registered Indigenous land use agreements in place. (reconciliation, web)

Almost 16 years later, Aboriginal people of Australia finally received an apology for the injustices non-Aboriginal Australians had done to them since the British landed at Botany Bay in 1788. In his address to Parliament in Canberra on 13 February 2008, Kevin Rudd, prime minister from 2007, declared:

Today we honour the Indigenous peoples of this land, the oldest continuing cultures in human history. We reflect on their past mistreatment. We reflect in particular on the mistreatment of those who were stolen generations - this blemished chapter in our nation's history. The time has now come for the nation to turn a new page in Australia's history by righting the wrongs of the past and so moving forward with confidence to the future.

We apologise for the laws and policies of successive parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians. We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country. For the pain, suffering and hurt of these stolen generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry. To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry. And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry. (qtd. in Dale 2010: 119-120)

This significant apology has been offered by the leader of the Labour Party who, after the victorious election of 2007, decided to apologise to Indigenous Australians for the injustices caused to them, particularly, to the Stolen Generations of the second half of the 20th century, as one of the first acts of the newly formed government alongside the Kyoto Protocol. Interestingly enough, this momentous decision stood in sharp contrast to the position of the previous Liberal government, which, at Australian Reconciliation Convention in May 1997, rejected the idea of a formal apology: the then Prime Minister, John Howard, was quoted as saying, "Australians of this generation should not be required to accept guilt and blame for past actions and policies" (John Howard. Opening Ceremony Speeches. Australian Reconciliation Convention. Web. 27 May 1997). Kevin Rudd, however, made this point strongly in his speech, apologising also for inaction of previous Australian governments, including Howard's. His aim was, as he put it, to heal the nation and look to the future:

We the Parliament of Australia respectfully request that this apology be received in the spirit in which it is offered as part of the healing of the nation. For the future we take heart; resolving that this new page in the history of our great continent can now be written.

We today take this first step by acknowledging the past and laying claim to a future that embraces all Australians. A future where this Parliament resolves that the injustices of the past must never, never happen again. A future where we harness the determination of all Australians, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, to close the gap that lies between us in life expectancy, educational achievement and economic opportunity. A future where we embrace the possibility of new solutions to enduring problems where old approaches have failed. A future based on mutual respect, mutual resolve and mutual responsibility. A future where all Australians, whatever their origins, are truly equal partners, with equal opportunities and with an equal stake in shaping the next chapter in the history of this great country, Australia. (qtd. in Dale 2010.: 120-121)

Speaking of the future of the Australian nation as a whole, alongside voicing the democratic principles, egalitarianism - as its foundation, Rudd tried to sound as convincing as possible, and, even though his speech was received with great applause from both the Labour and Liberal benches, still it was a political speech which, as time has proven, had little or no bearing on the practice of Australian police, courts ofjustice and (white) populace at large.

3. The Stolen Generation narratives

In Australian literature, in its relatively short history, there has been, however, a significant genre that makes it so distinct from other literatures in English, and which has been termed the Stolen Generations narratives (Huggan 2007). It should be noted that the Prime Ministership of Sir Robert Gordon Menzies (1949-1966) was marked by the Stolen Generation, that is, the official government policy of forcibly removing Aboriginal children from their parents and being adopted (assimilated) by white families. In her Culture and Customs of Australia, Laurie Clancy argues that such an assimilation policy was, in fact, a creative destruction and, instead of helping, it destroyed the indigenous families:

A culture of welfare and dependency, some argue, can be just as destructive for Aboriginal people as earlier, more overt forms of violence. It is an argument that can and has been easily taken up by conservative commentators and politicians as intellectual justification for their position, although recently, even some Aboriginal leaders have supported it, with reservations. What could be called malign neglect here goes even further to become "creative destruction," the assimilation of the representatives of the New Stone Age into the technologically superior society of the West. Prime Minister Howard has consistently refused to make a national apology to indigenous people on the grounds that the wrongs done to them were not done by himself or his contemporaries. This was despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of Australians marched on "Sorry" days in every capital city. (Clancy 2004: 24)

What is more, she continues,

[t]he same commentators have sought to play down or even deny the significance of a report on the so-called Stolen Generation, Bringing Them Home, which showed conclusively that even up until the 1950s indigenous people of lighter skin color were taken by force from their parents and merged into white society. They argued that half-caste children who were forcibly removed from their parents had not been stolen but "rescued" from a traditional society in which, if they survived the threat of infanticide at birth, they became abused outcasts-this, despite the torment that many witnesses who testified to the report revealed they had suffered at the forced deprivation. (Clancy 2004: 25)

A. O. Neville, one of the architects of what are now generally known as the Stolen Generations, advocated a three-step approach to racial policy, involving the forced removal of "half-caste" children from their mothers, the control of marriage among "half-castes", and the encouragement of intermarriage with the white community (Beresford and Omaji 1998: 46). These measures would in time correct what Neville saw as "incorrect mating" practices among "half-castes", ideally leading to a situation in which it would be possible to forget that there had ever been any Aborigines in Australia at all (qtd in Beresford and Omaji 1998: 48).

Interestingly enough, reconciliation within the Australian context bears an additional unexpected connotation, namely, that of uncanniness, in the sense that what is mine is already yours, that is a complete negation of Western rationalism and logic which underpins it. In their book Uncanny Australia (1998), Ken Gelder and Jane Jacobs argue that "reconciliation" co-exists uneasily with "difference" in postcolonial Australia. They liken this condition to the experience of the uncanny, in which "one's place is always already another's place and the issue of possession is never [settled, never] complete" (Gelder and Jacobs 1998: 138).

In re-diagnosing the condition of the unsettled settler, Gelder and Jacobs's study arguably bears most relevance to white Australia. But their point is that there is no clean break between alternative visions and versions (e.g. "white" and "Aboriginal") of Australia; rather, as conventional colonial distinctions between self and other become increasingly indeterminate, "a certain unboundedness" takes over: at different times, "each inhabits the other, disentangles itself, and inhabits it again" (ibidem).

Aboriginal literature in English is astonishingly rich in this magic quality, this certain unboundedness, which mainstream white literature lack. It is additionally supported by these peculiar colours characteristic of Afro-American literature. Two main representatives would be Sally Morgan's My Place (1987) and Kim Scott's Benang (1999), the latter being, like the former, the black family history and also a kind of stream of consciousness account of the shameful story of the treatment of the Australian Aboriginals by the white settlers, recalling the Nobel Prize winning novel by Tony Morrison, Beloved. As Huggan rightly observed,

[w]hile it is tempting to read My Place and Benang from this postcolonial optic, it is equally tempting to read them for evidence of the opposite - of the desire, against all odds, to find cultural stability and coherence, and to retrieve a lasting and mutually empowering sense of identity and place. Perhaps certain kinds of postcolonial reading can be as assimilative as the overarching Stolen Generation Narrative; and as inadvertently colonizing in their effect of turning Aboriginality to their own (white) political needs and historical ends. My Place and Benang are most useful, in this context, not as an unmasking of mythologies of whiteness, but as a reminder of alternative, Aboriginal epistemologies: epistemologies which are no less powerful for being bound up in - subject to but not subordinate to - whiteness, and which are experientially self-sustaining even if they are deemed to be categorically ' incomplete'. (Huggan 2007: 102)

Yet, there is always a mid-position: the position between the black and the white; but, this time the position of the white (the Anglo-Saxons and Anglo-Celts) has been ascribed by one of the leading Australian poets, Les Murray, to the ethnics, the (white) migrants from the outside of the British Isles. Murray's position is made clear in his astonishing 1994 attack on the "political correctness" of the Australia Council. "The ruling elite of Australia", he fulminates,

are excluding people like me from their Australia - the country people, the rednecks, the Anglo-Celts, the farming people - they have turned their backs on us [...]. They denigrate the majority of Australians who are born in this country, those that have mainly British ancestry [...]. We Old Australians, not necessarily Anglo but having no other country but this one, are now mostly silenced between the indigenous and the multicultural. (qtd. in Vasta and Castles 1996: 571)

Thus, as it seems, the problem of genuine national reconciliation does not consist in reconciling the white settlers and the black natives, but, in Murray's view, in excluding the progenies of the first white Australians, who have apparently been denied the land in which they were born and brought up and which they treat as theirs. Murray's vision of Australia belongs admittedly to a strong anti-migrant strand in national politics articulated in the 1990s by Pauline Hanson's One Nation party and still present in public opinion.

In addition, the ethnics do not have to bear the burden of guilt for the atrocities the first white Australians had done to the black natives, since they have just arrived, guiltless and blameless. In "A Brief History", he writes:

Our one culture paints Dreamings, each a beautiful claim.

Far more numerous are the unspeakable Whites,

the only cause of all earthly plights,

immigrant natives without immigrant rights.

Unmixed with these are Ethnics, absolved of all blame. (Murray 1996: 11)

The problem of guilt, naturally, cannot be easily solved, particularly when we bear in mind the value the indigenous people attach to land, and it is not a value that can be expressed in numbers, but in spirituality. Contrary to what the Bible teaches us, it is not the land that belongs to people - it is people who belong to the land, are very much part of it. Consequently, when the people are deprived of the land, they are deprived of themselves: they have got nothing to belong to, since they do not believe - contrary to some Westerners - in an afterlife. The Western concept of property is also foreign to them - the land is common and so are the material objects situated on it: houses, cars, food, etc. They wish to wander across the land freely, unstopped and unassailed by police, since the tribal law is what they respect, not the law of the white people. In light of the above, genuine reconciliation in Australia is virtually impossible, unless a serious and far-fetched compromise has been reached.

4. Conclusion

As shown in the first part of this paper, some steps by important (white) politicians have been made, some (black) individuals have won their court battles, but still it is not enough to claim national victory. In the narration of reconciliation Australian political leaders offer in recent times, however, we can find clear signs of a departure from the narration of confrontation and conflict of the 19th century, exclusion of the mid-20th century, assimilation of the second half of the 20th century and a postulate of an apparently genuine reconciliation in the early decades of the 21st century. Yet, these should be looked at as just postulates and ideological propaganda for purely political purposes, and even though a lot has been done to remedy the pitiable situation of most of them, Indigenous peoples of Australia are still disadvantaged, particularly those living in remote areas like the Northern territory. Unlike a narration of reconciliation practised in political speeches, the genuine, authentic process of reconciliation is problematic and undoubtedly lengthy, and its success remains to be seen in a rather distant future.

Sidebar

Ryszard W. Wolny is Professor and Director, School of English and American Studies, University of Opole, Poland. His interests focus largely on British and Australian literature and culture. He is the author of about a hundred scholarly publications, the most recent being The Masks of Ugliness in Literary Narratives (Frankfurt 2013), the monograph Patrick White: Australia's Poet of Mythical Landscapes of the Soul (Wrocław 2013), Poisoned Cornucopia: Excess, Intemperance and Overabundance across Cultures and Literatures (Frankfurt 2014), Outlandish, Uncanny and Bizarre in Contemporary Western Culture (Wrocław 2016). He is currently working on Disease, Death and Decay (with Katarzyna Molek-Kozakowska, Opole 2018) and Littoral Modernism: Patrick White's Theatre of Australia (Frankfurt 2018). He is a co-editor of the Peter Lang series Silesian Studies in Anglophone Cultures and Literature (with Ewa Kębłowska-Ławniczak). In 2017, he was elected President of Polish Association for the Study on Australia and New Zealand.

E-mail address: [email protected]

References

References

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