One of the less publicised aspects of the Mabo decision is that its moral justification depends on a particular view of Australian history — that the Aborigines are exclusively victims. This "politically correct" interpretation is pervasive in school curricula in particular, a development which is causing increasing concern for reasons reflected in this edited version of an article in the current issue of The Record:
The end of the "Anglo-Celtic" base is welcomed by multiculturalists because according to the new history taught in high schools and at university , Australia's history is one of shame, genocide and racism and many of the heroes of the past are murderers or fools.
Don Watson, an academic and speech writer for the Prime Minister Mr Keating, sums up this New Class white guilt view of history in these words:
"My generation was taught from the model of the Victorians, like Carlyle. They were always looking for heroes, so we learnt the history of great men. But you can't do that today... You can't teach about explorers, for example because they killed Aborigines"...(The Australian, 19 August 1993, p.7)
The over-riding emotion often produced in "Anglo" students and other people, when confronted with the white guilt view of history, is one of shame and possibly an unconscious desire for punishment. They are made to feel illegitimate occupiers of their own country, in spite of the fact that their forebears built its prosperity and that this prosperity supports the very people who attack the forebears...
It is only in recent times that Australian history has been widely studied in schools and universities. In the past a colonial cringe led to Australian history being regarded as unworthy of study, so the majority of people, largely being unaware of their own history, do not have the means to defend themselves when faced with the seemingly learned works and pronouncements of the dominant white-guilt view of history. Though many instinctively know that this white-guilt is biased and unfair, they are unable to match the sophisticated assaults of people who have the resources of universities and other publicly-funded bodies, including arms of government, at their disposal.
So at the very time that Australian history came to be widely studies, it is studied as a history of shame...
Aboriginal society is of course regarded as Utopian and peaceful, in perfect harmony with the environment. In fact, like all people Aboriginals had a dramatic impact on their environment. As reported in The Sydney Morning Herald of 8 January 1993,
"One scientist who has done intensive research on the subject, Dr. Tim Flannery, head of the mammals section at the Australian Museum (in Sydney) concludes that Aborigines were responsible for the disappearance of most of the 60 or so species of giant marsupials which inhabited Australia until 30,000 or 40,000 years ago."
Aboriginals, or at least the people of those times, also dramatically changed the vegetation pattern of Australia by their use of fire.
It is, in fact, in spite of cultural similarities such as the use of fire, uncertain whether these people were the direct ancestors of the present day Aboriginals, because in all human histories waves of invader/immigrants have displaced and/or intermixed with others. The fact that Australia has been inhabited by humans for 40,000 years or more does not mean that it has been one continuous occupation. Such an occupation would be unparalleled in history...
In the case of Aboriginals it is more likely, although there was a long period of isolation from the rest of the world, that similar displacements occurred, at least in the early to middle stages. The different characteristics of the Tasmanian Aboriginals suggest that they may have been displaced from mainland areas.
At any rate, though Europeans have had a dramatic impact upon the environment since 1788, this was also true of the people who preceded them on the continent. Aboriginals did not have the technology to do the type of damage of the European, but the history of native peoples has been to adopt European technology where it has become available.
It is not simply the case of the nasty European either directly disrupting the Aboriginal lifestyle or spreading diseases. Aboriginals themselves also freely sought out European settlements after word of these settlements spread to them. The anthropologist W.E.H. Stanner in his 1958 paper "White Man Got No Dreaming" stated:
"For every Aboriginal who, so to speak, had Europeans thrust upon him, at least one other had sought them out. More would have gone to Europeans centres sooner had it not been that their way was often barred by hostile Aborigines. Nowhere, as far as I am aware, does one encounter Aborigines who want to return to the bush, even if their new circumstances are very miserable. They went because they wanted to and stayed because they wanted to" (Ron Brunton, IPA Review Vol. 46 No. 2)
Though the Federal Government itself cited this Stannard paper in its own discussion paper on Mabo, nowhere is this fact that Aboriginals voluntarily sought out European settlements acknowledged.
Aboriginal society was very tightly structured and ruled by older men who took the younger women for wives. There was very little scope for independent assertion of differing outlooks within the tribe. Tribal law and custom was rigidly enforced. Wrongdoers who fled the tribe could be relentlessly hunted down and killed. "Alternative Societies" within the tribes would not have been tolerated.
There were painful initiation rites involving mutilation and then knocking out of teeth and as Geoffrey Blainey writes in his sympathetic book, "The Triumph of the Nomads", often violent clashes with enemies...Blainey estimates that the casualty rates of Aboriginal warfare surpassed those of the wars of Europeans. If there were five casualties in a band of 20 Aboriginals for example, then that was a massive casualty rate. Women and children were also targeted and killed in these clashes.
As with the many nomadic cultures, infanticide was widely practised. This was because mothers could not carry more than one child at a time and it was also used as a general method of birth control. Aboriginals also did not believe in natural death. If a person died it generally meant that it was the work of someone else's curse. Revenge then had to be taken against the chosen suspect. People out of favour or under suspicion lived under the treat of sudden violence after an entirely natural death. How many of those who idealise Aboriginal life would like to live under these conditions?
All this is not to stand in moral judgement on Aboriginal ways, but merely to point out that it was not an Utopian existence. While there were and are many things to admire, they cannot simply be viewed in isolation as though that was the whole story. Tensions existed within Aboriginal societies as in all societies and their life contained very harsh elements...
By today's standard the establishment of Aboriginal reserves, legislation such as the Aboriginal Protection Act and the Child Welfare Act and policies such as the prohibition of hotels selling Aboriginals alcohol seem harsh and/or paternalistic, but they involved some genuine attempts to improve conditions for Aboriginals.
Federal Race Discrimination Commissioner Irene Moss, however, portrays such things as a great and deliberate evil, a further extension of "Anglo" racist violence. Whites are judged in the harshest possible light, while Aboriginal societies are presented as having been Utopian before the whites.
While in the past judgements on Aboriginal societies have of course been overly harsh and dismissive, they have gone to an opposite extreme in recent years. It is important to put things in perspective. Things were far more complex than people like Irene Moss are prepared to allow. She takes all the benefits of a modern society, while attacking that society with the wisdom of hindsight and idealising a way of life she shows no inclination to try herself.