Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Aboriginal Tasmanians Race relations'
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Robinson, Cheryl Dorothy Moodai, of Western Sydney Hawkesbury University, and School of Social Ecology. "Effects of colonisation, cultural and psychological on my family." THESIS_XXX_SEL_Robinson_C.xml, 1997. http://handle.uws.edu.au:8081/1959.7/686.
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This research is a story about the author’s Murri family. It is about rebirthing the author’s identity, history and culture, and concerns the history and consequences that colonisation has rendered on her family. The story divulges the secrets and problems from the past that continue to affect the author and her family today. Aboriginal history concerns each and every person in Australia. Non-indigenous people need to understand that Aborigines’ spirits belong to this land, that they are a part of it. They need to understand what colonisation has done to Aboriginal families. It is only through understanding and accepting the history of what has happened to thousands of Murri families that their identities and place within their environment can become reality in the minds of non-Aboriginal people. Because a written discourse is alien to the Aboriginal culture and to the author’s psyche, she has rebirthed her family’s stories in both visual and oral language, and combined this with the written. The author’s art is a healing vehicle through which she and her family reconnect with their culture. It is connected with the author’s identity, her heritage. She has created images/objects that reflect what she has discovered of herself and her family. Her creations are imbued with all that is natural, her palette is the land and its produce, thus reconnecting herself with her heritage, the land – mother earth.Master of Science (Hons) Social Ecology
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au, D. Palmer@murdoch edu, and David Palmer. "Spurning yearning and learning Aboriginality: ambivalence shaping the lives of non-aboriginal Australians." Murdoch University, 1999. http://wwwlib.murdoch.edu.au/adt/browse/view/adt-MU20051108.160550.
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Much academic work concerned with social and cultural processes in Australia takes as its field of inquiry how the lives of Aboriginal Australians have been changed and impacted on by colonisation. Rarely has scholarship attempted to uncover some of the ways Aboriginality and Aboriginal people have become integral in the shaping of the lives of non-Aboriginal Australians.
Ths thesis takes to heart the challenge of subjecting oneself and one's own social and cultural position to the rigours of sociological scrutiny and sets out to examine how crucial Aboriginality and Aboriginal people have been in shaping the lives, identities and economies of non-Aboriginal Australians.
Drawing on the work of Homi Bhabha the thesis argues that ambivalence, whch underlies much of colonial discourse, can have a tremendously disruptive and unsettling effect on the authority, identities and everyday social lives of non-Aboriginal people. The thesis explores something of the diversity of this ambivalence by focusing attention on five groups of people (One Nation Supporters, retired tourists, 'alternative lifestylers', governmental workers and early colonists); two historical moments(early colonial times and the late 1990s); and two regions (the south-west and Kimberley of Western Australia).
The thesis argues that one of the effects of ths ambivalence is that the social worlds of non- Aboriginal Australians are often subjected to challenge and change. In early colonial times many 'settlers' were tom between the will to colonise and economic and cultural reliance on the efforts and knowledge of Aboriginal people. More recently, One Nation supporters attempt to distance themselves from Aboriginal people by constituting them as the barbaric and parasitical other. At the same time, Hansonites indirectly position Aboriginality as central to their own identity and political future. Another group, retired tourists, regularly perpetuate old colonial tropes and publicly express their disdain of Aboriginal people. At the same time, these people yearn for and engage in social practices otherwise associated with Aborigrnal culture. Behind both groups' public attacks on Aborigines as cannibals and the 'Aboriginal Industry' as spongers lies a deep political and cultural reliance on Aboriginality. Romantics and others who aspire to consume and mimic Aboriginal culture are likewise regularly ambivalent and contradictory in their treatment of Aborigmality. It is arguable that many are selfinterested and seek to plunder Aboriginal cultural. However, the very romance that prompts their mimicry can and does act to unsettle the certainty of non-Aboriginal dominance. This prompts people to re-examine their identities and social practices. Ambivalence and complexity is also central to the lives of those involved in the business of Aboriginal governance. On the one hand, these people are clearly implicated in the government and regulation of Aboriginal people. On the other hand, liberal discourse on fairness and equality of opportunity force governmental workers to increase their contact and reliance on Aboriginal people. This often has the effect of provoking changes in non-Aboriginal people's personal and working lives.
The thesis concludes that the engagement of colonial discourse with Aboriginalities inevitably leads to an ambivalence that disables the monolithic dominance of non-Aboriginal Australians. In a range of ways this ambivalence can and does produce conditions whch undermine and transform the cultural lives and identities of non-Aborignal Australians.
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Sampson, David. "Strangers in a strange land the 1868 Aborigines and other indigenous performers in mid-Victorian Britain /." Click here for electronic access to document: http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/dspace/handle/2100/314, 2000. http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/dspace/handle/2100/314.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Technology, Sydney, 2000.Sportsmen: Tarpot, Tom Wills, Mullagh, King Cole, Jellico, Peter, Red Cap, Harry Rose, Bullocky, Johnny Cuzens, Dick-a-Dick, Charley Dumas, Jim Crow, Sundown, Mosquito, Tiger and Twopenny. Bibliography: p. 431-485.
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Kealy, Vanessa. "Imagined spaces: interpreting perceptions of place and regulation of spaces through the processes of normalisation and reconciliation at Weipa." Thesis, Macquarie University, 1996. http://hdl.handle.net/1885/269920.
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As an imagined space of suburban normalcy, Weipa North, far north Queensland, is in a transition of governance, from a Comalco controlled space to a local government entity. 'Normalisation1 of the 'company town' is revealed as a mechanism of regulation, excluding the local Aboriginal community of Napranum which is constructed as Weipa North's 'other'.
This thesis focuses on the process of normalising' Weipa North through the experience of young Aboriginal people, and argues that normalisation' of Weipa North will not lead to Aboriginal reconciliation within the Weipa area. Marginalisation of young Aboriginal people's concerns and aspirations surrounding issues of 'normalisation', it is argued, undermines the potential for reconciliation where Comalco assumes connections to country
and culture are irrelevant to young Aboriginal people
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Frawley, J. W., University of Western Sydney, College of Social and Health Sciences, and School of Applied Social and Human Sciences. "Country all round : the significance of a community's history for work and workplace education." THESIS_CSHS_ASH_Frawley_J.xml, 2001. http://handle.uws.edu.au:8081/1959.7/528.
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The purpose of this research is to investigate the significance of a Tiwi community's history in order to better understand the work of Aboriginal Community Police Officers (ACPO).The situation under study is a workplace on Bathurst Island in the Northern Territory. The literature on workplace education offers the proposition that an understanding of the socio-cultural and historical context of workplaces is fundamental to thinking about workplace education.It is hypothesised that ACPOs have a dual consciousness of their profession and their workplace, and this consciousness has been informed and shaped by their common history.It is argued that this history is characterised by syncretism. The process of acculturation is researched, where police officers draw on experiences with, and knowledge of, both Tiwi and murrintawi societies.An historical account of the Tiwi society is given.A literary device of vignettes is used, followed by a descriptive-analytical interpretation in which historical events and various social-cultural aspects are described, analysed and interpretedDoctor of Philosophy (PhD)
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Malbon, Justin Law Faculty of Law UNSW. "Indigenous rights under the Australian constitution : a reconciliation perspective." Awarded by:University of New South Wales. School of Law, 2002. http://handle.unsw.edu.au/1959.4/19044.
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This thesis examines the possibilities for building a reconciliatory jurisprudence for the protection of indigenous rights under the Australian Constitution. The thesis first examines what could be meant by the term ???reconciliation??? in a legal context and argues that it requires (1) acknowledgement of and atonement for past wrongdoing, (2) the provision of recompense, and (3) the establishment of legal and constitutional structures designed to ensure that similar wrongs are not repeated in the future. The thesis focuses on the last of these three requirements. It is further argued that developing a reconciliatory jurisprudence first requires the courts to free themselves from the dominant paradigm of strict positivism so that they are liberated to pay due regard to questions of morality. Given this framework, the thesis then sets out to examine the purpose and scope of the race power (section 51(xxvi)) of the Australian Constitution, with particular regard to the case of Kartinyeri v Commonwealth in which the High Court directly considered the power. The thesis concludes that the majority of the Court had not, for various reasons, properly considered the nature of the power. An appropriate ruling, it is argued, should find that the power does not enable Parliament to discriminate adversely against racial minorities. The thesis then proceeds to consider whether there are implied terms under the Constitution that protect fundamental rights. It is argued that these rights are indeed protected because the Constitution is based upon the rule of law. In addition constitutional provisions are to be interpreted subject to the presumption that its terms are not to be understood as undermining fundamental rights unless a constitutional provision expressly states otherwise. The thesis also considers whether there is an implied right to equality under the Constitution. The conclusion drawn is that such a right exists and that it is both procedural and substantive in nature.
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Ingelbrecht, Suzanne. "Sorry : a play in two acts ; Shame and apology in the nation-state : reflections and remembrance ; We're ready (short story)." Thesis, Edith Cowan University, Research Online, Perth, Western Australia, 2012. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/491.
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"Sorry" is a play in two acts, exploring how collective memory of the past, including traumatic memory of being taken from one's family, affects the present in complex and surprising ways. The Stolen Generations' episode of Australian history, when mixed heritage Aboriginal Australians were taken from their families as a result of governmental policy, casts its shadow over four generations of Almadi Paice Aboriginal-Afghan-Anglo mixed heritage family members. Against a thematic backdrop of shame, apology and (hoped for) forgiveness, the 'living' family members struggle for empowerment and agency against the forces of government bureaucracy, the Law and their own emotional demons.
"Shame and Apology in the Nation-State: Reflections and Remembrance" is an exegesis which explores theoretical concepts related to collective memory, shame, performative apology and forgiveness, interlinked with Jan Patočka's notion of individual responsibility towards action. Using reciprocal interview material with a number of Aboriginal-Afghan-Anglo mixed heritage participants, who have either had direct experience of being "stolen" or who are related to "stolen" family members, this exegesis explores alternative modes of remembering their past and present in creative art works. In addition, I theorise that in our contemporary "age of apology" political apology to particular wronged groups of national communities may be problematic not only for their ubiquity and their tendency to alibi but because they do not address other important issues such as reparation and guarantees against repetition; nor do they deny the sovereignty of the nation-state apparatus to ‘do’ apology in a manner and at a time of its own choosing. The exegesis explores the importance of national commemoration, such as ANZAC Day, in promoting national collective memory, and theorises that a collective annual commemoration on behalf of the nation’s "stolen" people would be a much more compelling reconciliatory act than a single apology by a particular prime minister. My short story, "We’re Ready", which immediately follows the exegesis is my creative attempt to demonstrate the towards action and towards national reconciliation gestured by annual commemorative performance.
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Dewar, Mickey. "Strange bedfellows : Europeans and Aborigines in Arnhem land before World War II." Master's thesis, University of New England, 1989. http://hdl.handle.net/1885/274469.
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I first arrived in Arnhem Land in November 1980 as a trainee teacher determined to seek adventure having recently finished a BA (Hons) degree in History at Melbourne. I returned in January of the following year to take up a position as teacher to post-primary girls at Milingiinbi Bilingual School.
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Standfield, Rachel, and n/a. "Warriors and wanderers : making race in the Tasman world, 1769-1840." University of Otago. Department of History, 2009. http://adt.otago.ac.nz./public/adt-NZDU20090824.145513.
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"Warriors and Wanderers: Making Race in the Tasman World, 1769-1840" is an exploration of the development of racial thought in Australia and New Zealand from the period of first contact between British and the respective indigenous peoples to the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. It analyses four groups of primary documents: the journals and published manuscripts of James Cook's Pacific voyages; An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales by David Collins published in 1798; documents written by and about Samuel Marsden, colonial chaplain in New South Wales and the father of the first mission to New Zealand; and the Reports from the British House of Commons Select Committee into the Treatment of Aborigines in the British Empire from 1835 to 1837. This study employs a transnational methodology and explores the early imperial history of the two countries as a Tasman world of imperial activity. It argues that ideas of human difference and racial thought had important material effects for the indigenous peoples of the region, and were critical to the design of colonial projects and ongoing relationships with both Maori and Aboriginal people, influencing the countries; and their national historiographies, right up to the present day.
Part 1 examines the journals of James Cook's three Pacific voyages, and the ideas about Maori and Aboriginal people which were developed out them. The journals and published books of Cook's Pacific voyages depicted Maori as a warrior race living in hierarchical communities, people who were physically akin to Europeans and keen to interact with the voyagers, and who were understood to change their landscape as well as to defend their land, people who, I argue, were depicted as sovereign owners of their land. In Australia encounter was completely different, characterised by Aboriginal people's strategic use of withdrawal and observation, and British descriptions can be characterised as an ethnology of absence, with skin colour dominating documentation of Aboriginal people in the Endeavour voyage journals. Aboriginal withdrawal from encounter with the British signified to Banks that Aboriginal people had no defensive capability. Assumptions of low population numbers and that Aboriginal people did not change their landscape exacerbated this idea, and culminated in the concept that Aboriginal people were not sovereign owners of their country.
Part 2 examines debates informing the decision to colonise the east coast of Australia through the evidence of Joseph Banks and James Matra to the British Government Committee on Transportation. The idea that Aboriginal people would not resist settlement was a feature not only of this expert evidence but dominated representation of the Sydney Eora community in David Collins's An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, such that Aboriginal attacks on the settlement were not said to be resistance. A report of the kidnapping of two Muriwhenua Maori men by Norfolk Island colonial authorities was also included in Collins Account, relaying to a British audience a Maori view of their own communities while also opening up further British knowledge of the resources New Zealand offered the empire.
The connection with Maori communities facilitated by British kidnapping and subsequent visits by Maori chiefs to New South Wales encouraged the New South Wales colonial chaplain Samuel Marsden to lobby for a New Zealand mission, which was established in 1814, as discussed in Part 3. Marsden was a tireless advocate for Maori civilisation and religious instruction, while he argued that Aboriginal people could not be converted to Christianity. Part 3 explores Marsden's colonial career in the Tasman world, arguing that his divergent actions in the two communities shaped racial thought about the two communities of the two countries. It explores the crucial role of the chaplain's connection to the Australian colony, especially through his significant holdings of land and his relationships with individual Aboriginal children who he raised in his home, to his depiction of Aboriginal people and his assessment of their capacity as human beings.
Evidence from missionary experience in New Zealand was central to the divergent depictions of Tasman world indigenous people in the Buxton Committee Reports produced in 1836 and 1837, which are analysed in Part 4. The Buxton Committee placed their conclusions about Maori and Aboriginal people within the context of British imperial activity around the globe. While the Buxton Committee stressed that all peoples were owners of their land, in the Tasman world evidence suggested that Aboriginal people did not use land in a way that would confer practical ownership rights. And while the Buxton Committee believed that Australia's race relations were a failure of British benevolent imperialism, they did not feel that colonial expansion could, or should be, halted. Evidence from New Zealand stressed that Maori independence was threatened by those seen to be "inappropriate" British imperial agents who came via Australia, reinforcing a discourse of separation between Australia and New Zealand that Marsden had first initiated. While the Buxton Committee had not advocated the negotiation of treaties, the idea that Maori sovereignty was too fragile to be sustained justified the British decision to negotiate a treaty with Maori just three years after the Select Committee delivered its final Report.
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Jolly, Martyn. "Fake photographs making truths in photography /." Click here for electronic access to document: http://www.anu.edu.au/ITA/CSA/photomedia/ph_d.pdf, 2003. http://www.anu.edu.au/ITA/CSA/photomedia/ph_d.pdf.
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Blackmore, Ernie. "Speakin' out blak an examination of finding an "urban" Indigenous "voice" through contemporary Australian theatre /." Click here for electronic access to document: http://www.library.uow.edu.au/adt-NWU/public/adt-NWU20080111.121828/index.html, 2007. http://www.library.uow.edu.au/adt-NWU/public/adt-NWU20080111.121828/index.html.
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Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Wollongong, 2007."Including the plays Positive expectations and Waiting for ships." Title from web document (viewed 7/4/08). Includes bibliographical references: leaf 249-267.
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Davis, Edward R. "Ethnicity and diversity : politics and the Aboriginal community /." Title page, table of contents and abstract only, 1991. http://web4.library.adelaide.edu.au/theses/09PH/09phd2613.pdf.
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Croft, Pamela Joy, and n/a. "ARTSongs: The Soul Beneath My Skin." Griffith University. Queensland College of Art, 2003. http://www4.gu.edu.au:8080/adt-root/public/adt-QGU20030807.124830.
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This exegesis frames my studio thesis, which explores whether visual art can be a site for reconciliation, a tool for healing, an educational experience and a political act. It details how my art work evolved as a series of cycles and stages, as a systematic engagement with people, involving them in a process of investigating 'their' own realities - both the stories of their inner worlds and the community story framework of their outer conditions. It reveals how for my ongoing work as an indigenous artist, I became the learner and the teacher, the subject and the object. Of central importance for my exploration was the concept and methodology of bothways. As a social process, bothways action-learning methodology was found to incorporate the needs, motivations and cultural values of the learner through negotiated learning. Discussion of bothways methodology and disciplinary context demonstrated the relationships, connections and disjunctions shared by both Aboriginal and Western domains and informed the processes and techniques to position visual art as an educational experience and a tool for healing. From this emerged a range of ARTsongs - installations which reveal possible new alternatives sites for reconciliation, spaces and frames of reference to 'open our minds, heart and spirit so we can know beyond the boundaries of what is acceptable, so that we can think and rethink, so that we can create new visions, transgressions - a movement against and beyond boundaries' (hooks, 1994 p.12). Central to studio production was bricolage as an artistic strategy and my commitment to praxis - to weaving together my art practice with hands-on political action and direct involvement with my communities. I refer to this as the trial and feedback process or SIDEtracks. These were documented acts of personal empowerment, which led to a more activist role in the political struggle of reconciliation. I conclude that, as aboriginal people, we can provide a leadership role, and in so doing, we can demonstrate to the wider community how to move beyond a state of apathy.
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Brock, Stephen. "A travelling colonial architecture Home and nation in selected works by Patrick White, Peter Carey, Xavier Herbert and James Bardon /." Click here for electronic access: http://catalogue.flinders.edu.au/local/adt/public/adt-SFU20070424.101150, 2003. http://catalogue.flinders.edu.au/local/adt/public/adt-SFU20070424.101150.
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A thesis submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy - Flinders University of South Australia, Faculty of Education Humanities, Law and Theology, June 2003.Title from electronic thesis (viewed 27/7/10)
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Moreton, Romaine. "The right to dream." Click here for electronic access: http://arrow.uws.edu.au:8080/vital/access/manager/Repository/uws:2495, 2006. http://arrow.uws.edu.au:8080/vital/access/manager/Repository/uws:2495.
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Burridge, Nina. "The implementation of the policy of Reconciliation in NSW schools." Phd thesis, Australia : Macquarie University, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/1959.14/25954.
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"November 2003".Thesis (PhD)--Macquarie University, Australian Centre for Educational Studies, School of Education, 2004.
Bibliography: leaves 243-267.
Introduction -- Literature review -- Meanings and perspectives of Reconciliation in the Australian socio-political context -- An explanation of the research method -- Meanings of Reconciliation in the school context -- Survey results -- The role of education in the Reconciliation process -- Obstacles and barriers to Reconciliation -- Teaching for Reconciliation: best practice in teaching resources -- Conclusion.
The research detailed in this thesis investigated how schools in NSW responded to the social and political project of Reconciliation at the end of the 1990s. -- The research used a multi-method research approach which included a survey instrument, focus group interviews and key informants interviews with Aboriginal and non Aboriginal teachers, elders and educators, to gather qualitative as well as quantitative data. Differing research methodologies, including Indigenous research paradigms, are presented and discussed within the context of this research. From the initial research questions a number of sub-questions emerged which included: -The exploration of meanings and perspectives of Reconciliation evident in both the school and wider communities contexts and the extent to which these meanings and perspectives were transposed from the community to the school sector. -The perceived level of support for Reconciliation in school communities and what factors impacted on this level of support. -Responses of school communities to Reconciliation in terms of school programs and teaching strategies including factors which enhanced the teaching of Reconciliation issues in the classroom and factors which acted as barriers. -- Firstly in order to provide the context for the research study, the thesis provides a brief historical overview of the creation of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation. It then builds a framework through which the discourses of Reconciliation are presented and deconstructed. These various meanings and perspectives of Reconciliation are placed within a linear spectrum of typologies, from 'hard', 'genuine' or 'substantive' Reconciliation advocated by the Left, comprising a strong social justice agenda, first nation rights and compensation for past injustices, to the assimiliationist typologies desired by members of the Right which suggest that Reconciliation is best achieved through the total integration of Aboriginal people into the mainstream community, with Aboriginal people accepting the reality of their dispossession. -- In between these two extremes lie degrees of interpretations of what constitutes Reconciliation, including John Howard's current Federal Government interpretation of 'practical' Reconciliation. In this context "Left" and "Right" are defined less by political ideological lines of the Labor and Liberal parties than by attitudes to human rights and social justice. Secondly, and within the socio-political context presented above, the thesis reports on research conducted with Indigenous and non Indigenous educators, students and elders in the context of the NSW school system to decipher meanings and perspectives on Reconciliation as reflected in that sector. It then makes comparisons with research conducted on behalf of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation during the 1990s on attitudes to Reconciliation in the community. Perceived differences are analysed and discussed.
The research further explores how schools approached the teaching of Reconciliation through a series of survey questions designed to document the types of activities undertaken by the schools with Reconciliation as the main aim. -- Research findings indicated that while both the community at large and the education community are overwhelmingly supportive of Reconciliation, both as a concept and as a government policy, when questioned further as to the depth and details of this commitment to Reconciliation and the extent to which they may be supportive of the 'hard' issues of Reconciliation, their views and level of support were more wide ranging and deflective. -- Findings indicated that, in general, educators have a more multi-layered understanding of the issues related to Reconciliation than the general community, and a proportion of them do articulate more clearly those harder, more controversial aspects of the Reconciliation process (eg just compensation, land and sea rights, customary laws). However, they are in the main, unsure of its meaning beyond the 'soft' symbolic acts and gatherings which occur in schools. In the late 1990s, when Reconciliation was at the forefront of the national agenda, research findings indicate that while schools were organising cultural and curriculum activities in their teaching of Indigenous history or Aboriginal studies - they did not specifically focus on Reconciliation in their teaching programs as an issue in the community. Teachers did not have a clearly defined view of what Reconciliation entailed and schools were not teaching about Reconciliation directly within their curriculum programs. -- The research also sought to identify facotrs which acted as enhancers of a Reconciliation program in schools and factors which were seen as barriers. Research findings clearly pointed to community and parental attitudes as important barriers with time and an overcrowded curriculum as further barriers to the implementation of teaching programs. Factors which promoted Reconciliation in schools often related to human agency and human relationships such as supportive executive leadership, the work of committed teachers and a responsive staff and community.
Mode of access: World Wide Web.
xvi, 286 leaves ill
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Gibson, Lorraine Douglas. "Articulating culture(s) being black in Wilcannia /." Phd thesis, Australia : Macquarie University, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/1959.14/70724.
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Thesis (PhD)--Macquarie University, Division of Society, Culture, Media & Philosophy, Department of Anthropology, 2006.Bibliography: p. 257-276.
Introduction: coming to Wilcannia -- Wilcannia: plenty of Aborigines, but no culture -- Who you is? -- Cultural values: ambivalences and ambiguities -- Praise, success and opportunity -- "Art an' culture: the two main things, right?" -- Big Murray Butcher: "We still doin' it" -- Granny Moisey's baby: the art of Badger Bates -- Epilogue.
Dominant society discourses and images have long depicted the Aboriginal people of the town of Wilcannia in far Western New South Wales as having no 'culture'. In asking what this means and how this situation might have come about, the thesis seeks to respond through an ethnographic exploration of these discourses and images. The work explores problematic and polemic dominant society assumptions regarding 'culture' and 'Aboriginal culture', their synonyms and their effects. The work offers Aboriginal counter-discourses to the claim of most white locals and dominant culture that the Aboriginal people of Wilcannia have no culture. In so doing the work presents reflexive notions about 'culture' as verbalised and practiced, as well as providing an ethnography of how culture is more tacitly lived. -- Broadly, the thesis looks at what it is to be Aboriginal in Wilcannia from both white and black perspectives. The overarching concern of this thesis is a desire to unpack what it means to be black in Wilcannia. The thesis is primarily about the competing values and points of view within and between cultures, the ways in which Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people tacitly and reflexively express and interpret difference, and the ambivalence and ambiguity that come to bear in these interactions and experiences. This thesis demonstrates how ideas and actions pertaining to 'race' and 'culture' operate in tandem through an exploration of values and practices relating to 'work', 'productivity', 'success', 'opportunity' and the domain of 'art'. These themes are used as vehicles to understanding the 'on the ground' effects and affects of cultural perceptions and difference. They serve also to demonstrate the ambiguity and ambivalence that is experienced as well as being brought to bear upon relationships which implicitly and explicitly are concerned with, and concern themselves with difference.
Mode of access: World Wide Web.
xii, 276 p. ill
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Taffe, Sue (Sue Elizabeth) 1945. "The Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders : the politics of inter-racial coalition in Australia, 1958-1973." Monash University, School of Historical Studies, 2001. http://arrow.monash.edu.au/hdl/1959.1/8964.
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Babidge, Sally. "Family affairs an historical anthropology of state practice and Aboriginal agency in a rural town, North Queensland /." Click here for electronic access to document: http://eprints.jcu.edu.au/942, 2004. http://eprints.jcu.edu.au/942.
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Thesis (Ph.D.) - James Cook University, 2004.Thesis submitted by Sally Marie Babidge, BA (Hons) UWA June 2004, for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the School of Anthropology, Archaeology and Sociology, James Cook University. Bibliography: leaves 283-303.
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Stephenson, Peta. "Beyond black and white : Aborigines, Asian-Australians and the national imaginary /." Connect to thesis, 2003. http://repository.unimelb.edu.au/10187/1708.
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This thesis examines how Aboriginality, ‘Asianness’ and whiteness have been imagined from Federation in 1901 to the present. It recovers a rich but hitherto largely neglected history of twentieth century cross-cultural partnerships and alliances between Indigenous and Asian-Australians. Commercial and personal intercourse between these communities has existed in various forms on this continent since the pre-invasion era. These cross-cultural exchanges have often been based on close and long-term shared interests that have stemmed from a common sense of marginalisation from dominant Anglo-Australian society. At other times these cross-cultural relationships have ranged from indifference to hostility, reflecting the fact that migrants of Asian descent remain the beneficiaries of the dispossession of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. (For complete abstract open document)
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Beale, B. L. "Maternity services for urban Aboriginal women : experiences of six women in Western Sydney /." View thesis, 1996. http://library.uws.edu.au/adt-NUWS/public/adt-NUWS20030613.161127/index.html.
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Moran, Anthony F. "Imagining the Australian nation settler- nationalism and Aboriginality /." Click here for electronic access to document, 1999. http://dtl.unimelb.edu.au/R/U1L2H28HB18MC24L4CL743PII8DUPUQSDYN9NGAGLBXL8YA8BU-00451?func=results-jump-full&set_entry=000013.
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Ford, Payi-Linda. "Narratives and landscapes their capacity to serve indigenous knowledge interests /." Click here for electronic access to thesis: http://tux.lib.deakin.edu.au/adt-VDU/public/adt-VDU20070614.105953, 2005. http://tux.lib.deakin.edu.au/adt-VDU/public/adt-VDU20070614.105953.
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Thesis (Ph.D.)--Deakin University, Victoria, 2005.Submitted to the School of Education of the Faculty of Education, Deakin University. Degree conferred 2006. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 211-225)
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Price, Kathleen Alice. "Trouwerner : the forced forgetting : education and how it has affected/disaffected Aboriginal people of Tasmania." Phd thesis, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/1885/149988.
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Kidd, Michael John, University of Western Sydney, of Arts Education and Social Sciences College, and School of Humanities. "The sacred wound : a legal and spiritual study of the Tasmanian Aborigines with implications for Australia of today." 2002. http://handle.uws.edu.au:8081/1959.7/28158.
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This thesis looks at the reality of the situation of the Tasmanian Aborigines using the theme of the 19th Century genocide of the Tasmanian Aborigines and the Sacred wound in the context of the law and spirituality. The methodology of the lived experience of the author is drawn upon for a legal and spiritual analysis of cases lived by the author, which provide a backdrop to the handing back of certain Aboriginal lands in Tasmania as well as reflecting on the intersection of Aboriginal lore and the legal system. The meaning of these cases goes beyond a rational legal analysis as the idea that genocide is still continuing is a difficult one for Australians to understand due to compartmentalisation between spirituality and the law in the context of modern Australia. The High Court case of Mabo poses a dilemma for Aborigines as it contains an opportunity to move beyond terra nullius thinking, but at the same time it limits claims in a way that continues dispossession and may in certain circumstances disallow aspects of Aboriginal self determination. Within this apparent standoff lies the possibility for a development of the law that can embrace or incorporate the Aboriginal spiritual attachment to the land, ancestors and artefacts. There is no word in the English language that can describe the multifaceted, inside and outside, perspectives required to carry out the required discussion that could bring the law more into tune with the people, the land and the original inhabitants. The spiritual direction of Australia, however, could be affected by the turning away from a material, logical rational perspective to the embracing of connection as a value in itself: to spiritual values and a personal sense of calling. The Sacred wound is the meditation around which the discussion of all these themes of lived experience, the law and spirituality moves and ultimately rests.Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
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Riggs, Damien Wayne. "Benevolence, belonging and the repression of white violence." 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/2440/37755.
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Research on racism in Australia by white psychologists is often fraught with tensions surrounding a) accounting for privilege, b) the depiction of particular racial minorities, and c) how individual acts of racism are understood. Nowhere is this more evident than in research that focuses on the relationship between Indigenous and white Australians. Such research, as this thesis will demonstrate, has at times failed to provide an account of the ongoing acts of racism that shape the discipline of psychology, and which thus inform how white psychologists in Australia write about Indigenous people. As a counter to this, I outline in this thesis an alternate approach to understanding racism in Australia, one that focuses on the ways in which racism is foundational to white subjectivities in Australia, and one that understands white violence against Indigenous people as an ongoing act. In order to explicate these points, and to examine what they mean in relation to white claims to belonging in Australia, I employ psychoanalytic concepts within a framework of critical psychology in order to develop an account of racism which, whilst drawing on the insights afforded by social constructionist approaches to racism and subjectivity, usefully extends such approaches in order to understand their import for examining racism in Australia. More specifically, I demonstrate how racism in Australia displays what Hook (2005) refers to as a 'psychic life of colonial power', one that implicates all people in histories of racism, and one that highlights the collective psychical nature of racism, rather than understanding it as an individual act. In the analyses that follow from this framework I demonstrate how white privilege and its corollary - the disavowal of Indigenous sovereignty - are warranted by white Australians. To do this, I engage in a textual analysis of empirical data, focusing on both the everyday talk of white Australians as gathered via focus groups and a speech by Prime Minister Howard. In particular, I highlight how claims by white Australians to 'doing good' for Indigenous people (what I refer to as 'benevolence') may in fact be seen to evidence one particular moment where the originary violence of colonisation is yet again played out in the name of the white nation. More specifically, and following Ahmed (2004), I suggest that claims to 'anti-racism' may be seen as 'non-performatives' - they do not require white Australians to actually challenge our unearned privilege, nor to examine how we are located within racialised networks of power. In contrast to this, I sketch out an approach to examining racism, both within the discipline of psychology and beyond, that is accountable for ongoing histories of colonial violence, which acknowledges the role that the discipline often continues to play in the legitimation of race, and which is willing to address the relationship that white Australians are already in with Indigenous Australians.Thesis (Ph.D.)--School of Psychology, 2005.
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Byng, Karen T. G. "Beyond the boundaries of polling : Australian attitudes to aboriginal issues." Master's thesis, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/1885/150336.
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Ogilvie, Charlene Sarah. "The Aboriginal movement and Australian photography." Phd thesis, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/1885/149690.
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Shellam, Tiffany Sophie Bryden. "Shaking hands on the fringe : negotiating the Aboriginal world at King George's Sound." Phd thesis, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/1885/110025.
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In 1826 a British military garrison was set up on the edges of an Aboriginal
world at King George's Sound on the south west corner of Western Australia.
This history narrates four episodes which centre on the interactions that occurred
between the British newcomers and the Aboriginal people who lived there. The
garrison was designed to be a holding station, to deter the French from making
a territorial claim on a large and hard to defend continent and thus the British
presence at King George's Sound was not an overtly colonising one.
This history studies a series of events that took place during the first few years of
the British settlement at King George's Sound, from when it was established as a
military garrison in 1826 until after its conversion to a free settlement within the
colony of Western Australia. Four narrative episodes focus on the relationships
between the Aborigines who lived beyond the shores of King George's Sound and
the British newcomers who stepped ashore and stayed.
Western Australian historiography has rendered this past as a 'friendly frontier' - a
reflection of the few violent incidents between the Aboriginal people who lived
in the area and the newcomers who set up their camps. This history attempts
to leave behind such tropes as 'friendly' and 'peaceful' and look closely at the
everyday experiences of individual people as well as the complexities in the
developing relationships between particular British newcomers and Aboriginal
individuals.
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Kelly, Raymond. "Dreaming the Keepara: New South Wales indigenous cultural perspectives, 1808-2007." Thesis, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1309534.
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Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)This interdisciplinary study investigates the Aboriginal intellectual heritage of the Mid North Coast of New South Wales, through a combination of family history, oral tradition, and audio-recorded songs, stories, interviews, discussions, and linguistic material. This research has uncovered an unsuspected wealth of cultural knowledge, cultural memory, and language heritage that has been kept alive and passed down within Aboriginal families and communities, despite the disruptions and dislocations endured over the past seven generations. This study's findings are presented in three interrelated forms: a dance performance that incorporates traditional and contemporary songs, stories, and lived experiences of an Aboriginal extended family; an oral presentation within the framework of Aboriginal oral transmission of knowledge and this written exegesis, which is itself an experiment in finding pathways for the expression and progression of Aboriginal knowledge within the context of academic discourse. The theoretical framework of this work is grounded in my personal experience of Aboriginal traditions of knowledge production and transmission, maintained through everyday cultural activities, family memories of traditional education, and our traditional and present-day language forms and communicative practices. The performance, oral and written components connect this intellectual and cultural heritage with historical and photographic documentation, linguistic analyses, and audio recordings from my grandfathers' and great-grandfathers' generations. The written component establishes the background to the study, and reviews relevant literature with a prioritisation of Aboriginal voices and sources of knowledge, both oral and written. It explores aspects of my family history from the early 1800s to the present, including my childhood and early educational experiences and leads on to a detailed look at the work of my late father, Raymond Shoonkley Kelly in documenting and maintaining out intellectual and cultural heritage through the NSW Survey of Aboriginal Sites. The final part of this study focuses on language, which is central to all of the preceding investigation. This work demonstrates how operating from an Aboriginal knowledge base allows us to see beyond surface differences in spelling and pronunciation, to reach a deeper understanding of the cultural meanings and ways of speaking that have allowed us to preserve and maintain out cultural integrity. This knowledge base also enables the linguistic unpacking of previously unanalysable song material from the audio recordings. Indigenous people in New South Wales are continuing to engage in a cultural and political struggle to maintain and protect our identity in the face of an ever-present threat of assimilation by the mainstream Australian society. The success of our struggle will depend significantly on our ability to keep our language and our intellectual heritage alive.
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Louw, Andre Nathan. "The myth of the guiltless society. A socio-ethical appraisal of the experience of the aborigines in Australia since colonisation. Toward a theology of liberation for Australia." Diss., 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/889.
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This study is a focus on a small minority group within Australian society.
This study attempts to explore and expose the inherent injustices experienced by this Aboriginal group since colonization. Its major focus is the loss of their land and their human rights and dignity subsequent to this invasion/ colonization. It also attempts, subsequent to the High Court decision in favour of Aboriginal land ownership, to also theologically support that stance. This study exposes the heretical nature of the traditional theology and religious practices of the dominant white population. It also tries to show the correlation with the experience of the Maori people in New Zealand and how they lost their land to the British Monarch.
It then attempts some directives for reconciliation between these peoples and what could be done to restore the damage done since 1788.Theology
M.Th. (Systematic Theology)
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Mason, Courtney Wade. "All of Our Secrets are in These Mountains: Problematizing Colonial Power Relations, Tourism Productions and Histories of the Cultural Practices of Nakoda Peoples in the Banff-Bow Valley." Phd thesis, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10048/1581.
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This study examines some of the significant challenges that Nakoda peoples encountered from 1870-1980 in the Banff-Bow Valley, Alberta. Beginning with missionary movements, the 1877 Treaty Seven agreements and the establishment of the reservation systems, I trace the emergence of a disciplinary power regime and the subsequent consequences for Nakoda communities. Canadian governments and agents of the colonial bureaucracy manipulated time, space and movement which altered the structure of Aboriginal lives in ways that attempted to increase visibility, economic productivity and docility. Race as a normalizing and dividing practice (Foucault, 1975) is used to demonstrate how levels of discipline furthered assimilation strategies through the formation of Canadas first national park and the development of the regions tourism economies.
As the preeminent example of the engagement of Nakoda peoples in local tourism industries, the Banff Indian Days sporting and cultural festivals, which were celebrated from 1894-1978, are also investigated. Borrowing from poststructural and postcolonial theory, the interactions between tourists, participants, organizers and performers are problematized. It is revealed that the festivals became critical sites of cultural exchange that engendered unique socio-economic, political and cultural opportunities. In addition, the Indian Days fostered important identity-making possibilities and crucial spaces to assert, contest, and produce perceptions of Aboriginal cultures.
This research privileges information obtained from oral history interviews with Nakoda peoples. However, archival materials, mainly newspaper accounts, photographs, tourism advertisements, and government documents also contribute to the primary evidence collected. As well as analyzing racial discourse, this work also considers how Nakoda peoples responded to the representations and expectations that informed the production of Aboriginal identities. I conclude this study by suggesting that it is crucial for researchers to consult diverse Aboriginal perspectives and collaborate with the communities within which they work. This research offers new understandings of the cultural histories of the Banff-Bow Valley which reflect the dynamic and complex nature of colonial power relations.
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Elton, Judith. "Comrades or competition? : union relations with Aboriginal workers in the South Australian and Northern Territory pastoral industries, 1878-1957." 2007. http://arrow.unisa.edu.au:8081/1959.8/45143.
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This thesis examines internal union and external factors affecting union relations with Aboriginal workers in the wool and cattle sectors of the South Australian and Northern Territory pastoral industries, from union formation in the nineteenth century to the cold war period in the 1950s.PhD Doctorate
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Standfield, Rachel. ""Not for lack of trying" : discourses of whiteness, race, and human rights in postwar Australia." Master's thesis, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/1885/150356.
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McPaul, Christine. "Corroboree, performativity and the constructions of identity in Australia c1788-2008." Phd thesis, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/1885/150584.
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Kwok, Natalie. "'Owning' a marginal identity : shame and resistance in an Aboriginal community." Phd thesis, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/1885/147079.
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"Mythic reconstruction a study of Australian Aboriginal and South African literatures /." Click here for electronic access to document: http://wwwlib.murdoch.edu.au/adt/browse/view/adt-MU20070928.143608, 2006. http://wwwlib.murdoch.edu.au/adt/browse/view/adt-MU20070928.143608.
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Davis, Edward R. "Ethnicity and diversity : politics and the Aboriginal community / Edward R. Davis." Thesis, 1991. http://hdl.handle.net/2440/19654.
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Kowal, Emma Esther. "The proximate advocate: improving indigenous health on the postcolonial frontier." 2006. http://repository.unimelb.edu.au/10187/1625.
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This thesis presents an ethnography of white researchers who work at the Darwin Institute of Indigenous Health Research. This group of ‘proximate advocates’ is made up of predominantly middle-class, educated and antiracist white health professionals. Their decision to move from more populated areas to the north of Australia, where Indigenous disadvantage is most pronounced, is motivated by the hope of enacting postcolonial justice so long denied to the nation’s first peoples.This ethnography thus contributes to the anthropology of postcolonial forms, and specifically benevolent forms. The Darwin Institute of Indigenous Health Research is an example of a postcolonial space where there is an attempt to invert colonial power relations: that is, to acknowledge the effects of colonisation on Indigenous people and remedy them.
The thesis begins with an account of suburban life in contemporary Darwin focused on the figure of the ‘longgrasser’ who threatens to create disorder at my local shops. This is an example of the postcolonial frontier, the place where antiracist white people encounter radically-different Indigenous people. Part 1 develops a conceptual model for understanding the process of mutual recognition that creates the subjectivities of Indigenous people and of white antiracists.
Drawing on critiques of liberalism and postcolonial theory, in Part 2 I describe the knowledge system dominant in Indigenous health discourse, postcolonial logic. It is postcolonial logic that prescribes how white antiracists should assist Indigenous people by furthering Indigenous self-determination. I argue that postcolonial logic can be understood as the junction of remedialism (a form of liberalism) and orientalism. The melding of these two concepts produces remediable difference: a difference that can be brought into the norm.
In Part 3 I describe how white researchers at the Institute experience radical difference, or at least its possibility. These experiences challenge the concept of remediable difference. If Indigenous people are not remediably different, but radically different, the process of mutual recognition breaks down, and the viability of a white antiracist subjectivity is called into question. The ensuing breakdown of postcolonial logic threatens to expose white antiracists as no different from their assimilationist predecessors.
Part 4 explores the underlying dilemmas of the postcolony that are revealed when postcolonial logic unravels. The dilemma of historical continuity emerges when the discursive techniques that enact historical discontinuity between postcolonisers and their predecessors break down. The dilemma of social improvement is the possibility that the practices of the self-determination era not only resemble assimilation, but are assimilation. It is the possibility that any attempts to extend the benefits of modernity enjoyed by non-Indigenous Australia to Indigenous people will erode their cultural distinctiveness. The postcolonial condition is the experience of living with these aporias.
In the conclusion, I consider the implications of my argument for the current Australian political context, for the project of liberal multiculturalism, and for the broader problem of power and difference. I look to friendship as a deceptively simple, perhaps implausible, and yet powerful trope that can relieve the postcolonial condition and offer hope for peaceful coexistence in the postcolony.
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Slocum, Catherine. "Beyond the Aesthetic: A Study of Indigeneity and Narrative in Contemporary Australian Art." Phd thesis, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/1885/136433.
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Over the past decade, some of the most celebrated art to emerge from Australia has been the work of a group of Indigenous artists whose practice has been instrumental in relocating Indigenous experience and establishing an Indigenous sense of place within the complex social, political and cultural landscape of contemporary Australia. Their work is rooted in the urban Indigenous art movement that swept across the southeast of Australia in the mid-1980s. Like many artists once on the periphery of mainstream artistic narratives, however, these artists have benefited from globalisation, and they now find their work in the evolving discussions of contemporary art worldwide. No other group of artists has offered a more thorough or far-reaching artistic investigation of the history and lived experience of Indigenous Australians since colonisation, yet their work continues to be overlooked as a core area of academic inquiry. This thesis seeks to both illuminate its cultural significance and to state the case for continued art historical research on work tied to the narrative of Australia’s shared history. It does so through an in-depth reading of artworks produced by Vernon Ah Kee, Tony Albert, Brook Andrew, Daniel Boyd, Dianne Jones, Christopher Pease and Christian Thompson since 2000. At the forefront of these pieces are narratives underlining the subjugation of Australia’s Indigenous history, the intergenerational impact of colonisation and its legacy and the continued misrepresentations by others of Indigenous people and culture.
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Lyssa, Alison. "Performing Australia's black and white history: acts of danger in four Australian plays of the early 21 century." 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/1959.14/714.
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Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters in English in the Division of Humanities, Dept. of English, 2006.Thesis (MA)--Macquarie University (Division of Humanities, Department of English), 2006.
Bibliography: p. 199-210.
Introduction -- Defiance and servility in Andrew Bovell's Holy day -- Writing a reconciled nation: Katherine Thomson's Wonderlands -- Transformation of trauma: Tammy Anderson's I don't wanna play house -- The rage inside the pain: Richard J. Frankland's Conversations with the dead -- Conclusion: towards an understanding of witness to the trauma of invasion.
In an Australia shaped by neo-conservative government and by searing contention, national and global, over what the past is, how it should be allowed to affect the present and who are authentic bearers of witness, this thesis compares testimony to Australia's black/white relations in two plays by white writers, Andrew Bovell's 'Holy day' (2001) and Katherne Thomson's 'Wonderlands' (2003), and two black writers, Tammy Anderson's 'I don't wanna play house' (2001) and Richard J. Frankland's 'Conversations witht the dead' (2002).
Mode of access: World Wide Web.
210 p. ill. 30 cm
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Saunders, Jane E. "Between surfaces: a psychodynamic approach to cultural identity, cultural difference and reconciliation in Australia." Thesis, 2007. https://vuir.vu.edu.au/1452/.
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The impetus for this enquiry came from two experiences with an Aboriginal Other, which prompted the initial research questions: “Why does the existence of an Aboriginal Other threaten a white sense of belonging?” and; “What are the mechanisms and purposes of aggression towards, or exclusion of, that which represents otherness in the Australian context?” In the introductory chapters, the author’s experiences at Lake Mungo and Legend Rock are presented as case studies to illustrate Wittgenstein’s (1953/1968) concept of the ways that subject positions are constructed through language games and hegemonic discourses. Psychodynamic theories of identity formation have been applied to the analysis of these cases to argue that the unconscious construction of Australia as a good, white and Christian nation has acted to overwrite Aboriginal perspectives and to position Aboriginal people at the margins of society. In Chapter One the case of Lake Mungo was presented to illustrate the ways that language games function as cultural frames, through which all experience is filtered. As well, Buhler’s (1934/1990) conception of the deictic and symbolic fields, and the role of the proper noun in allowing or disallowing individuals to occupy a position in the symbolic order as subjective agents was discussed. Here, a relationship between cultural framing and the construction of hegemonic discourses which act to position all that is Other outside positions of enunciation was posited. This was followed by a brief exploration of the concept that the lives of Aboriginal people are organized according to an ontological position that differs in fundamental ways from the world view of the white mainstream. Specifically, it was argued that the social realities of Aboriginal people are embedded within their relation to land and the kinship obligations associated with belonging to a particular community in a particular place. A series of hypothetical indices of difference, based on Margaret Bain’s (1992) research into a semi-remote Aboriginal community at Finke, in Central Australia, was presented. The centrality of whiteness as an organizing principle in Australia was illustrated by Barton’s (1901) “A White Australia” speech, made at the time of Federation. In the ensuing investigation of the way that the dominant culture has constructed an ideal image of the typical Australian, it was suggested that white Australians identify with a mythical Good Australia though white discourses of enlightened nation building and Empire, in which Aboriginal culture has been “mapped and managed” into a museum context and Aboriginal people have been rendered as “metonymically frozen into an extinct past” (Hemming, 2003, pp. 1-3). In Chapter Two, a case study approach, based on Freud’s model of analysis as an archaeology of the present, was used to explore the mechanisms behind the occlusion of Aboriginality as a presence in the case of Legend Rock. The Freudian (1919) concept of the uncanny was critical to the investigation of the particular anxieties around belonging that are evoked for white Australians when confronted with the unfamiliar Aboriginal presence in familiar spaces. In this section of the thesis, Gelder and Jacob’s (1999) characterization of the overturning of the legal fiction of terra nullius after Mabo as the return of the repressed was discussed. In Chapter Three, the rationale for using a case study approach to address the guiding hypothesis and the propositions to be investigated in the current study are outlined. Chapter Four introduces Lacan’s (1949/2002) conceptualization of the mirror stage, during which identifications are formed and the ego, or “I” is first recognized, as well as Klein’s (1937/1964) theory of primitive defence mechanisms. The ideas of these clinicians were used to explore the function of the Other in both normal development and in pathological states. This literature was then applied to an investigation of the process of othering as it has manifested in the Australian context in more general terms. Rutherford’s (2000) thesis: that an Australian ego-ideal has been based on the identification with a mythical being-without-lack, provided a starting point for analysis of the ways that white Australia has constructed a veil around cultural difference in order to defend against acknowledging the fact that Aboriginal peoples have been profoundly damaged by the practices and processes of colonization, and that these practices and processes continue to damage current generations of Aboriginal people. In Chapter Five, it was argued that, after Mabo, white Australians have had no choice but to adopt one of two defensive positions with respect to Aboriginal Australia. Following Money-Kyrle’s (1951) reading of Klein, these positions were nominated as being characterized by either persecutory or depressive guilt. The rejection of the Aboriginal story of Legend Rock was posited as representing the persecutory position, which was discussed in terms of the phenomenon of the rise of Pauline Hanson and One Nation. It was argued that the denial of Aboriginal rights, and attacks on Aboriginal people as the recipients of special treatment, could be explained as representing the manic defence of a large minority of the white mainstream in response to perceived threats to identifications with the Good Australia evoked by the recognition of Native Title. As Klein has explained, the manic defence is driven by anxiety and functions through the primitive psychological process of splitting, whereby internalized good (ego syntonic) objects are retained and internalized bad (ego dystonic) objects are projected onto the scapegoated Other. In the case of One Nation, Aboriginal people were represented as “greedy” people who wanted to take away “our backyards”. By contrast, it was argued that many white Australians had adopted the more difficult depressive position, which was best exemplified by Paul Keating’s (1993) Redfern Park Speech. The processes of splitting and projection that characterize the persecutory position enable us to repress the knowledge that we have inflicted harm, and thereby escape feelings of guilt. Depressive guilt, on the other hand, is associated with the painful awareness that harm has been done and a desire to make reparation to the damaged psychic object. This desire was manifest in the emergence of grass roots movements, such as Australians for Reconciliation, comprised mainly of white Australians, who organized their own responses to the stance taken by Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party. Australians who wished to amend past wrongs were frustrated by the inertia of the Wik debate, the failed referendum for a republic, the Treaty debate, and the dismantling of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra. Ordinary citizens walked over bridges and contributed to the Sea of Hands in their tens of thousands to show their solidarity with Aboriginal people. The “Sorry” books were in answer to the Howard administration’s steadfast refusal to make an apology and offer compensation to the Stolen Generations, as had been recommended by Wilson and Dodson’s (1997) Bringing them Home Report. Chapter Six outlined the epistemological and methodological framework within which the research was conducted. In this section, the ethics of conducting research with indigenous communities has been presented, and the reasons for adopting a critical approach to psychological research are explained. The primary data from the interviews was presented in Chapters Seven, Eight and Nine. Data was organized into sections according to the main themes that were raised by the indigenous participants, accompanied by relevant commentary from the non-indigenous contributors. The analysis of the emergent themes has been presented alongside the data within each section. In Chapter Seven, the guiding hypothesis that Bain’s (1992) indices of difference would be salient for a cohort of Aboriginal people living in urban and regional environments was partially supported. The Aboriginal participants’ subjective experience of their Aboriginal identity was explored In Chapter Eight. In Chapter Nine, Lacan’s concept that the unconscious is structured like a language, together with his emphasis on the role of metaphor in creating the illusion of fixed meanings, was used to investigate how Aboriginal narratives of identity have been influenced by representations of Aboriginality in both mainstream and indigenous communities. In Chapter Ten, a summary of findings, conclusions and recommendations has been presented.
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Saunders, Jane E. "Between surfaces a psychodynamic approach to cultural identity, cultural difference and reconciliation in Australia /." 2006. http://wallaby.vu.edu.au/adt-VVUT/public/adt-VVUT20071129.092250/index.html.
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