微信客服：xiaoxionga100
微信客服：ITCS521
ECOS2005-无代写
时间：2024-03-15
ECOS2005
History
“From managing the estate to
being managed by the state”
(Langton, 2008)
Housekeeping
• Tutorial after lecture:
• Students should work in small groups (2-3)
• Students can do this anytime before end of next week.
• I’ll go up to CCWM after the lecture for anyone who wants to go up at that
time.
• Assignment 1 is based on today’s lecture.
• After British colonisation of Australia, government policies to deal with Indigenous people can be
broadly categorised into the following phases:
• 1.Protection and segregation; 2.Assimilation; 3.Integration; 4.Self determination and
reconciliation; 5.Neo-paternalism with emphasis on ‘mainstreaming'.
• Select one of these 5 phases and for your chosen phase write a short essay that addresses the
following:
• 1. Describe the underlying rationale and aim of the policy. What measures were taken to achieve
the aim of the policy? Students may choose to focus their answer on a national scale or just a
particular state (e.g. N.S.W or Queensland).
• 2. Describe the effects of the policy on Indigenous people. Include in your answer immediate
effects on the Indigenous population as well as legacy effects that may be felt today. Students
should use available statistics to highlight points in their argument.
• Include at least 5 references in your work.
• Word limit: 800 words. Extra writing that exceeds this limit will not be read.
• The use of AI is not permitted in this unit.
This week’s tut: Chau Chak Wing Museum visit
Tutorial
1. Download the Actionbound app.
2. Scan the QR code on the start guide.
a. Note: You must scan using the
ActionBound app. Scanning with
your camera will not work.
3. Complete the activities in the galleries.
a. Note: Photo or video activities must
be done using the in-app camera.
Photo and video cannot be uploaded
from your device’s library.
History pre-colonial
• Indigenous people have been present in Australia for at least 65,000 years
• Different pre-historians have speculated about the likely time to have
been taken to occupy the Australian continent:
• estimates suggest the first arrival around 55,000 BP (before present) some as far
back as 130,000 BP
• This process of human movement out of the Eurasian continent could
have been a major human migration (with associated push and pull
factors) (Butlin 1998).
History pre-colonial
South Australia – Warratyi rock engravings
• 63,000 BCE. 10,000 artefacts including 1,500
stone tools, a grinding stone and ground ochres
recently discovered in the Madjedbebe rock
shelter (previously known as Malakunanja) in
Mirrarr Country, in Northern Arnhem Land.
• Impossible to know exactly what Aboriginal
Australia was like pre-1788, and generalisations
about how life was obscure diversity across the
continent. Rose (1996) suggests a multilayered
set of identifications among families in kin-based
societies, perhaps organised into clans.
• No single Aboriginal nation but a large number
of groups occupying discrete areas (Moschion, 2023)
• Incredible diversity of language and culture.
• Archaeological evidence suggests that
Indigenous people developed an adequate
standard of living in these times. This is
evidenced by their lengthy and successful
adaptation to the highly variable and harsh
Australian landscape (Altman, 2000).
History pre-colonial
• Butlin (1933) suggests an Indigenous economy that was a functioning
ecosystem of kinship governed by law upholding relational ecological
management.
• Peterson (1993) in Moschion (2023) describes a non-market economy with
demand sharing (surplus must be shared amongst all beings).
• Reciprocity and sharing as mainstays in organisation and ethics (Reynolds
1996). Economic activity geared towards immediate consumption. No
single person had control of production
• Long sustainability also suggests governance mechanisms developed by
Australia’s Indigenous peoples represent good practice (Wills-Johnson, 2008).
• The landscape was managed through a sophisticated system of rules, rights
and obligations based in spirituality, and associated with the Dreaming.
Some anthropologists argue that surplus time was invested in religious life
rather than in material accumulation, which contrasts with the materialist
economic attitudes of British settlers (Altman, 2000).
History pre-colonial
• This pre-colonial time is what Trosper (Ch1). seeks to describe
• ideas and ways of life of many Indigenous peoples
• colonial settlement by Europeans pushed this way of life aside
• Concept of “living well”: pursuing actions that strengthen humanity’s relational
goods (trust, cooperation etc) created by relationships with nature and with each
other.
• Inclusion of nature in relationships means that relational goods promote high
productivity of the land, ecological resilience, and the well-being for all species
(not just humans).
History pre-colonial: relationship to land
• One shared principle of Indigenous cultures is that land has agency and
deserves our respect (Einhorn et al. 2023)
• Indigenous Australians are of the landscape, and language and culture are formed
by their landscape.
• Central role of land in Indigenous identity - key feature of Indigenous
worldviews: idea that all the landscape is alive, conscious and able to react
to human activity.
• Similar depictions can be made of Indigenous life and culture pre-
colonization in other parts of the world.
• In many countries, early settlers discovered the landscape was quite
productive and well tended.
Over the past decade, in Australia, growing
appreciation of sophistication of Indigenous society
• Use of fire to manage their environment: intervention involved use of fire
and proper harvesting techniques.
• Aboriginals had sophisticated bushcraft and understanding of their
environment.
• Because of this management, on arrival Colonists referred to the landscape
as “park-like” (Einhorn, 2023; Gammage, 2012),
• Explorer Leichhardt noted ”the natives seemed to have burned the grass
systematically along every water hole in order to have them surrounded
with young grass as soon as the rain sets ..it’s connected with the
systematic management of their runs to attract game ..”
• Brewarrina fish traps
Fresh water fishing traps of Gunditjmara people used to
manage eels in Lake & Brewarrina fish traps on Darling River
Tindale’s Arc
Source:https://survivalinternational.org/articles/3593-the-best-conservationists-made-our-environment-and-can-save-
it?hootPostID=5faeffa23dcfd86b6380dd2a6e34395a
Arrival of First Fleet 1788 (Australian Law Reform Commission)
• Dampier 1688 thought Aborigines must live off sea – belief/claim that Aboriginals
inhabited only on coastal areas (Reynolds, 1996).
• On arrival British settlers knew nothing about aboriginal society.
• 1788 Australia was described as “practically uninhabited”. Belief that people only
inhabited coastal regions. Europeans could not understand social or political
organisation that existed.
• Governor Phillip was instructed on first settlement to maintain peaceful and
friendly relations with native inhabitants.
• Indigenous people considered British subjects (protected by law).
Changing ideas (Trosper, 2022; Strackosh, 2015)
• Colonial times coincide with the rise of liberalism- European societies
were developing ideas of democracy and individual rights.
• Paradoxically, this rise of liberalism was companied by hierarchical
social outcomes.
• Evident in the exclusion of Indigenous peoples from the category of
“capable” individuals, and hence from citizenship and its associated
rights.
• Claim of liberalism to provide equal rights to all capable individuals
was made.
Early times after European arrival (Reynolds 2006)
• Growing awareness and reactions to each other – views slowly change
amongst some settlers.pk’
• During 19th century settlers gradually saw how extensive and varied
were aboriginal food sources that almost everything was edible
exploited at some time during a typical year.
• Some Europeans understood Aboriginals had sophisticated bushcraft
and understanding of their environment.
• Some Europeans also came to appreciate that as well as exploiting their
knowledge of the country the Aboriginals manage the environment:
• Colonial Governor George Grey “the Aborigine knows exactly what the land
produces, the proper time at which these several articles are in season and
the readiest means of procuring them”.
• Growing awareness of the use of fire. Explorer Leichhardt noted ”the
natives seemed to have burned the grass systematically along every
water hole in order to have them surrounded with young grass as soon
as the rain sets ..it’s connected with the systematic management of
their runs to attract game ..”
Joesph Lycett Aborigines using Fire to Hunt Kangaroos c1820 – National
Library of Australia
Early times after European arrival (Reynolds,1996)
• Writing of some British settlers provided a picture of Indigenous
Australian society:
• one that had exercised sovereignty and had a system of laws and customs that were
observed
• tribal groupings exercised authority independent of any outside power
• 1910 - Wheeler (an ethnographer) observed the existence of well understood customs and laws
amongst Indigenous Australians through which relations amongst people themselves and their physical
environment are controlled.
• Existence of customary law has since been well established:
• e.g. 1971 in a Supreme Court case in the Northern Territory Justice Blackburn concluded Yirrkala had a
system of law.
Early times after European arrival (Reynolds 2006)
• Aboriginal response to white settlers:
• were not keen to be admitted to an unwelcoming white society
• noted that aboriginal men had “dignified bearing with an air of freedom altogether
different from low class Europeans”.
• some settlers employed Aboriginals often jobs of servitude
• however, value of economic incentives undermined by the egalitarianism and reciprocity of
aboriginal society (NB importance for policy)- missionary observed that Aboriginals didn’t
understand individualism.
• experience showed most Aboriginals wouldn’t leave their lands purely from choice except
where they could do so on terms of equality
• Aboriginals were not content with menial jobs given by settlers (where Europeans might
accept jobs of servitude) – it was opposite to the instincts of Aboriginals who did not have
such hierarchies in their society
• Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders were experts in their physical environment.
European and Asian skippers depended on their judgement. The expertise of Aboriginal
stockmen important to the management of cattle.
Early times after European arrival (Reynolds 2006)
• Whilst some settlers had a greater awareness of Indigenous people, most
were ignorant of difference
• A demographic “picture” developed and became the justification for
settlement: Aboriginals were considered too primitive to be actual owners
or sovereigns (Reynolds, 1996). Colony acquired by terra nullius.
• Land was critical factor:
• Indigenous people needed land for their productive activities
• settlers needed land for farming.
• Any land tenure system that was not private property was not seen as
legitimate.
• Frontier wars and violent reprisals- violent conflict involving settlers, police
and Indigenous people arose from the rapid dispossession of land.
Frontier wars (https://deadlystory.com/page/culture/history/Frontier_wars)
• Resistance and massacres began from 1788.
• 2000 – 5000 colonists died and the death toll is for
Aboriginal people is unknown.
• In Queensland estimates suggest 60,000 Aboriginal
people died
• As a result of colonial violence and imported
illnesses ( flu, measles, tuberculosis and smallpox)
some estimates suggest around 90% of the
Aboriginal population prior to invasion was killed
during these wars.
• Research has been conducted at University of
Newcastle - an interactive map that allows you to
see and read about the massacres.
• Link to map:
https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/colonialmassacres/
map.php
Colonialism and land (Trosper, 2022)
• Indigenous territorial systems preclude using terms like private property as land is held not by individuals
but by relational subjects that include nonhumans. Indigenous people have a special relationship to the
landscape.
• Holders of land are responsible for maintaining the health of the relationships with land .
• When English settlers were moving to the USA (1600s), the feudal land tenure system in England was being
turned into a private property system
• As settlers took land from Indigenous peoples, they created a system of private property among
themselves
• John Locke, (philosopher and early theorists of the nature of property) provided a theory of property that
could be applied where settlers were occupying the land held by other people. He suggested a land
without people who had ownership, what was later called terra nullius in Australia.
• The settlers thought they could treat land as unowned because it hadn’t been transformed by farming
obtaining their right to the land by farming it (was therefore not “property’ that was “owned’)
Consequences of Colonial settlement(Australian Law Reform Commission)
• Colonial takeover led to a sustained period of fighting for land kin and survival.
The very well managed ecosystem was impacted by colonialists seeking food as
rations declined (Langton 2008).
• Risk of starvation from dispossession led to forced and colonised labour primarily
in grazing marine sectors or domestic servants work mainly for rations.
• Implications of dispossession for subsequent native title land claims.
• Devastation caused by introduced diseases and alcohol.
• Aboriginal population reduced during the first hundred years of settlement from
an estimated 300 000 to 60 000.
• Traditional ways of life destroyed or suppressed.
• Sequence of policies that compounded the trauma associated with
1788.
Broad categorization/framwork of government
policies for Indigenous people. (Aust Govt Law Reform Commission)
• Protection and segregation
• Assimilation
• Integration
• Self determination and reconciliation
• Self determination replaced by neo-paternalism with emphasis on ‘mutual
obligation’, ‘shared responsibility’, ‘mainstreaming’ and ‘normalisation’
Return of assimilation?
• Closing the Gap.
• Uluru Statement from the Heart- Commonwealth Implementation Plan
2021.
• Failed Voice referendum for constitutional recognition.
‘Protection” and segregation (Aust Govt Law Reform Commission)
• Combined reduction in Aboriginal population and awareness of their mistreatment
• 1837 House of Commons Select Committee recommended
• missionaries for Aboriginal people
• protectors for their defense
• special codes of law to protect them.
• Early approach: protectors appointed, in NSW, SA and WA to protect Aboriginals from abuses and to provide
the remnant populations around towns with some rations, blankets and medicine.
• Late 1800s more extensive policies of ‘protection’ formulated with the aim:
• isolating and segregating full-blood Aboriginals on reserves and restricting contact (and interbreeding) between them and outsiders,
• assimilate half-castes, and their children.
• limit civil rights: right to marry was limited, as were other civil rights.
• full-blood Aboriginals there was some tolerance of continuing traditional way of life, but sometimes overtly hostile to traditional
ways.
• Local protectors/guardians often police on the reserves present to control alcohol and to prevent
liquor, Aboriginals associating with whites and whites from entering the reserves.
Missions, reserves & stations (AIATSIS, 2022)
• Spaces set aside by governments specifically for Aboriginal people to live on.
• Missions created by church groups to house Aboriginal people, convert them to
Christianity and prepare them for menial jobs. Most of the missions were
developed on land granted by the government for this purpose.
• Reserves were usually parcels of land set aside for Aboriginal people to live on
and were not managed by the government or its officials. People living on
unmanaged reserves might receive rations and blankets from the state or
territory government, but often remained responsible for their own housing.
• Stations or ‘managed reserves’ were generally managed by government officials.
Schooling (preparation for the workforce), rations and housing were provided,
and station managers tightly controlled who could, and could not, live there. The
managers usually had total control over Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lives
including legal guardianship of their children.
Protection- series of legislated acts (Aust Govt Law Reform Commission)
• Legislated protection policy Victoria (1867), WA (1886), QLD (1897), NSW(1909), SA and
NT in 1910-11
• Under legislation:
• Aboriginals moved onto church missions and Government reserves
• alcohol prohibited
• restricted the movement of Aborigines
• regulated employment
• systematic efforts through the establishment of ‘boarding houses’ to take ‘part-Aboriginal’
children away from their parents and to educate them in European ways.
• Early-mid 1900
• protection policy reinforced- Protectors replaced by Protector Boards or Welfare Boards
• legislative restrictions and controls made more comprehensive: policy dictated where Aboriginal
people could live, work, freedom of movement, personal finances and child rearing practices
• Policy influence continued into the period of assimilation. Examples:
• provisions of the Welfare Ordinance 1953 (NT) -paternalistic arrangements for ‘wardship’ of
incompetent (Aboriginal) persons.
• NSW Aborigines Welfare Board controlled Aboriginal lives to 1960s
Underlying aim of legislation: example NSW
Aborigines Protection Act (Barani. 2023)
• Under this act, Aboriginal people of ‘mixed blood’ issued with ‘certificates of
exemption’, from regulations but they had to give up family contact.
• Certificates of exemption came at a price as individuals
• forced to relinquish family connections
• get written permission from the mission return for funerals. The aim was to boost
assimilation into mainstream society.
• Underlying belief was ‘protection’ of Aboriginal people would lead to their
‘advancement’ to the point where they would eventually fit into the white
community.
• Protection and segregation policies enforced to 1940s then replaced with policies
of assimilation and integration.
• Assimilation policy (1950s): the movement of Aboriginal people to Aboriginal
Stations where they could be prepared for absorption into the mainstream
society.
Protection and children
• Taking children from families was official government policy in Australia until 1969.
• 1814: The first ‘native institution’ at Parramatta in 1814 was set up to ‘civilise’ Aboriginal children
• On missions and reserves, protectors made guardians of children.
• Education of children was considered crucial
• Children separated from their parents and institutionalised.
• In institutions children could be indoctrinated by steps to develop the habit of labour.
• 1924 Kinchela Boys Home at Kempsey.
• Children were abused (physical, psychological, emotional, and sexual abuse)
• Little education was delivered and labour was exploited.
• Children known as ‘the Stolen Generations’ still search for their families today.
• In NSW: 15,000 and 20,000 alone.
• The effects on Aboriginal family life were devastating. Policies destroyed Aboriginal families and society.
Created intergenerational trauma.
• Unknown exactly how many children were taken over 1909 and 1969 and bad record keeping makes it
impossible to trace family connections in many cases.
• Almost every Aboriginal family has been affected in some way by this policy.
The Bringing them Home Report (RacismNoWay, n.d)
•Government inquiry (1995) was held and The Bringing Them Home Report was produced 1997. Recommended government apology
•It found that between 1/3 and 1/10 Indigenous children were removed – lack of precision due to missing and poor state of records.
•Long term negative consequences for those removed:
•more likely to come to the attention of the police as they grow into adolescence
•more likely to suffer low self-esteem, depression and mental illness
•had been almost always taught to reject their Aboriginality and Aboriginal culture
•unable to retain links with their land
•cannot take a role in the cultural and spiritual life of their former communities
•unlikely to be able to establish their right to native title.
Protection and stolen wages
• Under the Protection Acts there was provisioning for control of work and wages.
• Also establishment of trust funds for the benefit of Aboriginals.
• This continued after the period of protection, over most of the 20th century.
• Control and management of Commonwealth benefits in respect of Indigenous persons:
• Payments withheld include child endowment, pensions and even soldiers’ pay.
• Wages often went unpaid, or were paid at discriminatory levels.
• Indigenous stolen wages arose from the control of work and wages in
combination with misuse of trust funds.
• Massive loss of intergenerational wealth
• Associated loss of education about financial management.
Protection, segregation and assimilation
• Protection and segregation continued (1890s to the 1950s)
• About 1920s the policy became one of enforced assimilation for 'part- Aboriginals' as the
Aborigines Protection Board tried to reduce the number of people on the reserves.
• In the 1930s people were shifted from one reserve to another, so that some reserves
could be closed and the land leased to white farmers, (e.g. Tibooburra, Angledool and
Carowa Tank). Soldier settlement schemes.
• NSW Aborigines Protection Board replaced by Aboriginal Welfare Board 1940, but
continued, under a policy of assimilation with the aim:
• to close reserves and encourage people to move to town.
• In 1967 a Joint Committee of the two houses of State Parliament continued policies and
recommended all Aboriginal reserves should disappear.
• Such decisions totally demoralised the people still living on the reserves, who had come
to regard them as homelands.
Response of Aboriginal people
?)
• Aboriginal associations formed 1920-1940:
• Australian Aborigines Progress Association; Australian Aborigines League; Aborigines Progressive Association
• Groups lobbied for the abolition of the Aborigines Protection Board to be replaced by
a body with an all-Aboriginal membership and national citizenship for Aboriginals and
full equality with other citizens; representative in the Commonwealth Parliament.
• Prominent members were William Cooper (Cummeragunja), Bill Ferguson (Dubbo),
Margaret Tucker and Douglas Nicholls (Melbourne), Jack and Selina Patten and Tom
Foster (La Perouse), Pearl Gibbs (Brewarrina), Jack Kinchela (Coonabarabran) and
Helen Grosvenor (Redfern).
• 1937 conference in Sydney for 26 January 1938- called' A Day of Mourning and
Protest’, claim for citizen rights.
Response of Aboriginal people
• 1938 Aboriginal deputation proposed national policy for Aboriginals:
• Commonwealth control of all Aboriginal matters
• separate Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs (administration advised by at least half Aboriginals) nominated by the
Aborigines Progressive Association
• full citizen status for all Aboriginals and civil equality with white Australians
• equality in education, labour laws, workers compensation, pensions, land ownership and wages.
• 1939 Cummeragunja strike; they left the reserve and camped on the other side of
the Murray River in Victoria. Protest meetings were held in the Domain in Sydney.
• The movement for citizen rights continued into the 1960s.
• 'Freedom Rides' of 1965 students and Aboriginals protested against
discrimination in New South Wales towns.
• 1966 Gurindji strike - Wave Hill walk off
• Aboriginal action continued.
Assimilation 1950s
• 1937 first Commonwealth/State conference on 'native welfare' adopts assimilation as national policy:
"The destiny of the natives of aboriginal origin, but not of the full blood, lies in ultimate absorption … with a view to
their taking their place in the white community on an equal footing with the whites.“
• In 1951, at the third Commonwealth/State Conference on 'native welfare', assimilation is affirmed as the aim of
'native welfare' measures.
• Policy expectation all Aboriginals and part-Aboriginals to adopt the same manner of living as other Australians
• In NSW, Aborigines Welfare Board of NSW implemented the assimilation policy: the movement of Aboriginal
people to Aboriginal Stations where they could be prepared for absorption into the mainstream community.
• Individual families were persuaded to share the life in the towns with whites.
• Earlier government policies had relocated Aboriginal people from their homelands to reserves (stations or
missions).
• Aim of assimilation to break up missions & reserves, encourage people to give up seasonal and casual work,
and find regular work for wages (unequal wages ).
• Stations were places people put to work for little/no/unequal pay - considered as ‘stepping-stones to
civilisation’.
To achieve result of assimilation governments:
• Increased expenditure on health, housing, education and training programs.
• 1960s effort to review and repeal restrictive and discriminatory legislation,
especially by the Commonwealth Government, and the mechanisms of
‘protection’ were phased out.
• Access to social security benefits for Aboriginals came in 1960
• Aborigines became entitled to vote at federal elections in 1962
• State legislation prohibiting access to alcohol was repealed and in most areas
Aboriginals became entitled to full award wages.
• In 1967 the Constitution was amended by referendum so that Aboriginals would
in future be counted in the Census, and to authorise the Commonwealth
Parliament to pass laws specifically for the benefit of Aboriginal people.
• An Office of Aboriginal Affairs was established by the Commonwealth Government
to instigate and oversee programs of assistance for Aborigines
Assimilation 1960s (NSW)
• Basic human rights still denied under assimilation policy:
• children removed
• no freedom of movement,
• no access to education,
• no award wages,
• no marrying without permission,
• Aboriginals could not eat in restaurants, enter hotels or public pools or vote.
• The Aborigines Act of 1969 abolished the NSW Aborigines Welfare Board and
Aboriginal children then became wards of the state.
• NSW Welfare Board’s functions transferred to Department of Child Welfare and
Social Welfare. This later became the Department of Youth and Community
Services, which created the NSW Directorate of Aboriginal Welfare.
• 1975, the Commonwealth Government took over many of the functions of the
Directorate of Aboriginal Welfare, which then became the Aboriginal Services
Branch. The department’s name was changed in 1988 to Family and Community
Services and in 1995 to Community Services.
Outstation (or homelands) movement
• Arose 1970s and 1980s
• Aboriginal people who relocated themselves from the towns and
settlements where they had been settled by the government’s
assimilation policy.
• Aboriginal people created remote settlements
• Move towards reclaiming autonomy and self-sufficiency
• Move toward self-determination
• Residents are living there by choice – connections to land
Integration
• The paternalism, and arrogance of assimilation came under increasing scrutiny
• Questioning of assumption that Aboriginals would ultimately become like white Australians
• Growing awareness of Aboriginal problems by non-Aboriginal Australians.
• All this resulted in abandoning of assimilation.
• ‘Integration’ was term used to denote a policy that recognised the value of Aboriginal culture and the right of
Aboriginals to retain their customs, languages and distinctive communities
• Commonwealth Government aimed to avoid one-word descriptions of complex policies, and to focus on
developing new approaches to problems rather than on long-term aims.
• Emphasis on:
• increased funding and improved programs in health, education and employment
• promoting equality was accompanied by real social and economic advances
• increase funding for Aboriginal community development projects
• first steps were taken towards the granting of land rights.
• 1972 Commonwealth Department of Aboriginal Affairs was established
• 1973 the Woodward Commission was appointed to investigate land rights
• Aboriginal Land Rights (NT) Act 1976 (Cth).
Self determination - from state to indigenous
trusteeship (Smith 2006 )
• 1970 to 1980 Federal government shifted focus to self-determination which resulted in
the reignition of the indigenous economy.
• Government focus on economic independence and market-based solutions.
• 1990s to 2008: self-determination and reconciliation era
• Aboriginal communities to determine the pace and nature of their future development
• Commonwealth policy based on ‘the fundamental right of Aboriginals to retain their racial identity and
traditional lifestyle or, where desired, to adopt wholly or partially a European lifestyle’
• Policy encouraged Aboriginal participation or control in local or community government, and in other
areas of concern.
• Policy included government support programs managed by Aboriginal organisations- idea to support
self governance.
• Aboriginal Development Commission included the Aboriginal Land Fund Commission and the
Aboriginal Loan Commission.
Self-determination
• Major policy mechanisms of the self determination era:
• land rights (1972, (NTLRA 1976)
• Native Title Act (NTA 1993)
• 1980 Aboriginal Development Commission was established for economic and social
development and self-management.
• to assist Aboriginal people to acquire land
• to engage in business enterprises and to obtain finance for housing and other personal needs
• ATSIC Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander Commission formed 1990 - a body to represent Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander opinion on all matters of policy
• 1990 establishment of commercial development corporation (now IBA)
• establishment of NSW indigenous Chamber of Commerce and southeast QLD indigenous
Chamber of Commerce 2006
• Open for Business parliamentary inquiry 2008
• CDEP.
Criticisms of self-determination (Strakosch,2015)
• Self-determination policies can be seen localised service delivery and
varying degrees of delegated managerial authority.
• However, as these occur still within the state structure, hierarchy still
exists.
• This delegated authority can subsequently be unilaterally and
comprehensively resumed.
• Official power of state bureaucracy over Indigenous lives is still
colonial authority
• Ideas of neoliberalism and settler colonialism: still-existing settler
colonial hierarchies rearticulated through neoliberalism.
Erosion of self-determination policy approach
Strakosch, (2015)
• Role of domestic political conditions (Sanders 2006)
• Return of paternalism
• Self-determination erodes mid-2000s -replaced by policy less focused on
rights and relationships
• New focus on:
• reforming Indigenous behaviour: intervening over perceived community behaviour
or ‘dysfunction”
• mainstreaming (driving economic integration through mainstream employment..
• Particularly notable :
• abolition of representative Indigenous institutions (e. g. ATSIC)
• focus on reforming Indigenous welfare provision in line with “responsibility” and
“post-welfare” agendas
2007 Northern Territory Emergency Response
(NTER). Strakosch, (2015)
• Pre federal election and presented as a response to the Little Children are Sacred Report.
• NTER was a $587 million package of legislation that made focused on remote Indigenous
communities in the Northern Territory.
• Suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act
• Policy package often referred to as ‘New Arrangements’.
• mainstreaming of Indigenous policy into existing social policy departments,
• attempt to coordinate these departments through a centralised ‘whole-of-
government’ approach,
• Use of rhetoric of ‘mutual obligation’ for redressing disadvantage,
• these mechanisms ‘Shared Responsibility Agreements’ (SRAs), linked to broader
Regional Partnership Agreements (RPAs) that would establish ‘organic’ representative
institutions.
NT Intervention 2007
• $587m package of legislation (restrictions on alcohol, changes to
welfare payments, education, acquisition of parcels of land,
employment & health initiatives- suite of legislation:
• NTERA 2007
• Welfare Payment Reform Bill 2007
• Families comm services etc
• Appropriation Bills
• To enact, it required suspension of Racial Discrimination Act 1975,
Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1976 Native Title Act 1993 Social Security
Act, 1991, Inc Tax Assessment Act
NTER
• NTER measures continued under Rudd government.
• 2012 Gillard (Commonwealth government) continued all key aspects
of the Intervention, extended it to 2022 – in the form of Stronger
Futures in the Northern Territory Act. Welfare quarantining, school
attendance measures, and penalties for alcohol and pornography use
were all expanded. Extended NTER, replacing the legislation with the
Stronger Futures program.
• Stronger Futures lasted to 2022.
• We will focus on the NTER in detail in later lectures.
2008 Closing the Gap
• Close the Gap Social Justice Campaign
• Commonwealth Government (Rudd) apology to Stolen Generations, pledged the government to
bridge the gap between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Australian health, education and living
conditions
• Close the Gap Statement of Intent to:
• Produce an action plan addressing inequalities in health services, to achieve
equality of life expectancy and health between Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander peoples and non-Indigenous Australians by 2030.
• CTG strategy
• Annual progress report to Parliament
• 2018-20 COAG meetings: CTG framework and strategy revisions
• COAG and Coalition of Peaks partnership
• National Indigenous Australians Agency (2019) supports Minister for
Indigenous Relations – role to lead and coordinate development and implementation of
Closing the Gap targets in partnership with Indigenous Australians.
CTG 6 targets 2008-2019
• close the gap in life expectancy by 2031
• halve the gap in child mortality by 2018
• ensure 95 percent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander 4 years-olds enrolled in
early childhood education by 2025
• halve the gap in reading, writing and numeracy by 2018
• halve the gap in year 12 attainment by 2020
• halve the gap in employment by 2018.
• close the gap in school attendance by 2018 (this target was added in 2014)
CTG targets broadened in 2020: 16 new
targets
• Families, children and youth; health; education; economic
development; housing; justice : land and water (cultural rights are
realised);
• Cross-system priorities: address racism, discrimination and social
inclusion, healing and trauma, and the promotion of culture and
language for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples
• Following each annual review by the Productivity Commission on the
metric of CTG, parliament focuses on the lack of progress on closing
the gap
National agreement: 2020 16 targets
1.Close the Gap in life expectancy within a generation, by 2031.
2.By 2031, increase the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander babies with a healthy birthweight to 91 per cent.
3.By 2025, increase the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children enrolled in Year Before Fulltime Schooling (YBFS) early childhood
education to 95 per cent.
4.By 2031, increase the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children assessed as developmentally on track in all five domains of the
Australian Early Development Census
5.(AEDC) to 55 per cent.
5.By 2031, increase the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people (age 20-24) attaining year 12 or equivalent qualification to 96 per
cent.
6.By 2031, increase the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people aged 25-34 years who have completed a tertiary qualification
(Certificate III and above) to 70 per cent.
7.By 2031, increase the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth (15–24 years) who are in employment, education or training to 67 per
cent.
8.By 2031, increase the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people aged 25–64 who are employed to 62 per cent
9.By 2031, increase the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people living in appropriately sized (not overcrowded) housing to 88 per cent.
10.By 2031, reduce the rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults held in incarceration by at least 15 per cent.
11.By 2031, reduce the rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people (10-17 years) in detention by at least 30 per cent.
12.By 2031, reduce the rate of over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in out-of-home care by 45 per cent.
13.By 2031, the rate of all forms of family violence and abuse against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and children is reduced at least by
50%, as progress towards zero.
14.Significant and sustained reduction in suicide of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people towards zero.
15.a) By 2030, a 15 per cent increase in Australia's landmass subject to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people's legal rights or interests.
b) By 2030, a 15 per cent increase in areas covered by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people's legal rights or interests in the sea.
16. By 2031, there is a sustained increase in number and strength of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages being spoken.
A 17th target was later added:
17: By 2026, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have equal levels of digital inclusion
CTG 2023 (Productivity Commission 2023)
Perspectives on CTG (Altman 2017)
• CTG policy framework tries to address Indigenous disadvantage by
eliminating disparities according to official statistics between
indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians as discrete abstracted
populations—the focus of government Indigenous affairs attention
has been on Indigenous populations as statistically defined subjects.
• Problematic:
• values statistical equality above all else;
• assumes that populations can be readily distinguished;
• assumes that there is a degree of identity stability in papulation categories (
in fact there is much dynamism, especially in the propensity for people to
identify as Indigenous in censuses/surveys).
Perspectives on CTG (Altman 2017)
• CTG approach clearly failing.
• CTG is a potentially useful tool for measuring socio–economic
sameness, but who is the statistical Indigenous subject?
• CTG is not a useful tool for measuring aspirations that many
Indigenous Australians.
• Problems of governmental path dependency.
• Reluctance by governments to recognise special rights of Indigenous
peoples in combination with rights as Australian citizens.
• CTG framework illogical and incoherent.
Criticisms of CTG
• Conceptual: elimination of disparity must be based on a logic of
sameness.
• Framing of Closing the Gap as a technical problem – reported on with
a barrage of statistics, targets, measurement discussions.
• Disparity targets are modest:
• halve the gap in child mortality by 2018,
• halve the gap in reading and numeracy by 2018,
• to halve the gap in Year 12 attainment by 2020,
• halve the gap in employment outcomes by 2018
• close the gap in life expectancy by 2031.
Indigenous perspectives/support for CTG
Murphy (n.d); Kars (2020)
• Professor Kerry Arabena (descendant of Meriam People of the Torres Strait):
• “CTG campaign risks being ineffective over the long term and undermining the good so far achieved”.
• “ I am not done with the Closing the Gap Campaign yet. I think we still have a way to go and can build capacity in families and
communities to realise the aspirations that informed the CTG10. We did the same with ATSIC. We called it an experiment after 14
years and we brushed it aside, without keeping the inherent good, particularly the regional support structures at regional council
levels. I am concerned that if we abandon Closing the Gap, we will throw everything away, without assessing what works, why it
works.”
• Professor Marcia Langton (Marcia Langton is a descendant of the Yiman and Bidjara Nations):
• “For Indigenous Australians who attain a high level of education, there is no employment
gap”.
• Closing the Gap report is confusing on Indigenous employment rates and has been misinterpreted in the media. The most significant
finding on progress in closing the gap in Indigenous employment in the 2016 report makes the point that ‘There is a strong link
between education and employment – at high levels of education there is virtually no employment gap between Indigenous and non-
Indigenous Australians’. So while the report has given the impression that no progress has been made on the target to halve the gap
in jobless rates, if we dig into the data more, we see that there has been success.
• The steep decline in the statistics for Indigenous employment is attributed to the demise of the Community Development
Employment Programs (CDEP) scheme, but this should be compensated for by the new Indigenous Affairs employment programs in
the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet which are showing success.
Indigenous perspectives/support for CTG
• Closing the Gap or re-victimising the marginalised? Indigenous perspectives on family violence (Fiolet
2019):
• “Australia’s Indigenous population is less inclined to seek help than non-Indigenous Australians. And yet, there is
very little evidence regarding the reasons for this reluctance, particularly from an Indigenous perspective. Without
this information, we risk providing culturally insensitive services and have little hope of addressing the issues.
What’s more, ill-informed organisational and service-provider attitudes can cause re-victimisation for Indigenous
survivors of family violence rather than offer support or an opportunity for healing”.
• “Years of systematic and individual racism has led to Indigenous peoples to be too ashamed to bring any more
attention to themselves. This same ongoing mistreatment, seen not only in Australia but also in other colonised
countries such as Canada and New Zealand, makes the original owners of the country feel that they are not
entitled to the same support that colonised peoples receive. Judgement, misunderstanding of needs and western
mainstream approaches are causing mistrust and fear in a population already marginalised and abused”.
Some specific policies that have met with
some success
• Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP)
• Indigenous Rangers Program
• COVID response
Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) scheme
• Started 1977. Aims: building economic base for people and increasing access
to mainstream labour markets.
• CDEP organizations provide employment, training, activity, enterprise support to Indigenous
people.
• Was a labour market and social development program for Indigenous people.
• At its peak it employed over 36,000 Indigenous people (over one-quarter of total
Indigenous employment).
• Evidence presented in Altman & Gray (2016) and Kirrily (2017) indicated CDEP
scheme had beneficial effects on economic and social outcomes for remote
living people. It was a form of employment and income support in regions
distant from mainstream labour markets to participants that have very
different aspirations and prospects.
• Scheme abolished 2009. Replaced by Community Development Program
(CDP).
Indigenous Rangers Program
• Background: Land rights in 1970-80 NT underscores importance of land
management and the Indigenous connection to environment.
• Native Title - legal recognition of Indigenous peoples’ relationships with country.
• 1995 Northern Land Council creates Caring for Country unit
• 1997 Indigenous Protected Area (IPA) Program established
• 2007 Working on Country program of the federal government, with associated
funding of Indigenous ranger programs nationally.
• Policy that draws on the strengths of Indigenous people :‘Caring for country’ is
based in the laws, customs and ways of life that Indigenous people have inherited
from their ancestors and ancestral beings.
Indigenous Rangers Program
• Policy that provides:
• benefits for the social-political, cultural, economic, and physical and
emotional wellbeing of Indigenous people.
• benefits are shared with others who live together with Indigenous people,
and facilitate a better community and environment for all Australians.
• Growing body of research that establishes benefits ( we will discuss in detail later
in the semester).
• Growth in government programs supporting Indigenous land and sea
management reflects the synergy between caring for country and environmental
issues, and the productivity of Indigenous–environment collaboration.
Policy response to Covid (Stanley et al (2021))
• Indigenous high-risk status- poor relative health profiles (more “at risk”), high mobility of people; kinship needs)
• Extraordinary success of Indigenous populations in controlling Covid.
• Indigenous outcomes were better than non-Indigenous.
• Policy driven by Indigenous health leaders:
• “Indigenous Australia has been spared the impact (of COVID) seen elsewhere because behind every major decision,
strategy, approach and public health deployment we have seen culturally-centred leadership from Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander people. The lessons extracted from COVID-19 will no doubt be numerous and cover a range of
knowledge spheres and disciplines. But the one lesson that I hope non-Indigenous Australia finally learns is that
Indigenous leadership – when left to genuinely flourish without the ever-present interference and paternalism – is
phenomenally powerful, deeply impactful and highly successful, highlighting the ways of knowing, doing and being
that exist in Indigenous Australia.”
References
• AHRC (n.d) Track the History Timeline: The Stolen Generation. Available: https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/education/track-history-timeline-stolen-generations
• AIATSIS (2022). Missions, Reserves, Stations. Available: https://aiatsis.gov.au/explore/missions-stations-and-reserves
• Altman, J. (2017) A submission to the Productivity Commission on the Indigenous Evaluation Strategy. Available: https://www.pc.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/244543/sub023-indigenous-
evaluation.pdf
• Altman, J. & Gray, M. (2016) The Economic and Social Impacts of the CDEP Scheme in Remote Australia. Australian Journal of Social Issues. 40 (3), 399-410.
• Armitage, A. (1995) Comparing the Policy of Aboriginal Assimilation: Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. UBC Press
• Aust Govt. Law Reform Comission (n.d) https://www.alrc.gov.au/publication/recognition-of-aboriginal-customary-laws-alrc-report-31/3-aboriginal-societies-the-experience-of-contact/changing-
policies-towards-aboriginal-people/
• Barani (2023) Government Policy in Relation to Aboriginal people. City of Sydney Council. https://www.sydneybarani.com.au/sites/government-policy-in-relation-to-aboriginal-people/
• Butlin, N.G.1998.The paleo economic history of aboriginal migration ANU working paper number 119
• Davis, M (2015) Closing the Gap in Indigenous Disadvantage: A Trajectory of Indigenous Inequality in Australia Georgetown Journal of International Affairs , Winter/Spring 2015, Vol. 16, No. 1
(Winter/Spring 2015), pp. 34-44
• Einhorn, G, Gundersen, I, Schwab, N, Bell, A., Berhane, F., Fisher, C. Preiss, L., Saunders, D. & Williams, G. (2023) Embedding Indigenous Knowledge in the Conservation and Restoration of
Landscapes. Deloitte Insight Report
• Fogarty, W. , .Bulloch, H McDonnell, S. & Davis, M. (2018 ) Deficit discourse and indigenous health. How narrative framings of aboriginal and Taurus Strait Islander people are reproduced in policy.
Lowitja Institute & National Centre for Indigenous Studies. https://www.lowitja.org.au/content/Document/Lowitja-Publishing/deficit-discourse.pdf
• Fiolet, R. (2019) Closing the gap or re-victimising the marginalised? Indigenous perspectives on family violence. Available: https://www.broadagenda.com.au/2019/closing-the-gap-or-re-
victimising-the-marginalised-indigenous-perspectives-on-family-violence/
• Gammage, B. (2012). The biggest state on earth. How aborigines made Australia. Allen & Unwin.
• Howitt, R., (2010) Sustainable indigenous futures in remote Indigenous areas: relationships, processes and failed state approaches, GeoJournal, 77(6), 817-828,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/23325390,
• Kars, I (2020). Closing the Gap 12 years on: little progress, high hopes. Available: https://nit.com.au/16-10-2020/1458/closing-the-gap-12-years-on-little-progress-high-hopes
References
• Kirrily J. (2016). Better Than Welfare? Work and livelihoods for Indigenous Australians after CDEP. ANU Press Available: https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/32041
• Markham & Biddle ( 2018 ) Three reasons why the gaps between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians aren’t closing https://theconversation.com/three-reasons-why-the-gaps-between-
indigenous-and-non-indigenous-australians-arent-closing-91561
•
Moschion, J. (2023) Historical Frontier Violence: driver legacy and the role of truth telling. Presentation at USyD Conference: historical frontier violence :drivers, legacy and the role of truth telling.
Feb 2023
• Murphy, G. (nd). Closing the Gap: good policy or just target practice? Available: https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/closing-the-gap-good-policy-or-just-target-practice
• RacismNoWay (n.d) The Stolen Generations) Available: https://racismnoway.com.au/teaching-resources/the-stolen-generations/
• Reynolds, H. (1996) Aboriginal Soveignty. Three Nations, One Australia? Allen & Unwood.
• Reynolds, H. (2006) The Other Side of the Frontier. Aboriginal Resistance to the European Invasion of Australia. UNSW Press
• Rose (1998) Totemism, regions, and co-management in Aboriginal Australia, draft paper presented to crossing boundaries: The 7th annual conference of the international association for the study
of common property, Vancouver, BC, June, 10–14.
• Strakosch, E. (2015) Neoliberal Indigenous Policy : Settler Colonialism and the 'Post-Welfare' State Palgrave Macmillan UK
• Stanley, F. Langton, M. Ward, J. & McAullay (2021). Australian First Nations response to the pandemic: A dramatic reversal of the ‘gap’. Journal of Paediatrics & Child Health. 57 (12) 1853-1856
• Saunders, D. (2022) Embedding Indigenous Knowledge in the Conservation and Restoration of Landscapes. Deloitte Insight Report
• Trosper. R. (2022) Living Well by Developing Relationships in Indigenous economics: sustaining people and their lands. Ch 1 & Ch 4 The university of Arizona press
• Weir, J.K., Stacey, C. & Youngetob, K. (2011) The Benefits Associated with Caring for Country Literature Review AITSIS Report.
• Wills-Johnson, N. (2010). Lessons for sustainability from the world’s most sustainable culture. Environ Dev Sustainability 12 909–925
• Wilson, R. (2016). An Aboriginal perspective on 'Closing the Gap' from the rural front line. Available: https://www.rrh.org.au/journal/article/3693
History
“From managing the estate to
being managed by the state”
(Langton, 2008)
Housekeeping
• Tutorial after lecture:
• Students should work in small groups (2-3)
• Students can do this anytime before end of next week.
• I’ll go up to CCWM after the lecture for anyone who wants to go up at that
time.
• Assignment 1 is based on today’s lecture.
• After British colonisation of Australia, government policies to deal with Indigenous people can be
broadly categorised into the following phases:
• 1.Protection and segregation; 2.Assimilation; 3.Integration; 4.Self determination and
reconciliation; 5.Neo-paternalism with emphasis on ‘mainstreaming'.
• Select one of these 5 phases and for your chosen phase write a short essay that addresses the
following:
• 1. Describe the underlying rationale and aim of the policy. What measures were taken to achieve
the aim of the policy? Students may choose to focus their answer on a national scale or just a
particular state (e.g. N.S.W or Queensland).
• 2. Describe the effects of the policy on Indigenous people. Include in your answer immediate
effects on the Indigenous population as well as legacy effects that may be felt today. Students
should use available statistics to highlight points in their argument.
• Include at least 5 references in your work.
• Word limit: 800 words. Extra writing that exceeds this limit will not be read.
• The use of AI is not permitted in this unit.
This week’s tut: Chau Chak Wing Museum visit
Tutorial
1. Download the Actionbound app.
2. Scan the QR code on the start guide.
a. Note: You must scan using the
ActionBound app. Scanning with
your camera will not work.
3. Complete the activities in the galleries.
a. Note: Photo or video activities must
be done using the in-app camera.
Photo and video cannot be uploaded
from your device’s library.
History pre-colonial
• Indigenous people have been present in Australia for at least 65,000 years
• Different pre-historians have speculated about the likely time to have
been taken to occupy the Australian continent:
• estimates suggest the first arrival around 55,000 BP (before present) some as far
back as 130,000 BP
• This process of human movement out of the Eurasian continent could
have been a major human migration (with associated push and pull
factors) (Butlin 1998).
History pre-colonial
South Australia – Warratyi rock engravings
• 63,000 BCE. 10,000 artefacts including 1,500
stone tools, a grinding stone and ground ochres
recently discovered in the Madjedbebe rock
shelter (previously known as Malakunanja) in
Mirrarr Country, in Northern Arnhem Land.
• Impossible to know exactly what Aboriginal
Australia was like pre-1788, and generalisations
about how life was obscure diversity across the
continent. Rose (1996) suggests a multilayered
set of identifications among families in kin-based
societies, perhaps organised into clans.
• No single Aboriginal nation but a large number
of groups occupying discrete areas (Moschion, 2023)
• Incredible diversity of language and culture.
• Archaeological evidence suggests that
Indigenous people developed an adequate
standard of living in these times. This is
evidenced by their lengthy and successful
adaptation to the highly variable and harsh
Australian landscape (Altman, 2000).
History pre-colonial
• Butlin (1933) suggests an Indigenous economy that was a functioning
ecosystem of kinship governed by law upholding relational ecological
management.
• Peterson (1993) in Moschion (2023) describes a non-market economy with
demand sharing (surplus must be shared amongst all beings).
• Reciprocity and sharing as mainstays in organisation and ethics (Reynolds
1996). Economic activity geared towards immediate consumption. No
single person had control of production
• Long sustainability also suggests governance mechanisms developed by
Australia’s Indigenous peoples represent good practice (Wills-Johnson, 2008).
• The landscape was managed through a sophisticated system of rules, rights
and obligations based in spirituality, and associated with the Dreaming.
Some anthropologists argue that surplus time was invested in religious life
rather than in material accumulation, which contrasts with the materialist
economic attitudes of British settlers (Altman, 2000).
History pre-colonial
• This pre-colonial time is what Trosper (Ch1). seeks to describe
• ideas and ways of life of many Indigenous peoples
• colonial settlement by Europeans pushed this way of life aside
• Concept of “living well”: pursuing actions that strengthen humanity’s relational
goods (trust, cooperation etc) created by relationships with nature and with each
other.
• Inclusion of nature in relationships means that relational goods promote high
productivity of the land, ecological resilience, and the well-being for all species
(not just humans).
History pre-colonial: relationship to land
• One shared principle of Indigenous cultures is that land has agency and
deserves our respect (Einhorn et al. 2023)
• Indigenous Australians are of the landscape, and language and culture are formed
by their landscape.
• Central role of land in Indigenous identity - key feature of Indigenous
worldviews: idea that all the landscape is alive, conscious and able to react
to human activity.
• Similar depictions can be made of Indigenous life and culture pre-
colonization in other parts of the world.
• In many countries, early settlers discovered the landscape was quite
productive and well tended.
Over the past decade, in Australia, growing
appreciation of sophistication of Indigenous society
• Use of fire to manage their environment: intervention involved use of fire
and proper harvesting techniques.
• Aboriginals had sophisticated bushcraft and understanding of their
environment.
• Because of this management, on arrival Colonists referred to the landscape
as “park-like” (Einhorn, 2023; Gammage, 2012),
• Explorer Leichhardt noted ”the natives seemed to have burned the grass
systematically along every water hole in order to have them surrounded
with young grass as soon as the rain sets ..it’s connected with the
systematic management of their runs to attract game ..”
• Brewarrina fish traps
Fresh water fishing traps of Gunditjmara people used to
manage eels in Lake & Brewarrina fish traps on Darling River
Tindale’s Arc
Source:https://survivalinternational.org/articles/3593-the-best-conservationists-made-our-environment-and-can-save-
it?hootPostID=5faeffa23dcfd86b6380dd2a6e34395a
Arrival of First Fleet 1788 (Australian Law Reform Commission)
• Dampier 1688 thought Aborigines must live off sea – belief/claim that Aboriginals
inhabited only on coastal areas (Reynolds, 1996).
• On arrival British settlers knew nothing about aboriginal society.
• 1788 Australia was described as “practically uninhabited”. Belief that people only
inhabited coastal regions. Europeans could not understand social or political
organisation that existed.
• Governor Phillip was instructed on first settlement to maintain peaceful and
friendly relations with native inhabitants.
• Indigenous people considered British subjects (protected by law).
Changing ideas (Trosper, 2022; Strackosh, 2015)
• Colonial times coincide with the rise of liberalism- European societies
were developing ideas of democracy and individual rights.
• Paradoxically, this rise of liberalism was companied by hierarchical
social outcomes.
• Evident in the exclusion of Indigenous peoples from the category of
“capable” individuals, and hence from citizenship and its associated
rights.
• Claim of liberalism to provide equal rights to all capable individuals
was made.
Early times after European arrival (Reynolds 2006)
• Growing awareness and reactions to each other – views slowly change
amongst some settlers.pk’
• During 19th century settlers gradually saw how extensive and varied
were aboriginal food sources that almost everything was edible
exploited at some time during a typical year.
• Some Europeans understood Aboriginals had sophisticated bushcraft
and understanding of their environment.
• Some Europeans also came to appreciate that as well as exploiting their
knowledge of the country the Aboriginals manage the environment:
• Colonial Governor George Grey “the Aborigine knows exactly what the land
produces, the proper time at which these several articles are in season and
the readiest means of procuring them”.
• Growing awareness of the use of fire. Explorer Leichhardt noted ”the
natives seemed to have burned the grass systematically along every
water hole in order to have them surrounded with young grass as soon
as the rain sets ..it’s connected with the systematic management of
their runs to attract game ..”
Joesph Lycett Aborigines using Fire to Hunt Kangaroos c1820 – National
Library of Australia
Early times after European arrival (Reynolds,1996)
• Writing of some British settlers provided a picture of Indigenous
Australian society:
• one that had exercised sovereignty and had a system of laws and customs that were
observed
• tribal groupings exercised authority independent of any outside power
• 1910 - Wheeler (an ethnographer) observed the existence of well understood customs and laws
amongst Indigenous Australians through which relations amongst people themselves and their physical
environment are controlled.
• Existence of customary law has since been well established:
• e.g. 1971 in a Supreme Court case in the Northern Territory Justice Blackburn concluded Yirrkala had a
system of law.
Early times after European arrival (Reynolds 2006)
• Aboriginal response to white settlers:
• were not keen to be admitted to an unwelcoming white society
• noted that aboriginal men had “dignified bearing with an air of freedom altogether
different from low class Europeans”.
• some settlers employed Aboriginals often jobs of servitude
• however, value of economic incentives undermined by the egalitarianism and reciprocity of
aboriginal society (NB importance for policy)- missionary observed that Aboriginals didn’t
understand individualism.
• experience showed most Aboriginals wouldn’t leave their lands purely from choice except
where they could do so on terms of equality
• Aboriginals were not content with menial jobs given by settlers (where Europeans might
accept jobs of servitude) – it was opposite to the instincts of Aboriginals who did not have
such hierarchies in their society
• Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders were experts in their physical environment.
European and Asian skippers depended on their judgement. The expertise of Aboriginal
stockmen important to the management of cattle.
Early times after European arrival (Reynolds 2006)
• Whilst some settlers had a greater awareness of Indigenous people, most
were ignorant of difference
• A demographic “picture” developed and became the justification for
settlement: Aboriginals were considered too primitive to be actual owners
or sovereigns (Reynolds, 1996). Colony acquired by terra nullius.
• Land was critical factor:
• Indigenous people needed land for their productive activities
• settlers needed land for farming.
• Any land tenure system that was not private property was not seen as
legitimate.
• Frontier wars and violent reprisals- violent conflict involving settlers, police
and Indigenous people arose from the rapid dispossession of land.
Frontier wars (https://deadlystory.com/page/culture/history/Frontier_wars)
• Resistance and massacres began from 1788.
• 2000 – 5000 colonists died and the death toll is for
Aboriginal people is unknown.
• In Queensland estimates suggest 60,000 Aboriginal
people died
• As a result of colonial violence and imported
illnesses ( flu, measles, tuberculosis and smallpox)
some estimates suggest around 90% of the
Aboriginal population prior to invasion was killed
during these wars.
• Research has been conducted at University of
Newcastle - an interactive map that allows you to
see and read about the massacres.
• Link to map:
https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/colonialmassacres/
map.php
Colonialism and land (Trosper, 2022)
• Indigenous territorial systems preclude using terms like private property as land is held not by individuals
but by relational subjects that include nonhumans. Indigenous people have a special relationship to the
landscape.
• Holders of land are responsible for maintaining the health of the relationships with land .
• When English settlers were moving to the USA (1600s), the feudal land tenure system in England was being
turned into a private property system
• As settlers took land from Indigenous peoples, they created a system of private property among
themselves
• John Locke, (philosopher and early theorists of the nature of property) provided a theory of property that
could be applied where settlers were occupying the land held by other people. He suggested a land
without people who had ownership, what was later called terra nullius in Australia.
• The settlers thought they could treat land as unowned because it hadn’t been transformed by farming
obtaining their right to the land by farming it (was therefore not “property’ that was “owned’)
Consequences of Colonial settlement(Australian Law Reform Commission)
• Colonial takeover led to a sustained period of fighting for land kin and survival.
The very well managed ecosystem was impacted by colonialists seeking food as
rations declined (Langton 2008).
• Risk of starvation from dispossession led to forced and colonised labour primarily
in grazing marine sectors or domestic servants work mainly for rations.
• Implications of dispossession for subsequent native title land claims.
• Devastation caused by introduced diseases and alcohol.
• Aboriginal population reduced during the first hundred years of settlement from
an estimated 300 000 to 60 000.
• Traditional ways of life destroyed or suppressed.
• Sequence of policies that compounded the trauma associated with
1788.
Broad categorization/framwork of government
policies for Indigenous people. (Aust Govt Law Reform Commission)
• Protection and segregation
• Assimilation
• Integration
• Self determination and reconciliation
• Self determination replaced by neo-paternalism with emphasis on ‘mutual
obligation’, ‘shared responsibility’, ‘mainstreaming’ and ‘normalisation’
Return of assimilation?
• Closing the Gap.
• Uluru Statement from the Heart- Commonwealth Implementation Plan
2021.
• Failed Voice referendum for constitutional recognition.
‘Protection” and segregation (Aust Govt Law Reform Commission)
• Combined reduction in Aboriginal population and awareness of their mistreatment
• 1837 House of Commons Select Committee recommended
• missionaries for Aboriginal people
• protectors for their defense
• special codes of law to protect them.
• Early approach: protectors appointed, in NSW, SA and WA to protect Aboriginals from abuses and to provide
the remnant populations around towns with some rations, blankets and medicine.
• Late 1800s more extensive policies of ‘protection’ formulated with the aim:
• isolating and segregating full-blood Aboriginals on reserves and restricting contact (and interbreeding) between them and outsiders,
• assimilate half-castes, and their children.
• limit civil rights: right to marry was limited, as were other civil rights.
• full-blood Aboriginals there was some tolerance of continuing traditional way of life, but sometimes overtly hostile to traditional
ways.
• Local protectors/guardians often police on the reserves present to control alcohol and to prevent
liquor, Aboriginals associating with whites and whites from entering the reserves.
Missions, reserves & stations (AIATSIS, 2022)
• Spaces set aside by governments specifically for Aboriginal people to live on.
• Missions created by church groups to house Aboriginal people, convert them to
Christianity and prepare them for menial jobs. Most of the missions were
developed on land granted by the government for this purpose.
• Reserves were usually parcels of land set aside for Aboriginal people to live on
and were not managed by the government or its officials. People living on
unmanaged reserves might receive rations and blankets from the state or
territory government, but often remained responsible for their own housing.
• Stations or ‘managed reserves’ were generally managed by government officials.
Schooling (preparation for the workforce), rations and housing were provided,
and station managers tightly controlled who could, and could not, live there. The
managers usually had total control over Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lives
including legal guardianship of their children.
Protection- series of legislated acts (Aust Govt Law Reform Commission)
• Legislated protection policy Victoria (1867), WA (1886), QLD (1897), NSW(1909), SA and
NT in 1910-11
• Under legislation:
• Aboriginals moved onto church missions and Government reserves
• alcohol prohibited
• restricted the movement of Aborigines
• regulated employment
• systematic efforts through the establishment of ‘boarding houses’ to take ‘part-Aboriginal’
children away from their parents and to educate them in European ways.
• Early-mid 1900
• protection policy reinforced- Protectors replaced by Protector Boards or Welfare Boards
• legislative restrictions and controls made more comprehensive: policy dictated where Aboriginal
people could live, work, freedom of movement, personal finances and child rearing practices
• Policy influence continued into the period of assimilation. Examples:
• provisions of the Welfare Ordinance 1953 (NT) -paternalistic arrangements for ‘wardship’ of
incompetent (Aboriginal) persons.
• NSW Aborigines Welfare Board controlled Aboriginal lives to 1960s
Underlying aim of legislation: example NSW
Aborigines Protection Act (Barani. 2023)
• Under this act, Aboriginal people of ‘mixed blood’ issued with ‘certificates of
exemption’, from regulations but they had to give up family contact.
• Certificates of exemption came at a price as individuals
• forced to relinquish family connections
• get written permission from the mission return for funerals. The aim was to boost
assimilation into mainstream society.
• Underlying belief was ‘protection’ of Aboriginal people would lead to their
‘advancement’ to the point where they would eventually fit into the white
community.
• Protection and segregation policies enforced to 1940s then replaced with policies
of assimilation and integration.
• Assimilation policy (1950s): the movement of Aboriginal people to Aboriginal
Stations where they could be prepared for absorption into the mainstream
society.
Protection and children
• Taking children from families was official government policy in Australia until 1969.
• 1814: The first ‘native institution’ at Parramatta in 1814 was set up to ‘civilise’ Aboriginal children
• On missions and reserves, protectors made guardians of children.
• Education of children was considered crucial
• Children separated from their parents and institutionalised.
• In institutions children could be indoctrinated by steps to develop the habit of labour.
• 1924 Kinchela Boys Home at Kempsey.
• Children were abused (physical, psychological, emotional, and sexual abuse)
• Little education was delivered and labour was exploited.
• Children known as ‘the Stolen Generations’ still search for their families today.
• In NSW: 15,000 and 20,000 alone.
• The effects on Aboriginal family life were devastating. Policies destroyed Aboriginal families and society.
Created intergenerational trauma.
• Unknown exactly how many children were taken over 1909 and 1969 and bad record keeping makes it
impossible to trace family connections in many cases.
• Almost every Aboriginal family has been affected in some way by this policy.
The Bringing them Home Report (RacismNoWay, n.d)
•Government inquiry (1995) was held and The Bringing Them Home Report was produced 1997. Recommended government apology
•It found that between 1/3 and 1/10 Indigenous children were removed – lack of precision due to missing and poor state of records.
•Long term negative consequences for those removed:
•more likely to come to the attention of the police as they grow into adolescence
•more likely to suffer low self-esteem, depression and mental illness
•had been almost always taught to reject their Aboriginality and Aboriginal culture
•unable to retain links with their land
•cannot take a role in the cultural and spiritual life of their former communities
•unlikely to be able to establish their right to native title.
Protection and stolen wages
• Under the Protection Acts there was provisioning for control of work and wages.
• Also establishment of trust funds for the benefit of Aboriginals.
• This continued after the period of protection, over most of the 20th century.
• Control and management of Commonwealth benefits in respect of Indigenous persons:
• Payments withheld include child endowment, pensions and even soldiers’ pay.
• Wages often went unpaid, or were paid at discriminatory levels.
• Indigenous stolen wages arose from the control of work and wages in
combination with misuse of trust funds.
• Massive loss of intergenerational wealth
• Associated loss of education about financial management.
Protection, segregation and assimilation
• Protection and segregation continued (1890s to the 1950s)
• About 1920s the policy became one of enforced assimilation for 'part- Aboriginals' as the
Aborigines Protection Board tried to reduce the number of people on the reserves.
• In the 1930s people were shifted from one reserve to another, so that some reserves
could be closed and the land leased to white farmers, (e.g. Tibooburra, Angledool and
Carowa Tank). Soldier settlement schemes.
• NSW Aborigines Protection Board replaced by Aboriginal Welfare Board 1940, but
continued, under a policy of assimilation with the aim:
• to close reserves and encourage people to move to town.
• In 1967 a Joint Committee of the two houses of State Parliament continued policies and
recommended all Aboriginal reserves should disappear.
• Such decisions totally demoralised the people still living on the reserves, who had come
to regard them as homelands.
Response of Aboriginal people
?)
• Aboriginal associations formed 1920-1940:
• Australian Aborigines Progress Association; Australian Aborigines League; Aborigines Progressive Association
• Groups lobbied for the abolition of the Aborigines Protection Board to be replaced by
a body with an all-Aboriginal membership and national citizenship for Aboriginals and
full equality with other citizens; representative in the Commonwealth Parliament.
• Prominent members were William Cooper (Cummeragunja), Bill Ferguson (Dubbo),
Margaret Tucker and Douglas Nicholls (Melbourne), Jack and Selina Patten and Tom
Foster (La Perouse), Pearl Gibbs (Brewarrina), Jack Kinchela (Coonabarabran) and
Helen Grosvenor (Redfern).
• 1937 conference in Sydney for 26 January 1938- called' A Day of Mourning and
Protest’, claim for citizen rights.
Response of Aboriginal people
• 1938 Aboriginal deputation proposed national policy for Aboriginals:
• Commonwealth control of all Aboriginal matters
• separate Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs (administration advised by at least half Aboriginals) nominated by the
Aborigines Progressive Association
• full citizen status for all Aboriginals and civil equality with white Australians
• equality in education, labour laws, workers compensation, pensions, land ownership and wages.
• 1939 Cummeragunja strike; they left the reserve and camped on the other side of
the Murray River in Victoria. Protest meetings were held in the Domain in Sydney.
• The movement for citizen rights continued into the 1960s.
• 'Freedom Rides' of 1965 students and Aboriginals protested against
discrimination in New South Wales towns.
• 1966 Gurindji strike - Wave Hill walk off
• Aboriginal action continued.
Assimilation 1950s
• 1937 first Commonwealth/State conference on 'native welfare' adopts assimilation as national policy:
"The destiny of the natives of aboriginal origin, but not of the full blood, lies in ultimate absorption … with a view to
their taking their place in the white community on an equal footing with the whites.“
• In 1951, at the third Commonwealth/State Conference on 'native welfare', assimilation is affirmed as the aim of
'native welfare' measures.
• Policy expectation all Aboriginals and part-Aboriginals to adopt the same manner of living as other Australians
• In NSW, Aborigines Welfare Board of NSW implemented the assimilation policy: the movement of Aboriginal
people to Aboriginal Stations where they could be prepared for absorption into the mainstream community.
• Individual families were persuaded to share the life in the towns with whites.
• Earlier government policies had relocated Aboriginal people from their homelands to reserves (stations or
missions).
• Aim of assimilation to break up missions & reserves, encourage people to give up seasonal and casual work,
and find regular work for wages (unequal wages ).
• Stations were places people put to work for little/no/unequal pay - considered as ‘stepping-stones to
civilisation’.
To achieve result of assimilation governments:
• Increased expenditure on health, housing, education and training programs.
• 1960s effort to review and repeal restrictive and discriminatory legislation,
especially by the Commonwealth Government, and the mechanisms of
‘protection’ were phased out.
• Access to social security benefits for Aboriginals came in 1960
• Aborigines became entitled to vote at federal elections in 1962
• State legislation prohibiting access to alcohol was repealed and in most areas
Aboriginals became entitled to full award wages.
• In 1967 the Constitution was amended by referendum so that Aboriginals would
in future be counted in the Census, and to authorise the Commonwealth
Parliament to pass laws specifically for the benefit of Aboriginal people.
• An Office of Aboriginal Affairs was established by the Commonwealth Government
to instigate and oversee programs of assistance for Aborigines
Assimilation 1960s (NSW)
• Basic human rights still denied under assimilation policy:
• children removed
• no freedom of movement,
• no access to education,
• no award wages,
• no marrying without permission,
• Aboriginals could not eat in restaurants, enter hotels or public pools or vote.
• The Aborigines Act of 1969 abolished the NSW Aborigines Welfare Board and
Aboriginal children then became wards of the state.
• NSW Welfare Board’s functions transferred to Department of Child Welfare and
Social Welfare. This later became the Department of Youth and Community
Services, which created the NSW Directorate of Aboriginal Welfare.
• 1975, the Commonwealth Government took over many of the functions of the
Directorate of Aboriginal Welfare, which then became the Aboriginal Services
Branch. The department’s name was changed in 1988 to Family and Community
Services and in 1995 to Community Services.
Outstation (or homelands) movement
• Arose 1970s and 1980s
• Aboriginal people who relocated themselves from the towns and
settlements where they had been settled by the government’s
assimilation policy.
• Aboriginal people created remote settlements
• Move towards reclaiming autonomy and self-sufficiency
• Move toward self-determination
• Residents are living there by choice – connections to land
Integration
• The paternalism, and arrogance of assimilation came under increasing scrutiny
• Questioning of assumption that Aboriginals would ultimately become like white Australians
• Growing awareness of Aboriginal problems by non-Aboriginal Australians.
• All this resulted in abandoning of assimilation.
• ‘Integration’ was term used to denote a policy that recognised the value of Aboriginal culture and the right of
Aboriginals to retain their customs, languages and distinctive communities
• Commonwealth Government aimed to avoid one-word descriptions of complex policies, and to focus on
developing new approaches to problems rather than on long-term aims.
• Emphasis on:
• increased funding and improved programs in health, education and employment
• promoting equality was accompanied by real social and economic advances
• increase funding for Aboriginal community development projects
• first steps were taken towards the granting of land rights.
• 1972 Commonwealth Department of Aboriginal Affairs was established
• 1973 the Woodward Commission was appointed to investigate land rights
• Aboriginal Land Rights (NT) Act 1976 (Cth).
Self determination - from state to indigenous
trusteeship (Smith 2006 )
• 1970 to 1980 Federal government shifted focus to self-determination which resulted in
the reignition of the indigenous economy.
• Government focus on economic independence and market-based solutions.
• 1990s to 2008: self-determination and reconciliation era
• Aboriginal communities to determine the pace and nature of their future development
• Commonwealth policy based on ‘the fundamental right of Aboriginals to retain their racial identity and
traditional lifestyle or, where desired, to adopt wholly or partially a European lifestyle’
• Policy encouraged Aboriginal participation or control in local or community government, and in other
areas of concern.
• Policy included government support programs managed by Aboriginal organisations- idea to support
self governance.
• Aboriginal Development Commission included the Aboriginal Land Fund Commission and the
Aboriginal Loan Commission.
Self-determination
• Major policy mechanisms of the self determination era:
• land rights (1972, (NTLRA 1976)
• Native Title Act (NTA 1993)
• 1980 Aboriginal Development Commission was established for economic and social
development and self-management.
• to assist Aboriginal people to acquire land
• to engage in business enterprises and to obtain finance for housing and other personal needs
• ATSIC Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander Commission formed 1990 - a body to represent Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander opinion on all matters of policy
• 1990 establishment of commercial development corporation (now IBA)
• establishment of NSW indigenous Chamber of Commerce and southeast QLD indigenous
Chamber of Commerce 2006
• Open for Business parliamentary inquiry 2008
• CDEP.
Criticisms of self-determination (Strakosch,2015)
• Self-determination policies can be seen localised service delivery and
varying degrees of delegated managerial authority.
• However, as these occur still within the state structure, hierarchy still
exists.
• This delegated authority can subsequently be unilaterally and
comprehensively resumed.
• Official power of state bureaucracy over Indigenous lives is still
colonial authority
• Ideas of neoliberalism and settler colonialism: still-existing settler
colonial hierarchies rearticulated through neoliberalism.
Erosion of self-determination policy approach
Strakosch, (2015)
• Role of domestic political conditions (Sanders 2006)
• Return of paternalism
• Self-determination erodes mid-2000s -replaced by policy less focused on
rights and relationships
• New focus on:
• reforming Indigenous behaviour: intervening over perceived community behaviour
or ‘dysfunction”
• mainstreaming (driving economic integration through mainstream employment..
• Particularly notable :
• abolition of representative Indigenous institutions (e. g. ATSIC)
• focus on reforming Indigenous welfare provision in line with “responsibility” and
“post-welfare” agendas
2007 Northern Territory Emergency Response
(NTER). Strakosch, (2015)
• Pre federal election and presented as a response to the Little Children are Sacred Report.
• NTER was a $587 million package of legislation that made focused on remote Indigenous
communities in the Northern Territory.
• Suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act
• Policy package often referred to as ‘New Arrangements’.
• mainstreaming of Indigenous policy into existing social policy departments,
• attempt to coordinate these departments through a centralised ‘whole-of-
government’ approach,
• Use of rhetoric of ‘mutual obligation’ for redressing disadvantage,
• these mechanisms ‘Shared Responsibility Agreements’ (SRAs), linked to broader
Regional Partnership Agreements (RPAs) that would establish ‘organic’ representative
institutions.
NT Intervention 2007
• $587m package of legislation (restrictions on alcohol, changes to
welfare payments, education, acquisition of parcels of land,
employment & health initiatives- suite of legislation:
• NTERA 2007
• Welfare Payment Reform Bill 2007
• Families comm services etc
• Appropriation Bills
• To enact, it required suspension of Racial Discrimination Act 1975,
Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1976 Native Title Act 1993 Social Security
Act, 1991, Inc Tax Assessment Act
NTER
• NTER measures continued under Rudd government.
• 2012 Gillard (Commonwealth government) continued all key aspects
of the Intervention, extended it to 2022 – in the form of Stronger
Futures in the Northern Territory Act. Welfare quarantining, school
attendance measures, and penalties for alcohol and pornography use
were all expanded. Extended NTER, replacing the legislation with the
Stronger Futures program.
• Stronger Futures lasted to 2022.
• We will focus on the NTER in detail in later lectures.
2008 Closing the Gap
• Close the Gap Social Justice Campaign
• Commonwealth Government (Rudd) apology to Stolen Generations, pledged the government to
bridge the gap between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Australian health, education and living
conditions
• Close the Gap Statement of Intent to:
• Produce an action plan addressing inequalities in health services, to achieve
equality of life expectancy and health between Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander peoples and non-Indigenous Australians by 2030.
• CTG strategy
• Annual progress report to Parliament
• 2018-20 COAG meetings: CTG framework and strategy revisions
• COAG and Coalition of Peaks partnership
• National Indigenous Australians Agency (2019) supports Minister for
Indigenous Relations – role to lead and coordinate development and implementation of
Closing the Gap targets in partnership with Indigenous Australians.
CTG 6 targets 2008-2019
• close the gap in life expectancy by 2031
• halve the gap in child mortality by 2018
• ensure 95 percent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander 4 years-olds enrolled in
early childhood education by 2025
• halve the gap in reading, writing and numeracy by 2018
• halve the gap in year 12 attainment by 2020
• halve the gap in employment by 2018.
• close the gap in school attendance by 2018 (this target was added in 2014)
CTG targets broadened in 2020: 16 new
targets
• Families, children and youth; health; education; economic
development; housing; justice : land and water (cultural rights are
realised);
• Cross-system priorities: address racism, discrimination and social
inclusion, healing and trauma, and the promotion of culture and
language for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples
• Following each annual review by the Productivity Commission on the
metric of CTG, parliament focuses on the lack of progress on closing
the gap
National agreement: 2020 16 targets
1.Close the Gap in life expectancy within a generation, by 2031.
2.By 2031, increase the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander babies with a healthy birthweight to 91 per cent.
3.By 2025, increase the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children enrolled in Year Before Fulltime Schooling (YBFS) early childhood
education to 95 per cent.
4.By 2031, increase the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children assessed as developmentally on track in all five domains of the
Australian Early Development Census
5.(AEDC) to 55 per cent.
5.By 2031, increase the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people (age 20-24) attaining year 12 or equivalent qualification to 96 per
cent.
6.By 2031, increase the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people aged 25-34 years who have completed a tertiary qualification
(Certificate III and above) to 70 per cent.
7.By 2031, increase the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth (15–24 years) who are in employment, education or training to 67 per
cent.
8.By 2031, increase the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people aged 25–64 who are employed to 62 per cent
9.By 2031, increase the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people living in appropriately sized (not overcrowded) housing to 88 per cent.
10.By 2031, reduce the rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults held in incarceration by at least 15 per cent.
11.By 2031, reduce the rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people (10-17 years) in detention by at least 30 per cent.
12.By 2031, reduce the rate of over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in out-of-home care by 45 per cent.
13.By 2031, the rate of all forms of family violence and abuse against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and children is reduced at least by
50%, as progress towards zero.
14.Significant and sustained reduction in suicide of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people towards zero.
15.a) By 2030, a 15 per cent increase in Australia's landmass subject to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people's legal rights or interests.
b) By 2030, a 15 per cent increase in areas covered by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people's legal rights or interests in the sea.
16. By 2031, there is a sustained increase in number and strength of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages being spoken.
A 17th target was later added:
17: By 2026, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have equal levels of digital inclusion
CTG 2023 (Productivity Commission 2023)
Perspectives on CTG (Altman 2017)
• CTG policy framework tries to address Indigenous disadvantage by
eliminating disparities according to official statistics between
indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians as discrete abstracted
populations—the focus of government Indigenous affairs attention
has been on Indigenous populations as statistically defined subjects.
• Problematic:
• values statistical equality above all else;
• assumes that populations can be readily distinguished;
• assumes that there is a degree of identity stability in papulation categories (
in fact there is much dynamism, especially in the propensity for people to
identify as Indigenous in censuses/surveys).
Perspectives on CTG (Altman 2017)
• CTG approach clearly failing.
• CTG is a potentially useful tool for measuring socio–economic
sameness, but who is the statistical Indigenous subject?
• CTG is not a useful tool for measuring aspirations that many
Indigenous Australians.
• Problems of governmental path dependency.
• Reluctance by governments to recognise special rights of Indigenous
peoples in combination with rights as Australian citizens.
• CTG framework illogical and incoherent.
Criticisms of CTG
• Conceptual: elimination of disparity must be based on a logic of
sameness.
• Framing of Closing the Gap as a technical problem – reported on with
a barrage of statistics, targets, measurement discussions.
• Disparity targets are modest:
• halve the gap in child mortality by 2018,
• halve the gap in reading and numeracy by 2018,
• to halve the gap in Year 12 attainment by 2020,
• halve the gap in employment outcomes by 2018
• close the gap in life expectancy by 2031.
Indigenous perspectives/support for CTG
Murphy (n.d); Kars (2020)
• Professor Kerry Arabena (descendant of Meriam People of the Torres Strait):
• “CTG campaign risks being ineffective over the long term and undermining the good so far achieved”.
• “ I am not done with the Closing the Gap Campaign yet. I think we still have a way to go and can build capacity in families and
communities to realise the aspirations that informed the CTG10. We did the same with ATSIC. We called it an experiment after 14
years and we brushed it aside, without keeping the inherent good, particularly the regional support structures at regional council
levels. I am concerned that if we abandon Closing the Gap, we will throw everything away, without assessing what works, why it
works.”
• Professor Marcia Langton (Marcia Langton is a descendant of the Yiman and Bidjara Nations):
• “For Indigenous Australians who attain a high level of education, there is no employment
gap”.
• Closing the Gap report is confusing on Indigenous employment rates and has been misinterpreted in the media. The most significant
finding on progress in closing the gap in Indigenous employment in the 2016 report makes the point that ‘There is a strong link
between education and employment – at high levels of education there is virtually no employment gap between Indigenous and non-
Indigenous Australians’. So while the report has given the impression that no progress has been made on the target to halve the gap
in jobless rates, if we dig into the data more, we see that there has been success.
• The steep decline in the statistics for Indigenous employment is attributed to the demise of the Community Development
Employment Programs (CDEP) scheme, but this should be compensated for by the new Indigenous Affairs employment programs in
the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet which are showing success.
Indigenous perspectives/support for CTG
• Closing the Gap or re-victimising the marginalised? Indigenous perspectives on family violence (Fiolet
2019):
• “Australia’s Indigenous population is less inclined to seek help than non-Indigenous Australians. And yet, there is
very little evidence regarding the reasons for this reluctance, particularly from an Indigenous perspective. Without
this information, we risk providing culturally insensitive services and have little hope of addressing the issues.
What’s more, ill-informed organisational and service-provider attitudes can cause re-victimisation for Indigenous
survivors of family violence rather than offer support or an opportunity for healing”.
• “Years of systematic and individual racism has led to Indigenous peoples to be too ashamed to bring any more
attention to themselves. This same ongoing mistreatment, seen not only in Australia but also in other colonised
countries such as Canada and New Zealand, makes the original owners of the country feel that they are not
entitled to the same support that colonised peoples receive. Judgement, misunderstanding of needs and western
mainstream approaches are causing mistrust and fear in a population already marginalised and abused”.
Some specific policies that have met with
some success
• Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP)
• Indigenous Rangers Program
• COVID response
Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) scheme
• Started 1977. Aims: building economic base for people and increasing access
to mainstream labour markets.
• CDEP organizations provide employment, training, activity, enterprise support to Indigenous
people.
• Was a labour market and social development program for Indigenous people.
• At its peak it employed over 36,000 Indigenous people (over one-quarter of total
Indigenous employment).
• Evidence presented in Altman & Gray (2016) and Kirrily (2017) indicated CDEP
scheme had beneficial effects on economic and social outcomes for remote
living people. It was a form of employment and income support in regions
distant from mainstream labour markets to participants that have very
different aspirations and prospects.
• Scheme abolished 2009. Replaced by Community Development Program
(CDP).
Indigenous Rangers Program
• Background: Land rights in 1970-80 NT underscores importance of land
management and the Indigenous connection to environment.
• Native Title - legal recognition of Indigenous peoples’ relationships with country.
• 1995 Northern Land Council creates Caring for Country unit
• 1997 Indigenous Protected Area (IPA) Program established
• 2007 Working on Country program of the federal government, with associated
funding of Indigenous ranger programs nationally.
• Policy that draws on the strengths of Indigenous people :‘Caring for country’ is
based in the laws, customs and ways of life that Indigenous people have inherited
from their ancestors and ancestral beings.
Indigenous Rangers Program
• Policy that provides:
• benefits for the social-political, cultural, economic, and physical and
emotional wellbeing of Indigenous people.
• benefits are shared with others who live together with Indigenous people,
and facilitate a better community and environment for all Australians.
• Growing body of research that establishes benefits ( we will discuss in detail later
in the semester).
• Growth in government programs supporting Indigenous land and sea
management reflects the synergy between caring for country and environmental
issues, and the productivity of Indigenous–environment collaboration.
Policy response to Covid (Stanley et al (2021))
• Indigenous high-risk status- poor relative health profiles (more “at risk”), high mobility of people; kinship needs)
• Extraordinary success of Indigenous populations in controlling Covid.
• Indigenous outcomes were better than non-Indigenous.
• Policy driven by Indigenous health leaders:
• “Indigenous Australia has been spared the impact (of COVID) seen elsewhere because behind every major decision,
strategy, approach and public health deployment we have seen culturally-centred leadership from Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander people. The lessons extracted from COVID-19 will no doubt be numerous and cover a range of
knowledge spheres and disciplines. But the one lesson that I hope non-Indigenous Australia finally learns is that
Indigenous leadership – when left to genuinely flourish without the ever-present interference and paternalism – is
phenomenally powerful, deeply impactful and highly successful, highlighting the ways of knowing, doing and being
that exist in Indigenous Australia.”
References
• AHRC (n.d) Track the History Timeline: The Stolen Generation. Available: https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/education/track-history-timeline-stolen-generations
• AIATSIS (2022). Missions, Reserves, Stations. Available: https://aiatsis.gov.au/explore/missions-stations-and-reserves
• Altman, J. (2017) A submission to the Productivity Commission on the Indigenous Evaluation Strategy. Available: https://www.pc.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/244543/sub023-indigenous-
evaluation.pdf
• Altman, J. & Gray, M. (2016) The Economic and Social Impacts of the CDEP Scheme in Remote Australia. Australian Journal of Social Issues. 40 (3), 399-410.
• Armitage, A. (1995) Comparing the Policy of Aboriginal Assimilation: Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. UBC Press
• Aust Govt. Law Reform Comission (n.d) https://www.alrc.gov.au/publication/recognition-of-aboriginal-customary-laws-alrc-report-31/3-aboriginal-societies-the-experience-of-contact/changing-
policies-towards-aboriginal-people/
• Barani (2023) Government Policy in Relation to Aboriginal people. City of Sydney Council. https://www.sydneybarani.com.au/sites/government-policy-in-relation-to-aboriginal-people/
• Butlin, N.G.1998.The paleo economic history of aboriginal migration ANU working paper number 119
• Davis, M (2015) Closing the Gap in Indigenous Disadvantage: A Trajectory of Indigenous Inequality in Australia Georgetown Journal of International Affairs , Winter/Spring 2015, Vol. 16, No. 1
(Winter/Spring 2015), pp. 34-44
• Einhorn, G, Gundersen, I, Schwab, N, Bell, A., Berhane, F., Fisher, C. Preiss, L., Saunders, D. & Williams, G. (2023) Embedding Indigenous Knowledge in the Conservation and Restoration of
Landscapes. Deloitte Insight Report
• Fogarty, W. , .Bulloch, H McDonnell, S. & Davis, M. (2018 ) Deficit discourse and indigenous health. How narrative framings of aboriginal and Taurus Strait Islander people are reproduced in policy.
Lowitja Institute & National Centre for Indigenous Studies. https://www.lowitja.org.au/content/Document/Lowitja-Publishing/deficit-discourse.pdf
• Fiolet, R. (2019) Closing the gap or re-victimising the marginalised? Indigenous perspectives on family violence. Available: https://www.broadagenda.com.au/2019/closing-the-gap-or-re-
victimising-the-marginalised-indigenous-perspectives-on-family-violence/
• Gammage, B. (2012). The biggest state on earth. How aborigines made Australia. Allen & Unwin.
• Howitt, R., (2010) Sustainable indigenous futures in remote Indigenous areas: relationships, processes and failed state approaches, GeoJournal, 77(6), 817-828,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/23325390,
• Kars, I (2020). Closing the Gap 12 years on: little progress, high hopes. Available: https://nit.com.au/16-10-2020/1458/closing-the-gap-12-years-on-little-progress-high-hopes
References
• Kirrily J. (2016). Better Than Welfare? Work and livelihoods for Indigenous Australians after CDEP. ANU Press Available: https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/32041
• Markham & Biddle ( 2018 ) Three reasons why the gaps between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians aren’t closing https://theconversation.com/three-reasons-why-the-gaps-between-
indigenous-and-non-indigenous-australians-arent-closing-91561
•
Moschion, J. (2023) Historical Frontier Violence: driver legacy and the role of truth telling. Presentation at USyD Conference: historical frontier violence :drivers, legacy and the role of truth telling.
Feb 2023
• Murphy, G. (nd). Closing the Gap: good policy or just target practice? Available: https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/closing-the-gap-good-policy-or-just-target-practice
• RacismNoWay (n.d) The Stolen Generations) Available: https://racismnoway.com.au/teaching-resources/the-stolen-generations/
• Reynolds, H. (1996) Aboriginal Soveignty. Three Nations, One Australia? Allen & Unwood.
• Reynolds, H. (2006) The Other Side of the Frontier. Aboriginal Resistance to the European Invasion of Australia. UNSW Press
• Rose (1998) Totemism, regions, and co-management in Aboriginal Australia, draft paper presented to crossing boundaries: The 7th annual conference of the international association for the study
of common property, Vancouver, BC, June, 10–14.
• Strakosch, E. (2015) Neoliberal Indigenous Policy : Settler Colonialism and the 'Post-Welfare' State Palgrave Macmillan UK
• Stanley, F. Langton, M. Ward, J. & McAullay (2021). Australian First Nations response to the pandemic: A dramatic reversal of the ‘gap’. Journal of Paediatrics & Child Health. 57 (12) 1853-1856
• Saunders, D. (2022) Embedding Indigenous Knowledge in the Conservation and Restoration of Landscapes. Deloitte Insight Report
• Trosper. R. (2022) Living Well by Developing Relationships in Indigenous economics: sustaining people and their lands. Ch 1 & Ch 4 The university of Arizona press
• Weir, J.K., Stacey, C. & Youngetob, K. (2011) The Benefits Associated with Caring for Country Literature Review AITSIS Report.
• Wills-Johnson, N. (2010). Lessons for sustainability from the world’s most sustainable culture. Environ Dev Sustainability 12 909–925
• Wilson, R. (2016). An Aboriginal perspective on 'Closing the Gap' from the rural front line. Available: https://www.rrh.org.au/journal/article/3693
