Customer Reviews

Aboriginal Australians (Australian experience)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is the standard authoritative text on the first Australians, followed up by the also excellent Aboriginal Victorians (2005). Richard Broome was my postgrad co-ordinator at La Trobe. He is a scholar and a gentleman, highly respected in the Aboriginal community for his sensitivity and respect. His chapter on "Mixed Missionary Blessings" gives a balanced account of the work of missionaries. Europeans usually held one of two views about the Aborigines, both of which were misguided. The educated minority thought of them romantically as "noble savages" and the uneducated majority judged them to be ignorant savages. Instead of seeing them as fellow humans they were misjudged either as angels or devils, a poor basis for mutual regard and understanding. (p.26) Cook was under orders to claim possession of any inhabited land only "with the consent of the natives." However, by a narrow definition of "inhabited" as meaning "settled and cultivated," the new lands he discovered were declared to be terra nullius, (an empty land), a legal fiction only recently overturned. Since the Aborigines were few in number, did not wear clothes, did not engage in agriculture, had no built architecture or obvious form of government their land was appropriated by the British with, it seems, little pangs of guilt. "So it was that while the Native Americans or the Maoris of New Zealand who built villages, tilled the soil and had chiefs were offered treaties and some recognition of rights by the British, the Aborigines were not given any of these rights. This fact of dispossession was the crux of the future race relations problems in Australia, for it meant that injustice was sanctioned by the state and there could be little possibility of any fruitful human relations being formed with the Aborigines." (pp. 26-7). This book is highly recommended by all seeking an understanding of the "first Australians."