Waking Up To Dreamtime: The Illusion of Aboriginal Self-Determination

edited by Hon. Dr Gary Johns

Waking Up To Dreamtime: The Illusion of Aboriginal Self-Determination might well be called 'Aboriginal mythology'---the illusionary picture portrayed by propagandist myth-makers seeking to establish a separatist nation for Australian Aborigines.

This latest title from Media Masters---the Singapore-based Australian publishing house---brings to a new and highly disturbing focus the plight of Aboriginal Australia.

This book:

• Shows how funding of separate Aboriginal policies severely harms Aboriginal people.
• Tells why it is fashionable in intellectual circles to support Aboriginal self-determination.
• Reveals the brutalities of life in closed Aboriginal communities.
• Explains why today's policies must be stopped to let Aboriginal people choose their own life.

Waking Up To Dreamtime is edited by Dr Gary Johns, a former Labor Member of the House of Representatives and Special Minister of State dealing with native title matters. He is also President of the Bennelong Society.

The contributing authors to Waking Up To Dreamtime are experts in their own field either directly or indirectly involved with Aboriginal matters. Two are Aborigines whose lives are wholly dedicated to indigenous concerns. One is a Canadian professor who traces the calamitous policies of what happened in his own country now being re-enacted in Australia. Another is a missionary who has spent 23 years living in Aboriginal communities.

In short, Waking Up To Dreamtime shows how the right way ahead for the welfare of Aborigines is not as a separatist, self-governing society, but as an identifiable and individualistic part of the wider Australian community where, already, many Aborigines have made outstanding contributions.

For Gary Johns' associated article, published in The Australian on 22 November, click here: Look for Strength in the Mainstream

Availability

Waking Up To Dreamtime is available from Capricorn Link (02) 4577 3555, and from all good bookstores for $19.95 (RRP). ISBN 981-04-5150-4

Alternatively, copies may be ordered by contacting The Bennelong Society President, Dr Gary Johns.

About the Contributing Authors

Dr Gary Johns is a former Minister in the Australian Government. He is presently a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs, Brisbane.

Professor Tom Flanagan is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Calgary, Canada.

Trevor Satour is an Aborigine and is a former Head of the Centre for Aboriginal Studies at Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia. He has also been CEO of the New South Wales Aboriginal Land Council and filled senior level bureaucratic postings in Canberra and other locations.

Steven Etherington is an Anglican vicar, a PhD student and former teacher, who has spent 23 years living in Aboriginal communities.

Dr Stephanie Jarrett is a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Adelaide, and has recently completed her PhD on violence in Aboriginal society.

Helen McLaughlin is an Aborigine and Commonwealth public servant who spent several years at the United Nations working on indigenous issues, and is a former adviser to the Australian Government on Aboriginal Affairs.

Professor Kenneth Maddock is a former Professor of Anthropology at Macquarie University, Sydney, New South Wales.

Compelling Observation by Co-Authors of Waking Up To Dreamtime

ProfessorTom Flanagan writes . . .

'In 1998, the federal government set aside $23.4 million to buy farmland in southwestern Ontario to create a reserve for the 'Caldwell First Nation.' The latter embraces people who claim their ancestors were missed in a treaty signed in the 1790s. They have been living as ordinary Canadians for over 200 years but now want to become registered Indians.'

On land rights Flanagan says . . .

'. . . the aboriginal economic strategy is built on an outdated, collectivist view of the economy. Individual prosperity in a modern economy does not arise primarily from exercising control over land and resources but from offering goods and services that other people want to buy. The typical way of becoming self-supporting and prosperous is to sell one's time, the value of which is enhanced by education, vocational training, and work experience, in the marketplace.'

Dr Gary Johns writes ...

'Whatever the pre-eminence given to the preservation of culture, the fact remains that if not one shot had been fired in the European settlement of Australia, if not one massacre had taken place, if disease had not taken a single person, Aboriginal people would have become strangers in their own land. The primitive, pre-modern, technologically naive, closed, geographically limited Aboriginal society would not have survived. Moreover, the conditions that make possible its re-creation are just as damaging. The modern political organisation and access to information necessary for the present class of leaders to operate, destroys the old authority that depended on a closed information loop. The new language, necessary to communicate the solidarity of indigenous people, destroys the need for the old languages. The availability of science destroys the need for much belief in myth. The availability of material wealth destroys every aspect of the previous economy, and the social organisation based on those practices.'

Trevor Satour, Aboriginal activist, writes ...

'Incorporation into the mainstream economic and social system is the best, and indeed, will remain the only opportunity for most indigenous people to succeed. The idea that Aboriginal people can create better futures or usefully live within the framework of a separate culture, economy and politics quite apart from real world influences is delusion for the vast majority.'

Steven Etherington, an Anglican Vicar, writes . . .

'The missionaries who developed the first outstations or homelands centres did so in response to Aboriginal people needing to return from artificially created 'feeding centres' to their original homelands. Typically, these are many kilometres removed from even small Aboriginal towns, in the most isolated parts of Australia. The original motivations were to escape the pressures of alcohol and the pressures of contact with the outside world. The intention was to allow for a greater degree of self-government, and to provide a buffer as Aboriginal people were drawn inexorably into contact with more and more areas of mainstream life. The more than 30-year-old history of homeland centres has been complex, with funding gradually growing and more non-Aboriginal 'support' personnel being needed. As outstations have proliferated, the original rationale for their existence has been dramatically altered. Outstation communities may now be the most blatant example of spiritual destruction caused by uncontrolled, well-funded, white 'benevolence'.

Dr Stephanie Jarrett ...

'The following lament of a young man from a large 'local' prominent Aboriginal family: I quit my job...because the issue of 'family' made it almost impossible for me to operate as a service provider. My own family made it extremely difficult. They interpreted my role as obligating me to use my position to drive them in the work car around all day on all sorts of errands and when I refused it upset them...It was even harder working for families that I didn't belong to.... The pity is I really loved my job, I really did, I really love work.'

A young Aboriginal mother explains:

There's less domestic and other violence among the Aboriginals of Viewtown than in other places I've lived before, because there's no nearby mission or outstation that they can escape to here. Here they have to try to get along with each other and with whites as there's not much escape from each other. They can't just storm into town and out again like they do in Darwin, Alice Springs and Port Augusta.'

Helen McLaughlin writes ...

'The leadership and their non-indigenous supporters fiercely protect the ethnicity of these communities by condemning any programs that they judge to be 'mainstream', and demanding that only 'culturally appropriate' programs be allowed. It is almost as though there is a policy of encouraging the preservation of culturally pure communities, no matter what the cost. It is an insidious form of paternalism no less damaging than those that existed in the past. For every positive achievement elsewhere in Australia, the circumstances of these victims can be used to prove the existence of the exact opposite. The argument is that the current problems are the results of past policies, so now programs that are based on the premise of separate development must be given the chance to repair the damage. No wonder the communities are confused.'

Professor Ken Maddock writes ...

'It would be too strong to say that Aboriginal customary law is getting a bad reputation even among those who have been seen as its natural defenders. But its real or imagined drawbacks are being exposed in a way which is new at the very time that demands are being made for its recognition as a component of a treaty, as a technique of 'reconciliation' or as a remedy for the ills of Aboriginal society. Unless some hard thinking is done about what customary law is and what its recognition would entail, any political initiative in its favour may end in tears and disillusion.'