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The Forum > Article Comments > Cultural blindness > Comments

Cultural blindness : Comments

By Kellie Tranter, published 21/8/2009

True multiculturalism, with its fundamental tenet of common humanity, does not yet permeate all Australian society.

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http://www.antar.org.au/ is the website for ANTaR (Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation).

If you are a non-Aborigine you can join ANTaR, meet Aborigines, get their point of view first hand and join in the campaigns to lessen the inequities of Aborigines in our society. If you are an Aborigine you can join ANTaR, meet non-Aborigines, get their point of view first hand and join in the campaigns to lessen the inequities of Aborigines in our society
Posted by david f, Friday, 21 August 2009 10:12:37 AM
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Just a couple of observations.

"60,000 years of paradise ... then the white fella shows up"

Nice Noble Savage platitude, but not necessarily true. While pre-1788 life in Australia apparently had a fairly equable life expectancy, etc., I doubt it was exactly the paradise even I once imagined it to be. When I read William Buckley's memoirs - an account of pre-European contact life in Australia - I was quite shocked by the oftentimes brutality of the life Buckley witnessed. Which is not to say that Europeans were necessarily any better for a long time, but Australia clearly wasn't an unstained paradise, particularly for women and children.

"where can you buy a poster proffering the counsel of Indigenous Australians?"

I've seen a few around; they're usually the same vacuous, hippy drivel that adorns the supposed "Native American Wisdom" posters, a great many of which I suspect are either bastardised or more likely plain made up.

"we feel inferior (or ordinary) when compared to people with a culturally rich heritage"

No ... are you seriously saying that white Australian culture is culturally denuded? Dear me, I thought that sort of self loathing had set sail along with those tiresome Baby Boomer emigres sniping from their "exile" in Britain.

"White", if you must use the term, Australia has a rich cultural heritage, from our British/European roots, through the colonial experience and into modern times. That's not to say that it's the only story, but haven't we had enough of the cultural cringers and post-modernist tossers deriding "Dead White Men"?

I'm not saying that all is fine and dandy in Australia, but I'm getting rather tired of being told to wear a hairshirt and cover myself with ashes.
Posted by Clownfish, Friday, 21 August 2009 10:57:49 AM
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Kellie writes

'Unfortunately, I can't claim to have what I would regard as an adequate understanding of Aboriginal culture. I'm probably as ignorant as the average Australian.'

You are very ignorant of Aboriginal culture Kellie. I suggest before ranting against the whites you go and live in a community for awhile before mouthing off against the wicked whites.
Posted by runner, Friday, 21 August 2009 11:06:10 AM
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The article fails on a number of points.
Firstly, the author is surprised that the Alcatraz guide is upset over damage to wooden panelling in the church caused by Native Americans. The guide had every right to be upset. Although I'm sure ordinary Americans could do more to understand Native american culture, that failure in no one justifies gratuitous vandalism by the NAers. The action is more understandable given the period - at the time the damange was done, student radicals frequently vandalised public buildings to strike a blow for their cause - but it still amounts to one wrong committed to revenge another wrong. It doesn't add up to a right.
I don't agree that society as a whole is significantly more indfferent to indigenous people than they are indifferent to any other group. Should, say, white males over 50 (my demographic) be treated differently to recent asian immigrants in Melbourne? Does society really care about either group? Should indigenous people be singled out for special treatment simply because they are indigenous and here first? This would seem to imply that the recent immigrants deserve less help.
As for understanding cultures there are a lot of cultures to understand, of which indigenous culture is only one and not a very nice one. The treatment of women in indigenous culture is very poor as I understand it.
These are only a few of the problems with the article.
Posted by Curmudgeon, Friday, 21 August 2009 11:55:34 AM
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Monty moment "What have the Romans ever done for us".
Posted by Kenny, Friday, 21 August 2009 12:17:48 PM
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Clownfish, I think you might be confusing 'culture' with 'history'. Having an mildly interesting 'white anglo' Australian history doesnt mean we are rich in culture. I am a totally white non-religious Australian woman who regularly bemoans the total lack of any significant or meaningful cultural activities for 'white' Australians. Lucky I married an Asian guy who has plenty! And they are sooooo much more fun than Australia Day ie. they actually have some cultural signifigance to those who participate (rather than just having the day off to have a bbq or watch the cricket).
Posted by pmac, Friday, 21 August 2009 12:33:50 PM
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pmac, I'm not sure what your definition of "culture" is - you seem to mean "holidays" or "festivals". Culture is a lot more than just celebrating a religious festival.

When I was referring to "culture", I wasn't talking about history at all, except insofar as our history has a direct bearing on the culture that we have inherited and grown. By "culture", I meant everything from literature, art, music and mythology to ways of thinking and speaking. Everything from Shakespeare and the King James Bible, to Henry Lawson, the Lindsays, Kenneth Slessor, Sydney Nolan, Tim Winton, Brett Whiteley, Lloyd Rees, Errol Flynn, Howard Florey, Mary Gilmore, Peter Weir, George Miller, Paul Kelly, Nick Cave, Mick Thomas, David Oliphaunt, Noel Counihan ... I could go on.

"the total lack of any significant or meaningful cultural activities for 'white' Australians"

You really need to get out more and shrug off your inferiority complex. If Australia Day is the only Australian cultural activity you can think off, then you have a very blinkered idea of Australian culture.
Posted by Clownfish, Friday, 21 August 2009 2:12:34 PM
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Oh my bleeding heart .. your self loathing is embarassing.

My family came to Australia and assimilated, now we call ourselves Australians.

The aboriginals of this continent are racist and cannot get over the fact they were primitive people in a world of colonisation during the 18th century, so were many people who mostly move on.

As long as they cling to ancient hatreds and struggle with their own lives they will be on the fringes of society. They are falsely coached to believe they are some sort of mystical super class of eco genius - their own lifestyles betray them. It's just fantasy.

I wish it were better for them, sure, most of us do - but this holier than everyone else tripe does not help them nor does it endear them to the majority of Australians. People who get on with their lives and pay taxes that are then used endlessly to sooth and comfort and basically train the aboriginals that they should continue doing what they do to get more of the same.

Acceptance cuts two ways, seems we accept them, but they are encouraged not to accept us - have they accepted PM Rudd's apology yet?

The American aboriginals who yearn for days of old are similarly marginalised in their own country and like here, will die out living their last days as angry men and women, for what?
Posted by odo, Friday, 21 August 2009 2:20:57 PM
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People may well have lived here for at least 40 000 years but it is unclear what relationship the earliest Australians had with the Aborigines who were here in 1788.
Posted by benk, Friday, 21 August 2009 3:30:03 PM
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What is the source of the Aboriginal proverb?
"We are all visitors to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love ... and then we return home."
Posted by blairbar, Friday, 21 August 2009 6:14:49 PM
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The pre-contact culture of the aborigines may or may not have been brutal or completely awful.

But what was life like for the masses in "civilized" Europe. Europe was essentially a pooh-hole (its cities were stinking pooh holes) with a history of never-ending wars and religious persecution.

If life was so superior in Europe, then why did millions take the first opportunity that they could to go elsewhere, away from their stinking country and its stinking cities.

Plus Europe only became economically wealthy by the wholesale exploitation of most of the rest of the world.

Imperialism and colonialism.

Rule britannia, rule britannia, britannia rules the waves, pommys never ever shall be slaves.

But of course they enslaved and exploited everyone else, and stole their wealth.
Posted by Ho Hum, Friday, 21 August 2009 6:26:25 PM
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Ho Hum,

Did your mother not like you or something? - You need to take an anger management course.
Posted by dane, Friday, 21 August 2009 10:32:03 PM
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Aboringines are primitive people in a modern world. They lived here for thousands of years and never progressed. While the rest of the world slowly moved ahead they invented virtually nothing. When europeans arived they were still in the stone age. They hunted down and killed all the megafauna from this continent so that today we stand alone as being the only continent to lack megafauna. What was their life expectancy then? what is it now? Yet we for some reason are still blamed. what is their rate of violent crime? yet we are still to blame. what is their rate of child abuse? yet we are still to blame. They are allowed too get away with anything they want. 20 Aboringines recently killed a white Australian man with a cricket bat and it went virtually unreported in the Australian media. See the truth.
Posted by ozzie, Friday, 21 August 2009 10:37:06 PM
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Ozzie,
Aborigines lived here for tens of thousands of years and if left alone, there's no reason that they couldn't have survived in the same way for tens of thousands more.
It was more than a primitive stone-age culture with it's own laws and complex social structures. Every other major civilization during that period rose and fell, despite comparative technical advances.
Despite longer lifespans, we actually work longer hours than during medieval times and effectively have less leisure time.

We've only been here for hundreds of years and also hunted animals to extinction, dried up rivers and trashed our own environment. Living in harmony with the environment is something we are yet to learn.

Despite believing they know everything about Aboriginal history, most Australians can easily name about a dozen American Indian tribes but of the 240 plus Aboriginal tribes, can only name a few. All they know is the negative outcome of failed assimilation policies.

Indigenous populations in many other countries have suffered the same fate.

I don't expect that they would completely adapt to our culture any more than we could adapt to theirs.
Posted by wobbles, Saturday, 22 August 2009 2:18:26 AM
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Wobbles,

I'm not sure where to start. To begin with, there are now close twenty four thousand Indigenous university graduates, twenty five thousand by the end of this year, and around ten thousand currently studying. Indigenous women participate in tertiary education at a higher level than non-Indigenous men. And they would pretty much all consider themselves Indigenous. 'Adapt' ? Yes, they can.

Your comments are a hundred years out of date.

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Saturday, 22 August 2009 11:37:47 AM
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Ozzie & Wobbles, judging by my personal experiences I'd say you're both spot-on with your comments.
Posted by individual, Saturday, 22 August 2009 11:39:24 AM
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Let's face it Kellie Tranter, Not many city dwellers want the original inhabitants ( aboriginals ) living next door to them as they fear for their loss of property values, family and really its just to much hard work. And these fears are backed up with local and state planning laws in frustrating anyone who dares to make an application outside the square to supply a mix, including affordable housing. Anywhere, but not in our backyards, lump them together with the homeless, altogether somewhere else, out of sight out of mind. Even new emigrants are an exotic, except the original inhabitants. And then you have people like Noel Pearson trying to produce vibrant communities not in our backyards, being denied and frustrated by labors green left who dare not consider that "they", the educated aboriginals could lead their people and build communities without their permission.
Posted by Dallas, Saturday, 22 August 2009 3:13:11 PM
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Kellie says: “I am not so presumptuous as to assume comparability of their circumstances or attitudes”

Aw, but, why limit yourself like that Kellie, when you have shown presumptuousness in so many other areas of the article.

And done it so well! —let me count the ways.

1) You have presumed that “the… symbolism… and the plight of the American Indians [had] been lost on” the guide because s/he “lamented” the destruction of the church –could s/he not just possibly have been cognizant , sympathetic even, to the various Indian peoples causes but also wanted to preserve non-Indian icons!

2) You repeatedly presumed “ American Indians”: are one monolith group.

3) You repeatedly presumed that Australian “ Indigenous people” are one monolithic group, have the same generic feelings towards issues, have a common experience of wider society.

4) You have presumed an “ empty white-Australian cultural wardrobe” ( apparently only non-white cultures are worthy of your sensitivities)

5) You have presumed the existence of racism: underdevelopment is (your) evidence of racism . Might not there be other causes?

6) Your have presumed that only whites are capable of racism.

Kellie you are full of it… presumptuousness, that is!
If this article is an example how you THINK ( “it got me thinking ”), it makes me wonder what they are teaching at Law School, these days?
Posted by Horus, Saturday, 22 August 2009 6:08:14 PM
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Dallas writes

'Let's face it Kellie Tranter, Not many city dwellers want the original inhabitants ( aboriginals ) living next door'

Having lived close to aboriginal housing for years the reasons for not wanting them nearby has nothing to do with house prices. Try constant screaming, drunkedness, racism (much more than I've ever seen from Europeans) and violence at night and see how quickly your attitudes of this once 'peaceful' people group lived change. Try ringing police who refuse to come because family violence and disputes are a very common event and they get tired of trying to sort it out. Try living where parents are drunk and the kids run amuck from 5 years old upwards. They don't hesitate to throw rocks at cars and buses. My experiences are common for thousands of residents just wanting to live in peace and harmony. The cultural blindness comes mainly from academics who have their own version of history when it comes to white settlement. Because many of these academics themselves embellish the pagan lifestyle they are oblivious to the violence, the child abuse, the poor treatment of women that goes hand in hand with this culture. As the as change isn't expected as it is in the rest of the civilised world nothing will change. The academics will continue to blame the whites while every other people group (other than Muslims) will continue to integrate into society. I can't help to smile every time I come across someone from overseas who has come to help out the aboriginals and save them from the wicked whites. How quickly their attitude changes when faced with reality. Reality is certainly something the loathers of white European culture aren't willing to face up to. Facing reality would certainly stop the gravy train of funds from succcessive Governments in denial of truth.
Posted by runner, Saturday, 22 August 2009 7:48:24 PM
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runner, Australian aboriginals or part there of, are not the only drunks or rock throwers, be they landing on your roof or car on the freeway. I wouldn't expect Noel Pearson to be caught throwing rocks unless it was to skip stones across the water.
Posted by Dallas, Saturday, 22 August 2009 8:40:26 PM
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Dallas,
You are making a stupid trivial point. We are all aware that there are criminals from every ethnic group. However, the point being made is that some ethnic groups are FAR MORE LIKELY to be involved in criminal activity or antisocial behaviour.
Hypothetically if there was a society made up of two ethnic groups, 100 people from each group ( 200 people in total) and 99 people from the first group and 1 from the second regularly committed crimes, your trivial point would be correct. People like you would be screaming that not all crimes are made up of people from the first group. This stupid trivial argument is used so often by the politically correct and the media that I just get sick of it. How much longer do I need to put up with this propoganda.
Posted by ozzie, Saturday, 22 August 2009 10:45:25 PM
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Ozzie are you talking about specific crimes or just incarceration rates?
Is it only antisocial behaviour you are basing this extraordinary ratio on - or are you including things like embezzlement, corporate and tax fraud, serial killers, organised crime violence, drug manufacture importation and distribution, medical negligence and identity theft - or are you suggesting that criminal behaviour is not a matter of circumstance or environment, but an inherited ethnic trait?
Posted by rache, Saturday, 22 August 2009 11:39:53 PM
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Loudmouth/Joe,

Of course you are correct.

What I was clumsily trying to say was that aboriginals shouldn't be expected to completely abandon their heritage to appease those who oppose the principle of multiculturalism.

It was said in response to those in these forums that paint them all as social misfits and a criminal class.

Apologies if it came out wrong.
Posted by wobbles, Saturday, 22 August 2009 11:57:42 PM
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Sorry, Wobbles, I think I see where you are coming from. I don't think it's a matter of abandoning one's heritage, but of trying to make the best of one's circumstances over generations of hardship.

In the south/east, where people have lost their land long, long ago, except for bits and pieces, and where people have been embedded in a western/modern economy for many generations and who have access to towns and cities, people have the choice of either pursuing opportunity or 'security' on welfare. One pathway is open, the other is a blind alley, inevitably involving far greater rates of idleness, a sense of futility, turning to grog, drugs, crime, abuse - just as any people have done and would do in similar circumstances.

The pathway to opportunity is full of risks and demands effort. But in the long run, it is, and will always be, the only pathway to a decent life, and a decent future for one's kids. That's what many Indigenous people have chosen to do, in the face of racism from Left and Right, and against all the temptations of a deceptively comfortable lifelong welfare system. And they will prevail.

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Sunday, 23 August 2009 1:31:29 AM
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HoHum,

"The pre-contact culture of the aborigines may or may not have been brutal or completely awful"

Actually, I said neither. What I was did say was that it was not the unadulterated Rousseau-esque paradise too many white apologists try and make it out to be.

"If life was so superior in Europe".

Again, I did not say it was. In fact I said explicitly that they were probably about equal in simple terms of life expectancy; however, it is also insulting to pretend that Enlightenment Europe was solely a squalid sinkhole.

"Imperialism and colonialism. "

Why is it that anglo-european apologists seem to think that empire and conquest was purely an invention of wicked whites, foisted upon previously carefree brown people? Many of the cultures conquered by European Imperialist powers had been going about exactly the same business, to the best of their abilities. In many cases, the Europeans were not subjugating previously free peoples, but merely displacing a previous empire, for instance, the Mughals in India. In cases such as the Aztecs, for all their faults the Spaniards were veritable saints when compared to the murderously religious savagery of the Aztecs.

Or consider the genocide perpetrated on the peaceful Moriori by the Maori.

Clearly, Imperialism is not merely the White Man's Burden.

Oh, and some other folk need to lighten up, too. Just because I was defending Anglo-Australian culture, doesn't mean that I'm trashing Aboriginal Australian culture.
Posted by Clownfish, Sunday, 23 August 2009 9:59:32 PM
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The aborigional culture have been here before white man , look at the stolen generation , also the forgotten australians and child migrants , these are victims who were abused ,raped , tortured ,made slaves , for the goverment of australia , and the goverment of australia can get away with what was done to these victims , so where is the justice for us victims who had these terrible atrosities done to us when we were children in these states and territories of australias, run ophanages , girls homes, boys homes, state ward homes , state church run homes, foster homes , out of home care , and many more institutions in australia , the stolen generation got an apology from mr rudd but he will not acknowledge the forgotten australians or the child migrants who were abused the same way as the stolen generation , so how diffrent are we to those who mr rudd apoligized to , as we are still fighting for our apology of which there are still aboriginals who are the forgotten australians so why are we diffrent to the stolen generation , look at the media report on s.b.s 25th june this year you will see aboriginies who are the forgotten australians ,
Posted by huffnpuff, Monday, 24 August 2009 10:58:25 AM
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Pmac

So you're a “white non-religious Australian woman” unhappy at the “total lack of any significant or meaningful cultural activities for 'white' Australians".

Has it occurred to you that we 'white Australians' are heirs to what WAS a very rich culture coming out of our various European origins - but we’ve actively DE-cultured ourselves?

We’ve turned our backs on

1. religion - the Christian underpinnings of Western civilization and cultural practice, including its teachings about morality derived from a source outside of just ourselves, and

2. the extended family, and community generally - as we've let ourselves be sucked into a one-dimensional, economic, view of the human person, and have pursued many manifestations of atomistic individualism.

When you talk about Asian and other cultures which you see as "rich", ask yourself what makes them so. Is it not sense of community, of personal obligations at least as much as personal rights?

John Carroll (Sociology, La Trobe University) in his excellent book "The Wreck of Western Culture: Humanism revisited" (Scribe, Melbourne 2004) writes cogently of this:

"Humanism on its own is not a culture, and the attempts to make of it more than it was, opened the way for demonic forces that only real cultures can check. .... In the nineteenth century, chaos manifested in … nihilism. The last places to stand, the rocks of Christian salvation and aristocratic honour, had splintered, leaving nothing under the feet. … The new reality was Nietzsche’s ‘death of God’ and [the view of] Dostoyevsky’s [characters Raskolnikov and Ivan Karamazov, that] ‘everything is permitted’.

"[After about 1900] there are three quite distinct phases to the humanist going under: … active demolition of the old cultures, the period of the mockers; recognition of nihilism, producing resistance, a fight-back; then acceptance of nihilism."

A reviewer of Carroll's book points out shrewdly that "humanism, or humanistic rationalism, has robbed Western culture of the deep insights about humanity provided by faith. ... How can a culture survive when its guts have been torn out?"
Posted by Glorfindel, Thursday, 27 August 2009 7:05:27 PM
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