Assimilation might be an effective way of defeating racism, but I'd hesitate to suggest any social engineerinhg programme. My beef is with the whiners who forget that everyone born in Australia is indigenous and lecture "white" Australians about the gap without committing to any suggestions of what should be done, and by whom, to close it.

Hi Jules,

'Assimilation' has had a varied past. Whites have tended to use the passive version - ' to be 'assimilated' - but Aboriginal people have used - and lived - the active version - to exercise the same rights as other people have. When Aboriginal leaders like William Cooper used the term in the thirties, I think they meant 'equal rights in every way', which sounds pretty good to me.

When State governments were crafting their Aborigines Acts around 1940, they had to deal with the problem that, if people moved away from 'Missions', (which they could do anyway), they no longer had rights to the benefits of living on the 'Mission' such as rations, low or no rent, various forms of assistance: in other words, they couldn't double-dip. I guess you can't have it both ways, always.

For a long time, I thought that the rather desultory push for 'assimilation' by governments was countered by clauses in their various Acts which made it an offense for white men to consort with Aboriginal women - I took this to mean that any form of inter-marriage was banned - that actual policy was in the direction of segregation.

But no: from examples ever since the forties, it is clear that governments were opposed to casual liaisons, and more than happy, about actual inter-marriage. Even in the fifties, many, if not most, marriages - and long-term de facto relationships - of urbanising Aboriginal people were with non-Aboriginal people, usually working-class, and very often non-Anglo: Poles, Greeks, Italians, Maltese, Fijian Indians, Chinese, 'Malays', i.e. Indonesians.

In other words, as long as people conducted themselves in an approved manner, they could do what they liked, live and work where they liked, and marry who they liked.

In other words, people have always exercised whatever rights they had and usually more besides, 'pushing the envelope'. The one thing you can say about Aboriginal people is that they have almost never been passive, puppets, or even victims. They have been active agents in their own lives. Wonderful. May they continue to be so.

Joe

In the 1980s, a book on the history of Busselton was published. The town was originally called Vasse and was settled by Europeans in 1832. The book included details of the 'white' families which also had 'black' offspring, including the Bussell family after whom the town was renamed. Some of these old families were shocked to discover they had Aboriginal relatives but those relatives had for the most part been happily living for decades in the community as ordinary citizens, being neither critical of their white ancestors nor praising of their black ancestors. The book was an eye opener for me as it showed how many people of Aboriginal descent I knew. After the book's publication, nothing changed in the way community members interacted with each other - life went on as normal.

Hi Bernie,

Rebe Taylor wrote something similar - "Unearthed: Aboriginal Tasmanians Of Kangaroo Island" - about many of the Aboriginal families on Kangaroo Island, their land leases, inter-marriage with non-Aboriginal neighbours, etc. I'll bet that many towns right across Australia could have similar histories written about them, if Aboriginal researchers committed themselves to it.

Now that would be Indigenous research that we could all get something out of.

Cheers,

Joe