This essay discusses White’s statement from the article: “Inventing Australia Revisited” by considering nation and national identity, relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians and gender relations.
In the first part, this essay indicates how White refutes traditional claims about the nation and national identity, and then asserts nation and national identity are social and cultural products. There are three typical claims about the nation and national identity. First, it assumes that all members of the nation share certain characteristics. Then, these characteristics make the nation distinctive. Finally, they become “essential” to define the nation and its people (Carter 19). Nevertheless, Richard White argues there is
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Inventing Australia examined the ways in which Australia was imagined and invented over time, questioning the monolithic nation and the singular national identity seen as a pre-existent reality (White, Revisited 13). That is, it emphasises that how the term ‘Australia’ named by those specific institutional, political and geographical meanings is a historical contingency and product (16). For example, the image of Australia shifted from “a working-class man’s paradise” in the 19th century to “a suburban nation” in the 1950s (Carter 8). In the process of naming, the competitive struggle of power and identity should be identified to explain why some ideas of Australia would surpass others and become a representative of the nation and the national identity in different period of time. Nevertheless, to understand the history of Australia and Australian society completely, it is not enough to focus only on the constructed national history and national identity serving the interest of some specific groups of …show more content…
Inventing Australia only revealed that there are many versions of national identity and ways to imagine Australia. It ignored that national identity is simply one of multiple identities within Australia competing with each other, and as a social being, each individual could have multiple identities (White 18-19). This perspective corresponds to social history approaches which have been developed since the 1970s, focusing on the lives and identities of ordinary people which had been neglected in the singular national history—portraying great white men. Therefore, in the next part, this essay discusses how these new forms of history dealing with Aboriginal-settlers relations and gender relations challenge the narrative of Australian story and try to bring multiple identities into it.
First, the historical views of dealing with Aboriginal-settlers relations have experienced major shifts and provoked several debates. According to Attwood, Australia, as a settler society is inevitably prone to a controversy over the relationship between Indigenous Australian and non-Indigenous Australian which are divided by race (Attwood 1). The history of Aboriginal Australia shifted from silence and peace to dispossession and
The 2014 Walkley Award winning documentary, "Cronulla Riots: the day that shocked the nation" reveals to us a whole new side of Aussie culture. No more she’ll be right, no more fair go and sadly no more fair dinkum. The doco proved to all of us (or is it just me?) that the Australian identity isn’t really what we believe it to be. After viewing this documentary
Then it was the outback pioneer, battling the bush to build a new nation prior to the First World War. The Anzac legend – bold and ferocious males, unwilling to bow to military discipline, never flinched in battle defined the evolution of the image of Australian masculinity. Professor Manning Clark in his opus A History of Australia imaged the bronzed and noble Anzac as males involved in sex orgies, having violent scuffles, and in Egypt burned belongings of local people, brawled, got drunk and rioted and patronised brothels. Hero and larrikin, ratbag and rebel, the Anzacs ... ...
Maestro by Peter Goldsworthy provides an insight into 1960s/70s Australia and helps reinforce common conceptions about Australian culture. One common conception Goldsworthy reinforces in this text is Australia’s increasing acceptance of multiculturalism. Maestro, set in the 1960s to 1970s, shows Australians growing more accepting and tolerant of other cultures. This shift in perspective was occurring near the end of the White Australia/Assimilation Policy, which was phased out in the late 1970s/early 1980s. An example of this shifted perspective in Maestro is Paul’s father’s opinion about living in Darwin:
Key events in Aboriginal Australian history stem from the time Australia was first discovered in 1788. For instance, when Federation came into existence in 1901, there was a prevailing belief held by non Aboriginal Australians that the Aborigines were a dying race (Nichol, 2005:259) which resulted in the Indigenous people being excluded from the constitution except for two mentions – Section 127 excluded Aborigines from the census and Section 51, part 26, which gave power over Aborigines to the States rather than to the Federal Government. Aboriginal people were officially excluded from the vote, public service, the Armed Forces and pensions. The White Australia mentality/policy Australia as “White” and unfortunately this policy was not abolished until 1972. REFERENCE
English literature have been used to express the experiences and history of Australia. In Dorothy Mackellar’s “My Australia” poem, signifies the beauties and the terrors of the luck country. However, Migrants experience a different terror, as conveyed by Ania Walwicz as the “big, ugly” side of Australians - facing the cruel racism of the White Australian Policy. In Australia’s history, Migrants have been treated with alienation and physical discrimination which distant them from Australia’s community. Migrants not only faces the terrors of the land but also the racism enforced by Australia’s laws.
Indigenous People. In evaluating the Legal System’s response to Indigenous People and it’s achieving of justice, an outline of the history of Indigenous Australians - before and during settlement - as well as their status in Australian society today must be made. The dispossession of their land and culture has deprived Indigenous People of economic revenue that the land would have provided if not colonised, as well as their ... ... middle of paper ... ...
Australia is a relatively young country; only becoming a unified nation in 1901 (Commonwealth of Australia, 2012). A young country is no different from a young person; identity is an issue. Questions of who am I and where do I fit in the world are asked, and unfortunately not often answered until a tragedy occurs. National identity is a sense of a nation and its people as a connected whole. This feeling of cohesiveness can be shaped by many events in a nation’s history but none more so than war. War is a stressful, traumatic affair that changes forever, not only the people that go to it but the nation as a whole. Many consider the Great War Australia’s tragedy where we became a nation (Bollard, 2013) with our own modern identity.
Reynolds, H. (1976). The Other Side of The Frontier: Aboriginal resistance to the European invasion of Australia. Queensland, Australia: James Cook University
...rial covered in the unit Aboriginal People that I have been studying at the University of Notre Dame Fremantle, Aboriginal people have had a long history of being subjected to dispossession and discriminatory acts that has been keep quite for too long. By standing together we are far more likely to achieve long lasting positive outcomes and a better future for all Australians.
Major settlements occurred after the nineteenth century. The British had quickly out-numbered the Aboriginal community, leaving them powerless to the changes or the invasion. The belief systems of the Europeans overpowered the aboriginal’s way of life, pressuring them to conform to the...
In 1788 when the European settlers “colonised” Australia, the Australian land was known as “terra nullius” which means “land belonging to no-one”. This decision set the stage for the problems and disadvantages faced by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people for 216 years. The protection policy was meant to disperse tribes and force Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people off their traditional land so the “white Australian’s” could have more control. The protection policy enforced by the British colonies drove the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander onto reserves.
Within Australia, beginning from approximately the time of European settlement to late 1969, the Aboriginal population of Australia experienced the detrimental effects of the stolen generation. A majority of the abducted children were ’half-castes’, in which they had one white parent and the other of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent. Following the government policies, the European police and government continued the assimilation of Aboriginal children into ‘white’ society. Oblivious to the destruction and devastation they were causing, the British had believed that they were doing this for “their [Aborigines] own good”, that they were “protecting” them as their families and culture were deemed unfit to raise them. These beliefs caused ...
Since the time of federation the Aboriginal people have been fighting for their rights through protests, strikes and the notorious ‘day of mourning’. However, over the last century the Australian federal government has generated policies which manage and restrained that of the Aboriginal people’s rights, citizenships and general protection. The Australian government policy that has had the most significant impact on indigenous Australians is the assimilation policy. The reasons behind this include the influences that the stolen generation has had on the indigenous Australians, their relegated rights and their entitlement to vote and the impact that the policy has had on the indigenous people of Australia.
Samuel Wagan Watson presents an Aboriginal perspective on Australian identity, exploring the marginalization of Aboriginal culture. Watson associates
Since the British settled in Australia, Indigenous Australians have had cultural conflict. The Europeans believed that Aboriginal people were lower than the settlers and that their culture was more primitive to the culture of the British settlers. An example of this is how the Aboriginal people had a very strong spiritual connection to the land. Land could not be owned by a single person but had to be looked after by all of the community. When British settlers saw that the land had no fences they took the land for themselves to be used for farming. Many Aboriginals were losing their land. It made it worse when the Aboriginal believed that to make it fair the Europeans shared their products made from the farm. The Aboriginals then took food from the farm without consulting the British which resulted in violent conflicts between the two. Over time the government began to give the Aboriginals more rights, although still not many. They were given a certain amount of land but were not allowed to leave without permission.