Indigenous Perspective

s in the study of History

Jess Kortum and Jon Davies

Problems and Opportunities

Since 1788 most history taught in our schools has been from a Eurocentric point of view.

Through including Indigenous perspectives, there is a hope to redress the balance.

Should consider both post and pre-contact experience of Indigenous Australians

Should be included in all subjects, but perhaps History is the most suitable

Problems and Opportunities

Should include perspectives of Indigenous people today, not necessarily museum model

Include local communities and local indigenous knowledge, (research on local indigenous Histories: student as historian)

Work out what you and the students already know Doesn’t have to be confined to one unit, can be

embedded within many topics, Indigenous soldiers during WW1

Need to be ready to confront bias and latent racism

Unit 4: Australian HistoryArea of Study 2: Debating Australia's future 1960–2000

Outcome 2

Evaluate the extent to which changing attitudes are evident in Australian’s reactions to significant social and political issues. Examination of changing attitudes at TWO significant points in time, in the context of:

Attitudes to Indigenous rights (The 1967 Referendum and The 1972 Tent Embassy in Canberra)

http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/vce/studies/history/history-sd.pdf

Key Knowledge Key Skills

range of attitudes at each point in time; the connections between the two significant points in time

explain the historical issues covered in the key knowledge; apply historical concepts related to the period (1960–2000); analyse and evaluate written and historical evidence; synthesise material and evidence to draw conclusions; analyse the way that the experience of the period (1960–2000) has been interpreted and understood over time by historians and other commentators

Unit 2: Koorie History

Area of study 3: The Struggle for rights, 1967 Referendum Outcome 3Explanation of a campaign or action for Koorie rights

http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/vce/studies/history/history-sd.pdf

Key Knowledge Key Skills

• an issue or action from the period 1930 to 1970;

• locate relevant sources;

• evaluate visual, oral and written evidence;

• synthesise evidence to draw conclusions;

• examine a recent struggle through an oral response, written argument or multimedia presentation.

VELS

The 1967 Referendum Sample Unit - Level 6

The unit links primarily to the domains of:

History (Level 6) Civics and Citizenship (Levels 5 and 6) Thinking Processes (Levels 5 and 6) Communication (Levels 5 and 6).

http://vels.vcaa.vic.edu.au/support/crosscurricular/indigenous_perspectives.html

http://www.library.uq.edu.au/fryer/1967_referendum/images/MayDay1966_500x300.jpg

Source: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/awaye/features/1967referendum/fb_image3.jpg

Faith Bandler- an IndigenousPerspective

Co-founded the Aboriginal Australian Fellowship in 1956 From 1957, she was instrumental in the Federal Council for

the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders’ campaign for a national referendum to change the Constitution.

http://dl.screenaustralia.gov.au/module/1025/

Class Discussion

After viewing the video about Faith Bandler – 1967 Referendum, discuss the following:

1) Describe the way in which Aboriginals were controlled and governed in Australia immediately before the 1967 referendum.

2) Comment on the situation Aboriginals had to live with if they crossed state borders. How did this compare with the situation for newly arrived immigrants to Australia?

3) Define the way(s) in which the 1967 referendum could possibly alter the status and the lives of Aboriginal people.

Primary Source Material 4 sources- letter to the Prime Minister, newspaper articles, petition Jigsaw activity

When analysing your source,

consider the following:

1) What perspective/s are

being represented or

considered in your source?

2) How does this source influence understanding of the significance of the 1967 referendum?

40 years on- ABC news report

http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2007/s1932612.htm

Secondary Sources

Noticeable lack of indigenous voices in the secondary sources, failure of our universities?

Most historical research on the referendum is written by non-indigenous Australians, and this is contradictory to the need for us to include indigenous voices in the classroom.

Secondary Sources

Secondary sources chosen try to show the many different experiences of Indigenous Australians and the failure of the referendum to consider these differences.

Before the students start to read secondary sources. Brainstorm what they know about the referendum

Stuart MacintyreStuart Macintyre

A Concise History of Australia

By far the most dramatic challenge came from the Aboriginal movement, and at the very moment when government belatedly began to give effect to its policy of assimilation. In 1959 the Commonwealth extended welfare benefits to all but “nomadic or primitive” Aborigines. In 1962 it provided the right to vote. In 1965 the Arbitration Court awarded equal pay for Aboriginal pastoral workers. In 1967 a national referendum, supported by all major and carried by an overwhelming majority, gave the Commonwealth power to legislate for Aborigines.

The last of the measures acted as a watershed. The earlier changes were designed to remove the formal disadvantages that prevented Aborigines from becoming free and equal citizens of Australia; this one, while commonly regarded then and now as conferring citizenship, singled them out as special category of people for whom the Commonwealth could legislate over the discriminatory arrangements of more conservative States. The coalition government failed to do so. Rather it resisted the growing demands of Aborigines for recognition of their claims for self-determination. Just as the Commonwealth had rejected the land claim of the Gurindji in Central Australia in 1967, so it opposed a court action brought in 1968 by the Yolngu people of Arnhem Land who opposed a mining project on their land. Back in 1963 the Commonwealth had dismissed their bark petition against the excision of this land. Now it condemned the legal claim as “frivolous and vexatious

Bain Attwood & Andrew Markus

The 1967 Referendum: Or when Aborigines didn’t get the vote!

Up until the late 1960’s – and in many sections of Australian society well beyond these years—it was still commonly held that Aboriginal people were inferior and their culture incompatible with the “modern world”.

The legislative changes in this period were premised not upon a re-evaluation of the worth of Aboriginal culture but on a grudging acceptance of the view that a path to the superior world of white Australia should be created for Aboriginal people willing to abandon their own way of life. It was believed that entry into the white world, through a process of assimilation, would only be possible for a minority of Aboriginal people, for at least for many years. Such problems as were recognised in the relationship between the two peoples were explained solely in the terms of Aboriginal deficiencies; discrimination and prejudice were seen as the rational response of white Australians when brought into contact with an inferior people.

It is in this context that the discourse of citizenship rights came into existence. It was not concerned with formal admission to Australian Citizenship – conferred automatically on all born in Australia under the Nationality and Citizenship Act of 1948 - but about equality before the law. And this status of equality was premised upon the abandonment of Aboriginal culture.

Richard BroomeBreaking down the barriers

The early 1960’s witnessed new legislation in all the states, which removed most of the outstanding restrictions on Aborigines and granted them full citizenship rights. In 1967, 89 per cent of all Australians of voting age agreed to the referendum proposals that Aborigines should be included in the census count and the federal government should be give power to legislate for Aborigines. This overwhelming vote for Aboriginal citizenship and federal control led to the creation of the Department of Aboriginal Affairs. By the end of the 1960s few restrictions remained, although reserve dwellers in the Northern Territory and especially Queensland were still controlled by special acts.

While the Queensland reserves usually contained the best housing and health facilities, and its legislation provided the best employment protection provisions, the Queensland Aboriginal Acts generally have been the most restrictive and the Queensland administrators the most paternalistic and bureaucratic. Everything done to and for Aborigines was the most extreme in Queensland. By 1960 almost half of all Aboriginal Queenslanders were still controlled by special acts. Besides the loss of civil rights already described elsewhere, reserve dwellers in Queensland were subject to the petty tyranny of superintendents which approached the system of control found in gaols or mental asylums .

Geoffrey BlaineyA Shorter History of Australia

Most Aborigines now had a better bargaining position. Churches which had run mission stations encouraged them and offered to move out. Forceful black folk began to speak up, some voicing grievances that should have long been remedied and others claiming land: in 1967 the Gurindji people occupied part of Wave Hill pastoral station in the Northern Territory. Equal pay was awarded by the Commonwealth Arbitration Commission, a decision which increased the pride but diminished the well being of Aboriginal Stockman.

It is widely believe that before 1967, when a federal referendum was passed by a big majority of Australians, Aborigines were not allowed to vote. In fact, the great majority already held the right to vote, The Aboriginal right to vote had differed from state to state. As a generalisation a vote had usually been allowed to a person who was less than half Aboriginal in ancestry and lived near a town in the southern half of Australia but, as recently as 1949, few full-Aboriginal people had the vote. Thousands of Aborigines, alas, did not have voting rights in the Northern Territory until 1962. It was proud day when an Aborigine, Neville Bonner of Queensland, became a senator in 1971, but any of his kinsfolk continued to resent the fact that they had been second-class citizens for so long, and that their culture had been decried.

Historical Interpretations

Conservative

Referendum as reassuring reminder of Australia’s equality, “one people, one nation”

Liberal

Referendum has a redemptive role, when racist past was purged

Revisionist

Referendum neither a watershed or turning point, still exists a failure to acknowledge special difference

Or, a bit of all three!!!!

Activities

Split Students into groups, each group reads a source and identifies which interpretation it fits into.

Students swap groups and discuss their perspective with others

Can be done as a Think, Pair, Share activity

Activities

Timeline of attitudes to Indigenous Australians

In groups Use the information in the secondary sources

to map a timeline of the experiences of Indigenous Australians and their rights.

Timeline to be mapped on the board. Appeals to visual learners

Activities

3 Level Questioning Using any of the secondary sources, in this case Broome Questions What percentage of Australians voted yes in the

referendum? What was the attitude to indigenous Australians in

Queensland in the 1960’s? How does the experience of Indigenous Australians

differ to what you would expect to be your rights as an Australian Citizen?

Essay/Outcome:

'The 1967 referendum made little difference to the reality of life for Aboriginal people.'To what extent do you agree with this assessment of the 1967 referendum?

References Henry Reynolds and Bruce Dennett, The Aborigines, Melbourne :

Oxford University Press, 2002. Bain Attwood and Andrew Markus , The 1967 referendum, or, When

Aborigines didn't get the vote, Canberra : Aboriginal Studies Press, 1997.

Stuart Macintyre, A concise history of Australia, Melbourne, Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Richard Broome, Aboriginal Australians : black responses to white dominance, 1788-1994, Published St Leonards, N.S.W. : Allen & Unwin, 1994.

Anna Clark, History’s Children: The History Wars in the Classroom, UNSW Press, 2008