UNDERSTANDING
ABORIGINAL CULTURE – AND OUR OWN
Copyright, Dr. A.B.
Kelly, 28th July 2000
Figure 1: Trackers Peter and Stanley at Finke 1953
There is both ignorance and
confusion about Aboriginal Culture. There are a number of reasons for this
situation. Few Australians have any contact with Aborigines. There are also the
deliberate distortions introduced by the ‘Aboriginal Industry’ and a lack of
any general understanding as to the importance of culture. There is an even
greater lack of understanding of what constitutes the essence of a culture.
I
was one of a small number of non-aborigines in the 1950’s who had the
opportunity to live and work with Aborigines who retained their tribal culture.
I was one of an even smaller group who were fully accepted by tribal
Aborigines, and invited by the elders to attend secret ceremonies, and to
accept initiation – which I declined. I set out to understand them and their
culture. At that stage I had a relatively slight understanding of Anthropology
and Philosophy. One of the first books I had bought when I left school in 1944
was Elkin’s ‘Aboriginal Men of High Degree’.
After
40 years of working life, I undertook Tertiary studies and Postgraduate
research for 14 years, seeking to put my lifetime experience into context and
to make sense of my observations in the field. I obtained my Doctorate in 1998.
In
the April 2000 issue of Quadrant, Peter Howson, a previous Minister for
Aboriginal Affairs, commented on the state of barbarism that is now apparent in
every remote Aboriginal community. Unfortunately this reversion to barbarism is
not limited to remote communities. Before anything can be done to try to repair
this situation, we have to understand its causes.
Howson
quoted a 1999 report by Boni Robertson of Griffith University, Queensland,
which stated:
“The
degree of violence and destruction in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
communities cannot be adequately described. The Task Force found evidence of
all forms of physical, psychological, cultural and structural violence being
perpetrated, and while many may consider the violence to be a characteristic of
indigenous cultures there are other factors that must be considered.
“Appalling
acts of physical brutality and sexual violence are being perpetrated within
some families and across communities to a degree previously unknown in
indigenous life. Sadly, many of the victims are women and children, young and
older people now living in a constant state of desperation and despair.
“A
majority of the informants believe that the rise in violence in Aboriginal
communities can be attributed to the so-called ‘Aboriginal Industry’. When a community has to deal with three men
raping a three year old child, who was raped by another offender ten days
later, there is a crisis of huge proportions.”
The
horrific tale told by Peter Howson comes as no surprise to me. I was privileged
to work closely with tribal Aboriginals in the Northern Territory in the
1950`s, and have maintained my interest since then. While the reversion to
savagery in Aboriginal communities, detailed by Peter Howson, has affected the
situation from 1970 on, the seeds of that decline in the Northern Territory had
already been initiated in the 1960`s.
The
problem is essentially a problem of culture. The nature and role of culture has
to be understood before we can hope to appreciate the genesis of the problem
that Howson describes. It has its origin in cultural challenges with which
Aboriginal society has not successfully coped. What follows is a diagnosis,
which we have to get right before we can make any attempt to prescribe a cure.
To
understand the extent of this problem we first have to understand the essential
nature of a culture. The roots of a culture are to be found in the ideas, which
the people of that culture take for granted, as to the meaning and purpose of
human life. (Dix 1967,7)
Every
culture is ultimately based upon a belief system, which tells the members of
that culture who and what they are, and what the world is all about. This is
the central role of a culture. Humans are made in such a way that they need a
culture to complete them. We have an innate need of a culture, and we cannot
live without one, nor without creating one. A culture provides the necessary
matrix for each individual’s development. (Midgley 1978,286) A person’s culture
is literally that person’s second nature.
In
Australia, we currently have the opportunity to observe the effects of cultural
breakdown in both the broad Australian society and in Aboriginal society.
Aboriginal society has been subjected to an inevitable attack on its cultural
foundations.
Western
societies generally, including Australian society, have also been subjected to
an attack on their cultural foundations. The attack on Aboriginal society came
from the outside; the attack on Western society comes from within. The
consequences are similar, the differences in outcomes being primarily one of
degree.
Already
in the 1950’s, Central Australian Aborigines were experiencing the effects of
the inevitable external attack on their culture from the mere presence of a
Western culture. Many young Aborigines were reluctant to learn the belief
system, which was the foundation of their culture. However, in the majority of
cases, an effective accommodation between the two cultures had been reached.
Every cattle station supported a homogenous aboriginal camp where Aborigines
were able to maintain the cultural ceremonies, which were vital to the
transmission of their cultural beliefs. The status of elders also helped
maintain internal tribal discipline. At the same time the camp provided a
source of labor for the cattle station.
The
two main disasters that overtook Aborigines in the 1960’s, were the decision to
apply Award standards to Aboriginal workers on stations, and the decision to
remove the prohibition on Aborigines drinking. The Award ensured that the
homogenous camps would be disbanded, with the Aborigines gravitating to towns
or settlements; the second disaster, Alcohol, ensured their total
demoralisation and the subsequent inability to preserve their culture.
The
inability of Aborigines to handle alcohol is similar to the inability of
Europeans to handle heroin. Their inability to handle alcohol had been
recognised everywhere there was contact between the two societies, and
prohibition was a universal consequence.
Europeans
had been culturally and physically exposed to alcohol for thousands of years,
and yet they still produce alcoholics who cannot tolerate alcohol. However in
the 1960’s we were busy abandoning many of our own cultural restraints. So why
should we continue to impose restraints on others, which earlier generations -
who were clearly not as enlightened - had found necessary?
Traditional
Aboriginal culture was not going to be able to survive indefinitely, but the
inevitable passage into Australian society should have been eased, not made
almost impossible by the dehumanising and de-culturing effects of these twin
disasters of Alcohol and Award.
The
Aboriginal belief system was already under threat from the mere presence of
non-Aborigines. The fundamental Aboriginal belief in the importance of increase
or maintenance ceremonies was challenged by the relative prosperity of other
Australians who did not participate in the ceremonies. The other fundamental
belief that all individuals were reincarnated from the land left the origin of
non-Aboriginal Australians unexplained.
Both
internal and external attacks on the culture of a society can result in
cultural breakdown. As humans need a culture to complete them, successful
attacks on their culture will reduce them as human beings. The state of nature
adverted to by Hobbs, where the life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish
and short, is the life of man without a viable culture. The obvious
consequences of cultural breakdown include increased crime, increased suicide
and increased substance abuse. We cannot understand these symptoms without
first having an understanding of the nature and role of culture in a society.
There
was a degree of truth in the old paradigm of primitive Aborigines as a proud,
innocent and noble race. In my experience, initiated Aborigines, particularly
the elders were self-confident and proud. They were convinced of the truth of
their own cultural beliefs. By way of contrast, other Australians have largely
lost sight of the cultural beliefs upon which their society was founded.
The
pride of the initiated Aborigines came from their knowing who they were, what
they were, and what their role in the world was. In contrast, other Australians
do not now enjoy the same degree of confidence, as did the tribal Aborigines,
in the belief system upon which their own culture and society was founded.
The
certainty enjoyed by earlier generations of Australians had faded over time. It
had left behind many institutions and practices that it had influenced, but the
heart of the culture, the Christian belief system which told Australians who
and what they were, and what the world was all about, was failing.
In
Western society there are potentially three main vehicles of cultural
transmission. The first, the most important, and potentially the most
effective, is the family. The second is the school, and the third is the
church. But the family often requires the cultural support of both school and
church to be fully effective.
For
various reasons the potential effectiveness of these cultural supports has been
significantly reduced. Culture has its origin in the common cultus, the ideas
which the people take for granted as to the meaning and purpose of human life.
The ideals of Christianity, which underpin Western culture, had in earlier generations
become so widely accepted, so much ‘part of the wallpaper’, that they were
eventually taken for granted.
It
was assumed that these ideals were part of our nature rather than part of our
cultural nature, so in the name of liberty, one of the ideals that Christianity
had fostered, the foundation of those ideals was removed from schooling. State
education proudly became free, universal and secular some three or four
generations ago. Most families are now into the fourth or fifth generation that
has failed to get this essential cultural support from State education.
The
categorisation of religion as unnecessary in the State education system,
treating it as an optional extra, like piano lessons or ballet, has in turn
diminished the church, and has reduced the church’s effectiveness as a cultural
support of the family. I am not suggesting that this is the only reason for the
diminution of the church’s role. The church has problems in the understanding
and communication of its message, which I have considered elsewhere.
(Rethinking Christianity, 1999)
The
lack of support for the family, in its role as the primary transmitter of
culture, places additional burdens on families. Many families do not have the
cultural resources to cope. The situation can only get worse, as the vast
majority of people get their mores; their pattern of behaviour, from what
everybody else is doing, as Kohlberg has shown. A culturally deteriorating
environment breeds further deterioration. Families everywhere are fighting the
same loosing battle.
In
the Aboriginal context the situation is far worse than in the general
Australian society, but the diminishing cultural standard of the Australian
society means that effective help is certainly not on its way.
Without
the cultural support of a credible belief system, a society will inevitably
deteriorate. This deterioration begins in the families that lack support from
church and school. The consequences in the broader Australian society are
similar to those being experienced by Aboriginals, but so far the consequences
are on a much smaller scale.
The
cultural deterioration in Aboriginal society is far worse than in the broader
society. There are a number of reasons for this. Aboriginal culture was
transmitted through and beyond the process of initiation. The foundational
myths were a male preserve. Only males were initiated. A non-initiated person
was a non-person, with no rights.
Early
contacts with Aborigines in remote areas were mainly made by European males.
Aborigines were willing to ‘lend’ their females for a consideration. The result
was a growing number of half-castes. While some early half-castes were
initiated and so incorporated into the tribal system, it was soon realised by
the elders that male half-castes presented the tribe with a problem. They were
not the product of both their Aboriginal parents, so they could not be
initiated or be fitted into the strict marriage system. In this system who a
person could marry was strictly determined by the moiety or ‘skin’ of both parents.
Once it was realized that half-casts were not the offspring of both Aboriginal
parents, they became an anomaly. These half-casts came to be despised in the
tribe. As a tribal elder expressed the position to me, ‘White fellow all-right,
black fellow all-right, yellow fellow rubbish’. Aborigines always referred to
themselves as black fellows. A retired Aboriginal Welfare Officer with whom I
had been on patrol, was recently told by a black fellow in Darwin ‘There used
to be black fellows, and there used to be white fellows, now there are black
fellows and white fellows and there are all these Bloody Aborigines!’
Besides
rejection by the tribe, half casts were usually abandoned by their white
progenitors. They were in danger of having no cultural formation of any kind,
and growing up savage. There were some notable exceptions. There were those who
were acknowledged and brought up by their white father. There were others who
were rescued, by Missionaries, Police or Welfare Officers, from the tribal
situation in which their chances of survival until adulthood were remote. These
‘rescued children’ were generally fostered to white foster parents. In either
case they had the opportunity of absorbing the culture of their white parent or
foster parents. Those who were not rescued are seldom around to comment.
One
of the symptoms of the present cultural deterioration of Australian society is
the push to denigrate earlier generations. One notable feature of this trend is
the development of an ‘Aboriginal Industry’, devoted to blaming earlier
Australians for the poor circumstances of many present day Aborigines and
half-casts.
A
recent invention of the Aboriginal Industry is the claim that half-caste
children were stolen from the tribe. In my experience, these children were
rescued from a perilous situation. Male children were not likely to be left to
survive until maturity. They were rejected as yellow fellows, and even if they
had survived they would not be initiated or allowed to marry. Female children
were not as readily killed, but they could look forward to a lifetime of use as
the sexual playthings of all and sundry.
Half-castes
generally could not be incorporated into the Aboriginal culture. Unless rescued
by whites they had no hope of incorporation into any culture. As Hill records
“Another tragedy was the fate of the half caste child, mother Aboriginal,
father Asiatic or European. Belonging to no definite race, family or tribe, it
was often enough at this time destroyed at birth or abandoned by the woman.” (1973,38)
I
only ever knew one person who was stolen as a child. He was a full blood
Aboriginal who had been stolen by the local Territory tribe from a Queensland
tribe. The Aborigines practiced infanticide in hard times, and when the rains
came they would raid other tribes for children, killing any adults who stood in
their way.
One
of the deliberate confusions introduced by the Aboriginal Industry into the
discussion of Aboriginal interests is the blurring of the distinctions between
Aborigines and pseudo-Aborigines, persons who claim to have some Aboriginal
lineage. This strategy only developed when it became financially beneficial to
be deemed Aboriginal. The real gulf between Aborigines and part-Aborigines was
immense in the recent past. Except in some rare early circumstances, those that
followed the initial contacts between white and black, half casts were
generally rejected by Aborigines. Aborigines would always relate much more
readily to whites. From a strict cultural perspective, the only people who are
culturally Aborigines are initiated full-blood people and their full-blood
family. The rest are pseudo-Aborigines.
Burnam
Burnam, the Aboriginal philosopher, writer and actor, was a lot more Aboriginal
than many who claim to speak on behalf of Aborigines. He suggested that the
authorities should listen only to full bloods on Aboriginal matters, rather
than those who claim to be Aboriginal but who have, as he put it, ‘a severe
pigmentation problem’. Burnam Burnam’s view was that the attitude of the
chromatically challenged to the real Aborigines, was that the real Aborigines
exist to perform for the tourists, while the half casts were made to look after
the money side of things. As Michael Warby has pointed out, the real Aborigines
are now being used for the patronage opportunities of the Aboriginal Industry,
and for the display of moral vanity by the politically correct. He identifies
moral vanity as the force which attracts people to causes which provide a sense
of moral worthiness but which have no regard to logic, evidence, cause and
effect or consequences. A prime example of the triumph of moral vanity over
common sense is provided by the story of Ngulupi Station under so-called Aboriginal
control, reported in the Weekend Australian of 22-23 July 2000. Aborigines are
now suffering oppression by pseudo-Aborigines on almost every Aboriginal
settlement in Australia.
Prior
to the disastrous decision to make alcohol freely available to Aborigines,
these pseudo-Aborigines had a motive to distinguish themselves from Aborigines.
If they maintained normal community standards they could seek exemption from
the prohibition on alcohol, but this exemption could be withdrawn if they
abused alcohol. This system worked to the advantage of many individuals, and of
their families. This incentive was removed when it became financially
advantageous to be deemed Aboriginal, and alcohol was available to all. The
Australian government provides financial benefits to Aborigines, real or
pseudo, beyond those available to the general community. This policy, when
linked to the policy on alcohol, is demonstrably counter-productive, but is
persisted in because of the appeal of the Aboriginal Industry to the morally vain.
Ironically, the Aboriginal Industry is also largely financed by the Australian
government.
On
many forms published by the Australian government, Universities and other
Institutions, people are asked whether they are of Aboriginal descent. I know
of people with no Aboriginal ancestry who have adopted the policy of always
answering yes to this question. These people urge all Australians to do this so
that an appropriate distinction will then have to be officially made between
the real Aborigines and pseudo-Aborigines. Burnam Burnam’s wish would then
become reality.
Let
us return to our consideration of the broad cultural question. A culture will
find its expression in the rituals and interpersonal relationships of a
society. It will also be expressed in the institutions of the society, and in
the artifacts and art of the society. These expressions are not the culture of
the society, as some tend to believe. They are all cultural artifacts. The
culture is the underlying belief system.
If
the nature of culture is to be understood in greater depth, every culture has
to be understood as a process. Every culture is a process of human
self-creation. People make cultures and cultures make people. We are made in
such a way that we need a culture to complete us. As our second nature, our
culture provides the necessary matrix for our individual development. Our
culture also determines the range of possibilities of that individual
development.
Twelve
thousand years ago Europeans, Asians and Aboriginals were all at a similar
Paleolithic stage of material development. However while other cultures moved
on to more highly developed stages, Aboriginal culture remained largely static.
Why should this be? The answer is to be found in an essential cultural
difference. The difference is in the underlying belief systems. Changes were
wrought in the belief systems of Europeans and Asians while the Aboriginal
belief system remained static.
A
surprising feature of Aboriginal culture throughout Australia is its essential
uniformity. There were no great differences in the culture throughout the
country, despite vast differences in climate and physical resources. The belief
system again accounts for this uniformity. We could contrast this uniformity
with the diversity between belief systems elsewhere over similar large areas.
The area of Australia is slightly larger than the area covered by the old Roman
Empire at its maximum extent, for example, with its diversity of peoples and
beliefs.
There
were two fundamental Aboriginal beliefs. These were the belief in the
importance of increase or maintenance ceremonies and the belief in
reincarnation. When an Aboriginal was initiated he was told who he was, which
Dreamtime ancestor he was the reincarnation of. He was told his secret name. His
main role in life was then to ritually repeat the activity of that ancestor.
The focus was therefore always on the past, on the Dreamtime, never on the
future. There was no concept of progress, or even of a future where things
could be different.
The
other fundamental belief was in the efficacy of increase or maintenance
ceremonies. A ritual relationship between man and the physical environment was
thought to maintain that environment and ensure the supply of food sources.
If
a source of food disappeared, the problem was in the performance of the
ceremony, not in the failure to conserve the source of food, much less to
attempt to conserve or propagate food. No such effort at conservation or
propagation was ever made. Such an effort would have violated their fundamental
belief. In my experience tribal Aborigines refused to be interested in the
process of growing food, despite seeing it happen. I could not even interest
them in attempting to grow pitjuri, a native tobacco of which they are
inordinately fond. Needless to say this fundamental belief that everything was
accomplished by ceremony, was contrary to the facts.
Captain
Cook, in 1770, was surprised that despite the proximity to Australia of islands
that produce coconut trees, these trees were not to be found in Australia.
Coconuts propagate by sea, and they wash onto our shores today, as far South as
Sydney Harbor. Coconuts are an ancient plant, and the tropical and subtropical
coasts of Australia would have been covered with coconut trees when the Aboriginals
first arrived. They must have all been eaten out and no new seed, which washed
up on the shore, was ever allowed to regenerate. Cook must have realised the
connection between the absence of coconuts on the mainland and the activities
of Aboriginals, as he only planted coconuts on uninhabited offshore islands,
for the survivors of shipwrecks.
The
only vegetable food that was eaten by Aborigines and is now eaten by other
Australians is the Macadamia nut. A small remnant population with extremely hard
shells survived in Queensland. They now flourish as far South as Adelaide.
There has been a report that the ancestor of the Macadamia was in Australia
before the ancestor of the eucalypt. There should have been as many varieties
of Macadamia as there are of Eucalypt – perhaps even soft-shelled Macadamias.
Like the coconut, macadamias were a victim of the belief in the importance of
ceremony rather than in action. The remnant saved can thank their hard shells,
or rather; we should be thankful that the shells were so hard.
The
Aboriginal culture was a culture doomed to eventual self-destruction as it
destroyed the physical basis of its own survival. There is evidence that the
numbers of Aborigines had been far greater in the past than they were upon the
arrival of Europeans. They were rescued from their inevitable fate by that
arrival.
As
a process of self-creation, a culture is capable of being a cumulative process.
In a progressive culture, each generation can build on the accomplishments of
the previous generation. This is not to say that beneficial progress is
inevitable. A culture can progress technically while regressing morally.
Anecdotal evidence is that in Western cultures each generation is brighter than
the previous one. This is supported by the objective need to continually lift
the norm in Intelligence Testing.
This
phenomenon appears to also occur at the family level, in the moral sphere.
Families whose members tend to criminality tend to produce criminals and
families whose members maintain high moral standards tend to produce moral
children. How much of this is nature and how much is nurture is difficult to
decide. But any Police Officer will tell you that his workload stems from a
very small minority of the population. This minority is now growing due to the
lack of cultural support to those families that most need it.
In
a static culture, such as Australian Aboriginal culture, it is difficult to see
the prospect of any progress. Change in a cultural pattern seems to depend
primarily on initiatives from within the culture, rather than from outside.
Everyone who has had contact with real Aborigines, particularly in those areas
of Australia where there was no contact with other races prior to the arrival
of Europeans, has described the Aborigines as childlike. Objective support for
this anecdotal view has been provided by a series of tests, based on the work
of Piaget, which were carried out in Hermannsburg, a remote Central Australian
Aboriginal Mission, in the 1960’s.
Piaget
is an educational psychologist who describes three distinct periods of mental
development through which children pass. The first stage lasts until about age
2, the second to age 11 and then there begins the development of the final
stage, where children begin to reason realistically about the future and to be
able to deal with abstractions. The capacity to deal with abstract matters is
the mark of mental maturity.
A
paper by M.M. de Lemos, who carried out the Hermannsburg tests, is republished
in The Psychology of Aboriginal Australians (1973) Kearney & Os. In
the group of 80 children tested by de Lemos in the 1960’s, half the children
were Aborigines and the other half were seven-eights Aboriginal, having had a
white great-grandfather. The environment of both groups was identical. The
children with a trace of European ancestry showed markedly better performances
in the tests, while the general standard of the full-blood Aborigines implied
‘an inability to form logical concepts or to apply logical operations to the
organization and systematisation of concrete data . . . affecting the level of
logical thinking in all areas.’ Later studies appear to have avoided
distinguishing between full blood and part Aboriginal subjects.
This
is not to denigrate Aborigines. There is more to a person than measured mental
development. A real Aborigine who is immersed in his own culture is in no way
inferior as a person, but he perceives the world differently.
The
remoteness of European ancestry in the Hermannsburg test group shows that it
took some time for Aborigines to realise that those, who they would later
categorise as yellow fellows, could not fit into the marriage structure of the
tribe.
A
Masters Thesis by Margaret S. Bain, published as The Aboriginal-White
Encounter (1992) concludes that Aborigines are only capable of first-degree
abstractions. These are abstractions that retain a direct link with empirical
reality. Westerners regularly recognize and utilise second-degree abstractions,
abstract concepts that have no direct link to concrete reality. Westerners
understand the world differently from Aborigines. Bain also finds that while
social processes in western society are both interactional and transactional,
utilising both first degree and second-degree abstractions, Aboriginal social
transactions are purely interactional, utilising only first-degree
abstractions.
This
analysis came too late to prevent a number of tragedies in the black-white
encounter. When whites gave food or other gifts to Aborigines in early
encounters, the Aborigines interpreted this as a duty. When the gift was not
repeated this could be interpreted as a failure to obey a law, and the white
man could be punished by spearing. A number of people speared during early
contacts were known to be well disposed and generous to Aborigines.
In
The Psychology of Aboriginal Australians, we find that Mathew had
concluded in 1910 that Aborigines ‘were unreflective and averse to both
abstract reasoning and sustained mental effort’. In 1872 Wake had suggested
that to speak ‘of intellectual phenomena in relation to the Australian
Aborigines is somewhat of a misnomer’
The explanations of these phenomena put forward at the time were all
evolutionist, the assumption being that social development could be understood
on the biological model.
I
would argue that Aboriginal mental development is better understood as a
function of their particular approach to human cultural self-creation.
Aboriginal Australians became locked into a non-progressive culture, which
limited their possibilities of mental and cultural self-development. The fact
that a small admixture of European genes has a significant effect on mental
development seems to indicate a Lamarckian development in the progeny, rather
than a Darwinian one.
These
differences between real Aborigines and pseudo-Aborigines have to be taken
seriously if Aboriginal policy is to be effective. Most Aboriginal policy is
premised on the assumption that there is no difference between Aborigines and
pseudo-Aborigines, or between Aborigines and Europeans. This is clearly not the
case. Aborigines think, understand and act differently. They are not usually
capable of the self-motivation we take for granted.
Aborigines
find any contact with the white man’s law confusing. In their culture,
punishment is immediate, physical and mandatory. There is no room for a plea in
mitigation. The rituals of our law are largely meaningless charades to them.
The approach of our law to offenders is constantly changing. Law enforcement in
2000 is different from what it was in 1950. It is more different from what it
was in the 1890’s. It is vastly different from what it was in 1788. Is it
reasonable to apply the latest fashion of such variable standards to people
whose idea of law was set in stone thousands of years ago? It makes great
business for the Aboriginal Industry, but it does nothing for the Aborigines.
The
present day situation of real Aborigines is worse than it ever was previously.
Most of the damage that has been inflicted on Aborigines was done with the best
of motives, but in ignorance of the reality. The activities of good-hearted but
ignorant do-gooders have hastened the passing of the Aborigines more rapidly in
the last half Century than ever before. The cynical Aboriginal Industry is
still hard at work. It is time for a rethink.
Aboriginal Policy
The
primary cause of the disastrously mistaken policies that are applied to
Aborigines is the failure to recognize how different they are, with the
consequent projection of Western attitudes and concepts onto them. Their
mind-set is fundamentally different from ours. Western man is oriented towards
the future. Aboriginal man is oriented to the present and the past.
As
we have seen, Aborigines think, understand and act differently from other
Australians. In scientific studies de Lemos found an absence of the ability to
form logical concepts, which affected the level of their logical thinking in
all areas. Margaret S. Bain concluded that Aborigines are only capable of
first-degree abstractions, abstractions that retain a direct link with
empirical reality. Bain also found that Aborigines only ever utilize
first-degree abstractions, those that have a direct link to concrete reality,
even in their social transactions. These studies confirmed earlier, less
rigorous observations, which had concluded that Aborigines were unreflective
and averse to abstract reasoning.
Western
thought is essentially abstract. There is a premium on clarity of thought, and
on the making of distinctions, which comprise the essence of clear thought.
However clear thinking can be impeded by faulty basic assumptions, lack of
knowledge or by the `thought control` of political correctness. All of these
factors are affecting and have affected Aboriginal policy. Aborigines have
suffered and still suffer from mistaken policies.
The
most basic distinction is the one that should be made between Aborigines and
pseudo-Aborigines. This distinction is based on the distinctiveness of
Aboriginal thought patterns, which does not apply to pseudo-Aborigines. Real Aborigines are in need of specifically tailored policies, which take
account of their cultural base. Their cultural base is essentially Paleolithic
in both material and mental terms.
That
is not to say that there should not be appropriate policies for disadvantaged
pseudo-Aborigines, but because the circumstances of Aborigines and
pseudo-Aborigines are quite different, the policies should be different. There
is no real reason for any difference between the policies that should be
applied to disadvantaged pseudo-Aborigines and those applied to any other
disadvantaged Australians. There are compelling reasons for quite different
policies to be applied to real Aborigines. Such policies must take into account
the real differences between Aborigines and other Australians.
The
projection of Western thought patterns onto Aborigines is particularly evident
in the projection of spirituality onto Aborigines and of sacredness onto
physical sites. The distinction between the sacred and the secular is an
abstract distinction that has never been drawn by Aborigines.
Aborigines
maintain a barrier of secrecy around their foundational myths, which is
extended to the memory-aids pertaining to those myths and even to the locations
where ceremonies pertaining to those myths are usually performed. It is a
Western projection to call these things sacred. There are no sacred Aboriginal
sites. There are secret Aboriginal sites – secret from the non-initiated – but
these are not necessarily fixed. I attended a secret ceremony that the Native
Affairs staff knew was immanent, and which some of them intended to attend, but
the location was switched by the Aborigines at the last minute.
It
is often claimed that a site is sacred because it has a Dreamtime story
attached to it. This is total non-sense. Every physical feature of any note had
an explanation of its existence in terms of the activities of some Dreamtime
agent, just as we explain such features in geophysical or biological terms.
Being explained by a story does not make a site sacred, otherwise there would
be no non-sacred sites.
The
projection of Western thought onto Aborigines is also evident in the supposed
spirituality of Aborigines. The concept of spirit only has meaning as the
antithesis of matter. It is an abstract concept, which is not well grasped by
many in the Western thought-world. A spiritual perception is the perception of
something that has no material existence. Aborigines had no concept of anything
that did not have a direct material connection.
Spiritual perception is most evident in moral perceptions, particularly
in the perception that some practice, which is widely accepted, is not moral. A
classical example is provided by Xenophanes assertion that the Olympian gods
could not be gods at all, because of the immoral actions that were attributed
to them. As late as Hesiod these stories had not been challenged. The
Aborigines were certainly not more spiritually advanced than were the Greeks of
Homer’s time.
It
is time we distinguished real Aborigines from pseudo-Aborigines, and treated
them differently. They have to be treated as they are and not as they are
thought to be, in some romantic projection of Rousseau’s concept of the noble
savage. We have to realize the
importance of culture. This entails the recognition that the roots of any
viable culture can only repose in ideas about the meaning and purpose of human
life that are not in conflict with empirical reality. This is a challenge we
all have to face.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bain
M.S. (1992) The Aboriginal-White Encounter
Darwin, SIL-AAIB Occasional Paper.
Dix
G. (1967) Jew and Greek
Westminster, Dacre Press
Hill
E. (1973) Kabbarli Sydney, Angus &
Robertson
Kearney
& Os (1973) The Psychology of
Aboriginal Australians
Sydney,
John Wiley & Sons.
Kelly
A.B. (1999) `Rethinking
Christianity in the Light
Of Process Thought` in Quodlibet,
July 1999.
<http://www.quodlibet.net/kelly-process.shtml>
Kelly
A.B. (1999) The Process of
the Cosmos: Philosophical
Theology and
Cosmology USA, Dissertation.com
<http://members.dingoblue.net.au/~abkelly>
Kohlberg. (1983) Moral Stages: A Current
Formulation
Levine
& Hewer and a Response
to Critics Basel, Karger
Midgley
M. (1978) Beast and Man
Sussex, Harvester Press