STOPPING THE ABORIGINAL GENOCIDE

Dr. A.B. Kelly, September 19, 2005

Prior to the changes to Aboriginal Policy in the 1960’s most Northern Territory Aborigines were able to preserve their familiar culture, and thus were able to preserve their lives. They were generally both happy and healthy because their culture made their lives meaningful. It told them who they were, what they were, and what the world was all about. No culture can do more than that.

In the 1960’s the prohibition of the supply of alcohol to Aborigines was removed, and Aboriginal workers on Cattle Stations were made eligible for Award wages. The consequential disbandment of the Cattle Station camps, which had made it possible for the Aboriginal culture in the bush to be preserved, forced the Aborigines into Towns where alcohol was readily available and “sit-down” money was also available. These changes could only undermine the Aboriginal culture.

If the purpose of the changes to Aboriginal Policy had been overtly Genocidal they could not have been more effective. But the Genocidal effects of these policies were concealed by the failure to distinguish part-Aborigines from full-blood Aborigines. This strategy enables Governments to claim that the Aboriginal population is increasing while the population of full-blood Aborigines is decreasing as a direct result of the attack on their culture. One can only hope that this was not the real purpose behind the 1960’s policy changes.

There is perhaps little doubt that the changes made to Aboriginal policy in the 1960’s were made from the best of motives but it appears that they were made by people who had no direct knowledge of Aborigines, and no adequate understanding of the Aborigines’ particular cultural and cognitive context.

This lack of knowledge is clear from the underlying assumption in the policies that were adopted in the 1960’s. The policies all assumed that Aborigines were not significantly different from other Australians. The people responsible for the changes probably did not realise that their reforms were effectively Genocidal. If the present policies are maintained they will inevitably lead to the extinction of full-blood Aborigines.

The previous protectionist policies were made by people who enjoyed direct knowledge of Aborigines. Those people were clearly aware that Aborigines were different from other Australians. They recognised that this difference warranted the protection of Aborigines, even though they did not understand why the Aborigines were so different.

I was struck by the significant differences between Aborigines and other Australians when I worked closely with Aborigines in the 1950’s. I subsequently addressed the origin of this difference in my Doctoral Thesis, which traced the cognitive development of humans since the evolution of Homo sapiens.

My research made it clear that humans do not continue to evolve. They develop their cognitive ability within and through their cultures. Individually, humans develop themselves cognitively by coping with the challenges that they meet, particularly by having to cope with intellectual challenges. One of the most significant intellectual challenges that humans face appears to be the challenge to an existing belief-system. Individual human cognitive development is a response to intellectual challenges. This cognitive development is ultimately able to be reflected in cultural development.

Cultures are potentially the most effective processes of human development, as humans make cultures and cultures, to a significant extent, make the humans of those cultures.

HUMAN CULTURAL AND COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

Homo sapiens evolved as a new species some 160,000 years ago. Our species has not changed physically in any significant way since that time, but it has changed cognitively, to various degrees in different cultures. Cognitive developments are not reflected in human morphology. Ancient cognitive changes can only be indicated by physical evidence of changes in culture, including changes in behaviour and activities.

The first physical evidence of such a cognitive development is the Palaeolithic Revolution of some 40,000 years ago. This revolution was characterized by the development of new tool-making technology, the use of new materials for tools, and the use of tools to make tools. These changes did not occur in Australia, where Aborigines were isolated from these and other developments.

Most other human cultures continued to advance cognitively, as evidenced by the eventual development of various civilisations. The first recorded development of a specifically cognitive change in the ancient world is to be found in the emergence of the Pre-Socratic Philosophers around the Sixth Century BC.

The Pre-Socratics initially sought to provide rational explanations of the world, when belief in the myths of the Olympian Pantheon was failing. The development of modern Science, reflecting a further cognitive development in the West, followed closely on the challenge to existing beliefs posed by the Reformation.

People in Europe and Asia have had to cope with many challenges, including foreign invasions and changing technologies. These events forced them to develop both technically and cognitively. The isolation of Australia sheltered Aborigines from such events.

If I could suggest an analogy between humans and computers, we could envisage two identical modern computers, with one running the original Microsoft Word Programme and the other running the latest, more sophisticated version of the Programme. The possible outputs from the two computers would necessarily vary. Even though the hardware would be identical, the different software would make a significant difference.

While new software has to be inserted into computers, humans appear to make their own more sophisticated programmes and transmit them genetically. This is an inference to be drawn from a paper by M.M. de Lemos, republished in “The Psychology of Aboriginal Australians” (1973) Kearney & Os.

A series of tests, based on the work of Piaget, was carried out by de Lemos in the 1960’s at Hermannsburg, a Central Australian Aboriginal Mission. In the group of 80 children tested half were Aborigines and the other half were seven-eights Aboriginal, each having one white great-grandfather. The tribal and Mission environment of both groups was identical.

The children with a trace of European ancestry showed markedly better performance in the tests. De Lemos found the general standard of the full-blood Aboriginal children 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.”

A Masters Thesis by Margaret S. Bain, published as “The Aboriginal-White Encounter” (1992) is based on her research in the Finke district. It concluded that Aborigines are only capable of first-degree abstractions, those that retain a direct link with empirical reality. Bain also finds that while social processes in Western cultures are both interactional and transactional, making use of both first degree and second-degree abstractions, Aboriginal social actions are purely interactional, making use only of first-degree abstractions. These are all one-way actions, as prescribed by tribal law.

As long ago as 1910 Mathew had concluded in “The Psychology of Aboriginal Australians”, that Aborigines: “were unreflective and averse to both abstract reasoning and sustained mental effort”. The explanations put forward at that time were all evolutionist, the assumption being that social development could be understood on the biological model. It can not.

It is clear that the cognitive development of Aborigines is less than that of part-Aborigines and other Australians. It appears reasonable to attribute this deficiency to the absence of alternative world-views either within, or impinging upon, the Aboriginal culture. The absence of significant Aboriginal cognitive development is essentially a cultural phenomenon. The Aborigines had a culture that provided a complete explanation of the world. Knowledge of the Dreamtime stories and of the tasks of practical living was passed on, but there was never any challenge to the Dreamtime explanations of the world, and no motive to increase the sum of practical knowledge.

Aborigines have no history of being confronted with the type of intellectual challenges that stimulate cognitive development. When they were confronted with the advanced Western Scientific culture of 1788 A.D. the challenge to their belief-system, and to their world-view, was too great to be comprehended by them. It still is.

The Aboriginal belief-system appears not to have changed since they first entered Australia. This is suggested by the uniformity of their belief in the creative activities of the Dreamtime Ancestors. This belief is remarkably uniform throughout the Continent, despite the fact that their language had broken up into hundreds of different dialects.

The Aborigines appear to have entered Australia with a complete explanation of the world and of their part in it. Aboriginal Australians were locked into a static world-view which was remarkably uniform throughout the continent. This complete world-view limited the possibility of further cognitive and cultural self-development.

The fact that a small admixture of European genes has a significant effect on cognitive development, as De Lemos found, seems to indicate a Lamarckian form of cognitive development in societies that had to cope with a series of challenges to existing world-views. The evidence of the “Flynn Effect”, which shows a regular generational increase in I.Q. in problem-solving societies, particularly in the problem-solving aspect of the I.Q. Tests, supports the view that cognitive development is passed on genetically. There appears to be no other explanation of De Lemos’ finding that children with a trace of European ancestry showed markedly better performance in the tests of cognitive development.

The cognitive differences between Aborigines and part-Aborigines have to be taken seriously if Aboriginal policy is to be effective. Present Aboriginal policy is premised on the assumption that there is no difference between Aborigines and part-Aborigines, or between Aborigines and Europeans. This is clearly not the case. Aborigines think, understand and act differently from Westerners and part-Aborigines.

As a result of their isolation Aborigines are still a Palaeolithic people with Palaeolithic minds. Through no fault of their own they are not capable of adapting to our Twenty-first Century environment. Exposing them directly to that environment without adequate protection condemns them to death. The cultural, cognitive and intellectual deficit of some 60,000 years cannot be made up in any one lifetime. The present policies are fundamentally Genocidal.

In a recent address to the Bennelong Society, Warren Mundine maintained that Aboriginal people must adapt to the modern capitalist environment, or find themselves like a species that is unable to compete in a harsh world. (The Australian, September 10-11 2005).

Mr Mundine’s address illustrates the failure to appreciate the genesis of the Aboriginal problem. It embodies the clear assumption that Aborigines are no different from other Australians, except for the colour of their skins.

This assumption underlies all the changes that have been made to Aboriginal Policy since the 1960’s, with disastrous results. The social situation of Aborigines has constantly deteriorated during the last 40 years, with the epidemic of petrol sniffing by Aboriginal children simply being the most recent symptom of this deterioration.

There are two distinct cultures in Australia, the Australian culture and the Aboriginal culture. They are significantly different. The vast majority of part-Aborigines are members of the Australian culture, not of the Aboriginal culture. As a general rule part Aborigines are not Aborigines in any real sense, either culturally or genetically.

My views are not just academic waffle. In the 1950’s I was OIC Finke Police District, an area from just South of Alice Springs to the South Australian Border and from Queensland to the West Australian Border. The vast majority of the District’s population was Aboriginal.

At that time Aborigines lived long and healthy lives. I liaised with the Flying Doctor and maintained the Flying Doctor Medical Kit. I supplied Rations to Aged and Infirm Aborigines. I attended Aboriginal secret ceremonies, at their invitation. I saw no other white people, nor any part-Aborigines, at these ceremonies. Despite my close contacts I found the Aborigines, and their culture, very difficult to understand.

In 1985 I entered Flinders University as a Mature Age Student. In 1998 I was awarded a Doctorate in Philosophy. My Thesis was initially inspired by my contacts with Aborigines. I researched the overall development of mankind since the evolution of Homo sapiens, the causes of cognitive development and the role of culture in human development.

The Aboriginal policy that was introduced in the 1960’s is based on the fundamental mistake that Aborigines are not significantly different from other Australians. This fundamental mistake has given rise to the consequential mistake that Aborigines and part-Aborigines should not be distinguished. Both these assumptions are based on ideologies that conflict with the evidence. Aborigines are a Palaeolithic people with their own Palaeolithic culture. Part-Aborigines are generally members of the Australian culture. They are not members of the distinct Aboriginal culture. The present policies are killing Aborigines, who lack the cognitive capacity to adapt to another, significantly different, culture.

Ultimately, as T.S. Elliot pointed out, every culture is the incarnation of a belief system. The Aboriginal Culture is the incarnation of the belief-system of the Dreamtime. Every culture finds its expression in the institutions of the society that the culture informs.

The Australian culture is expressed in both its formal institutions, Parliaments, Courts, Churches etc. and in its less formal institutions, shops, newspapers, libraries, sporting teams etc. It would be a major exercise to list all the institutions of the Australian culture. The complex of institutions of a sophisticated culture can enable that culture to withstand attacks on its underlying belief-system for some time. But the Aboriginal culture has no such complex of institutions.

There is only one institution in the Aboriginal Culture, the Tribal Elder. The Elders are the repository of all Aboriginal knowledge. An Aborigine did not become an Elder by becoming old, but by the acquisition of cultural and relevant practical knowledge. Destroy the capacity of the Elders to function properly and you destroy the Aboriginal Culture. Alcohol efficiently destroys the capacity of Elders to carry out their institutional role.

Destroy the effectiveness of the only institution of a culture and you destroy the culture. Destroy the culture of a Palaeolithic people, who cannot adapt to sophisticated culture, and you destroy those people. The cultural, cognitive and intellectual deficit of some 60,000 years cannot be made up in any one lifetime. Because of the institutional fragility of the Aboriginal culture, the present Aboriginal policies are essentially Genocidal.

Previous generations of young Aborigines lived a meaningful existence because of their culture, which was passed on by their elders. Aboriginal Elders are now frequently disabled by alcohol. They become incapable of exercising their institutional role. Young Aborigines are left to lead a meaningless existence. They turn to petrol sniffing just as other young Australians who find themselves in a similar situation, turn to drugs. If we are to halt the present Aboriginal Genocide the most urgent necessity is the restoration of the complete prohibition of the supply of Alcohol to Aborigines. If the status and sobriety of the Elders can be restored, the problem of petrol-sniffing will disappear.

Prior to the 1960’s the adverse effect of alcohol on Aborigines had been recognised throughout Australia, resulting in a universal prohibition on the supply of alcohol to Aborigines, with severe penalties suffered by the suppliers. The immediate restoration of this prohibition is the only way that Aboriginal culture may be saved and young Aborigines may again live meaningful lives. It is almost too late.

A radical approach is needed if the health and happiness of Aborigines is to be restored. Any successful approach has to recognize the stage occupied by Aborigines in the story of human cultural development.

Prohibition of the supply of all alcohol to Aborigines is essential if the present Aboriginal Genocide is to be halted. Each Aboriginal Elder who dies or is rendered incapable by alcohol hastens the passing of the Aborigines. We are all guilty of Genocide if we do not act.