The First Australians

[GreenGully]

The First Australians written, directed and produced by Rachel Perkins. Heket asked me to do a review of this series. So I am. You can watch it for free here on the SBS Website (http://www.sbs.com.au/firstaustralians/). I watched it when it first aired on SBS a few months ago. I was enthralled, most of the content being already known to me, but never presented in such a concise way, all of my accurate knowledge of this country's history has been garnered in snippets. Personally, I was moved. It was fascinating watching my mother and step father (who were with me for the first few episodes) and who are white react. They had never known any of this stuff. It was never taught to them in school. Actually, the small amount I was taught in school was by a renegade history teacher who decided to ignore the curriculum and teach us about the Stolen Generations, it was NOT the norm.
Anyway back to the series.There are no corny visual re-enactments, rather voice over readings of actual documents - lots of primary sources. There is a good balance of both black and white historians who are interviewed thoughout. I recall that one of the white historians shitted me. There are also interviews with relevent indigenous representatives from the different areas covered. I think is significant that it is written directed and produced by an Aboriginal woman, and that extensive consultation with various relevent people and communities occured thoughtout production.
So go watch it!:eager

[Ceres]

Oh thanks for that! I saw it in the ABC shop the other day and was quite tempted to purchase it. I might have to splash out on it now.

[Ayla]

Wow, thank you GG I'll have to watch it!

[Blossomtime]

It really is brilliant. What really grabbed me was the gut-wrenching pain and rawness that some of the women, in particular, spoke with. So important to watch and listen and hear that.

[~*heket*~]

Great! Thanx M :D

[Janet]

bump

[cgull]

Thanks Janet, GG :)

[Janet]

I'd like to add a response too since my field of study is colonial societies in the 18th century.

The program makers made a common error of looking at 19th century racist attitudes and reading them backwards into the 18th century. This is not to say that what we recognise as deeply enculturated racism was absent but there is a very different resonance to a lot of the ways in which indigenous peoples were perceived and the issues managed as we moved into the 19th century and our racism took on a quasi-scientific bent. The use of the Great Chain of Being, which predated Darwin, and then the later co-opting and misrepresentation of Darwinism to further the racist aims of 19th century politicians made a great difference to the ways in which indigenous people were viewed. Aborigines were viewed as "noble savages" in the 18th century and as no different from animals in the 19th century to enable the genocide - another term we use retrospectively as modern people.

With most British colonies the pattern is pretty similar - start out in a fairly conciliatory manner, (not to mistake that this is an invasion, please don't get me wrong) but then as time passes the fear of the colonists increases and they begin to put more and more laws in place to keep themselves separate from the colonised. They did it in Ireland, which was their colonial training ground. They did it in the Americas and then they did it in Australia. If you read the writings of the colonists they follow very similar patterns around identity formation and the need to remain separate in every way from the colonised as time passes.

I'm happy to yack about it all day if asked but I'll leave it there unless there's any interest. :)

[Ceres]

Yack away... very interesting! This is a bit of a knowledge-gap for me.

[cgull]

Mmmm... very interested to hear more, Janet.

Does the pattern happen with other colonising nations - Spanish, French, Dutch - or is it peculiar to the way the British think?


I have been under the impression that the initial interactions with Aborigines was less conciliatory - or less acknowledging - than in North America - is that impression wrong?

[Janet]

Yack away... very interesting! This is a bit of a knowledge-gap for me.
What the miniscule details of 18th century life have escaped you? Fie upon you! :lol


Mmmm... very interested to hear more, Janet.

Does the pattern happen with other colonising nations - Spanish, French, Dutch - or is it peculiar to the way the British think?


I have been under the impression that the initial interactions with Aborigines was less conciliatory - or less acknowledging - than in North America - is that impression wrong?
The bible of colonisation from the perspective of the colonised is "The coloniser and the colonised" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Colonizer_and_the_Colonized) Albert Memmi. A book written about being Algerian under French colonial rule in the 20th century. So the details seem to change with time but the overall effects remain very similar. You can also apply his work to women's experience of living in a patriarchy. Colonising nations have their own issues but there are big similarities too. I was deeply struck by the 17th century Americas stuff (and I mean the whole lot, north, south, everywhere) and how similar it was to English colonisation of Ireland at that time.

Briefly speaking (haha) the English originally went to Ireland in about the 12th century which was at a time when the two countries shared a basic religion - Catholicism. The details were different because of the creole effect which religions experience and the Celtic church was very different from the English version but they did recognise one another's forms of worship. The colonisers moved fairly seamlessly into Irish society, intermarried, learnt the language, wore the clothes of the locals and apart from names, became fairly indistinguishable from the locals.

Elizabethan England, with it's aggressive new Protestantism and it's young adventuring military men turned up and couldn't tell what was called the Old English from the Natives. So when they re-invaded they brought all manner of laws with them about not wearing the native dress, not speaking Irish, and no intermarrying, thank you very much. The language and dress stuff may not seem all that big to us but to Elizabethans, dress was everything. It denoted everything about a person from their rank, sex, business/calling, wealth, everything. Theoretically you could say clothing was so important to the Elizabethans that a naked person could almost be a nonperson, a cipher, because all the important identifiers were removed from them. It's also important because colonial spaces are highly charged places for colonists.

You can see the fear colonisers have that the new place in which they've plonked themselves is going to swallow them up and so that makes those markers and identifiers from the old country even more important. Look at the narratives of Lost Children and the Evil Bush in 19th century Australia and you can see it there. Look at the English making laws about clothes in Ireland and you can see it there. Anti-fraternising laws make sure that we know who we are by defining who we're not.

In fact, useless last piece of information :lol the expression "beyond the Pale" comes from this time in Irish history because the small settlement on the east coast was The Pale and outrageous Native behaviours (everything from eating their children to cannabalism was attributed to the Native Irish or "Wilde Irishe" as one Elizabethan document described them) were thus occurring "beyond the Pale".

:)
(I called my thesis after that book actually. It's "The Wilde Irishe" Protestant perceptions of Irish Catholic savagery 1641-1798" :lol)

[battlecrumpet]

Wow, fascinating thread :)

Be interested to hear, Janet, whether you think things have changed - or not changed - between past empire-building and international relations in very recent history. For example, the US going in countries for oil, setting up military bases etc (politics, politics, can't help myself :))

[Sarasvati]

This is interesting indeed! While at the airport I bought a book called Terra Nullius. It discusses the idea of the "empty land" that made it legal to colonise (this is something that happened in Africa and America and other places as well... the natives didn't count as people). Anyway he brings up Eyre, who researched the local aboriginal groups and was actually fairly respectful in his treatment of them... but 50 years later the written works that dealt with the same subject matter had reduced aboriginal populations to dehumanised status. So what you say about the noble savage degenerating to near-animal status is reflected in that...

I was actually going to write a review of the book when I finish it. Some of it is truly horrifying :(.

[Janet]

Wow, fascinating thread :)

Be interested to hear, Janet, whether you think things have changed - or not changed - between past empire-building and international relations in very recent history. For example, the US going in countries for oil, setting up military bases etc (politics, politics, can't help myself :))
Gee it's a hard one. I think when I look at Australian society, which has not been officially invaded by the US unlike other countries, that so many of Memmi's premises of what it's like to live in a colonised country are being enacted. It's a long time since I read it but certain portions really stood out for me about that stuff and have only increased over time. For instance one section deals with how the colonised know all about the coloniser but the coloniser knows nothing of the colonised. If you look at how much we know of the US - food, culture, tropes, politics, movies, history, famous people, loads of stuff - and how much they overall (as a whole, not individuals who of course buck all trends) know about us - um, nothing but Crocodile Dundee or Steve irwin - it's quite striking.

Setting up a military base in a country is somewhat different from the kinds of colonial behaviours that we once saw commonly occurring because it's very specific and doesn't necessarily have to mean having a lot to do with the locals. China invading Tibet? Very clear colonising going on there in every way as a whole society is subsumed by the dominant culture and in a particularly aggressive way. I'm sure the US ties with Saudi Arabia, for example, aren't having much of an effect on the ordinary person there whose life is largely constrained by Wahabiism. Invading for specifc political purposes is a little different from expansionism, I think although arguments could be made either way.

[battlecrumpet]

Thanks for that Janet! It's a really interesting topic.


I'm sure the US ties with Saudi Arabia, for example, aren't having much of an effect on the ordinary person there whose life is largely constrained by Wahabiism.

Yeah Saudi Arabia was the country I had in mind when I mentioned US bases.
But even if the US bases don't directly affect many citizens of Saudi Arabia, they surely indirectly influence the US - Saudi politics, and therefore to some extent the people, because US troops in Saudi was one of Bin Laden's main gripes against the US. And most of the S-11 terrorists were Saudi. And yeah, Bin Laden was part of the Saudi elite and not your average Saudi person, but I think his views have attracted some level of support among non-elite people in the Middle East.

So I guess what I'm saying is, US bases in Saudi are part of what's fanned hostilities btw parts of the Middle East and the US - and these hostilities have impacts on "average" people. Maybe more in other some other Mid Eastern countries, and of course int he US itself (thru the impact of terrorism), but not sure about within Saudi itself. But I'm guessing that there might've been an increase in support for Wahhabis and other conservatives - cos populations (in general) tend to go more politically conservative in response to an external threat, and also become more susceptible to authoritarian styles of govt (if you believe Noam Chomsky).

But I haven't studied this officially, just read a couple of books, so I might be talking total crap AFAIK :)


Invading for specifc political purposes is a little different from expansionism, I think although arguments could be made either way.

I got the impression that some expansionism in the past (e.g. Spanish conquest of Sth America) was driven by a quest for resources (gold in that case) - similarly the US quest for resources recently (ie oil). But it's a bit different I guess cos the US has made itself dependent on oil. I'm not sure to what extent Spain was dependent on gold (or why they wanted it anyway, apart from for decorating churches).

[battlecrumpet]

This is interesting indeed! While at the airport I bought a book called Terra Nullius. It discusses the idea of the "empty land" that made it legal to colonise (this is something that happened in Africa and America and other places as well... the natives didn't count as people).

Yeah Terra Nullius was pretty bloody scary. I didn't realise that the concept was used in other countries (apart from Australia) to excuse "colonisation". But now I think about it, of course it would've been used elsewhere. Sounds like an interesting read, that book.

Terra Nullius was still officially "law" in Australia until the Mabo Case (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mabo_v_Queensland_%28No_2%29) in 1992 for f***'s sake.

[Janet]

Spain was part of a general European expansionist drive. They were competing with England, religion was changing as Protestantism was developed. Like I said, I think there are probably arguments to be made in all directions about what constitutes colonisation in a more modern setting and honestly tain't my field of expertise!

I do believe Chomsky. Often. :lol