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July 5, 2007
Barry Cohen, a minister in the Hawke government, was a federal Labor MP from 1969 to 1990, argues in an op-ed in The Australian that Rousseau and the 'noble savage' are responsible for what he calls the 'still substantial pockets of Aboriginal deprivation that include abysmal housing, appalling health, poor nutrition and minimal education together with the worst excesses of white society - unemployment, alcohol and drugs, crime, sexual abuse, imprisonment and a much higher mortality rate than their white contemporaries.'
This is part of a conservative discourse about brutal colonial histories and failed socialist experiments to fix the Indigenous problem and a return to government policies resonating with overtones of the assimilation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities into mainstream Australian society, assimilationist overtones. It is a discourse that places land rights, human rights and the preservation of Aboriginal history and culture in opposition to a well educated community, able to compete in the marketplace. So what is the argument? Cohen says:
Much of this [failure] can be sheeted home to the white liberal "feel goods" who have encouraged many Aborigines to fantasise about living in a netherworld between modern Western society and their previous nomadic existence as hunter/gatherers. Somehow they managed to create this fantasy world where "the noble savage" continues to hunt and fish as they have had for millennia, speaking their native tongue and communing with nature while at the same time earning a good living in a highly sophisticated, technically advanced society. It was rubbish then and it is rubbish now. Unfortunately, few have the balls to say so. Certainly not the whitefellas.
The finger is pointed at Nugget Coombs, who for over 25 years, Nugget Coombs, was closely involved with the struggles of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples for the recognition of their rights.
The reality is that the lack of education, limited institutional experience and vulnerability to abuses of power, which have Indigenous communities had left their organisations struggling to deliver to their constituents.These communities have attempted to develop their capacities to organise themselves, to resolve conflicts, to tackle dysfunction, and confront their own painful histories in order to imagine a sustainable future for themselves and their families.
So why haven't the liberals said that Coombs talked rubbish? Cohen says that they wouldn't be game:
Not those in positions of power - the politicians, bureaucrats and public figures. They would be flayed by the chattering classes, the media and those Aboriginal leaders who have a vested interest in defending the present system. It is dangerous to generalise about Aborigines and the array of problems they face for they vary enormously from those who live more traditional lifestyles to those who live in an urban environment. It is a fantasy to imagine that they can live rough in small, remote communities and also enjoy modern housing, health care, nutrition, education and also be gainfully employed. It is difficult to provide such essentials in large towns and cities, let alone in remote communities of 50 people or less.The former minister for Aboriginal affairs, Amanda Vanstone, had the courage to describe them as "cultural museums" and was pilloried by the baying media.
This ignores the economic development that has taken place or that indigenous communities have substantial capabilities to engage,deliver and develop with the mainstream economy in remote and urban contexts.
It also ignores what Nugget Coombs wrote in in his last book ‘Aboriginal Autonomy’ (1994) where he imagined an Aboriginal economy that:
would function in parallel and close interaction with the mainstream, not as set apart from
it. [it] would have its own cultural emphasis choosing its own stream of development and thepoint at which it enters and seeks to influence the mainstream.”
We have a hybrid economy. Coombs argued that the outstation or homeland movement as a response to the problems of contact and an attempt to evolve a lifestyle which preserves the essence of the Aboriginal way, whilst drawing on elements of non-Aboriginal society. One of the most important effects of this movement has been the rehabilitation of traditional authority and decision-making structures. This has introduced a political component into Aboriginal plans and a desire to resume control of those aspects of. their lives most severely weakened by European dominance.
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