Interpreting Australia's Aboriginal History
National identity is fluid, it changes over time due to political and social reformations.
Due to Australia’s heavily multicultural past, historians have been faced with the
daunting task of accurately depicting Australia’s history. On the one hand, Australia’s
Aboriginal history dates back 20,000 years, on the other, you have European settlement
that goes back roughly two centuries. Which is the correct version? National Identity is
constantly evolving in the sense that curriculums are constantly being revised to include
new information. Historians are now mindful of the way in which they represent specific
indigenous/ethnic groups so as not to appear Eurocentric. The exclusion of women in frontier
life in Australian history …show more content…
has also been contested in recent decades.
If we were to examine the early days of European settlement in Australia, we’d note the
racial tensions that were experienced between frontiersmen and aboriginal folk.
Aboriginals were forced from their homelands, children were taken from their parents
and placed into the homes of white folk during the stolen generation. This colorful past
with Australian indigenous people highlights some of the inherent racism experienced in
the early days of Australian settlement. Today, attitudes have sort of shifted in favor of
aboriginal rights, aboriginal activist movements have brought to light one of the worlds oldest
cultures and given it voice. The problem is that historians are now burdened with the task of
including a whole section on indigenous people and their culture in the history textbooks,
a culture that many caucasian historians fail to comprehend.
Take historian John Hirst for example, Hirst was approached by the Howard government to
produce a pamplet that was to be used by migrant workers to study for the Australian citizenship
test. The problem that Hirst later discovered was the restrictions on how history and certain
groups were to be presented. Indigenous peoples get very little background information, while
certain groups, such as women frontiersmen got very little if any recognition in the final publication. History is a pliable subject depending on who is writing it, it’s the story of origins
and how those origins affect the people we are today. The representation of history is often times
subject to the writer, what are the social and political components that effect what gets published
and what is merely swept under the carpet? Aboriginal rights movements and contemporary
feminist movements have effected the way in which certain groups are represented in the
textbooks. Historians have taken new approaches to try and not be exclusive of certain subgroups
realizing the damage it can cause to someone’s sense of national
pride.
Due to Australia’s heavily multicultural past, historians have been faced with the
daunting task of accurately depicting Australia’s history. On the one hand, Australia’s
Aboriginal history dates back 20,000 years, on the other, you have European settlement
that goes back roughly two centuries. Which is the correct version? National Identity is
constantly evolving in the sense that curriculums are constantly being revised to include
new information. Historians are now mindful of the way in which they represent specific
indigenous/ethnic groups so as not to appear Eurocentric. The exclusion of women in frontier
life in Australian history …show more content…
has also been contested in recent decades.
If we were to examine the early days of European settlement in Australia, we’d note the
racial tensions that were experienced between frontiersmen and aboriginal folk.
Aboriginals were forced from their homelands, children were taken from their parents
and placed into the homes of white folk during the stolen generation. This colorful past
with Australian indigenous people highlights some of the inherent racism experienced in
the early days of Australian settlement. Today, attitudes have sort of shifted in favor of
aboriginal rights, aboriginal activist movements have brought to light one of the worlds oldest
cultures and given it voice. The problem is that historians are now burdened with the task of
including a whole section on indigenous people and their culture in the history textbooks,
a culture that many caucasian historians fail to comprehend.
Take historian John Hirst for example, Hirst was approached by the Howard government to
produce a pamplet that was to be used by migrant workers to study for the Australian citizenship
test. The problem that Hirst later discovered was the restrictions on how history and certain
groups were to be presented. Indigenous peoples get very little background information, while
certain groups, such as women frontiersmen got very little if any recognition in the final publication. History is a pliable subject depending on who is writing it, it’s the story of origins
and how those origins affect the people we are today. The representation of history is often times
subject to the writer, what are the social and political components that effect what gets published
and what is merely swept under the carpet? Aboriginal rights movements and contemporary
feminist movements have effected the way in which certain groups are represented in the
textbooks. Historians have taken new approaches to try and not be exclusive of certain subgroups
realizing the damage it can cause to someone’s sense of national
pride.