Re-imagining an Aboralian future

Non-Indigenous people are, in nomenclature, defined as not being Indigenous: defined in the negative. Indigenous people are also referred to as the first Australians by politicians and others; does this make non-Indigenous Australians the second Australians? And if so, what does this mean? Or when politicians talk about this country’s Indigenous peoples as the original Australians, does this make non-Indigenous people the unoriginal Australians?

This approach to portraying the Australian is, of course, facetious. But it does serve to elucidate the problem of the picture of Australia in the mirror. Identifying Indigenous Australians with this land is non-contentious, it is only when we try to place non-Indigenous Australians into the landscape, physically and symbolically, that difficulty arises.

Let me highlight the point with an observation. I recently gave a paper at AIATSIS and with a bit of spare time wandered around the National Museum gift shop. I looked over the large range of Indigenous items for sale from all over the country, including some from my own state Tasmania. I then moved over to the other large section built around books on native animals, toys, native flora and fauna in text and souvenirs. And that was it, the full gift shop: non-Indigenous Australia wasn’t there. Taking the gift shop as a proxy representation of our country, why is the Indigene represented in a myriad of shapes and forms in how we sell ourselves, but the non-Indigene is not? I think an explanatory frame can be found in the still unfixed, and to a large extent stalled, sense of non-Indigenous belonging in Australia.

To elaborate, the main story running through 200 years-plus of colonialisation and constitution as a nation state has been to try and change the country to suit the new people: a belief system aligned with a frame of mind whereby the land, along with its Indigenous inhabitants was subservient to the inherent superiority of the migrant settlers. The overt statement of superiority over nature and natives is no longer uncontested in the public and political discourse but its echoes still run through the fabric of Australian life. Yet the fatal flaws in such old thinking are now obvious and its impact has been catastrophic for the country i.e. the condition of the Murray River, salination etc, and as critically, for its peoples, Indigenous and non-Indigenous.

The non-evolved connection to country can also be seen in the struggle for national identity. Limping from Anzac, to mateship, to outback, the search has become more obsessive, frenetic and perhaps more embarrassing but no less futile.

In 2009, The Australian, in partnership with Qantas, began what they referred to as a national conversation on what makes Australia great. Via a social networking website they collated the contributions of thousands of people, eventually coming up with five key facets of Australian greatness: pride, teamwork, community, fun and freedom. I am sure I am not the only person whose heart sank at the end result of this search for a national identity. Where is the unique Australian identity and connection to country in these five facets?

And it is a disconnection to country that resonates in mainstream Australia’s disconnection from Indigenous Australia. Disconnection from country also explains I think much of the non-Indigenous disengagement reflective in the picture of Australian race relations. Perhaps the usually undefined, but simmering resentment of Indigenous people and place in Australia held by a (significant) minority of Euro-Australians might be explained at least in part as an undefined resentment of Indigenous belonging. Because, the vast majority of non-Indigenous Australians do not know this country; our country. Yes, they might travel around it as grey nomads in caravans, but as an English colleague of mine noted, non-Indigenous Australians seem to him to live their lives in urban bubbles and their relationship to country remains as a tourist. It is still the exotic unknown.

The inevitable conclusion here is that non-Indigenous Australia has yet to adapt to living in this place, let alone evolve into people who belong to the land. And this belonging to the land is in my definition what it should be to be Australian; this is what we should see in the mirror. And at the risk of stating the blinking obvious, we need to do so: we have nowhere else to go. This is home, for all of us.

In outlining what can be at least a start of generating an alternative narrative I want to first disrupt the usual dichotomising of Australians into Indigenous and non-Indigenous. This disruption is not in any way suggestive that Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians are, or should be, the same. Rather, in this evolving Australian narrative our differences would be at the centre of our re-imagining of self-concepts and belongings; a potent adaptive diversity; not a rift that requires melding. Rather than focusing on how the Indigene should fit into mainstream Indigenous culture it is time to consider how the mainstream of primarily Euro-Australians might evolve a little faster in their own fit to belonging to the country. The presumptions of evolutionary inevitabilities need to be reversed with non-Indigenous peoples adapting to what it is to be Australian. This is where non-Indigenous Australia can learn from Indigenous Australia.

So, how can we accelerate the evolutionary process? Belonging is a relationship and relationship is belonging. So, in an alternative narrative of being Australian we will re-imagine and redefine our relationships: to country and to each other as non-Indigenous and Indigenous peoples. I propose two beginning tenets of what we should see in the mirror of means to be Australian:

1. To be Australian is to understand, within self concept and in the practice of everyday life that you belong to the land, the land does not belong to you. You are from, and of, this country and it is part of you.
2. To be Australian is to embrace, respect and acknowledge the space and place of the Indigenous and the non-Indigenous within this country. We are both, and it is this that makes us unique.

To re-emphasise I am not advocating that we are all Indigenous now. Lineage is central to identity and non-Indigenous people should retain pride in their own particular lineage, from Britain, Europe, Asia or Africa. The same goes for Indigenous people; we also are not just Indigenous but Walpiri, Quandamooka, pakana, Yorta Yorta and many other peoples.

What I do advocate is a very different imagining of Australia’s heritage; a reimagining of narrative that takes us way beyond pioneers and explorers and Anzacs, although these of course remain to one that embraces, for all of us, the ancient and contemporary Indigenous belonging to country. A new narrative of Australian heritage, one which is uniquely Australian, is in relationality with the land, and embraces our Indigenous heritage past and present as a matter of pride for all. We all share that heritage. While our lineage differs, our different heritages can be interwoven into the one grand narrative of national self concept where to be Australian links Indigenous and non-Indigenous as essential elements.

The next task is to start thinking about who we are, how our Indigenous and non-Indigenous contemporary reality can be mutually and physically recognised in everyday public life as well as integrated into private and social realms. Adaption to Australian reality involves a national evolution; a shared complex identity built on recognition, rather than competition, and where national pride can coexist with our complex and differing pasts and futures and survive the inevitable ructions of a familial relationship: between peoples and country.