So Jacinta Price is being criticised for this part of her speech yesterday (and I'm going by the way The Guardian has extracted it):
The senator’s speech criticised Indigenous bodies which she claimed sought to “demonise colonial settlement in its entirety and nurture a national self-loathing about the foundations of modern Australian achievement”.
Guardian Australia asked Nampijinpa Price to clarify whether she thought any Indigenous people were suffering negative impacts of colonisation, Price responded: “No.”
“A positive impact, absolutely. I mean, now we have running water, readily available food,” she said.
“No, there is no ongoing negative impacts of colonisation.”
Well, I think that last line is clearly ridiculous - in fact, you would hard pressed to find any indigenous group from around the world who you could say is suffering no negative impacts of colonisation. It's pretty remarkable when you look at their situation in very diverse countries how their communities typically share problems of alcohol and drug abuse, high suicide rates, and economic marginalisation.
On the other side, though, the first sentence quoted above is a pretty accurate critique of how the pro-indigenous advocacy has become intensely about never acknowledging any good to come out of joining modernity - medicine, reliable food sources, travel, more opportunity for different experiences, etc etc.
I may have written about this here before, but I still think it is very telling how an exchange in an episode of Northern Exposure way back in the 90's caught my attention for how, even then, it reflected something that I felt had already become politically incorrect to say in Australia. The lead character (the New York Jew Dr Joel) asked his laconic, indigenous helper Marilyn what she thought of her ancestors' land being colonised. And her answer was along the lines "It comes with some good things, and some bad." I'm sure medicine got mentioned in the "good" - but I can't remember what else. And I think in the bad was the loss of some traditions, although again, I can't remember the detail.
But the thing was that the show, which obviously had a "liberal" bias in its stories and general attitude, did not attract controversy in American for having an indigenous character state the obvious - there are advantages to having entry into the modern world as a side effect of colonisation. Which is not to deny that there have been better and worse ways in which colonisation has happened in history.
As I complained in my last post about the Voice, "the vibe" in indigenous advocacy seems to have moved to a completely negative and grievance based approach over the last 30 years, and it's not hard to imagine that this is having a negative effect on the attitude of the young indigenous towards respect of laws and property. And the higher rate of indigenous youth crime is, I have no doubt at all, a reason why in many regional parts of Australia, the "Yes" vote would be seen as rewarding the "wrong" attitude.
To go back to the title of the post: why is it so hard for the both the Yes side, and the No side, to move from the unrealistic extremes on a key question of the effect of colonisation.
The correct answer - it has had a mixed effect of positive and negatives - is obviously true, and it would give confidence that people can reach a common ground if both sides can stop pretending that it's not.
Update: Well, I think I have found the conversation on a Northern Exposure fan site. It's not exactly the same as my 30 year old memory, but the gist is close enough, I think!:
Marilyn: Death, like the white man, wasn't happy in his own land. He didn't think his kingdom was big enough. He wanted more. One night, when the good spirit was asleep, Death attacked the world. He killed a lot of people, and he took the Chief's prettiest daughter as his bride. She pretended to be a good wife, but one day she secretly fed him a pumpkin seed. The pumpkin grew and grew inside death. Finally, he exploded, and a million pumpkin seeds covered the earth.
Joel: I still don't get it.
Marilyn: A lot of people died, but a good thing came out of it, too.
Joel: What was that?
Marilyn:: It's the same with white people. They cleared the forest, they dug up the land, and they gave us the flu. But they also brought power tools and penicillin and Ben and Jerry's ice cream.
3 comments:
Take heart Steve. I'll put on my optimist hat and argue that the Voice will enable a reframing of the indigenous subject resulting in a more balanced and honest appraisal of the subject.
Yes, I've noticed Price's press conference going off like a little bomb on the pages of all my lefty friends. I think they're shocked and appalled at her comments precisely because for most of the past four or so decades, they've been imbibing a consistent story about colonialism being bad, evil, wrong - basically, the root cause of all that is bad in the world. Price's comments were such a thoroughgoing denial of this view that they were bound to cause horror amongst progressives. Yes, she goes to the other extreme, too much so. But her position is intriguing nonetheless; with the argument that colonialism brought with it a lot of good things, the implication can only be that the problems many Aboriginal communities now suffer are not really the effect of colonialism: the responsibility goes back to Aboriginal communities themselves.
"...will enable a reframing of the indigenous subject resulting in a more balanced and honest appraisal of the subject."
I very much have my doubts about this, because the "old guard" of indigenous activists (Langton, Pearson, etc) will be ropeable that their preferred way didn't get up, and will complain and complain. The younger set of advocates are, generally speaking, more radical and will spend a year or so calling for marches and rallies that achieve nothing.
I think it's pretty clear that Jacinta Price doesn't have much of a following within the indigenous world, and I think she and Mundine are both prone to making silly statements.
So the problem is that I see no sign of any good quality, new "third way" or centrist style leadership from within the indigenous activist world.
It makes me very pessimistic.
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