Reaction and Interaction: A Food Gathering People and European Settlement in Australia

Abstract

REACTION AND CULTURAL CONDITIONINGH E reaction of an aboriginal people to the presence and culture of an in-T trusive and settling people is not based necessarily on curiosity, acquisition and imitation. Such drives are familiar to us of the western world, even in cross-cultural situations; we might infer, therefore, that because our culture is comparatively rich, the less well-endowed peoples, when confronted with it, would desire to examine, acquire and imitate it.In Australian Aboriginal culture, however, the individual is trained not to show curiosity, indeed, not to be curious. Thus, during initiation he only looks at rites and objects when told to do so, and he does not ask the "why"; he waits until he is told-and that in instalments. Moreover, both men and women grow up accepting the fact that sections of knowledge are restricted to one or more groups, and are not free to all.With this background, the Aborigines consider quite naturally that the ways, possessions and beliefs of the white man are his secret, his own possession, and are not to be "taken by storm'' or imitated. They are just factually "another kind" and neither envy nor acquisitiveness is aroused. They do not expect the white man to pry upon their life-and this seldom occurs (anthropologists apart, who must make out a case for doing so), though the ordinary white man's motive for this lack of interest is not based on the idea of mutual respect for cultural tradition; it is very often just a matter of superiority and prestige. The native way of life is "queer," especially in the degree in which the Aborigines do not seem to act from the same motives or for the same inducements as the European.Further, imitation for the native is not imitation of the fortuitous, of the strange, but of the traditional, of the cultural, of the ways of the cult-heroesor "Dreamings" as the Australian Aborigines call these. Life consists in maintaining continuity with the past-the culture-stream-not in imitating the culturally unrelated exotic. In spite of this, many benefactors have been disappointed that Aborigines have shown no desire to join a mission or settlement and partake of the benefits-material and spiritual-which were openly displayed to them. But, of course, houses, and farming, church-going, and school were not only exotic; they also interfered with t,he established routine of nomadism and ritual.Likewise, acquisition is not a universal trait; it is itself an acquirement 164

Introduction: Conceptual Moves towards an Intercultural Analysis

“…In this broadest sense this collection builds on previous accounts of Aboriginal-non-Indigenous relations (see, amongst others. Anderson 1984;Austin-Broos 2003;Barwick 1991; Beckett 1987 Beckett , I988a, 1993Chase 1980; Cowlishaw 1988b Cowlishaw , 1999 Cowlishaw ,2004Elkin 1951;Folds 2001;Gerritsen 1982;Keen 1988;Liberman 1985; Macdonald 2000;Martin 2003; Merlan 1998;Morris 1989;Povinelli 2002;Rowse 1992;Sansom 1980; Stanner 1977;Sullivan 1996; Trigger 1992;Wilson 1979).…”

Ethnography & the Production of Anthropological Knowledge. Essays in honour of Nicolas Peterson

“…In this respect, he is arguably more honest than Cape York's Richard Ah Mat (2003), who in claiming that modernisation is in fact essential to cultural survival, elides the profound personal and cultural transformation that would necessarily be entailed. On the other hand, it is a theme to which a good number of anthropologists (of varying political persuasions) as well as others have paid attention (for example, Brunton 1993;Cowlishaw 1998;Elkin 1951;Folds 2001;Martin 1993Martin , 2001Stanner 1979;Sutton 2001Sutton , 2009. Sutton, for example, raises a range of issues that overlap directly with those of Johns, but based on a detailed and nuanced understanding of remote Aboriginal societies.…”

Indigenous participation in Australian economies : Historical and anthropological perspectives

“…This cycle, they argue, was constituted by an annual oscillation between seasonal picking and what Elkin (1951) classed 'intelligent parasitism'. While stating that the resident Aboriginal families were descendents of a dispossessed and displaced people whose 'former way of life had since then become impossible', and whose 'customs and law had broken down', the idea that assimilation had failed is not explicated (Castle and Hagan 1978:159).…”