First Nations Justice, Reconciliation and The Voice
So God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them…
Genesis 1:27
Dear Students, Parents and Carers
During my lifetime I have seen a seismic shift in the prevailing attitudes towards Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians. This is indicative of changing attitudes right from the beginning of the British arriving in 1788 with multiple ship loads of convicts.
At Primary School and High School my History and Social Science textbooks presented Indigenous people as frozen in time, relics of a Stone Age culture. They were effectively portrayed as oddities according to a cultural stereotype. The government policy at the time was one of assimilation, in essence drawing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people into the dominant white culture, not only in terms of social mores but also through intermarriage. The premise was that as there was no future for such a residual culture as theirs, therefore, as a racial group, over time, they would cease to exist. The prism applied was the dominant march of history, thought to be inevitable as part of the determining Enlightenment concept of progress.
There were strong antecedents for these views. When the British warships and convict transport ships arrived under Captain Phillip in 1788, they perceived Aboriginal people with whom they came in contact as primitive savages, nomads of “no fixed address”, living in temporary bark humpies, completely unlike the Georgian mansions of England familiar to naval officers. Accordingly, they applied the concept of “terra nullius”, that is, Australia was an empty land and, therefore, fit to be annexed as part of the British Empire.
The dismissive view of Aboriginal people prevailed through the 19th and first part of the 20th centuries. This led to the segregation of many Aboriginal people into Reserves, and directly to the Stolen Generation; whereby often Aboriginal children were removed from their parents and placed in Residential Homes, where the treatment was often appalling and where their culture was suppressed. Many older Indigenous people in our society now were themselves part of the Stolen Generation. It is easy for us to be censorious and condemn the prime movers of such a policy. However, we need to realise that they were people of their times and were sometimes acting out of good motives in terms of what they thought was to the benefit of Aboriginal people.
The legacy of this is that many First Nations people, including those who may come to Shore as students, have a deep experience of hurt, rejection and social engineering. They are, therefore, cynical about modern “do gooders” who may breeze in and impose their solutions without consulting Indigenous people and then leave without effecting any helpful change.
Part of the back story of this cultural distress arises from other views dominant in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Racial theory was driven by the pseudo-science of eugenics, whereby racial superiority of the white man was asserted. Typical of the time was investigation of skulls to attempt to prove that white Anglo-Saxons had larger brains than non-whites. These so-called scientific views were deeply affected by the cultural zeitgeist of the era, social Darwinism. Charles Darwin’s “Origins of the Species”, based as it was on an evolutionary theory which asserted the survival of the fittest in the plant and animal kingdom, was applied by others to social theory such that the fittest races, i.e. white people, were assumed to dominate via an unchangeable law of nature. This became a justification for ignoring or ill-treating people of coloured skin.
An aspect of the ill-treatment of Indigenous people in Australia was the inability of some white settlers to accept that people so different from themselves were in fact human, rather than sub-human. Various anthropological theories were advanced at the time to justify this cultural myopia. It led to what has been termed the Frontier Wars, a reciprocal cycle of violence, whereby Aboriginal people, reacting to the loss of their hunting lands to white settlers, helped themselves to livestock from farms. The worst instances of white reprisals have been termed genocide, leading to a series of massacres extending over 100 years, the most famous of which is the Myall Creek massacre in North-Western NSW. As the white settlers and soldiers had firearms, and raids were often vindictive, the deaths of Aboriginal people were completely disproportionate to settler and soldier deaths.
In the later 20th century, Indigenous affairs moved forward, firstly with the 1967 referendum which recognised Aboriginal people as Australians who could be counted in the census and who had the same rights as other Australians. This was followed by Wik and Mabo Legislation which restored Land Rights and then the National Apology by Prime Minister Rudd in 2007.
Those who promoted theories of racial inferiority or mistreated Indigenous people missed an important biblical principle: “So God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them” (Genesis 1:27). There is a fundamental dignity, irrespective of skin colour or ethnicity, which is innate.
There have been recent attempts to overturn the notion of the primitive Aboriginal; an effort to recapture cultural cache. The best known of these has been the recent work of Bruce Pascoe, Dark Emu, wherein he asserts that Aboriginal people away from coastal regions formed housing settlements, built permanent structures, cultivated farms and dammed waterways. This remains very controversial and has been attacked by academic anthropologists.
I have had the opportunity to learn a great deal from and about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, partly as an historian but mostly through their strong presence in schools I have led. In the first of these, the School Council Chair was Aboriginal, elected by parents in a largely Anglo-Saxon community. However, my main learning came as Principal of an all Aboriginal school from 2010-2021 where all the students and most of the staff were Aboriginal, with a small Torres Strait Islander enrolment.
Why, you might wonder, this extensive treatise now? There are five reasons: We have just commemorated NAIDOC Week (National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee), with a keynote address on Assembly from one of our Aboriginal graduates. Secondly, we are currently meeting in a Working Party comprising School Council, Foundation, Executive Leadership Team and parent representatives, with a task of strengthening our current Indigenous Programme which, while well intentioned, has been somewhat piecemeal. The third reason is immediate: NESA (New South Wales Education Standards Authority) has this week announced an upgrade of the school curriculum to include further Aboriginal perspectives and to consider Australian history through an Indigenous lens of colonialism and dispossession, not just via a settler perspective. Fourthly, this article highlights one aspect of Shore’s recently published Strategic Directions document.
The fifth reason is the currency of the Voice referendum arguments, pro and con. I will respond to requests by a number of parents to explain to our students what the referendum is about. I have no intention of suggesting to students, staff or parents how they should cast their vote. This is not my prerogative. Many of our community may think the answer is obvious, however, that may be the case with people on both sides of the debate. Indeed, Indigenous leaders with public profile appear on behalf of both the for and against cases. As the issue is political and divisive, it is not appropriate for the School to attempt to mandate a particular view. Certainly, there are passions on both sides of the question and differing arguments how to best progress Indigenous reconciliation.
For our part here at Shore, we are working on our own Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP). We are attempting to develop measures of substance, which are neither tokenism nor virtue signalling but are, by their reach, substantive. Both these endeavours, the Working Party and the development of our RAP, involve as participants our Aboriginal staff. This avoids the error of what has been too often in our national past, a well-meaning paternalism which has failed to connect deeply with First Nations people about their affairs, or as Aboriginal Elder and Keynote Speaker at Speech Night last year, Pastor Ray Minniecon, put it so evocatively, “white fellas telling black fellas what’s good for them”.
Part of Shore’s processes will be cultural sensitivity training for staff and an attempt to promote presence for our Indigenous students. This is a work in progress, and will require continued goodwill, understanding and funding. As the seismic shift referred to before has now brought this to a place of recognition of the 500-800,000 First Nations people currently in Australia (calculations differ in terms of the reluctance of some to so identify out of their fear of residual racism), the time seems right for Shore to appropriate these changes in order to contribute meaningfully to justice and reconciliation. I will inform our Shore community from time to time of developments.
American Tea
2023 is the 85th year of the celebration of our American Tea, this year occurring on Friday 8 September 2023. I understand it began during World War II as a Garden Party at Shore to thank American servicemen on leave in Sydney for their contribution to the war effort. It represents great collaboration between SPA volunteers on both campuses and School staff, to conduct the largest Shore community event of the year. Since American Tea is a very sizeable undertaking, it absolutely requires a large number of parent volunteers to function. Funds raised are directed towards additional programmes and opportunities for our students. Can I please request the involvement of many of our Shore community in terms of material donations and volunteering online for assistance on the day itself. Please access the volunteer sign-up forms and donation information on the American Tea page on Lampada. Further information will be found in the coming weeks in the Shore Weekly Record.
Dr John Collier
Headmaster
