Posts revisited (1)

In my earlier post on my family blogI wrote at some length about a visit I made to a small and remote community. I also quoted extensively from the opening of an address by anthropologist David Martin. I'm inserting them here in the interestes of discussion.
Feel free.

David Martin, an anthropologist with many years' experience of working with Aboriginal people, had this* to say recently: ‘Much of the support for the new policies is predicated on the assumption that Aboriginal people naturally desire the lifestyle and values which correlate with economic integration… if they don’t, a carrot and stick approach… can be used to achieve it. ‘However the evidence… shows that while many… do indeed seek to take advantage of better economic opportunities, and while cultural change is a feature of all societies… there is a widespread resistance amongst Aboriginal people to what they see as attempts to assimilate them into the dominant society, economically and socially.’ ‘…my unease is because the debate is conducted with such a vitriolic and unnecessary demonisation of what has gone before… with a complete disregard for what I would see as the lessons of history in Aboriginal affairs; and most importantly with an all too common disregard for the diverse views, values and aspirations of the Aboriginal people at whom the new policy apparatus and its ideological underpinnings are directed. ‘Except when the latest instance of horrific dysfunctionality in the Aboriginal world is brought forward to illustrate the need for profound change, or when the views of the new Aboriginal political elite are given prominence in the legitimizing discourse around proposed policy directions, Aboriginal people themselves are conspicuously absent from the discussion… ‘They are essentially empty vessels, or rather chipped and cracked ones, into which the new array of more socially functional values is to be poured.’ *David Martin, Why the ‘New Direction’ in Federal Indigenous Affairs Policy is as Likely to ‘Fail’ as the Old Directions, CAEPR (10 May 2006). Worth thinking about.