Skye Krichauff - Memory, Place and Aboriginal-Settler History: Understanding Australians Consciousness of the Colonial Past

Memory, Place and AboriginalSettler History

Anthem Studies in Australian History

Anthem Studies in Australian History publishes new and innovative scholarship in Australian history, including work that is concerned with how the legacies of the past resonate in contemporary Australia. The series aims to showcase research in the Indigenous, social, cultural, political, media, environmental and economic histories of Australia. This includes Australian scholarship on the historical dimensions of visual and material cultures as well as relevant work in heritage, museum and memory studies. The series is particularly focused on approaches that locate the histories of Australia in broader postcolonial, transnational or comparative contexts, and examine Australia in the Asia-Pacific region and the world.

Series Editor

Kate Darian-Smith University of Melbourne, Australia

Editorial Board

Tracey Banivanua Mar La Trobe University, Australia

Frank Bongiorno Australian National University, Australia

Anna Clark University of Technology, Sydney, Australia

Martin Crotty University of Queensland, Australia

Bridget Griffin-Foley Macquarie University, Australia

Anna Johnston University of Queensland, Australia

Jane Lydon University of Western Australia, Australia

Chris McAuliffe Australian National University, Australia

Amanda Nettelbeck University of Adelaide, Australia

David Nichols University of Melbourne, Australia

Maria Nugent Australian National University, Australia

Fiona Paisley Griffith University, Australia

Keir Reeves Federation University, Australia

Penny Russell University of Sydney, Australia

Anja Schwarz University of Potsdam, Germany

Simon Sleight Kings College, London

Agnieszka Sobocinska Monash University, Australia

Memory, Place and AboriginalSettler History

Understanding Australians Consciousness of the Colonial Past

Skye Krichauff

To those, past and present, whose land was taken over, and to those, past and present, who acted with decency and saw the humanity in others

CONTENTS

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How do people know or, more poignantly, make sense of events that precede their own lives? How are experiences passed down through the generations and how does knowledge of our forebears experiences affect our understanding of both broader historical events and the world in which we currently live? What can be gained by distinguishing between different ways the past is known, for example, the past known through memory (by recalling an event, place or person that has been actually experienced) and the past known through abstract means (such as through lectures, books, information boards)? These are some of the rather vague and general questions I have grappled with while trying to understand how societies live with historical injustices or, more particularly, how non-Aboriginal Australians know, make sense of and relate to the historical injustice of Aboriginal dispossession.

Throughout my childhood and adolescence I was completely ignorant about the Aboriginal people who belonged to the land my forebears occupied in the 1870s and on which I grew up. It was not until I was at university in the early 1990s that I began to learn how Europeans came to be in this country. This newly acquired knowledge shook me and made me question everything I thought I knew about the world in which I lived. I was shocked and sickened: at the injustice and manner of the original owners dispossession; that our whole society, our whole legal and parliamentary system, was based on such a fundamental, massive immoral act which no one seemed to speak about; that I had remained completely unaware of this for the first 20 years of my life and had never had any cause to question or think about European presence here; that when I told others what I had recently learned, no one seemed particularly interested.

The general lack of discussion and concern about how Europeans came to be here which prevailed in Australia throughout much of the twentieth century has, in certain ways, been superseded. Now, in the twenty-first century there is greater awareness and acknowledgement of the violence of European occupation and the multifaceted injustices Aboriginal people suffered and continue to suffer as a result of colonialism. The walk for reconciliation in 1988, the history wars of the 1990s and 2000s, the Mabo decision and legislative recognition of Native Title, Prime Minister Kevin Rudds apology to the Stolen Generation, all signal that the nation as a whole is more alert and sensitive to our problematic history. There are now laws, policies, councils and committees to promote reconciliation between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people. But while this may make some Australians more alert and sensitive to some aspects of Aboriginalsettler history, it does not necessarily translate into a widespread understanding or empathy for Aboriginal suffering, or to non-Aboriginal Australians making the connection between the violence of the past, the fundamental injustice of dispossession and their own lives.