Exiting the Aboriginal Industry

Like so much else in our world, the field of Aboriginal affairs is awash in sloppy terminology, saturated with words glibly thrown around as if we all took their meaning for granted, yet without any clear definition: “autonomy”; “self-determination”; “nation”; “civilisation”; “country”; “culture”; “knowledges”; “spirituality”; “elder”; “race”; “tribe”; “clan”; “mob”; “language”; “disadvantaged”; “reconciliation”; “racism”; “gap”; “voice to parliament”; “dreaming”—even “Aboriginal people”, whose numbers are growing faster than any biological process can explain. Lack of clarity allows exploitation of such words, in aid of a broad range of purposes, that make it difficult for opponents or sceptics to question, let alone understand.

Quadrant readers will be familiar with yet another term, “Aboriginal industry” (hereon referred to as the Industry), which I can trace back only as far as Kerryn Pholi’s lucid, perceptive and disarmingly frank article in the December 2012 issue, “Silencing Dissent Inside the Aboriginal Industry”. She wrote:

In Australia, our substantial emotional and economic investment in maintaining a separate Aboriginal identity has created an Aboriginal industry, made up of institutions and agencies with “expertise” on the distinct needs and wants of Aboriginal people.

To my understanding, “industry” refers to a group engaged in a common economic activity, either co-operatively or competitively (or both), for the purpose of producing material goods or providing specific services. Applying that to Aboriginal activities seemed pretty nebulous, if not far-fetched, and I had difficulty in seeing how the self-appointed indigenous “leaders” sporadically jostling for attention in the public space could possibly collaborate to establish a viable industry of any kind.

However, once the recent Voice referendum progressed beyond being just a twinkle in Prime Minister Albanese’s eye, the emergence of its promoters sure started to look like a group working towards a common goal, supposedly the ultimate economic betterment of a poorly defined sector of the Australian population. The stampede in support allowed not only the “usual suspects” to out themselves—such as Megan Davis, Noel Pearson, Marcia Langton, Thomas Mayo and the Dodson brothers—but also a range of “useful idiots” in the form of industrialists, bankers, academics and university administrators, union leaders, sports stars and their administrators, religious leaders, media celebrities, entertainers and actors. Could this group be the backbone of the Industry? While it’s impossible to know their individual motives, the outstanding characteristics they seem to share, regardless of ethno-cultural background, are education and affluence; they are all articulate, privileged individuals, employed in highly paid, apparently fulfilling positions, and living in salubrious localities. This was clearly brought out by the referendum results: affluent electorates swayed towards voting Yes, the most conspicuous being the only jurisdiction to support a voice to Parliament, the Australian Capital Territory, 60 per cent of whose voters were in favour, in contrast to the national average of 60 per cent against.

The impending referendum spawned several books, both for and against. Those in favour, having based their emotive arguments mainly on “doing the right thing” for “history’s victims”, while ridiculing opponents as stupid, ignorant, even racist, victims of dis- or mis-information, now seem redundant. However, amongst those opposing was a contribution by Gary Johns, The Burden of Culture (order it here), which goes much further, covering all the important issues so comprehensively that it suddenly becomes more pertinent than ever. The socio-economic problems remain, and demand serious attention now, without further pointless distractions. With the Voice dead and buried, its frustrated promoters have little choice now but to openly push their ulterior motives: “treaty” and “truth-telling”, still hopeful of more power and remuneration. And they will continue to brandish their prime weapon, “the gap”: Aboriginal “disadvantage”, as a trigger for whitefella guilt.

Gary Johns, a former politician and minister in the Keating government, has a substantial record in public affairs, and for thirty years has engaged in indigenous matters. Prior to the Voice referendum, he set up an organisation, Recognise a Better Way, which then combined with other opposition groups, and has now morphed into the non-profit organisation Close the Gap Research. He knows, and understands, his subject well, and has read deeply and broadly. Advocates of genuine truth-telling would be hard-pushed to find a more detailed, comprehensive, clearly articulated and jargon-free account of the current state of Australian Aboriginal affairs.

What comes out very early in the book is how “the gap”, a chronic sore in Australian society, arises largely from conditions in the remote communities—which, seemingly paradoxically, is where Aboriginal people live closest to their “traditional culture”, “on country”. While “assimilation” has for some reason become a pejorative term in recent years, it perfectly describes the remainder of Australia’s indigenous people, the 80 per cent that includes many who have escaped those dysfunctional “utopias” for healthier and more fulfilling lifestyles in cities, suburbs or towns. That would certainly include all the Industry leaders, possibly the most “assimilated” of all Aborigines! Also paradoxically, it is they who bleat incessantly about how Aboriginal lives have gone downhill ever since James Cook’s mob set foot upon the shores of Botany Bay.

But even those still living remotely long ago discarded traditional lifestyles, now demanding modern housing, electric power and water, effective telecommunications, motorised transport, complex health facilities, imported processed food, fully equipped and staffed schools, policing and so on, returning very little to the greater economy that supports them. The traditional remnants in their lives include mainly the freedom to move about at random, speak in their decaying languages, indulge in sporadic ceremonies that have lost most of their meaning, and maintain feuds and vendettas, with pervasive beliefs in magic and sorcery.

The Burden of Culture is unashamedly a cri de coeur, opening with a poignant dedication: To Aboriginal children who are trapped by the dreams and careers of an Aboriginal elite and their promoters. Its under­lying thesis is that an Aboriginal Industry has sprung up that is now colonising our institutions, public discourse, education and even thinking, cynically exploiting us in a grab for power and cash. In his opening chapters, Johns comes out with guns blazing. But from beginning to end, the book is densely packed with plain common sense (for most of us), well supported by a plethora of useful information, including countless eminently quotable passages.

Chapter One, “Aboriginal Colonisation”, proposes, with strong supportive argument, that Australian mainstream society is now being reverse-colonised by the Industry. Referring to the High Court’s decision in the bizarre Love case, Johns writes: “It proves that even the most learned are suckers for cultural dreaming, the myth of the noble savage, and sorcery, which is a more accurate word for spirituality.” Now there’s an interesting definition of “spirituality”!

Chapter Two, “A Tale of Two Aborigines”, deals with the complexities of identity and lifestyle, and delves into the major issues of incarceration, alcohol abuse, mental illness, initiation practices, schooling, suicide and paternity. He mentions that “culture … is held to be special, but also hard to define and therefore hard to criticise”. We’ll return to this later.

In Chapter Three, “Industry Strategies: How Loyalty is Enforced”, Johns reflects on W.E.H. Stanner’s observations that Aborigines readily parasitised colonial society (in fact, the process commenced from the arrival of the First Fleet in Sydney Cove), seeing their own lifestyles were so harsh and unpredictable, and will continue increasingly to do so: “The squeeze-play may be not much more advanced now than it was, but it is far bigger. It has four parts—remove or ignore historical context, misrepresent evidence, generate guilt and money, and control descendants.” “Truth-telling” in a nutshell!

For contrast, he quotes the 1937 manifesto of the New South Wales Aboriginal Progressive Association, which had sibling organisations in other states: “We have no desire to go back to primitive conditions of the Stone Age. We ask you to teach our people to live in the Modern Age, as modern citizens.” How times have changed! Meanwhile, other groups were pushing for a separate “model Aboriginal state”, based on the fantasised socialistic underpinnings of the noble savage, and later promoted by the Communist Party of Australia. There’s plenty of revealing history here.

Johns looks into the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, which revealed that death rates among Aboriginal prisoners were actually lower than among other prisoners, and might even be lower than death rates for Aborigines living outside prison. It also concluded that deaths in custody did not result from deliberate violence or brutality by police or prison officers, and reported:

It is sometimes assumed that most Aboriginal persons who are sentenced to imprisonment have been convicted of relatively trivial offences such as public drunkenness or offensive behaviour. There is very little evidence to support this assumption.

Another report, seriously misconstrued from the outset yet endlessly exploited by the Industry, is Bringing Them Home, of 1997. Its confection of the “stolen generations” was forensically picked apart by Keith Windschuttle in The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Volume Three: The Stolen Generations 1881–2008 (2009). Anyone seriously interested in this inquiry would be well aware of the report’s fraudulent conclusions, yet it has prompted accusations that Australia is guilty of “crimes against humanity”, and even “genocide”, in some readings of the UN Convention on Genocide. Sadly, its legacy is now so entrenched that social and community workers are hamstrung by fear of creating another “stolen generation” when trying to safely place endangered children.

The chapter looks into “apologies and other performances”, the “no fewer than thirteen periods of celebration or commemoration each year for Aborigines”, compensation for the “victims” of the “stolen generations” and the vexations of child protection. It’s a truism that “anyone would be hard pressed to argue there’s a great Australian silence”.

Chapter Four, “Colonisation: A Matter of Time”, argues convincingly that our continent would have been occupied inevitably by a European power, even if the Maoris had beaten them to it. We can speculate about how the Aborigines would have fared under different scenarios, but there’s no denying that the British were by far the best option. And there’s no denying that many Aborigines “voted with their feet”, integrating early with the invader society; women who lived with white sealers weren’t slaves, but usually escapees from violent tribal culture. Johns responds to claims for reparations, generally from Industry leaders with predominantly European ancestry:

While the compensated fail to understand that their poverty arises not from invasion but from lack of understanding of the modern world, or from their culture and behaviour and capacity, they will forever remain poor, forever demanding compensation.

He discusses the mythical “spiritual connection to land”, and its distorting effect on High Court judgments, as well its cynical exploitation by the Industry. Also made clear is “internal colonisation”, the constant shifting of tribal territories, with endless warfare involving groups invading neighbouring lands, at times resulting in “genocide”. The Uluru Statement is here torn to shreds, and the High Court ridiculed for some apparently stupid decisions, one of the main concerns for Voice opponents.

Chapter Five, “Whose Empowerment?”, draws heavily on Tadhgh Purtill’s The Dystopia in the Desert, elaborating how a complex, symbiotic relationship has arisen between remote community dwellers and the bureaucrats and other outsiders supposedly there to help them. It serves very much to maintain the status quo. “Gambling, unemployment, conflict over money and mining royalties all originate in a lack of understanding of money: what it is, where it comes from, how it can be used constructively.” A culture of bilateral dependency has arisen, with the prime object of keeping the money flowing. Staff come in:

wanting to change the lives of Aborigines. They leave disappointed. If they stay, they inwardly resign to do no good. The rules and procedures are broken daily. The reports to government are fudged. [With the] vicious infighting … These places are dangerous.

It’s no surprise that corruption is rife, with “big men” pulling the strings (and funds). This is not exaggeration, yet it is what the Industry is striving to maintain.

Johns also seriously questions the real worth of the much-touted Aboriginal community-controlled health organisations, various evaluation strategies, child “protection” practices and the profusion of consultancy reports and recommendations based heavily on entrenched ideology. Regarding jobs in remote communities, there’s “a comprehensive list of programs [from government departments]. There is no shortage of infrastructure … what is missing is employment, and a willingness to search for work, or a capacity to engage in it.” It’s a scathing condemnation of the Industry, mindless government leaders and agencies, and the gullible intelligentsia allowing, even facilitating, its persistence.

Chapter Six, “Identity: There’s More to Life”, questions the politics and practicalities of dividing people on the basis of ethnic/cultural/racial identity, which was soundly rejected by the nation in the recent referendum. Surely, individual need, rather than ancestry, should determine one’s eligibility for welfare assistance? Is a person handicapped simply by their Aboriginality, however remote? If so, how can it be defined, for that huge (and growing) majority of mixed ancestry? It could be something that has no ending. Kerryn Pholi’s article discusses this question. Provocatively, Johns advocates genetic testing to sort out the inevitable fraudsters seeking special privileges, but he must know that, with the current state of DNA testing, Aboriginal ancestry can only be confirmed, but not reliably excluded. He shows that living remotely, rather than Aboriginality, is a greater risk factor for many of the problems that contribute to “the gap”. In the mainstream community, affirmative action, rather than job appointments on merit, seriously threatens the nature of work, and the quality of its output. Our universities seem to be infested with potential impostors, whose identity claims remain unchallenged out of sensitivity.

In the matter of foster-care for children at risk, “Aboriginal wishes to ‘immerse’ their children in ‘culture’” can wreak havoc with the child’s, and its carer’s, mental health, as shown in several heart-breaking court cases. It seems counter-intuitive to condemn a seriously abused or neglected child to the culture responsible for such mistreatment, on the basis of mystical genetic heritage.

Chapter Seven, “Aboriginal Land: Does Not Sustain Life”, details the history of the native title and land rights movements, and demonstrates the shortcomings of their outcome, once touted as the panacea:

Aborigines are sitting on [scattered lands], waiting for something to happen … the incentive is to stay because of the promise of money to be had from land rights, or government-provided houses, underwritten by welfare. Life goes on relatively undisturbed by outsiders, although often much disturbed by insiders.

It’s no surprise that the remote communities sit on marginal lands, with minimal development potential, for all the fertile and economically productive regions were settled long ago. The vagaries of the remote pastoral and mining industries provide an extremely unreliable basis for sustainable economies. Mining royalties tend to be squandered, rather than invested, and the potential for corruption is almost limitless. Most Aborigines who have done well have succeeded by leaving their tribal lands and cultures to participate in the real-world economy, existing quite comfortably away from their ancestral territories. The ones thriving remotely are mainly the “big men”, with their lawyers and consultants:

The benefits of native title are few and fitful; the costs are high; the disputes are many; the system will need to be propped up forever on the pretence that native title holders can contribute to the “north” of Australia … descendants of the original claimants, where they do not live on the land, may lose interest in the idea of something that has a tenuous connection to their lives … [but] A benefit of land rights to the Aboriginal industry has been the use of the term “traditional owner” as a political tool.

Chapter Eight, “Aboriginal Culture: Loyalty or Exit?”, affirms that traditional cultures, even though imbued with pervasive fear and violence, especially towards women and outsiders, were an adaptation for survival in harsh environments. With the dramatic post-colonial changes:

Aboriginal culture is stuck in a rut. The big policy question is whether those who need to escape can. Why some intellectuals and Aboriginal leaders want to block them from escaping is also a big policy question.

Johns elaborates on how traditions are being distorted by modern technology.

Chapter Nine, “Aboriginal Law: Uncivilised”, outlines the tensions between British and Aboriginal law right from the colony’s early days. The Western principles of “the protection of the innocent and the punishment of offenders using rational assessment of evidence and trial before peers and judges were unknown in Aboriginal society [which] had its own ways of dealing with such problems, often in the most horrific manner”. In the early days, courts were reluctant to get involved in black-on-black violence, but some Aborigines, particularly women, wanted access to settler law for their own protection.

Apart from the divisive issue of identity, the grotesque aspects of Aboriginal law, its obligations of payback, the indeterminate role of poorly defined elders, the intrusions of magic and sorcery, and regional variations, do not allow it to fit comfortably with our legal system, or our society. Yet, this is still being promoted by Industry spokespersons, and debated in some intellectual and legal circles. Incredibly, separate (and expensive) Aboriginal courts have already been set up in some states, but without any evidence of benefit.

Chapter Ten, “Aboriginal Knowledge: Not Enlightened”, opens with an apposite 2011 quote from Thomas Sowell, contrasting the remarkable technological and social revolutions in the almost medieval eighteenth-century Scotland and nineteenth-century Japan, with the retrogressive attitudes taught to twentieth-century Third World leaders who studied in the West, becoming indoctrinated with fashionable social theories and ideologies. The connection to modern Australia is obvious; learning a trade might be more useful than studying sophist ideology.

We’re forever being told about “special Aboriginal knowledge”. Universities even employ “Indigenous Knowledge Holders”, making them sound like very special people. Johns questions the point of “people being taught their own culture, sometimes by people who don’t have it”. He analyses the methods and dangers of traditional healing, the myth of “caring for country”, and the contentious issues surrounding Aboriginal academics, bureaucrats and research methodologies. (Some years ago, I looked into the PhD “thesis” of an indigenous director, entitled “Doctor”, of the National Museum of Australia, to find it was little more than a high-school-standard essay on the life of his grandmother, with lots of family photos.)

Chapter Eleven, “Aboriginal Language: Dead or Just Sleeping?”, opens with a quote from the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, urging the maintenance and transmission of Aboriginal languages. Every Industry leader is educated and articulate in English, some, if not most, possibly not being fluent in any Aboriginal language. Yet, they demand bilingualism be inflicted on Aboriginal children, those living remotely already having restricted opportunities to learn English. Snippets of Aboriginal languages are even being introduced into mainstream schools, apparently at random. It was Whitlam, in 1972, who made it official policy that kids living remotely be taught in their own languages. The idiocy surrounding this initiative, with its ramifications and bizarre rationales, strains credibility, and Johns covers it in detail. In conclusion:

There is no proof that reviving Aboriginal language has a beneficial effect on Aborigines. It may lift their spirits for a time, it may fascinate, but it will not unlock the knowledge they need to gain a foothold in the wider community.

In his final chapter, “Exit Strategy”, Johns recapitulates the exhaustive range of issues covered throughout the book. The only point of contention, for me, and trivial at that, arises here: his claim that “There was nothing in the Aboriginal economy that Europeans could use as a foundation for civilisation.” As Bill Gammage has argued convincingly, all the “parklands” surrounding incipient colonial Sydney, which facilitated establishment of the grazing industry, were a result of centuries of clearing and burning practices focused on kangaroo hunting.

Johns then prescribes “Sixteen ways to save lives and overcome Aboriginal colonisation”. Essentially, this is about eliminating separateness, the politics of identity, how Australians should think and act as citizens of a unified nation, one that helps those of its members truly in need, rather than those who identify as a special group only because of their often marginal ancestry.

Given that “culture” is the titular character here, a fluid term (as Johns alludes) sacralised and weaponised by the Industry, it deserves some elaboration. Grotesque remnants are still prevalent in remote communities, exploited by older men to subjugate and abuse women, and to terrorise children in dangerous and now-pointless initiation ceremonies. But culture has a far broader context, deserving of deeper analysis. Essentially, it entails the entire complex of behaviours in a community that extend beyond natural physiological reflexes and instincts, that is, those aspects of our lives that are learnt, adjustable, and become characteristic of our community. While the capacity to speak, dependent on anatomy and neural connections, is genetically transmitted, language is a cultural manifestation that is socially transmitted, and so evolves, changing over generations. The mere fact of the remarkable language diversity in pre-colonial Australia, with around 250 major language groups (comprising maybe 700 dialects—but where does one dialect end and another start?), reflects the extensive changes that have occurred over the millennia (so much for the reliability of oral histories). Cultural and biological evolution go hand in hand; if a species is a biological experiment that has so far succeeded, then traditions are successful cultural experiments. Traditional Aboriginal cultures served to fit the people into their place. All their beliefs, rituals and ceremonies were developed not only to ensure their survival, but also to explain their surroundings as best they could, and to streamline movement, social interactions and the acquisition of food.

The supreme tool-making animal, Homo sapiens has evolved to see the world teleologically, with everything having a cause and effect, even purpose. Extension of such thinking to ourselves raises unanswerable questions, reflecting the limitations of our brain’s evolution. What is our purpose? What are we doing here? Where did we come from? Where are we going? Why? We attempt to explain our surroundings, but limited to terms we understand. We have little choice but to invoke the supernatural. The landscapes, of which we are integral components, must have arisen from the actions of familiar, albeit monstrous, forms of creatures we know—a helpful mnemonic for negotiating one’s territory, as much as anything else, and passed down through generations in song and dance. This is the basis of the almost-sacred, undefinable “Dreaming”, now being replaced by the more authentic-sounding, central Australian “Tjukurrpa”. And emotions, nasty behaviour, disease and plain bad luck are attributed to evil spirits, perhaps recruited by malevolent human agents, who hence deserve retribution. This is by no means unique to Aboriginal cultures, but in Western society has been largely replaced by science; we now know the geological and meteorological determinants of familiar landscapes, and the causes of disease.

The point of all this elaboration is to emphasise how traditional cultures were seamlessly integrated into lifestyles and survival needs. Today’s Aborigines, even in the most remote regions, have totally absorbed modern technology into their lives. They long ago stopped walking the country, now relying on four-wheel-drive vehicles and aircraft. They stopped living on the ground, where all essential activities occurred, but moved into modern housing, with all its expensive and complex trappings. Almost all their food is transported from far away, despite lip service to “bush tucker”, and much of what they now eat is extremely detrimental to their health (hence “the gap”). They demand expensive, modern health facilities and treatment, despite ostensible veneration of “bush medicine” and “traditional healers”, little more than sorcerers. Alcohol, drugs, tobacco, kava, money, gambling, digital technology and mangled English have all been subsumed into this new culture, while the Industry talks of “jobs”, “autonomy”, “self-determination” and, of course, “traditional culture”. Does anyone seriously wish to give up any of these innovations, and return to their fully traditional ways? If not, what is the point of holding on to dying languages and restrictive shards of old ways?

Identity politics, with its irresolvable stresses and strains, is dangerous for a society, even one that claims to be diverse and multicultural. The arguments in The Burden of Culture boil down to a simple dilemma for our nation: Do people deserve special treatment purely on the basis of an assumed ancestry? Or should only individuals with exceptional needs be given special treatment? Each risks the outcome that people given limitless, unconditional assistance inevitably become addicted to it—Noel Pearson’s “welfare trap”. “The gap” keeps being promoted as glaring evidence of the suffering of Aboriginal people as a group, yet it is the wrong measure, being heavily distorted by specific conditions in the remote communities. Instead, we should be looking more carefully at discrepancies between them and their urbanised counterparts, and asking, “Why the difference?” Why do the inhabitants of those unstable dystopias, living “on country, close to traditional culture”, suffer the most? Anyone familiar with those communities would be aware of their insurmountable problems, where lifestyles are sustained entirely by expensive and corruptible external inputs. Yet, it is these very people that the Aboriginal Industry wants to keep trapped on location, to promote its self-serving purposes.

If there is “no such thing as race”, as many Industry leaders now assert, why do they keep spruiking indigenous exclusivity, specialness and exceptionalism? How can they justify a special “voice”, or need for “treaty”, or reparations? They should be honest with their hapless underlings, and reveal their own secrets to personal success, instead of bleating incessantly about the long-past injustices, depredations and deprivations of colonialism, that can never be eradicated from the history books but should be relegated to the past where they belong.

For a long time, many in the Australian mainstream community have felt browbeaten and cowed by the Industry. The referendum outcome, a convincing refutation of its fanciful claims and ambitions, just might serve as a catalyst, giving us the courage to speak out openly and truthfully. Instead of mindlessly digging the indigenous money-pit wider and deeper, we should be seeking more effective and constructive ways of improving the lot of those captive in our remote communities.

The Burden of Culture is an excellent start; in my dreams, it would be a set text for final-year high-school students throughout Australia. It certainly should be read by all our politicians and senior bureaucrats, at all levels of government. Such a clear exposition of the major concerns and challenges, with measures to address them, gives the Aboriginal Industry an opportunity to respond, were it so confident of its cause. Just don’t start counting the days…

The Burden of Culture: How to Dismantle the Aboriginal Industry and Give Hope to its Victims
by Gary Johns
Quadrant Books, 2022, 516 pages, $39.95

Paul Prociv is the former Professor of Medical Parasitology at the University of Queensland. He wrote articles on life in remote Aboriginal communities in the special August 2023 online issue and the October 2023 issue.