Memory, Place and Aboriginal-Settler History Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Historical Inheritance: Tracing the Past
- 2 Dwelling in Place: Absorbing the Past
- 3 The Social Community: Networks of Memory and Attachment to Place
- 4 The Cultural Circuit: Making Sense of Lived History
- 5 ‘Memory’ to ‘History’: From Verbal Transmission to Text
- 6 Settler Belonging, Victimhood and Trauma
- 7 Unsettling the Disconnect
- Appendix 1 Interviewees
- Appendix 2 Towns/ Settlements Whose Public Spaces Were Surveyed
- Appendix 3 List of Mid-Northern Written Histories Surveyed
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
6 - Settler Belonging, Victimhood and Trauma
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 January 2018
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Historical Inheritance: Tracing the Past
- 2 Dwelling in Place: Absorbing the Past
- 3 The Social Community: Networks of Memory and Attachment to Place
- 4 The Cultural Circuit: Making Sense of Lived History
- 5 ‘Memory’ to ‘History’: From Verbal Transmission to Text
- 6 Settler Belonging, Victimhood and Trauma
- 7 Unsettling the Disconnect
- Appendix 1 Interviewees
- Appendix 2 Towns/ Settlements Whose Public Spaces Were Surveyed
- Appendix 3 List of Mid-Northern Written Histories Surveyed
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Mid- northern settler descendants have continuous and strong connections with the districts in which they have grown up and with the people who live there. They refer to their childhood places as ‘home’ and (when asked) describe a deep and enduring sense of belonging to these places. Their childhood years are described fondly and their adult lives positively. Their memories and sense of belonging are grounded in and inseparable from the family property. Aware of the importance of place to their ‘lucky’ lives, my interviewees do not take for granted their forebears’ ability to prosper and acquire land in the new colony. Their foundation stories are stories of good fortune.
This strong sense of belonging and historical and current good fortune which prevails among mid- northern settler descendants is at odds with findings and arguments put forward by several highly regarded scholars who seek to understand the absence of empathy for Aboriginal people's suffering which is evident among many Australians. In an influential article titled ‘Expulsion, Exodus and Exile’ (first published in 1999), historian Ann Curthoys draws on the work of other prominent scholars to construct her argument. Curthoys concludes with the following strong and persuasive words:
And so it is that in Australia, as in other settler societies, the trauma of expulsion, exodus, and exile obscures empathetic recognition of indigenous perspectives, of the trauma of invasion, institutionalisation, and dispersal. The self- chosen white victim finds it extremely difficult to recognise what he or she has done to others. The legacy of the colonial past is a continuing fear of illegitimacy and an inability to develop the kind of pluralistic inclusive account of the past that might form the basis for a coherent national community.
Curthoys's thesis has been widely and seemingly uncritically accepted and promulgated by numerous scholars across a variety of disciplines.
I too am seeking to understand what inhibits non- Aboriginal Australians from connecting their histories and empathising with Aboriginal victims of colonialism, but my findings are contrary to Curthoys's. I argue that some key assumptions made by Curthoys and others demonstrate a certain ‘eastern- state- centrism’ and homogenise and generalise diverse, complex, historically and regionally specific experiences of colonialism.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Memory, Place and Aboriginal-Settler HistoryUnderstanding Australians’ Consciousness of the Colonial Past, pp. 165 - 192Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2017