Dreamtime at Sydney university course

Press, 17 December 1982, Page 14

Dreamtime at Sydney university course

Australian Aboriginals will be the teachers for a course on Australian' Aboriginal history starting at Sydney’s Macquarie University. The course will give recognition to the fact that the history of Australia was being passed on orally from generation to generation of Aboriginals long before Europeans thought Australia worthy of exploration or development and began chronicling its history. Defying conventional academic practice, the university will interpret Aboriginal history as starting in the “dreamtime” and not with the first known contact with Aboriginals by literate white men about 1606. The historical views and records of the black people who have inhabited Australia for at least 40,000 years hitherto have been studied either separately in a pre-history context in anthropology or archaeology, or have' been lumped in with the general post-white settlement Australian history. Scholarly Aboriginals are affronted by the “lost race” inference and strongly assert to the viability of a continuing, distinctive Aboriginal culture in both traditional anti urban environments. -

The real significance of the course is that for the first time Aboriginals will teach their version of their own history, as distinct from the so-called “establishment” version. The course, which has been in preparation for more than two years, is being set up in the university’s School of History, Philosophy, and Politics. It-will be headed by Mr Eric Willmot, principal of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies in the national capital, Canberra, who has been appointed an honorary visiting fellow. .

He will be assisted by a fulltime senior lecturer, . Mr: Michael Williams, who is writing a master’s thesis at Griffith University in Queensland on the history of his own people, the Goorang Goorarig. Mr Willmot, an M.Sc. mathematician, said: "One of

the major aims of the course will be to encourage the recording of Aboriginal history, since most of it is only in oral form. Parts of the course will be painful to some white Australians who will be brought face to face with the reality of the destructive effect European society had on Aboriginal people. “This is not a course about who is to blame or who bears the guilt for the events of the past. Rather it seeks to bring together ' the tremendously broad and important heritage for all Australians which •was the product of Aboriginal occupation of this continent since the beginning of human time.” /

Mr Williams described the course as “a unique chance for the Aboriginal viewpoint to be heard 'and discussed.”

He said: “A distinct Aboriginal culture still exists and there is a difference in the way we operate as a people. The world view of Aboriginal people and the events that form the history of Australia are quite different to the Aboriginal view. z “We now have an opportunity to give another point of view and to expose people to a culture that has not yet been fully understood so students may develop a balanced understanding of the history of Aus- • tralia.” ~ •

Because Aboriginals had no written language, their history is. encapsulated in myths, legends, and folk memory, which have been underpinned in many cases by recent scientific archaeology findings. The task of recording it. is w’ell advanced but requires much painstaking work. . ■ The reticence of most of the older, traditional Aboriginals to pass on important information except to their own people or trusted friends means that the work is slow and tedious. A tenfold or more increase over the past few years in the number of Aboriginals engaged in-tertiary studies — many of whom lack formal secondary education qualifications but have been accepted as mature

age students — is a guarantee that the work will . proceed more rapidly in the future. The course will bring together the largest number of Aboriginals who have ever been involved in one tertiary programme. The only white Australians to participate will be scholars who have a special contribution to make.

Aboriginal educationists said research was uncovering events which were considered shameful and from which the general white population should therefore be shielded. Because the white “establishment” preferred that they should never be disclosed it had not been possible to place a correct historical interpretation on the events, especially from the Aboriginal viewpoint. Previously unrecorded details of massacres, the activities of the “squatocracy” (generally people who moved from the early white settlements into the hinterland and occupied land without official title for grazing sheep), the takeover of tribal land, and the illicit acquiring of land legallyowned under white law by Aboriginals, forced labour, and many other examples of the repression of blacks by whites are being documented. The educationists explain that the Macquarie University course, the research activity, and the expected publication' by 1988, Australia’s bicentennial year, of a comprehensive Australian Aboriginal History would help create a better understanding in the community generally of why it was important to Aboriginals to establish their own history. Dr Caroline Ralston,: senior lecturer in Pacific History at Macquarie University, who played a key role in setting up the course and will oversee its operation, said: “The response is quite exciting. Initially we set about- encouraging wide participation but the response, from full-time students . has been so enthusiastic that we will now have to be very selective in enrolling non-de-gree students.” (Australian Information Service)