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White Australia, Settler Nationalism and Aboriginal Assimilation *
Author(s) -
Moran Anthony
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
australian journal of politics and history
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.123
H-Index - 23
eISSN - 1467-8497
pISSN - 0004-9522
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8497.2005.00369.x
Subject(s) - nationalism , assimilation (phonology) , cultural assimilation , ideology , ethnic group , gender studies , mainstream , white (mutation) , sociology , psychological nativism , political science , politics , anthropology , law , linguistics , philosophy , biochemistry , chemistry , gene
This article examines policies of Aboriginal assimilation between the 1930s and the 1960s, highlights how different forms of settler nationalism shaped understandings of the Aboriginal future, and explores the impact of the shift from biological notions of Australian nationhood (white Australia) to culturalist understandings of national cohesion and belonging. Assimilation policies were underpinned by racist assumptions and settler nationalist imperatives. Aborigines of mixed descent were a special focus for governments and others concerned with Aboriginal welfare, “uplift” and assimilation. This is most evident in the discourse of biological absorption of the 1930s, but lived on in notions of cultural assimilation after the Second World War. One of the ongoing motivations for assimilation drew upon the nationalist message within “white Australia”: the need to avoid the development of ethnic or cultural difference within the nation‐state. The article highlights an ideological split among the advocates of individual assimilation and group assimilation, and uses the writings of Sir Paul Hasluck and A. P. Elkin to illustrate these two views.