Aboriginal Studies Press book shortlisted for Prime Minister's Prize for Australian History

 

Russell McGregor’s Indifferent Inclusion: Aboriginal people and the Australian Nation

 

 

29 May 2012

A clear and measured account of assimilation which deepens our understanding of this still-misunderstood policy ideal has been shortlisted in the 2012 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards.

Russell McGregor’s Indifferent Inclusion: Aboriginal people and the Australian Nation is a powerful holistic interpretation of complex relations between Indigenous and settler Australians in the crucial middle four decades of the twentieth century and comes at a time when assimilation still has its advocates in public debate.

Published last year by Aboriginal Studies Press — Indifferent Inclusion was one of five finalists announced last week in the newly incorporated Prize for Australian History.

McGregor — an Associate Professor of history at James Cook University in Townsville — has published extensively on the history of settler Australian attitudes toward Aboriginal people.

Rhonda Black, Director of Aboriginal Studies Press — the publishing arm of AIATSIS — says that Indifferent Inclusion cleverly combines the perspectives of political, social and cultural history as well as a thoughtful analysis of how the relationship changed and what were the impediments to change.

“McGregor adopts a critical stance on the programs and practices pursued under the name of ‘assimilation’ and in doing so he offers a more sympathetic appraisal of what ‘assimilation’ meant to its advocates in the mid-twentieth century.”

Ms Black highlighted that McGregor probes beyond the struggle for political rights, revealing the shifts in public attitudes which sometimes assisted, but sometimes constrained, the incorporation of Aboriginal people into the national community.

Author Russell McGregor highlights that Indifferent Inclusion explores the ideals which impelled the quest for Aboriginal inclusion as well as the public apathy on which that quest frequently stumbled.

“It provides new perspectives on policies of assimilation,” he said.

“Indifferent Inclusion explores issues ranging from victory in the 1967 referendum to demonstrations of Aboriginal prowess on the sports-field; from Aboriginal efforts to lever citizenship from their military service to the use of Aboriginal motifs in domestic decoration and homeware.

 “It also illuminates continuities between Indigenous agendas then and now, showing for instance how today’s ideas of mutual obligations were anticipated in earlier Aboriginal advocacy of their need to shoulder the responsibilities of citizenship.

“The legacy this book traces is an ambiguous one. Over the middle decades of the twentieth century, Aboriginal people were incrementally but incompletely included in the national community,” he noted.

Ms Black highlighted that although settler Australians baulked at opening their hearts and minds to the full inclusion of Aboriginal people in the Australian nation, we can only hope that the light Indifferent Inclusion casts on the past can encourage greater openness in the future.

‘The judging panel itself noted that this book makes a welcome and timely contribution to both public and scholarly debates about Indigenous-White relationships in Australia,” Ms Black said.

Aboriginal Studies Press (ASP) is the publishing arm of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS), the world’s premier research and collecting institute of Australian Indigenous studies. ASP publishes outstanding writing that promotes an understanding of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures.