Australia's Shame

At the Ian Potter Centre, which is part of the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, the first floor is given over to indigenous art. I tagged along behind a party of students who were being told about the paintings by a huge bearded man who was part Aboriginal. He explained the paintings and artefacts in considerable detail. The connection between the traditional iconography and how modern Aboriginal artists have changed and reinterpreted the themes was really fascinating.

The picture shown is by Julie Dowling and refers to the Bathurst Island Mission, where in the 1920s a Catholic priest forbade the practice of Aboriginal ritual and marriage practice, effectively destroying the culture.

But what hit me so hard was what he said about the treatment of Australia's original people by the white settlers, which continues to this day. Incredibly, it remained legal to hunt and kill Aborigines until 1967. A bounty of ten pounds sterling was paid for each body, many of which were supplied to hospitals throughout the world for students to dissect. There were many other appalling facts about how abominably the whites have behaved. It may have begun in the nineteenth century but it was taken over and formalised as part of the white Australia policy, which apparently foresaw the complete annihilation of the indigenous population by 1970.

Today, the Australian governement seems yet again about to fail to keep its promises to the Aborigines, partly because out of habit, partly because in times of financial stricture, promises are expensive. It is a shocking story and so different from what has happened in New Zealand, where the Treaty of Waitangi is finally being fairly applied with the consent of both parties.