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Good Reading : February 2007
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38 goodreading ı FEBRUARY 2007 word of mouth up close balancing act World-renowned archaeologist JOSEPHINE FLOOD has been studying and writing about Australian Aborigines, their history and their art, for more than thirty years, but only since her retirement a few years ago has she felt at liberty to say what she says inThe Original Australians. ALISON PRESSLEY spoke to her recently about her ground-breaking new book. I’ve lived in Australia now for three decades, and I consider myself reasonably well-read and up to speed with current affairs. But Dr Josephine Flood’s new book The Original Australians answers more questions and illuminates more issues connected with Australia’s first inhabitants than anything else I’ve read. It’s a work of phenomenal breadth and scope, covering 50,000 years of habitation of the world’s largest continent – yet it does so in a con- cise 300 pages and in a prose so engaging and readable that you’re scarcely aware of reading serious non-fiction. I devoured it as I do particularly attractive novels. Some of the content is fairly controver- sial. Dr Flood wrote the book in response to frequently asked questions, some from overseas visitors to Australia and others from interested locals. They wanted to know such things as: Where did the Aborigines come from, and what are their genetic origins? What impact did they have on the Australian environ- ment? Why did they not become gardeners or far mers? Was conflict or imported new disease the main factor in Aboriginal depopulation? Were Aboriginal children ‘stolen’, and if so why and with what result? And finally, what are the problems in modern Aboriginal communities, and can they be resolved? Big questions. And considered, thoughtful, balanced and fair answers. Dr Flood’s main concern has been to avoid the extremes of the scales of justice and to present both sides in accordance with the evidence available. So of course she has ruffled a few feathers. ‘I debunk a lot of myths but I don’t cast blame, I just tell the story based on the evidence,’ she says firmly. ‘But one lot of feathers was ruffled because I mention cannibalism. I’ve often been asked the question ‘was there cannibalism here?’ so I felt that it needed an answer. I devoted a couple of pages to just giving the actual situation, which is that there was very little cannibalism, and it was of a ritual nature, and so it was very different from, say, the cannibalism in New Guinea. But people objected to my even mentioning the subject.’ Which took us on to the vexed question of the eager ness of some white writers to blame everything wrong with Aboriginal societies today on racism. ‘I think history has a pendulum in it, and once Henry Reynolds started writing his very sympathetic versions of Aboriginal history thirty years ago the pendulum actually swung too far to non-indigenous people blaming themselves for all the modern problems,’ she says. ‘This in fact is simplistic: there are all sorts of causes of modern problems, it’s not just gover nment policies over the last 200 years. The pendulum reached its extreme in 1988 with the Bicentenary, when a whole lot of works came out which were basically self-flagellation. There was a lot of misinfor- mation put out, which is one reason why I wrote this book.’ At all points in the book Dr Flood is at pains to concede that yes, the coming of the Europeans was disastrous for the Indig- enous population, and yes, bad deeds were committed. But when you look at what happened from an archaeologist’s point of view, which naturally takes in a huge time- span, it’s sadly inevitable as well as universal. Dr Flood writes that all the evidence points the fact that the coming of the Aborigines to Australia 50,000 years ago led to huge habitat alteration via fire, and hence to the megafaunal extinctions; also hat the plain fact is if Captain Cook and his cohorts hadn’t claimed sovereignty over Australia some other European ation would have done so very shortly afterwards: it was the Age of Exploration leading to the Age of Empire, and Indigenous populations all over the world suffered the consequences. That’s historical fact, and we can’t alter it no matter how heartbreaking the reality. Dr Flood is optimistic about the future of Australia’s First Nation, despite the admittedly dire problems. She is a great fan of Noel Pearson, and praises him for being the first Indig- enous leader to say the unsayable and acknowledge that many Indigenous communities today are dysfunctional and need to face that fact. She also illuminates the historical events behind today’s situation with remarkable clarity and compassion. The response to Dr Flood’s book from the Aboriginal com- munity has been very positive. ‘I think what they [Indigenous reviewers] like about it is that I don’t play the blame game, that I try to look in an objective way at the whole story,’ she says. ‘But they took issue with certain things. I think one criticism is valid, in that they felt that I had understated the problems of the stolen generations.There I was trying to get a balance because I felt that a lot of what had come out on the stolen generations had been very unbalanced, had painted a very one-sided picture. So I tried to paint a balanced picture, but I may not have got it quite right. I’m hoping the book will go into a second edition so that I can cor rect a few things like that.’ I hope so too. The Original Australians deserves to be read in homes, schools and colleges, and should take its place proudly alongside Dr Flood’s previous books, which include the classic Archaeology of the Dreamtime. The Original Australians is published by Allen & Unwin, rrp $39.95 Everything about books www.goodreadingmagazine.com ONLINE
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