School of Social and Political Sciences - Theses

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    Imagining the Australian nation: settler-nationalism and aboriginality
    Moran, Anthony F. ( 1999-11)
    The thesis examines different forms of Australian setter-nationalism, and their impact upon settler/indigenous relations. I examine the way that the development of specific forms of settler national consciousness has influenced the treatment of, thought about, and feeling towards the indigenous as a people or peoples. I claim that discourses of the nation operate, in an ongoing way, as shaping forces in everyday and public policy responses to the collective situation of Australia's indigenous peoples, and to the perception of their place in Australian society. The first part of the thesis provides a theoretical framework for understanding Australian settler-nationalism, drawing upon major theories of nationalism, postcolonialism and psychoanalysis. I provide a historical and political analysis of white Australian nationalism, emphasising its racist underpinnings, and its influence upon governmental policies of biological absorption and assimilation. The second part of the thesis analyses relations between settler Australia and indigenous peoples from the 1960s to the present. Drawing upon psychoanalysis, especially that of the British object-relations school pioneered by Melanie Klein, and many contemporary discourses of the nation, I develop an account of two specific modes of settler-nationalism, which I term assimilationist and indigenising. I examine the way that these different modes have influenced and shaped public debates on Aboriginal land rights and the movement for Aboriginal Reconciliation. The major political phases studied include: the events leading up to and surrounding the passing of the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976; the Hawke Labor Government’s attempt, between 1983 and 1986, to introduce national Aboriginal land rights legislation; what can be broadly characterised as the period “after Mabo”, including the political activity stirred by the High Court’s historic Mabo decision of 1992, the passing of the Native Title Act 1993, the Wik decision of 1996, the rise of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party, and the Native Title Amendment Act 1997; and the period of the Government process of Aboriginal Reconciliation from 1991 to the present.