Great Australian Silence
Topic: Settler Colonialism: Native Peoples of America and Australia · NCERT: Class 11, Ch 6 "Displacing Indigenous Peoples"
Meaning
"The Great Australian Silence" was the title of a powerful 1968 lecture by the anthropologist W.E.H. Stanner. An anthropologist is someone who studies human societies and cultures. Stanner pointed out that historians had stayed silent about the Aborigines and left them out of Australia's story. His lecture helped start a new kind of history that took native peoples seriously.
Example
From the 1970s, scholars began to study the Aborigines as communities with their own distinct cultures. Henry Reynolds's book Why Weren't We Told? criticised the habit of starting Australian history with Cook's "discovery". University departments, galleries of native art and native life stories soon followed.
Don't confuse with
- Mabo case (1992): the Great Australian Silence was a lecture about how history was written. Mabo was a court ruling that gave natives legal rights to land.
Related concepts
- Indian Reorganisation Act
- Constitution Act 1982
- Multiculturalism in Australia
- Mabo case
- Stolen Generations
- National Sorry Day