Abstract
Remembering our Indigenous past: local talk as public opinion about Indigenous history
May 2007 saw the 40th anniversary of the 1967 Referendum to remove sections from the Australian Constitution discriminating against Indigenous Australians. Publicity surrounding this event highlighted to news audiences the dramatic constitutional and policy shifts in the governance of Indigenous Australians and their relations with the non-Indigenous majority. Indigenous history remains a site of contested knowledge among historians and policy-makers, but also among members of the Australian public.
This paper reports on a project that examined public opinion about Indigenous issues when it is understood as talk in local conversational terrains. Through their conversations, participants used ‘local talk’ of History as an important narrative theme to explain their understanding of Indigenous issues. Three distinct and contested narratives were used to explain participants’ growing and changing knowledge of Indigenous issues in the public sphere. Individuals and groups used Progress, Imperialist and Struggle narratives to negotiate and explain their understandings of past policies governing Indigenous Australians.
Most importantly, through their talk of History, participants illustrated reflexivity about the ways issues such as the Stolen Generations emerged onto the public agenda in media and political debate and became ‘available’ as subjects of public opinion. Participants explained their understanding of the ways Indigenous history had been silenced in official Australian histories and in local dialogue, and the difficulties of speaking about such issues once again. They also explained how media frames, collective memories and personal experiences contributed to their local understanding of Indigenous issues.
The paper argues that such fine-grained analyses of understandings of history in local talk can shed light on the development of Indigenous policy and explain why some historical issues resonate so strongly with contemporary news audiences.
Kerry McCallum
University of Canberra