Contesting Assimilation

Tim Rowse (ed)

'Assimilation' was one of the most hopeful social ideals of post-second world war Australia, a rallying cry for those who wanted a 'fair go' for Indigenous peoples.

By the 1970s, 'Assimilation' had slipped into disrepute and was a dirty word among people of progressive opinion.

By the early twenty first century, such odium was countered by a more conservative nostalgia for a golden Australian past.

Throughout the course of its many usages, 'Assimilation' has been a contested term whose importance today, like reconciliation, is evidence by the lack of agreement about what it actually means.

In Contesting Assimilation, fifteen historians illuminate moments in twentieth century Australia when the policy of 'assimilation' was being planned, implemented, abandoned and debated.

The essays collected here are about non-Indigenous Australians, their social ideals, their racial theories, their policies and programs. Readers will encounter influential officials such as A.O. Neville, S.G. Middleton, J.H. Davey and Cecil Cook, the influential federal minister, Paul Hasluck, and humanitarian critics and supporters such as Mary Bennett, Gerald Peel and A.P. Elkin. Several contributions focus on Indigenous anticipations of and responses to assimilation including what Fred Maynard learned from African-American wharfies, and what some urban Aboriginal people understood by 'respectability', and why residents of Bulgandramine lost the place they called home.