Dr Broome says where people in power in Australia have listened to and worked with Aboriginal people, successful outcomes often followed. Current policy, he says, including the Government’s recently announced Northern Territory package, was not based on sufficient consultation with Aboriginal people.
“It not only denies them a role in their own future, it also courts failure,” Dr Broome says.
Dr Broome, who teaches Aboriginal History, 19th and 20th Century Australian History, and History and Heritage, will speak on this and other issues of Aboriginal agency at a seminar in Shepparton this week on Aboriginal ways of dealing with settler colonialism in Victoria.
His lecture will focus on the experience of Aboriginal people of Central and Northern Victoria over 150 years of settlement, since most of the ancestors of the Aboriginal community in the Shepparton region were from these parts of Victoria.
“I will explore how Aboriginal people on the frontier, work situations, on reserves and missions, in politics and other situations made bids to exert some influence over their lives,” Dr Broome says.
“Where those in charge listened to and worked with Aboriginal people successful outcomes often followed. The lesson for us today is that Aboriginal people have strength and ideas enough to shape their own futures if given the chance and sufficient support. Current policy however, including very recent announcements about the Northern Territory, is not based on sufficient consultation with Aboriginal people.”
Dr Richard Broome’s Aboriginal Victorians. A History since 1800 (2005) was short-listed for the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission’s non-fiction prize, 2006, and the Victorian Premiers non-fiction prize 2006, and won the NSW Premier’s Prize in Australian History 2006. It is currently short listed for the Victorian Community History Prize 2005-2007.
The book is a sympathetic account of the early history of Aboriginal and colonial settler societies in Victoria, and the sometimes savage clash of indigenous and settler cultures. It is considered a work of formidable scholarship and essential reading for a balanced understanding of Victorian history.
Dr Broome has also written a commissioned history of immigration for Victoria’s 150th anniversary of white settlement, and a history of Coburg (Coburg:Between Two Creeks (1987).The Shepparton seminar will be open to the public. (See flyer attached.)
Venue: Harder Auditorium at the Goulburn Ovens Institute of TAFE/La Trobe University, Fryers Street, Shepparton
Time: 6.00 pm to 6.30 pm
Date: Wednesday 27 June.
Aboriginal Australians have held some power in their entangled history of cultural engagement with Europeans since first contact with European settlers in 1788; they have not simply been victims of a colonial situation, but had some control and agency over the circumstances in which they found themselves, according to Australian historian and author Dr Richard Broome, Co-ordinator of La Trobe University’s History program and author of Aboriginal Victorians. A History since 1800: (Allen & Unwin, 2005).
For further information:
http://www.latrobe.edu.au/history/staff/broome.html
http://www.latrobe.edu.au/news/2005/mediarelease_2005-39.php
Dr Broome is available for comment/ interview.
Contact details:
Tel: 03 9479 2367
Email: r.broome@latrobe.edu.au
For seminar:
Rhonda King, La Trobe University (Shepparton)
Tel: 03 5821 8316