Many migrants are currently feeling the blast of harsh political rhetoric and media headlines. For academics Dr Daeul Jeong and Dr Angela Baeza, it is a timely moment to consider the relationships between migration, colonisation and the longest history of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples.
Migrants have a responsibility to respect and acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of this land and support their ongoing efforts for self-determination on their own Country, they say.
“If we are going to put down roots and live on this land, we need to think about the history of this land, our position within it, the kind of society we want to create, and what our responsibilities are,” they write in the article below.
Daeul Jeong and Angela Baeza write:
For those of us who came to Australia as migrants, Australian colonial history often feels like it is not “our history”.
It is easy for us to think this way. The colonisation of Australia seems like something that happened a long time ago, involving British settlers and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Meanwhile, we came to this country much later.
But are we really outsiders to this story?
Today, we live and work on this land, buy homes, run businesses, raise our children, build our futures here, and we call Australia ‘home’. We entered this country through the visa and citizenship systems created by the Australian state, and consequently we decided to build our lives following its laws and institutions.
But often migrants are unaware that the state and those institutions were shaped through the dispossession of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
If we call Australia our home, does this history not, in some way, become our story too?
To think about this question, we first need to move beyond one familiar image of Australian history.
Australia before the British invasion and colonisation of 1788 is often imagined as an isolated continent, disconnected from the outside world. But the reality was much more complex.
For example, Yolŋu people in northern Australia had longstanding trade and other relationships with Macassan visitors from what is now Indonesia before European settlement.
Even after British arrival, Australian history did not become a story only about British settlers and Indigenous peoples.
Chinese and Japanese migrants, Asian pearling workers, and those commonly known as “Afghan cameleers” – who in fact came from places including present-day Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and elsewhere – worked alongside Indigenous peoples, formed relationships, and sometimes formed families together.
Migration history and Indigenous history were never completely separate stories.
The history of this continent, the movement of people, and the histories of Indigenous peoples have been intertwined for much longer than we often think.
Dispossession
Today, we often hear the term “Indigenous dispossession”. But for many migrants who have not had the opportunity to learn Australia’s colonial history, this can feel like an abstract concept.
Dispossession means more than: “the ownership of the land changed a long time ago”.
Goenpul scholar Distinguish Professor Aileen Moreton-Robinson argues that the Australian nation is “socially and culturally constructed as a white possession”, which is fundamentally built on the disavowal of Indigenous sovereignty.
British colonisation took place even though Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples were already living within their own laws, societies, cultures, political systems and deep relationships with Country.
The taking of land was also not peaceful. Many Aboriginal people were killed through the Frontier wars and other massacres.
Dispossession also involved extensive government and mission control over Indigenous peoples’ everyday lives. There were systems that controlled where people could live and work, whom they could marry, and how they could use their own money.
Distinguished Professor Linda Tuhiwai Smith, in her book Decolonizing Methodologies, said: “They (colonisers) designed social policies designed specially to break down Indigenous families.”
Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families, supported by the laws and policies implemented by governments and churches. These removals, now known as the Stolen Generations, continued into the 1970s and their impacts reach across generations.
Indigenous communities were also excluded from civil and political rights that other Australians took for granted, in some cases until as late as 1967.
The labour of Indigenous peoples was also used to build Australia’s economy. Aboriginal men, women and children worked in pastoral, domestic and other industries, often without proper control over their wages. Governments in some jurisdictions controlled those wages, and significant amounts never reached the workers who earned them.
Dispossession, therefore, was not simply “the loss of land”. It was a long process in which people were dispossessed of their land, subjected to violence and massacres, separated from their families and children, and denied control over their own lives, movement, labour and money.
The Australia we know today – its economy, laws and institutions, systems of land ownership and accumulated wealth – cannot be separated from this history.
Our relationship to this history
Today, the right for us to enter and live in Australia is granted by the Australian state. We receive Australian visas, obtain citizenship, buy homes and land under Australian property law, and work, run businesses and build wealth within its laws and institutions.
But this very state is a settler-colonial state formed through the dispossession described above.
Recently in Australia, anti-migrant rhetoric and far-right populism have become increasingly visible. As argued earlier, migrants are blamed for economic and social problems, and political language repeatedly asks who counts as a “real Australian”.
But these far-right ideas have long been part of Australian history, marginalising Indigenous peoples, migrants and other minority groups.
This language is not simply a matter of political debate. Racism, exclusion and discrimination affect people’s mental health and increase anxiety, stress and social isolation.
Many migrants experience discrimination because of these far-right ideas, while at the same time feeling tempted to agree with far-right voices in order to gain a sense of belonging.
If we seek belonging only through someone else’s recognition, we remain outsiders.
Instead, we need to recognise ourselves as active members shaping this society.
If we are going to put down roots and live on this land, we need to think about the history of this land, our position within it, the kind of society we want to create, and what our responsibilities are.
What can we do?
The first thing we can do is pay attention to histories beyond those centred on British settlers.
Australia has a much more diverse history of migration than the brief examples introduced above. And, most importantly, there are more than 65,000 years of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories, among the world’s oldest continuing cultures.
First Nations’ history is also a history of many different peoples and nations, with societies that maintained peace through diplomacy and relationships rather than large-scale killing and war.
The land we now call home holds many proud cultures that deserve higher acknowledgement.
Second, we need to recognise that the lives we build today exist on wealth created through Indigenous dispossession and resistance.
With that understanding comes recognition that many Indigenous people continue to experience those historical injustices, while simultaneously striving to reclaim their voices and self-determination. Their struggle and resistance is not unrelated to us.
What responsibilities do we have as people living on dispossessed land? Returning everything and leaving may not be a realistic answer for those of us who have already built our lives here.
But at the very least, we can respect and acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of this land and support their ongoing efforts for self-determination on their own Country.
Migrants are not outside Australia’s colonial story. We are part of its past and are already shaping its present and future.
Therefore, we also have a responsibility to choose what relationships we build, with whom we stand in solidarity, and what kind of Australia we leave to the next generation.
About the authors
Dr Daeul Jeong is a South Korean woman and Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Indigenous Futures and Indigenous and Transcultural Research Centre at the University of the Sunshine Coast.
Dr Angela Baeza is a Diaguita Woman from the Chilean desert, educator, and a Research Fellow at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Indigenous Futures at The University of Queensland.
See Croakey’s archive of articles on the cultural determinants of health
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