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Periodically, in Australian society racial chasms emerge portraying the great divide between Indigenous and non Indigenous Australians, exposing the sustained influence of the doomed race protective myth and its residue. This book exposes that a long and powerful influence on Australian society, economy, culture, and history has been the doomed race protective myth. While most nations harbour protective myths of one form or another, often endorsed by Australian governments at all levels and steeped in a cruel racism and, inter alia, a quest for pastoral lands, Australia's doomed race protective myth has asserted an undue influence on First Nations people. This book argues the doomed race protective myth warped the vision of power elites, politicians, and bureaucrats. For centuries, sustained by representations in official and public history, schools, churches, and a whole host of public institutions, the doomed race protective myth has been voiced by almost every facet of non Indigenous Australian society, with pastoral Australia particularly benefiting. This book opens fresh vistas to the continuing racism in Australian society through an examination of the long politicised doomed race protective myth which was foisted on First Nations people, and with vested interests in pastoral Australia. Key events in Australia's race relations history such as the 2023 First Nations Voice to Parliament Referendum have new light shed on them. Transnational themes relevant to Indigenous history have been examined. People with an interest in non Indigenous Indigenous affairs, academics, politicians and bureaucrats, and students will enjoy this book.
List of contents
Introduction; 1 The doomed race: myths and protective myths, history and the vagaries of the complex relationship between nostalgia and critique; the vagaries and politics of the memory factor in history; 2 Protective myths at play, the Stolen Generations, and silencing the past; 3 Terra nullius, massacres, First Nations societies, and settler nationalism's hegemony and political might; 4 Assimilation and the politics of protective myths; 5 School education, protective myths, and a "science" for the subjugating, segregating, and later assimilating First Nations societies; 6 General conclusions
About the author
Grant Rodwell is a senior lecturer (adjunct) at the University of Newcastle, Australia. He has published seven books with Routledge.
Summary
This book exposes a long and powerful influence on Australian society, economy, culture and history has been the doomed-race protective myth.
