In looking at how Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander culture had
been taught in the western education system in Australia, large scale
white-washing of history becomes a clear trend. Simplified and offensive
depictions of Indigenous Australians were common in social studies texts book throughout
the 20th century. These depictions denied Indigenous Australians the
right to represent their own culture and reflected a Eurocentric top-down
approach to education. They also acted to reaffirm the European idea of the
‘noble savage’, an idea rooted in sentimental notions of primitivism. This
approach fails to recognise the fluidity, dynamism and adaptability of
cultures. The
notion of there being any static or ‘authentic’ form of Indigenous culture
implies that any deviation from a fixed identity would result in a loss of
cultural identity. Culture is not a unitary
monolith but rather a dynamic system, continually recreated (Canepa 2010 pp.
8-10).
In contemporary society, a colonialist mentality towards issues of
cultural collaboration remains prevalent among many white-Australians. WRAP THE CITY, as an initiative begun by five white females, calls for a re-evaluation of the way that white-Australians
approach issues of Indigenous culture. It is our hope that students and the
general public alike will more readily engage in dialogue about the
consequences of colonialism that remain prevalent in our society.
