S325961 - Indigenous Governance and Leadership - Arts and Humanities Assignment Help

Assignment Task

Australia is an isolated land ofresilience where Indigenous Australians have lived for approximately60,000 years in relative peace throughout the Australian landscape, in as many as 500 separate clan groups. European settlers arrived and fraudulently declared the land terra nullis, meaning ‘belonging to no one’, in an act to deceitfully advise their counterparts in Europe that they have successfully found available land to set up their required penal colony. Australia has a large number of Indigenous Australians, some of whom are feeling confused and angry about their place in the nation.This essay will show that Aboriginals had an integrated system of lore in Australia long before being invaded by Europeans in the 1700’s. It will also show the modern-day law of Australia does not take into account the customary needs of Indigenous Australians and the Western discourse of value is unmistakable in the justice system, provoking the intergenerational trauma held over from colonisation that is evident today. 
White Australians need to have a period of ongoing education about Indigenous knowledge, culture and lore and once the truth about Australia’scolonisation history is told, understood and acknowledged this will help Indigenous people with their intergenerational trauma that is still being felt from the effects of colonisation and colonialism. White Australians need to be educatedabout their cultural self-awareness (CSA) and cultural intelligence (CI). CSA is being able to step back from one’s self, looking at culture and beliefs, and understanding why other cultures do things differently (Quappe & Cantatore, 2015). CI could be described as a person who easily adjusts, with minimal stress, to dealing with people from a culture other than their own (Brislin et al., 2006). Once white Australians are open to exploring these options Indigenous Australians will have an equal standing in the land that has been their home for many years before Europeans arrived.
Colonisation
There is not one universal definition of colonisation, but after reviewing multiple definitions available the one that has resonated is “Colonisation – The act of taking control of an area or a country that is not your own, especially using force, and sending people from your own country to live there” (“Colonisation,” 2020). This is precisely what happened in Australia in 1770 when European ships, overcrowded with convicts and crew, were sent to find land to set up a required penal colony. Theprison systems in Europe were at breaking point after the American Revolutionary War (1775 – 1783) (Parliament of New South Wales, A convict settlement in Sydney, nd). After an initial period of politeness towards the Aboriginal people, who had inhabited the land for up to 60,000 years before the ship’s arrival, the captain of the ship declared Terra Nullis–no man’s land. They used unreasonable threats and physical force such as firing weapons, to take initial control of the land and the people. Over time they used methods such as hunting down whole clans of Aboriginal people, including women and children, in planned co-ordinated attacks and also poisoned flour and water holes in a genocidal way with the intention of eradicating the race altogether. The real toll of colonisation on Aboriginal people is still unknown as there is a gap in knowledge from an Aboriginal standpoint in Australian history as the stories are passed down through oral history and tend to be very different to European written text. 
Australia’s first nation people are still reeling from the effects of colonisation even though the first Europeans arrived in the 1770s. The Europeans were committed to their intention to permanently displace the Aboriginal people that had inhabited the Australian land for more than 60,000 years previous to the arrival of the first fleet of ships. Australia’s colonisation did not happen with one single event on one day. It has been a long drawn out system of structure that has resulted in the cultural upheaval of Indigenous people still being lived today in contemporary Australia (Maddison, 2013). Aboriginal culture and history are very complex and can not be judged by white Australia as wrong. The eternal interference of the Australian government has proven the approach they are using has failed. They continually churn and try to reinvent Indigenous policies and affairs with the aim of a better standard of life for all Aboriginals, but in the twelve years since the introductions of the Closing the Gap campaign and spending billions of taxpayer’sdollars, the life expectancy of Indigenous people has not improved (Hudson, 2017).
Australia still has strong political, economic and cultural ties with Europeand colonisation affected and changed Indigenous governance and leadership in Australia for good.Colonialism leads to colonisation. Colonialism comes from the leaders, controllers or government from one country encouraging their citizens to go to a new land and take control and govern it using their governments policies and procedures for their own financial benefit and with the mindset that they are superior to any one that may already inhabit the land.  A state of colonisation then followed. A wave of people left their current country and settled in the new land, by this stage was governed by their original country. In Australia the colonists used force to take control and also preached to Aboriginals to take up the ‘white way of being’ as the only way of living. Aboriginal lore, language and cultural identity was misunderstood by the colonists so therefore discouraged and even became unlawful to practise their epistemological ways. Aboriginal people had to abandon their traditional customs and assimilate into the new Australia so they could continue to feed their families and survive. Indigenous people in Australia moved from living in a harmonious, sustainable, and self-governing state (pre-colonisation) through to extensive racism, gross cultural disregard, and unjust political policies, set by both sides of government, that has resulted in intergenerational ongoing trauma (Contemporary Australia). Australia will have this ongoing historical hangover until the white privileged people of the nation start to be educatedabout their own cultural self-awareness and their cultural intelligence and really listen and understand the trauma that has been caused and is felt by Aboriginal people across the country.“Healing needs to address the deep wounds created by unresolved colonial history” (Grieve-Williams, 2019).This healing needs to come from the top (government) and filter through to the media, (which is mainly middle-aged white privileged men), so it can then move through to the majority of the white people living within the country. Once everyone has been educated on the facts and truth of Australia’s colonisation history, they can start to say sorry for the pain caused and Indigenous people can start to lift the burden of racism and unjust intergenerational disadvantage that has plagued since colonisation. 
Governance is the ways in which people organise decision making to get things done and good governance is when there is a competent management system in place. Indigenous people in Australia had a complex governance structure in place including legal, and political laws, and also cultural traditions before colonisation, but were forced to surrenderthe system they had used for many thousands of years and conform to the new Australian rules after colonisation. Indigenous Australian’s had a complex justice system, referred to as ‘the lore’, well before European law was introduced (Muswellbrook Shire Council, 2017). The lore was commonly used in determining the unacceptable behavioural standards within the community. The elders, the oldest and most respected members of the community, were often police, judge, and jury and ensured punishment was served when the lore was broken. Besides the law of the land, Indigenous lore (which is still followed today) includes spiritual connection with people, past and present, wildlife, and the land.  Cultural beliefs including recognition of a greater being and modern-day Christianity and song lines, dance, and kinship. It is a cultural way of living and is passed down through oral literature to each generation. The lore does not change; it is set in Indigenous culture and will remain as it has for thousands of years. When the lore was broken pre-colonisation, Indigenous leaders ensured the perpetrator was punished for their wrongdoings. ‘Payback’ was declared, and punishment took place in the basic forms of public ridicule and exclusion from the community, or the more severe physical punishment of spearing’s, burning of body hair, and, fighting with sticks and spears or death (Australian law Reform Commission, 2010). Today, the Indigenous lore is still followed in some remote places within Australia, but the Australian law over rules it majority of the time. This is a very confusing way to live. 
Governance in a Western colonial environment is vastly different to the leadership of Indigenous generations of the past, but slowly, Indigenous Australians are gaining back their confidence and speaking up, taking action, and reclaiming their own governance structures. Traditional Indigenous leadership entangles spiritual and physical qualities to ensure lore and order was maintained, but today governance incorporates ticking boxes and ensuring that measures are met. This is often the requirement of the Australian government to have future funding continued for the work being completed, so often governance equals funds. Many people living in remote communities with Australia struggle to understand the need for Western style governance. It is not the way their ancestors managed life and the understanding may take many future generations to filter through to a colonised context. Colonialism has been infused in everyday life for Indigenous people and some say the communities are currently in a confused cross between traditional and colonised regimes. Colonisation has deeply affected Indigenous people spiritually, culturally and intergenerational trauma still effects many. 

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