The
growth of Aboriginal self-determination has had a substantial impact on the
practice of anthropology in Australia. While *resistance to assimilation has
been exercised throughout the present century, it was only in the later 1960s
that European Australians began to appreciate the difficulties of enforcing
assimilation against sustained indigenous opposition. In 1963, The Australian
Social Science Research Council sponsored a project to investigate the policy
implications ‘arising from contacts between Aborigines and non- Aborigines’
which culminated in a three-volume publication by the political scientist C.D.
Rowley; the first of which provided a detailed critique of the failure of assimilationist
policy. Myers’s recent, excellent ethnography of the Pintupi, of central Australia,
not only analyses traditional Pintupi social strategies as social adaptations
to the harsh, unpredictable environment of the Western Desert, but interprets
Pintupi society as the product of intentionally negotiated relationships.
A
more fundamental effect on anthropological practice has been felt as Aboriginal
people have become aware of what anthropologists had written about them in the
past. At least three anthropologists have been criticized for publishing
material to which access is restricted by ritual sanctions. In two cases, the
offending material has been with-drawn from publication. While *archaeology has
been the primary target, anthropology will not be able to escape an indigenous
critique. Regrettably, some academics have interpreted these campaigns as a
denial of scientific objectivity. Others, who have sustained cooperation with
Aboriginal communities, have emphasized that this is not the case. The same
issues are being confronted in North America.
A
number of Australian Aboriginal authors have recently published studies of the social
conditions in which they grew up and of traditional legends from their own communities.
Perhaps the most significant influence on the direction anthropological research
takes in Australia over the next few years will come from Aboriginal people themselves.