'Where are you from?': Aborigines, 'Asians' and the Australian National Imaginary, 1901-2001.

The partitioning of 'the Indigene' and 'the immigrant' in dominant Australian ideologies and policies leaves the question of Aboriginal/ migrant relations virtually unexplored. The policy of multiculturalism in Australia pays scant attention to Indigenous issues, and reconciliation debates often centre on a 'Black/white' binary that excludes diasporic communities. Despite the separation and bifurcation of Indigenous and multicultural discourses, this paper shows that many Asian-Australian communities have shown solidarity with Indigenous people in their support of reconciliation and Native Title. I show that the cross-cultural dialogue between Indigenous and Asian communities challenges the prevalent Black-white partitioning of race relations in Australia, and undermines the continuing cleavage of 'the immigrant' and 'the Indigenous' in contemporary paradigms of reconciliation.

   Racist attitudes are common among Australian university
   students ... The survey of 400 students from around Australia ...
   found a disturbing animosity towards Asians and Aborigines. (1)

The re-emergence of race-based discourses in the public debates triggered by Pauline Hanson in 1996 was directed largely at Indigenous rights and immigration policies. Hanson's re-racialisation of Australian identity targeted Indigenous and Asian-Australians, in particular, as those who are intractably unassimilable. In other words, 'Aborigines and Asians' symbolised the most obvious examples of racialised 'Otherness' in the white Australian imaginary. In dominant Anglo-Australian ideologies, signifiers such as Aboriginality and 'Asianness' function to symbolise or represent a threat to national homogeneity and 'oneness'. 'Aborigines and Asians' are perceived as antithetical to the project of national unity and exist in the white national imagination as problematic or troublesome, as the following quotation reveals: 'There are two major groups of nonwhite Australians, both of which have been here a very long time and we have had problems with. One is the Aborigines ... And the other one is Asians.' (2)

Prior to Hanson's coupling of Asians and Aborigines together 'in one racialised package', (3) the interrelationships between these communities were rarely considered. Issues pertaining to Indigenous peoples and those associated with migrancy and the diaspora existed in the white Australian imaginary as distinct and mutually exclusive discourses. The tendency to perceive 'the Indigenous' in isolation from 'the multicultural' has also been reflected in institutional or legislative terms in the political arena. Notwithstanding Hanson's rhetoric, the continuing separation and bifurcation of these debates is also evident in the clearly differentiated departments of government relating to migrancy on the one hand, and Aboriginal Australia on the other. The enforced separation of these communities, both ideologically and institutionally, has existed since the colonial era, making Hanson's rhetoric one of the most explicit examples of the convergence between discourses on Asian immigration and Indigenous policies in the political sphere since the nineteenth century.

RAISON D'ETRE 

The point or central purpose of my thesis is to map and trace the tripartite relationships between Aboriginal, Anglo- and Asian-Australian communities in this country since its federation. This triangular configuration of relationships has shifted over the past hundred years, but the overall dominance of white Australians in cultural, social and political terms has prevailed throughout. I do not wish to deny the agency that Indigenous and Asian-Australian communities have exhibited in their various attempts to resist white hegemonic rule, but the capacity of these 'groups' to negotiate their subject positions has occurred within the framework and confines of white dominance. My thesis argues that this triangulation of relationships in no way confers equal entitlement to national belonging or membership. White Australianness gains meaning and signification through a proprietorial mode or sense of belonging to this nation. Non-white Indigenous and migrant minorities have found a myriad of other ways to gain a sense of entitlement to the nation through, for example, clubs, societies and political mobilisation, but their sense of belonging does not emanate from their possession of the nation in legal, governmental and cultural terms. Indigenous and multicultural identities have been used by the state to showcase the nation at different points in time, but this only serves as a reminder of the way white Australians (as a whole) manage and govern non-white minorities.

My thesis argues that ideological and legislative attempts to keep Aboriginal and Asian communities apart have been designed to maintain the overarching supremacy of white 'settler' Australians. I cite a number of historical and contemporary examples of the separation of debates and policies on 'the Indigenous' from 'the multicultural', and argue that the strident attempts to divide these communities have been initiated in order to minimise the risk any collaborative political mobilisation might pose to white hegemonic rule. In other words, the enforced separation of these communities has sought to secure and guarantee the exclusive rights of whites to the possession of the land and its resources. White paranoia about losing our stronghold on the nation is evident in the intense anxiety among Anglo-Australians in recent decades engendered by the simultaneous assault on 'white certainties by the new assertiveness of [I]ndigenous Australians, on the one hand, and by the spectre of Asianisation, on the other'. (4) The historic alliances between these communities have even been expunged from the national imaginary, thereby privileging dominant renderings of nation that posit Australia's isolation until its 'discovery' by the British. In reality, cross-cultural exchanges and relationships between Indigenous communities and Asian seafarers and sojourners considerably predate white invasion, thus challenging the accepted version of Australian history that takes the British presence as its cornerstone. (5)

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, discriminatory and restrictive legislation was introduced to prevent Indigenes from associating with people of Asian descent. Queensland's 1897 Aborigines Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act and Western Australia's 1905 Aborigines Act were both introduced to prevent contact between Indigenous and Asian communities. Such legislation was designed to stop people of Asian descent employing Aboriginal labour; to disallow the cohabitation or marriage of Indigenous women with Asian men--thereby preventing an increase in the mixed-race or so-called 'coloured' population; to enable the removal of any such children to institutions, and to incarcerate Aborigines on reserves. Prior to the introduction of this legislation, through the employment of Aboriginal and Melanesian workers, Chinese businesses were making some challenges to white capitalism. In seeking to prevent an increase in the mixed-race population, these policies were also the legislative response to a fear that whites might lose their possession of the nation through being 'swamped' by non-white peoples.

In more recent settings, there have also been attempts to prevent Indigenous people from forming links with non-white migrants. The first Minister for Immigration Arthur Calwell, for example, was opposed to the introduction of non-Anglo immigrants because of a fear that these migrants might band with Aboriginal people in an act of solidarity against white Australia. According to Calwell, 'coloured' migrants 'would form the nucleus of "black power" in Australia. They would try to identify themselves with the Australian Aborigines who have been maltreated from the earliest days of white settlement in this country'. (6) Calwell's fear of reprisal stems from an awareness that Indigenous and non-white migrant peoples have justifiable reasons for protesting against their treatment. In the contemporary era, debates on reconciliation and Native Title centre largely on a dialogue between Black and white Australians, while the debates surrounding multiculturalism, immigration and asylum seekers rarely include any consideration of Aboriginal issues or any mention of Indigenous people's viewpoints. Instead, discussion centres on 'Anglos' and 'ethnics' and is indicative of the bifurcation between discourses on 'the Indigenous' and those pertaining to 'the immigrant' that my thesis seeks to challenge.

The partitioning of 'the Indigene' and 'the immigrant' in dominant Australian ideologies and policies is also evident in the university environment. Courses are often divided between those pertaining to 'Indigenous Studies' and 'Multicultural Studies' so that the relationship between these fields of inquiry remains vastly under-theorised. Academic conferences tend also to divorce discussion on Indigenous issues from that pertaining to migrancy and multiculturalism by focusing their attention on one issue or the other. Conferences that examine both Indigenous and migrant identities often divide and separate sessions thematically, thereby further hindering the development of a wider, triangulated view that accounts for the intersections between these issues. In much academic and intellectual writing the bifurcation of these debates is also evident; most studies on migrancy and multiculturalism omit discussion on Indigenous issues, and analyses of Indigenous identities and politics centre largely on 'Black-white' relations.

In recent accounts, however, more Australian race theorists are recognising the importance of examining the interrelated nature of Indigenous and Asian-Australian subjectivities, with some theorists noting such an omission from their work. An early study which recognised the exclusion of Indigenous issues from its analysis of migration and multiculturalism is Lois Foster and David Stockley's 1984 Multiculturalism: The Changing Australian Paradigm. (7) By the late 1990s more theorists were beginning to acknowledge their failure to theorise Indigenous issues in conjunction with those centring on migrant and diasporic peoples. In White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society (1998), Ghassan Hage recognised that his work 'left the question of Aboriginal-ethnic relations highly unexplored', and despite the 'occasional reference to Aboriginal people', remained the uncritical product 'of an institutionalised division of labour between academics interested in "multiculturalism" and academics interested in "Aboriginality"'. (8) Another 1998 publication that recognised its omission of 'the Indigenous' from discussion on migrancy was Jon Stratton's Race Daze. Stratton justified the exclusion of Indigenous issues from his research through claims that Indigenous peoples are engaged in 'different battles' (9) from migrant or diasporic communities.

In the 1999 introduction to their edited collection of conference proceedings, The Future of Australian Multiculturalism, Hage and Rowanne Couch acknowledge Ann Curthoys' critique of their 'failure adequately to encompass the [I]ndigenous question'. (10) In her 2000 article 'Asians in Australia: a contradiction in terms?', Ien Ang also acknowledges and then rationalises her omission of Indigenous peoples from her account. (11) I am not arguing that Indigenous and multicultural discourses must always be discussed in relation to one another. I am suggesting that understanding migration as a process which occurs within the enduring legacy of colonisation might provide a useful challenge to the usual narratives of nation that rely on dichotomies between 'Black-white' and 'Anglo-ethnic' histories. My thesis seeks to provide an alternative discourse to the usual focus on the dichotomy between Anglo-Celtic and Indigenous Australians, and the typical positioning of 'non-Anglo-Celtic peoples outside these dynamics so that they inhabit a separate binary dynamic with Anglo-Celtic Australia'. (12)

The very act of migration, regardless of whether it was two or one hundred years ago, is predicated on the acts of invasion and colonisation. To research immigration and multiculturalism in isolation from the colonial endeavour involves negating the enduring salience of colonisation in Australian society, and the role migrants play within that. As Curthoys has noted, no matter how dire 'the personal circumstances of particular groups of immigrants (convicts and refugees, for instance), all contribute structurally to colonising processes wherever these processes continue to exist'. (13) Regardless of the racism and other difficulties migrant communities have encountered in Australia, all immigrants remain the beneficiaries of the dispossession of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. 'Immigration, then, whether British or non-British, European or non-European, lies within rather than after a history of colonisation, within the history of relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples.' (14) The artificial separation of migrancy from colonialism also involves overlooking or obscuring the role migrants can play in the process of reconciliation in Australia.

Curthoys is one of the few theorists who has attempted to bridge the gap between 'the Indigenous' and 'the multicultural'. In 'An uneasy conversation: the multicultural and the indigenous', she examines the way Indigenous and multicultural discourses have been assigned separate spheres in public and intellectual debates. (15) While her ideas are informative, my examination differs in that I explore 'the multicultural' with specific reference to 'Asian' migration, drawing connections between former and contemporary imaginings of Asia and Australian national identity. Asians were by no means the only non-white migrants to Australia in the colonial period. South Sea Islander or Kanaka peoples, Indians and Afghanis were among some of the other migrant communities forced to Australia as indentured labourers or lured by the prospect of accumulating wealth. But Chinese and other migrants from the various regions of Asia formed the largest non-Anglo-Celtic constituency and, indeed, the desire to keep them 'at bay' was a critical catalyst in the unification of the separate colonies into a federated Australia. (16) The Asian presence is also particularly important in any historical study of Australian race relations because much of the legislation directed towards Indigenous peoples was in response to it. Migrant populations are increasingly coming to Australia from the various regions of Asia, providing a new and emerging impetus for contemporary research in Australian race theory. While the number of studies analysing the positioning of the Asian diaspora within Australian national boundaries is increasing, an even newer area of research involves examining how dominant ideology positions 'the Asian' in relation to 'the Aborigine', and the negotiations of this positioning by the two latter groups.

My interrogation of the complex and ambiguous relationship between Asian migration and the history of colonisation locates Asian emigres as both agents in and victims of the colonial endeavour. Many Chinese and other Asian sojourners and settlers encountered exclusion and marginalisation from the Anglo-Australian dominated power structure but, like their white counterparts, they were also pioneers or 'invaders' who shared the Anglo-Celtic ambition of exploiting Aboriginal waters, land and labour for personal profit. Via their cultural and spiritual exchanges and intermarriage with Aboriginal communities, however, these same Asian immigrants provided a forerunner to decolonisation. (17) In the contemporary era, the relationship between Indigenous and Asian-Australian communities remains fraught with complexities. Many Asian-Australians have difficulties identifying themselves as beneficiaries of Australia's colonial legacy, and can adopt the negative valuation of Aboriginality that exists in the dominant Anglo-Australian imaginary. On the other hand, Asian-Australian refugees and migrants might also have experience of living under a repressive colonial regime and can thus share an understanding of Aboriginal people and politics based on shared experiences.

My thesis shows that there are many points of continuity between colonial and contemporary representations of Aborigines and Asians. During the colonial period, white racial and cultural identities were dependent upon and were intimately tied to the symbolic meanings ascribed to the so-called 'native' on the one hand, and to the assumed potential invaders characterised as 'aliens' or 'Asiatics' on the other. I show that this particular nexus or matrix was configured in racial, spatial and national terms specific to Australia. The establishment of 'white Australia' was dependent on the appropriation and theft of the land, and on the legitimation of a claim to exclusive possession of it. (18) In other words, 'white Australia' was defined foundationally against the Indigenous owners and in opposition to the 'yellow hordes' who might, in turn, become invaders themselves. While the language and, therefore, the meanings of debates were somewhat different in the nineteenth century, they are 'not as different as perhaps some present-day Australians would wish'. (19) While 'native' or 'black' has been replaced by 'Indigenous' or Koori(e), Murri and other regional terms, and the potential invaders are now cast as migrants more generally (unease about 'Asian' and other non-white immigration persists, however), white Australianness is still imagined within these symbolic terms. The determined conviction of white colonists to steal and then claim exclusive ownership of the land has played a founding role in the formation of contemporary white Australianness.

The next two sections highlight the difficulty of theorising and understanding the relationships between Aboriginal and Asian collectivities within dominant paradigms of nation and identity. I show that the policy of multiculturalism pays scant attention to Indigenous issues and colonisation. Following this I argue that contemporary debates on reconciliation are frequently narrowly conceived in their focus on the dialogue between Indigenous and Anglo-Celtic Australians. Multiculturalism excludes 'the Indigenous' and debates on reconciliation frequently overlook 'the multicultural' but, as I show further in the paper, Indigenous and Asian-Australian peoples have challenged this binary logic in their recent cross-cultural exchanges.

MULTICULTURALISM AND INDIGENOUS PEOPLES

   Discourses of multiculturalism, whether as official policy, media
   reportage or as academic discussion, are frequently narrowly
   focussed and problematic. The import of the history of the
   Indigenous presence for these discourses is often neglected or
   marginalised. (20)

This next section examines the difficulties involved in attempting to include Aboriginal people within the discourse of multiculturalism. It questions whether the social and political needs of Indigenous peoples can be met by a policy that was designed to manage the consequences of large-scale European migration. As Curthoys maintains, the discourse of multiculturalism in Australia remains remarkably inattentive to the past and present colonial features of Australian society. (21) Australian Indigenous and immigrant peoples have very divergent histories, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people often resist being drawn under the rubric of multiculturalism. Instead, many Indigenous Australians have attacked multiculturalism, claiming that the idea of the equal validity of every culture 'reduces them to the status of just another ethnic minority.' (22) Many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people wish to reinforce their status as the 'first' or Indigenous peoples of this country; this does not necessarily go along with the recognition of how racism and ethnocentrism impact upon 'Other' minorities. Lois O'Donoghue recognises both advantages and disadvantages in contemporary multiculturalism:

   [p]erhaps Aboriginal people have benefited from the greater
   appreciation of cultural diversity which has resulted from the
   admission of other points of view. However, we are the original
   inhabitants of this land, and our sufferings, past and present,
   make some form of special recognition a moral imperative. (23)

Many Aboriginal communities also feel that because migrants have not suffered cultural domination to the same extent (in Australia at least) they are less disadvantaged. John Docker argues that each individual in 1788 and since who has come to Australia, however variegated their experiences and 'however much there has been racism and ethnocentrism and differential access to power ... ha[s] benefited from the original invasion and dispossession of the Aboriginal peoples, and still benefit[s]'. (24) For Aboriginal people, then, migrant groups could be seen as another set of invaders, 'not brothers and sisters on the margins, not the fellow oppressed and dispossessed'. (25) Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have thus avoided conflating their own political agendas--at the foreground of which are land rights and Native Title--with the very different concerns of various migrant communities. (26)

Many Aboriginal people feel that because those migrating to Australia can retain their language, and often have families or communities to go to, they are less disadvantaged. Ruby Langford Ginibi's comments are illustrative:

   even the people who migrate here are on a higher social level
   than we are, and we're the first people of this land! My people
   were forced to give away using our language and culture, and
   adopt the ways of the white man, but the people who migrated
   here don't give away their language or culture to become
   Australian citizens. (27)

In her autobiography Born a Half-Caste, Marnie Kennedy makes similar claims: '[e]very nationality in Australia is allowed to speak its language. They have their own gatherings. These are the things that make Aborigines very bitter because they were made to give up everything that was sacred to them.' (28)

RECONCILIATION AND THE ASIAN DIASPORA

Despite the predominance in reconciliation debates on 'Black vs. white' issues, the shared knowledge of being located on the margins of white Australian society has led many Asian-Australians to consider their role in the reconciliation process. In a letter responding to the Federal Government's refusal to over a formal apology to the 'Stolen Generations' of Indigenous Australians, members of the Vietnamese-Australian community in Melbourne expressed an understanding (often lacked by Anglo-Australians) of the need to appreciate their position as migrants in relation to the Indigenous community:

   We [Vietnamese Australians] are here now, living in the cities
   and towns that were their [Indigenous Australians'] hunting
   grounds, their camping places, their sacred sites. We are the
   beneficiaries of their dispossession, and we acknowledge their
   loss. We understand about the loss of home, family and cultural
   values, and we too would like to express our deep sorrow to all
   indigenous Australians for their suffering and over our support
   for genuine reconciliation. (29)

In his assessment of Chinese language media debates on reconciliation in Australia, Edwin Tsung-Rong Yang has noted a high consciousness among Chinese commentators regarding Aboriginal affairs and issues in a general sense, and of the need for Chinese to participate in reconciliation. However, the Chinese community has not necessarily matched their support for reconciliation with an active sense of responsibility for past injustices. Yang found that, while many Chinese migrants support reconciliation and an apology from the Prime Minister, they simultaneously construct themselves as 'new migrants' without a participatory role in, or responsibility for the past. (30) Recent Chinese arrivals often differentiate themselves from earlier settlers by characterising past sojourners as 'the other' or 'the aberrant' Chinese, and this tendency might contribute to a lack of accountability felt by newer migrants.

According to Helen Sham-Ho, from the Chinese perspective and in Chinese parlance, urban Aborigines are not generally categorised as 'Aborigines' but are often referred to as Western people [sai-yan/xi-ren]. (31) This might also help to explain the lack of identification of interests and political positions by Chinese and Aboriginal communities. Another difficulty in trying to get migrant or diasporic communities to appreciate their role in the reconciliation process concerns a lack of awareness of Indigenous issues among immigrants, especially those of non-English speaking backgrounds. Newly arrived migrants generally find it difficult to access information on Indigenous Australians, and English language classes run by Migrant Resource Centres tend not to contain Indigenous issues in their curriculum. (32) Many of the issues surrounding reconciliation and Native Title have been inaccessible to Asian-Australian communities because of the complex nature of the legal terminology used in such debates. Even the broader Australian community has experienced difficulties in understanding the government's changes to Native Title legislation. (33) For newly arrived migrants, much time and energy goes towards surviving and understanding daily life in a new and unfamiliar setting. (34)

A further complication in helping migrant communities to understand their complicity in the ongoing colonisation of Indigenous Australia is that their knowledge and understanding of Indigenes is invariably mediated by mainstream representations, making them vulnerable to 'the distortions, fabrications and stereotypes that circulate in the national media'. (35) In Sang Ye's interviews with Chinese-Australian migrants, one interviewee commented that: '[n]early all the Aborigines are unemployed or refuse to take jobs that are available; they're outside the pubs or on the grass getting drunk on beer.' (36) These comments show very clearly that the common experiences of racism that many Asian and Aboriginal Australians share do not automatically guarantee understanding or political solidarity between the two groups. (37) The previous quotation also illustrates the way in which migrant Australians can reproduce dominant white Australian characterisations of contemporary Aboriginality.

I am not arguing that debates on 'the Indigenous' and 'the multicultural' should always be examined together; nor am I proposing that these two debates remain entirely separate and discrete. I am suggesting that the maintenance of rigid distinctions between these fields of inquiry serves white national interests by hindering the opportunity for dialogue between Indigenous and diasporic collectivities to take place, thereby curtailing the emancipatory potential of such alliances. Peter Read highlights the challenges to white hegemonic rule that a greater understanding between Indigenous and Asian communities could precipitate by asking us to: '[i]magine the effectiveness of an Asian Australian bloc ... representing not themselves, but the principle of shared land.' (38)

ABORIGINAL/ASIAN LITERARY AND CULTURAL PRODUCTION

I will turn now to some recent writing by Aboriginal and Asian people, highlighting the 'fraught yet potentially productive relationship between Asians and Aborigin[e]s'. (39) I show that despite the ideological and legislative attempts to locate Indigenous and Asian diasporic communities in isolation from each other, members of these communities have initiated their own dialogue in recent theatre productions, novels, poetry and the visual arts.

Indigenous writers such as Melissa Lucashenko, Alexis Wright and Bruce Pascoe have explored the interconnections between Aboriginal and Asian peoples in their recent novels. Through her introduction of the Aboriginal/Chinese character Paul Ah Sung, Lucashenko's Hard Yards makes these cross-cultural connections explicit. (40) Commenting on the parallels in the way Aboriginal and Asian communities are ostracised by white Australian society, one protagonist notes that even though the Chinese are 'loaded ... they still copped it, same as Murries'. (41) This theme of shared marginalisation is also explored in Wright's Plains of Promise when the Chinese character Pilot Ah King complains to his Aboriginal wife that white people '[d]on't let no dirt or dirty people like you or me inside [their big houses]'. (42) Pascoe's Ruby-Eyed Coucal (43) imagines the possibility of 'mounting a legal challenge to the principle of terra nullius based on ancient trade and cultural links between China, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and the peoples of Arnhem land'. (44) The poly-ethnic characters in Pascoe's novel not only challenge the concept of Australia as an isolated and singular entity until its 'discovery' by the British but, by arguing that other nations such as China had already recognised the sovereignty of Aboriginal Australia, show that the British violated the sovereign rights of the original custodians. Singapore-born writer Simone Lazaroo has included Aboriginal protagonists in her recent novel. Lazaroo's The Australian Fiance depicts a number of poly-ethnic Broome characters, including one whose mother is a Nyul-Nyul Aboriginal woman, and whose father's ancestry is Indonesian and Japanese. The central protagonist in this novel is a Eurasian woman from Singapore who bonds with the Aboriginal/Asian character because of a shared experience of living under a British colonial government. (45)

The emerging dialogue between Australian Indigenous and Asian communities is also evident in a growing number of recent theatre projects. Some of these include the musicals Bran Nue Dae and Corrugation Road by Broome-based writer and musician Jimmy Chi, himself of Japanese, Chinese and Aboriginal ancestry. In their live theatre performance Black and Tran, Hung Le and Ningali Lawford produced a satirical comedy that addressed the issue of racial discrimination by ridiculing the stereotypes of Aboriginal and Vietnamese cultures. Darwin-based writer Gary Lee, an Indigenous Larrakia man of Japanese, Chinese and Filipino lineage, wrote the play Keep Him My Heart: A Larrakia-Filipino Love Story as a way of demonstrating the Asian/Aboriginal links of Darwin that were initiated long before the arrival of the British. Binh Duy Ta's play Conversations with Charlie portrays the language of desire between these two disenfranchised groups through the sexual attraction between the Aboriginal woman and the newly arrived Vietnamese man. Shown at this year's Adelaide Festival, Black Swan Theatre's The Career Highlights of the Mamu paralleled the experiences of Aboriginal survivors of the Maralinga nuclear tests with Japanese atomic bomb victims in Hiroshima.

Given the tensions and contradictions I have outlined, long-lasting and productive relations between Aboriginal and Asian diasporic peoples can sometimes be difficult to forge. Migrant communities (that is, all non-Indigenous Australians) remain the beneficiaries of colonisation but, unlike their Anglo-Australian counterparts, non-white migrants have been racially 'marked' and had their ability to claim the title 'Australian' questioned. My insistence that more recent migrant communities recognise their complicity in the injustices committed against Indigenous peoples does not, of course, take the onus o. Anglo-Celtic or 'settler' Australians to understand and acknowledge our role in the colonisation of Aboriginal Australia. Ongoing research into the positioning of migrant communities in relation to Indigenous peoples, that is within rather than after the colonial process does, however, problematise the 'polarising binary of indigenous and white race relations' (46) that presently characterises debates on reconciliation.

The dialogue between Indigenous and Asian communities also challenges the prevalent Black-white partitioning of Australian historiography, and undermines the accepted Anglo-Celtic narrative of nationhood--that is, that the history of this country began with white 'settlement'. The dialogue between these communities works to 'complicate and undermine absolute distinctions between black and white Australians', (47) dislocating the Anglo-Celtic from the centrefold of Australian history. Cultural exchanges were being made between various Indigenous and Asian communities long before white people 'discovered' this land, but it is only now that this part of the national story is being told. Aboriginal and Asian-Australian cross-cultural production plays an important role in 'unearthing' the experiences of these communities themselves, providing these people with a way of writing themselves, their families and communities into existence.

While issues pertaining to 'the multicultural' and 'the Indigenous' continue to be seen as parallel discourses, inter-cultural exchanges between Indigenous and immigrant communities will remain the exception rather than the rule. I have argued that the continuing cleavage of 'the immigrant' and 'the Indigene' in contemporary paradigms of reconciliation provides little space for discussion on the potential role and contribution of migrant Australians to the reconciliation process. This is compounded by the fact that the discourse of multiculturalism pays scant attention to the continuing legacy of colonialism in Australia. Indigenous and diasporic peoples might not always share common concerns or political agendas, but they do share the experience of living in Australia, and this means living on the land of Australia's Indigenous peoples. It is this recognition that is missing from current debates on multiculturalism and reconciliation, but is surely the basis upon which any cross-cultural dialogue between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians depends.

ENDNOTES

(1) Stephen Coates, 'Racism rife in universities, study reveals', Courier Mail, 3 April 1993, 7. According to a nation-wide survey, Australian university students are just as susceptible to adopting racist attitudes as the general community. While a survey of four hundred students might not be representative of the attitudes of all Australian university students, the results are, none the less, disturbing.

(2) Anonymous interviewee quoted in Susan Schech and Jane Haggis, 'Migrancy, whiteness and the settler self in contemporary Australia', in John Docker and Gerhard Fischer (eds), Race, Colour and Identity in Australia and New Zealand, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 2000, 233.

(3) Jon Stratton, Race Daze: Australia in Identity Crisis, Pluto Press, Annandale, New South Wales, 1998, 13.

(4) Ien Ang, 'Racial/spatial anxiety: "Asia" in the psycho-geography of Australian whiteness', in Ghassan Hage and Rowanne Couch (eds), The Future of Australian Multiculturalism, Research Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Sydney, Sydney, 1999, 198.

(5) Regina Ganter, 'Editorial: Asians in Australian history', Queensland Review, vol. 6, no. 2, 1999, ii.

(6) Arthur Calwell, Be Just and Fear Not, Lloyd O'Neill, Hawthorn, Victoria, 1972, 124.

(7) Lois Foster and David Stockley, Multiculturalism: The Changing Australian Paradigm, Multilingual Matters Ltd, Avon, England, 1984.

(8) Ghassan Hage, White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society, Pluto Press, Annandale, New South Wales, 1998, 24.

(9) Stratton, Race Daze, 19.

(10) Hage and Couch, 'Introduction', in The Future of Australian Multiculturalism, xii.

(11) Ien Ang, 'Asians in Australia: a contradiction in terms?', in Docker and Fischer 129.

(12) Ann Curthoys, 'Immigration and colonisation: new histories', UTS Review, vol. 7, no. 1, 2001, 172.

(13) Curthoys, 'Immigration', 171.

(14) Curthoys, 'Immigration', 172.

(15) Curthoys, 'An uneasy conversation', in Docker and Fischer, 21-36.

(16) Penny Edwards and Shen Yuan-fang, Lost in the Whitewash: Executive Summary, 11 October 2000, Available: http://www.anu.edu.au/ culture/whitewash/concept.html.

(17) Curthoys, 'Immigration', 170-79.

(18) Ang, 'Racial/spatial', 194.

(19) Curthoys, 'An uneasy conversation', 22.

(20) Jan Larbalestier, 'What is this thing called white?: reflections on 'whiteness' and multiculturalism', in Hage and Couch, 146.

(21) Curthoys, 'An uneasy conversation', 34.

(22) Chilla Bulbeck, Social Sciences in Australia: An Introduction, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Sydney, 1993, 273.

(23) Lois O'Donoghue quoted in Bulbeck, 274.

(24) Docker, 'The temperament of editors and a new multicultural orthodoxy', Island Magazine, no. 48, 1991, 54.

(25) Docker, 54.

(26) Anne Brewster, Literary Formations: Post-colonialism, Nationalism, Globalism, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Victoria, 1995, 16.

(27) Ruby Langford Ginibi, My Bundjalung People, University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia, Queensland, 1994, 52.

(28) Marnie Kennedy, Born a Half-Caste, Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, Canberra, 1985, 4-5.

(29) Thanh Van Le and Thang Manh Nguyen, 'Vietnamese and Aborigines: letter', Age, 3 April 1998, 14.

(30) Penny Edwards, Lost in the Whitewash: Colloquium Report, Centre for Cross-Cultural Research, Australian National University, Canberra, 2001, 23.

(31) Edwards, Lost in the Whitewash, 25.

(32) Helen Sham-Ho, 'Reconciliation in multicultural Australia', Migration Action, vol. 20, no. 2, 1998, 39.

(33) Michelle Giglio, 'Taking up the challenge--young people, reconciliation and multiculturalism', Migration Action, vol. 20, no. 2, 1998, 29.

(34) Sarina Greco, 'Editorial: reconciliation and multicultural Australia', Migration Action, vol. 20, no. 2, 1998, 3.

(35) Suvendrini Perera and Joseph Pugliese, 'Detoxifying Australia?', Migration Action, vol. 20, no. 2, 1998, 17.

(36) Anonymous interviewee quoted in Sang Ye, The Year the Dragon Came, University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia, Queensland, 182.

(37) Perera and Pugliese, 14.

(38) Peter Read, 'Pain, yes; racism, no: the response of non-British Australians to Indigenous land rights', in Geoffrey Gray and Christine Winter (eds), The Resurgence of Racism: Howard, Hanson and the Race Debate, Monash Publications in History, Clayton, Victoria, 1997, 95.

(39) Jacqueline Lo, Tseen Khoo and Helen Gilbert, 'New formations in Asian-Australian cultural politics', Journal of Australian Studies, no. 65, 2000, 10.

(40) Melissa Lucashenko, Hard Yards, University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia, Queensland, 1999.

(41) Lucashenko, 122.

(42) Alexis Wright, Plains of Promise, University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia, Queensland, 1997, 89.

(43) Bruce Pascoe, Ruby-Eyed Coucal, Magabala Books, Broome, 1996.

(44) Perera and Pugliese, 12.

(45) Simone Lazaroo, The Australian Fiance, Picador, Sydney, 2000, 92.

(46) Perera and Pugliese, 14.

(47) Perera and Pugliese, 13.

PETA STEPHENSON AUSTRALIAN STUDIES