PSYC1005 Study Guide - Final Guide: Terra Nullius, Institutional Racism, Stolen Generations
Indigenous Psychology: Past, Present and Future
A Dark History: British Colonisation
• First contact in 1788
• British colonisation based on terra nullius - land belonging to nobody.
• Institutionalised racism across generations:
The Protection Era
• From 1869 to 1911, protection legislations were enacted throughout Australia.
• Treated Indigenous as inferior.
• Loss of culture and knowledge for many Aboriginal groups.
• Aboriginal people were denied their rights as Australian people during this period.
The Assimilation Era
• Started in the 1930s.
• "The policy of the Commonwealth is to do everything possible to convert the half-caste into a white
citizen".
• Assimilation relied on the well-established and widely-accepted view that Aboriginals were inferior to
white Australians.
• Focused on the forced removal of children from their families.
The Stolen Generations
• Children housed in sub-standard living conditions, with harsh regimes, punishments and inadequate
diets.
• Kept away from family members, instructed to reject their Aboriginality and forbidden to speak their
language.
• This lead to intergenerational trauma for those families affected, including ongoing mental-health
issues, substance abuse, unemployment, low educational achievement, unstable living conditions,
poverty, high incidence of arrest & incarceration, and suicide.
• Has be considered as an act of genocide - acts committed with the intent to destroy, in part or whole, a
national, ethnic, racial or religious group.
Psychology and the Multigenerational Oppression of Indigenous Australians
1. Psychological theory
legitimised protection and
assimilation practices
Background:
• Evolutionary biology - a scientific conceptualisation of 'race'.
• Social Darwinism - biological differences between races.
2. Psychological theory
legitimised protection and
assimilation practices
• Adaptation of early psychological theory.
• Eg: Phrenology, Gall - different parts of the brain were responsible for
different faculties to represent components of one's character.
• Established that you could determine one's character from analysing
the skulls of deceased Aboriginal Australians. These were compared
to European skulls and was used to identify the evolutionary
inferiority of Aboriginals. Phrenology was later discredited.
• Eugenics - Galton, R. Berry - the relationship between size of an
indiidual’s head as directly correlated to their intelligence - from
this he took that Aboriginal people were least intelligent, and
Europeans were the smartest. This theory facilitated assimilation.
3. Psychological research
constructed a theory of
deficit of Indigenous
peoples
• Theory of deficit - deficiency relating to intelligence was related to
deficiency and dysfunction of cultural minority groups.
• Deficit theory perpetuated inferiority of cultural minority groups.
• Comparative research demonstrated Indigenous deficit:
o Intelligence testing – Porteus: perpetuated racial stereotypes
of Aboriginals as inferior.
o The Queensland test - McElwain & Kearney
o Measuring cognitive characteristics - Piaget, de Lacey
o From deficit to differences - Dasen
Psychological Researchers Allocated Blame
• Researchers and policymakers (and the media) blame the Indigenous people themselves: "Blame the
parents", "Blame the children", "Blame the community!"
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