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ability to stand aside and let people Ieam from
making their own mistakes; and to give advice when
required, without being alienated altogether when
that advice is not taken.
It is interesting to note the objective comments of the social
scientist.
The squatters, whose self-interest required Aborigines for
cheap labour nihilated the efforts of the Aboriginal people to
maintain their social cohesion by withdrawing from the white world.
These efforts were categorised by squatters as communist inspired.
The Bateman Report on Worker’s Awards of 1948 also designated
the resistance of the Aboriginal people as Communist influenced.
Rowley (1971aj252) quotes John Wilson as saying that there
had been periodic attempts by police to round up Aborigines from
their mining and take them back to the stations.
The Aborigines told Wilson
We talk about wages and a place to stay, and squatters
and police keep saying Communist. We say ,,What,s
this Communist?”
⅞
Clearly there was a nihilation by squatters and police of the
Aboriginal world of meaning by branding their request for basic
needs, wages and housing as inspired by communism (Bjelke-Petersen,
Premier of Queensland, uses the same mechanism in the eighties).
The demanding of basic human rights by Aborigines could not be
tolerated in a world that needed cheap labour: they had to be
rejected.
Just as clearly there was a rejection by the Aborigines of their
location in a particular world by white people, either a ’world’
of communism or a world of dependence on white men and a world of
white culture.
*
The case of Strelley will now be taken up in order to map in
detail the components of a situation where there has been a self-