Published: 2011
ISBN: 978-1-921214-79-0
Pages: 212
Imprint: Post Pressed
Rae Norris holds Bachelor and Masters degrees in History and Sociology and has published widely on employment equity issues. She was awarded a PhD at Griffith University in 2006 and the inaugural Griffith University Chancellor's Medal for excellence in PhD research in 2007. She was chosen as a delegate to the 2020 Summit held in Canberra in April 2009 in the Indigenous Stream on the basis of her research into the foundations of Indigenous employment disadvantage. She is an Adjunct Research Fellow with the Centre for Governance and Public Policy at Griffith University.
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1: If the Truth Be Known
Chapter 2: Aboriginal Arrangements
Chapter 3: The Colonial Economy: Antecedents, Establishment, Effects
Chapter 4: British Baggage: Beliefs about Blacks to 1850
Chapter 5: Conflict of Cultures 1788 to 1850
Chapter 6: Empty Promises
Chapter 7: Codifying Contempt, Institutionalising Ignorance 1897 to 1967
Chapter 8: None So Blind
Appendix 1: Attitudes to Aborigines 1788-1850
References
Index
This work will provide an insight into our current understandings of the low levels of participation of Aboriginal people in the workforce and will assist in better identification of key factors of concern. One of its great contributions in is the articulation of racist ideology that has operated in this area but has gone unmentioned and unnoticed. In identifying this as a key factor, the [book] will assist in developing policies and strategies that more clearly target the structural and philosophical elements that have been identified in the careful and informative research at the heart of the [book]. It makes an important and meaningful contribution to debates on Indigenous employment and engagement in the economy (or lack thereof).
Professor Larissa Behrendt, Professor of Law and Director of Research at the Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning at the University of Technology, Sydney
Rae Norris's important new study shows how the combination of legislative barriers and racist attitudes served to exclude Indigenous Australians from employment in the past and to nullify their persistent efforts to take advantage of economic opportunities generated by white settlement. Discriminatory legislation has been repealed, but as Norris shows all too clearly, institutionalised racism and beliefs regarding the inability or disinterest of Indigenous Australians in gaining employment persist. Only when these underlying issues are addressed can Indigenous economic disadvantage be overcome.
Professor Ciaran O'Fairchellaigh, Centre for Governance and Public Policy, Griffith University