Aboriginal and Multicultural Imaginaries: Tensions, Accommodations, Reconciliation

Abstract

The relationship between Australia’s Indigenous peoples and multiculturalism has been fraught, with Indigenous people generally resisting incorporation within multicultural debates and agendas, asserting instead distinct Indigenous rights and claims in relation to the Australian settler state. In this chapter parallels with the Canadian and New Zealand experiences are discussed. Australia’s multicultural policy discourse has been mainly focused on immigrant diversity, but it has also attempted to draw Indigenous people into its broader framework. The decade-long official Aboriginal reconciliation process of the 1990s represented an attempt to broaden the understanding of nation and heritage to accommodate Indigenous demands, and to an extent this involved an expanded notion of multiculturalism that recognised the unique position of Indigenous people. While emphasising the ongoing tensions between multicultural and Indigenous imaginaries, the chapter discusses examples of Indigenous leaders and scholars who have attempted to reconcile the two. Will Kymlicka’s formulation of multiculturalism in multi-nation states, which shows the contribution of Indigenous people and claims to multicultural thinking and policy, is discussed.