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Anglo-Celtic culture which sought to diminish the power of its minority groupings by
making them 'history-less'. Thus the aborigines were assumed to have no land rights,
English was the only language taught in the schools and the dress and customs of the
Chinese were ridiculed. In order to assert their unity and identity as a bulwark against
the dominant attitudes and institutional structures, it was to be expected that the Italian
speakers should have looked to traditional ways and the preservation of familiar
values. The history of 'their' people, even when idealised around the concept of
peasantry, was made (in the words of Brunn) 'the ideological nucleus of their
existence'. ^^
In his studies concerning other immigrant communities in Europe, Brunn noted
the crucial role of history in the formation of group-identity and group-behaviour. He
argues that historical awareness, ideas and conceptions have played a central role in the
development of cultural homogeneity and continuity. 'History', he says, 'served to
confirm the existence of the ethnic group and its legitimation was then built on
evidence of an unbroken history'.^' All peoples, literate or illiterate, members of a
tribe or small or large nation, use history to confirm their ethnic existence. It is a
creative force which reinforces group consciousness and strengthens bonds. Keesing
in his work among Island Melanesians goes further, stating that the (re)invention of the
past (history) is an important component for understanding the present.^^ Though a
view of events in the past may be expressed which bears little relationship to
documented history, people, places and deeds, such memories and stories are the basis
for a sense of community, of oneness between a group of people who are adjusting to
a new way of life as an isolated, peripheral entity.