Moving Forward Together in Aboriginal Women's Health: - Theses ...

Moving Forward TogetherJanet KellyProminent Western theorists then drew links between ‘the child’ and ‘primitive’races. Renan for example, suggested that philosophers needed to understand thechild to understand the savage. He encouraged investigators to travel among theprimitive peoples which are fast disappearing from the face of the earth (Renan1891, p. 150). Likewise, Darwin’s theory of evolution helped to cement the ideathat the child and ‘the savage’ were at an interchangeable stage of evolution(Ashcroft 2001a).Victorian travellers’ and explorers perpetuated the idea with travel diaries full oftheir perceptions of Indigenous peoples as being childish, immature, and primitive,dangerous, unbridled pre-civilised savages lacking any sexual restraint. In 1872,Richard Burton described tribesmen of East Africa as the slaves of impulse, wilfulpassion and instinct (Burton 1872). Similarly Lionel Phillips described SouthAfrican ‘Kaffirs’ as ‘a complex mixture of treachery and cunning, fierceness andbrutality, childlike simplicity and quick wittedness’ concluding that ‘such peoplerequire a master, and respect justice, and firmness. Generosity is a quality they donot understand’ (cited in Bolt 1971, p. 137). These travel diaries and travellers talesappeared to confirm the science and became unofficial but influentialanthropological accounts (Said 1978, 1993).The concept of ‘development’ as a maturation or growth linked to progress, scienceand intellect also emerged in the eighteenth century. Post-colonialists 6 argue thatthis strengthened the belief that children and ‘primitive’ people were less developedand therefore required authority, meaningful direction and education (Ashcroft2001a; Locke 1693). The combination of nineteenth century scientific belief in thehierarchy of man and superiority of European knowledge, with children andprimitive man being viewed as similarly undeveloped and uneducated and requiringauthority and direction, and supportive evidence of lesser species from overseastravellers and explorers, all led European Imperialists to adopting a belief that theyhad the authority, right and ability to colonise land belonging to others (Said 1993,p. 121).When emerging scientists came to Australia (as well as Africa, Asia, New Zealand,Canada and the Americas) they brought with them tools of Western analysis and an6 The concepts within postcolonial theory are explained more fully in chapter four.33