The policy of assimilation, loosely dated between the 1930s and 1970s, is typically associated with Paul Hasluck’s Commonwealth initiatives to extend the grounds on which indigenous persons could be exempted from the states’ protective legislation, and ‘be accepted as ordinary members of the Australian community’. Maynard points out that the Australian Aboriginal Progressives Association (AAPA), formed in the 1920s, argued against protective policies and for equal rights. They claimed the ‘right to function in our own interest, as right thinking civilized people and decent citizens, not as non-intelligents [sic] devoid of all reason’. The idea that Aborigines could prove themselves capable of living in society, and therefore worthy of equal rights, was taken up by indigenous activists in response to the humiliations of protection.

However, as Tim Rowse demonstrates, many of the progressive indigenous activists internalised the distinction between civilised and uncivilised as the marker of assimilability.  A tension that ran throughout indigenous activism was that between the virtues of assimilation and those of community. Martin Krygier’s essay notes that the assimilatory tendencies of liberal society are manifest in an antipathy toward alternative sources of normative authority, embodied in community. Liberal assimilation individualises the subject and makes, in Hasluck’s words, the ‘behaviour of the individual, the response of the individual, the aspiration or effort of the individual … the core of our problem’. The obsession with miscegenation and degrees of Aboriginality (full-blood versus half-caste) was a manifestation of an interest in the things that broke the bonds between individuals and community.

Given the acceptance by AAPA, and others, of the markers of modernisation as dividing the assimilable from the non-assimilable, what can be made of the relation between the critique of assimilation and its perceived benefits? Clearly, for the AAPA and non-indigenous sympathisers, such as the redoubtable Jessie Street, the benefits of assimilation were significant. They went beyond formal equality, however, and even then represented the other side of liberal modernisation. The struggle for assimilation by indigenous people was also a struggle to define the terms of assimilation. As Rowse contends, self-determination can be thought of as the realisation of assimilation. The development of assimilation, as the broader process of social integration of coloniser and colonised, displays the productive interaction of liberal ideals with the defence of community interests by those whose norms are not dominant.

The unravelling of the individualist orientation of assimilation was reflected in the social science of A. P. Elkin, W. D. Borrie, and Charles Rowley, for whom culture provided a context that tempered its homogenising tendencies. By ‘enabling individual Aborigines to gain security in their own society’, the objectives of assimilation could be more fully realised. This critique coincided with doubts about the way of life into which Aborigines would be assimilated. The shift from assimilation to integration, then self-determination, responded to the impossibility of matching a uniform legal society with a uniform community. The indigenous defence of community was at odds with Hasluck’s insistence that ‘this is a problem for the individual. The individual person of Aboriginal origin trying to fit into Australian society.’ Ultimately, this vision of assimilation was unsustainable against the community interests defended by Aborigines who otherwise argued for the extension of equal rights.

The idea that assimilation has been undermined by left-wing urban élites that encourage indigenous separatism is a misreading of history. It imputes the racist assumption that indigenous people are incapable of collective action and are the subjects of white policy agendas, which, captured by 1960s radicals, have been to the detriment of indigenous people. This attempts to preserve the unity of the Australian community against multiculturalism and indigenous self-determination, which purportedly strike at its heart. However, history points to the fact that the ideals of liberal equality must be realised within communities, and where these communities are diverse, individuals struggling to defend their own ways of life determine the contexts within which this occurs. Contesting Assimilation is an important contribution to understanding this process. It offers a good mix of theoretical speculation and historical analysis. Rowse has done an excellent job of arranging these papers, originally written for a conference, into a coherent book with a point to make. And the point it makes – that assimilation has been a contested process throughout, both by indigenous and non-indigenous activists – is a significant one. It does suffer, as a book, from the brevity of the chapters. Given, however, the current debate over history and its contemporary meaning, a volume that combines matter of fact historical scholarship with insightful commentary on its present relevance is indeed a valuable resource.