Australia’s Doomed-Race Protective Myth

Book excerpt: Periodically, in Australian society racial chasms emerge portraying the great divide between Indigenous and non‐Indigenous Australians, exposing the sustained influence of the doomed‐race protective myth and its residue. This book exposes that a long and powerful influence on Australian society, economy, culture, and history has been the doomed‐race protective myth. While most nations harbour protective myths of one form or another, often endorsed by Australian governments at all levels and steeped in a cruel racism and, inter alia, a quest for pastoral lands, Australia’s doomed‐race protective myth has asserted an undue influence on First Nations people. This book argues the doomed race protective myth warped the vision of power elites, politicians, and bureaucrats. For centuries, sustained by representations in official and public history, schools, churches, and a whole host of public institutions, the doomed‐race protective myth has been voiced by almost every facet of non‐Indigenous Australian society, with pastoral Australia particularly benefiting. This book opens fresh vistas to the continuing racism in Australian society through an examination of the long‐politicised doomed‐race protective myth which was foisted on First Nations people, and with vested interests in pastoral Australia. Key events in Australia’s race‐relations history such as the 2023 First Nations Voice to Parliament Referendum have new light shed on them. Transnational themes relevant to Indigenous history have been examined. People with an interest in non‐Indigenous‐Indigenous affairs, academics, politicians and bureaucrats, and students will enjoy this book.