First Nations? Second Thoughts.(Review)

First Nations? Second Thoughts, by Tom Flanagan; McGill-Queen's University Press, 2000, about $40.

TOM FLANAGAN has been writing on Canadian original issues for twenty-five years. After serving and participating in the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples--which produced a 3500-page report at a cost of $54 million and recommended a completely new level of aboriginal government, and a bucket-load of new money for aboriginal affairs--Flanagan has blown the whistle on the whole damn show.

He decided to sketch the orthodoxy that surrounds aboriginal policy in Canada, and tell the story of the great harm its separatist and romantic notions are doing to Canadian aborigines. There are immense lessons in Flanagan's analysis for Australian policy-makers, especially those who are slaves to fashionable ideas.

I note with fear and trepidation the "next big thing" in aboriginal orthodoxy, "the indigenous order of governance". This notion has been taken up with gusto by the Australia Institute in its September 2000 paper for ATSIC, "Resourcing Indigenous Development and Self Determination". It borrows heavily from the Canadian orthodoxy and recommends that Australian aboriginal governments--indigenous governance structures, to be correct--should receive a guaranteed share of national tax revenue, that is, a bucket-load of new money.

The Canadian orthodoxy consists of eight propositions:

* Aboriginals differ from other Canadians because they were there first. As first nations, they have unique rights, including the inherent right of self-government.

* Aboriginal cultures were on the same level as those of European colonists. The distinction between civilised and uncivilised is a racist instrument of oppression.