The politics of 'Aboriginal society'

Intellectuals who engage in the making and critique of public policy may mobilise historical narrative in their policy discourse. Thus issues of historiography are sometimes politicised. For both policy makers and historians concerned with Indigenous matters, the notion 'Aboriginal society' emerged in the 1960s. The question of how to address it in policy, I argue, has been entangled with the question of how to write its history. I illustrate this nexus by briefly examining commentaries by six policy intellectuals - Coombs, Stanner, Hasluck, Langton, Pearson and Sutton - whose thoughts on the Indigenous policy innovations of 1966-77 have included relating those events to underlying historical structures of settler colonial history. In particular I draw attention to historiographical features of three policy revisionists: Noel Pearson's emphasis on economic history, Peter Sutton's concept of 'liberal consensus' and Marcia Langton's highlighting of Aboriginal demography.