Aboriginal Australia: “Our” country is waiting for you

Indigenous cultures are each excitingly distinct. No two are exactly alike in the world. A 2015 Australian advertising campaign by Tourism Australia titled Aboriginal Australia: Our Country is Waiting For You beautifully exemplifies the wonders of Australia’s native culture. But it forgot to include the brutal violence and domination of the Aboriginals by white colonisers???

The 3 minute long advertisement shows white tourists being shown elements of Aboriginal culture while a dreamy voiceover says things like “every plant, every animal is our family, they are our ancestors.” And “we share the light, we share the land.” While Australian tourism campaigns are not often focussed just on native ethnic experiences, this advertisement romanticises the Aboriginal culture.

Don’t get me wrong, it is important to give positive representations of culture plenty of exposure in the media, and the Aboriginal Australia ad does a great job of doing that. The problematic aspect of this campaign, however, is the restricted allocation of Aboriginal representation to tourism advertising.

Avril Bell’s 1996 work on New Zealand Pakeha and Maori identity correlates well with Aboriginal identity particularly to do with advertising. Bell explains that although the indigenous group is marginalised and excluded from institutions such as work and politics, they are called upon to represent the collective culture of the country for entertainment and tourism purposes.

Bell’s idea is seen in Aboriginal Australia. Aboriginals are one of the most marginalised indigenous peoples of the world and are used to show the importance of their traditions to Australian national culture. It seems ironic that the most impoverished ethnicity within Australia is represented as so happy and bountiful to the outside world. These are the people that are the face of Australian tourism and yet who is the head of the big corporations like Tourism Australia that will reap the benefits of their culture? White men.

Aboriginals are barely represented in Australian society, so why should they be used only for tourism purposes? They are the origin people of the land and their culture deserves more than to be a commodity for white men to buy and sell as they please.