ABSTRACT
Ann Curthoys (2000) described the relationship between Indigenous and migrant communities in Australia as an ‘uneasy conversation’ (21). She pointed to the contested relationship between multiculturalism and Indigenous rights in Australia and highlighted the problematic framing of both these interests under the broader concept of ‘cultural diversity’ by academics and policy-makers. While Indigenous and Chinese experiences of marginality often intersected, Curthoys argued that they also occupied ‘significantly different places on the colonial-post-colonial spectrum’ (Curthoys 2000: 32). The re-mapping of Chinese diasporic and Aboriginal histories by historians such as Regina Ganter (2005), Guy Ramsay (2001, 2004) and Sarah Yu (1999) has begun the important process of documenting this ‘uneasy conversation’. These historical studies move beyond the ‘white/minority’ binary to incorporate what Ramsay has called the ‘third space of Chinese-Indigenous connections’ (Ramsay 2004: 53). In his detailed account of Chinese diasporic and Indigenous communities on Thursday Island, Ramsay identified how these intercultural engagements subverted the colonial structure of Anglo—Australian society:
the presence on Thursday Island of a longstanding Chinese community, which, while ostensibly subject to the hegemony of White colonial society, subtly undermined the latter’s cultural dominance through connections and contentions with an array of other Asian and Indigenous cultures.
(Ramsay 2004: 54)