Multiculturalisms “Down Under”: Multicultural Governances across Australia

Abstract

Society building is a difficult and elusive challenge at the best of times, no more so than in settler societies like Canada and the United States, New Zealand, and Australia (Pearson 2001). Consider the conflict of interests arising from the interplay of three distinct yet interrelated dynamics. First, the process of colonization with its dispossession of indigenous peoples; second, the process of settlement in establishing the colonizer’s agenda; third, the process of immigration involving a mix of benefits and costs. The fractured allegiances of each of these dynamics—indigenous, colonizer, immigrant—poses a challenge in constructing a coherent society of commitment, consensus, community, and citizenship. Responses to this multidimensional challenge were varied. Invariably, however, they focused on an assimilationist model that not only privileged a white supremacist governance but also insisted on a universal (homogeneous) and centralized notion of the nation-state that extolled the virtues of one people, one culture, one polity, and one territory (Guibernau 2007).