Dissolving- myths of exclusive national sovereignty. Part Two - Australia.

While the latest acts of violence in Papau are becoming more visible in the mainstream media (despite all attempts of Javenese nationalist elites to prevent media coverage in Papua) there is a campaign under way regarding recognition of Australia’s First Peoples in the Anglo-Australian Constitution of 1901.

Some indigenous activists argue that they are not bound by this Constitution. Conceived of in keeping with the racist ideologies of the late 1880s – which excluded First Peoples -  it simply does not apply to them.

There is no treaty (or treaties) between First Peoples and the imperial British authorities and their neo-imperial heirs, and little prospect of Anglo-Australian authorities taken effective action to remedy this major flaw in Australia’s foundations.

A recent paper by Marcia Langton “Indigenous exceptionalism and the constitutional ‘race power’) rightly identifies the obsolete notion of ‘race’ as something which has reached its use-by date.

Whatever is meant by ‘race’ it usually imagines some form of biological component as part of a means of conceptualising relationships between groups of people.

Like the modern nation-state, it involves a ‘blocked’ form of energy.

Marcia Langton says:

“In the slowly building campaign for constitutional recognition of indigenous people, it is vital we broaden the understanding that the constitutional tradition of treating Aborigines as a ‘race’ must be replaced with the idea of ‘first peoples’. By this I mean simply what is proposed in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (sic – Peoples – BR): It recognises that ‘Indigenous peoples are equal to all other peoples, while recognizing the right of all peoples to be different, to consider themselves different, and to be respected as such.’…”

While I agree with the need to consign the obsolete concept of  ‘race’ to the dustbin, and while I agree that Anglo-Australia needs to find a means of recognising this country’s First Peoples, I doubt if there is much else I agree with in Marcia’s position.

On the one hand, she seems to seek to transcend the limits placed on our creative imagination of who we are by European master narratives, she also seems to accept too much of the conceptual prisonhouse which has be instituted in this former British penal settlement.

The present Australian Constitution is a document which is riddled with the racism of the late 1880s, and is a document which was designed to protect the vested interests in the former British colonies which became the Australian States. First Peoples were excluded from all consideration, except to be deemed of no account.

The problem I have with Marcia’s position is that seeks to incorporate First Peoples and their Ways into a Constitution which preserves a monolithic Anglo-Australian formation rather than seeking to reform the 1901 Constitution to provide First Peoples with the means by which they may live full lives in accordance with very different values to those imported with the Church of England, European farmers, and the suburban notions of domestic order of their subsequent Westernised middle class families.

For me, any position which does not begin with the acknowledgement – not just of country – but of the fact that Australia’s First Peoples are captive of a modern nation-state is a position which can never restore and maintain the full well-being of those First Peoples (and, by extension, of non-indigenous Australians).

That is, any analysis which excludes recognition of the 214 years of struggle of First Peoples to socialise Europeans into this country’s realities leaves out some very important dimensions. And inevitably reduces into another exercise in ethnocide as the imported status quo exerts its powerful influence in all that is reproduced from such narrowly conceived ‘origins’.

This is a systematically distorting influence – institutionalised racism is rife in ‘modern’ Australian life, and professional deformations of those conceptual craftworkers who are recruited by the state are the price of entry into the Anglo-Australian systems of patronage.

The ‘modern’ condition is one which automatically assigns a vast privilege to itself – and assumes that while other peoples “of course!” have to change their Ways to fit in with ‘modern’ cultural specifications, there is no counterbalancing expectation that ‘modern’ Western Ways must change to comply with the cultural specifications which are grounded in this country.

Well, welcome to post-modern conditions.

There is ample evidence this ‘modern’ privilege is long overdue for reform. The attempts to delay this reform take many forms – but these attempts to delay the process will increasingly require more resources than can be afforded. Change is happening.

Life will seek out the constrained ‘freedoms’ it needs in order to maximise its full potential. Life is a process of realisation, just as so much of life in this country has been ‘unrealised’ since 1788 (rendered unreal by the imposition of failing narratives from the other side of the planet).

Many would agree that Marcia’s position is that of a realist. Some small changes to the 1901 Constitution are the best than can be hoped for.

But there is also a saying that the idealist is the only realist – since the idealist contains within their form of representation the germ of better futures which, in the fullness of time, are (to some extent) realised.

Part of this struggle is a struggle for the creative imagination.

This requires crafting new forms of representation – on all levels. These need to be fashioned in a spirit of cultural partnership between First Peoples and non-indigenous peoples.

Rather than propping up the drooping 1901 Australian Constitution a la Dali, we need significantly more exercise of our collective creative imaginations and creative powers (working with known realities). Until there is a critical mass, as we saw with the broad-based  effort across the face of life  leading into the1992 Mabo decision, change will not come.

A METAPHYSICAL "SELF"

One area where work is required is that provided by what is known as Australian Dreamings. Instead of a debate about evolution versus Creationism, where do First Peoples cosmologies fit into Australian life?

Within surviving Ways of First Peoples in this country life has been subjected to forms of signification which relate particular people to particular aspects of life. These systems of signification are not based on European Western modern notions of biology or society as understood by modern anthropologists.

There is an Anglo-Australian norm which operates to insist that First Peoples – in urbanised places like Wollongong where I live – do not rediscover their Dreaming identities. The ethnological norm implies that – once you have been stripped of your cultural birthright – under no conditions are you allowed to rediscover it as a lived cultural reality. First Peoples cosmologies are treated as a threat by 'modern' Anglo-Australian interests.

“NO DREAMING ALLOWED” declares the neo-colonial powers. Yet all of our lives are informed by our creative imaginations and associated ‘fantasy’ structures.  This is our condition!

Freedom, in this context, means the freedom to signify life in keeping with life’s own scripts – not some fantasy invented by others and forcefully imposed on First Peoples.

The struggle for this kind of freedom – a freedom of Being – must have its local situations, its specific contexts in which real matters are worked through. By the same measure, an enduring solution requires a change to a global force-field.

Without a global shift any local successes are more than likely to be beaten ‘back into proper’ shape by an oppressive regime.

At this stage of the transformative process it is difficult to be able to provide an account of a future condition – which will, in all probability, be different to what we can imagine at this time.

However, in both the Papuan-Indonesian and the First Peoples-Australian cases, a good outcome would be one where relationships between the various parties are informed by key values on both sides rather than mere domination by one side as is presently the case – reintroduction of reciprocity, perhaps, into Indonesian life the case of Papua, and respect for the whole of life in ‘modern’ Australia, perhaps, in the case of Australia’s First Peoples.

We all need to rethink life – and leave behind the empty shell of identity as provided by the somewhat medieval notion of a modern nation-state.

A national Constitution is part of the modern nation-state formation. The present Australian Constitution is a culturally one-sided document. It claims an exclusive form of sovereignty which systematically benefits some at the expense of many others, including First Peoples.

Can we imagine life in which the present Constitution is replaced with two-sided forms of representation – in which sovereignty is shared with this country’s First Peoples?

Well, that is the magnitude of the challenge life presents us with.

We may well discover our own metaphysical 'selves' in the process.

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More reading:

 Indigenous exceptionalism and the constitutional ‘race power’
Marcia Langton,
Melbourne Writers Festival
BMW Edge theatre, Federation Square, Melbourne
26 August, 2012

http://www.youmeunity.org.au/downloads/8f2d6396820886086f16.pdf

Dissolving - myths of an exclusive national sovereignty. Part One - Papua

 The acts of violence which have taken place in Papua over the last fifty years or so – in the name of an Indonesian nation possessing an exclusive sovereignty – may go unnoticed by many decent folk (as the intermational media are prevented from operating in Papua) but they are particularly painful to me. 

I studied New Guinean Ways as a student, and have gained some understanding and appreciation of them over the years. I do not subcribe to the fantasies of those of dismiss Papuans as a 'stone-age peoples'. They have finely tuned ways of Being of the highest order.

I also gained some understanding of how people who consider themselves ‘civilised’ and ‘superior’ to others cannot govern to ensure the well-being of those others. From many accounts, Javanese elites have such an attitude towards Papua’s First Peoples.

Just as it is painful to witness what is happening in Papua, so too is it painful to witness the ongoing acts of violence - now located on a much more subtle level – which have marked the 214 years of occupation of this place we know by its foreign name as “Australia”.

Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr – like others who have held that office – is always careful to couch his gentle querying of human rights abuses in Papua with explicit statements about recognising Indonesian sovereignty over Papua.

I suspect that underlying this is the knowledge that Anglo-Australia – lacking any form of Treaty or Treaties with this country’s First Peoples – instinctive knows not to invite scrutiny of its own claims to sovereignty. There is no Treaty of Waitangi, nor even the thin patina of ‘legitimacy’ for a hostile regime with the hasty "Act of Free Choice"  which took place in Papua in July 1969 (while world attention was on the moon landing).

When Bob Carr recently called for an inquiry into the role of Detachment 88 in treating Papuan independence activists as “terrorists” a high-level member of the Indonesian elite responded:

“ Mr Mahfudz is a member of the PKS party, which is strongly Islamic, and part of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's governing coalition.

“In an interview with The Age, the head of Indonesia's parliamentary commission for security, Mahfudz Siddiq, seemed to confirm that Detachment 88 was present in West Papua, partly because, he alleged, Mr Tabuni was ''one of the actors behind a series of violent actions'' there.

''That makes the presence of Detachment 88 and its involvement in some cases in West Papua as being very much about doing their job. Several cases in West Papua at that time were already seen as terror,'' Mr Mahfudz said.

Independence activists have denied that Mr Tabuni was involved in a series of killings in the lead-up to his death.

Mr Mahfudz also chided Mr Carr because he said he had never heard Australian politicians complaining about Detachment 88 killing Muslim terror suspects.

''In my opinion, it is too far for Bob Carr to mention human rights training to Detachment 88. Did Australia give any comment when Islamic activists got killed or injured by Detachment 88 while the anti-terror squad was raiding a house?'' Mr Mahfudz said.

''I think Australia must be careful about these statements because they could be seen as having double standards.''

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/indonesia-rebukes-carr-over-west-papua-call-20120829-250yb.html#ixzz2559P4F1s

GANGSTER THIEFDOMS

The notion of sovereignty of modern nation-states sets up a construct which separates one part of life from the rest of life. Within this artificial construct there is deemed to be some form of exclusive authority related to a myth of a monopoly on the "legitimate" use of violence.

This can be compared with gangsters who, in terrorising the locals,  agree with other neighbouring gangsters that they will not interfere in each other’s reigns of terror, and will turn a blind eye to any acts of violence directed by the local gangsters to people within the bounded area.

This way of manipulating the world’s people has enjoyed considerable success during the last few centuries. But its time has come, and now the cluster of beliefs necessary for such illusions are weakening, and the modern nation-state is dissolving before our eyes.

Those who benefit from the modern-nation state arrangement will use all in their power to resist this change – and they are extremely nasty people convinced of the rightness of their One Nation approach to life.

But life is much  greater than they are and new permutations are underway.

It is time for all of us who are dominated and manipulated by Nationalist gangsters, of one kind or another, to stop taking their claims seriously, and to insist that new and healing ways are  the only acceptable standards in the 21s century.

PAPUA

During the late 1960s, when in my twenties, I was drawn into modern anthropology by a Dutch Professor, Jan Pouwer, who had worked in what was then Dutch New Guinea.

To my knowledge (and in my memory) he never spoke directly of the tragedy which had befallen the people of the former Dutch part of New Guinea. Perhaps, in the late 60s and early 70s, it was still early days.

I did, however, learn much about the ways of life of the First Peoples of New Guinea. I learnt enough to know that they are very different from the ways of life of Javanese peoples (as complex as those ways are).

Jan Pouwer stressed the role of reciprocity as a total social fact for New Guinean ways.  This makes for very different kinds of cosmologies, social and ecological relationships and senses of identity to those which accompany the notion of the modern nation state.

After World War 2 a myth was created about a modern nation state called Indonesian which took its boundaries from the former Dutch empire in this side of the planet. Papua was included in this nationalist fantasy, even though the ways of life of Javenese nationalists and Papuan peoples bore little comparison.

The ongoing tragedy in Papau was made possible by the failure of international forces – forces which are themselves constituted by a myth of an exclusive national sovereignty – to insist that the new Indonesia did not automatically include all of the former Dutch colonial possessions.

The cold war played a part in all of this, with Javanese nationalists skilled at playing off competing imperialist powers on both sides to obtain a ‘home’ advantage – but for whose home?

Papua has clearly provided sources of wealth for the social complex represented by Indonesian nationalists – Freeport’s Grasberg mine being a case in point. Papau has also provided ‘living-space’ to non-Papuan Indonesians – the well-known ‘transmigration’ occupation -  as a means of resolving some difficulties for the Indonesian nation-state.

 

But the idea that Papuans fighting for survival of their ways of life – against Javanese forces of occupation – can be categorised as ‘terrorists’ is just too absurd to be taken seriously.

We have seen how such myths – the doctrine of terra nullis in Australia’s case – simply cannot be upheld as credible once they reach their use-by date. It takes more resources to promote the pretence than can be afforded.

As though obeying some kind of unstated law, life simply opts to move on to a new position. We are on the move now.

So too with the myth of an exclusive Indonesian sovereignty in Papua. Papua's First Peoples must be regarded has having a form of co-existing soveriegnty within a regional complex.

In saying this, however, I am not an advocate of independence in which one ‘superior’ group is displaced and replaced with another ‘superior’ group.

I see “independence” as belonging to the same cluster of ‘modern’ beliefs which have caused so much suffering on our planet. An Independent Papua will suffer from the same problems as all modern nation-states.

They all require ongoing acts of violence (physical and/or psychic) to sustain themselves since they are inherently unstable.

My preference is for networks of ‘interdependence’. This will require a global shift to become possible (and not, I hasten to add, the global shift of modern consumerist ‘globalisation’.)

Solving the problems in Papua and Australia needs a changing global context.

While I acknowledge that there is a process underway which involves the notion of ‘autonomy’ in Papua – and that this may be a realistic and achievable outcome if pursued in good faith – my fundamental belief is that the notion of an exclusive form of national sovereignty must be dissolved in order to provide for co-existing forms of sovereignty within new social formations.

Nationalism of the exclusive national soveriegnty type sets up a narrative by which all manner of obscene acts of violence can be justified by those commiting them. Those people who subscribe to these narratives are themselves trapped.

There is much work to be done on this front if we are to replace the destructive ways of the modern nation-state with truly healing solutions. And in both Papua and Australia we are faced with healing challenges of awesome dimensions.

Is there any room for healing movement in Papua by way of fully implementing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigneous Peoples in relation to the Indonesian modern nation-state (and Australia)?

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Brief background reading.

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Act_of_Free_Choice

 PART TWO - AUSTRALIA to follow.

 

Assange and Interpol

Questioning the structures of authority which protect powerful figures who systematically misled us and pursue those who unmask them leads us to ask "Who, exactly, are Interpol?"

Wikipedia notes:

"In order to maintain as politically neutral a role as possible, Interpol's constitution forbids it to undertake any interventions or activities of a political, military, religious, or racial nature."

Interpol's Constitution says:

"Its aims are:


(1) To ensure and promote the widest possible mutual assistance between all criminal police authorities within the limits of the laws existing in the different countries and in the spirit of the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights";

Then how come, at this moment when the whole world knows where Julian Assange is to be found, we get:

http://www.interpol.int/News-and-media/News-media-releases/2012/PR065