'Australia' - what's in a name? Part 3. Getting our spirits right.

“Getting the spirit right” is a lot easier to say than to achieve.

The expression “Getting the spirit right” can be understood as a shorthand way of summing up a vast number of factors which have to be tweaked to fine-tune life to the high point it strives to reach.

While there are many areas of contemporary life in this country which have to be reworked in order to move towards restoring balance to life here, the ideal of “Getting the spirit right” may serve to remind us of what is truly important in what can be a confusing mix of voices, policies, platforms for powerbases, official strategies and so on.

“Getting our spirits right” has to be seen as a primary and key objective if we are to move any significant distance to healing the relationship between First Peoples and those of us who – one way or another – have come to be this country since 1788.

We will never get the right spirit into this relationship until we non-indigenous peoples cease from insisting that First Peoples must accommodate themselves to our reality, and that our realities should not be expected to have to be modified or reformed to better accommodate First Peoples realities.

While dominating (and increasingly strident) Anglo-Australian voices may insist that their’s is the only yardstick for evaluating life in this country, that imperial measure yardstick is already obsolete. Life is moving on whether they like it or not.

What we need to ask now is “What do we have to change in Anglo-Australian life in order to provide better living conditions – as judged by First Peoples -  for First Peoples by way of recognition and the proper resources needed to live full lives?”

And better living conditions does not mean employment, housing, education and health as defined by culturally one-sided values, although it may well include all of that. Better living conditions must include recognition and affirmation of First Peoples as First Peoples, and not merely as captives of a modern nation-state.

Until there has been some serious major reform of the cluster of values; attitudes; cultural practices and constitutional arrangements the provision of better employment, education, housing and health will not produce the affirmation of Being required for full well-being.

Making the restoration and maintenance of First Peoples full well-being, health and happiness – as assessed on their own terms - the measure by which we non-indigenous gauge our success requires a comprehensive rethinking of who we are, where we are and where we fit into life.

It is my view that lasting social healing requires a sound and uncompromising diagnosis – followed by the gentlest of treatments. Dissolving blockages – rather than attempting to smash through - is far more preferable.

DISSOLVING BLOCKAGES

Much symbolic energy has been invested (by those opposed to First Peoples) in the term 'Australia'. That name has a very strong hold on all of us. 

Coming to see that 'Australia' - standing on its own and as presently constituted - is seriously lacking something vital is an example of dissolving a blockage.

Briefly stated, one of the problems with the name ‘Australia’ (and the accompanying term ‘Australian’) is that – without some dual name from an indigenous source - it is culturally one-sided and embodies the wrong spirit.

The challenge which confronts us to find something new which contains the right spirit.

And merely adding a new indigenous name of names  is not sufficient to work healing magic. The addition of that indigenous name (or names) has to signify real changes to the formal and informal constitution of modern Australia.

Irrespective of the fine characteristics of so many of the people who live in this country, and who are proud to call themselves ‘Australian’, the term ‘Australia’ – under the present Constitution – enshrines  institutionalised racism against this country’s First Peoples.

As another recent issue clearly demonstrates, the picture is far from simple. There has been a suggestion by Professor Tim Flannery that the Australian War Memorial should honour First Peoples warriors who died defending their country from colonial invasion.

But the country they died defending is not the same country for which the Australian War Memorial embodies as a ritual shrine. It could be said that First Peoples warriors died defending their country from ‘Australia’.

And, further, that ‘Australia’ is the eventual name of the occupying power which institutionalised itself here after those warriors lost that phase of their long and ongoing struggle.

Of course, this is exactly the kind of message which Prime Ministers past and present do not want to be part of a conversation about the respective places of indigenous and non-indigenous peoples in this country. No official ‘oxygen’ for such voices.

Fortunately, in addition to my views, there are many indigenous people in this country who have been saying this sort of thing for many years – as part of a much wider ‘conversation’ about life here. The views these people represent have been denied official ‘oxygen’ for some hundreds of years now, and are not dependant on it for survival.

Their message “We have survived” is proof of this. “We have survived” despite a long affirmation drought spanning two centuries. 

Not surprising, given the lame provisions for constitutional recognition on offer from Anglo-Australia authorities, many of these First Australian reject the limited terms of the official ‘conversation’ about constitutional recognition.

They add issues such as unextinguished sovereignty; the lack of a treaty or treaties; reparations for past and present damages; the need to undertake reform of past and present Western practices; the need for a fair-dinkum and culturally appropriate means of representation in the governance of this country – and more.

The issues these First Peoples bring to the ‘conversation’ need to be added to the discussional agenda – not brushed aside as inconvenient.

What we need – to heal life in this country - is not merely a culturally one-sided conversation but a robust dialogue which genuinely affirms First Peoples as cultural partners in life here. We really need to provide spaces for these voices in the conversation if we are to find a stable foundation for future life in this country.

I don’t expect this to happen under the Abbott government, which is reportedly cutting funding to the National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples and relying, instead, on a totally unrepresentative Indigenous Advisory Council.

Presently the National Congress is the only indigenous body which has a chance of providing the means for a country-wide consultation process.

And the National Congress itself is regarded, by a number of First Australians, as not a representative body for them. At the core of First Peoples Ways is a deep distrust of any process which allows a disproportionate amount of power to accumulate in any one person or group.  As soon as a process concentrating power in one locus becomes apparent, something will be done to derail that process.

Concentrations of power – of the kind which are enabled by the modern nation-state – are anathema to those who lives are informed by First Peoples Ways.

So even if funding was secured for the National Congress and it was used as a vehicle for Constitutional reform, considerable work would remain to be done in order to find some means of including voices which are presently marginalised and which insist that indigenous sovereignty was never extinguished.

It is hard to imagine the Prime Minister’s hand-picked Indigenous Advisory Council ever embracing this challenge – but the National Congress has some chance of providing a two-way conduit for a robust dialogue 

Maybe Congress, working with local First Peoples, could tell us the answer to this long neglected question: "By what original name or names do we call this country?"

That might work as a genuine conversation starter.

'Australia' - what's in a name? Part 2. Looking to First Peoples

The northern origins of the present common name for ‘Australia’ and ‘Australians’ – and the acceptance of that foreign term of identity by people who  live here – reminded me of some of the issues surrounding collective (group) names and/or language names for some First Peoples in Central Australia.

I am not a linguist nor am I particularly good with language matters. So what follows should be regarded as merely a bit more stimulation to a wider conversation in which others have more important things to say.

Particularly important, we need to hear from First Peoples themselves. While waiting for that i have turned to some good non-indigenous sources.

What follows is just a quick exercise in finding out a little more about some aspects of language and identity in this country.

RECOMMENDATION

If you do nothing else around the 26 January, I highly recommend you take a good look at the map of Australia’s indigenous languages.

http://www.abc.net.au/indigenous/map/ (David R Horton, creator, © Aboriginal Studies Press, AIATSIS and Auslig/Sinclair, Knight, Merz, 1996 - accessed 13 Jan 2014. )

Have a look at it and – if so moved to learn a little more - find the Central Australian language names Warumungu: Alyawarre; Andegerebenha; Arrernte; Antakarinja; Yankuntjatjara; Pitjantjatjara; Pintupi and Luritja.

Note also what the accompanying text says on the ABC website. This is just one means of representing First Peoples socio-cultural relations in this country. The language map is not the final story, but it does make a start to better visually represent language and country.

Stick with it – this confusing array of original names from this country will soon begin to be a little more digestible – and that has to a good thing.

This AIATSIS map, i think it correct to say, is an improved version of an earlier 1970s attempt by the anthropologist Norman Tindale to graphically represent what was then thought of as the tribes of Aboriginal Australia.

His careful work sought to standardise what was their name (or names); where were their tribal boundaries etc. When I first saw Tindale’s 1974 map in the mid 1970s, it made a profound impression on me.

All the maps of this continent i had seen previously were those which showed the Australian States and Territories only. Those maps lacked any indigenous dimensions. Tindale’s map was a real eye-opener for me.

While regarded as possibly flawed by today’s standards, Tindale’s map has to be regarded as a great contribution to the process by which non-indigenous eyes learn to see this country,

And , after i saw Tindale’s map, i saw the map of Aranda country by T G H Strehlow – showing so many, many named sites on Aranda country. This revealed this country at another level of magnification.  My eyes were opened even wider to realities in this part of the world.

The mists were lifting from my own case of terra nullius of the mind.

I am a word person, but i think the visual media provide a far more direct route to our minds than long-winded strings of words.

I was lucky enough to see a wonderful display of First Peoples art of Central Australian countries about the same time as i saw Tindale’s map, and that was truly mind-blowing. I was working as a tutor at James Cook university at Townsville then, so it must have been 1976 or 1977.

In the early 1980s i was fortunate to work with senior lawmen in Central Australia, helping Warumungu and Alyawarra people to prepare their land claims.

Our Westernised eyes are slowly learning to ‘see’. And part of this requires us to stop looking so hard with eyes re-enforced with heavy duty Western notions of bounded objects.

LANGUAGE NAMES

In “The Languages of Australia” Professor R.M. Dixon touched on the issue of language and tribal names (1980:40-43 Section 2.4)

Using a distinction between language speakers own usage (language1) and a more technical use by linguists (language2) Professor Dixon wrote:

“I mentioned in the last section that a certain linguistic feature may be taken as indexical of tribal membership. It is, in fact, not uncommon for a language1 name to be based on such a word. In the Western Desert language2 the suffix –tjarra ‘HAVING” occurs in most language1 names – Pitjantjatjara ‘having the word pitjantja – “come” ‘, Ngaanyatjara ‘having the word ngaanya “this” ‘, and Nyanganyattjara ‘having the word nyanganya “this” ‘, among many others.” (Dixon 1980:41-42)

So Yankuntjatjara has the word yankuntja to distinguish its speakers from Pitjantjatjara speakers etc. A google search reveals that yankuntja means ‘come/go’. (wikipedia ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yankunytjatjara_dialect )

Dixon also notes, page 41, that “Some language names are simple compass directions e.g. Guwa ‘West’, presumably a label introduced by their neighbours to the east.”  This pattern shouldn’t pose any problem for Westerners!

The most frequent linguistic common pattern, according to Dixon, is for the language1 name to be based on the word for ‘no’ in that language. He cites Wira+dhuri as No+HAVING from North East Queensland. And in some parts of Northern Victoria and southern New South Wales the word for ‘no’ is reduplicated as with “Yota-Yota”.

Early ethnographers like A.W. Howitt tackled the question of ‘tribal’ identity in relation to territory and language:

“The tribes-people recognise some common bond, which may be their word for “man,” that is, an aboriginal of Australia.

In such cases there is a prefix or postfix meaning “people” or “tribe”; thus the Wotjo are collectively called Wotjo-baluk, that is to say, “tribe of men.” Or the name may be derived from the word in their language for “no” or “yes,” more frequently the former …” (Howitt 1904 1996:41)

Howitt also invokes the term ‘nation’, and this is in keeping with what some First Peoples have and continue to say:

“But while the individual tribes are thus distinguished from others, there are numerous cases in which the word for “man” is common to the languages of a considerable number of more or less related tribes, indicating a larger aggregate, for which, in default of a better term, I use the word “nation.”

Dixon, in a 1976 paper in “Tribes and Boundaries” edited by Nick Peterson, disagrees:

“ … if several different tribes have the same word for ‘man’ it need not imply any political or linguistic unity (any more than need the same word for ‘stomach’ or ‘sun’) . It is true that in many cases a group of tribes which speak dialects of the same language, often have a common word for ‘man’ (the tribes speaking Dyirbal do, for instance: in contrast, ‘woman’, for instance, seems much less liable to dialect variation. But the word for ‘man’ cannot be taken as any sort of linguistic or political criterion, as Howitt seems to imply.” (Dixon, in Peterson 1976:233)

Curiously, Dixon’s 1976 paper makes much of what he was told by the then late Jack Stewart of the Yidinjdji tribe who explained to Dixon that:

“ … what Europeans called a ‘tribe’ was more appropriately described as a ‘nation’. He explained that aboriginal Australia had many separate nations, just as did Europe (he mentioned France, Italy, Germany, and so on)… He said each Australian nation had its own ‘language’: this would sometimes have a degree of intelligibility with the language of the next nation, and sometimes not.” (Dixon 1976:214)

The formation of national languages in all those European countries is itself a fascinating topic and it is by no means obvious that they – as imagined at a particular stage in their ‘history’ - represent ‘solid’ entities which can be used as a universal yardstick either by Westerners or by First Peoples.

I sometimes wonder that, given the earlier use of the word ‘man’ in English (for ‘mankind’ ‘humanity’), if the recorded use of the local First Peoples word for ‘man’ was a result of European inquiries. Anthropology, for example, was once regarded as ‘the science of man’.

What can be clearly identified from both Jack Stewart and other sources is that there is some idea of a much larger collective identity and larger social formations than that of individuals and ‘clans’.

If i understand correctly there is a grouping of Nyangatjatjara which joins both Yankuntjatjara (Yankunytjatjara) and Pitjantjatjara, as they both have nyangatja  demonstrative ‘this’ or ‘this one’ (See en.wikipedea.org.au/Yankunytjatjara_dialect )

(‘nyangatja ’ also given as ‘right here’ in Daniele M. Klapproth, 2004 “Narrative as Social Practice: Anglo-Western and Australian Aboriginal Oral Traditions” – which looks like a good read. See google e-books)

That is, in place of an entirely either/or mentality, a both-and approach can operate as well. Modern social scientists and other Western experts make much of an either-or logic but are less proficient in the both-and arts of life.

There is also a sense, in more recent times than those of Howitt, that ‘tribes’ are appropriate for First Peoples and ‘nations’ are reserved for Europeans.

‘Same language’ ‘same tribe’ ‘same nation’ – the philosopher Wittgenstein might ask “What do we mean by ‘same’ here?” Certainly there is plenty of confusion, especially when these terms are bounced back and forward across major cultural boundaries such as those which exist between English and First Peoples.

I recall reading somewhere that the different words for ‘man’ is what gives us the Koori-Yuin distinction (along the South Coast of NSW, and into Victoria). “Yuin is also a general name for all the tribes from Meimbula to Port Jackson…” wrote Howitt (page 82)

(Wikipedia ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuin_people Note also reference to other group name using word for ‘no’).

Also check out Wilhelm Schmidt’s 1919 map for Yuin and Koori at http://austlang.aiatsis.gov.au You will have to read the disclaimer before entering the AIATSIS Austlang site.

The notion of a Yuin nation is alive at the Sandon Point Aboriginal Tent Embassy in the Northern Suburbs of Wollongong at this time (2014) as some local First Peoples continue to assert their sovereignty.

 ‘Koori’, by contrast to Yuin, has taken on a wider usage.

Other group names over much of Queensland, writes Dixon, make use of the suffix -barra ‘belonging to’ and are based on geographical features. Dixon cites Gulgibarra ‘people associated with sand’. These may be names of more local groups and perhaps dialects rather than ‘tribal’ names Dixon 1976:210)

A WARUMUNGU EXAMPLE

Spencer and Gillen (1904) provide a similar usage to that of -barra in connection with Warumungu speaking people in the Northern Territory.

Using a slightly different spelling:

“Warramunga is the name by which the members of this tribe speak of themselves, and is also that by which the are most often called by other tribes, but in this instance they are sometimes referred to under the name of “Bata aurinnia,’ which means “the people who dwell on hard ground.” This term is applied to them by strangers, and is not in any way the equivalent of a tribal name. It is remarkable how difficult it often is to ascertain the latter with certainty.” (1904:11)

By contrast, and this may reflect a historical shift, the 1988 report of the Aboriginal Land Commissioner, Maurice J, on the Warumungu land claim notes:

“Partta

20.2.1 Warumungu witnesses call the area around Tennant Creek and the McDouall Ranges ‘Partta’, (‘hard ground’) and the people associated with it ‘Parttawarinyi’ or ‘Partta people’…” (Maurice 1988:68)

‘Parttawarinyi’ must be the equivalent of Spencer and Gillen’s ‘bata aurinnia’. The orthography used in the 1980s is different to that of the 1900s.

The Aboriginal Land Commissioner continued:

“20.2.2 While the word Partta denotes this particular area, which geographically is quite central to Warumungu territory, it can also have a wider meaning. Partta can be said to typify the Warumungu, their culture and way of life and it can refer to all the Warumungu people living at Tennant Creek.” (Maurice 1980:68)

This may (or may not) be true at this time, but it may also be ‘situational’ as Fred Myers says in regard to Pintupi (see below).

Returning to my language theme, we can see that some names given for First Peoples languages can be teased out by reference to a key word they use, or by some other feature including compass or directional factors.

If you check the languages on the AIATSIS map will you see Alyawarre and Andegerebenha. Alyawarre is also written Alyawarra. The adoption of a two vowel orthography for Aranda/Arrernte took place in the 1980s.  and i am guessing that Andegerebenha is Andakerebina in what follows.

Colin Yallop, in his 1977 book “Alyawarra – An Aboriginal Language of Central Australia” provides an example relevant to where this piece of writing is heading. Amongst other things, he notes that:

“…’Andakerebina’ is an Arandic equivalent of the term ‘Southerners’ (Alyawarra antikirripirna = ‘from the South’)…” (1977:2)

Does this indigenous example parallel the origins of the word “Australia” – based on a southern and an apparently geographical reference?

And, if those directional based terms are accepted by those thus identified, is there any problem? Southerners, Westerners, Northerners, Easterners.

As we know from European values, references to direction may also carry other meanings (which may cut both ways). 

My guess is this is especially true within First Peoples cosmologies, where direction is not merely an abstract thing but embedded in all manner of other considerations.

PINTUPI

Jumping a little to the West of Alyawarre speakers, and coming around from the -tjarra grouping, we come to Pintupi.

In his 1986 book “Pintupi Country, Pintupi Self” Fred Myers pays very careful attention to questions of social identity. The people Fred worked with in 1973 had come ‘into’ places like Papunya from the Gibson Desert, mainly during times of major droughts. He writes:

“Even their name is an artefact imposed upon them by changing conditions. Though known in the area where they came to live as “Pintupi,” most say the never used this label to refer to themselves before contact with whites. While they speak a common language, with some dialectical differences, the people called the Pintupi do not represent a single social entity, neither as a tribe nor as a language group. Asked if a person is a Pintupi, they are likely to respond that “he is from the west, indeed” (yapurramalu kula)! The reply underscores a consistent view of social identity: that their conceptual unity results from their migration eastward, a product of time and space.” (1986:28)

Fred continues:

“Despite the reassuring presence of tribal groupings on some ethnological maps such as Tindale’s (1974), such overarching social identities hold little significance in this region and are genuinely misleading. Names need not specify social boundaries. Identity, as among many hunting-and-gathering peoples, is situational. “The people from the west” exist only in contrast to “the people from the east”. (1986:28-29)

However, a better term than ‘situational’, since it can extend the range of factors to those which Fred Myers may wish to include, is ‘contextual’.

Contextual factors have to be seen as key factors running through all of these matters.  Life is not as ‘fixed’ as some modern masters would like it to be. 

SITUATING EUROPEANS - BEREEWOLGAL

What Fred Myers says is interesting for ‘Australians’ as ‘Southerners’. Can we say that the people in the south exist only in contrast to the people in the north?

By contrast Tench, mentioned earlier in relation to his account of initial colonisation circa 1788, wrote that,  in addition to a term for gun-bearers ‘gooroobeera’’ (stick of fire) local First Peoples had a term for the new arrivals “… the appellation by which they generally distinguish us was that of bereewolgal, meaning men come from afar.’ (Tench in Flannery 1996:266)

‘Strangers’ in more senses than one might be another interpretation.

A full review of First Peoples words for Europeans would be interesting. Maybe someone has already done this, but i have not come across it.

‘Gubba’ is used for non-indigenous person in the Illawarra area where i presently live, but i am unaware of there being any actual meaning for that term.

Jumping from Sydney to Tennant Creek, in the Northern Territory - Gillen, who was mentored by Warumungu people in 1901, recorded in his diary that “These people call the whites “Papilarinyi” …” (Gillen 1901 1968:262).

This is an interesting characterisation since skin colour (Whiteman) is not the feature Warumungu people found most striking when Europeans arrived, uninvited, into their country.

The 1901 term is now pronounced “papulanyi” – ‘papulu’ is an enclosed space, i was told by a linguist, such as the gall formed by the gall wasp, and hence extended to mean ‘house’.  ‘Warinyi’ means ‘dweller, sider’ (Evans ‘A Learner’s Guide to Warumungu’ 1982:14 and see  Disbray et al Warumungu Picture Dictionary 2005:2 – both produced by the IAD Press in Alice Springs).

When Europeans first arrived in Warumungu country, after perhaps initially living in tents, they built a stone building for a telegraph repeater station on the Overland Telegraph Line and it was designed with defensive capabilities - vis-à-vis their Warumungu hosts -  in mind.

LURITJA

Spencer and Gillen worked with Aranda men in Alice Springs in 1896-7. The great anthropological field-working team accepted that the European notion of the ‘tribe’ could be applied to First Peoples Ways.  They also considered the notion of ‘nation’ which, at that time, was used by others writing about First Peoples.

Prior to the formation of the Commonwealth of Australia there are references, for example, in other writers’ works to a Yuin nation covering a considerable stretch of the South East coast of New South Wales.

Clearly alive to such issues, Spencer and Gillen investigated relationships between language names and social identity while carrying out fieldwork in Central Australia and in writing up their accounts.

In their 1904 book “The Northern Tribes of Central Australia” they note, in relation to tribal names:

“The names used are those by which the members of the tribes respectively call themselves, and which outsiders also apply to them. Thus, for example, the Arunta call themselves by this name, and it is used by the Kaitish in speaking of them.” (1904:10-11)

A footnote is attached to the last sentence which states:

“The Luritja tribe possible forms an exception to this, but we are not able to speak positively. It is possible that the names of the tribes were originally applied to them by outsiders and were subsequently adopted by the members of the tribe themselves, but the evidence is scanty and inconclusive.” (1904:10-11 Fn2)

‘Outsiders’  -  as significant others (certainly in Central Australia) – may play an important role in matters of identity.

Modern Western thinking often situates a locus of responsibility ‘within’ individuals and, mistakenly, introduce something Westerners take for granted into their attempt to make sense of First Peoples Ways.

There is a much larger totality of exchange relationships (positive and negative) at work when it comes to individual and group identity than those envisaged by thinkers who restrict First Peoples horizons to than of clans.

T.G.H. Strehlow grew up speaking Aranda (Arrernte) at the Hermannsburg Mission and knew both sides of the local cultures in Central Australia extremely well.

In his index to 1947 book “Aranda Traditions” (republished 1968) Strehlow provides the following brief note regarding Loritja:

“Loritja, name applied by Aranda to all the western speech groups … ‘Loritja’ languages are spoken from the Western MacDonnells to Mt Margaret, in Western Australia, and from The Granites in the north to Ooldea on the transcontinental railway. None of these western groups speak of themselves as ‘Loritja’. They call themselves Kukatja, Pintubi, NGalia, Ilpara, Andekerinja etc.” (1968:177-178)

So far so good. Note what Strehlow said about Pintupi vis-à-vis what Fred Myers said.

Far more importantly on pages 51-52 we gain something of an insight into the additional dimensions of the term “Loritja’ to those of simple geographical reference. In regard to sharing a common language (Northern Aranda and Western Aranda) and common cause, Strehlow writes:

“A feeling for tribal unity is almost completely absent. The bond of a common tongue is not valued very highly. The Northerner, for instance, sneers at the dialect of the Western man: he regards it as an inferior mongrel language, which has been degraded by admixture with Loritja words. Indeed, he looks upon the Westerner himself as a ‘half-breed Loritja’; and Loritja is to him a term which is suggestive of everything that is barbarian, crude, savage, and, generally speaking, non-Aranda.” (1968:51-52)

You can only wonder what these Aranda men made of those other Westerns – Europeans.

The attitude Strehlow attributes to Aranda men is in keeping with what Dixon noted in his book on the Languages of Australia:

“Each community in Australia – as in many other parts of the world – considers its own language to be the ideal way of speaking, and looks down on all other tongues.” (Dixon 1980:41).

I guess the same can be said of English speakers, French speakers and so on. Against this many First Peoples in Central Australia speak several languages and have a great linguistic ability. I imagine this was the case in areas which have been long subject to the language suppression practices of colonisation.

Dixon goes on to describe how First Peoples have a fine appreciation of the nuances of language and languages. Their Ways of life made full use of our mental capacities.

SO WHAT?

I am not sure if this leads anywhere.

The one thing i have gained from this brief and very incomplete review of some aspects of First Peoples group names and languages is that there many different accounts according to who is providing the information.

Pintupi are not Pintubi. Loritija are not Loritija. And, perhaps by similar criteria, Australians are not Australians.

Things are not set in stone. Flexibility characterises the lived realities as much as any preconceived ideas of ‘solid’ bounded things like ‘tribes’. There are networks of people who share common codes and who are (or are not) in exchange relationships.

Rather than force an interpretation on any of this, i will let it mull for a while.

'AUSTRALIA' - what's in a name?

‘AUSTRALIA’ – WHAT’S IN A NAME?

PART ONE

Preamble

Australia’s Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, in a New Year’s message announced that, in 2014, “I will also start the conversation about a constitutional referendum to recognise the first Australians. This would complete our Constitution rather than change it.”

With that announcement from the Australian Prime Minister we can regard the conversation as being well and truly on the discussional agenda for the present, at least,

Not that is was absent from the discussional agenda prior to the Prime Ministers New Year message. It is a debate that has been going on for some time. A long process preceded the Rudd government making a commitment to a referendum on this issue.

The new Prime Minister’s imprimatur, however, will be useful for those people who require reassurances before taking up this most touchy of issues for Anglo-Australians.

But make no mistakes, no real change can come from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. A peoples movement is required if we are to truly heal life in this country.

  --------------

WHY I CANNOT CALL HOME ‘AUSTRALIA’

“The revolution is just a T-Shirt away” (Billy Bragg)

A recent minor furore about the sale of a T-Shirt has provided me with some unexpected food for thought.

The disputed T-Shirt in question stated that Australia was established in 1788. Those people rightly opposed to what former Senator Aden Ridgeway aptly named the ‘terra nullius of the mind’ were quick to call this denial of First Peoples long and prior presence in this country “racist”.

The T-Shirt was removed from sale. A minor debate followed regarding when ‘Australia’ could have been said to have been established.

Some pointed out that in  1788 the British authorities ‘established’ New South Wales and not ‘Australia’.

The Commonwealth of Australia was founded in 1901 by the British Act which became the Australian Constitution.

There is a good brief account on Wikipedea of the emergence of the term ‘Australia’ prior to and after 1788.

See Section headed “Etymology” at www.en.wikipedea.org/wiki/Australia

The Wikipedea entry notes that while the use of these the terms ‘Australia’ and ‘Australian’ appear to have been in use earlier, the 1814 publication of Matthew Flinders makes passing use of ‘Australia’ and, in a section, on botany by Robert Brown, to ‘Australian’.

Flinders states that he preferred ‘Australia’ to the ‘Terra Australis’ of his wealthy patron Sir Joseph Banks. He gives as one reason that this is “… an assimilation to the names of the other great regions of the earth.” That is, Asia, Africa, America … Australia.

Interestingly all these names seem to originate from European sources rather than from the places they designate. If that is correct, then there is a very Eurocentric process at work in how we (Westernised peoples) conceptualise our home planet.

At the time of Flinders the term ‘Australia’ would have had a more limited range of meanings to those of today. There was, as is obvious, no Australian nation in 1814 – it was still the early days of colonisation. ‘Australia’ and ‘Australian’ would have referred to the place but not the social formation now known by the same terms.

These two very different meanings act as a language trap for anyone want to talk about, on the one hand, this country and, on the other, the social formation which has gradually taken shape since 1788.

We lack a vocabulary for talking about this country in contrast to talking about the dominant social formation. And the latter systematically expropriates the whole of life here into a monocultural form of nationalism which privilege introduced Anglo norms.

Accompanying this systematic privileging of Western Ways are the people who seek to accommodate First Peoples within the existing ‘nation’.

Unlike Prime Minister Abbott, who seeks to complete the Constitution rather than change, we have to go much further than changing the 1901 Constitution,

The true challenge is to reform the notion of a single one-sided nation (concentrated around a cluster of norms) to bring it into better conformity with the realities of this country (for which we lack a name) and which allows equal space for First Peoples norms.

In looking for new socio-cultural forms for life here we need to turn away from modern Europe and develop a better understanding of First Peoples Ways.

As a first step in this direction, we need to find a new vocabulary and, perhaps, a new language. 

SOUTH IS NORTH IN BACK-TO-FRONT OZ

My Australian Collins Pocket Dictionary of the English Language does not give an entry for ‘Australia’. It does have one for ‘Australian’ without any etymology. For other entries such as ‘austral’ and  ‘Austro-‘ Collins provides the derivation as L. auster – the south.

Other sources show that ‘Australian’ appears to have derived from a French term. (So, a linguistic genealogy which possibly runs trough Latin, Portuguese, Spanish, French, English)

Generally speaking its is clear that the term ‘Australia’  builds around a core notion of “South”  which is derived from Latin as adopted by North  Europeans.

The earlier use of variations of ‘Australia’ to refer to a southern land were used by Europeans in the northern hemisphere.

After all these centuries in this country, we still do not have a truly indigenous name or names for the place we live in. Same can be said of ‘America’ for that matter.

So for those non-indigenous people who still call ‘Australia’ home, they have accepted a term of identity which is only indirectly related to where they live. They are ‘southerners’ - as viewed from a north European perspective.

From an indigenous Australian perspective, they may actually be better identified as ‘northerners’.  I am not sure what the Latin term for ‘north’ may be. ‘Aquilo’ and ‘borealis’ have been suggested as appropriate vis-à-vis ‘auster’ and ‘australis’.

There is more to this than mere geography.

MY THREE TWEETS

I made three tweets at the time of the minor debate about the ‘Australia Est 1788’ t-shirt incident: and someone asked me to expand (which is what set me to write this present piece). The three tweets were:

1. "Australia" - southern land. Defined by relation to European northern others (not here) Brief account at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia 

2. "Australia" - a southern neo-Europe and not merely descriptive? Time for a new/indigenous name or names? Discuss until Jan 27!

3.  "Australia" - name; Commonwealth constitution; socio-cultural construct - all inherently racist? Add to PM Abbott 'conversation'

I think the first point has been covered.

MODERN AUSTRALIA IS A NEO-EUROPE.

The second point, is that ‘Australia’ is a southern neo-Europe and not merely descriptive.  Alfred W. Crosby made use of the term ‘neo-Europe’ in his 1986 book “Ecological Imperialism – The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900.”

Crosby looked at how European peoples have displaced the original peoples and the original practices especially in the temperate regions of the earth, and substituted their own ways. The model i prefer is that provided by the notion of cloning.

In this country, the Ways of First Peoples (which life has placed at the nucleus) have been suppressed and a European form of culture forcefully implanted in order to monopolise the richness of First Peoples living countries.

That is, Australia (as presently constituted) is a clone from a European country, and not just a name for a continent (and islands).

This goes beyond considerations of the linguistic and social origins of terms of identity. There is no secret that modern Australia was established – colonies, states and commonwealth - by a process which excluded recognition of the existing cultural practices, languages and rights of First Peoples.

The forms of governance, social organisation and cultural practices instituted here derives entirely from European sources and, by way of a corollary, derives nothing from First Peoples Ways.

INHERENTLY RACIST

The third point touches on the present Australian Constitution and the mainstream socio-cultural constructs as being inherently racist. Racism against First Peoples has been institutionalised for so long here that it is taken as ‘normal’.

The recent appalling Australian Parliament’s treatment of First Peoples in the Northern Territory – by both the Howard and Rudd-Gillard governments – in the name of a national emergency/intervention provides clear evidence of not only how these forms of racism operate but how they are accepted, by the wider non-indigenous Australians, as ‘normal’.

In that instance First Peoples were not only treated as objects (and not as Peoples with a voice or voices), they were subject to draconian statutory restrictions which applied across the board as though their lives are the mere plaything of non-indigenous politicians – which they have been for far too long.

We may enter the 21^st century with the letter and the spirit of United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in mind – but not so for the Australian Parliament, nor the mainstream media and far too many non-indigenous peoples.

Those who regard the 1901 ‘White Australia’ Constitution to be complete as it stands – rather than a heartless document – will continue to seek to preserve the outmoded forms of privilege which it made possible.

So i actually write for a much smaller demographic – those who know – in their Being – that there is something seriously wrong with the present life-arrangements in this country and a corresponding need for some serious life healing measures to restore well-being here.

These healing measures will never be possible if the only ‘conversation’ is one pleasing to the ears of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.

New voices are required to round out the process contra those who can only sing the praises of the culturally one-sided modern nation-state.

AN EMPTINESS OF SOUL

All this has lead me to be more aware of a sort of emptiness of soul which comes with the social process of identifying by the European term ‘Australian’.

Despite the fact i have lived so much of my life here, have family here and invested so much of my self in coming to understand this country - despite loving this country in ways which worry me vis-à-vis my similar attachment to New Zealand/Aotearoa – i cannot embrace a sense of collective identity with a nation-state entity which has no reasonable relationship with the original First Peoples - let alone a formal treaty or treaties – and which continues to abuse and mistreat First Peoples as a matter of course.

When i tell people “I am not ‘Australian’ “ I am – understandably – mistaken to be saying “I am a New Zealander”. People operate with a prefabricated sense of identity provided for them by the modern nation-state.

The modern nation-state, as described so well by Benedict Anderson in a book by the same name is an “Imaginary Community”.

It seems to be incomprehensible to people who identify in such ‘limited’ terms that there are real options which are much less restricted than being ‘either’ an Australian ‘or’ a member of some other nation-state.

What is required is some means by which the incomplete part of an ‘Australian’ identity can be brought into a rounded fullness and not restricted to that thin definition of Being which derives from Europe as adapted to ‘Australia’ as solely a neo-Europe.

To be an ‘Australian’ means – amongst so many other things – to accept the definition of who were are by reference to a word derived from Latin for ‘south’.  In other words, to be permanently dislocated from my surrounding as gauged by someone else’s position in the northern hemisphere.

Added to this, the cultures of those northern peoples is not as superior as they would like us all to believe.

I am not ‘south’ – i am here. But where is ‘here’ exactly? My here is in a country which carries inscribed on its soul – sung by countless generations of First Peoples’ songmen and songwomen -   very different Ways of Being.

We need a new name for the country i want to identify with – a name which comes from this country itself, not from the northern hemisphere. And with that new name, a new country in which First Peoples are engaged and active as cultural partners.

A tall order. Probably will never happen in my lifetime. I am 66 and this is the end game stage of my adult life – but a new country waits to come into Being and, for that to happen, we conceptual craftspeople have to fashion the appropriate forms of representation, despite the odds.

BI-CULTURALLY BALANCED

New Zealand/Aotearoa is a little more bi-culturally balanced than life in this country. Aotearoa is a Maori word meaning Land of the Long White Cloud.  By having an official dual naming policy there is a direct and immediate form of recognition – and affirmation - of Maori people as First Peoples.

By contrast, the term ‘Australia’ standing on its own does not recognise and affirm First Peoples whose ancestors were here long before European countries derived their present names.

I wonder if my problems with calling this country home would be solved if we had an indigenous name or names to stand beside ‘Australia’ as part of a through-going dual naming policy?

CONCLUSION - SOUNDS OF CICADAS

This summer’s fantastic cicada chorus serves as an apt metaphor for    what is required from an effective peoples movement. A great number of voices singing the same tune. We have a long way to go on this front.

If the 19^th and 20^th centuries have belonged to the nationalists in this country (and elsewhere) the 21^st and 22^nd centuries will belong to those who leave nationalism behind and embrace new forms of identity and new Ways of Being.

  

The a priori and unproven presumption of ‘superior’ European Ways – with supposed cultural roots in ancient Greece and Rome – can no longer be accepted at face value.

It is time to lay modern Australia to rest and to create new forms -  new conditions of Being. This reform of Western life should have been set into practice in 1788 when Europeans arrived here. It was not and has been delayed for over two centuries.

The ‘Australia’ which people like John Howard, Tony Abbott and Christopher Pyne wish to provide with state-sanctioned and entrenched levels of privilege is no more than a shell like that of a cicada.

Their ‘Australia’ is set to become a dry and empty exuvia – a formerly constraining exoskeleton, which having served its purpose,  remains behind when a richer form of life has shed its skin, magically grown new wings, and taken flight in order to join the grand chorus of life affirming songs.