Draft materials for Ch Eleven and the Standard Model
More work required.
A KEY TRANSFORMATION
A key transformation occurs in life when particular distinctions are introduced into the relationships between men regarding rights in sexual access to particular eligible women. By women i mean females who are not sisters, mothers, or otherwise subject to an incest taboo of some kind. “Wives” may be an appropriate term, but may also suggest a more restricted and semi-permanent group than was the case. I don’t know.
Levi-Strauss’ work on myth and kinship provided insights into the changing patterns of homicide at this First Ways to Neo-ways transformational juncture – with the change from the Palaeolithic Ways to Neolithic societies close kin (e.g. brothers) begin to kill each other in fights involving women.
The introduction of a barrier between ‘bothers’ in relation sexual access to eligible women – that is, a barrier at the highly personal relationship – generates a new periphery – a group boundary.
This group is smaller than the larger formation which preceded it. To a greater extent than previously, the groups then manifest the same homicidal behaviour between each other as is now manifesting between brothers.
Ironically, in my assessment, the image of the isolated group and all its attendant problems (which is inappropriately projected onto First Peoples Ways) is a result of distinctions introduced into life to produce neolithic life formations.
(What does Ian Keen in his book have to say? Nothing major – but there is a sense of a tendency away from fixed notions of bounded groups. Quote?)
After general account of myths of other peoples Ways, smaller sets of myths by conceptual craftspeoples – such as those of modern anthropologists in relation to First Peoples.
SPECULATIVE HISTORY – of the times post Darwin.
There exists a sort of ‘standard model’ which is embedded in the modern anthropological unconscious and which privileges a form of social organisation despite what is known. I think of this as being similar to the early model of the atom in physics – useful in its day but superseded by better ways of interpreting experience.
In that standard model “Each moiety is further subdivided into a set of patrilineal clans which are the land owning units of the society.”
One of the characteristics of this standard model is a presumption that, collectively, First Peoples rights are to be bundled into small units and not to be seen as co-extensive with the whole of life.
For all the ‘fit’ the standard model may have with First Peoples practices, as they are lived out in real life, it is what is left out, excluded from the picture, of the resulting forms of representation which remain a serious problem.
In addition to the question of the adequacy of the presumptions which are required for a standard model, major questions remain to be answered regarded the significance of what is systematically excluded as this relates to issues of indigenous sovereignty, indigenous governance, and the ongoing requirements of life and well-being vis-à-vis the modern Anglo-Australian nation-state.
My own view is that there is no society – in the sense of a bounded entity of some kind. Rather, First Peoples Ways need to be approached from the view that “It is all culture”. The search for bounded groups is, therefore, inappropriate. First Peoples Ways represent a very different mode of life.
There was/is an open-ended network of exchange relationships which connected life from the micro to the macro. Within the larger life formation there were/are relative discontinuities and clearly distinguishable cultural components (language being an obvious component, but other practices as well) as part of the large whole.
As part of culture was the means for binding people’s identity with aspects of place, Being was well and truly Earthed.
In the modern nation-state, identity is not related to property rights in any specific area (you may be homeless, lacking any prospect of adequate resources for living and still a citizen).
Rather than the comparatively unearthed sense of identity in the bounded modern nation-state – patrolling the geographic borders of sovereignty – First Peoples Ways share a common understanding that people-and-country constitute a fundament unit.
There are territories – and transgressions upon territories which result in sanctions.
The key point is that fusing Being and aspects of country is a different mode of life to that which imagines modern nation-states as bounded sovereign units.
The transformations of soul which are introduced into social relationships to produce neolithic ways of life (e.g., non-sharing between brothers) are correlated with the introduction into life of a mode absolute form of group boundedness. That is, the transformations at the core of life manifest themselves as a periphery.
First Peoples did not undergo this transformation.
This has direct bearing on the question of indigenous ‘nations’.
[More required – tracks and paths in Central Australia, given more dense modes of living where resources permitted?)
As part of the newly emerging discipline of modern Anthropology in Australia, Stanner formed views of First Peoples realities which came from the work of others.
Consequently his first hand experiences with Warumungu people, for example, are given form in relation to notions he brought with him both from Radcliffe-Brown and earlier ethnographers such as Spence and Gillen (throughout) and Mathews (see 1979:32).
He mentions, for example,
“… it is a practically invariable rule of Australian patrilineal totemism that a man’s totem centre is in his own and his father’s “country”, i.e. the horde country in or near which he lives. Unless the Warramunga differ markedly in this respect, which seems only remotely possible, we are at a loss to explain how men living in one part of the territory can have their totem sites, of which they speak as “my country’, as much as 100 miles away, in distant parts of the tribal territory.” (Stanner 1935 1979:7)
He continues to spell out something of this standard model:
“This offends against a number of principles which by their width of distribution have come to appear almost basic in aboriginal society : (1) the close, personal tie between a man and his “country”, (2) the impregnation of his mother by a pre-existent spirit which (on Spencer and Gillen’s account) is associated with the mangai of the child’s father’s totem, and (3) the desire of a man to live and die in his own country, that is, the country of his totem.” (ibid)
An encounter with First Peoples living their lives according to their own Ways can be a somewhat chaotic experience for those who are not familiar with such matters.
One way of making sense out of this chaotic experience is to take certain aspects of experience as significant vis-à-vis an abstract model of life. The abstract model may be confirmed by some experiences or found to not to fit.
Stanner himself is the first to say:
“The local organisation of Australian tribes as a whole has been very insufficiently studied, and it is by no means certain that the description given by Radcliffe-Brown is an adequate description.” (Stanner 1935 1979:9) He refers to Radcliffe-Brown’s “The Social Organisation of Australian Tribes” Oceania, Vol 1 pp 35-6.
What is lacking in Stanner’s pioneering days of modern anthropology is the type of sophistication regarding interpreting field ‘data’ of the kind spelt out by Pouwer in 1976. (Has it every been put into practice?)
Firstly, ‘data’ is information which has already been passed through a screening process. Some aspects of experiences have been deemed to be significant and some have been excluded. The residual is ‘data’.
Then there is, ideally, a process to look for the best means of characterising data without presuming that such factors as ‘patrileneal descent’ are self-evidently beyond question.
Stanner, of course, did great fieldwork in the short time he was with Warumungu people – but his 1935 writings do not represent his end analysis.
Stanner’s report states “In the following pages, I summarize the data so far gained from Tennant Creek, …” (1935 1979:3)
He expected to return to do more work with Warumungu people at a later time.
“I have not dealt to the full with the kinship material I obtained, but I shall include this in a later general summary. There are a number of points on which I wish to re-examine the Warramunga, and there is a good chance that I shall obtain new material, and I shall make a point in this on my return trip across Australia. There are several points at which it whill be possible to make contact with Warramunga, under perhaps better conditions for work that those of last year.” (Stanner 1935 1979:33)
It was Stanner’s view that it would be hypothetically possible to link mangaya sites with father-son couple.
“I have no doubt that if one were able to record all the mythology of the Warramunga, Tjingili, and presumably other tribes of this “nation”, one would find that each totem and its mangai spot are traditionally linked either with one sub-section, or with a father-son couple, just as each mangai is associated with only one locality (in the sense of a long track or path). What mythology one can glean certainly supports this conclusion and Spencer and Gillen appear to share it.” (Stanner 1935 1979:27-28 – my emphasis)
If there ever was a perfect correlation between a semi-moiety patriline and a part of country as Dreaming Track, this would be epiphenomenal – an outcome not a basic structuring principle but of the high degree of correctness of a vast field of exchange relationships.
Stanner himself proceeds, of Spencer and Gillen:
“But they leave unanswered the obvious question: if descent of the totem is “in practically every case’” patrilineal, and if alternative marriages for an A1 man with a B2 woman have been permitted for so long, is it not natural to expect any one totem to be distributed among the four sub-sections of the one moiety, even if the possession of the totem is preponderantly with one father-son couple? My information suggests that this must be so. Native informants are fairly clear about it, and seem to see nothing unusual in it. … Spencer and Gillen’s tendency to record the ideal system and disregard the irregularities, perhaps explains the absence of data on this point.” (Stanner 1935 1979:28)
He provides examples of such cases and concludes “Thus, I was told that ngapa, water, belonged to all our subsections of Kingili. There were many similar cases.” (page 28)
(see also his speculations on the movement from sub-sections to moiety bottom page 30)
****
But see also Stanner views on ‘when pressed’ as to who owns … This may be so in settled times, but in the absence of settled times Warumungu masters have the right to assign particular people to particular roles in order to make good gaps in their cosmic maintenance priorities without their hands tied in order to comply with mistaken Western ideas about life (in general) and Warumungu life in particular.
And Spencer and Gillen, and Strehlow. All encounter the same problem of finding certainty from informants regarding larger group boundaries.
+++++
++++
TIDY – BY WHOSE NOTION OF ORDER
Despite over two centuries of contact, most non-indigenous people in this country live in what is almost a complete vacuum regarding First Peoples lived realities. Most would not know one indigenous name for ‘water’ – that most basic of resources from living country.
By and large, most features of Warumungu life are invisible to Western eyes, We non-indigenous people are living in a kind of counterfeit reality which only sees our own reflection. We do not ‘see’ First Peoples at all, especially in regard to their core identity as provided by a Dreaming persona.
When First Peoples are decorated for ceremony they may provide a glimpse of a deeper level of reality than that of the more mundane everyday. For those who share the code, such occasions are a show of who they really are.
The contrast to this orthodox indigenous identity is the prefabricated identity dictated by secular European master narratives of one kind and/or another. From the image of Bennelong in the British military fashion through to cowboys and stockmen, sportspeople, and so on.
The work of modern anthropologists such as Spencer and Gillen and Stanner have provided us with more than enough information to make a start on gaining a deeper understanding of First Peoples realities. But we do have to critically assess the presumptions of those hard-working fieldworkers.
First Peoples such as Warumungu, who we know by names such Tom, Dick and Harry, may also have Warumungu names. We have grown accustomed to using the English names, and lost sight of the extra dimensions to their lives.
I understand from my reading about such matters that, in the case of Warumungu men in Central Australia, there may also be special and restricted names which may relate to their Wirnkarra identity.
By all accounts, they have a particular Wirnkarra (Dreaming) identity which has been bestowed upon them by the workings of a complex social process. It is the workings of this process which we need to develop a better appreciation of - in addition to and in contrast to the presumptions of previous centuries European experts.
[Add material from F Morphy re patrilineal clan – a sort of standard model for secular researchers who do not delve too deep into such matters. But by uncritically or unreflectingly using this approach they may be binding the very people they might otherwise seek to see better able to live freer – binding to Western notions which do not allow for the type of serious free play which informs First Peoples Ways.]
It strikes me that the efforts of some of those experts included a notion of order and a sense of ‘tidiness’ which strives to make First Peoples lives fit into neat models of nuclear families organised by straight up-and-down ‘patrilineal descent’. And, if not patrilineal descent, something (e.g. matrilineal descent) not too far removed from it.
By contrast, Warumungu notions of order and of ‘tidiness’ was and is far more exacting and, as well, is more dynamic and complex. Ensuring that the right lives are assigned and aligned to the right part of life was and is something involving considerations of proper exchange relations.
In my experience, First Peoples are wonderfully adept at engaging in complex exchange relations. There seems to exist, traditionally, opportunities for skilled players to gain additional benefits to those bestowed upon them by birth alone.
And, belatedly in Australian history, an identity citizens in a monocultural modern nation-state. Totally denying First Peoples own Ways, their lives are expected to be refashioned to comply with a Western fantasy of “One people, one country.”
I may as well be clear about my position in regard to such fantasies. There are many countries and many peoples in Australia. There has never been one nation.
The “one people, one country” approach is ethnocidal. It carries with it “one language and one law” as a surmise. In no instances where this ideology is invoked do those invoking it consider that anything other than English is the one language, or that the law will co-exist with systems of law which have been here prior to 1788.
We have not had have space in our Western Ways for recognition of First Peoples as First Peoples. The small spaces which are made available are those which require First Peoples to refashion their Being to comply with monocultural Western specifications.
This core issue of Dreaming persona – of signifying Being - which receives so little serious attention by mainstream conceptual craftworkers, can be compared with an attempt by a ‘secular’ and ideological driven Chinese state or party to forcefully determine the identity of reincarnated Dalai Lama.
Except the situation in this country is on a far more massive scale.
In this country, we are not talking about a single (if key) reincarnated life as recognised by those who follow a particular Way (Tibetan Buddhism) but, rather, with identities of entire populations.
As i have already mentioned, this is a live issue and has real consequences for living people at this time.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment