Decolonising Australian Anthropology - Part Nine

FREEDOM IS FREEDOM TO SIGNIFY IDENTITY 

It is possible, using the materials of Stanner, to demonstrate that the there exist both 'strong' and 'weak' forces in Warumungu life. Clearly from his account, the relationship between father and son is a weaker relationship than that stronger relationship between Mother’s relatives and her children. 

When things fail to align according to an ideal model, the comparative strengths of the relationships became manifest in ways it would not have had the proper forms of marriage taken place. 

While this particular example can be conceptually supported by the work of Levi-Strauss on the role of the Mother’s Brother my view is that there is far more to Warumungu life than this. 

Assigning mangaya may well involve a process which takes into account far more than the comparative strengths or weaknesses of the claims of fathers or mother’s relatives on the identity of children. 

The range of factors which may be considered include other priorities such as positions which need to be filled in order to repair damage done to the social fabric by ‘corrosive’ factors resulting from contact with European life. 

Attempting to ground Warumungu processes in Levi-Strauss’ exchange and alliance based views runs the risk of replacing one form of European conceptual prison-house (patrilineal descent) with another (alliance theory). 

Rather than constructing mechanical models of how First Peoples should assign mangaya identities, on the basis of less than ideal data, the need is to stand back and accept that First Peoples must be free to manage their affairs by whatever means – and in accord with whatever priorities – they consider to be appropriate. 

That is, they need to be free politically – free from secular models of modern anthropology and free from statutory definitions which seek to ‘fix’ them in culturally inappropriate ways. 

Mindful of the fact I am not an indigenous Australian, in this piece i am, exploring a core issue, arising from our understanding of Warumungu Peoples Ways, in regard to their struggle to live according to their own cultural imperatives while captive within a modern nation-state. 

I hope that, in so doing, i am providing a sort of conduit for the voices of senior men who may not otherwise be heard in this major conversation. In seeking to flag this issue, my hope is that their authoritative voices will soon replace mine. They are the true authorities on these matters, and my piece here is by way of a few introductory words.  

To recap, the reason for my focus is that, firstly, we have particularly good ethnographical materials in regard to Warumungu Ways and, secondly, those  are the Ways i am personally familiar with as a result of time spent in Warumungu country in the 1980s. During that time i came to understand something of the extent of their struggles, especially from the perspective of senior lawmen. 

While there are all manner of issues which Warumungu people would like to see addressed my focus has to be on what presents itself to me as a core issue. 

This core issue involves Constitutional recognition of the rights of First Peoples authorities (e.g. senior lawmen) in assigning an existentially high identity to members of their collective social world. 

That is, the right of senior First Peoples, acting in community, to assign a particular Mangaya/Dreaming persona – and place in the scheme of things – as they determine to be appropriate. 

By contrast, under the workings of the Aboriginal Land Rights (NT) Act, which provides a Western statutory definition of 'traditional Aboriginal owners' of land, the 'claimants' had to be grouped in 'local descent groups' formed according to a 'principle of descent' which they deemed relevant. 

As things stand European notions of the role of ‘descent’ interfere with official recognition of this process of assigning Dreaming identities and roles in relation to Country.  

Defining tradition owners by reference to ‘descent’ criteria (e.g. as members of a local descent group) impose culturally inappropriate conditions on the operation of First Peoples Ways. 

First Peoples need to be able to do operate unencumbered by Western ideas when it comes to determining which people are related to which country to ensure that all parts of country are kept alive and properly cared for. Senior First Peoples are custodians of a system of law which originates in life itself. 

To what extent an understanding of Warumungu Ways can be transposed to the lives of other First Peoples is not self-evident. This is a large continent and different groups of First Peoples may have had very different ideas about matters such as reincarnation of Dreaming ancestors. 

My guess is, from reading about the disputes over who is included in major native title issues, many groups have this exact problem – 1. who counts as a significant person and 2. according to which criteria – indigenous and/or non-indigenous? 

I am familiar with one case in the Illawarra, where i presently live, where a senior Wodi-Wodi woman faced serious challenges to the identity bestowed upon her by an Elder and by indigenous means. The challenges, it seemed to me, were framed in hard European terms.  

WHOSE REALITY IS DOMINANT HERE? 

There is a dismissive response from some anthropologists to the evidence that First Peoples core identities are signified by indigenous processes (and not by Western notions of descent) to exclaim "Ah, but that is only for ceremonial purposes!" 

In other words, their really important reality is that which complies with European master narratives about kinship and descent. 

This cue from the cross-cultural experts is then taken up by other Anglo-Australian authorities. 

Having considered some of the issues raised by Stanner’s material, Justice Maurice – advised by his own anthropologist - wrote, in his Warumungu land claim report: 

“What is prevented is the ceremonial use of the father’s mangaya.”   (Maurice 1988:56).  

He went on to conclude that Warumungu realities could be carved up in keeping with the specifications of modern European masters. 

He wrote: 

“The evidence of Aboriginal witnesses in this land claim establishes beyond doubt that patrilineal descent is fundamental the formation of Warumungu local descent groups.” (Maurice 1988:126) 

and 

“I find that those persons whom I have identified by name as members of Groups 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 by virtue of patrifiliaton are the traditional owners, within the meaning of the Act, of those several parts of the claim area with which those groups are traditionally identified …” (Maurice 1988:131) 

Confronted with a complex living reality - like a surgeon finding more than he had bargained on when opening up his patient - the simple-minded model of patrilineal descent came to the rescue. Let's stitch this one up and move on. 

One clear aim for First Peoples to consider in their struggle – as captives within a modern nation-state -  is to break the nexus which allows others to provide 'authoritative' pronouncements - about First Peoples realities - which derive their authority from cultural master narratives originating in vastly different parts of life. 

A role for non-indigenous people is to work towards opening up the space – or spaces – for First Peoples to be enabled to determine matters such as relations to country on their own terms. 

Decolonising Australian Anthropology - Part Eight

"MERELY CEREMONIAL" 

There is a tendency amongst those who are wedded to a narrowly conceived form of materialism and corresponding interpretations of ‘kinship’ to dismiss what takes place which such serious and formal displays as ‘merely ceremonial’. 

My own view is that what is made manifest by such ceremonial displays goes to the core realities of First Peoples and that much of what concerns those who dismiss its importance remain in the realm of epiphenomena or, at least, a lower level of reality than that which informs the lives of senior First Peoples. 

Some anthropologists and researchers take ‘sister’s sons’ (in the European sense) to be the literal meaning of ‘kurtungurlu’  and then regard it as being extended to include other men. Nash’s fine work with the etymology supports this interpretation, at least in terms of possible origins of the word.  

The narrow focus on family relations is a dominant view for some modern anthropologists. 

Ian Keen, for example, in a comparative study of seven different groups of First Peoples across Australia has written that (page 176) 

“I agree with Harold Scheffler that Aboriginal notions of relatedness had their basis in genealogical relations – that is, relations between parents and children. … all the nuclear family terms may be extended to distant relations…” (2004 175-176) 

Taking a wider view – one which does not privilege as ‘literal’ forms of family relationships which make sense within Western frameworks – is a more difficult challenge. This challenge has been well articulated  and raised by some anthropologists - Schneider for example - but I am unaware of it being seriously addressed by mainstream anthropologists in Australia. 

The systems of categorisation indigenous to this country may well be informed by very different systems of values and concerns than those which produce Western notions of kinship relations. 

The idea that the whole of First Peoples Ways can be grounded in the relationships between parent and child stands in contrast to a view which allows space at the macro end of the scale for something which is akin to sovereignty (but not that  of recent the modern nation state form). 

My view is that the category kurtungurlu stands on its own as part of cluster of categories which includes kirda.  Those who act in certain ways, within highly constrained limits, are categorised accordingly.  

Following Burridge’s work in New Guinea (“Tangu Traditions”) is a subtle interplay between ‘behaviour’ and ‘categorisation’ which is not grounded in Western notions of kinship nor of Western notions of biology.  

While life in Central Australia is not as plastic as it appears to be for Tangu speakers in New Guinea, neither is it as rigid and fixed as Western thinkers may prefer it to be.  

‘Classificatory kinship’ takes us into other social universes. I find these matters very difficult to clearly articulate.  

It seems to me that, as much as i admire the fine abilities of many of those who write about these matters, when they privilege the father-son relationship or the mother-child relationship – as ‘real’ - and by way of relying on the ‘standard model’ they put the stress in the wrong place. 

The stress should be on the relationship between members of Wurlurru-and-Kingili, not the terms (or subset(s) thereof). 

This strikes me as being part of the unstressing of that other important relationship – between the Western academic and First Peoples themselves.  A key signature of modern studies is a presumption that this relationship is something which can be taken for granted.  

However, each of us is situated within a larger life-formations and there can be no privileged position of the kind which is implicit in ‘the study of other peoples’ by objective researchers. 

The introduction into the forms of representation of First Peoples Ways fashioned by conceptual craftspeople of the unconscious foundations of those craftspeople’s own relationships may be unavoidable. 

I am thinking in particular of the restricted  Anglo-Australian view of First Peoples sovereignty which is taken for granted by some researchers seeking to identify basic land owning units of indigenous social organisation. The resulting representations are those which can be easily accommodated by dominant Anglo-Australian political, legal and social structures without any requirement of reform of those structures. 

It may be that corrective measures are available which counter the effects of this constraint. While the best form of corrective measure regarding forms of representation has to be that informed corrections from First Peoples themselves, this may not be easy to achieve in the short term. 

There may also be some techniques which, as an aid to correction, enable interested people to move away from modern methods. 

For example, in place of forms of representation which stress one aspect of the total field encountered by a researcher – relationships between father and son for example – at the expense of other significant relationships can be required to be seen as part of a configuration with some form of weighting for all the relationships within the configuration. 

Also, amongst these techniques are those which employ a ‘both-and’ approach and which reject the claims to dominance of an uncompromising ‘either/or’ logic. 

Complementary opposition is a useful tool in this regard. Nash (1982:145) provides a useful summary of Meggitt’s other translation of Warlpiri uses of ‘kurdungurlu’  which include “guru-ŋulu” ‘those outside the ritual’ (Meggitt 1966:202) and ‘those who may not act in a particular ritual’ (Meggitt 1962:203 …) 

To the extent that such Warlpiri expressions suggest that kurdungurlu are some kind of (significant) ‘outsiders’ Warumungu practices are better represented by recognising those who decorate the ‘actors’ are fundamentally important complementary opposites.  

While they may stand in a different relationship to the relevant ‘Dreaming’ than the reincarnating ‘actors’ they are only ‘outside’ in the sense that a generative context can be regarded as being outside the text. 

It is the application of a alien either/or logic by the analyst which puts them ‘outside’ rather than ‘beside’. 

As a reincarnation of a Dreaming ancestor, the ‘actor’ is a text. Those applying the decorations are the context. Both are necessary as there can be no text without a generative context. 

Ian Keen, in “Aboriginal Economy and Society – Australia at the Threshold of Colonisation”  -  wrote:  

“Networks of regional cooperation underpinned the sharing of ancestral law. People of a wide region, often including people of several regional or language identities, cooperated in the performance of ceremonies that re-enacted ancestral events and made ancestral beings visible and tangible. These networks of cooperation also provided the framework for structures of authority that were moulded around relations of age and gender, imbued with authority, and that transcended local relationships. Male initiation ceremonies combined socialisation practices with these features.” (2004 republished 2008:244) 

A both-and logic is required to respect the whole Being of First Peoples.