Mythologising culture

In western Sydney, I found an extreme version of what I propose is a national Aboriginal mythopoeia, that is, a powerful system of beliefs and practices in relation to Aboriginal people and culture. A reified Aboriginal culture is promoted at institutional sites and in reconciliation discourses that evokes the presence of something precious and mysterious that must be re‐read into local Aboriginal people, but which assiduously avoids their actual circumstances and subjectivities. The awkward relationships and avoidances evident in a western Sydney reconciliation group are posited as a benign example of this mythology, born of a ‘sentimental politics’ of regret and reparation at work in Australia. Unity between the state and civil society is evident here, thus requiring an analysis that goes beyond a critique of government policies and programmes as intentional and rational, and grasps the nature of the widespread desire for Aboriginality. Through ethnographic attention to the actual relationships of Indigenous people and others, anthropologists can avoid being complicit in this regressive, separatist construction.     

The divergence of traditional Aboriginal and contemporary fire management practices on Wik traditional lands,Cape York Peninsula,Northern Australia

Fire has been a critical component of Aboriginal culture and natural resource management in Australia for millennia. Aboriginal fire management in Northern Australia is widespread and, in some more remote areas, has continued relatively undisrupted despite widespread changes in tenure and land use. For the Wik people of Western Cape York, there has been a continued connection to their culture and traditional lands. Recently, Wik traditional owners have formed a ranger program which has secured funding to manage contemporary land management issues. This includes the landscape‐scale management of fire for biodiversity conservation and greenhouse gas abatement. Because the work is being conducted by Aboriginal people, with consent from traditional owners and on their traditional lands, there is an assumption that the activities are compatible with historical traditional land management and cultural practices. In this study, we use participatory action research to compare contemporary fire management with the current understanding of traditional Aboriginal fire management to assess objectively the compatibility of these two paradigms. We do this by combining the experience and understanding of traditional owners with anthropological and ecological perspectives. We find that contemporary fire management is applied across traditional cultural boundaries using methods such as aerial incendiaries. Financial incentives and contractual obligations associated with fire management are externally driven or include modern considerations such as the protection of infrastructure. In contrast, traditional fire management was the prerogative of traditional owners and was applied at fine scales for specific outcomes. Fire management was governed by rules that determined how people moved across the landscape and how resources were partitioned and shared. Supporting the implementation of Aboriginal burning alongside current fire management practices could lead to significant community engagement in such activities and is likely to have much better biodiversity and social outcomes.     

Aboriginal spirituality in a new age

Aboriginal people’s responses to different exogenous religious influences have not been uniform. Here I contrast Aboriginal responses to Christian cosmology with responses to New Age influences. I then explore the question of whether a comparison of classical Aboriginal religious thought with New Age ideas and values yields much in the way of similarities or compatibilities.     

Culture conflict and coping in a group of aboriginal adolescents

Critical incidents adapted to presentation in picture form were used to investigate responses of Aboriginal adolescents from Elcho Island mission in the Northern Territory of Australia in conflict situations arising from culture contact. These Aboriginal youths are part of a complex environment where choice behaviour is mediated by specific and broader situational characteristics of the social environment. Results showed a relationship between conflict responses and orientation to traditional values and skills, but no apparent relationship between conflict responses and modern value orientation or psychopathology variables. Adolescents who attended high school in Darwin were seen as more mission and academically oriented than locally educated youth. Contrary to expected patterns, males appeared to be less involved in both mission and traditional activities and more restricted by traditional social expectations than were females.     

The appropriation of an Aboriginal landscape in northern New South Wales

The attachment of Australian Aboriginal people to land has not only been amply documented by anthropologists since the late 19^th century, it is also one of their own enduring tropes of differentiation from non‐Aboriginal and “official” Australian state society. In the face of widespread and concerted alteration of the pre‐settlement landscape engendered by industrial and commercial development, Aboriginal people seek to reclaim or reappropriate remnants of a pristine environment untransformed by modern development. Alteration of the landscape, as far as Aboriginal people are concerned, also goes hand in hand with the progressive decimation of Aboriginal populations in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries through violence and disease. Contemporary Aboriginal communities seek to protect the sites of violent death, believed heavily populated with the frustrated spirits of the deceased, from disturbance, particularly by non‐Aboriginal people. In this chapter I discuss some of the anthropological implications of seeing landscape as a terrain of intercultural conjunction in such a bifold society in northern New South Wales, and what levels of transformation are and are not acknowledged by a marginal, minority indigenous population seeking to insulate their historical landscape from development.     

Sickening Bodies: How Racism and Essentialism Feature in Aboriginal Women's Discourse about Health1

In the last decade there has been much interest in the concepts of ‘racism’ and ‘essentialism’ and the ways in which these notions have been appropriated by Aboriginal people to demarcate a specifically Aboriginal space (Cowlishaw 1986; Lattas 1993; Langton 1981; Morris 1988; Muecke 1992). Central to these concerns is the issue of black/white relations and the specificities of racial oppression. Following these concerns in this article I explore the nexus between the metaphorical dismemberment of self and the corporeal dismemberment of sickness which is reflected in the high mortality rates and disease patterns of Aboriginal people. I extend Fanon's concept that racism has the power to alienate ‘a man of colour’ from his own self-image to argue that it more than metaphorically breaks the human body (Fanon 1991). I provide a window into a much neglected area of research: how notions of illness and social relatedness are constructed in particular socio-historical circumstances. I explore the meanings of illness as expressed at the level of community and as a form of embodiment associated with unequal colonial relations. I focus on indigenous exegeses which articulate Aboriginal women's experience of illness and their sense of identity. I draw on the work of Leder (1990) to foreground a phenomenological view where selfhood is continually confronted by circumstances that make present the ‘body’ as a ‘sharp and searing presence threatening the self’. I also apply Sansom's (1982) model of illness and the significance of carers in an Aboriginal community to demonstrate a world-view of personhood that is diffused with other persons and things rather than a world-view that entails a highly individuated and bounded self. In this world-view adequate healing requires a reconstitution of social relations and a re-ordering of the racialised status quo.     

Art,Culture and Ambiguity in Wilcannia,New South Wales

The claim of most town whites that Aboriginal people of Wilcannia make art but have no culture and the claim by Aboriginal people of the town that their art work and art designs demonstrate their culture and cultural traditions opens up the powerful and productive dimensions of art and culture for closer scrutiny. In so doing, the ambivalence and ambiguity which saturates these categories is ethnographically revealed. How can the presence and production of artworks in Wilcannia and the white denial of culture be considered? Why indeed do these questions matter, in what ways do they matter, and to whom do they matter? How do the categories of traditional/remote, urban/settled and their avatars intersect with black and white notions of Aboriginal art and Aboriginal culture discursively and experientially?     

Ecohealth and Aboriginal Testimony of the Nexus Between Human Health and Place

The spread of industrial civilizations has been particularly traumatic for the last remaining hunter-gatherer societies. Manifestations of this include expatriation from ancestral lands, sickness, poverty, and environmental degradation. Northern Australia has been no exception despite remaining a stronghold of Aboriginal cultures and still containing vast areas of relatively intact landscapes. Most Aboriginal people reside in remote settlements where they remain on the negative extreme of basic indicators such as life expectancy and educational attainment. In addition, biodiversity declines are being documented from loss of Aboriginal fire management and invasion by feral species. There has been little consideration of potential health, social, economic, or environmental benefits of routinely hunting, gathering or being on their land. This reflects a Western philosophical position that segregates land management and health policy, a view at odds with Aboriginal peoples’ testimony of the indivisibility of people and land. Here we report perspectives from Arnhemland gathered through observation and unstructured and semistructured interviews. Themes that emerged included the high level of detailed, complex knowledge of their traditionally owned lands, the perceived urgency about passing this on to younger people, and the need that both land and people have for each other for the well-being of both. Primary motivations for returning to traditional lands were gathering food, escaping from stresses, and educating young people. The many barriers included no transport, family problems, frequent funerals, and other cultural or family obligations. This work forms part of a larger transdisciplinary research program that aims to inform policy about sustainable futures in northern Australia.     

Preparation and use of plant medicines for farmers' health in Southwest Nigeria: socio-cultural,magico-religious and economic aspects

Background

Little is known about the use of bush medicine and traditional healing among Aboriginal Australians for their treatment of cancer and the meanings attached to it. A qualitative study that explored Aboriginal Australians' perspectives and experiences of cancer and cancer services in Western Australia provided an opportunity to analyse the contemporary meanings attached and use of bush medicine by Aboriginal people with cancer in Western Australia

Methods

Data collection occurred in Perth, both rural and remote areas and included individual in-depth interviews, observations and field notes. Of the thirty-seven interviews with Aboriginal cancer patients, family members of people who died from cancer and some Aboriginal health care providers, 11 participants whose responses included substantial mention on the issue of bush medicine and traditional healing were selected for the analysis for this paper.

Results

The study findings have shown that as part of their healing some Aboriginal Australians use traditional medicine for treating their cancer. Such healing processes and medicines were preferred by some because it helped reconnect them with their heritage, land, culture and the spirits of their ancestors, bringing peace of mind during their illness. Spiritual beliefs and holistic health approaches and practices play an important role in the treatment choices for some patients.

Conclusions

Service providers need to acknowledge and understand the existence of Aboriginal knowledge (epistemology) and accept that traditional healing can be an important addition to an Aboriginal person's healing complementing Western medical treatment regimes. Allowing and supporting traditional approaches to treatment reflects a commitment by modern medical services to adopting an Aboriginal-friendly approach that is not only culturally appropriate but assists with the cultural security of the service.     

A protease from Legionella pneumophila with cytotoxic and dermal ulcerative activity

Abstract Culture supernatants of Legionella pneumophila , Philadelphia 1, were found to have proteolytic activity, as well as a nondialyzable, heat-labile cytotoxin for Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells, and a factor which caused hemorrhagic dermal ulceration when injected intradermally into mice. A protease was purified from culture supernates by filtration on Sephacryl S-200 followed by chromatography on DEAE cellulose. Proteolytic activity had a pH optimum of 5.5, and migrated as two bands in PAGE, with molecular weights of 42 and 31 kDa. CHO cell cytotoxic, dermal ulcerative, and proteolytic activities copurified. The results are consistent with the same protein being responsible for these activities.     

Rejecting the Rainbow Serpent: An Aboriginal Artist's Choice of the Christian God as Creator1

In this paper, I illustrate the way one Aboriginal artist challenged what he perceived as an essentialised concept of Aboriginality, by rejecting rainbow serpent iconography. The motivations for this rejection were the artist's strong belief in the Christian God as creator and his reaction against New Age representations of Aboriginality in which the rainbow serpent signifies Aboriginal spirituality and is posited as the single creator for all of Aboriginal Australia. A conflict arose at the artist's gallery when he refused to exhibit a rainbow serpent painting by another Aboriginal artist. Publicised in the local newspaper, the rejection of these artworks started a brief public debate about the role of Christianity in Aboriginal culture. The various positions adopted by the Aboriginal protagonists highlight the complex processes of negotiation, dialogue and debate surrounding diverse constructions of identity.     

`Two Laws‘, Ontologies,Histories: Ways of Being Aranda Today

At Hermannsburg, in central Australia, Western Aranda people frequently propose that they live by ‘two laws’, Aranda law and God's law. This is a common phenomenon remarked throughout northern Australia and analysed by a number of anthropologists in the past. This discussion throws new light on the issue by interpreting `two-laws' talk in terms of a culture of encompassment that marks the emergence of historical or ‘ethnic’ identities as Aboriginal people make the transition from an autonomous world to one in which they must engage in the practices of European orders that can come to dominate their lives. The discussion deploys ‘ontology’ and ‘ethnicity’ in order to mark different magnitudes of difference that can shape Aboriginal experience today.     

Real People: Authenticity and Aboriginality in the Australian Holistic Milieu

For many alternative spiritualists, it is axiomatic that indigenous peoples offer a radical alternative to Western materialism and alienation. Such a vision served some of the Australian alternative spiritualists in this research as both an auto-critique of modernity and a profound truth that could serve a range of personal and political projects. In practice, however, faith in this vision had to be reaffirmed in the face of Australian Aboriginal people who did not match the ideal. Maintaining faith in a useable Aboriginal alterity thus required negotiating the tensions between competing constructions of the genuine as either personal authenticity, adherence to tradition, or genealogical essence. Indeed, it was the movement between these different iterations of authenticity that ensured that the search for the real maintained its value as a framework for self-making at the same time as it tied Aboriginal people to a restrictive notion of culture and personhood.     

Ontology and cultural politics: Aboriginal versus European Australians

Conclusion Nevertheless, in the remote parts of the Western Desert the Aboriginal people remain Aboriginal in thought and experience. They exploit the advantages which the Euraustralians offer, while remaining committed to their way of life. European-Australians water their trees, carry water to the camps, collect the Aboriginals' firewood, repair their automobiles, cook meals for the children and old people, and clean the few Aboriginal houses which exist; their wages are paid by the Australian government.If anything, strategic contact with European civilization has increased the amount of time available for traditional Aboriginal ceremonies, as well as the number of Aboriginals who can transport themselves to the ceremonies. Euraustralian residents are outraged about the amount of time Aboriginals spend corroborreein'. The Secretary of the West Swan Progress Association, a Euraustralian community group. claims that the Aboriginals are becoming a law unto themselves, and this offends the moral-legalistic sense of order which Euraustralians assert in their cultural political struggle with Aboriginals. Today, the cultural politics is being carried on with renewed vigor, and the outcome is by no means certain.A Catholic missionary, at the end of his career with Aboriginals made perhaps the most astute comment I have heard about the Aboriginal undergoing modernization.Ken Liberman has been the Western Desert Research Officer for the Western Australian Museum for the past two years. Currently, he and his wife, Ms A.Z. Parker, are community organizers employed by the Aboriginal Council at Docker River, Northern Territory, Australia.     

Double Displacement: Indigenous Australians and Artefacts of the Wet Tropics

The history of dispossession of Indigenous Australians as a result of government policies has been well documented. Going beyond this established literature, this paper explores connections between the displacement of Aboriginal people of the rainforest region of North Queensland to reserves and the ethnographic trade in museum artefacts. I provide an analysis of how Aboriginal people and some of their material products were historically sent along different trajectories. The paper sheds light on debates about the political and economic aspects of a history of displacement, circulation, and emplacement that continues to produce inequalities today.     

Open for Inspection: Problems in Representing a Humanised Wilderness

Historically, a large percentage of non-indigenous Australians have obtained knowledge of Aboriginal people through channels which provoke an aesthetic response (paintings, film, literature, etc.). More recently, inhabited national parks, such as Kakadu and Uluru, have offered a supposedly more direct engagement with contemporary Aboriginal life, yet this engagement is also filtered through a number of aesthetic discourses. The necessity for any social group to construct representations of itself arises out of the complexities and contingencies of the political landscape. Although such representations can and do reflect a number of political perspectives, Aboriginal people occasionally have the opportunity to convey their own view of the social and historical circumstances which continue to impinge upon their lives. Although national park boards of management often encourage this indigenous voice, I argue that the resulting aesthetic representations tend to elide and suppress the untidy moments which gave rise to them. This, I further suggest, presents problems for any attempt to represent the contemporary social and cultural reality of a particular group of people.     

What is culture? Systems of people,places, and practices

Abstract

Culture is a fuzzy concept without fixed boundaries, meaning different things according to situations. To address this issue, I introduce a p-model to understand culture as a system of people, places, and practices, for a purpose such as enacting, justifying, or resisting power. People refers to population dynamics, social relations, and culture in groups. Places refers to ecological dynamics, institutional influences, and culture in contexts. Practices refers to participatory dynamics, community engagement, and culture in action. Power refers to forcing others into compliance (power-over people), controlling access to spaces (power in places), and behaving as desired (power-to practice). I use racism to illustrate the p-model and suggest applications in theory, research, and practice in developmental sciences.     

Recognition of Aboriginal rights, interests and values in river research and management: Perspectives from northern Australia

Summary Aboriginal people perceive land and water as equal components of country, and hold distinct perspectives on water relating to identity and attachment to place, environmental knowledge, resource security, and the exercise of custodial responsibilities to manage interrelated parts of customary estates. This paper documents Aboriginal perspectives from certain areas in northern Australia, defined as the region of tropical savannas stretching from Townsville to Broome, and offers a number of suggestions for improving current knowledge of Aboriginal values and Aboriginal participation rates in water and catchment management. The paper highlights the cultural significance of rivers and water in selected northern regions, and provides a preliminary outline of research and management priorities as determined by key north Australian Aboriginal land management organizations. Priorities include developing the capacity for collaborative aquatic resource management, conservation of traditional ecological knowledge, riparian resource inventories and threat assessment, as well as improved Aboriginal participation in catchment management and water policy. Although there is a strong north Australian focus to this paper, the issues raised are relevant to water and natural resource management policy throughout Australia.     

Nations and Tribes ‘Within’: Emerging Aboriginal ‘Nationalisms’ in Katherine

Throughout Australia, many Aboriginal responses to the legislative and administrative pressures of the native title regime have been couched in a nation‐building idiom expressed through legally incorporated Aboriginal associations. The membership criteria of these umbrella associations are often derived from definitions of the ‘tribe’ or ‘language group’. Yet, in a kind of Balkanisation, those who see themselves as marginalised to positions of uncertainty on the peripheries of the nation often seek to establish their own independent corporations on the basis of exclusive ties to specific areas of land within it, in search of greater recognition and in competition for scarce resources. In Katherine, in the Northern Territory of Australia, the administrative and legislative gaze of the State, particularly the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976, brought into focus a Jawoyn ‘tribe’, soon to express itself in the idiom of nationhood, closely followed by a Wardaman ‘tribe’ and ‘nation’. More recently, a native title gaze has now brought into focus ‘new’ configurations of kindred clusters, apparently located on the ‘peripheries' of the Jawoyn and Wardaman nations, and named and valued them as Dagoman. This paper discusses the processes associated with an emerging, but seemingly already fragmenting, Dagoman nation. It argues that divergent and changing Aboriginal subjectivities disrupt what might be seen as mimetic processes as Aboriginal people employ strategies of transforming essentialist representations of their collective selves in changing conditions of possibility.