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.     

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article: Aboriginal Progress: A New Era? Edited by D. E. Hutchison The Original Australians. By A. A. Abbic. A. H. & A. W. Reed Aboriginal Bark Paintings. By Robert Edwards and Bruce Guerin The Art of the Wandjina. By I. M. Crawford A Comparative Osteological Study of the Ainu and the Australian Aborigines. By Bin Yammaguchi Gardens of War: Life and Death in the New Guinea Stone Age. By Robert Gardner and Karl G. Heider. Random House The Voyages of Captain Cook. By Rex and Thea Rienits. Paul Hamlyn They Came for Sandalwood: A Study of the Sandalwood Trade in the South-West Pacific, 1830–1865. By Dorothy Shineberg The Kalinga of Northern Luzon, Philippines. By Edward P. Dozier The Hero as Murderer, The Life of Edward John Eyre. By Geoffrey Dutton. F. W. Cheshire The Autobiography of a Runaway Slave. By Estaban Montejo. Edited by Miguel Barnet and trans. by Jocasta Innes Morne-Paysan, Peasant Village in Martinique. By Michael Horowitz Authority and Change. A Study of the Kallu Institution among the Macha Galla of Ethiopia. By Karl Eric Knutsson Tibet's Terrifying Deities, Sex and aggression in religious acculturation. By Fokke Sierksma New Perspectives in Archeology. Edited by Sally R. Binford and Lewis R. Binford The Haua Fteah (Cyrenaica) and the Stone Age of the South-East Mediterranean. By C. B. M. McBurney Indian Culture and European Trade Goods. By George Irving Quimby The Fort Ancient Aspect, Its Cultural and Chronological Position in Mississippi Archeology. By James Bennett Griffin Peru Before the Incas. By E. P. Lanning     

Mythologising culture

This second part of Mythologising Culture examines the responses of Aboriginal people in western Sydney to the valorizing of Aboriginality by the Australian nation. As Aboriginal culture has become the object of restitution, regret and reconciliation, Aboriginal people are being called upon to represent and produce Culture in iconic forms such as painting, dancing and other performances and representations. These activities, often depicted as remedial, are seldom initiated and controlled by Aboriginal people, but rather disturb cultural adjustments and established social relations. I discuss a range of responses elicited by these post‐colonial activities, from enthusiastic embrace to the rejection of state sponsored culture. Further, I consider the structural implications of suburban Aborigines being offered the chance to distance themselves from the anonymous suburban poor.     

Sorcery and the dividual in Australia

In this article I present an analysis of Australian Aboriginal sorcery, applying concepts from the New Melanesian Ethnography. My starting‐point is Keen's approach to magic among the Yolngu, which engages Strathern's concept of the dividual, but which focuses on the extension of partible aspects of the person in space and time. Building on Keen's analysis, I draw on ethnographic material from Cape York Peninsula to argue that Aboriginal sorcery might be understood not only as the extension of partible aspects of the person, but also in terms of the interplay between the internal divisions and external connections of dividual personhood, linking that interplay to the various invasive techniques understood to be employed by sorcerers. On that basis, I argue that, in the central Peninsula, sorcery beliefs are best understood as forms of ‘indigenous analysis’ (Strathern) or ‘naïve critique’ (Kapferer) that simultaneously articulate and obscure the anxieties that inhere in postcolonial Aboriginal sociality.     

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.     

Legitimising Belief: Identity Politics,Utility, Strategies of Concealment,and Rationalisation in Australian Aboriginal Religion

The ‘women's business’ on Hindmarsh Island has had spectacular success although vital evidence had been kept secret ‘in a sealed envelope’. This paper, drawing primarily on the author's own encounter with the native title claims procedure, discusses various formative processes involved in the contemporary construction of Aboriginal indigeneity in which religious belief is heavily valorised. Subjected to a process of rationalisation for a long time, religious traditions are now being used as a strategic resource in native title claims. In the endeavour to make best possible use of the jurisprudential opportunity offered, the maintenance of secrecy and cloaking of information emerges as an important strategy. Secrecy clearly is an integral part of traditional Aboriginal culture. However, cloaking in fact may not only privilege esoteric contents, but merge with attempts of deliberate deception. Yet, in itself this too might be considered an Aboriginal cultural tradition.     

Changing Selves in Remote Australia? Observations on Aboriginal Family Life,Childhood and ‘Modernisation’

The idea of modernity is increasingly called upon to describe and understand change in Indigenous societies, replacing the older paradigms of colonisation, culture change and the short-lived misnomer hybridity. This paper problematises such an approach in the field of Australian Aboriginal Studies, with special attention to the question of whether individualisation and individualism are real phenomena in Aboriginal life-worlds, or else what kind of subjectivities might be in the making. The focus is on childhood as a site of change towards, and resistance to, modern individualism in reference to the history of state and religious interventions into Aboriginal family life.     

THINKING THROUGH IMAGES: KASTOM AND THE COMING OF THE BAHA'IS TO NORTHERN NEW IRELAND, PAPUA NEW GUINEA

We can learn a lot about religious ideas by studying not just the impact on them of missionization but also how religious beliefs and practices are translated into local religious forms. In this article I draw attention to the case of the Baha'i faith in the Nalik area of northern New Ireland (Papua New Guinea). In discussing how the faith became strongly associated with the ability to harness ancestral power, I argue that this relationship emerged through Nalik people's ability to think through images, in other words through transforming forms in order to create new understandings. This study not only underlines the importance of localized studies into the technology of image production but also fills a gap in anthropological studies that, up until now, have systematically ignored the Baha'i movement and its place in the contemporary Pacific.     

The social organisation of Wadeye's heavy metal mobs

The heavy metal mobs of Wadeye (notorious in the media as ‘heavy metal gangs’) are a new form of Aboriginal social organisation, almost entirely constituted by collateral kinship rather than descent relations. Dozens of overlapping mobs are each made up of sets of brothers and cousins, and are publicly symbolised by the name of a heavy metal band discovered via mass media. In contrast to recent Australianist anthropology that emphasises the fluidity of social structures and intercultural processes of identity formation, I argue that the metal mobs constitute a highly codified system of social organisation, and one in which non‐Aboriginal cultural influences are quite peripheral.     

Molar size sequence in Australian Aboriginals

Percentage frequencies for molar size sequence of first and second molars were calculated in a group of contemporary Australian Aboriginals using mesiodistal and buccolingual dimensions, as well as crown areas. Comparisons were made between sexes, arches, and dimensions within the Aboriginal groups and also between Aboriginal data and those published for other populations. The frequencies of the M2 > M1 molar size sequence in the Aboriginals fell within the range of frequencies reported for other contemporary populations. Differences in the frequencies of the M2 > M1 sequence between the sexes and between arches, together with the relatively high frequency of asymmetry in molar size sequence within Aboriginals, supported the notion that local environmental conditions acting during odontogenesis, together with differential responses to other environmental influences, play an important role in determining observed patterns of molar tooth size.     

Peopling of Sahul: mtDNA variation in aboriginal Australian and Papua New Guinean populations.

We examined genetic affinities of Aboriginal Australian and New Guinean populations by using nucleotide variation in the two hypervariable segments of the mtDNA control region (CR). A total of 318 individuals from highland Papua New Guinea (PNG), coastal PNG, and Aboriginal Australian populations were typed with a panel of 29 sequence-specific oligonucleotide (SSO) probes. The SSO-probe panel included five new probes that were used to type an additional 1,037 individuals from several Asian populations. The SSO-type data guided the selection of 78 individuals from Australia and east Indonesia for CR sequencing. A gene tree of these CR sequences, combined with published sequences from worldwide populations, contains two previously identified highland PNG clusters that do not include any Aboriginal Australians; the highland PNG clusters have coalescent time estimates of approximately 80,000 and 122,000 years ago, suggesting ancient isolation and genetic drift. SSO-type data indicate that 84% of the sample of PNG highlander mtDNA belong to these two clusters. In contrast, the Aboriginal Australian sequences are intermingled throughout the tree and cluster with sequences from multiple populations. Phylogenetic and multidimensional-scaling analyses of CR sequences and SSO types split PNG highland and Aboriginal Australian populations and link Aboriginal Australian populations with populations from the subcontinent of India. These mtDNA results do not support a close relationship between Aboriginal Australian and PNG populations but instead suggest multiple migrations in the peopling of Sahul.     

Immigrants' religious participation in the United States

Using New Immigrant Survey 2003 data, I examine immigrants' religious participation once in the United States. This is the first large-scale study to consider this question quantitatively and to compare across origin groups; the findings are key to informing our knowledge of the religious lives of the foreign born. Results indicate that, after accounting for participation before coming to the US, time in the US exhibits a robust, positive association with an increase in religious participation, suggesting the continuing importance of religion in immigrants' adjustment, in spite of the disruptive event of migration.     

HLA-DRB1 frequencies of non-Austronesian-speaking Gidra in south New Guinea and their genetic affinities with Oceanian populations

DNA typing of HLA-DRB1 genes was conducted for 192 samples from the Gidra who speak one of the non-Austronesian languages and inhabit the southern lowlands of New Guinea. Comparison of the allele frequencies with those of eight other Oceanian populations reveals that the Gidra are genetically closest to the non-Austronesian-speaking Goroka and, next, to the Aboriginal Australian groups, but are remote from the Austronesian-speaking groups in mainland New Guinea and the rest of Melanesia. This finding clearly supports the hypothesis that non-Austronesians and Aboriginal Australians are descendants of the first-stage migrants to Oceania. © 1995 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article: The Land and People of Northeast Brazil. By Manuel Correia de Andrade Development and Dependency. The Political Economy of Papua New Guinea. By Azeem Amarshi Australian Imperialism in the Pacific. The Expansionist Era 1820–1920. By Roger C. Thompson Law and State in Papua New Guinea. By Peter Fitzpatrick The Voice of Tambaran. Truth and Illusion in Ilahita Arapesh Religion. By Donald F. Tuzin Social Organization in Aboriginal Australia. By Warren Shapiro The Camp at Wallaby Cross: Aboriginal Fringe Dwellers in Darwin. By Basil Sansom Oenpclli Bark Painting. By The Aboriginal Arts Board. Paul Hamlyn The Languages of Australia. By R. M. W. Dixon The World as a Company Town: Multinational Corporations and Social Change. Edited by Ahmed Idris-Soven Hunters, pastoralists and ranchers. By Tim Ingold Green and Pleasant Land? Social Change in Rural England. By Howard Newby Rural Sociology in the Soviet Union. Its History and Basic Concepts. By Terence M. Cox. C. Hurst Challenging Anthropology: A Critical Approach to Social Anthropology. Edited by David H. Turner and Gavin A. Smith Marxism and Anthropology: The Concept of ‘Human Essence’ in the Philosophy of Marx. By George Markus Ideology and Everyday Life: Anthropology, Neo-marxist Thought, and the Problem of Ideology and the Social Whole. By Steve Barnett and Martin G. Silverman Patterns of the Past: Studies in Honour of David Clarke. Edited by I. Hodder, G. Isaac and N. Hammond     

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.     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed:
Teresa Chikako Maruyama, Hospice Care and Culture: A Comparison of the Hospice Movement in the West and Japan
Peggy DesAutels, Margaret P. Battin and Larry May, Praying for a cure. When medical and religious practices conflict
Tod Chambers, The Fiction of Bioethics Cases As Literary Texts
Janice M. Brencick and Glenn A. Webster, Philosophy of Nursing. A New Vision for Health Care
Sidney Bloch, Paul Chodoff and Stephen A. Green (eds.), Psychiatric Ethics, Third Edition
Mark J. Cherry, Persons and Their Bodies: Rights, Responsibilities, Relationships
Alice Domurat Dreger, Intersex in the Age of Ethics     

Adolescent religiousness and its influence on substance use: preliminary findings from the Mid-Atlantic School Age Twin Study.

Research has consistently shown that religiousness is associated with lower levels of alcohol and drug use, but little is known about the nature of adolescent religiousness or the mechanisms through which it influences problem behavior in this age group. This paper presents preliminary results from the Mid-Atlantic School Age Twin Study, a prospective, population-based study of 6-18-year-old twins and their mothers. Factor analysis of a scale developed to characterize adolescent religiousness, the Religious Attitudes and Practices Inventory (RAPI), revealed three factors: theism, religious/spiritual practices, and peer religiousness. Twin correlations and univariate behavior-genetic models for these factors and a measure of belief that drug use is sinful reveal in 357 twin pairs that common environmental factors significantly influence these traits, but a minor influence of genetic factors could not be discounted. Correlations between the multiple factors of adolescent religiousness and substance use, comorbid problem behavior, mood disorders, and selected risk factors for substance involvement are also presented. Structural equation modeling illustrates that specific religious beliefs about the sinfulness of drugs and level of peer religiousness mediate the relationship between theistic beliefs and religious/spiritual practices on substance use. Limitations and future analyses are discussed.     

Whole-Genome Genetic Diversity in a Sample of Australians with Deep Aboriginal Ancestry

Australia was probably settled soon after modern humans left Africa, but details of this ancient migration are not well understood. Debate centers on whether the Pleistocene Sahul continent (composed of New Guinea, Australia, and Tasmania) was first settled by a single wave followed by regional divergence into Aboriginal Australian and New Guinean populations (common origin) or whether different parts of the continent were initially populated independently. Australia has been the subject of relatively few DNA studies even though understanding regional variation in genomic structure and diversity will be important if disease-association mapping methods are to be successfully evaluated and applied across populations. We report on a genome-wide investigation of Australian Aboriginal SNP diversity in a sample of participants from the Riverine region. The phylogenetic relationship of these Aboriginal Australians to a range of other global populations demonstrates a deep common origin with Papuan New Guineans and Melanesians, with little evidence of substantial later migration until the very recent arrival of European colonists. The study provides valuable and robust insights into an early and important phase of human colonization of the globe. A broader survey of Australia, including diverse geographic sample populations, will be required to fully appreciate the continent''s unique population history and consequent genetic heritage, as well as the importance of both to the understanding of health issues.     

Interleukin 1-beta responses to bacterial toxins and sudden infant death syndrome

We tested the hypothesis that significantly higher IL-1beta responses to toxic shock syndrome toxin (TSST) noted for parents of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) infants might be due in part to genetic factors such as the IL-1beta (C-511T) and IL-1RN (T+2018C) single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP). The first objective was to assess the distribution of these polymorphisms among SIDS infants, parents of SIDS infants and controls, and two ethnic groups: Aboriginal Australians who have a high incidence of SIDS; and Bangladeshis who in Britain have a low incidence of SIDS compared with Europeans. The second objective was to assess IL-1beta responses to endotoxin and toxic shock syndrome toxin (TSST) from leukocytes of smokers and non-smokers in relation to these polymorphisms. There were major differences in the distributions of the IL-1beta (C-511T) SNP between Europeans and Bangladeshis (p=0.00) and between Europeans and Aboriginal Australians (p=0.00); however, they were similar for the Bangladeshi and Aboriginal Australian subjects. The allele frequency distribution of the IL-1RN (T+2018C) SNP for the Aboriginal Australians was statistically different from the European group (p=0.00), but it was not different from the Bangladeshi group (p=0.09). Compared with controls of European origin, there were no significant differences in the distribution of these polymorphisms among SIDS infants or parents of SIDS infants. For the IL-1beta (C-511T) SNP, the highest IL-1beta responses to endotoxin were obtained with leukocytes of non-smokers with the heterozygous CT genotype. Smokers had significantly lower levels of IL-1beta in response to endotoxin (p=0.01) and these differences were significant for donors with the wild type CC (p=0.00) and CT (p=0.03) genotypes. Similar patterns were observed for IL-1beta responses to TSST, but the differences were not significant. For the IL-1RN (T+2018C) SNP, the highest IL-1beta responses to endotoxin were obtained with leukocytes from non-smoker donors with the wildtype TT genotype and significantly lower responses were found with leukocytes from donors with the TC genotype (p=0.02). The responses of smokers were lower but the differences were significant only for donors with the TT genotype (p=0.00). Similar patterns were observed for IL-1beta responses to TSST, but the differences were not significant. IL-1beta responses to both endotoxin and TSST were increased for the small number of smokers with the TT genotype of the IL-1beta (C-511T) SNP. The TT genotype of the IL-1beta (C-511T) was found predominantly among Aboriginal Australian and Bangladeshi individuals but only a small proportion of Europeans. Smokers with the AA genotype of the IL-10 (G-1082A) SNP which is found predominantly among these two groups had significantly lower levels of IL-10 responses. If cigarette smoke enhances pro-inflammatory responses and reduces anti-inflammatory responses in individuals with these genotypes, this might partly explain the increased susceptibility of Aboriginal Australian infants to infections and SIDS.