Mediating Aboriginality: the Politics and Aesthetics of Australian Reconciliation

Mediating Aboriginality: The Politics and Aesthetics of Australian Reconciliation

Submitted by: Kelsey Brannan November 22, 2011 Georgetown University

This is a revised version of the paper to be read at the 2011 CSAA: Cultural ReOrientations and Comparative Colonialities Conference on November 22 at the University of South Australia in Adelaide.

Keywords: Reconciliation, aboriginality, art, identity politics, tourism, media literacy, colonialism

“As a foreigner, it has been hard to locate Aborigines on any level, least of all in person. Yet, when one becomes aware of their absence, suddenly in a way they are present.”1 - Marcia Langton Foundation Chair in Australian Indigenous Studies at Melbourne University

At Reconciliation Place in Canberra, Australia, voices sing and Aboriginal songs play when people walk past motion-sensor sandstone monuments (Figure 1). As a visitor from the United States, I find that other tourists like myself visit these sites of commemoration and leave with the impression that indigenous reconciliation is set in stone. Up the road from these commemorative sites, the Aboriginal Tent Embassy remains a site of protest for indigenous communities (Figure 2). The visual and ideological disparity between the celebration of a shared journey at Reconciliation Place and the anger that remains at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy reveals the gaps in Australia’s recuperative official rhetoric. There is a need for a reexamination of the relationship between these cultural sites to the social inequalities that still exist in Australia today.2

Rethinking contemporary Indigenous identity means critically analyzing the way in which the definition of “Aboriginality” is reoriented through reconciliation media and discourse.

According to Marcia Langton, the Foundation Chair in Australian Indigenous

Studies at the University of Melbourne, the definition of Aboriginality has been negotiated by: (i) local indigenous Australians, (ii) the textual and fictional constructions

1 Marcia Langton, “Aboriginal Art and Film: The Politics of Representation,” in Blacklines: Contemporary critical writing by indigenous Australians, ed. Michel Grossman (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 2003), 114. 2 David O. Sears and P.J. Henry, “Definition: Symbolic Racism,” in Handbook of Political Psychology (Japan: Matsusaka University Press, 2002), accessed May 5, 2011, http://www.issr.ucla.edu/sears/pubs/A165.pdf 2 created by mainstream media, and (iii) the dialogue between indigenous and non- indigenous populations.3 Reconciliation art projects, such as Reconciliation Place, follow the third definition of Aboriginality proposed by Langton. In the effort to reconcile the relationship, however, the definition of Aboriginality inscribed in art sites like

Reconciliation Place monumentalize and redeem indigenous culture for the tourist gaze and further distance indigenous communities from their right to self-determination. In this way, reconciliation media stems from an academic and non-indigenous point of view.4 Peter Rigby writes, “anthropologists rightly pride themselves on their ability to analyze, understand, and explain mythological symbolic systems, yet they seldom address those associated with the provenance of their own discipline.”5 Rigby underscores a need to question how privilege actors – in this case the people in charge of funding reconciliation projects – subtly, yet violently erase indigenous sovereignty through language and art.

The examples of reconciliation media I describe in this paper, utilize a rhetoric of sameness, popularly known as “closing the gap,” to forgive and forget the past in order to build and promote equality between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians. This rhetoric gives the Australian population a preferential meaning of reconciliation, that is, the utopian ideal that forgiveness and equality will heal past violence. This preferential visualization of reconciliation in urban areas, however, is only a fragment of the larger issues at hand.6 Reconciliation rhetoric represses past and present contemporary human

3 Marcia Langton, “Aboriginal Art & Film: The Politics of Representation,” in Blacklines: Contemporary critical writing by Indigenous Australians. (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2003), 120. 4 Michael Dodson, 34. 5 Peter Rigby, African Images, (Oxford: Berg, 1996), 3. 6 Sigmund Freud. Civilization and its discontents. (New York: W.W. Norton, 1962). 3 rights conflicts and ignores the diversity and clashes between urban and remote indigenous Australians, such as the opposing perspectives between Bess Price and

Larissa Bernhardt regarding the politics of the Northern Territory Intervention.7 How come tourists do not hear about these events when visiting indigenous commemorative sites?

I do not intend to say that reconciliation, as a concept, is harmful or ill informed, as the campaign for reconciliation in Australia has helped educate and produce cultural awareness about the relationship between indigenous and nonindigenous people.

Instead, I hope to call attention to an “outsiders” relationship to reconciliation media and how media (re)orient and displace past injustices, rather than solve them in a practical matter. How can or will the rhetoric of reconciliation be re-orientated to translate cultural practices into positive practical outcomes for indigenous communities? How can indigenous people gain control of their own image? These questions underscore the need for reconciliation literacy, the ability to critically question how and who is representing indigenous people and what makes their representations legitimate. Moreover, these questions (re)examine what group of people reconciliation discourse is targeting and representing: indigenous or non-indigenous Australians?

In the first part of this essay, I briefly trace the historical development of reconciliation rhetoric in Australian landscape paintings between 1790 and 1900, paintings that fictionalize indigenous identity and repress the violent history between indigenous and non-indigenous communities. I then show how these colonial mediations of Aboriginality resurface in contemporary visualizations of reconciliation. The next step

7 Bess Price, “Bess Price: Welcome to My World,” ABC Background Briefing, May 1, 2011, accessed May 8, 2011, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/backgroundbriefing/stories/2011/3201609.htm. 4 for Reconciliation Australia will be the most difficult; to break away from the confining non-indigenous framework that perpetuates textual and symbolic conceptions of

Aboriginality. i. The Beginnings of Reconciliation: Black Land, White Pictures

Paintings, art, and poetry are ways of interpreting and displacing guilt. Sigmund

Freud referred to art as producing direct dialogue with the desires of the unconscious.8 He notes that the artist has the incredible ability to reveal “deeply dark wishes in the work” in a disguised form, from which the viewer can take pleasure in “personal daydreams” without shame.9 New to the land and ashamed of the deteriorated existence of indigenous

Australians, I argue that early Australian landscape painters, painted “harmonious” and mythological renditions of the bush land to relieve their alienation and to cope with their guilt.10

In 1790, the Port Jackson Painters were shipped from England to Sydney to paint cartographic records of the land in order to spur European migration.11 A View of Sydney

Cove, 1792, documents the Sydney Harbour as a rather prosperous town into various cartographic grid-like settlements (Figure 3). The painting places the indigenous person outside the European settlement in a canoe. With the non-indigenous figures on the land and the natives outside it, the settler was able to claim the position as local inhabitant.

8 Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its discontents. (New York: W.W. Norton, 1962). 9 Sunnie D. Kidd, “On Poetic Imagination: Sigmund Freud and Martin Heidegger,” accessed October 20, 2011, http://www.inbetweenness.com/Sunnie's%20Publications/ON%20POETIC%20IMAGINATION%20SIGM UND%20FREUD%20AND%20MARTIN%20HEIDEGGER.pdf. 10 Caroline Jordan, “The Bush.” Lecture at La Trobe University, March 26, 2010. Melbourne, Australia March 26, 2010. 11 Nat Williams and Margaret Dent, “National Treasures from Australia’s Great Libraries,” (Canberra: National Library of Australia, 2005), 24. 5

In the mid 1880s, European artists, such as John Glover, painted Aboriginal

Arcadias in Tasmania in order to archive indigenous harmony and feel connected to the landscape.12 For example, in A Corroboree of Natives, Van Diemen’s Land 1840, Glover documents Aboriginal tribes performing a corroboree, a ceremonial meeting where

Aborigines interact with the dreamtime through dance, music and costume, in an untouched and Eden-like landscape 13 (Figure 4). Glover’s rendition of the indigenous corroboree, however, is superficial and inaccurate; it imagines a nostalgic version of the indigenous person prior to the Black Wars (1830-1837).14 Thus, Glover’s European perspective ignores the deteriorated existence of Aborigines in Tasmania in 1837.15 This representation of Aboriginality in John Glover’s painting follows Marcia Langton’s second definition of Aboriginality, a fictional interpretation that not only situates indigenous culture as “unchanging,” but (re)imagines it for a non-indigenous audience.”16

Glover’s nostalgic depiction of Aboriginality was a form of reconciliation; a mnemonic painting process used by Europeans to cope with their guilt.

In Tranquil Waters, 1894, Sydney Long solidified the “white” Australian as

“local” by replacing the “black” Aboriginal figure with a “white” Aboriginal figure. In these paintings, the uninhabited bushland is occupied with mythical white nymphs

(Figure 6). Long’s replacement of the “black” Aboriginal with the mythic “white” figure erases the indigenous person present in Glover’s paintings and foregrounds European

12 Tim Bonyhady, Images in Opposition, An Aboriginal Arcadia, 1801-1890. (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1985), 31. 13 “Corroboree,” Merriam-Webster, accessed May 28, 2011, http://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/corroboree. 14 Runoko Rashidi, “Black War: The Destruction of The Tasmanian Aborigines,” accessed September 28, 2010, http://www.cwo.com/~lucumi/tasmania.html. 15 Tim Bonyhady, Images in Opposition, 31. 16 Marcia Langton, “Homeland: Sacred visions and the settler state,” Artlink 20(2011): 11. 6 mythology. By replacing the white figure, Long was able to inscribe the land with

European history and paint over indigenous history.

These narratives of imperialism, mourning, and myth present in early Australian landscape have not left Australia’s public memory, but have resurfaced in Australia’s reconciliation campaign. ii. Staging Aboriginality: Campaigns Directed by White Australia

“It is as if we [indigenous Australians] have been ushered onto a stage to play in a drama where the parts have already been written.”17

- Michael Dodson Professor of Law at ANU

The contemporary mediations of Aboriginality, produced by Reconciliation

Australia, a nonprofit organization established in 2000 to build and promote harmony between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians, function as audiovisual extensions of the “local” identity crisis that began when European settlers first migrated to Australia in 1788. Although the events and media projects created by Reconciliation Australia seek to create harmony between indigenous and nonindigenous Australians, the symbolic and cultural projects do little to fix the economic gaps between the two.18

In 1995, National Reconciliation Week (NRW) was established to fund events and projects that seek to repair and close the gap between indigenous and non-indigenous

Australians. This year’s theme, “Let’s Talk Recognition,” encourages Australian citizens

17 Michael Dodson, “The end and the beginning: Re(de)finding Aboriginality,” in Blacklines: Contemporary Critical Writing by Indigenous Australians, ed. Michele Grossman (Carlton,Victoria: Melbourne University Press), 37. 18 “Australian Reconciliation Barometer: Key Findings Fact Sheet,” January 2010, accessed May 5, 2011, http://www.reconciliation.org.au/barometer2010. 7 to vote yes on the 2012 referendum, which, if successful, will recognize indigenous communities in the Australian constitution.19 These reconciliation campaigns, however, turn Australia’s reconciliation process into a stage where various reconciliation actants, ranging from media campaigns that educate nonindigenous Australians about Aboriginal culture to companies that adjust their business structure and image according to

Reconciliation Action Plans (RAP) (e.g. Qantas Airlines), perform “Aboriginality” for a non-indigenous audience.

In 2009, the programmers for National Reconciliation Week created various posters and videos to address the week’s theme, “See the Person, Not the Stereotype”

(Figure 7). The poster ad depicts two faces, one indigenous and the other appearing to be non-indigenous, with a statement that forces the viewer to confront racial prejudice. For example, in the top left corner, the poster asks, “Which one of these men is in a gang?

And the end line reads, “We’re hoping you couldn’t answer that.”20 The actors used in the “See the Person, Not the Stereotype,” advertisement, however, are placed into an oppositional template that turns them into racial objects, not individual subjects.21 The image of the seemingly urban indigenous person lacks specificity and heterogeneity, which denies indigenous diversity and assumes that indigenous experience is the same for all indigenous Australians, remote and urban. By equating the two “different races” with the same social status, this ad underscores the government’s assumed failure of

19 “Let’s Talk Recognition for National Reconciliation Week,” Media Release on Reconciliation Australia, May 26, 2011, accessed June 5, 2011, http://www.reconciliation.org.au/home/latest/let-s-talk-recognition- for-national-reconciliation-week. 20 Michael Dodson, “Ad campaign to challenge perceptions,” April 17, 2009, accessed April 30, 2011. http://reconciliation.e- newsletter.com.au/link/id/a014ec1beb179f802a43Pd4c7858dd288fa0b3ce9/page.html?ib=1 21 Marcia Langton, “Aboriginal Art and Film: the politics of representation,” Online Article at Rouge Press, accessed April 30, 2011. http://www.rouge.com.au/6/aboriginal.html. 8 indigenous self-determination from the Howard era and accepts the inevitable assimilation of indigenous culture into “white” culture.22

Unfinished Oz, an indigenous literacy project created by Reconciliation Australia, launched a video and radio ad called, the “Fresh Eyes Campaign” during the 10th year anniversary of the Bridge Walk for Reconciliation. The ad features familiar Australian faces and eyes, such as Ernie Dingo, Paul McDermott and Jack Thompson (Figure 8).

Similarly to “See the Person, Not the Stereotype,” the video intercuts between extreme close up shots of indigenous and non-indigenous Australians talking about how the “true” project of reconciliation is about “moving forward” and celebrating the similarities between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians.23

The dialogue in the video encourages a future of idealized “unity” and represses past and current violence. It is also important to note that each person in the ad wears a pair of “colored” contacts different from their “natural” eye color in order to underscore the way which people must see things “differently,” that is from the “other’s” perspective. By switching the eye color, however, the ad superimposes the colonizers’ gaze over indigenous perspectives and reveals how the subtlest gestures perpetuate racial differences. It also underscores the inherent contradiction in reconciliation discourse; on one hand it celebrates a future of equality and on the other it confirms racial binaries.

Reconciliation Australia’s goal to educate the public about indigenous Australians has also encouraged businesses to adopt a Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP), in order to restructure the way indigenous culture is visualized to the public. For example, in May of

22 Larissa Behrendt, “Why is overcoming Indigenous disadvantage so hard?” March 23, 2011, accessed April 25, 2011, http://wheelercentre.com/videos/video/larissa-behrendt-why-is-overcoming-indigenous- disadvantage-so-hard/. 23 “Reconciliation Australia Fresh Eyes” May 27, 2010, accessed February 28, 2011, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Bb0hWtLAgY. 9

2009, Qantas refreshed their Reconciliation Action Plan and added a new section to their business called “The Spirit of Reconciliation.”24 This section focused on bringing

“Aboriginal culture on board” through indigenous employment, partnerships, the

Australian Way Magazine, and inflight entertainment.25 Unlike Reconciliation Australia’s ad, “See the Person, Not the Stereotype,” which seeks to assimilate the image of the traditional Aboriginal Australian into “white” Australia, Qantas’s “Spirit of

Reconciliation,” preserves Australia’s oldest culture through tourism art.”26 The organization responsible for promoting indigenous “culture” on Qantas airlines, however, is Corporate Communications, a department in the “Tourism Australia” sector of the

Australian government.27 By putting indigenous culture in the hands of Corporate

Communications, Qantas Airlines perpetuates Marcia Langton’s second definition of

Aboriginality, the stereotypical construction of indigenous people by mainstream media, and further distances indigenous peoples from their right to self-determination.

Qantas has also added traditional indigenous art to the exterior aesthetic of its latest aviation technology. The cover of the 2009 Qantas Reconciliation Australia Action

Plan features the “Yananyi Dreaming” Boeing 737-800 aircraft, decorated with the indigenous designs by Rene Kulitja (Figure 9).28 Rene describes her dreamtime as embodying her “traditional place” in the land, she says, “my picture tells about the

24 “Spirit of Reconciliation,” accessed May 31, 2011, http://www.qantas.com.au/travel/airlines/indigenous- programs/global/en. 25 Ibid. 26 “Qantas Reconciliation Action plan,” accessed June 2, 2011, http://www.qantas.com.au/infodetail/about/community/2009RAP.pdf 27 “Corporate Communications,” in Portfolios: Resources, Energy, and Tourism: Australian Government Directiory, accessed June 2, 2011. http://www.directory.gov.au/. 28 “Flying Art,” accessed June 2, 2011, http://www.qantas.com.au/travel/airlines/aircraft- designs/global/en. 10 landscape, the animals and the ants of Uluru.”29 Her art was magnified “100 times” and transposed on the exterior of the Qantas Boeing, and is now called, what Qantas refers to as, a “Flying Dreamtime.”30 The translation of traditional artwork onto a modern plane, however, commodifies Rene’s spiritual connection to the land for the tourist gaze.

Felicity Wright explains, “whereas settlers see an empty wilderness, Aboriginal people see a busy spiritual landscape, peopled by ancestors and the evidence of their creative feats. These divergent visions produce as tension, one that spills over into the world of

Aboriginal Art.”31 In an effort to close the gap between indigenous and nonindigenous

Australians, Qantas’s “Flying Dreamtimes” becomes subject to the “fictionalization” that occurs in mainstream tourism – they lose cultural meaning. As a result, tourists and airport dwellers misrecognize Rene’s dreamtime as a “general” signifier of Aboriginality, rather her personal and intimate connection to the land.

In 2010, Reconciliation Australia (RA) released the first Australian Reconciliation

Barometer, which measures the relationship between indigenous and non-indigenous

Australians.32 The barometer’s website notes, “the barometer explores how we see and feel about each other, and how these perceptions affect progress towards reconciliation and closing the gap.”33 According to the Barometer report, however, the trust between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians has not improved since Prime Minister

Rudd’s national apology in 2008.34 Why is this? The study’s approach to measuring

29 Ibid. 30 Ibid. 31 Felicity Wright, “Can art make people (feel) well?: The Relationship between art and health,” Artlink 20(2001), 42. 32 “Australian Reconciliation Barometer Report 2010,” accessed March 30, 2011, http://www.reconciliation.org.au/home/reconciliation-resources/facts---figures/australian-reconciliation- barometer. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid. 11 reconciliation is flawed and asymmetrical. For instance, the barometer asks what non- indigenous Australians are willing to do for indigenous Australians, but it does not ask indigenous Australians about what they are willing to do for non-indigenous Australians.

People were asked whether or not they agreed that, “Indigenous people are open to sharing their culture with other Australians.”35 The barometer did not ask, however, whether or not non-Indigenous Australians were open to sharing their culture with indigenous Australians. The barometer’s rhetoric speaks to the flaws of the Barometer report itself, which is a tool used to measure Aboriginality in relation to “white”

Australia, rather than asking questions about what needs to be done to improve relations.

Reconciliation media has not significantly changed or altered the Australian national consciousness. One of my respondents said, “Frankly, reconciliation, although symbolically important, is considered a lot of hot air by some people when put alongside more pressing problems of Aboriginal people.”36 Perhaps, if Aboriginal art and reconciliation media were not entirely ubiquitous, the attention to their underlying intentions can be put under closer scrutiny.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the “outsider’s” gaze misrecognizes reconciliation media. To take us back to the beginning of the paper I would like to reiterate the way Western strategies of remembrance, such as the creation of monuments and statues, have influenced invalid interpretation of indigenous events. For example,

Reconciliation Place, a permanent art installation consisting of seventeen indigenous sculptures, acknowledges and commemorates positive and important events that

35 Ibid. 36 Email Interview. Anonymous professor at La Trobe University. April 28, 2011. 12 commemorate “white” Australia’s contribution to indigenous reconciliation. For example, the Referendum Sculpture at Reconciliation Place memorializes the 1967

Referendum, the decision that gave indigenous Australians the right to vote (Figure 10).37

The statue, however, creates a perspective that hides the failed implementation of the

Referendum shortly after its passage.38 When the 1967 referendum was passed, indigenous and nonindigenous Australians were convince that it would secure equality and self-determination for indigenous Australians, but, in turn, it only gave the Australian government the right to regulate and impose “white” law on Aboriginal history and culture.39 Kevin Gilbert, an Aboriginal activist, said at the 25th Anniversary of the 1967 referendum, “If the Referendum hadn’t been passed, we would have been further advanced because “white” Australia would not have fooled the world into thinking that something positive was being done.”40 This sculpture underscores what a blunt instrument western law can be when representing indigenous issues.41 The Referendum as well as the other sculptures at Reconciliation Place, deny indigenous Australians the right to repossess his or her own past resistance as a part of their contemporary identity.42

Critics note that the creation of indigenous sites in urban spaces not only commodify “Aboriginality” for the pleasure of an outsider’s gaze, but also contradict the

37 Frank Lampart, “Introduction,” in Reflections: 40 years on from the 1967 Referendum, (Adelaide: Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement Inc, 2007), 3. 38 Damien Short, Reconciliation and Colonial Power: Indigenous Rights in Australia, (Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2008), 5. 39 Ibid, 20. 40 Frank Lampart, “Introduction,” in Reflections: 40 years on from the 1967 Referendum, (Adelaide: Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement Inc, 2007), 3. 41 Ibid. 42 Michael Dodson, “The end in the beginning: re(de)finding Aboriginality,” in Blacklines: contemporary critical writing by Indigenous Australian, ed. Michele Grossman (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 2003), 38. 13 indigenous “non-physical” and aural way of expressing their connection to the land. 43

This claim, however, also reifies Aboriginal culture as “being stuck in the past” and concludes that Aboriginal culture should not and cannot evolve to use visual language.

Since the establishment of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in 1972, the symbols of

Aboriginality (e.g. the Aboriginal Flag, hands, dot and circle paintings) have played significant roles in increasing the visibility and need for indigenous sovereignty (Figure

11). 44 Indigenous artists living within urban Australia inform their literary, artistic, and activist “texts” with a theory of “locality,” a theory that focuses on creating meaning for indigenous peoples themselves, rather than readers from “mainstream” discourse (e.g. non-indigenous Australians).45 Felicity Wright notes that, “Art has made a significant contribution to the wider political process both though the work of [indigenous] artists tackling political subjects directly and the use of art as statements of custodial ownership in Native Title Claims.”46 Yet, the tension between indigenous artists effort to reclaim the past using visual symbols and the way in their symbols are misinterpreted by an

“outsiders” gaze surfaces at public indigenous art sites. How can a nonindigenous person understand the “local” knowledge within indigenous texts, if they cannot speak the language? The ease of Aboriginal “recognition,” has made it extremely difficult for indigenous people to diversify their image and diverge away from “white” Australia’s plan for reconciliation.47

43 Bronwyn Batten, “Monuments, memorials, and the presentation of Indigenous past,” in Public History Review, 11(2004),103. 44 Janet Maughan, “Polemic: From the 21st Century and through the telescope,” Artlink 20(2001), 5. 45 Felicity Wright, “Can art make people (feel) well?” Artlink, 20(2001), 42. 46 Ibid, 43. 47 Vicki Couzens and Lee Darroch, “Birrarung Wilam Park Project,” March 2, 2007, accessed April 15, 2011, http://www.artshub.com.au/au/news-article/news/museums-and-libraries/birrarung-wilam-river- camp-park-project-154058. 14

For example, Birrarung Wilam, an indigenous public art-site located next to

Federation Square in Melbourne, transforms the original meaning of the indigenous texts into generic symbols and Western monuments (Figure 12). The sound installation at

Birrarung Wilam consists of three stainless steel panels divided into sections of possum skins.48 Traditionally, possum skins are collected by Aboriginal children over time and sewn together to make clothes. These clothes map out a person’s connection to place and each skin holds its own unique story.49 Birrarung Wilam visitors are supposed to touch the sonic possum skim panels and listen to pre-recorded stories told by indigenous

Australians.50 The sound installation seeks to imbue the urban environment with indigenous traditions using sonic art, but there are three major factors that disrupt the translation process: (i) the noisy location of the installation alongside Artplay, a children’s art center, not only mutes the sounds emitted from the panels, but also limits the site’s audience to primarily young children, (ii) the lack of information panels misguides participants, and (iii) Melbourne’s moist inner-city climate subjects the sound technology to deterioration and breakdown. Although this project seeks to enrich

Melbourne’s inner city life with traditional indigenous culture, the urban environment subjects “Aboriginality” to misinterpretation and fictionalization. Despite this contradiction, however, scholars continue to argue that the production and visibility of these indigenous symbols in urban landscapes makes people “feel better” about the disadvantaged position of indigenous peoples. 51

48 Iain Mott, Birrarung Wilam, accessed on 23 May 2010. http://www.sounddesign.unimelb.edu.au/web/biogs/P000595b.htm#2. 49 Mark Harding, “Googarra (Possum Skin Cloaks)”, http://www.ngargawarendj.com/possumskin.htm, updated in 2006, accessed on 27 May 2010. 50 Veronesi and Gemeinboek. 51 Felicity Wright, “Can art make people (feel) well?” 15

In the beginning of the documentary, Our Generation (Saban and Curtis 2010),

Richard Gandhuwuy, a clan elder in east Arnhem Land, Northern Territory says,

“Balanda (non-indigenous person) is trying to say, “Look at my way, this is the better way.’”52 The documentary highlights the way in which the Australian government continues to violate indigenous land rights and culture, despite its status as one of the most developed countries of the world. The film’s rhetoric, which structures indigenous culture as precious and unchanging, underscores the cultural paradox evident in reconciliation discourse. On one hand, agencies like Reconciliation Australia construct new and “urban” definitions of Aboriginality utilizing the rhetoric of sameness to erase difference between indigenous and nonindigenous Australians, and on the other hand, human rights activists highlight the importance of preserving the “old” and “traditional” forms of indigenous culture. Will these groups begin to see on the same line? Is a negotiation possible?

The negotiation of “Aboriginality” in reconciliation discourse can also be seen within the controversial politics of the Northern Territory Intervention, which is a series of law enforcements and social welfare provisions implemented by the government in

August 2007 to protect women and children from the sexual abuse reported in the “Little

Children are Sacred Report.”53 According to Bess Price, a local indigenous activist, the violence and sexual abuse in remote indigenous communities is due to the denial by indigenous elders to admit that their culture and traditions cannot change. Bess Price supports the Northern Territory Intervention and believes her culture needs to change

52 Our Generation. 53 Australian Human Rights Commission, “The Northern Territory ‘Emergency Response’ Intervention – A Human Rights Analysis,” in Social Justice Report 2007. Web. http://www.hreoc.gov.au/social_justice/sj_report/sjreport07/chap3.html 16 laws in order to protect the lives of women and children from sexual abuse. Bess prices states, “We should give up our violent ways. Our laws allow capital punishment, it allows violent payback.” 54 Yet, other indigenous Australians believe the intervention is violating indigenous culture and unfairly taking away agency from indigenous communities that are non-violent. The 2007 the Australian Human Rights Commission produced a Social Justice Report conveying the controversial form of the Intervention. It states:

The most significant problem with the new arrangements identified by the Little Children Are Sacred Report is the lack of capacity for engagement and participation of Indigenous peoples. This manifests as a lack of connection between the local and regional level, up to the state and national level; and as a disconnect between the making of policy and its implementation.55

The main question is: how can the Australian government fix indigenous community violence in a top-down model without damaging trust? What about the communities that are not violent in the region? Why do they have to suffer from top-down regulations?

On May 1, 2011, ABC National Background Briefing, David Price, Bess Prices’ husband was asked the following question: “Where should the line be drawn between contemporary individual rights and the right to practice traditional culture in a society that values the community over individuals?”56 David Price responded by saying that it is essential for the Australian government to alter its agenda to focus less on preserving

“traditional” culture and more on giving individual human rights to all Australians. 57

54 Bess Price, “Bess Price: Welcome to My World,” ABC Background Briefing, May1, 2011, accessed May 8, 2011, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/backgroundbriefing/stories/2011/3201609.htm 55 Australian Human Rights Commission, “The Northern Territory ‘Emergency Response’ Intervention – A Human Rights Analysis.” 56 Ibid. 57 David Price, “Bess Price: Welcome to my World, transcript,” May 1, 2011, accessed May 6, 2011, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/backgroundbriefing/stories/2011/3201609.htm 17

Rather than perpetuating the oppositional binary between indigenous and nonindigenous

Australians, Price calls for a recognition of basic human rights and a protection of

Australia’s “precious” and “diverse” society.58

Language enables and also disempowers.59 If the language uttered by

Reconciliation Australia gives agency to “white” Australians or “Balanda’s” world only, how will the fictionalization of Aboriginal issues end? Although the subtle visualization of “Aboriginality” in urban Australia promotes indigenous culture as being valuable for all Australians, the art and discourse paints over the continued violence. Instead of trying to translate, measure (e.g. Australian Barometer), or superimpose “white” language over indigenous culture, Reconciliation Australia should focus on funding campaigns that will promote strategies of positive deviance to reduce violence in communities that need it.60

This strategy finds successful non-violent community practices and replicates them from the bottom-up.61 Real change lies in community practice; without it, the reconciliation campaign will continue to fictionalize progress and restrict indigenous self-determination.

In this call for Reconciliation literacy I have critically questioned the depiction of reconciliation not to debunk its intentions, but to reveal how even the most harmless depictions can enact violence. The politics of reconciliation exists far beyond the picture frame, into the way we, as humans, choose to create, preserve, and archive aspects of society culture and repress others.

58 Ibid. 59 Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: selected interview and other writings, 1972-1977, (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), 11. 60 Pascale, Richard T., Jerry Sternin, and Monique Sternin. 2010. The power of positive deviance: how unlikely innovators solve the world's toughest problems. (Boston, Mass: Harvard Business Press, 2010). 61 Ibid. 18

Figure 1. Reconciliation Place and the National Library in Canberra, Australia. Photo taken by Molleren Shaw on September 24, 2010.

Figure 2. Aboriginal Tent Embassy. Photo taken by Jenny Hodge on February 27, 2011.

Figure 3. Port Jackson Painter, A View of Sydney Cove, 1792, Drawing, ink and water colour.

Figure 4. A Corroboree of Natives, Van Diemen’s Land, John Glover, 1840.

Figure 6. Tranquil Waters, 1894, oil on canvas on hardboard, Art Gallery NSW.

Figure 7. “See the Person, Not the Stereotype,” National Reconciliation Week, 2009 .

Figure 8. Unfinished Oz. Fresh Eyes Video Screenshot, Jimmy Little wearing blue eye contacts

Figure 9. Qantas’s Yananyi Dreaming’ Boeing 737-800. From Cover of 2009 Reconciliation Action Plan Report.

Figure 10. Referendum Sculpture, Reconciliation Place, Canberra.

Figure 11. Aboriginal visual symbolism at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy.

Figure 12. Birrarung Wilam (River Camp), Possum Skin Sound Panels, 2010.

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