University of New South Wales

College of Fine Arts

School of Art Theory

ABORIGINAL ART - RESISTANCE AND DIALOGUE

The Political Nature and Agency of Aboriginal Art

A thesis submitted by Lee-Anne Hall in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Art Theory CFATH709.94/HAL/l Ill' THE lJNIVERSllY OF NEW SOUTH WALES COLLEGE OF FINE ARTS Thesis/Project Report Sheet

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Abstract 350 words maximum: [PLEASETYPE]

This thesis examines the political nature and agency of Aboriginal art in cross-cultural dialogue. This has required that Aborigines be revealed as purposeful actors seeking dialogue with the settler-culture.

Foucauldian frameworks with regard to discourse, power and subjectivity are used to reveal imperial discourses as having constituted the Aborigine as oppressed and marginal subject. Foucault's thesis on the nature of operative power concludes that power is relational and negotiable, resistance is a force in counter to power. Accordingly, whilst European dominance and control over Aborigines has been both severe and damaging, the power of the settler or imperial culture has never been absolute. In conceptualising Aborigines as capable of active resistance, Aboriginal art is positioned in the contemporary era as central to strategies of resistance, in tandem with the maintenance of an autonomous Aboriginal cultural identity. Secondly, this thesis seeks to establish the use of art as efficacious in promoting cross-cultural dialogue, specifically, political dialogue. Thedialogue sought by Aborigines and referred to herein is one which seeks recognition of Aboriginal sovereignty and the imperative of reparation.

The use of Aboriginal art in the dialogic process reflects the precious place art holds in Aboriginal society as central to the propagation and maintenance of religious knowledge, political power and social control. The mobilisation of Aboriginal culture along with a strategic creative incorporation and appropriation of settler-culture forms, are positioned as power bases from which Aborigines refuse subjectification, promote and sustain their own cultural identity and integrity, and effectively dialogue across cultures.

Discussion regarding Aboriginal art's political efficacy across cultures is framed by detailed discussion of three artworks which appeared during 1988, Australia's Bicentenary year of European settlement. The artworks, the Barunga Statement, the Tjukurrpa Mosaic and the Aboriginal Memorial are each located in highly public and prestigious sites. The efficacious nature of these artworks is shown to be problematic, in that meanings (signs) are neither stable nor authoritative across cultures. This instability makes the artworks vulnerable to manipulation and gross fonns appropriation,of whereupon they appear to serve purposes contrary to their initial function. Other factors are demonstrated to be operational however, whereby appropriation is shown to be either partial, and/or its processes are deferred or refused. These factors relate to, the ongoing attachment (inalienability) of the artwork from its Aboriginal creator and community of origin; acts of Aboriginal counter-appropriation; the incommensurabitity of cultures, mobilisation of difffaance; and, the 'resonant' character of these works, where their meanings are constantly renegotiated in lived time and space.

IO _J Dcclaralion rclatin& dispositionof projectrcpon,,\huia I am fuDy aware of the policy ofthe University rclatin& to the retention and use of hicher dccru projectpo rc ns and theses, namely that the Univeniay rc1&ins the copies submined for examination and is freetoallow them IO be consulted or borrowed. Subject lo lhc provisions of&he Copyril,h1 Aca J968, theUniversitymay issue a projed rcpon inor thesis whole or in pan,photosaat in or microfilmr o olhct'°PYUII 10 medi:a. I also authorise the publication by University. Microfilms of a w50 d stnc:t ill ·ssenalionAbctrac:u International (applicable dc>elorata only). . �--6_,_'JS_ or Dale 'The University rccoanises that I.here may benupcional circumstanc.cs requirin& res i s on c.opyina or condition, on me. Reque,u for reslric:t.ion for a period up IO 2 yean mustmade be in writin& lhelo ReJistrar. Requ t r I lon&erec riodof rcstriaion may be cor.1iderccl in n�nal ciraimsllnc.es if accompaniedby a lcucror SUpp>I\ fromSupervisor the o d ofSchool. Suda reque,u 011111 besubmiuedwith the thesis/project repol1. i FOR OFFICE USE ONLY Date of completionor requircmenu Reaistmand Dep,iy Principal nus SHEETIS TO BE GLUED TO INSIDE1liE FRONT COVF.R OF THE THESIS 'I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, it contains no material previously published or written by another person nor material which to a substantial extent has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma of the University or other institute of higher learning, except where due acknowledgement is made in the text."

Lee-Anne Hall January 1995 In submitting this thesis to the University of New South Wales for examination, and subsequent consultation or borrowing for academic use, I make the following request for the imposition of restricted access.

Chapter Four 'Both Sword and Shield - The Barunga Statement', contains discussion deemed sensitive by myself and my informants, where discussion surrounds Aboriginal political decision making with regard to material deemed secret and sacred.

I therefore ask that sections 4.5 and 4.6 in this chapter be made unavailable for student use or academic copying or citation.

22a Earl st, Hunters Hill i

PREFACE

'I believe that any expression of Aboriginal art, be it traditional or contemporary is an act of political defiance. So much time and effort, two hundred years of very concerted effort to destroy Aboriginality and Aboriginal culture has gone into this country. The fact that Aboriginal culture does remain a living thing in itself is an extraordinary political statement, about their resiliance, their adaptability and their tremendous willpower' (Gary Foley, quoted in Symes and Lingard 1988). ii ABSTRACT

This thesis examines the political nature and agency of Aboriginal art in cross­ cultural dialogue. This has required that Aborigines be revealed as purposeful actors seeking dialogue with the settler-culture.

Foucauldian frameworks with regard to discourse, power and subjectivity are used to reveal imperial discourses as having constituted the Aborigine as oppressed and marginal subject. Foucault's thesis on the nature of operative power concludes that power is relational and negotiable, resistance is a force in counter to power. Accordingly, whilst European dominance and control over Aborigines has been both severe and damaging, the power of the settler or imperial culture has never been absolute. In conceptualising Aborigines as capable of active resistance, Aboriginal art is positioned in the contemporary era as central to strategies of resistance, in tandem with the maintenance of an autonomous Aboriginal cultural identity. Secondly, this thesis seeks to establish the use of art as efficacious in promoting cross-cultural dialogue, specifically, political dialogue. The dialogue sought by Aborigines and referred to herein is one which seeks recognition of Aboriginal sovereignty and the imperative of reparation.

The use of Aboriginal art in the dialogic process reflects the precious place art holds in Aboriginal society as central to the propagation and maintenance of religious knowledge, political power and social control. The mobilisation of Aboriginal culture along with a strategic creative incorporation and appropriation of settler­ culture forms, are positioned as power bases from which Aborigines refuse subjectification, promote and sustain their own cultural identity and integrity, and effectively dialogue across cultures.

Discussion regarding Aboriginal art's political efficacy across cultures is framed by detailed discussion of three artworks which appeared during 1988, Australia's Bicentenary year of European settlement. The artworks, the Barunga Statement, the Tjukurrpa Mosaic and the Aboriginal Memorial are each located in highly public and iii prestigious sites. The efficacious nature of these artworks is shown to be problematic, in that meanings (signs) are neither stable nor authoritative across cultures. This instability makes the artworks vulnerable to manipulation and gross forms of appropriation, whereupon they appear to serve purposes contrary to their initial function. Other factors are demonstrated to be operational however, whereby appropriation is shown to be either partial, and/or its processes are deferred or refused. These factors relate to, the ongoing attachment (inalienability) of the artwork from its Aboriginal creator and community of origin; acts of Aboriginal counter-appropriation; the incommensurability of cultures, mobilisation of differance; and, the 'resonant' character of these works, where their meanings are constantly renegotiated in lived time and space. IV

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The people I have to thank are numerous. Although I am sure many will have forgotten their kindness and generosity of spirit, I have not forgotten them, and now wish to offer my heartfelt thanks.

During the course of my studies at the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales, I received the supervisory assistance of Ian Howard and Fay Brauer. I am particularly grateful for the time offered by Fay Brauer, who in addition to her position as Head of School for much of the past two years had the unenviable task of taking over as supervisor half way through this project.

To those who agreed to be interviewed, thanks are due for your time and the willingness to share experiences, knowledge and opinions. Shifts in my research interests have unfortunately meant that some interview material now sits on the shelf, waiting for use perhaps at another time. Thanks to: Dick Kimber, Daniel Vachon, Dr Nick Williams, Janice Stanton, Joanne Boniface (Alice Springs), Helen Stuart (Hermannsburg), Dennis Williams Tjapanangka (Yuendumu), Chips Mackinolty, Margie West, Geoff Adlide, Steve Anderson, Hinton Lowe (Darwin), Kerry Giles, John Keen, Dr Peter Sutton (Adelaide), Prof. Annette Hamilton, Father Frank Brennan, Djon Mundine, Dr H.C. Coombs (Sydney), Wally Caruana, Dr Luke Taylor (Canberra), Gordon Bennett (Brisbane).

Still others offered their assistance in a variety of ways, through discussion, reading sections of my work or helping in the location of images, texts and artists. Thanks are due to: Jenny Barrett, Heather Goodall, Sue Mason-Cox, Simone Fullagher (Sydney), Peter Bellas, Geraldine Tyson, Claire Williamson (Brisbane), Peter Haynes (Parliament House, Canberra), Prof Vincent Megaw (Adelaide) and Alison Burkhardt (UTS).

The School of Leisure and Tourism Studies, University of Technology, Sydney has been a most congenial place to work during the years it has taken to complete this v study. I would most like to extend grateful thanks to Head of School, Associate Professor Rob Lynch, who has generously supported my research by making available time for travel, computer use and a 'gold card' photocopier key.

In addition I must thank the library staff of the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, for the patience and kind assistance shown to yet another student interested in Aboriginal culture, over the period 1990-1992. It seemed I was always visiting the Institute during a Canberra winter; thank goodness for my friends Coral Hunt, Angela Gee and Graham Lightbody who offered their warm houses and equally warm company. To those other friends and family who provided accomodation on various research visits, I offer my gratitude for putting me up when the budget wouldn't stretch to a hotel bed. Valerie Hall, Cathryn Phillips, Carolyn and Robert Bullock, Lesley Porter (Adelaide), Angela Gee and Graham Lightbody (again!), Jan and Nick Williams (Alice Springs), Geraldine Tyson (Yuendumu), Mike and Terri Hobbs (Brisbane).

To those who have shared my home life (including Rosie my cat), I owe my sincere thanks for many thesis discussions over the dinner table, encouragement to plough on, and of course friendship. My particular thanks, love and appreciation are reserved for Mark Abourizk, for his good humour, encouragement, cooking, cleaning, but most of all his ears and eyes in listening and reading with me. A final acknowledgement to my family and friends all over the place who never failed to enquire "how's the thesis going?". It seems dear friends you could never comprehend the pain and guilt such a question summoned, and so I await a happier, interrogation, "What will you do on the weekends now?".

Lee-Anne Hall Sydney, January 1995. vi ABBREVIATIONS

AAC Art Advisory Committee, (Parliament House Construction Authority)

AAMA Association of Australian Art Museums

ABA Australian Bicentennial Authority

ANG Australian National Gallery, until 1992 (lOth Birthday celebrations) thereafter NGA (National Gallery of Australia)

ATSIC Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission

CAAMA Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association

CLC Central Land Council

DAA Department of Aboriginal Affairs, replaced in 1989 by ATSIC

LRN Land Rights News

Mabo Mabo vs Queensland, High Court Judgment June 1992

NAC National Aboriginal Conference

NLC N orthem Land Council

PHA Paliament House Authority

PHCA Parliament House Construction Authority TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE ...... 1

ABSTRACT ...... 11

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... iv

ABBREVIATIONS ...... VI

INTRODUCTION - POOR BUGGERS?

The Myth ...... 1 The Postcolonial Context ...... 3 Theoretical Frameworks ...... 5 Case Studies ...... 8 Thesis Outline ...... 10

CHAPTER 1

THE POLITICAL CONTEXT OF ABORIGINAL ART

1.1 The Role of Culture in Political Struggle ...... 12 1.2 Categorising Political Art ...... 13 1.3 Tjukurrpa as Context ... , ...... 15 1.4 Art and Tjukurrpa ...... 18 1.5 Aboriginal Art, Ideology and Politics ...... 19

CHAPTER2

'THEY KEEP TAKING OFF THEIR CLOTHES': Aboriginal Resistance

2.1 Introduction ...... 25 2.2 Discursive Discourse and the Objectified Aborigine ...... 26 2.3 Access to Power: 'Where there is power, there is resistanc ...... 30 2.4 Aboriginal Resistance ...... 32 2.5 Mobilising Culture ...... 35 2.5.1 Divergent Knowledges ...... 36 2.5.2 Aboriginality as Politicised Identity ...... 37 2.5.3 Expressing Identity - Aboriginality ...... 39 2.5.4 Difference/Differance as Strategy ...... 41 2.6 Incorporation/Appropriation- Where to borrow is to Resist ...... 43 2. 7 Incorporation and Cultural Integrity ...... 45 2.8 Conclusion ...... 47 \

CHAPTER3

ART AND DIALOGUE- MOBILISING CULTURE

3.1 The Elcho Island Rangga - Parable I ...... 48 3 .1.1 The Yirrkala Bark Petition - Parable II ...... 49 3.2 Dialogue- Aboriginal Exchange Practices ...... 53 3.3 The Circulation of Aboriginal Art ...... 56 3.4 Collapse of the Sign ...... 58 3.5 Cultural Appropriation ...... 60 3.6 Counter Appropriation ...... 64 3. 7 Incommensurability ...... 68 3. 7.1 Revelation and Occasion ...... 68 3.7.2 Wonder ...... 73 3.8 The Agency of Wonder- Resonance ...... 74 3.9 Conclusion ...... 76

CHAPTER4

BOTH SWORD AND SHIELD - THE BARUNGA STATEMENT

4.1 Introduction ...... 78 4.2 The Bicentenary Context ...... 78 4.3 Description - The Barunga Statement ...... 80 4.2 Treaty Talk ...... 81 4.3 The Barunga Festival ...... 84 4.4 The Petition Format ...... 86 4.5 A Collective Statement ...... 89 4.6 Repainting of Statement ...... 92 4.7 Barunga Statement Unveiling- Parliament House ...... 94 4.8 Parliament House - Barunga Statement in situ ...... 96

CHAPTERS

ART AND THE NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS 1 - The Tjukurrpa Mosaic

5.1 Introduction ...... 99 5.2 New Parliament House ...... 99 5.3 Mosaic design brief and commission ...... 101 5.4 Unveiling of Tjukurrpa Mosaic ...... 103 5.5 Criticism of Mosaic ...... 104 5.6 An Aboriginal Statement? ...... 105 5. 7 Counter Appropriation - The Curse ...... 107 5.8 Reappropriation/The Resonant Object ...... 111 CHAPTER6

ART AND THE NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS 2- The Aboriginal Memorial

6.1 Creation - Curating The Memorial ...... 115 6.2 The Aboriginal Memorial In Situ ...... 119 6.2.1 Museum as Institution of the State ...... 120 6.3 The Museum: It gives, It takes away ...... 123 6.4 Memorial and resonating National consciousness ...... 127

CHAPTER 7

CONCLUSION: 'Bringing their dead with them'

7.1 Introduction ...... 13 2 7.2 Resistance ...... 132 7.3 Dialogue ...... 135 7.4 'Bringing their dead with them' ...... 136

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 139

PERSONAL COMMUNICATIONS ...... 162

APPENDICES ...... 164

A Elcho Island Rangga (1957) B Yirrkala Bark Petition (1963) C The Burnum Burnum Declaration England, 26 January 1988 D Barunga Statement E Barunga Statement Text F The Burnam Burnam Treaty, Salzburg (1988) G Promissory Statement of the Prime Minister (1988) H 'Whale Dreaming' - Barunga Statement I Commissioning letter (Papunya Tula Artists) (1985) J Tjukurrpa design (1985) K Tjukurrpa Mosaic, forecourt Parliament House Canberra (1988) L Aboriginal Memorial, National Gallery of Australia (1988) M Hollow Log Coffins- Traditional Use 1

INTRODUCTION - POOR BUGGERS? The Myth

Until the recent period, a popular view persisted amongst 'liberal-minded' Australians that Aboriginal people were the 'poor buggers' of Australian society, who in being colonised, were weakened, exploited and made dependent peoples. This reading of Aborigines was promoted initially by key anthro-historical texts (Bates 1966; Elkin 1974; Rowley 1972 [1970]), which projected a profile of Aborigines as victims, naive and fateful in their melancholic acceptance of dispossession. Numerous accounts continued in this tradition, telling the tale of colonisation as a sorry one for indigenes, but also as the price of progress. These texts have largely suggested to readers that colonisation was entirely successful in crushing resistance and assimilating Aborigines. Narratives of this tone do not identify Aborigines as determinant actors in their relations with the colonising culture; rather they pledge that history has acted upon them. Paradoxically, in these discourses of tragedy, Aborigines have had their marginal status romanticised, there being little left to do but smooth their dying pillow.

Using the critical perspectives offered by contemporary theory, this view of the 'fatal impact' of colonisation1 has begun to be refuted, generating a rewriting both of colonial history, and a reassessment of its once abject subjects, the Aborigines. As Nicholas Thomas writes 'fatal impact' discourses are recognised now as. being partial and paradoxical accounts. While being,

'generally sympathetic to the plight of the colonised, such perspectives frequently exaggerate colonial power, diminishing the extent to which colonial histories were shaped by indigenous resistance and accommodation... (Colonial) Fantasies of conquest were frequently

1 See Alan Moorehead's book The Fatal Impact - The Invasion of the South Pacific 1767-1840 (1987) for an encompassing view of South Pacific peoples in the early period of discovery and colonisation, as primitives, childlike, and conquered. 2 realised only partially or farcically; rituals of colonial administration may have created an appearance of dominance and order, an aura of government, that was matched neither by practical control nor by more than a limited transformation of indigenous life; and the products of assimilation were taken to be subversive as often as they attested to the successes of the civilising missions' (Thomas 1994: 15).

This thesis intends not to romanticise Aborigines in their struggles. Instead it will present Aboriginal resistance as ever present and immanent, and their success in this regard to be entirely possible. Claiming Aborigines to have been victims and subjects of the colonising culture, yet defiantly resilient, is perhaps to walk a fine line where 'angels fear to tread'. This is not to deny the lived experience of many Aboriginal people in terms of dispossession, poverty and associated ills. Rather it is to argue how the coloniser/settler cultures'2 power to create and reproduce myths (discourses) further creates the Aboriginal victim subject and obfuscates autonomous and dissident Aboriginal actions. Belief in the powerlessness of Aborigines and their inability to negotiate with 'real' power (i.e. white governance), is to follow Peabody's cynical dictate, that 'If both should come to the same bargaining table, the later is simply a beggar' (Peabody in Tatz 1987:299). For Aboriginal people and their cultural forms, such reductive arguing would eventually lead to ethnocide.

In conceptualising Aborigines as capable of active resistance, this thesis is primarily concerned to reveal Aboriginal art in the contemporary era as central to strategies of resistance, in tandem with the maintenance of an autonomous Aboriginal cultural identity. Secondly, it seeks to establish the use of Aboriginal art as efficacious in the process of promoting cross-cultural dialogue, specifically political dialogue. The dialogue sought by Aborigines and referred to herein is one which seeks recognition of Aboriginal sovereignty and reparation with the settler-culture. As dialogic agents, it is argued the three major artworks under discussion, the Barunga Statement, the Tjukurrpa Mosaic and the Aboriginal Memorial are strategically positioned to

2 In an attempt to avoid applying prescriptive hierarchical terms (e.g. 'the dominant culture') the terms 'coloniser-culture' and 'settler-culture' will be used throughout this thesis. 3 encourage national reflection and remembrance over the long term. The use of art in the dialogic process reflects the precious place art holds in Aboriginal society as central to the propagation and maintenance of religious knowledge, political power and social control. Although the employment of Aboriginal art in attempts to dialogue with the settler-culture has received strong criticism from some quarters that it invites desacrilisation of form and meaning, it will be argued that Aboriginal art's use in political dialogue is not haphazard or ad hoc, but is logical and strategic.

The Postcolonial Context

Given the many references to Australia as a postcolonial nation, discussion which

3 centres itself around the ongoing effects of colonialism may seem erroneous • However, the term postcolonial is far from problematic, in that it does not simply refer to political independence from the once imperial power, Great Britain. As is well understood from the writings of Franz Fanon to Homi Bhabha, the end of the era of imperial rule does not necessarily result in a return to the customs, conditions, political systems and technologies of a pre-colonial era. Neither does it necessarily suggest an eventual ousting or a triumph of indigenous populations over the colonial interlopers, as has been seen in parts of Africa and India. For it is the case the term postcolonial has currency in nations where colonial cultures have settled over generations to create multicultural communities such as Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States (Ashcroft et al. 1989: 1-2).

For many scholars of postcolonial conditions these varying circumstances cut a swathe across any easy use of the term postcolonial. It is therefore at issue whether postcolonial status may truly be claimed, when a kind of internal imperialism lingers, and where effective control and privilege over the indigenous population continues to be held by the settler-culture (Hodge and Mishra 1990:xi - xiii). The

3 I refer here not only to intellectual debate and discussion in the academy, but also on radio and television (specifically the Australian Broadcasting Corporation). 4 significance of this issue is apparent when examining the dual perspectives of indigenous and settler communities; where the dissimilarity of lived experience between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal populations in terms of respect for civil liberties and life opportunities is so stark, that use of the term postcolonial appears for many Aborigines to be bitterly ironic. As Simon During recognises, while the term postcolonial remains a promise of liberty for indigenous peoples, it is not yet a living reality in the Australian community (During 1992:339).

The combined work of postcolonial scholars Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, Stuart Hall and anthropologists James Clifford and Nicholas Thomas among others have been significant in redrawing the boundaries by which it is possible to reflect upon the 4 aftermath (continuing effects) of colonial imperialism • In particular their work repositions indigenous or native cultures as active rather than passive receptors of the presence of foreign powers. Hence, whilst the spectre of colonialism hangs heavy, they believe the period of postcolonialism across the globe is witness to dynamic examples of indigenous/local resistances, cultural convergence and also maintenance of cultural difference. It is, as Bhabha suggests, a period of increasing intersubjectivity, in the rise of the interstices in influence and political power (see Bhabha 1994: 1-19). Bearing this reading in mind, a postcolonial existence where Aborigines might advantageously and opportunistically utilise their own cultural forms with settler technologies and social constructs, in a position of equity and self­ determination, may be at hand. Of necessity, this discussion takes place against an existing backdrop of critical theory, as to the political purpose and efficaciousness of art in Aboriginal, western and colonised societies.

4 It should be noted that the majority of critical writing attendant to the meditations of artists reflecting upon or writing within a postcolonial situation, has been generated from within literary criticism. 5 Theoretical Frameworks

'The role for theory today seems to me to be just this: not to formulate the global systematic theory which holds everything in place, but to analyse the specificity of mechanisms of power, to locate the connections and extensions, to build little by little a strategic knowledge (savoir)' (Foucault 1980: 145).

Michel Foucault's arguably modest claim for theory reflects the demands upon it within this thesis: to apply theory to specific example, and in so doing 'build little by little a strategic knowledge'. This knowledge will be built up (in Chapters One, Two and Three) by interweaving key theoretical perspectives which analyse the strategic use Aborigines make of their art in political dialogue with non-Aborigines. This will be shown through identifying Aboriginal modalities of power; positioning Aboriginal art as central to political negotiations, and, accounting for the political agency of Aboriginal art in its reception.

The approach undertaken is interdisciplinary across the fields of anthropology, sociology, art history, semiotics and phenomenology, encompassing all within a broad cultural studies perspective. Theoretical frameworks which provide alternate readings of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal power relations, will be utilised herein with attention to the broad poststructural project of the examination of power: how 5 power is created, maintained, exercised and circulated • Particular emphasis is given to Foucault's conceptualisations of power, discourse and subjectivity, the use of which enables a reading of Aborigines as recognising non-Aboriginal political and economic dominance while being resistant, and not necessarily subservient to hegemonic codes. This does not claim for Aborigines a level playing-field in the

5 Poststructuralism emerged in philosophic quarters in France during the 1960's as a field of critical thought and writing largely engaged in the investigation of power. The work of such authors as Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida in particular have had enormous impact across the disciplinary fields of literary studies, feminism, postcolonialism, and anthropology, and has led to the theoretical development of arguments which overturn or 'de-centre' privileged positions, through a correspondent recuperation of those relegated to marginal or peripheral positions. 6 stakes of power and its brokerage, for clearly this is not so. However, it remains an oversimplification to suggest that the effects of western discourses are total, in the disavowal of human agitation as transformative. Foucault's methodological strategy 'genealogy' is adopted herein as a means to examine the nature and agency of the specific Aboriginal artworks under discussion. Through genealogical research it is possible to uncover the discursive and arbitrary means by which histories (discourses) are made, propagated and maintained (Dreyfus and Rabinow 1982: 108). Genealogical research concurrently enables the recovery of subjugated or buried knowledges, (such as those Aboriginal) which Foucault suggests, 'allows us to establish a historical knowledge of struggles and to make use of this knowledge tactically today' (Foucualt 1980:83).

The use of western paradigms of theory demands a cautious approach, for whilst such frameworks are useful in critical assessment of the macro-organisation of industrial society, they may prove to be blunt instruments with which to address the experience of non-western, non-industrialised cultures. Nevertheless, postmodern approaches within feminism, postcolonial studies, semiotics and psychoanalytic theory, among others, have allowed considerable advances in social and political readings of art (Preziosi 1989: 166). The analytic focus has shifted substantively; no longer do form, content, and the means of production provide the parameters of critical inquiry. Questions are now asked of the context in which art appears; how does it circulate, and to whom and for whom does it speak? With the enlistment of such concerns, it can be seen that the politics of representation have become key to identifying and evaluating political art (Foster 1985:143-144). Aborigines, long politicised subjects in representation, are now subjects who 'talk back' (Hooks 1990) by seeking to create and control their own representations (see Langton 1993). Under this shift in discursive conditions, Aboriginal art comes out from the bunker of the ethnographic to be read as politicised in context, motivation, intent and circulation. Aboriginal art is proudly proclaimed as the site of representation, and as that which nurtures and asserts cultural difference. It is the voice of alterity speaking from within and across the incommensurable divide. 7 In assessing the agency of Aboriginal art in its cross-cultural circulation, the issue of commodification and appropriation of meaning has been addressed firstly through

6 use of a semiological perspective • Baudrillard is one author to have explored this perspective in terms of the 'collapse' of the sign' (1981), theorising how appropriation of meaning is an inevitable process in the marketplace and through the mass media, making resistance to dominant discourses and domains of power impossible. Fry and Willis (1989a, 1989b) borrow from Baudrillard (1981) and Clastres (1988) to conclude that for Aboriginal art, sign appropriation is deliberate and serves the larger purposes of ethnocide. Once again Aborigines are positioned as victims.

In a contrary use of the semiological perspective these views are contested. The works of postcolonial scholars and anthropologists, Foster, Bhabha, Clifford, Hall, Muecke and Thomas, document and analyse varying strategies of indigenous resistance, including acts of counter-appropriation. A poststructural phenomenological perspective is introduced as a means to discuss the levels at which the sign is unable to be directly controlled by either author or would be appropriators. Artworks are shown to have meaning in reference to temporal, spatial and specific audience coordinates. This quality is expressed as resonance, and is discussed through example in Chapters Three, Five and Six.

The works of anthropologists have been used extensively herein to support claims as to the political nature of Aboriginal art within Aboriginal communities. The use of anthropological material is however a double-edged sword. Whilst it provides inroads to increased understanding, it is also a reminder of the power of the imperial culture to contain and identify its Other (see Fry and Willis 1989:4-12; Clifford

6 Following the early work of Linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1978), the Semiological perspective has been developed by many authors, including notably Roland Barthes (1973), and Jean Baudrillard ( 1981). 8

7 1988; Marrie 1987:17-20) • Hence, despite the richness of available anthropological research and theorisation of Aboriginal art and cultural practices, there is little evidence to suggest this material has been effectively integrated within the framework of Australian Art History. This situation has subsequently resulted in misrepresentations or overly simplified appraisals of Aboriginal art.

Of recent times anthropology has lost much of its association with the forces of colonialism. This seems due, in no small way to anthropologists who have lead the fray with critiques of their own disciplinary area (Clifford and Marcus 1986; Michaels 1987a). Whilst anthropologists still seek to document what has been, they appear to be also keen observers of cultures in transition, impacts of contact, indigenous resistance to domination. Their work is assisting the process of documentation of Aboriginal cultural practices for practical purposes within communities, upholding the continuum of knowledge, and generating interest among young Aboriginal people. Anthropological texts, in particular, the various works of Eric Michaels, Howard Morphy, Nicholas Thomas and Annette Hamiliton, in their cross-disciplinary approaches, have provided a rich resource base and excellent theoretical starting points for the direction of this thesis.

Case Studies

The Bicentenary year of European settlement, 1988, was a rubicon year for relations between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians. Therefore it will be posed as a backdrop to discuss specific agencies of Aboriginal art. Three case studies of Aboriginal artpieces made in response to European celebrations have been selected for discussion: The Barunga Statement, the Tjukurrpa Mosaic and the Aboriginal Memorial. Having originated in remote communities, these works are now all situated permanently in the national capital, Canberra, where their positioning is

7 Fry and Willis (1989:4-12; 1989:108-164), Michaels (1988:59-73) and Marrie (Praxis 17 1987: 17-20) have made substantial comment on the involvement of white anthropologists, advisers to Aboriginal communities and art critics, with regard to lessening the interference of non-Aborigines in Aboriginal affairs. 9 noticeably, politically strategic. Like the Rangga Memorial of Elcho Island and the

8 Yirrkala Bark Petitions before them , all are examples of the integration of traditional Aboriginal discourses and iconographic forms with formats meaningful to the European. To this end, all three artpieces have been produced consciously as political stratagems. Their purpose has been to effect political ends not only at the highest level of governing office in Australia but also among the populace.

The case studies are confined to artwork from centres within Central Australia and Arnhem Land. Where relevant, background or ancillary information specific to the communities from which the art has come is provided, necessarily reflecting the diversity of cultural practices, ceremonies and form and use of objects across Aboriginal Australia. Therefore statements made herein with regard to Aboriginal people, their cultural practices or forms, should be read in their specific context, and not as pertaining to all Australian Aboriginal communities; nevertheless some general application might be assumed herein.

Qualitative research in the form of taped and transcribed interviews were conducted with relevant individuals in the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales. Each interviewee was chosen on the grounds of their substantial personal and professional interest in Aboriginal culture and their specific knowledge with regard to the case studies. Selected quotes have been included throughout the body of the text in support of the arguments herein. Where practicable those interviewed were offered the opportunity to read their interview transcripts for further comment or clarification. Unfortunately, the number of sensitive issues raised and discussed in interview led to a degree of self censorship, whereby some interviewees declined in part, permission to quote or attribute their comments. Thus some very lively observations have not been included in the final text. Likewise, where quotes could

8 See Chapter Three, Section 3 .1. for brief descriptions of Elcho Island Rangga Memorial and the Yirrkala Bark Petition. 10 not be substantiated by other authoritative commentators or pointed evidence, they

9 too were not used •

Thesis Outline

Chapter One attempts to contextualise Aboriginal art production in terms of the defining system of Aboriginal belief, Tjukurrpa. Art is positioned as central to the maintenance of Tjukurrpa, and therefore also ideology and social control. Located thus the production and form of Aboriginal art is considered political. Chapter Two uses a Foucauldian framework to position Aborigines as resistant to the domination and subject producing discourses of the settler-culture. Aboriginal resistant behaviour is identified as counter-narrative, whereupon Aborigines access their own 'local knowledges' as a means to both refuse and subvert settler-culture discourses. These are examined under the broad categories of 1) Mobilising Culture, and 2) Incorporation and Appropriation of settler-culture forms.

Having established the means by which Aborigines are resistant, Chapter Three offers a detailed examination of the use values of Aboriginal art in political dialogue with the settler culture, highlighting traditional practices and concepts such as reciprocity which support its use in this way. In its circulation, Aboriginal art is shown to risk appropriation, and therefore loss of meaning and dialogue. Counter­ appropriation and the tactical mobilising of the wondrous and incommensurable are briefly exampled as two means by which appropriation is deferred and in some instances denied. Finally, resonance is introduced as interactive experience between art and audience, which ensures a life for the artwork independent of any attempts of appropriation.

9 It should be noted that many of these individuals (including artists, arts advisers, curators, collectors, historians and anthropologists) whilst without a substantial body of published work, have been influential in setting the agenda of public discussion and also in encouraging considerable critical and scholarly appraisal, purchase and exhibition of Aboriginal art works. They include: Margie West, Aboriginal Art Curator, Museums and Galleries of the Northern Territory, Djon Mundine, in his dual roles as adviser to the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and arts adviser to Ramingining Arts, Steve Fox, Arts Adviser Yirrkala, Chips Mackinolty, past arts adviser for the Mutitjulu Communities, Mimi Arts and Crafts, past Communication and Media Liaison Officer at the Northern Lands Council. 11 Chapters Four, Five and Six provide case studies through which to examine the major themes which have arisen in the earlier chapters. The Chapter Four case study, the Barunga Statement, precedes discussion on the Aboriginal Memorial and Tjukurrpa Mosaic, because it evidences the value amongst other strategies, of negotiating mammoth social change at the highest levels of political office. Chapters Five and Six follow with discussion of the Tjukurrpa Mosaic and the Aboriginal Memorial. These works do not appear foremost as artworks, but as iconic representations. They differ somewhat from the Barunga Statement in the audiences they attempt to address, and in the degree to which they resonate in the national consciousness. In conclusion, Chapter Seven, is both summation and evaluation of the levels of success that has been reached by Aborigines from a recognised position of alterity, where art has been used in order to initiate and achieve political dialogue with the settler-culture. 12 CHAPTER 1 THE POLITICAL CONTEXT OF ABORIGINAL ART

1.1 The Role of Culture in Political Struggle

Writing over three decades ago of the battle to decolonise North Africa, Franz Fanon positioned culture to be 'at the very heart of the struggle for freedom' (1963 [1961]: 188). Culture, and not money or guns is attributed this crucial position because its forms of language, art, beliefs and custom are the basis for both social cohesion and social differentiation. Without the opportunity to continue to practice culture, it might be argued the integrity of discrete societies are at risk. This position is supported in the Australian context by a body of literature which suggests that where political control was gained by coloniser forces, it was through an active programme of destruction and repression of indigenous cultural forms and practices (Rowley 1972; Reynolds 1981; Attwood 1989). Attempts were made to replace/displace traditional beliefs and practices with those of the coloniser, and thus it might be said diminish the means by which indigenous people held firm their traditional networks and mechanisms of political and social control.

It follows, the survival of invaded or colonised peoples has been reliant upon their ability to resist 'cultural invasion', or the imposition of the colonisers' world perspectives and values (Freire 1970: 150) in order that they might persist as culturally distinct, autonomous peoples. Aboriginal 'persistence' 1 has relied upon a strong sense of group identity, and cultural reproduction, recognisably separate from the coloniser-culture. In this case the very act of cultural continuance, in the face of colonising forces of assimilation, subsumption or erosion becomes coterminous to an act of resistance. Cultural resistance as the janus face to cultural persistence, can be recognised as the strategic play of opposition, adaptation, integration and ongoing cultural difference, in the determination to speak out and for the self.

1 Keeffe's (1992) use of the term 'persistence' is adopted here to reflect cultural continuance. 13 The suitability of Aboriginal culture (art) as a tool in political dialogue and struggle may be further understood and evaluated by the positive profile it has achieved within non-Aboriginal society over the past twenty years. Although this thesis will not engage in discussion upon Aboriginal art within the art marketplace in any depth, it is essential that the discursive roles it has played in the validation of Aboriginal culture in the wider Australian community be acknowledged. The rhetoric which surrounds contemporary Aboriginal art production makes various claims for it, including: a factor in cultural survival, as therapy (Wells 1982:57-61); assisting Aboriginal communities adjust to altered political and economic circumstances, wrought by colonisation (Morphy 1980:80-82); a tool of reconciliation, reflecting positive and changed relations between Aborigines and non­ Aborigines (cf. Nicolls 1993:706). These roles claimed for Aboriginal art may be understood as firmly grounding it in the realm of the political.

1.2 Categorising Political Art

There is no simple point of definition for the term 'political' in relation to art. From the Frankfurt School theorists (Benjamin, Adorno) through Semiological perspectives (such as offered by Barthes and Baudrillard), to Hal Foster writing 2 today, this relationship appears to have been increasingly problematised • Therefore it may be taken for granted herein that political art does not merely refer to a particular kind of representation of the subject, or aesthetic style (Clark 1982:250- 251). As Hal Foster argues in Recodings - Art. Spectacle and Cultural Politics, art is political in 'its critique of social representations' (gender positioning, ethnic stereotyping) (Foster 1985:141). Contingent with an acceptance of art's political character, is an understanding of art's political agency; now largely read comparatively in terms of its ideologic role and purpose, the processes and routes of circulation and codes of consumption (1985:143).

2 Technological change, the effects of globalisation and mass consumerism have been influential in bringing about enormous changes to debates with regard to the intention and function of art. 14 The following will briefly concentrate upon categorisations of political art to be found in the writings of Theodor Adorno and Hal Foster. Adorno considers two types of political art, each having differing results; 'committed art' and 'autonomous art' (in Zuidervaart 1991 :36-37). 'Committed' political art seeks to change fundamental political attitudes but according to Adorno, is reduced or fails in its intended course of action, because it is easily trivialised, co-opted and thus undermined. In contradistinction, 'autonomous art' may inadvertently succeed in creating change without necessarily having such aspirations, because it does not demand an ideological position be ingested, but compels attitudinal change. Adorno concludes his difficult arguments with the claim 'politics has migrated into autonomous works of art', by which is meant, to art has 'fallen the burden of wordlessly asserting what is barred to politics.' (1991:37).

Foster's work links with that of Adorno, where he discusses the relative agency of 'presentational art' and 'art with a politic' (Foster 1985:153-155). Art which presents itself in contrast or relief from other ideologies which oppose or differ from it, is understood as art of dissent, opposition or confrontation, and in Foster's typology is 'presentational' political art. Such art attempts to represent the collective beliefs or experience of a group, and further, idealises it as a 'truthful' political position (1985:154-155). Foster critiques this kind of political art, as ideologically rhetorical and therefore limited and in effect propaganda. This is the point at which 'politics is thus reduced to ethics - to idolatry or iconoclasm - and art to ideology pure and simple, not its critique' (1985:155). Foster's second conceptual category of political art, 'art with a politic' is unfortunately under-developed by its author; however this term might be understood as referent to art which is (con)textually produced. Its political nature and agency relies not on form or ideological content, but like Adorno's 'autonomous art' relies upon its capacity to resonate across the temporal and spatial field, or social totality (1985:155).

Much of contemporary Aboriginal art may be identified using either Adorno's or Foster's typologies of 'committed' or 'presentational' art; this appears to be the case with the volume of 'issue' or 'statement' based artwork that has emanated from the 15 urban centres. Such artworks are usually topical, the result of artists responding to particular social, political or economic conditions and issues, such as racism, land rights or deaths in police custody. Their political agency is apparent where the form and subject matter arouses or challenges the interest of their audience to take action

3 or where it attempts to galvanise a shift in attitude • Although deserving of further investigation, Aboriginal 'committed' or 'presentational art' as produced in the metropolitan centres, will not be discussed in any depth. The current study is instead concerned with select pieces from tradition-based artists, whose work, because of its abstractions, is usually relegated to categories such as the apolitical, decorative or religious. The political nature and agency of this work will be examined within the framework of Foster's theory of 'art with a politic', being art capable of ongoing resonating political power, not bound by ideological restrictive positions or topicality. In reaching an understanding of the political nature and agency of Aboriginal art, it is first important to establish its specific social context. For it is only in the social field that art can act as a conduit of that which is meaningful and purposeful, and as a consequence be deemed 'political'.

1. 3 Tjukun:pa as Context

Tjukurrpa, or Dreaming4 is the encompassing cosmology of Aborigines, involving past and present, lore and law. Its genesis is considered to be the 'time' when world creative figures also known as 'ancestors', roamed the land creating all

3 There are other emergent forms of Aboriginal political art which do not easily 'fit' the categories espoused by Foster or Adorno. Artists such as Trevor Nickolls, Tracy Moffat, Gordon Bennett and Judy Watson all produce artworks which are in the Western art tradition of personal enquiry, albeit as cultural texts the audience cannot but read them in terms of the larger social conditions of ongoing colonisation, oppression, poverty etc. The work of these artists and others is ideologically informed but also displays a complex of ideas and critical perspectives in tune with postmodern themes, as in the fracturing of absolutes, culture and identity.

4 The word 'Tjukurrpa' is used here and elsewhere in this thesis interchangeably with the commonly used English word 'Dreaming'. Tjukurrpa is used by Pitjantjatjara, Warlpiri and Pintupi people in Central Australia. Alternate words for 'Dreaming' in use across Australia are given by Berndt and Berndt (1988:229-230). 16 natural forms and life (Maddock 1982:105-120; Berndt and Berndt 1988:229-230)5• Ancestral forces remain active into the present through the specific attribution of totems to individuals at conception and birth, and through relatedness to geography and familial descent (see Spencer and Gillen 1968; Munn 1970; Berndt and Berndt 1988). Together with the totemic (ancestral) relationship, comes obligation to enact the ceremonies and traditions of Tjukurrpa ancestors using ritualised performance, sacred song, powerful words and application of totemic designs or symbols. Through belief and practice, world order and social relationships may be reconfirmed, illuminated and conveyed, allowing Tjukurrpa to remain relevant and strong (Michaels 1987:29).

A relationship of propinquity exists between levels of sacred knowledge (Tjukurrpa) and individual political power. This led anthropologist Eric Michaels to suggest Aboriginal society functions as an 'information economy', whereupon knowledge is wealth (Michaels 1984). In the 'information economy' knowledge is subdivided into that which is generally available or public, and that which is restricted (secret); albeit, these categories are not always fixed (Berndt 1982:31). Most prized of all is ritual or ceremonial knowledge based in and upon Tjukurrpa, commonly referred to as that which is sacred. Sacred knowledge is believed to be powerful in its own right; therefore, a correspondent demand exists that it be carefully managed. Where sacred knowledge is deemed most powerful, 'secrecy' is employed as a protective mechanism, to shield vulnerable individuals vis-a-vis the power of the sacred object, word, song or design (Morphy 1991:95; see also Spencer and Gillen 1968:132-136). But secrecy has other purposes too, relating to the accrual and maintenance of political power in Aboriginal society. Secrecy facilitates access for some (initiated males) to cultural power through acquired knowledge, and exclusion for others (usually non initiates, women and children) through ignorance (Berndt and Berndt 1982:295). Morphy offers a more radical proposition, believing secrecy to be strategically managed through an illusory 'mask' of knowledge, whereby 'the mask

5 Although the period known as the 'Dreaming' is relegated to the past, there appears to be no specific time nor linear historicity attached to Dreaming events. In this sense Eric Michaels (1984:10) suggests the ancestors and accounts of their actions might be treated as 'quasi-historical'. 17 of secrecy is an illusion and a tease; knowledge slips out from behind its locked door into the public arena and back again' (Morphy 1991 :96). This can perhaps be understood in particular reference to the access of women to male sacred

6 knowledge • Women may not be officially party to 'men's business', but it is likely they have accrued substantial amounts of information with regards to it. Indeed for older women, there is perhaps a pretence of secrecy, rather than lack of knowledge

7 (Maddock 1981) •

The acquisition of secret-sacred knowledge involves a long path of learning which begins for most (males) at puberty with the first rites of initiation, but may go on for many years. As the recognised guardians of sacred material and knowledge, ritually senior men are responsible for passing knowledge on, making sure it has been 'earned', through submission and acts involving pain and fortitude (Myers 1982: 100). Novices first learn the stories and symbols, which are suitable for public knowledge, relating to their totem and moiety (see Morphy 1991:61 re Yolngu; Taylor 1987:25 re Kunwinkju). As individuals go through the initiation process and into adulthood proving their willingness, worth and responsibility, they are increasingly given more opportunities to learn 'deeper' levels of meaning attached to words, songs, objects and designs. Notwithstanding the lengthy and arduous process of initiation, it may be many years before individuals achieve a near consummate knowledge of Tjukurrpa, and are able to enjoy the revered position of an 'elder' in Aboriginal society. Consequently, to hold or be awarded sacred knowledge is prestigious, operating for individuals, Michaels suggests as 'capital of a particular

6 Both men and women are ritually involved with the sacred, albeit at differing levels of interaction. Men however are considered to have primacy of knowledge, and the more encompassing and important of ceremonies and responsibilities with regard to the sacred. Berndt and Berndt suggest the perception of male primacy with regards to the sacred may be a problem with western gender biased anthropological interpretation (1988:296-7). They posit a radical view in suggesting that women were 'considered innately sacred and did not require ... ritualised enhancement', this belief is based in the observation that many of the major procreative ancestral figures are female. Despite the gender of the ancestral figures, males in the main control and enact these rituals. A belief more commonly shared is that of men and women having complementary 'mytho-ritual cycles' (Munn 1986:213; Berndt and Berndt 1988:297; Morphy 1991:287).

7 The knowledge held by women in this regard may be recognised and drawn upon on occasions when senior men die, and the knowledge gap needs to be filled (Kimber in Charlesworth et al. 1990:16). 18 sort', both within specific communities, and in ceremonial exchanges where such 'capital' is recognised as being of pre-eminent value (Michaels 1984:3; see also Kimber in Charlesworth et al. 1990:21). Some individuals never acquire levels of knowledge beyond that publicly available, and so in 'knowledge' remain at the level of a child. An indication of the reduced status such individuals have in Aboriginal society is in the telling Pitjantjatjara phrase for males in this category, being 'Wiya Wati', translated as 'not a man' (Kimber p.c. 30 July 1990). Generally Europeans are also relegated to this grouping, a reflection of their lack of status and ignorance with regard to ritual matters.

1.4 Art and Tjukun:pa

As with the acquirement of treasured sacred knowledge in Aboriginal society, so too the ability to paint sacred imagery reflects the position of artists in Aboriginal society as one of authority in ritual matters and social life (Berndt 1964; Sutton 1989; Morphy 1991). Instruction with regard to Aboriginal artistic systems starts early in life with adults familiarising children with the lexicon of culturally standardised iconographic forms via their use in both instructional and playful contexts, where for example, simple illustrated symbols might function as mnemonic

8 supplements to conversation (Munn 1986:143; see also Taylor 1987) • The learning of ancestral designs happens upon another stage as part of the ongoing process of initiation (Morphy 1991:61). As one becomes more senior through increased knowledge and involvement in ceremony, the complexity of Tjukurrpa and familiarity with its symbolic lexicon is opened up. At this point, artists are able to 9 go beyond secular depictions to the sacred or secret-sacred •

8 Nancy Muon's work refers specifically to Warlpiri people, although Luke Taylor's 1987 work (unpublished Ph.D.) confirms a similar learning process with regard to the Kunwinkju of Arnhem Land.

9 It is apparent from the vast number of Aboriginal paintings in the marketplace, that many Aborigines in their use of 'culturally standardised' iconographic forms have adopted the mantle of 'artist'. Inevitably though, it is skill level and deep levels of knowledge related to Tjukurrpa and its representative forms which give some individuals a magnified artist status, in both the context of their own communities and in the European marketplace (see Sutton 1989; Charlesworth et al. 1990; Morphy 1991). 19 The reproduction of Aboriginal sacred forms and imagery is 'basically utilitarian, designed to have some direct or indirect purpose or effect' , (Berndt and Berndt 1988:411,444), such as retaining cosmological balance, ensuring environmental fecundity, facilitating evidence of social (status) and political power, and also as proof of land ownership (see Berndt 1964; Berndt and Berndt 1988; Taylor 1987:31; Munn 1986: 184,214). In being the distillation and invocation of sacred law and lore (Tjukurrpa), the sacred symbols and forms within Aboriginal art are believed to be

10 intrinsically powerful requiring a careful stewardship • In tum Aboriginal knowledge of the Tjukurrpa and faithfulness in its sacred power facilitates and legitimates the use of paintings ?r emblematic objects as agents of power in their

11 circulation • In this sense belief ;r intrinsic power is essential to its efficacy.

1.5 Aboriginal Art. Ideology and Politics

In illuminating and reproducing Tjukurrpa, artists are helping to ensure the continuity of cultural and political institutions. As Howard Morphy observes Aboriginal art provides 'a way of socializing people into a particular world view in which certain themes become meaningful, in which certain values are created, and 12 by which certain things can be done' (Morphy 1991:293) • This comment, reflecting in part an Althussarian conception of ideology 13 suggests Aboriginal art corresponds to sociologist Janet Wolff's all encompassing dictate, 'art is clearly an

10 Nancy Munn (1970) outlines the process of consubstantiation or embodiment of ancestral or totemic figures with created artefacts.

11 A myriad of examples exist to this effect, although near all are to be found within the ritual context. For example, in traditional Aboriginal communities ritual is enhanced with the depiction of powerful ancestral designs and/or the use of object emblems as with bull roarers, tjurunga boards, rangga, mortuary poles (Berndt and Berndt 1988; Sutton 1988; Morphy 1991).

12 Howard Morphy's comment concerns Yolngu people of North East Arnhem Land, but is used here as a general principle for Aboriginal art.

13 Althussar's conception of ideology proposes ideology to be the social reproduction of values, attitudes and skills, through social and political institutions, in order to create willing subjects to fulfil the material requirements of society. The ideological structure is held together through 'imaginary relations of individuals to their real conditions of existence' (Althussar in Grosz 1989:14). In contradistinction specific ideologies are given as 'representations of specific historico-political values, values which serve dominant interests' (albeit for Althussar these ideologies were always class positions) (Grosz, 1989:14). 20 ideological activity and ideological product' (Wolff 1981:55).

The idea that art is both ideological activity and product is widely supported. Fredric Jameson posits that artefacts which signify difference across cultures may in use be 'strategic technologies' that allow political power to be orchestrated (Jameson 1981 :79-81). Most interesting to contemplate is Tony Bennett's idea that the 'aesthetic act' is a 'practice of signification', which produces a particular consciousness in the practitioner, as say with specific religious observances such as communion (Bennett 1979:113). In the creation of Aboriginal art, similar levels of ideologic practices of signification may be witnessed where artists and helpers sing and/or chant incantations, their purpose being to invoke ancestral powers and in so doing invest them within the artwork. Where the paintings are produced for ceremonial purposes, particularly those upon the body or ground, the sacred designs are thought to recreate ancestral events referred to within the paintings (Morphy 1991:102), and thus increase the efficacy of the ceremony. These artworks and designs which are at all times purposeful, reverential and embodiment of the sacred

14 might be noted in Levi-Strauss's terms to be 'cooked' ; displaying 'complex symbolic and material articulations of the imaginative and ideological structures of the society that produced them' (Greenblatt 1990: 169).

Given the 'cooked' nature of Aboriginal art, ideology or sacred power specific to Aboriginal communities is largely imperceptible and unassimilable to non-initiates or those with limited understanding or involvement with Aboriginal culture. The reasons for this are varied, relating principally to ignorance of Aboriginal belief systems and the codification of signs, existing prohibitions with regard to sacred imagery, and it might be argued, the degree of obscuration that occurs once ideology has been 're-worked' in aesthetic form (see Woolf 1981 :65). The degree to which ideology is obscured presents a useful contradiction, whereby the immediate intent of the artwork is hidden, yet allows the artwork to function positively in Foster's

14 In Claude Levi-Strauss' writings upon myth he introduced the empirical categories of the raw and the cooked, the fresh and the decayed, the moistened and the burned, as perhaps useful 'conceptual tools with which to elaborate abstract ideas and combine them in the form of propositions' (Levi-Strauss, The Raw and the Cooked, 1970:1). 21 terms as 'art with a politic' (Foster 1985:155). Thus, accessing the artist's intention or the artwork's meaning must be approached via a more circuitous route. This necessitates critical observation and analysis of the art not only in its immediate presentation, but through an engagment with 'their logic of construction and the particular aesthetic codes involved in their formation' (Woolf 1981 :65), and also observation over the period of the artwork's long term circulation.

This approach to analysing 'art with a politic' may be illustrated in the case of Arremte artist, Albert Namatjira, who was tutored by non-Aboriginal artist Rex Batterbee in the Watercolourist tradition. Although Namatjira's works achieved high popular appeal in his lifetime, it was demeaned and denied status by those with the power to confer it in the world of museum curators, art historians and critics 15 (Thomas 1986:22-24; 1992:209-210) • His was considered< Chocolate Box, art, it being an__anathema for Aborigines to adopt or adapt the techniques and style of the

European16 • The rediscovery and re-evaluation of Namatjira's work in the mid- 198o's tells quite a different story. By returning to accounts first offered by anthropologist T.G.H. Strehlow in 1956, art historians have undertaken a structural decoding of Namatjira's paintings to reveal a range of sub-textual meanings and purposes to his work (Bum and Stephen 1986, 1992; Rowse 1992). This has been possible not only through a return to Namatjira's work on formal or aesthetic terms, but rather through a genealogical analysis of the specifics of cultural obligations and historical period in which the work appeared and was judged. Given then a variety of discursive factors, none the least being the mission context in which Namatjira lived, where traditional practices were forcibly discouraged (Jones 1992), Namatjira's paintings in their conveyance of totemic landscapes are not only understood as ideological but also as political communiques with intention to

15 The Art Gallery of South Australia was the first and only State gallery to purchase (1937) and have a Namatjira in their collection for many years. See also Morphy (1992/1993) who suggests State galleries did not collect Aboriginal art because they deemed it to be the responsibility of the ethnographic museums.

16 cf. Daniel Thomas reports the 'art world' to be 'quite kindly disposed' towards Namaatjira's art prior to his departure from Hermannsburg in 1951; from this time he was perceived as a 'wanderer between two worlds' (Thomas 1986:22). 22 challenge the prohibitions enforced in the mission environment. It is now possible to read Namatjira's work as a 'counter-colonial strategy', one of 'rapprochement as well as resistance' (Bum and Stephen 1991:277-279). This strategic re-reading of Namatjira and his work can be extended to also include the work of other Aboriginal artists who continue to paint their Dreamings as self conscious and politicised presentations of the self.

While it is possible through genealogical analysis to individually identify examples of the intentionally political and subversive within Aboriginal art, it is the wider social context in which Aborigines produce~ which may result in an inevitable politicising of their work. Without collapsing either the distinctions and differential effects of race or class into each other Fredric Jameson's observation is useful here, whereby the position of the marginalised subject is incommensurable to the positions of those who represent capital. The cultural artefacts of each grouping are placed as 'symbolic .. .in an essentially polemic and strategic ideological confrontation between classes' ( 1981 :85). French cultural theorists Gilles De leuze and Felix Guattari support similar views in their presentation of a three point model with which to identify and fathom the character of the cultural production of contemporary cultures

17 that suffer minority status (1990:59-60) • Their model asserts:

1) All art of the Minority is Political - this argument accepts that artwork of a marginalised group is political by virtue of the context of production.

2) Minority art is deterritorialised - this term describes the dilemma of the minority where their cultural productions of necessity use the forms of the dominating culture. To choose not to produce in these circumstances is believed to be a non-choice, simply their cultural survival, or sense of 'national consciousness' relies upon expression. They argue the minority by degrees impress upon the dominant cultural form their own styled expression.

17 By use of the term 'minority' Deleuze and Guattari do not imply the cultural form to be minor but rather, the culture and its forms have been marginalised by the dominant culture. Their specific example is the literature of Jewish writers, forced to write in German, the language of the dominant culture. 23 3) Art takes on collective value - here it is argued that art no longer speaks for the individual artist, but for the minority, this occurs whether or not representation is sanctioned by the larger group to which the individual belongs.

Using Deleuze and Guattari's framework, interesting correlations are to be found with the situation of Aboriginal artists, and will be discussed in Chapters Two and Three. Yet there is a larger warning to be heeded before any easy acceptance of their arguments might take place. Their model, Stephen Muecke suggests,

'romances' the position of the marginal culture~ as necessarily political or necessarily oppositional, whereby the utterances of the marginal are claimed to be the 'voice of truth', and the dominant or centre culture as 'decadent' (Muecke 1992: 190). Muecke begs a contrary position, whereby a range of transitive positionings might be held by dominant and marginal players, and where there need be no particular value or alignment of 'good' or 'bad' attached to centre or margin. This is not only because individual circumstances are subject to evolutionary shifts, but because it does not consider the proposition of the marginal subject achieving or having dominance in certain quarters. This position is crucial in recognising Aborigines as active in the power relationship with the coloniser culture, and will be argued in the following chapter with the use of Foucault's analysis upon power and resistance.

Taking into account the above discussion on the political in art, Aboriginal art is determined herein as political by virtue of the following: it imbues and/or represents an Aboriginal world view or ideologic position; it attempts to protect and promote this world view through orchestrated distribution; in the antagonisms of power it refers to, and the dialogic exchange it seeks within and exterior to the Aboriginal community. In this, Aboriginal art production is both witness and bearer of a continuing tradition which has survived the colonising process. These conceptualisations of the political are to be found in Aboriginal art, no more so in the urban centres than in tradition-based communities. 24 Having identified the political context in which Aborigines live and produce art, Chapter Two attempts to position Aborigines as actively and politically resistant to the settler culture's subject producing discourses. It will be followed in Chapter Three by a specific discussion upon the agency of Aboriginal art as a dialogic instrument. 25 CHAPTER2 'THEY KEEP TAKING OFF THEIR CLOTHES': Aboriginal Resistance

2.1 Introduction

'Attempts at civilising them encounter insuperable resistance. They keep taking off their clothes. To reason with them is to debate with the air'.

Referring here to early contact with Aborigines, Paul Carter's words from The Road to Botany Bay (1987:321), bring to life the genuine puzzlement of Europeans in their early interactions with Aborigines. What these words also foreground is an active refusal by Aborigines of the symbols (clothes) of European presence and control. As such they provide the following discussion with a potent metaphor for Aboriginal struggle and refusal of imposed subjectivities.

The purpose of this chapter is to present the relationship of Aborigine and non­ Aborigine as one which reflects ongoing power struggles. In so doing, it follows Foucault's reading that the greatest of human struggles is apparent in the fight against subjection and subjectivity (Foucault in Dreyfus and Rabinow 1983:212), in recognition that for Aborigines their struggle against subjection has dominated the period since colonisation. Discussion herein is limited to subjection based upon racial differentiation. This is not intended to discount the effects of other forms of subjectivi~ i.e. sexual or worker categorisations, but)( to simplify (albeit artificially) the framework of analysis applied to a difficult area of investigation. Foucault's conceptualisations upon the nature of power and the agency of discourse are used to briefly examine both the path by which Aborigines were created and maintained as subjects by the coloniser culture, and the active role played by Aborigines in their refusal of imposed subject identities. 26 2.2 Discursive Discourse and the Objectified Aborigine

The period of the European's early colonisation and exploration of Australia involved a quest for advancement of knowledge; yet paradoxically the European was unable to assimilate the new and wondrous before them, except through the matrix

1 of resemblance and non-resemblance to European land and culture • Aborigines were found to be non-literate, without clothes, developed agriculture or permanent housing, and devoid of legal institutions, culture, or history. On all counts, the indigene figured comparatively as a primitive and inferior culture (Donaldson and Donaldson 1985; Stratton 1989). Whilst it may be argued it was beyond the skills, insight and world view of early colonisers and explorers to engage with or accommodate notions fundamentally contrary to their own, this position does not provide significant rationale for the brutal excesses of European attempts to control Aborigines. A more thoughtful response is demanded to the question: Why was Aboriginal cultural difference read in negative terms?

While acknowledging that this most complex question might be approached from various ports, discussion herein will begin with a return to Sartre's phenomenological conceptualisation of Otherness, in refutation of solipsism, Being

2 and Nothingness (1956[1992]) • Sartre proposed that Others exist in relation to the self, as proof of the existence of the self. Never absent, Others create an ever present self consciousness, 'I need the Other in order to realise fully all the structures of my being' (1956:302). Because Others are outside of the self, they are perceived to be unknowable except through the perceptions of the self. The self consciousness created by the Other's presence creates for Sartre a sense of shame, which is perceived as somewhat threatening. This is because 'the Other is not only the one whom I see but the one who sees me' (1956:310). As a strategy of knowing and control of the threatening Other, the self represents Others in objectified terms

1 Michel Foucault's The Order of Things (1970) traces the shift in the assessment of other peoples and phenomena, from akin to different, post-17th century (1970:17-30).

2 It is noted that Sartre's work recognises the foundational meditations of philosophers Kant, Husserl, Hegel, and Heidegger. 27 (1956:306). In this process of understanding, the Other is contained and made subject to, and subject of, the defining self.

In recent decades this concept of Otherness has been developed beyond individual self/ other relations by those writing within contemporary philosophy, anthropology, psychoanalytic theory, feminism and postcolonial studies. These writings suggest Otherness to also be a feature of larger social relations across the boundaries of culture, gender and class. Otherness has entered current discourses on these subjects as a referent for the marginal and abject subject within a binary relationship characterised by opposition and an imbalance in power. In the coloniser discourses referred to herein, the defining self is the settler culture, and the Other is Aboriginal.

Aborigines have in part been sustained as abject Others, through the settler culture's ability to create, represent and project Aboriginal identity. Stuart Hall's definition of identity creation is useful here, 'identity is something never complete, always in process, and always constituted within, not outside representation' (Hall 1990:222). As a consequence of this process of identity creation, Aboriginal identity might be observed as being founded upon normative concepts and beliefs within Aboriginal society, integrated with representations that have been conferred by and in concert with the coloniser3. Understanding the logic and discursive process by which Aborigines might internalise abject representations of themselves, relies firstly upon the critical relationship of knowledge to power, and in the second instance, upon the centrality of specific discourses to subject formation, and thirdly, modalities of

4 control •

3 Traditionally, identity for Aborigines has been centred upon individual relationship to land and associated totemic 'Dreaming' figures and with the relationships to kin and clan which bind and obligate people to each other (Berndt and Berndt 1988: 135).

4 The creation of marginal Others has been most ably demonstrated by Edward Said in his seminal work Orientalism (1978), where he utilised a Foucauldian approach to enunciate the discursive (albeit primarily literary and aesthetic) modes by which the West in the 19th century sought to maintain political, social and economic influence in the Middle East. Although criticised in part for his fetishistic treatment of Middle Eastern peoples, and the lack of recognition of resistance to Occidental influence (see Clifford 1988; Young 1990; Bhabha 1990}, Said's work has provided a working model for the textual analyses of discourses in culture specific contexts. 28 Knowledges, or 'discourses' in Michel Foucault's writings are understood as discursively produced, historically specific bodies of knowledge which are embodied in disciplinary fields and social institutions, and constituted through the network of

5 interrelations between them • As these know ledges are partial and partisan, they are not 'truths', although this does not discount their functional value. In their placement within disciplinary fields and institutions, discourses have a productive capacity, whereby the logic of their particular narratives authorise meaning, 'truth' and rationale, which in tum enables and constrains behaviour. Discourses come to appear dominant, or have dominant status in specific epochs or amongst particular groups where they have been privileged in their textualisation and institutionalisation, and where other knowledges have been concurrently subjugated. This privilege may be relative, arbitrary, a result of alignment with existing beliefs or bodies holding power, or as a result of their functional application (Foucault 1980; Dreyfus and Rabinow 1982).

A sampling of textual accounts of the colonial period offers insight to the currency that discourses had last century in the production of Aboriginal subjects, and which in part continue to have their effects. Charles Darwin's opus On the Origin of the Species, published in 1859, has been found to have particularly influenced many ethnographic reports. In 1867, anthropologist Pitt Rivers found Aborigines to be 'living representatives of our common ancestors'. By 1901 little change in opinion had occurred, evident where Baldwin Spencer posits, 'Aborigines may be regarded as a relic of the early childhood of mankind left stranded .. .in a low condition of savagery' (in Donaldson and Donaldson 1985:69). Drawing from Psychoanalytic theor)) it has been argued that the creation of Others as primitives in colonised society reflects the dual axioms of ethnocentric European narcissism, where the West believes in its own absolute cultural superiority (Clastres 1988:53), whilst

6 displaying a repugnance toward non-Western cultures (Snead 1990:235) •

5 Discourse was first explored by Foucault in The Order of Things (1970) and further theorised in The Archaeology of Knowledge (1972). Throughout the body of Foucault's work he examined discourse through the specifics of institutions, disciplinary fields and history.

6 Snead's argument in this regard is based upon the work of both Freud and Nietzsche. 29 Contradictory discourses appear to underlie and support colonial perceptions; on the one hand, Enlightenment ideals of altruism, civilisation and progress (see Lively 1967), and on the other, European imperialism driven by imperatives to achieve ruling and economic supremacy. Enlightenment discourses position the European as having set sail to discover the new world emboldened with 'hope and expectation that light could be spread from the philosophes outward' (Lively 1967:xv). Recent critical appraisals have displaced the dominance of such rhetoricisms, revealing how Enlightenment ideals were subsumed by, or operated in tandem with the expansionist practices of imperial colonialism (Greenblatt 1991a). As Bhabha and Spivak have both suggested, imperialism was 'inevitably also a subject constituting project', as a means to 'tum the native into a proletarian' in order to create and maintain a ready labour supply (Young 1991:159; Bhabha 1990:75). Subsequently, acting within these sets of discourses, the European naturalised and rationalised the annexation and exploitation of the land mass of Australia, to the detriment of the indigene.

Actual and continuing coloniser control over the indigene necessitates coloniser discourses be inculcated in the indigene, in order that Aborigines might become in Foucault's terms 'docile bodies', available to be 'subjected, used, transformed, and

7 improved' (Foucault 1984:180-182) • Foucault observes docility to not be a static state, once and forever achieved; rather it is requiring of constant supervised attention (1984:180-182). Deploying Bentham's architectural, model of the 'panopticon' as a metaphor for incarcerating modalities of power, Foucault revealed a key strategic technology by which discipline and subjection may be insidiously achieved over individual bodies (1984:206-213). The panoptic mode of control and regulation involves a discursive orchestration of governing administrative and instructive mechanisms, which create the appearance of a totalising system of surveillance, whereby subjects appear to be knowable and visible (Bhabha 1990:76). Governing regulatory and administrative bodies such as the judiciary, policing, welfare and education systems become administers of discourses, as well as

7 Whilst Foucault generally reserved the term 'docile bodies' for the corporeal body, it is useful in understanding the tactical means by which the settler culture has attempted to control Aboriginal people. 30 surveillance agents, witness to recalcitrance and executors of discipline. Being under constant surveillance, and having internalised governing discourses, docile bodies come to conceptualise power as somehow outside of the self, always victorious, impenetrable, and unable to be appropriated. The panoptic effect might be judged disastrous for Aboriginal people, where it maintains them in the position of powerlessness and marginal subject of the coloniser culture.

2.3 Access to Power: 'Where there is power. there is resistance'

The bleakness suggested by Foucault's description of how power over subjects might be orchestrated is countered by his larger thesis on the relative nature of both power and discourse. Foucault advises there should be 'no built-in tendency to show power as being at once anonymous and always victorious' (Foucault 1980: 163); indeed there are many possibilities for 'transgression and resistance' (McHoul and Grace 1993: 15). It is the case however that these possibilities may only be approached via a path which forsakes repressive and centralist notions of power, understood by Foucault to be 'juridico-discursive' (Foucault 1980:114-116; McHoul and Grace

8 1993:87-88) • In repressive and centralist theses of power, struggles are often considered to be lop-sided contests with strength pitted against weakness. Resistance by the 'weak' is positioned as likely to be crushed or at best synthesised. Adhering to such theses of power. Jean Baudrillard theorises how resistance by the weak or oppressed is ultimately futil~ in the face of the 'total system' which incorporates and inverts to itself all resistance. Resistance, it is suggested) can only exist in appearance as 'anarchist gestures', and protest, as 'wildcat strikes and terrorism' (Baudrillard in Jameson 1981:91).

Foucault's challenge to the primacy of 'juridico-discursive' powers involves refuting the notion that power was pre-existent, observable either in sovereign/subject relationships, or was primarily evident in oppositional relationships with the institutions of the State or Capital. Overturning repressive and centralist

8 Foucault refers to Hegel, Freud and Reich as the antecedents of contemporary repressive theses of power (1980:89-90). 31 conceptualisations of power requires engagement with a 'new economy of power relations' (Foucault 1982:210-21). This 'new economy' of theorising power insists upon power's infinite and immanent properties and its relational nature across the social body. Power, according to Foucault exists only in action, its purpose being to attempt to modify or limit the actions of others (Foucault 1978; 1980:89-90; 1982:219-220).

As a relation of force, power relations are understood to be neither exhaustible, nor alienable; they presuppose a dynamic relationship between parties, of action or the possibility of action, reactions and interventions (Foucault in Dreyfus and Rabinow

9 1982:220) • Whilst power cannot be alienated, access to power (or control, authority, governance) may be enhanced or made available to individual bodies through one or more ways: the accumulation of resources such as wealth, status, and/or through strategic alignments, the tactical deployment of discourses and supporting technologies. The prospect for accessing power through the deployment of discourse arises from the foundational understanding that discourses are relative, multiple and competing, not set in stone. As Foucault has made clear, knowledge is neither absolute or stationary but is subject to evolutionary shifts and interventions.

' ... we must not imagine a world of discourse divided between accepted discourse and excluded discourse, or between the .dominant discourse and the dominated one; but as a multiplicity of discursive elements that can come into play in various strategies' (Foucault 1978:100).

In the above statement the contradiction inherent to discourse is identified, where it 'transmits and produces power; it reinforces it, but also undermines and exposes it, renders it fragile and makes it possible to thwart it (1978: 101). Hence in the

9 The belief that power is not the privilege of elite groupings such as the State, industrial capital or Euro-cultures but is accessed by all, is probably the most contentious of Foucault's claims for relational power. Foucault makes no concurrent denial of the effects of institutional power, rather, his claim suggests institutional power is not inviolable; it may be contested and resisted on various fronts, with varying modes and strengths (Foucault in Dreyfus and Rabinow 1982:213). 32 mobilisation of counter discourses, which intervene and disrupt the primacy of currently dominating discourses, there exists the possibility of resisting the position

10 of known subject •

The following section takes up Foucault's formulaic pronouncement 'where there is power there is resistance' (1978:95) to identify attempts by Aborigines to resist the coloniser's subject producing discourses. In doing so it identifies resistance as a power in counter to power (1980:96). Aboriginal resistance to imposed subjectivities might be read herein in Foucault's terms as an attempt to 'govern'. Governance in this instance does not refer to the creation of absolute rule over others; rather it seeks to 'structure the possible field of action of others' (Foucault in Dreyfus and Rabinow 1982:221). In so limiting the control of the coloniser culture over the self, Aboriginal autonomy might be achieved.

2.4 Aboriginal Resistance

Where it has been recognised, Aboriginal resistance to the coloniser presence has been overwhelmingly defined in terms of violent opposition to colonisation (i.e.

11 Rowley 1972 ; Reece 1974; Reynolds 1981; Curthoys 1983). Due to this confining definition of Aboriginal resistance it has been argued that the breadth of Aboriginal struggle has gone largely unrecognised in terms of the diversity, character, and will of Aboriginal actions (Keeffe 1992:76-77). Documentation of struggle in terms of physical combat has led to analyses which suggest resistance has been ineffectual, given the superior technology i.e. guns and horses available to the colonisers (Reynolds 1981: 18). The continued use and faith of Aborigines in customary power as a means to resist the coloniser has been similarly evaluated asx

10 The mobilising of beliefs counter to dominating coloniser discourses will be discussed as a strategy of Aboriginal resistance to subjectivity in Sections 2.5-2.9 of this Chapter.

11 C.D.Rowley writes, 'Australian historians have paid little attention to the Aboriginal groups' resistance to white settlement. We are not yet in any position to assess the full significance of what appears, from the records, as somewhat sporadic and periodic. Yet there is, in my own view and from detailed examination of evidence in one region, enough to describe it in some regions as a series of deliberate, if limited, guerilla skirmishes. (Aboriginal society lacked the type of organisation which makes possible a campaign of warfare).' (1972:5). 33

'an illusory reality' (Kolig 1982:29 cf. Stanner 1979:278-9), 'increasingly inoperable' in a colonised country (Fry and Willis 1989) and 'holding back the inevitable tide of progress' (see Kroeber in Maddock 1981: 162-172). Ironically, it appears that attempts at re-writing Aboriginal resistance are in part self-defeating, where they draw their analytic frameworks from repressive notions of power. In so doing, they concurrently suggest Aboriginal defeat to be inevitable. As Rowley writes to great melancholic effect, settler forces and colonial administration appeared to have defeated Aborigines; 'The only hope for the survival of the Aboriginal was some kind of agreed settlement to end hostilities, leaving at least some place where he could live' (1972: 116).

Recognition of the scope of Aboriginal resistance is made possible with a concurrent recognition of the ever-present power struggles between Aboriginal and non­ Aboriginal people. These power struggles have been particularly noticeable in recent times through_..tetJ:.the Royal Commission into Aboriginal deaths in police custody>< and Land Rights struggles. The tactics used in power struggles of cultural resistance are according to Foucault multi-variant in character and not necessarily recognisable (1978:92-102). Such tactics are described by Foucault as 'possible, necessary, improbable; others that are spontaneous, savage, solitary, concerted, rampant or violent; still others are quick to compromise, interested or sacrificial; by definition , they can only exist in the strategic field of power relations' (1978:96). They are not therefore predicated upon a simple inversion of power where the oppressed becomes the oppressor; neither do they seek a situation of constant enmity. They do not necessarily happen through the due processes of law, or within the public domain; they may not be unitary in delivery or bilateral in confrontation. Instead they bring about 'redistributions, homogenizations and convergences of power relations) (Foucault 1978:94). In summary, resistance may be recognised as a multiplicity of discursive struggles: neither necessarily oppositional, discrete or sequential, but alternately opportunistic, tactical, disruptive, interventionist force and strategy (Young 1990:87). 34 Although at times conjunctive, each resistance should be assessed as a 'special case' (1978:96), for as Minson has clarified in relation to Foucault's precepts, power does not have a general value but rather 'a particular value under any complex of conditions' (in Frow 1988:359), having ' ... the capacity to be either socially

1 productive or repressive (Foucault 1978:95). It should not therefore be assumed that the Foucauldian model of resistance would result in a reversal of fortune; it may be that resistances are indeed bloody and damaging in their enactment and results.

Foucault's analytic approach to analysis of power relations carries a caveat which stresses the importance of the specificity of investigations (1980: 145); 'Fixed universal meanings ... cannot be abstracted from history. Their meanings always take the forms defined for them by historically specific discourses' (Weedon 1987:108). The intention therefore is not to generalise with regard to resistance, but to investigate the nexus of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal power, with the use of Foucault's genealogical method (1980:83-84). This model gives recognition to particular, or local circumstances and actions; for it is in the specifics of each circumstance that 'particular regimes of power and knowledge' are uncovered (Foucault in Dreyfus and Rabinow 1983:211). Accordingly, the repositioning of Aboriginal people as actively, strategically resistant begins with the enunciation of their own practices of struggle, and active dialogue with the colonising culture. Notwithstanding commonalities with other colonised peoples, it may be argued that Aborigines have persisted with their own particular regimes of 'power and knowledge' and have struck their own specific set of antagonisms and replies.

The forms and incidence of Aboriginal resistant behaviour to European colonisation and progressive settlement are too numerous to quantify or document in this thesis. Instead the following will concentrate upon two major models of resistance which have come into play in the colonised era; categorised herein under the broad rubrics:

1) mobilising culture (the use of Aboriginal 'local' knowledges) and; 2) incorporation/appropriation of settler culture forms. 35 In practice, these modes of resistance operate as counter-narratives to the dominant settler-culture's controlling discourses. Mobilising culture in order to resist subjection involves Aborigines in the promotion and use of their own cultural forms and practices (divergent knowledges) in order to negotiate with the coloniser culture from a position of autonomy. Aborigines exhibit a pragmatic approach in the incorporation and appropriation of settler-culture forms. This approach need not be read as hastening assimilation, but paradoxically may serve to enhance Aboriginal autonomy. Where settler-culture forms are made over to belong to their Aboriginal users a concurrent 'Aboriginalising' of settler-culture forms might be witnessed. At this point occasionally, incidentally or deliberately Aboriginal forms may be recognised as subversive agents.

2. 5 Mobilising Culture

In the face of immense pressure to fully adopt the social and political ways of the West, many Aborigines continue to use and refer to their own cultural discourses, manifest in traditions, beliefs, values and systems of logic. For Foucault cultural specific discourses are understood to be 'local, discontinuous, disqualified, illegitimate know ledges' which part company with, counter, and at points refuse the position of the self appointed centre culture and its 'unitary body of theory' (1980:81-83). Continued use of 'local knowledges' does not indicate a total Aboriginal retreat or denial of the technological and disciplinary capabilities of the West, for it will be argued in sections to follow, Aborigines do appropriate and integrate western conventions and political behaviour where appropriate and beneficial. Aborigines continue to use their own cultural discourses because it is within these discourses that their power, authority and identity are situated, and therefore they appear as the most logical means to contest the domination of the imperial culture. This strategy is consistent with Lyotard's view that, 'minorities are not critics; they are much worse, they do not believe' (Lyotard in Foster 1985:177). Thus, holding their own collective and divergent 'knowledges' of the 36 self and cosmos, Aborigines cry loudly their 'lack of belief' in the so-called natural

12 primacy of the West •

2.5.1 Divergent Knowledges

As outlined in Chapter One of this thesis, the foundational and abiding cosmological/ideological, 'local knowledge' of Aborigines is Tjukurrpa. The deep sense of cultural belonging available to adherents of Tjukurrpa is empowering, in that it offers the Aboriginal individual and society a way of knowing the self outside of imposed subject identities. However, given the aggressive nature of early European tactics of control which severely disrupted community life and the codes 13 and practices of Tjukurrpa , it may be deduced that Tjukurrpa is neither an invincible knowledge, nor the only counter-narrative which Aborigines have accessed.

The term 'Aboriginality' signals the existence of an Aboriginal counter-narrative in addition to Tjukurrpa; albeit it is not necessarily based upon traditional lore or law, but draws sustenance from it. Aboriginality has evolved as a pan- or soli

12 Similar theorisations may be found in the work of Michel Pecheux where he terms subjects who refuse the identity offered by dominant discourse to be 'bad subjects' (in Selden 1989: 108).

13 These disruptions are well documented and include the enforced dispossession of whole communities from traditional lands and attendant practices or the removal of individuals from families (see Sykes 1989; Attwood 1989). 37

14 1982:5; see also Bennett) S. 1989:4-5) • Attempts to forge a pan-Aboriginal identity might then be seen as the political activity of some Aborigines, as a consequence of oppressive historical conditions (1989:4-5).

In the contemporary period, the notion of a pan-Aboriginal body of people is supported by government and many Aborigines alike, albeit for differing reasons. For Government, the reasoning is largely pragmatic. A definable 'public ethnicity'

(Weaver [1984] in Beckett 1988:191)15,r is considered a useful tool in the process of policy and planning and enabling effective allocation of government resources (DAA Annual Report 1987 /88:2). Despite the benefits which may have accrued from a recognised public ethnicity, the purpose of having a pan-Aboriginal identity for Aboriginal people extends beyond equitable resource distribution.

2.5.2 Aboriginality as Politicised Identity

Following from the early attempts to create a pan-Aboriginal awareness amongst Aboriginal people and government alike, Aboriginality has evolved as a response and a consequence of the colonial presence. The particular values and identifiable characteristics of Aboriginality have been listed by Coombs et al. (1983) as: 1) survival, spiritual as well as physical; 2) social, cultural and spiritual identification with the land; 3) a respect for the inherent dignity of a human being; 4) self control;

14 Howard reports the Aborigines prior to World War Two were not particularly successful in forging a pan-Aboriginal identity; albeit 'there were always a few willing to risk the displeasure of those in power' (1982:5).

15 The 1989 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission Bill gave the following definition of Aboriginal identity: II An Aboriginal person is a person of the Aboriginal race of Australia II (A TSIC Bill 1989, Section 4(c) 35:2). As a consequence of the ATSIC decree Aboriginal descent became the key identifier of Aboriginal identity; no longer are Aborigines part or full blood in official description, but 'Aboriginal', and their 'others', termed 'non-Aboriginal'. The ATSIC Bill follows in definition the Aboriginal Development Commission Act of 1980 which defined an Aborigine to be a person (1) of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Island descent, (2) whom identifies as an Aborigine or Torres Strait Islander and, (3) whom is accepted as such by the community in which he or she lives (in Parliamentary Hansard, 26 November 1987:2776 G. Hand, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, M.H.R.). Additionally_. it has been suggested that the renegotiation of terms used to describe Aborigines at official levels reflects an evolving relationship between Aborigine and non-Aborigine which gives positive attribution to the Aborigine and which infers 'culture' beyond the superficiality of colour (Beckett 1988; Hamilton 1990:21-22). 38 5) harmony in social relationships; 6) reciprocity. These characteristics and their values are further contextualised in terms of social behaviour and roles performance, continuity and innovation (in Pettman 1992: 109-110). Accordingly, Aboriginality is not a singular determinant but an evolving identity that encompasses and authenticates diverse expressions of being Aborigine, within an identifiable range of values and characteristics.

Aboriginality has become in use and in value a strategy of Aboriginal resistance to imposed subjectivities. This is particularly evident when other possibilities (i.e. assimilation or genocide) are countenanced. There are great imperatives for Aborigines in the maintenance of a viable Aboriginality. Colin Tatz recognises that Aboriginality provides a necessary political-cultural sense of self; 'without the security of belonging or believing you belong to that consciousness, you cannot hope to change your world of discomfort, dis-ease, unease, to change your order of things' (Tatz 1982:61-62).

In suggesting Aboriginality to be a specific consciousness of belonging, Tatz is indicating it functions for Aboriginal people as a politised identity. Aboriginality can become a means through which the self might be identified and articulated from a position of positively defined difference. From this point it would then be possible to draw useful parallels with the proposition of radical educationalist, Paulo Freire (1970), where> he argues) the basis of equity for oppressed peoples must come from a fundamental cognitive realignment, understood as raised political consciousness, or 'conscientizacao'. Raised consciousness offers the means through which the 'oppressed' may develop powerful new self conceptions (1970:19). With these new self conceptions16..> Freire suggests_, the colonised might come to realise themselves as 'hosts' rather than slaves of the coloniser (1970:33). This realisation, formed and articulated through political consciousness, is the point at which the 'subject' is no

16 It is further contended by Freire that without raised consciousness~~, the oppressed exist in a state of 'existential duality', (similar in concept to Foucault's 'docile bodies' (1970:50). In this condition the threat and the power of the oppressor has been successfully internalised and 'as long as their ambiguity persists, the oppressed are reluctant to resist, and totally lack confidence in themselves, having 'a diffuse, magical belief in the invulnerability and power of the oppressor'(Freire 1970:50). 39 longer wholly subjected to the dominant group's controlling, projected

17 identifications •

2.5.3 Expressing Identity - Aboriginality

Aboriginality has its outward expression in signages present in social behaviour,

18 such as language use, body gestures, colours, adornments and cultural artefacts • These modes co-signify Aboriginal cultural inclusiveness and Aboriginal cultural differentiation, which in being responded to, offer a locus upon which the desire or enmity of non-Aborigines may be concentrated.

The design and colours of the Aboriginal flag provide an exemplary illustration of the capacity of Aboriginal cultural symbols to ignite passionate response. Created by Harold Thomas in 1971, in Adelaide, South Australia, for a National Aborigines Day (NADOC) 19 rally, this symbol has been adopted by Aboriginal people throughout Australia as a representation of their Aboriginality (The White Invasion Diary Collective 1986). The flag's red, yellow and black colours, in concert, have come to embody adherence to a set of beliefs with regard to Aboriginal identity; pride, autonomy and nationhood. Substantially different reactions to the display of codified expressions of Aboriginality (i.e. the colours red, black and yellow) may be observed where Vivienne Johnson (1992) records the reactions of police (in Redfern, New South Wales) toward Aboriginal residents. These authority figures were observed to be noticeably antagonised by signages of Aboriginality, whereby 'poorly trained young police persist in confusing gestures of resistance to white authority

17 Using 1986 Australian Bureau of Statistics figures, Jan Pettman concludes that positive pride in Aboriginal identity and a willingness to identify as Aborigine are escalating. Pettman correlates this escalation to key social and political events and achievements, as with the Land Rights movement and the success of such Aboriginal culture forms as music, performance and painting (Pettman 1992: 117).

18 According to Dick Hebdige, in Subculture - The Meaning of Style (1979), identity may be expressed within groups, through coded behaviour. These codes or csigns' may include or be evident in: language use, dress, leisure activities, etc.

19 The acronym 'NADOC' refers to National Aborigines Day of Observance Committee. This name was changed in the mid-1980s to National Aboriginal and Islander Day Observance Committee ('NAIDOC'). 40 figures with criminality' (emphasis added) (Johnson 1992:36). Confusion between Aboriginal resistance and Aboriginal criminality has been theorised by Roberta Sykes as a feature of Aboriginal and coloniser relations; 'any Black resistance to things whites proposed ... became regarded by whites as criminal. For two hundred years then, Blacks have had their actions defined for them as ~~criminal;) '(Sykes 1989:84). Thus it appears that the flag colours within contexts such as these could not possibly appear as decoratively benign signifiers, rather they resonate as signifiers of resistance which may be read in Fredric Jameson's politicised terms as strategic oppositional technologies (Jameson 1981:85). While these 'signages' target Aborigines for harassment in these contexts, the choice to persist in explicitly signalling their Aboriginality then becomes an act of political defiance.

In the process of creating a differential and politicised identity through use of cultural signifiers, Aborigines have reclaimed the right to identify themselves linguistically and conceptually, rather than be behoved to European taxonomic descriptives or racist diminutives. The appellations of 'Koori', 'Nunga', 'Murri', and 'Nyoongah', have come into popular use in different Australian states, where there is a certain exclusivity and currency in their usage. Some Aborigines reserve the rights of use to these self-referents, in particular •Koori', with the expectation non-Aborigines should use the more formal descriptive term 4 Aboriginal' (Johnson,

1992:34-37). The use of these names embolden their users, si~nalling a larger cultural sense of belonging. They proudly and defiantly flag Aboriginal difference, promote cultural autonomy and refuse incorporation (Johnson 1992; Brady 1992:69- 98)20. Aborigines do not only define the self in this way, they also defme the settler-culture through use of Aboriginal terms such as 'goonya', walpa~ and 'udnyu' and 'balanda, (Stratton 1989:147). The use of these Aboriginal references for the settler-culture, Stratton believes, provides a means by which Aborigines might in part control the identity of non-Aborigines. Such language use may also positively encourage a future plurality of relations between cultures, whereby the defming

20 An example of the possible political usefulness of self-descriptors is evident where James Miller (1985) suggests the adoption of 'Koori' across Australia, in deference to the Eora people who suffered the first onslaught of the European. By this act Miller believes Aboriginal resistance will be subsequently honoured each time the word is used (Miller 1985:vii). 41 terms are not of necessity, 'European - Aborigines, but of Italian/German/English/ Pitjantjatjara/Gurunji/Aranda' (Stratton 1989: 147).

In the creation of new and positive self conceptions, Aborigines may be considered to be contributing to an array of discursive interweaving and dissenting discourses about Aboriginal identity and Aboriginal subjectivity. It is possible then to entertain the idea that the once marginal subject may, through a series of such tactical moves,

21 decentre Eurocentric discourses as uniquely authoritative • Further speculation suggests if, and when these dominant, centred discourses are challenged and begin to break down, then 'there remains no point relative to which others can be defined as marginal. .. no longer can whiteness, maleness or heterosexuality be taken as the ubiquitous paradigm, simultaneously centre and boundary' (Ferguson 1990: 10). In this statement, Ferguson identifies the possibility of future new ways in which human groups might relate, overturning the binary conceptions which have led to inequitable relations and subject identities.

2.5.4 Difference/Differance as Strategy

The employment of Jacques Derrida's strategy of 'difference/differance' involves the social totality in an overturning of binary conceptualisations of self/other relations, and through it a refusal of subject identities. Although Derrida's term 'differance' had its genesis as a deconstructive strategy for interrogating the relationship of meaning between the sign and signified within literary texts, it has been utilised by feminists, anthropologists and postcolonial scholars alike in their respective investigations of sexual difference and Otherness. In Derrida 's conceptualisation, 'differance' falls ambiguously and purposefully between the meanings of 'to differ' and 'to defer' (Derrida, 1992:[1968]). In the first instance 'to differ' refers to points or bodies which are both separate and unalike from each other, there being no point from which the other can be measured, given that each is autonomous. 'To

21 This 'mobile' character or play of discourse is instanced by Foucault (1987: 101) in his analysis of the changes in social attitudes towards homosexuals. Foucault argues that the change has come about through homosexuals representing themselves, tactically reclaiming of gay sexuality as normal, not deviant. In so doing they dislodge their Other status. 42 defer' is a separation in a temporal sense, where meaning is elusive, ungraspable, or deferred. Elizabeth Gross offers a concise reading of how these layers of difference/ differance operate;

'Differance, in sum, can be regarded, first as movement, energy or force, a resonance, or drive which has no identity; second as an activity which makes different things - physical or mental possible; third, consequently, differance defers, or postpones identity and meaning; and fourth, differance is Derrida's name for his attempts to reveal the play of differences' (Gross 1986:35}.

When used as a strategic tool, differance may be employed to undermine the binary opposition of white/black, the position where black culture is always a negative imprint of the white positively valued culture. Hence differance, as Bhabha contends, 'would liberate the signifier of skin/culture from the signifieds of racial typology, the analytics of blood, ideologies of racial and cultural dominance or degeneration' (Bhabha 1990:80). It might therefore be deduced that in the space of 'differance', Aboriginal culture becomes no longer subject to the settler-culture, given that representations and their meanings are never fixed or settled, but constantly deferred. Thus, Aboriginal identity is irreducible to positive or negative values. In this way, each culture becomes incommensurable to the other.

Feminist Luce Irigaray activates and extends the concept of differance as a non­ negative space where she investigates sexual difference (1984). Of particular interest to the current argument is her use of Rene Descartel s first of ten passions pertaining to the soul, where 'wonder)c is positioned as a relational bridge to the incommensurable (lrigaray 1984). 'Wonder' was nominated by Descartes as having the effect of being a 'sudden surprise of the soul', with the capacity to arouse and astonish, create desire and yet be unpossessable or irreducible (Descartes 1985:349- 356). For Irigaray, if both males and females could inhabit a similar zone of wondrousness, each could achieve alterity and be autonomous and irreducible to each other. Irreducible difference replaces the need for known, assimilable or 43 subjugated identities. Transposing ethnicity for gender in this instance, there are significant parallels to be found in terms of the possibility of a renegotiated relationship between Aboriginal and settler cultures which finally might see each culture as alien wonders to each other. These points will be returned to in Chapter Three, where Aboriginal art will be theorised as reflecting the wondrous and incommensurable.

2.6 Incorporation I Awropriation- Where to borrow is to Resist

"An Aborigine doesn't stop being an Aborigine because he gets up from the campfire and drives off in a Toyota. It's just an object. Aborigines are very good at taking things we find useful from the Western world, and remaining wholly Aboriginal" .22

These words spoken by prominent Aboriginal figure Galarrwuy Yunupingu23 indicate that Aborigines borrow and interact with European cultural forms and institutions, in order to avail themselves of the opportunities and technological advances that certain objects afford; they are not rescinding their Aboriginality by doing so. Nonetheless, Yunupingu's words should not be taken to mean incorporation is always an entirely willing undertaking, or that Aboriginal culture is impervious to the influence of white culture.

The engagement of cultures at its most benign is an osmotic process, which involves adaptation and change on both sides. Nicholas Thomas (1991) in an examination of colonial contact in the South Pacific offers evidence of comparable levels of European and indigenous appropriation of objects and interaction with cultural artefacts. He argues persuasively for a view of indigenous people as wholly active

22 Galarrwuy Yunupingu, Chairperson of the Northern Lands Council, interviewed by Janet Hawley, 'For the first time in 200 years Aborigines are starting to get back what they have Iost'(SMH November 1987:6).

23 Aboriginal leader and Chairperson of the Northern Lands Council. 44 in the contact relationship, whereby 'both sides have creatively changed the purposes of abducted treasures, represented the other, and imagined a narrative of contact objectified in artefacts of alterity and artefacts of history' (Thomas 1991: 194). As a counter-political strategy, the incorporation of other cultural structures in order to persist and resist, might then be read as both acceptable and necessary in the

24 colonised state •

The employment of Aborigines within the institutions of the State provides one example whereby Aborigines have the opportunity to work instrumentally towards their own objectives by making a claim on administrative power. Yet, it may be argued that the degree to which the State co-opts its employees, there is a correspondent weakening of the ability of individuals to agitate, criticise or openly lobby against the governing policies which is their duty to implement (Jakubowicz [1981] in Keeffe 1992:85). Hence, critics argue that co-option effectively controls possible Aboriginal dissidence through indirect rule (Howard 1982: 159),x and institutionalising their opposition (Keeffe 1992:85). In practice however, there is some suggestion this situation is otherwise, where Aborigines working within the governing bureaucracy feel a freedom to act (extending at times to fierce criticism), independent of government-coded behaviour for public servants (Beckett 1988:15). This would appear to reflect an opinion that the Aboriginal governing body is the Aboriginal people, not the Federal Parliament. A more recent trend is the creation of 'Black Bureaucracies', a process of Aboriginalising bodies administering Aboriginal affairs. This strategy seeks to give preference to the placement of Aborigines in the workplace, in recognition of their unique insight, understanding and skills in dealing with Aboriginal issues.

24 Although not for discussion here, incorporation as a strategy for accessing and negotiating power is closely aligned with Derrida's term 'deconstruction', following in part Foucault's thesis on the immanence of power and the involvement of the whole social body in the matrix of power. As a political strategy deconstruction relies upon 'inhabiting' (incorporating) those structures which are privileged sites of power; to do otherwise it is suggested is ineffective. 'The movements of deconstruction do not destroy structures from the outside. They are not possible, nor effective, nor can they take accurate aims, except by inhabiting those structures, inhabiting in a certain way, becapse one always inhabits it. Operating necessarily from the inside, borrowing all the strategic and economic resources of subversion from the old structure, borrowing them structurally' (Derrida [1976:24]; in Grosz 1989:29). 45 2. 7 Incorporation and Cultural Integrity

At the level of cultural survival, the Aboriginal incorporation or appropriation of non-Aboriginal cultural and technological forms into their repertoire of resistance has lead some commentators to believe the integrity of indigenous culture to be under threat. Fanon posits this situation as akin to the indigene 'leaving certain of his intellectual possessions in pawn', aBtl thus threatening the very codes by which culture appears distinct (Fanon 1963:38; cf. Kolig 1982:26). This reflects a larger fear as expressed in the lugubrious opinion of Levi-Strauss, who concluded in 1955

25 that essential cultural difference was shrinking across the globe • His was the view that globalisation, the progressive domination and absorption of western economic, cultural and communication systems, threatens the authority and practice of local cultures. Taking this view with regard to Aborigines, it has been suggested by cultural theorists Fry and Willis that the world will be left with only commodified

26 and hybrid versions of Aboriginal culture (Fry and Willis 1989) • While these positions attempt to display, at one level, a liberal minded sympathy for Aborigines, they also betray imperial discourses at work. Indeed as Roger Benjamin has pointed out, the views of Fry and Willis represent a paradox, in seeking to protect Aborigines from the influence and interactions with others they are ultimately advocating the ethnocide they rail against (Benjamin 1990). Such views have further resulted in essentialist notions of culture, perpetuated by the view that authentic Aboriginal culture emanates from an Aboriginal past which was somehow more 'true' than contemporary Aboriginal experience and expression. Stuart Hall counters such positions in his reflection that the impact of colonialism is always syncretised or 'creolised' (1990). This is no indictment of failure, rather it is part of 'a dialogue of power and resistance, of refusal and recognition', which also accommodates the 'irreversible influence of the European' (Hall 1990:233-234). Given cultural change can be observed resulting from peaceable interactions between

25 James Clifford 1988:14, citing Claude Levi-Struass 1955, Triste Tropiques.

26 The notion that Aboriginal art is becoming increasingly hybrid and compromised will be discussed in Chapter Three, section 3.3, with reference to the effects of circulation outside traditional routes. 46 cultures it may appear somewhat naive to expect cultural stasis in circumstances where culture has been at the vanguard of human struggle. As Fanon has argued, it is to be expected that culture will be influenced and in part transformed by struggle;

\the struggle for freedom does not give back to the national culture its former value and shapes; this struggle which aims at a fundamentally different set of relations between men cannot leave intact either the form or the content of the people's culture'~ (Fanon 1961: 197-198).

In recognition of a world where all cultures rub up against each other, Chris Jenks offers a useful way of understanding cultural continuity with a reworking of the term 'cultural reproduction' (Jenks 1993a, 1993b). Here cultural reproduction is conceptualised as metaphorically akin to birth and creation; that which comes forth is inevitably a new form, although critically linked to its progenitors. The considerable impacts of the West upon non-western cultures are acknowledged by Clifford in differential terms, whereby as some signs of difference collapse, other 'orders of difference' emerge (Clifford 1988:15). The future Clifford concludes is 'not (only) monoculture', but one of considerable diversity where authentic expressions of culture do not necessitate static, non-interactive traditional displays (Clifford 1988: 16).

In recent years, an increasing number of Australian anthropologists and art historians have come to similar conclusions (i.e. Sutton 1989; Morphy 1991; Bum and Stephen 1992). While Aboriginal material culture has been undeniably transformed through the contact of colonisation, this does not however lead ipso facto to a less authentic or devalued cultural form. Instead, as anthropologist Howard Morphy writes, in the massive transformations that have been made Aborigines 'have retained a cultural identity that is very different from the dominant mode of the invader, even if its parameters have shifted' (Morphy 1980:82). 47 2. 8 Conclusion

In conclusion~ this ~hapter has made use of Foucauldian theories upon discourse, power and subjectivity to outline relationships of power between Aboriginal and non­ Aboriginal people. Foucault's conceptualisation of resistance as a power in counter to power, has enabled a reading which refuses the notion of Aboriginal people as powerless, revealing them instead to be actively resistant to the settler-cultures subject producing discourses. Aboriginal resistance or struggle may be observed through the mobilisation of counter narratives discussed herein as 'local knowledges' and as the incorporation/appropriation of settler-culture forms. Young's statement may be taken as applicable here: 'contrary to what is often assumed, it is the absence of resistance which is impossible. Power is a two-way process' (Young 1990:87).

The use of counter-narratives manifest through Tjukurrpa and Aboriginality, and the strategic incorporation/appropriation of settler-culture forms may allow Aborigines to speak not only on their own behalf, but through their own ideological and conceptual conduits. Although the incorporation of settler-culture forms has been shown to contain 'risks' for Aboriginal people, which must be carefully negotiated, a loose appropriation of cultural and technological forms, myths, values and institutions of non-Aboriginal culture'k continues to be pursued as advantageous to Aboriginal cultural continuance. Thus. from the Aboriginal struggle to resist submission comes the development of a distinctive 'Aboriginal' identity and 'voice', which can facilitate self advocacy. Further to this Derrida's concept of differance has been utilised to suggest the possibility of a renegotiated relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people; an equitable relationship which might prove to be resistant to the production of subject identities.

The following ~hapter introduces Aborigines as active in their attempts to dialogue with the settler culture on equitable terms. Aboriginal art is positioned as central to their counter narratives, and central to their conceptions of individual and cultural power. 48 CHAPTER3 ART AND DIALOGUE - MOBILISING CULTURE

3 .1 The Elcho Island Rangga - Parable I

In 1957 on Elcho Island (Gunwinku) off the north east coast of Arnhem Land, Yolngu elders made a decision to reveal publicly secret-sacred objects known as

1 rangga (painted wood creative figures of ancestral powers) • The revelation before governing white administrators.t took place in the grounds of the Methodist mission church where a created memorial (nara) had been constructed (see Appendix A) (Berndt 1962; Maddock 1982; Morphy 1983). In its public placement, the sacred rangga also became available for the first time to Yolngu non-initiates, women and children. The revelation of sacred rangga took place within the context of the participation by Aboriginal Elcho Islanders in the 'Adjustment Movement', being the move towards adoption and incorporation of European ways and technology. The purpose of revelation of rangga was broad; to assert and demonstrate authority and control over their own affairs~ and resist the rapid absorption of Yolngu culture)\ into a Christian, European way of life. The revelation was also calculated to draw their governors into a relationship of understanding and respecfx which would promote fruitful cross cultural dialogue (Berndt 1962:87).

Sacred rangga were chosen as instruments for this task because, in their sacred and iconic decoration, rangga incorporate local moieties and the main religious stories (Dreamings) for the region. They also authoritatively represent and connect Yolngu

3 society and relationships • The precious regard with which rangga are heldx made their revelation a particularly generous actJ[ which displayed toward EuropeansJ('

1 According to Howard Morphy, the term Yolngu means 'aboriginal person' in the languages of Northeast Arnhem Land (Morphy 1991:39).

2 Nancy Williams in The Yolngu and their Land (1986:xii) remarks that in Yolgnu epistemology, 'understanding' entails respect.

3 Morphy suggests rangga to function as an 'archetypal sign for Yolngu discourse' (Morphy 1983: 111). 49 'goodwill, suggesting the wealth potential they (Yolngu) have to offer'. The revelation also brought to the fore the Yolngu expectation that revelation would bring return benefits (Berndt 1962:84,87). It was the case however that the deed of Yolngu elders was misunderstood by Europeans and other individual Yolngu, leading to claims that the action was inviting sacrilege and a latent commodification of precious objects (Maddock 1982:9-10).

Ken Maddock in The Australian Aborigines identifies the Elcho Island revelation of rangga and other similar actions as 'desperate responses', which did not take into account the power differential (as he perceived it), or the lack of shared cultural discourses between Yolngu and the Europeans (Maddock 1982:9-10). As culturally specific forms, rangga were obtuse to non-initiates, whereupon they did not and could not hope to commend their meanings to the European independent of their authors and the historical specificity of their creation and placement. Neither could their sacred power counter misunderstanding, wilful misreadings and misuse. Hence, Maddock's gloomy conclusion that 'there is something self defeating about a message that has to be deciphered by anthropologists' (Maddock 1982:9-10).

3 .1.1 The Yirrkala Bark Petition - Parable II

In 1963, several years after the Elcho Island Memorial was put in place, senior Yolngu clansmen of Yirrkala (related to the Elcho Island people)x created a petition on bark to serve upon the Australian Federal government (Appendix B). The petition requested the Federal government to convene a committee to hear the views of the Yirrkala people, who were concerned with plans to grant Yolngu territories to the French aluminium company Pechiney '< for bauxite mining at Gove in Arnhem

4 Land •

4 The Petition indicated the fear Yirrkala people had that their interests would 'be completely ignored as they have been ignored in the past'. It issued a request that a committee with 'competent interpreters' be appointed to hear the views of the Yirrkala people, and that 'no arrangements be entered into with any company which will destroy the livelihood and independence of the Yirrkala people' (Bark Petition, Parliament House, Canberra). I.

50 The Bark Petition did not appear as an isolated communication, but was contextualised by previous Yolngu artworks which had been used to communicate specific matters to European audiences. An example of this was the featured display of painted panels in the Methodist Mission church, representing the dua and jridja moieties of Yolngu. Their placement therein was seen as Church acceptance and sanctioning of traditional ancestral lands, which were embodied within the painted panels of ancestral designs and totemic forms (Wells 1982:78-79).

Edgar Wells, Superintendent of the Yirrkala Mission at that time, offers background and insight to the motivations of the Yolngu artists in Reward and Punishment in Arnhem Land (1982). The visit of Kim Beazley, Member of the Commonwealth House of Representatives, to Yirrkala in July of 1963 with Gordon Bryant, Chairman of the Federal Council for Aboriginal Affairs, is cited by Wells to have been pivotal in the instigation of the Petition. Over the period of his stay Beazley had viewed and was suitably impressed by the painted panels within the Methodist Mission church. He subsequently suggested Yolngu elders (and artists) convey their feelings with regard to the mining project to the Federal government in a petition form, 'make a bark petition ... a petition surrounded with Aboriginal painting will be irresistible' (Wells 1982:79-80). And so it proved to be.

In describing a Yolngu petition to be potentially 'irresistible', it is likely Beazley was referring to the probability of a cross-cultural form which could capture the imagination of the Federal Parliament, the media and ordinary Australians, whilst also serving to authenticate the petition as truly representative of Aboriginal interests. While fulfilling these intentions there remained some degree of ignorance with regard to the Aboriginal content of the form. This is most evident where the Sydney Morning Herald reports the Bark Petition having been received by the House of Representatives as, 'a petition in aboriginal dialect, pasted on a bark painting ... The painting shows fish and animals' (SMH 15 August 1963). By choice of these few words 'fish and animals' the Sydney Morning Herald positioned -the most central, authoritative totemic forms as almost incidental to the Bark Petition's efficacy. The use of Yolngu language confounded those in receipt of the Bark 51 Petition at the Federal Parliament. As was humorously reported at the time 'before it was given the Clerk's certificate of approval for submission to the House, Mr Nelson had to verify that the translation was correct, but he cannot read the

5 language' (SMH, 15 August 1963) .

The reception of the Petition in Canberra was mixed. Paul Hasluck, Minister for Territories introduced a motion to reject the Bark Petition on the grounds that the signatories were too young. The parliamentary motion was accompanied by a request to Edgar Wells in his role as Mission Superintendent to provide the ages of all signatories. Upon news reaching Yirrkala that the validity of the Bark Petition was being questioned, a second petition was orchestrated. Wandjuk Marika, elder and respected artist of Yirrkala produced a petition with names of Yirrkala

Aborigines~ that were accompanied by individual thumbprints (Wells 1982:83-85).

After considerable political wrangling within Canberra over acceptance of the first Bark Petition, the Federal Parliament's response to the second Petition was to appoint a select committee of enquiry to examine the issues raised. Committee hearings in Yirrkala and Darwin followed which lead to recommendations to excise 6 a portion of the Gove Peninsula and declare it a protected area • The Parliament's positive albeit belated response has been described by Wells as pivotal in confirming to Aboriginal leaders the value of art as a philosophical tool in ,the quest for a particular quality of life (Wells 1981 :38).

The challenge the Yolngu people had made to the Federal Parliament was both implicit and explicit: the Yolngu were not a subservient people, and they deserved to be understood in their own terms and cultural context. In their preparedness to make concessions in the use of the petition form and bilingual text, the Bark Petition authors were not conceding their authority, but were seizing it, by also assuming

5 Member for the Northern Territory, Mr J.N. Nelson (Labor), presented the Bark Petition to the Federal Parliament.

6 Written upon didactic panel, accompanying display of Bark Petitions (Parliament House Canberra). 52 well before the 1967 referendum the rights of any other Australian individual or group in petitioning the serving government.

Several crucial differences between presentations of the Elcho Island rangga and the Bark Petition may be observed. The Yirrkala Yolngu articulated their concerns in a way that increased understanding without compromise to precious cultural forms, beliefs and values, whilst concurrently establishing their own authority. Their considerations resulted in the following: the innovative and integrated use of a European format (petition) united with a particularly Yolngu form (bark painting), chosen to increase the Yolngu's capacity to communicate. The Bark Petition included the use of Y olngu totemic imagery sanctioned for public use upon the Petition, to avoid possible sacrilege, as well as the joint use of the local language Gupapuyngu, translated into English. The distribution of the Bark Petition intentionally by..-passed church officials and ~~tttf Territorian bureaucrats, and was instead directed to the highest elected officers in the land, Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies, Leader of the Opposition Arthur Caldwell and other party leaders (SMH 15 August 1963). Behind these differences in presentation lay an active consideration of the non-Aboriginal audience whereby the Petition's instigators sought to strike a middle-ground between the use of Aboriginal cultural discourses and the imperative to overcome the oblique nature of culture specific political dialogue. In contrast to the Elcho Island rangga, which Berndt observed • being used for a clothes-line some years after its initial placement, the opposite status is true for the Bark Petition. The Petition in its strategic presentation and placement gave the Yolngu of Yirrkala a political voice in Canberra, which continues to be

7 heard beyond the period of its initial presentation •

7 Given this succes!, it is perhaps unsurprising to find the Yirrkala community has continued to use cultural material to assert itself in the political arena over the past 30 years, during which Land Rights and Aboriginal sovereignty have remained major themes. This is evidenced in: the 1968 Bark Petition presented to the Federal Parliament seeking change of name from the Gove Peninsula to 'Nhulunbuy'; the message stick presented at Yirrkala to Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Ian Viner, following the passing of the Aboriginal Land Rights Act (Northern Territory) 1976; the involvement of Yirrkala artists in the Barunga Statement painting 1988; and most recently the rock music band Yothu Yindi who have done much to raise the awareness of the broad spectrum of Australia's youth regarding Aboriginal issues. 53 The Elcho Island rangga and Bark Petition examples briefly illustrate in differing ways the extent of possibilities and the dilemmas faced by Aborigines in their ongoing use of cultural forms in political exchange. Whilst they flag the intention of Aborigines to create a meaningful dialogue using cultural forms central to Aboriginal self knowledge and power, it is the case that where Aboriginal cultural discourses and their forms enter the domain of the European, they enter also a competitive and hostile realm, where their beliefs are rarely shared or valued. The imperative arises for a conceptual lingua franca.

This Chapter will concentrate its discussion upon the strategic play of Aborigines in instigating cross cultural dialogue; the occasion and dynamic of dialogue; and the deliberate use of art/artefacts as meta signs or authorising agents for Aboriginal discourses and authority. At all times the possibility of equitable and effective dialogue between Aborigine and non-Aborigine, is framed by the following problematic: what happens to 'meaning' or purpose when Aboriginal cultural material exits its original empathetic and affirming social unit/!, and, how might this material circulated in the West be realised as an actual force, and not merely referential? A tracery of the major issues will be considered before being more fully realised in case study Chapters Four, Five and Six.

3.2 Dialogue- Aboriginal Exchange Practices

At the heart of Aboriginal political and social life is the practice of reciprocal exchange which engenders relationships of debt and obligation across the social body. Traditionally, exchange involved not only consumables such as food, implements and services but also valued cultural objects and forms including ceremonial knowledge, songs, dance, stories, emblems and sacred objects. In the contemporary period, western commodities such as guns, blankets and food, have come to play a part in the exchange economy and on occasion often stand in for cultural artefacts (Altman 1987). 54 The reciprocal nature of Aboriginal exchange practices requires that the object of exchange or service given 'must be repaid, in kind or in equivalent, within a certain period' (Berndt and Berndt 1988:22). As with many indigenous societies where reciprocity is operational, repayments are never accepted as final, but always generate an 'excess' involving prestige for the giver and indebtedness for the receiver (Thomas 1991:14-22). This aspect of 'excess' in exchange relates to the perception that exchange objects or services are not alienable commodities, but are 'gifts' (Mauss 1969). It is in the differential between the alienable commodity and inalienable gift whereby 'commodities have prices, gifts have rank' (Thomas 1991: 14 )8 that the political agency of the art object in circulation might be interrogated. Gifts or services are considered to be,

~instruments for realities of another order: influence, power, sympathy, status, emotion; ... exchange consists of a complex totality of manoeuvres (sic), conscious or unconscious, in order to gain security and to fortify one's self against risks incurred through

9 alliances and rivalry~(Levi-Strauss 1976:63) •

In sum, relationships of reciprocal dependency ensure communities remained tightly interwoven; to have ignored or not fulfll the bond of reciprocal relationships was to leave the way open to 'conflict and social disturbance' (Myers 1982: 100).

Given the political valency reciprocal relations afforded Aborigines, it is not surprising that they should attempt to reproduce its effects in their interactions with Europeans, in order to bring them under Aboriginal control (Morphy 1991:4;

8 Thomas uses C.A. Gregory's definitional insight as the basis for his analysis.

9 Berndt and Berndt outline six major types of Aboriginal gift exchange, witnessed across Australia and operative on the basis of: (1) kinship, where specific gift exchange relationships are evident, (2) gifts made to settle grievances or debts, (3) gifts in return for services or goods, (4) formalised gift exchange, (5) trade, and, (6) economy of sacred life, occurring in the context of ceremonies (Berndt and Berndt 1988:122-129). 55

10 Michaels 1987:18-19; Hamilton 1972) • In the earlier colonial period Aboriginal efforts moved from an initial engagement in providing European men with the sexual services of Aboriginal women and manual labour, to inviting Europeans to participate in ceremonies, in order to witness sacred emblems and their associated myths and song cycles. In the context of Aboriginal exchange the revelation of sacred material or performance was especially valuable, being used to instigate frameworks for relating, whereby power, authority and trust might be established between two parties on the strength of shared and binding exchanges (Strehlow 1970; Berndt and Berndt 1988:429). Beyond the clan or tribe, revelation or the loan of important cultural artefacts were representative of friendship and safe passage, reifying 'political goodwill' which might lead to positive returns (Strehlow 1970: 136). Annette Hamilton reads the actions of Aborigines in initiating exchange with Europeans as Aborigines 'trying to give their ultimate possession, their spiritual knowledge; all the time, at every step trying to get the whites to behave morally, properly and generously' (Hamilton 1972:45; see also Reynolds 1981:57-58). This rationale was founded upon the belief that whites would defer to the local Aboriginal authority and codes of behaviour>\ when they became truly 'tied' to the country through participation in important ceremonial activities.

Lacking appreciation of Aboriginal reciprocal relationships, involving debt and encumbrance, few Europeans involved themselves as alternately willing debtors and creditors in Aboriginal exchange (Hamilton 1972). This lack of participation by Europeans in Aboriginal reciprocal exchange may in part be explained as reflecting an apparent differential, in terms of the Europead:.5\ own approach to exchange. For Europeans, exchange practices resembled simple economic transactions, whereby the exchange value of the object or services were determined and settled (Marx

10 A mechanistic example of such behaviour is evident in the attribution of Aboriginal 'skin' names to non-Aboriginal people having ongoing relationships with Aboriginal people (this has been noticed particularly with regard to Warlpiri people). Such names confer upon the receiver a position of relatedness to clan groups, i.e. as 'brother', 'uncle', 'sister', 'auntie' 'nephew', 'niece', or 'cousin'. When given to non-Aboriginal people, skin names operate to ensure maintenance of 'an amiable, cooperative reciprocity', (Micheals 1987:18-19). The skin names further instruct the mediation route between the visitor and the Aboriginal group. Certain people in the community thus become responsible for the visitor, whilst the visitor is obligated to interact via nominated 'relatives'(Kimber p.c. 30 July 1990). 56 1973[1939]). They could neglect or choose to remain ignorant of countervailing Aboriginal political processes at hand; in so doing, alienation of the object or service

was believed total, and no debt was thought to be incurred (Thomas 1991:22)11 •

If Aboriginal attempts to create reciprocal relations appear naive in the context of the aggressiveness of early settlement, they must also be seen to illuminate an Aboriginal political economy, where the call for equitable cultural and economic exchange and restitution of debt was being made. Fundamental cultural differences

and related abuse of Aboriginal goodwill that emerged in matters of exchange~ have not stopped Aborigines from using their cultural material in interaction with Europeans. Rather, over a long period it has shaped the modes of dialogue where 12 cultural material is concemed •

3. 3 The Circulation of Aboriginal Art

Where Aboriginal material culture circulates in non-Aboriginal society it does so principally through the conduits of the art marketplace and media. At both sites Aboriginal art is removed from its ritualised context and original 'use' value, to become also a commodity with exchange value. Commodity status has engendered concern that in the disengagement of art from ceremonial life, the once sacred would become profane with the potential for corruption to Aboriginal culture (Anderson and Dussart 1988: 140). This opinion has been strongly argued in reference to the

11 It remains ironic however that on numerous occasions the protocols usual to economic exchange were not observed by the European. The most obvious example being found in the alienation of Aboriginal land, taken under the legal guise of 'terra nullius' (see Hamilton 1972). Sutton suggests the alienation of Aborigines from their lands to not only be due to white ignorance, but he suggests there to be an 'active disregard for the complex cultural system governing Aboriginal ownership and occupation of the land' (Sutton 1989:9). Such attitudes surfaced for example in times of drought where stock were given preferential treatment to Aborigines, who in tum were driven-off farming land and made to go into the towns for food, or made to work for their keep; the men as stock or yard men, and the women in house duties, or in sexual favours (Hamilton 1972).

12 Today Aborigines and government are increasingly wise to dissolute individuals and practices. Incidents involving unscrupulous traders, colonial landowners, ethnologists, missionaries, governing officers and thieves in the alienation of cultural forms from their Aboriginal owners for the use and profiteering of non-Aboriginesx has largely receeded into the past. Those who once came bearing flour, tea and sugar, have been replaced by those who deal in cash: the art dealers and tourists. 57 adoption by Aboriginal artists of non traditional materials and formats (acrylic paints, watercolours, canvas, pokerwork), and the subsequent creation of artefacts at variance with historical prototypes, such as souvenirs. The charge has been laid that Aboriginal art has been 'degraded by contact, rather than possessing its own unique dynamism' (in Sutton et al. 1988: 192; Fry and Willis 1989: 10). Such a reading of culture supports the thesis that change to literal or physical forms of Aboriginal material culture is a body blow to cultural continuity. Other opinion suggests this to be an unfair summation which neglects the historical reasons for change and fails to

13 read innovation in politicised terms (Bum and Stephen 1992) • The Aboriginal right to adapt their cultural forms is supported by Myers as astute in that, 'they have sought in their movements, to extend their system of relatedness to include the new opportunities of contact with whites and at the same time to sustain their autonomy' (1986:25).

Opposing views are offered by Fry and Willis (1989a, 1989b) and Kleinert (1988:92-95), who argue that Aborigines lack the necessary autonomy to be fully determining4ft. their engagements with the marketplace. Driven by their own economic needs and at the mercy of the marketplace, Aborigines are considered manipulated and duped, not empowered, in the production of art for an essentially non-Aboriginal audience. These concerns are valid, but they are no longer perceived as a the only possible outcome. The status of commodity need not remove the capacity of the art to continue to have a religious function in its original context, nor its capacity to communicate at profound levels to a non-Aboriginal audience (Morphy 1991:1-4). From harsh experience Aboriginal artists, arts advisers, and artists' agents have come to realise that it is impossible to preempt or control the circulation routes or audience for each artwork. Therefore they carefully manage their involvement with the marketplace, making clear distinctions between cultural material available for ritual contexts and that made available for the marketplace (Taylor and Altman 1991). As Adrian Marrie commented over ten

13 Bum and Stephen have exposed the patronising air of such thinking in their earlier writing where they argue, 'the assumption remains strong, Aboriginal culture loses value as it moves into contact with white culture, while European art gains vitality through employing Aboriginal motifs' (Bum and Stephen 1986). 58 years ago, the vast bulk of Aboriginal art which reaches the marketplace is de­ ritualised; 'Aborigines now exploit our artistic values, our mania to possess for their own economic advantage' (Marrie 1983:7).

Numerous examples exist of how Aborigines protect their art with the employment of a range of political controls and censorious measures, which seek to obfuscate rather than illuminate secret and sacred levels of meaning. Morphy gives two examples of Yolngu controls used in bark paintings for the marketplace. Firstly, the increase in figurative painting, is designed to lead the audience away from the deeper levels of meaning toward more surface readings based upon the painting's figurative characters. Secondly, in their contrary use of high abstractions, geometric Yolngu art has been perceived as 'slippery', literally resisting interpretation and corruption, and thus keep hidden and safe, 'inside' meanings. Internal meanings may change over time, but as deeper meaning is known only to a few, the culture

14 and its forms may appear stable (Morphy 1991:298-299) •

3.4 Collapse of the Sign

Despite these and other measures to safeguard the 'inside' meanings of the paintings in order to ensure cultural continuity internal to Aboriginal communities, it is still the case that their sign values are outwardly labile and not _by themselves authoritative. This is not a pointed criticism of Aboriginal art, rather it reflects postmodern debates within aesthetics, semiotics and cultural theory. It is now considered naive in light of mass media technology and global distribution networks to presume art to be autonomously authoritative (see Baudrillard 1981; Foster 1985; Roberts 1990). 'Meaning', semiotic theory informs, does not rest inside form, but exists in relation to a field of possible meaning in historicised time and space.

14 An incident involving conflict, from the early days of the Western Art movement provides an example of Aborigines applying their own political controls where art is distributed. Warlpiri artists after selling paintings that depicted the rough forms of sacred objects, were drawn into negotiations with their related and neighbouring group, the Pintupi, who objected to the depiction, however obliquely rendered (Kimber p.c. 30 July 1990). The outcome of discussions was that the depiction of sacred forms was to be avoided, except in rare cases where their use might be sanctioned. 59 Meaning is established where there is agreement upon how it is codified, and

15 therefore differentiated, rendered non-ambivalent and intelligible •

Aboriginal art is then codified by virtue of a culture specific symbol/sign system which relates the artwork's material presence (that which signifies) with its conceptual presence (that which is signified). For non-Aborigines, attempts at a lexicographic/ grammatical decoding of Aboriginal specific iconographic symbols within paintings (i.e. concentric circles, wavy lines, animal tracks or crosshatching), is obviously possible but limiting, and invariably reductive to formal qualities. Eric Michaels explains, 'something false and damaging may result from the invitation to peek into the painting and select out a few figures to serve as handles in the construction of a meaning satisfying to the uninitiated viewer' (Michaels 1994:50). As Munn (1986), Berndt (1988), Morphy (1991) and Langton (1992/1993) among others concur, paintings are not singularly interpretable, but have layers of meaning. The availability of deeper levels of meaning requires the receiver have commensurate levels of ceremonial knowledge. Having this knowledge makes it possible to determine/decipher not only what the depiction of symbolic imagery might be but also what it might in its relational placement reference. Together, these observations suggest that far more important than scholarly acquired knowledge is the imperative of the 'true believer'. Greater levels of knowledge come with commitment, trust and application manifest through . the process of initiation (Michaels 1994:50). Without belief and belonging, the art of Tjukurrpa may be easily reduced to symbols and stories, notions and delusions; and meaning and its original 'use value' cannot be shored up. As a consequence, Aboriginal art in circulation becomes open to appropriation.

15 The study of the codification of signs, Semiotics, was developed by linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. Saussure devised a model of language signification, where words were shown to be signs, comprising the spoken or written form (signifiers) which are used to signal a concept. Saussure's framework has since been widely taken up and developed as 'structuralism' by the disciplines of anthropology (via Levi-Strauss), and literary criticism. 60 3.5 Cultural Appropriation

Although critically linked, appropriation, the act of taking for the self, does not only refer to the alienation of the physical object from its producer. Rather it suggests a removal of the defining elements of context, use and symbolic value. An adjunct to this removal is the correspondent imposition of new sign values which benefit the appropriator. Where cultural artefacts or specific forms are appropriated Foster applies the term 'cultural appropriation', defining it as where 'the specific content of one social group is made over into a general cultural form or style of another' (Foster 1985: 168). The process of cultural appropriation has a near seamless appearance, although as Foster identifies, the media is the most obvious point at which appropriation takes place; here it is 'agentless, traceless and capable of neutralising the specific content making it over to that which belongs to the mass' (Foster 1985: 168).

Acts of cultural appropriation may appear to be lacking in guile, without intent to desacrilise, and perhaps even acts of homage; these appearances however are fallacious. Cultural appropriation is not an act of veneration, for it neither exalts the form nor privileges original contexts. Acts of cultural appropriation are demonstrations of relative power which attempt to remove a resource and resituate it with the appropriator (Davilia 1987). Instances of the commercial use of Aboriginal designs give strength to Ferguson's observation that cultural appropriation is propelled by capitalism, whereby the plunder of marginal or subordinated cultures is necessary in order to invigorate the dominant culture, as in capital's need for new

16 products and markets (Ferguson 1990: 11) •

16 For most artists protection from the illegal appropriation of cultural material may be sought in existing copyright legislation. Whilst this is technically the case for Aborigines their ability to gain comprehensive protection is hampered by notions of ownership of cultural property at odds with European culture and law. Appropriation of say, Aboriginal designs by manufacturers and traders of goods such as T -shirts, teatowels, prints and cloth have cost Aborigines in terms of lost income from sale of their own goods may be addressed by copyright law to varying degrees of success. However the arguments for more comprehensive protection for Aborigines and their cultural material are based on a concern for protecting Aboriginal culture from being demeaned and desacrilised; there is little precedent for recognising such rights in Australian copyright law (see Golvan 1992). 61 Examples of cultural appropriation with regard to Aboriginal art and artefact are found in various quarters including the blatant violation of Aboriginal copyright by the commercial sector for fmancial gain, and in the legal but nonetheless problematic use of stylised Aboriginal totems or patterned imagery in tourism promotions and in

17 corporate designs • At this later level Aboriginal participation through commissions should not be understood as equating with Aboriginal control, nor does it prevent the process of sign appropriation.

Cultural appropriation might be considered to reflect a deeper complexion to the relationship between Aborigine and non-Aborigine, one that moves beyond simple economic exploitation of Aborigines, moving instead towards recognition of intersubjectivity. As Homi Bhabha has discussed at length, the coloniser culture has an observable ambivalence towards the colonised, their Otherness being the focus of desire and derision (Bhabha 1987, 1990). Bhabha' s thesis is clearly shared and illuminated to varying degrees by Hamilton (1990), Lattas (1992), Bennett (1988), and Willis (1993) all of whom, like Bhabha, appear to have drawn on psychoanalytic theory informed by Lacan and Freud. Each author recognises the attraction for Aboriginal Otherness is not an endorsement of Aboriginal difference, but is driven by contradiction. The apparent 'lack' in the coloniser culture, invites the determination to make what is valuable one's own, whilst the fear inspired by the Other's cultural difference, and embodied in its cultural forms, animates the concurrent desire to control it. Thus through appropriation it is thought difference and Otherness might be rendered harmless or innocuous.

Recent critiques of the appropriation of Aboriginal culture identify its value to the settler culture as assisting the process of identity creation and nation building. In

17 Recent examples of illegal use of Aboriginal artwork include infringement of the copyright subsisting in the artistic works (designs) of George Milpurrurru, Banduk Marika and Tim Payungka (among other Aboriginal artists), recognised by the Federal Court of Australia on 13 December 1994. The designs in issue had been reproduced upon carpets produced in Vietnam and imported into Australia. The original artists were awarded $188,000 in damages (Hessey 15 December 1994: 15). An example of the legal use of Aboriginal artwork is found in the commissioning of artwork from Balarinji Designs, Adelaide, for transference to the fuselage of a QANTAS Boeing 747-400 aircraft. That aircraft now forms part of the QANTAS worldwide promotional strategy. 62 doing so Hamilton forwards the concept of a 'National Imaginary'; an imaginary space where the settler culture might produce 'not merely images of themselves, but images of themselves against others' (Hamilton 1990: 16). In Lattas' view the late 20th century retrieval of Aboriginal culture is largely a redemptive project fuelled by the popular myth that modem Australia is 'souless', and in need of a spiritual heart (1992). Aborigines as the original inhabitants of Australia with their rich sacred traditions are positioned as natural redeemers, whereby Aborigines have become the 'Holy Other', cannibalised by the settler culture 'in the process of trying to constitute its own being' (Lattas 1992:57). However, the process of imaginatively or psychologically internalising (appropriating) the Aboriginal Other is not indiscriminate, rather it involves a highly selective expropriation of the mythic and spiritual base of Aboriginal culture, in servicing the nation's real or imagined identity debt crisis.

The appropriation of Aboriginal forms, particularly where related to spirituality, the land and totemic forms can be broadly witnessed in numerous works of settler culture art, film and literature (see Dutton 1974; Healy 1989; Hamilton 1990) and in the varying commodified images which circulate throughout popular culture and advertising (see Sheill and Stephen 1992). Yet, as with other instances of cultural appropriation via initial commodification, it is not the substance of living Aboriginal culture which is taken, but its signages (see Willis 1993:112; Hebdige 1979). Marcia Langton writes;

'the most appropriators have grasped is the exterior, decorative features of Aboriginal material culture and some suggestion that behind the abstraction there lies a body of hidden meaning .. .I think it is naive and racist to view the acceptance and popularity of Aboriginal art as simply hegemonic appropriation. This view accords no intention to the Aboriginal artists and musicians ... to theorise that their works have been appropriated in some deterministic way is to fail to see and locate their power' (Langton 1992/1993:7,9). 63 Herein the 'body of hidden meaning' is positioned as inalienable and ineluctable, and therefore clearly unavailable for appropriation. This argument can in part be sustained with the realisation that Langton is not referring to the physical art object, but to the artwork in its relational context, as a consubstantiation of totem and self; a relationship which travels with the artwork despite its commodity status (see Munn

18 1970) • Accordingly, whatever new meanings may be attributed to the work through sale, they always co-exist with originary meanings and relationships; indeed a 'play' of meaning is the result. As Andrew Benjamin offers, the artwork has a 'tiered existence' which allows both a play of meaning and differing levels of meaning to co-exist without necessary collapse:

' ... the work is always a cultural commodity and therefore always an object of exchange, its capacity for reinterpretation means that it also has a related though separate existence as an object of actual and potential interpretation. Even though there are two related levels of existence and, furthermore, even though one may inform the other, one is not reducible to the other (Benjamin 1991:146).

From this reading, marketplace commodification and appropriation of Aboriginal art appears partial at best, and as Langton suggests, with only the material manifestations of art available for consumption. Yet while approi>riation does not destroy authorial intent it may effectively mask or compete with it where other meanings and uses have been applied. The mere 'locating' of Aborigines as actively resistant to marketplace appropriation, does not bear weight in analysis. To equate Aboriginal intentions to deflect appropriation and preserve cultural integrity, with their absolute success in this endeavour is to run the risk of romanticising Aborigines and their productions as somehow beyond the processes of appropriation. And, thus capable of achieving what no other art has to date; a singular and authoritative voice, transcendent across all circumstances. However, if the process

18 Munn refers to the process of artwork creation, whereby ancestral figures and their sacred powers are believed to be imbued within the designs through song and incantation. Subsequently, these are not believed to be removed at point of sale (Munn 1970:141-163). 64 of appropriation is not to be entirely avoided, it may instead be argued that it is possible to delay or subvert the process with the use of counter-appropriative strategies.

3. 6 Counter Appropriation

Increasingly in the work of postcolonial scholars, the indigenous adoption and adaptation of European cultural and technological forms is perceived as a deconstructive tactic of plunder and appropriation (Bhabha 1987, 1990; Clifford 1988; Hall 1990; Thomas 1991: 186; Sweet 1989). As a strategy of resistance counter-appropriation is operative on a number of levels including: frrstly, reclamation of cultural material that has been appropriated by the dominant culture (albeit this may not necessarily result in the physical return of the cultural material), involving the reassertion of indigenous sign values upon the material which has been originally appropriated; and secondly, appropriating European forms from which new creations, purposes, and sign values will come forth. It is this later tactic of counter-appropriation which Foster (after Barthes) has termed 'myth robbery', suggesting, 'since myth robs myth, why not rob myth?'(1985: 169).

Homi Bhabha presents probably the most developed thesis of counter-appropriation in his isolation of the use colonised peoples made and make of colonial culture forms

(particularly language)~ as a kind of subversive 'mimicry' (1990). In Bhabha's conception mimicry involves the indigenous culture taking on the superficial public behaviours of the coloniser. Like pantomime, mimicry produces the effect of parody in creating the indigene as a subject that is 'almost the same, but not quite'. It 'continually produces its slippage, its excess, its difference' (Bhabha 1990:318), and is therefore a constant reminder to both colonial authority and the colonised of their difference. 'Slippages', or the excess of difference which is produced through mimicry, creates a counterpoint of facilitation for coloniser and colonised. In the first instance, slippages produce and maintain the subject as Other. Secondly, it is argued that where indigenes use the dominant culture's forms in new and differing contexts, the slippages which occur serve to alienate coloniser cultural forms and 65 tropes from their source and relocate them with the colonised. This, Bhabha believes to be most threatening to the colonising culture in the creation of 'another

19 knowledge of its norms' (Bhabha 1990:318; see also Sweet 1989:62-75) •

Mimicry is linked to Deleuze and Guattari' s concept of 'deterritorialisation' (1990[1986]), which presents a similar range of problems for colonised cultures. Indigenes are at a disadvantage in cultural production where there exists no commensurable terms or models in the adopted or borrowed culture to express the

20 subtleties of culture, or culture specific concepts • The question partially addressed in Chapter Two continues to hover: How is it possible for indigenes to persist as culturally distinct whilst using the expressions of the dominant or imperial culture?21

Stephen Muecke grapples with these issues in Textual Spaces (1992), with his discussion of the Aboriginal use of English language. It is recognised at the outset by Muecke that the reduction of indigenous languages brought on by the impact of colonisation has seen a parallel increase in the use of the English language. Nevertheless, English is not adopted in its pure form, but reflects the influence of its Aboriginal users. In short, it has been 'Aboriginalised', being recognised and spoken (with variants) as 'Aboriginal English' throughout the Australian continent and Island territories (Muecke 1992:92). In tum its widespread u~e has come to

19 Jill Sweet (1989:62-75) examples the use of parody in Pueblo Indian culture in interactions with visitors. Pueblo clowns parody tourist foolishness in their customs and rituals, resulting in a reversal of usual power relations between Pueblo and non-Pueblo (at least within the physical confines of the Pueblo community). Sweet believes these actions to 'monitor the behaviour of the stranger'(1989:72) whilst they are in the Pueblo community, by playfully reflecting back to the tourist any inapproriate behaviour. These behaviours may be identified using Hasan Dogan's framework, as consciously employed strategies; 'the local culture preserves its coherence and integrity, and does not experience disorder and pyschological strain' (Dogan 1989:223).

20 In Aboriginal painting from Central Australia this problematic can be exampled where the use of acrylic white paint is used in the place of white pipe clay, or where the canvas is a substitute for the body or ground. Is it possible for the painting to have the same levels of sacredness when they do not employ sacred materials, such as pipe clay and specific sacred ground?

21 Refer to Chapter Two, Section Incorporation I Appropriation- Where to borrow is to Resist. 66

22 function as a lingua franca for Aborigines, assisting an active political solidarity • In the play of Aboriginal conceptualisations, narrative structures, introduced words and phrasing with English language forms and words, Aboriginal English is found to be subversive. In this respect Aboriginal English appears as a deterritorialised form, yet also functions in a similar way to Bhabha's notion of indigenous mimicry, being somewhat unnerving for the settler culture. Muecke puzzles this problem further where he notes that the subversive nature of Aboriginal English may not only go unrecognised by the coloniser culture, (particularly in the process of transferring spoken Aboriginal English to writing), but it may also be marginalised as an exotic form (1992:96). Here the problematic highlighted by Barthes (1973: 149) is at work, whereby the dominant culture controls the boundaries and the reading of oppositional text(s) through the dominance of the coloniser's disciplinary discourses and institutions. In countering this grim reading of Aboriginal English as a reduced form rather than a subversive form, it is necessary to engage with Jameson's call for a consciously political interpretive reading of cultural texts ( 1981: 17). The benefits of a consciously political reading would, Muecke suggests, secure 'a broader significance for them (Aborigines) which takes the form of a transformation from the traditional ideology of the Dreaming to the contemporary context of political calculation and struggle' (Muecke 1992:96).

A consciously political reading is perhaps not required for an appreciation of the political intentions of contemporary Aboriginal comics, performance artists and playwrights, such as Ernie Dingo, Bob Maza, Bobby Merritt and Jimmy Chi. Their work involves the production of heterogenous, satiric self-representations, and reflects upon inter-cultural relationships. Satire as a political tool is evidenced in the 'claim' made by Burnam Burnam upon the land mass of the United Kingdom on behalf of all Australian Aborigines (see Appendix C). This 'claim' in the form of a performance took place on 26 January 1988, and with the context and attention of Australia's Bicentennial celebrations, garnered considerable media attention (Langsman 1988:2). The use of humour in this way may however be problematic

22 The political usefulness of the adoption of English does not of course adequately compensate for the loss of Aboriginal languages throughout the continent. 67 given its heavy reliance upon cultural contexts, and, the risk that the burlesque nature of the humour might undermine the 'political seriousness of the intercultural transaction' (Thomas 1991:187). While being playful and mocking, the Burnam Burnam performance is significant as an example of the more complex phenomena of bricolage, whereby Aborigines integrate and appropriate Anglo-Australian myths into their repertoire of cultural resistance.

The term bricolage was first offered by Levi-Strauss (1972[1962]) in reference to 'primitive' cultures attempting to use their own conceptual belief systems to make sense and create answers (logic) for phenomena encountered in contact with European cultures. In the Australian context Aboriginal bricolage is apparent in what appear to be examples of hybrid or 'creole' art as with the introduced use of Christian motifs or figures (Christ) in Dreamings, as seen in Hermannsburg paintings (in Hardy et al. 1992:Fig. 1.16, 3.1). It is also evident in regional oral history where historical figures (i.e. Captain Cook and Ned Kelly) have been

23 mythologised in Aboriginal terms (Maddock 1988:11-30; Rowse 1993:229-25) • Bricolage differs from mere incorporation of dominant forms in more than a few ways. It presents itself as two fisted, being necessary adaptive behaviour in ordering the world around that which is known and accepted andl( as being an openness to new information 11 without assigning priorities. Maddock (1988) contributes, 'their

23 The personages of Christ, Ned Kelly and Captain Cook do not however appear passively in Dreaming images or oral accounts. They figure in Northern Australia as reappropriations being mythologised characters that represent, in Cook's case, history (the coming of the white man), and political awareness (the oppressive agency of colonisation). In contrast Ned Kelly enjoys a renegade 'Robin Hood' type status; he is a friend to the Aborigine. The appearance of Christian motifs or figures such as Christ is perhaps more complex, in that they coexist with Aboriginal mythological depictions and landscapes. Aboriginal artists exhibit a strong sense that these two mythological/religious worlds can and do mesh, although undoubtedly there is some compromise in belief and practice. As Morton comments, Western Aranda tradition continues, is transmitted and enhanced, 'old stories and songs now sit side by side with new stories and songs about Jesus and Mary, God and Satan, Adam and Eve' (Hardy et al. 1992:54).

These ideas are further elucidated in the film 'Too Many Captain Cooks' (Director, Penny McDonald 1988, Australian Film Television and Radio School). Here artist Paddy Wainbarranga of the Rembarranga people of Central Arnhem Land narrates how Captain Cook visited Australia over a million years ago, well before the English documented visit of 1770. The many Captain Cooks referred to in the film are representatives of non-Aboriginal culture. The old Captain Cook is possibly a Christ figure, for the narrator expands, that he was unaccepted by his own people and killed as a result by the many rapacious 'new' Captain Cooks. 68 value lies ... in giving a reading of an Aboriginal sense of themselves, of their part in relation to the outside world' (1988:21). In this way, time, characters, and historical events are all Aboriginalised. In their entry into the circulation routes of the larger Australian community they may over time disrupt dominant paradigms of knowledge. Thus, these examples of Aboriginal cultural expression, equate in their use value with acts of counter-appropriation, clearly illustrate Foucault's stated contradictory nature of discourse where it 'transmits and produces power; it reinforces it, but also undermines and exposes it, renders it fragile and makes it possible to thwart it' (Foucault 1978: 101).

3. 7 Incommensurability

The level at which it might be argued that cultural appropriation is not achieved rests in the incommensurability of Aboriginal cultural forms, practices and beliefs with those of the non-Aborigine. However, for incommensurability to have its effect, a relationship of Derridean difference must be recognised. How might this occur in a colonised setting where Aborigines are still struggling against the position of marginal and known subjects? It is argued herein that such recognition, a literal incommensurable space, can be created where Aborigines strategically chose to reveal precious secret and sacred material to non-Aborigines. The explicit Aboriginal purpose of the revelation of secret and sacred material is political, in seeking to create a dialogic and obligated relationship of exchange. It is through the act and occasion of revelation that the unforeseen may occur, the recognition by the coloniser culture of the incommensurable.

3. 7.1 Revelation and Occasion

The use of Aboriginal cultural material as proof of Aboriginal relatedness to tracts of land and individual authority has become commonplace since the introduction of the Land Rights Act (Northern Territory) 1976. Land Commission Judges have come to rely upon viewing sacred material, performance or ceremonies as prima facie evidence of the legitimacy of claims (Peterson and Langton (eds)1983; see also 69

Stanner 1979:277)24 • Therefore Aborigines are required to work with anthropologists and legal counsel to document the Tjurkurpa, ceremonies, material culture, iconography and places which relate them to tracts of land. In sum, revelation has become for Aborigines a measured political act, yet as a strategy of

25 dialogue Aborigines remain cautious (Myers 1982:94) • To avoid possible compromise or desacrilisation of sacred or secret material Aborigines demand significant controls in regard to revelation, to which the Courts have largely responded in their management of legal proceedings. Only those persons absolutely essential to the assessment process have limited access to sacred material, and then they are under oath of secrecy; likewise, transcripts of sensitive court proceedings

26 are embargoed • Despite the increasingly common use of Aboriginal sacred artefacts and performances for such purposes the question remains: How is it possible to understand their nature and agency as producing political effects? For non-Aborigines privileged to witness the revelation of sacred material or knowledge first hand, it has been described as a transformative experience. Two personal accounts (Coombs 1978; Coombs p.c. 28 March 1991; Hamilton p.c. 30 January 1992) are used here to illustrate both the strategic use Aborigines make of revelation

24 The Land Rights Act (Northern Territory) 1976, created a formal legal process with regard to Aborigines gaining freehold title to unalienated land, and allows land only be granted where traditional ownership can be 'demonstrated' in ways that satisfy a European court (Langton and Peterson 1983). Under the Act, (Section 3), Aboriginal traditional ownership needs to be established in the following ways: '(a) have common spiritual affiliations to a site on the land, being affiliations that place the group under primary spiritual responsibility for that site and for the land; and (b) are entitled by Aboriginal tradition to forage as of right over that land' (Layton in Langton and Peterson 1983:15). In a number of circumstances where land ownership remains unclear, or the Court remains unsatisfied with evidence, caveats have been issued to Aboriginal people requiring that they 'explain themselves' more clearly (Stanner 1979:277) and give explicit evidence relating to claims, or face the consequences of insufficient evidence being available, i.e. loss of claim.

25 Myers refers here to Pintupi people, suggesting that the revelation of important ritual objects and ceremonies was most likely irksome given Europeans were viewed as children in terms of their level of knowledge and status with regard to Tjukurrpa. Revelation was therefore a difficult undertaking, likely as it was to transgress the conventions of sacred information exchange in the information economy (Myers 1982:94).

26 Neate reports the following methods to be deployed in land claim hearings to protect Aboriginal secret material and information from widespread distribution: (1) restricted evidence; (2) evidence not recorded verbatim, but summersied by i.e. anthropologists; (3) written notes given as evidence, but not marked as an exhibit; (4) evidence given in secret session but not recorded; (5) evidence given to the Commissioner alone (Neate 1982: 1, 17, 18). 70 of cultural material, and also the resulting significant shifts in non-Aboriginal perception.

Respected senior Australian Public Servant, H.C. 'Nugget' Coombs was appointed by Prime Minister Harold Holt, in July 1968 to the Chair of the Council for

27 Aboriginal Affairs (Coombs 1978:2) • This position saw Coombs travel extensively throughout Australia during the period of his office (1968-1976) meeting with and listening to the concerns of many Aborigines. During 1970 Coombs went on behalf of Minister-in-Charge of Aboriginal Affairs, W.C. Wentworth, to investigate the desecration of Aboriginal sacred sites by nickel miners at Wingelina, in Western Australia. At Wingelina, Coombs was taken to the damaged sites, considered sacred to his Aboriginal hosts and their ancestors. Comments made by Coombs in his book Kulinma (1978), describing this day are telling of a personal revolutionary perception shift;

'Whereas earlier I was being led by the White anthropologist and the Aborigines were coming along, now they were taking us. They were in charge and we were the guests. They talked to me about the significance of the sites and the stories of their totemic ancestors, and what it meant to them for these places to be destroyed. As the day progressed, these men grew in statue and authority. When _we had finished the day they said "We do not come here very often, and it is an important occasion. Tonight we would like to sing one of the song cycles about our ancestors who created this country for us" .

We went out that night and sat in a circle in the sand .. .In that circle I realised that these men whom I had presumed to pity had dignity and authority backed by a tradition infinitely older than our own. It was a moving experience which has left its mark on my mind and spirit' (Coombs 1978:32).

27 Coombs had earlier recommended the formation of the Council for Aboriginal Affairs (Coombs 1978:2). 71 It seems probable that revelation occurred in this instance because Coombs was recognised as a person of some influence and authority who could perhaps offer assistance (Coombs p.c. 28 March 1991). What is also apparent is Coombs' own recognition of Aboriginal power and authority, the experience leaving its mark on 'mind and spirit'. One could further muse how this personal 'revelation' for Coombs impacted upon his future advice to government, and subsequently how policy and legislation were eventually framed.

Annette Hamilton, anthropologist and witness to various land claim legal proceedings in Central Australia offers in part an interpretation of the transformative experience for legal counsel thus;

' ... even where such people (Land Commissioners and Senior Counsel) may have been inclined to dismiss Aboriginal ritual as superstition or irrelevant fantasy. Their views tend to change when they sit down among Aboriginal men, decorated and charged with sacred power, in the midst of their country, and see sacred objects reverentially displayed and sung over. Even the most hardened cynic seems to be affected. The experience itself takes on a particular value, over and above its legal value, from the presence of the objects themselves. In this sense a kind of magical power is being exerted by the, objects themselves. For senior members of the legal profession in Australia, this can take on a particular meaning because Aborigines phrase their own interpretations as being concerned with the highest Law, and they are showing the terms of their own highest and most important Law. This Law, of course, reminds the members of the legal profession of the importance of their own Law, and perhaps engages them in a more respectful attitude towards the Aboriginal people.

When Aboriginal people reveal their Law, they are doing so in a spirit of equality and reverence : for the white man privileged to experience this, he is drawn into a special role, that of the privileged pioneer on 72 the frontier of experience of the 'other'. In this sense, Aborigines are right, they do possess a kind of magical power, and, as events have shown in the Northem Territory at least, that power really does work, have efficacy in the real world.' (Hamilton p.c. 30 January 1992).

The strategies employed by Aborigines to effect power in the above accounts are manifold. Happening upon Aboriginal territories, these occasions clearly situate the Aborigine as host and the non-Aborigine as dependent guest. Acts of revelation or exchange which occur in these contexts are controlled by the Aborigine, and attempt to oblige the non-Aborigine to enter the contract of reciprocal exchange. As Michaels reports, the revelation of that which is secret, at what point and in what context, is for those select custodians with the responsibility a position of considerable power and prestige. Consequently in its conveyance prestige is bestowed upon the teller, and 'honours the person being told, with such honour

28 however comes also obligation (Michaels 1984:8) • This is the point where revelation might operate as a kind of gift, generating its excess, entangling the receiver ' ... in wider relations which are not easily shrugged off' (Thomas 1991:123). The comments of former Land Commissioner, Justice Toohey, appears to confirm the notion of revelation as strategic, and also personally obligating of the receiver;

'There are numerous occasions when ... claimants have produced material.. . performed ceremonies or shown objects of a sacred nature ... where that has been done almost on a personal basis, clearly it has been done because of my position as Land Commissioner. But it has had certain personal overtones attached to it which make me conscious of the need to meet any obligations that ought to be met with regard to that material' (in Neate 1982: 17).

28 Michaels' comment is made here in reference to the Warlpiri, although general application may be assumed. 73 Operating beyond the level defined as politically strategic, and problematic to the accounts of Coombs and Hamilton, is the actual nature of Aboriginal power being spoken about. Power is phrased in these reports in unresolved, romantic terms such as 'authority backed by a tradition infinitely older than our own' (Coombs 1978), and Aborigines are those who 'possess a kind of magical power' (Hamilton 1992). It is unlikely here that Hamilton is referring to the deployment of magic as in the use of extraordinary powers. Rather, she suggests there to be a faint, albeit willing suspension of disbelief as the egos of select European players are flattered or genuinely surprised by the occasion and the sincerity of those performers before them. The ceremonious act of revelation which promotes the European's willing suspension of disbelief, like theatre itself, is localised and dependent upon each individual seduction. This seduction experienced initially in intimate circumstances might be understood as the experience of 'wonder' and desire for Others and their

29 most secret and sacred artefacts •

3.7.2 Wonder

It might be argued that the 'wonder' which affects its audience so dramatically does not lie within the works themselves, but is a response provoked by that perceived to be mysterious and marvellous, as with the secret and sacred. The concept of 'wonder' as used herein follows closely that proposed by philosopher, Descartes, where he described it as the experience of unreserved awe, which is experienced

30 before great art (1985:349-356) • Wonder is considered particularly efficacious in the instance of revelation, as it arouses passions which fix the object of wonder in the mind, to be wondered further (1985:354-355).

29 The religious or sacred elemental nature of Aboriginal paintings has been identified as particularly attractive to European audiences, who are admiring of the artwork as exotic, and are somewhat entranced by the idea that Aboriginal art has deep levels of meaning and purpose (Morphy 1980:89, 1991:24, cf. Benjamin 1990:77).

30 Refer to Chapter Two, Section 2.5.4 Differance as Strategy, where 'wonder' is cited as a 'relational approach to the incommensurable. 74 In their marvellousness, wondrous objects or sites are often perceived to possess incorporeal yet near palpable forces, cited by various authors to be 'aura' (Benjamin 1973), 'atmosphere' (Bohme 1993), 'reverberation' (Bachelard 1994) and 'resonance' (Greenblatt 1990). Whilst these forces have identifiable characteristics, their measurement is difficult for they defy the usual empiric methods of quantifying cause and effect. Insight to the effects of these forces may be gained instead through accounts (i.e. the authors mentioned above), which focus upon the corporeal object, and the sensate interaction between object and audience. In Walter Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1973), 'aura' is thought to be that which surrounds and invests a unique work of art. In a later piece of work Walter Benjamin reconfigured 'aura' to be 'the experience of an expectation or a possibility' (Benjamin A. 1991: 150). Bohme (1993) observes incorporeal forces, such as 'atmosphere', to be produced through techniques, yet to whence they belong he cites phenomenologists to be unsure;

'We are not sure whether we should attribute them to the objects or environments from which they proceed or to the subjects who experience them. We are also unsure where they are. They seem to fill the space with a certain tone of feeling like a haze' (Bohme 1993:114).

3. 8. The Agency of Wonder - Resonance

In the revelation of Aboriginal sacred material to non-Aborigines, the object's 'wonder' or force appears to remain intact where the field of its distribution is limited, and where its offering is understood and received as a privilege. It might be further argued that because revelation of the secret and sacred is never total in these circumstances, their material manifestations only serve to further signify that which is unavailable, the wondrous, the incommensurable. In signifying that which is incommensurable, Aboriginal artefacts displayed in revelation might come to be understood as similar in their effect and affect to Foster's 'art with a politic' (1985: 155), whereby they entreat the audience's attention and speculation. Stephen 75 Greenblatt's interpretive writings upon 'resonance' as the lasting force of the wondrous is useful here;

'By resonance I mean the power of the object displayed to reach out beyond its formal boundaries to a larger world, to evoke in the viewer the complex dynamic cultural forces from which it has emerged and for which as metaphor or more simply metonymy it may be taken by a viewer to stand' (Greenblatt 1990: 170).

Greenblatt speaks here not of an inherent authority within the artwork, or stability of the 'sign', but an object which attracts and reverberates, corresponding in part to Bachelard's (1994[1958]) phenomenological poetics. The reverberating or resonant object is one which allows the play of meaning over time and space. It is a literal deconstruction of the effects of linearity upon objects. Meaning therefore is not fixed but is accumulative, reflexive, dialogic; always dependent upon context and the relationship of receiver with object. In practice and with regard to Aboriginal resonant artefacts the temporal and spatial conditions of resonant dialogue between audience and object might span years with significant intervals, involve great distances and many participants. This dialogic 'play' is supported by Andrew Benjamin's notion of the 'tiered existence' of artworks. The integrity of the work may be maintained he suggests, at the same time that new meanings and purposes, or an 'afterlife', are possible through continual audience reinterpretation and translation (Benjamin 1991:146,152).

It remains a point of issue that artworks which have their wondrous effect in intimate circumstances, may in contrast be considered non-wondrous, or inconsequential, in circumstances where there are no opportunities for their authors to stage-manage the reception of artwork. How then might artworks have their effect, in the absence of the artist, ceremonious occasion, wonder, and directed 'meaning'? The droll commentary of Rowse may be used here to reach a possible resolve, where he claims that for Western audiences in their engagement with Aboriginal art 'inscrutability is no disadvantage' (Rowse 1993a:91). Rowse's 76 comment suggests that where ideology or author intentions might be obscured, 'feeling' or near palpable forces, come to be privileged by audiences. Thus, it appears it is the resonant quality of Aboriginal artworks, and not the crisp presentation of ideology which finally has its impact. Ironically, despite and because of their obtuse forms, Aboriginal artworks may come to resonate as 'art with a politic', having in Hamilton's terms 'efficacy in the real world'.

3. 9 Conclusion

This Chapter has attempted to establish that over the long term Aborigines have attempted to dialogue with the settler culture. Aboriginal purpose has been to engage the settler culture in political discourse in order that Aboriginal aspirations, autonomy and cultural values might be recognised. In endeavouring to achieve this aim Aborigines have made deliberate and logical use of their material culture (art and artefact). This is rationalised with the understanding that Aboriginal art is both description and embodiment of Tjukurrpa, social relationships and key values held within Aboriginal society; thus it figures as an archetype of Aboriginal discourse (see Morphy 1983:111).

Enquiry in this chapter has highlighted the problematic expressed by semiotic analyses of art. It has shown that despite the intentions of Aboriginal artists, where artworks enter circulation their original meanings or use values do not necessarily remain intact. In circulation objects become commodities, and so other symbolic and use values come to be attached. Strategies of counter-appropriation are shown to be employed by Aboriginal artists as tactical in resisting the process of appropriation. The incommensurability of Aboriginal culture and its forms with settler culture forms is offered as greatly advantageous in political dialogue. In orchestrating ceremonious occasions of the revelation of secret and/ or sacred material, Aborigines are observed in part to be controlling the terms of dialogue; the offering of precious 'gifts' through acts of revelation, carry with them an 'excess' of obligation, imposed upon the recipient. Resonance is introduced as the quality of 77 the incommensurable artwork over time, which allows and promotes a dynamic between audience and artwork, perhaps impossible to achieve by other means.

It is not possible to give account for every transaction whereby Aboriginal art changes hands, either as explicit gifts, or as explicitly rendered commodities. The case studies that follow provide evidence of the mobilising of traditional Aboriginal cultural discourse, tenets and forms that have occurred in order to establish a rapport with the non-Aborigine and assert political power in specific dialogue. The creation of obligated, dialogic relationships through the use of artwork, and the resonating properties of Aboriginal cultural material will be highlighted. 78

CHAPTER4 BOTH SWORD AND SHIELD - THE BARUNGA STATEMENT

4.1 Introduction

The case studies to be discussed in this and the following two chapters, the Barunga Statement, the Tjukurrpa Mosaic and the Aboriginal Memorial may be read as both Aboriginal contributions and Aboriginal interventions to the Bicentenary celebrations. They provide strong illustrations of the complementary use Aboriginal artists have made of their own cultural discourses and forms with the political structures of the settler culture, such as the Parliament, the legislature, and processes of democracy. In this sense the sophisticated knowledge Aborigines have gained of settler-culture systems, formations and myths is allowing their infiltration and use for Aboriginal purposes.

4.2 The Bicentenary Context

1988, the Bicentenary year of European settlement provided excellent opportunities for Aborigines and non-Aborigines alike to renegotiate the myths and terms of first contact and European settlement. Yet as a national 'maturation rite' providing occasion for European reflection and reparation it appeared to be variously squandered by some and exploited by others (Hutchison 1992:11-12). The goodwill suggested when both Houses of Federal Parliament in their first sitting of 1988 passed a motion recognising Aboriginal prior ownership of Australia, seemed to Reynolds to be little more than gestural, in that it did not signal a year of watershed legislative change for Aboriginal people (Reynolds 1988:3). The enormity of such changes had been side-stepped in the early 198d'-s at official levels for the 1 celebratory mode of a birthday party • As Spearitt points out, '1988 has not been a spontaneous celebration of Australia and what it means to be Australian.

1 The idea of a birthday party was promoted and instituted by the advertising agencies Mojo, and Monahan Dayman Adams. Both companies were employed by the Federal government to advise in relation to the commemoration of the Bicentenary. 79 Bureaucrats, consultants, advertising agencies, and governments have been busily planning the year for a decade' (1988:3). This was the point at which there was in Willis's words, a 'final collapse of a distinction between official and commercial nationalism' (Willis 1993: 180). Here the hand of opportunist politicians offering Australians 'bread and circuses' appears evident.

The direction and extent of Federal government spending during the Bicentennial year reportedly incensed many observers, creating inter and intra-state rivalries, particularly where New South Wales was seen to be in receipt of the lion's share of financial assistance for its celebratory activities and projects (Hutchison 1992: 15). None appeared to be more appalled than Aborigines, who maintained their own considerable reasons for disquiet at the year long celebration (White Invasion Day Collective 1986; Fesl 1987; Carmody 1988). In the lead up to 1988, across the country Aborigines as individuals, clans and community organisations became involved in difficult decision making as to the extent of their non-involvement in the Bicentennial celebrations. The choice of involvement, it seemed caught many Aborigines in a double bind~ ~etween an apparent condonment of settler-culture celebrations~ and the opportunity to show the world a strong Aboriginal presence, seeking restoration of sovereign status (Mundine in Morphy and Taylor 1990:v).

Aboriginal resistance, the desire to tell their own story, to represent themselves wa~ it seemed;to be a difficult and variously successful project.

Hence, an Aboriginal determined presence became tactical in countering incorporation into the discourses of settlement, nationhood and identity and resisting the official command to "Celebrate in '88". Aborigines chose instead to mourn the year, while also celebrating cultural survival (Fesl 1987:31-32). Within this conceptual framework a loose programme of events, actions, protests, demonstrations and media attention throughout the year, regularly brought to the 80 fore the disjunction of settler culture celebration in the face of ongoing Aboriginal

2 dispossession and oppression •

4.3 Description- The Barunga Statement

A major Aboriginal contribution during 1988 came in the form of the 'Barunga Statement', which was designed to carry the concerns for Aboriginal justice into the

Federal political arena. The Barunga Statement oro~( petition is a large (120cm square) ochred painting on composition board (see Appendix D). In the very centre of the painting)(' is the Barunga Statement itself on a sheet of white paper (A3 size) printed with English text. Amidst the call for recognition of the rights of Aboriginal people to be met through law, the Barunga Statement calls finally for"' 'the Commonwealth Parliament to negotiate with us a Treaty recognising our prior ownership, continued occupation and sovereignty and affirming our rights and freedoms' (see Appendix E). The painted panels of the Statement depict selected totems (Dreamings) belonging to Aboriginal groups from North East Arnhem Land and Central Australia. From the top left hand side to bottom left hand side these are: 1) Top; Crocodile Fire Dreaming, of the Madurrba people in the Blue Mud area, 2) Centre; Crocodile Fire Dreaming, of the Gumatj people in the Caledon Bay area, 3) Bottom; Whale Dreaming depicting sea rights, Trial Bay area. On the

Statement's right hand side~ is the Two Women's Dreaming from C~ntral Australia. The top and bottom of the painting depict the gatherings of the women at two sites Ulpanyali (top)x and Ilpilli (bottom), for the same ceremony. The centre panel illustrates the coming together of women for the same ceremony, indicating carriage of the story through the land.

The Barunga Statement is a particularly potent example of how politics are played out both within Aboriginal communities~ and exterior to them. Various issues arise for discussion including an examination of the historical, political and social context

2 Examples of these diverse strategies of raising community awareness include, Burnam Burnam's claim of the United Kingdom for Aborigines, 26 January, 1988 (Hewett and Monaghan 1988:3); the Australia Day/Invasion Day march in Sydney (26 January 1988); the presentation of a petition to Prime Minister Hawke, at the opening of the New Parliament House in May 1988, with over 5000 Aboriginal signatories requesting Aboriginal sovereignty be recognised (Hefner 1988:3); The Northern Land Council's poster project 'We Have Survived' (Mackinolty p.c. 4 August 1990). 81 surrounding the Barunga Statement's production; the artwork as a 'collective' statement, and its communicative ability. Contextualising this particular example for discussion necessitates a brief introduction to the call for a treaty, Aboriginal with non-Aboriginal Australians.

4.2 Treaty Talk

Like the indigenous peoples of the Pacific and North America, Aborigines in recent times have pursued a treaty between themselves and the settler-culture, as both concept and document (Wright et al. 1985; Nettheim 1989; Yunupingu 1989). To be founded upon recognition of an ignoble colonial past, Aboriginal sovereignty, and willing concession to Aboriginal rights and needs, a treaty document has been envisaged as potential sword and shield, in terms of how it might facilitate the emergence of equitable societal structures and indigenous rights to land and resources (Yunupingu 1989:8; Bennett 1989:155-156). Yet for a pan-Aboriginal treaty position and document to be struck, consensus must be reached across Australia's enormous landmass, and its diverse and sometimes factional Aboriginal set of communities. Galarrwuy Yunupingu, Chairperson of the Northern Land Council, has expressed this in terms of the responsibility of leaders to consult:

'We have to talk within our communities and organisations to make sure that what goes into any treaty is what everyone, every Aboriginal person, can agree with. That means we all have to be thinking about it and talking about it' (1989:8).

However, it is evident from incidental examples that some Aboriginal people conduct treaty negotiations from a more narrowly representative base; either as local communities (Brennan 1991 :55-56), or less frequently as individuals. An example of the latter approach may be observed in the action of high profile Aborigine Burnam Burnam, who by self-appointment developed a treaty document and served it upon 'White Australia' in Salzburg, on 27 January 1988 (see Appendix F). In its lack of broader representation Burnam Burnam's wildcard action appears more as a 82 personal political stunt, (related to his claim of the United Kingdom land mass on 26 January 1988), than a document to be seriously considered by either Aboriginal groups or the Australian government.

Aboriginal rights to land, wealth and sovereignty, such as might be facilitated through a treaty, may be considered by some to be a challenge to existing economic and political power blocs. Thus, perhaps not surprisingly, treaty talk for the non­ Aboriginal community appears to be a nervous exercise. Federal governments of the past few decades have been criticised as displaying inertia, cynicism and at worst, being reactionary with regard to the development of a treaty with Aborigines (see Bennett 1989:22-45). Evidence of the range of such behaviour can easily be found when looking at post-Whitlam government actions and responses to the concept of Aboriginal Land Rights and political and economic self determination. Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser (1975-1983) continued the Whitlam Government programme of Aboriginal autonomy, with his government's National Aboriginal Conference (NAC) in 1979..- promising to work towards a 'Treaty of Commitment' (Bennett 1989: 155). Yet, as Frank Brennan in Sharing The Country (1991) reveals, there was underlying tension in Fraser's Cabinet, where moves towards a treaty were privately contested by Aboriginal Affairs Minister Fred Chaney who was 'active in discouraging the idea of an Aboriginal treaty on the grounds that it was socially and politically divisive' (1991 :59). In recognition of the public unease surrounding a treaty, the NAC at this time chose to use the Yolngu word and concept of Makarrata given to mean 'the end of dispute between communities and

3 the resumption of normal relations' (Brennan 1991:60) •

3A closer look at the semantic of the word 'Makarrata' offers great insight into the conceptual elements as understood by the participants of the NAC. Tatz (1983:292) reports 'Makarr' as the Gupapuyngu word for thigh, and being reference to the area 'in which an aggrieved Aborigine spears the human cause of his grievance. The later, after expert dodging of the thrown spear, then allows his accuser to dance close to him to facilitate the spearing. By doing so he accepts the retribution'. In taking the Makarrata to have a like meaning, the non-Aboriginal community would need to adopt a willingness to submit themselves and their activities to (Aboriginal) lawful punishment in order to begin equitable relations. 83 The incoming Labor government of 1983.., led to power by Bob Hawke, made the commitment to furthering talks of a Makarrata, compact or treaty, and further, made the radical and progressive move of offering a national land rights legislation. At this point, land rights overtook the Treaty as the more important issue for many Aboriginal people in the early 1980's. However, the promise of national land rights legislation was not generally popular, bringing with it great conflict between the states and Commonwealth government. If instituted, the Commonwealth could compulsorily acquire land from the states, but would be bound to offer the states compensation. It was vociferously argued that moves towards compensation would be a financial burden that the Federal government could not support, given mining, pastoral and general community fears over loss of rights to land (Brennan 1991:71- 72). In March of 1986, the Federal Cabinet responded to this dilemma by abandoning national land rights legislation. As Brennan opines, the Federal Labor Government's walk away from its commitment amounted to 'the grossest breach of faith committed by any government towards Aboriginal people since white settlement' (1991:72). From this point of time the notion of a treaty or the increasingly preferred Labor term, 'compact of understanding/ once more gained favour with Federal government and Aborigines, among whom, hopes ran high that it might be achieved by the Bicentenary year (1991:74-79).

Prime Minister Hawke's understanding of a treaty in the late 19807's, as documented by Brennan )was not as a separate binding legislative document,. but II& a kind of preamble to the forthcoming Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) legislation (1989), which had been identified by the Hawke Government as the instrument of reconciliation (Brennan 1991 :64). Given this factOlj it is difficult to appraise the possible intentions of the Prime Minister when he again publicly

4 announced (on Alice Springs' radio) his favouring of a treaty • Such a comment suggests Hawke's behaviour to have been promoting goodwill, in positioning Labor as 'a government of national reconciliation', a Party anxious to settle with Aboriginal people prior to the Bicentennial year (Brennan 1991:67,74-75).

4 Comment favouring a treaty was given while Hawke was being interviewed on Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association radio (CAAMA) in Alice Springs, September 1987. 84 Cognisant of Labor's political agenda, and armed with Hawke's statement, the Northern and Central Land Councils decided to agitate more forcefully towards a treatyS. In making their move, the Land Councils issued invitations to Prime Minister Bob Hawke and the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Gerry Hand, to attend the 1988 Barunga Sport and Cultural Festival. The intention of both Land Councils was to use the Barunga event as the place and time to issue the Prime Minister with a special and hopefully binding presentation (Brennan p.c. 26 November 1993).

4.3 The Barunga Festival

The official publication of the Northern Land Council (NLC), Land Rights News

6 (LRN) , editorialises the invitation to Prime Minister Bob Hawke and Minister for Aboriginal Affairs Gerry Hand to attend the Barunga Festival, was an attempt to continue to build the relationship of understanding and goodwill between Aborigines and the Australian Federal Parliament. The Barunga Festival was applauded as a perfect opportunity in this regard because its focus was on the unique achievements of Aborigines in both the sporting and cultural arena (LRN 7/1988:26). Pat Dodson, Coordinator of the National Federation of Land Councils)( and Director of the Central Land Council, recounted in Land Rights Newsx the significance of the visit in terms of recognition of Aboriginal rights and in terms of their political aspirations being met:

J(Barunga was never just a political event. Many things happened ... the difference this time was our resolve to show the Prime Minister that our culture and law are a reality, are practiced and held

5 The Northern and Central Land Council's great enthusiasm for a treaty may principally be seen as being carried by the enthusiasm of the Council chairpersons, respectively, Galarrwuy Yunupingu and Wenten Rubuntja. Both men had previously been involved in high level talks with government, and had prepared presentations to government on behalf of their representative peoples. Over a long period of time the issues remained the same, Aboriginal autonomy, recognition of Aboriginal custom and authority, and rights to land.

6As the official publication of the NLC, Land Rights News might be seen to present ideological views consistent with the NLC policies. 85 dear ... we were not just putting on a token song and dance routine for the symbols and representatives of colonisation, but deliberately taking the opportunity to educate non Aboriginal people, to help them

understand and learn~ (LRN 7/88:26).

During the course of events at Barunga, both Bob Hawke and Gerry Hand were invited to meet with hundreds of senior Aboriginal men with the intention that a treaty process be agreed upon. Significantly, in symbolic and political terms this meeting took place on ceremonial ground in order, Land Rights News reports, for Aboriginal men 'to discuss Aboriginal issues on their terms', according 'respect for Aboriginal law and tradition' (LRN 7/88:23).

An immediate outcome of this meeting was the agreement by Prime Minister Hawke, on behalf of the Federal Government, to a five-point promissory statement (see Appendix G), which sketched out the process towards a negotiated treaty with Aboriginal people. The statement resolved to support the necessary consultation process that would ensure Aboriginal people would be the authors of such a document. Under pressure to give a timeline for the treaty, the Prime Minister's statement was hopeful that negotiations would start before the end of 1988-\ and be completed before the end of the life of the Parliamenf. This statement was formally signed by Land Council leaders Galarrwuy Yunupingu, Wenten Rubuntja, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Gerry Hand, and the Prime Minister, Bob Hawke 8 (LRN 7/88; Brennan 1991:82) •

Following the Prime Minister's verbal delivery of the five point statement to the Barunga Festival crowd, the Prime Minister was ceremoniously presented with .the

7 Such a timeline did not prove to be achievable by the next Federal election held on 23 March 1990, where Federal Labor was re-elected. It is difficult to assess whether this reflects a lack of political will, or the necessary but lumbering mechanics of such a consultative process. Certainly, the oppositional stance of the Federal Coalition, with its claims that a treaty would be socially divisive does not seem to have accelerated the process (see Brennan 1991 : 100-10 1).

8 Brennan (p.c. 26 November 1992) reports Prime Minister Hawke's advisers to have been caught unawares with regard to the proceedings at Barunga. They were subsequently very concerned that a promissory note of such import could be devised and signed at this time. 86 painted Barunga Statement by Northern and Central Land Council Chairpersons Galarrwuy Yunupingu and Wenten Rubuntja, on the 12 June 1988 (LRN 7/1988). Upon this presentation appeared to rest the political aspirations of Aborigines in seeking formal acknowledgment of colonial debt, Aboriginal sovereignty and related rights, and the necessity to commence the treaty process. In literally 'spelling out' Aboriginal desires in a public forum, and in their mobilising of joint Aboriginal and European politico-cultural formats, the Land Council\ it appeared, had managed an incredible feat. They had succeeded in obligating the Prime Minister to a treaty process.

4.4 The Petition Format

The incorporated use of European formats (Petition and English text) with those Aboriginal (painted Dreamings) within the Barunga Statement.y is both preceded and contextualised by the 1957 Elcho Island display of sacred raanga.r and the Yirrkala

9 Bark Petitions of 1963 and 1968 • The use of both European and Aboriginal formats may be seen as significant and strategic) reflecting Aboriginal attempts to maximise opportunities for broad-based understanding of their concerns. As Galarrwuy Yunupingu claimed, the ancestral images surrounding the central text were intended tto remind the politicians where the words come from - they are the

10 stories of the land' (Adlide p.c. 17 September 1992) •

It may be accepted that petitions are instructive instruments which seek to carry and convey the concerns of the petitioner body into the political arena. Yet their larger intention is for mediation. Most significant of all, the petition form may be regarded as representing actual and symbolic contracts between two parties, involving recognition of debt or disquiet, and:pledge by the receiver to act in response.

9 A direct link to the original Yirrkala Bark Petition of 1963 is acknowledged through Galarrwuy Yunupingu, whose father, Munggurrawuy, was involved in the production of the Bark Petition.

10Geoff Adlide here paraphrases the words of Galarrwuy Yunupingu. 87 The wording on the Barunga Statement was initially devised by Galarrwuy Yunupingu, through the Northern Land Council (NLC). Drafts of the text were sent to the Central Land Council (CLC) where it was agreed upon by Wenten Rubuntja, who then left it to the CLC director Pat Dodson, staff advisers and key observers to finalise text, and complete detailed negotiations with the NLC. (Adlide p.c. 17 September 1992; Brennan p.c. 26 November 1992). As respective heads of the Northern Land Council and Central Land Council, Galarrwuy Yunupingu and Wenten Rubuntja selected individuals from their regions to paint upon the Barunga Statement board, choosing also to direct the artists as to which ancestral Dreamings would be depicted (Adlide p.c. 17 September 1992; Dennis Williams Tjapanangka p.c. 16 November 1992).

Whilst some of those who had been directly involved in painting the Barunga Statement were known as artists beyond their communities, their choice in this context was not related to their artistic abilities. The ritual seniority of these men established them as those with knowledge, authority and rights to represent precious ancestral imagery; hence their choice in this matter might be perceived as tactical. From Yirrkala in North East Arnhem Land these men included Galarrwuy Yunupingu, Djwing Ngurruwuthun, Bakulangay Marawilli, Marrirra Marawilli, Djambawa Marawilli. All these men have been respected painters since the 1960~s 11 • Central Australia Aboriginal representation included Wenten Rubuntja (Arremte) usually resident in Alice Springs, Lindsay Turner Tjampijinpa (Warlpiri) from Niripyi outstation, via Papunya, and Dennis Williams Tjapanangka (Warlpiri) from Yuendumu. At the time of painting the Barunga Statement, Lindsay Turner Tjampijinpa was a field officer for the CLC, whilst Dennis Williams Tjapanangka was a CLC Council member. Of the Central Australian painters, only Rubuntja could be considered an active artist who derived income from his painted works rendered alternately in the Hermannsburg watercolourist or acrylic dot style.

11 The identity and status of these individuals as artists was established in discussions with John Rudder (29 September 1992) of the AIATSIS, and Steve Fox, arts adviser at Yirrkala (13 April 1993). 88 Given the Barunga Statement sought to 'underline the context of the consultations and any future discussions with the Australian Government' (LRN 7 /88:23)> it appeared critical that its painted (totemic) imagery represented Aboriginal peoples and their lands, conjoined by the two Land Councils. The Barunga Statement in its use of important ancestral images was an expression of ongoing tradition, based upon linkages of people to land, and each other. It set out to effectively render pan­ Aboriginality in two major ways. Firstly, in the use of artwork belonging to Aboriginal communities geographically isolated from each other (the Northern Territory's 'Top End' and Central/Western Desert regions) there is a strong suggestion of unity through diversity. Secondly, and perhaps less obviou¢' pan­ Aboriginality is suggested with the choice of Dreaming depicted in the Central Australian panel. The Dreaming depicted on the right hand side panel links all Aboriginal language groups from Port Augusta in South Australia to the sea at the top end (Dennis Williams Tjapanangka p.c. 16 November 1992). Small community groups and the passage of the Dreaming are represented in the painting by long . d 1" 1 "d h" h . . 1 {'\_ f"'\ E h pamte mes, a ongst e w tc are semt ctrc es \.._..) \..._.} ~'-' ~C'\ . ac language group along the 'Two Women' Dreaming trail, has a responsibility for maintaining specific ceremony attached to it as the Dreaming passes through their land. Accordingly, in this one Dreaming there is signalled cultural unity, while also recognising the unique role each Aboriginal community has to play in 'holding strong' culture. The conscious choice made by Wenten Rabuntja to paint this Dreaming may then be understood as a political device which gave evidence of an

12 existing larger Aboriginal political, social, and cultural cohesiveness • The Barunga Statement on the surface appeared to match Pat Dodson's motivating challenge for Aboriginal people to 'look at appropriate political mechanisms to bring

13 about realisation of our rights' (LRN 7/88:26) •

12 So successful was this concept made graphic, the Central Land Council subsequently used the basis of the design as its logo, believing it to encompass and convey a sense of the diversity yet relatedness of Aboriginal people in the Central Australian region.

13 According to Chips Mackinolty, Media and Communications Officer of the NLC during 1988, the Barunga Statement was intended to be just one means among others to focus attention on Aboriginal issues during the Bicentenary year. Other attention grabbing modes included producing 100,000 copies of LRN for national distribution, stickers, T-Shirts, and poster production (Mackinolty p.c. 4 August 1990). 89 4. 5 A Collective Statement 90 91 92 93 94

4. 7 Barunga Statement Unveiling - Parliament House

When Prime Minister Bob Hawke accepted the Barunga Statement in its presentation at the Barunga Festival, he made a promise to those assembled that it would be displayed in Parliament House, Canberra. Positioned within the Parliament House, Hawke announced the Barunga Statement would act as a reminder to the Commonwealth government of its peace-making obligations and responsibilities to Aboriginal people in setting in train a Treaty (LRN 9/1988:26). Galarwuuy Yunupingu in his speech at Barunga took up Hawke's promise, 'it will be a reminder, because if nothing is acted on, he (the Prime Minister, Mr Hawke) will have to pass it on to the next one and the next one, and the next one after that'

17 The role of the 'worker' is briefly described by Morphy (1991 :64) and Munn (1986: 184).

18 This action was undertaken whilst Ngurrwuthun was attending with Galarrwuy Yunupingu, a World Council of Churches conference on Indigenous Peoples (Adlide p.c. 17 September 1992). 95 (LRN 9/88:26). This prophetic statement of Galarwuy Yunupingu's did indeed come to pass.

The unveiling of the Barunga Statement in Parliament House, Canberra, was the final official duty of Bob Hawke as Prime Minister. This act, on 20 December 1991 at 10.30 am, was performed 42 months after the initial promise. The unveiling ceremony was brought forward by one hour on the directive of the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs Robert Tickner, with knowledge that Paul Keating would be sworn in as Prime Minister by the Governor General at 11 am that same morning. In this way it was ensured that Bob Hawke would still hold the office of Prime Minister for this duty (Kingston 21 December 1991 :5).

Cynically the rescheduling of the Barunga Statement unveiling could be looked upon as Hawke exiting on a highly emotive issue for Australians, whilst ensuring a personal claim on setting the agenda for reconciliation. Conversely, Hawke's desire to do the honours at such a ceremony might be seen as rooted in his personal expression of interest and commitment to reconciliation and the treaty making process with Aboriginal Australia - a view which appears to be supported by Hawke's earlier (1988) pledges of Government commitment to a treaty with Aborigines (Brennan 1991 :81). Thus, Hawke appeared to feel justified in commenting during his unveiling of the Barunga Statement that it was "very fitting indeed that my last official act as Prime Minister is to hang the Statement in Parliament House" (Wright 21 December 1991:1). During Hawke's speech reference was also made to his personal preference for a Treaty with Aboriginal Australia, although this was referred to in rather oblique terms as "personally I would like to see that reconciliation embodied in a document. It is infinitely preferable that we have the courage to do that" (Skelton 21 December 1991:7). In true political verbiage this statement was decidedly guarded, contexualised by Hawke's earlier comment, "but the important thing is what's in our minds and in our hearts" (Skelton 21 December 1991:7). 96 The substantial media interest in covering this event, it seems, was not it relation to the Statement's significance in terms of national reparation between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people, but because its unveiling was to be Hawke's final Prime Ministerial act. Similarly the unashamed emotional display by Hawke and those Ministers present, John Kerin, Gerry Hand, Peter Staples, Brian Howe and Robert Tickner, as with members of the press and public, was linked by the press to Hawke's departure. Both the Canberra Times and The Age whilst noting these contiguous factors, reported Hawke's speech as, 'one of Mr Hawke's finest and most heartfelt speeches' (Wright 21 December 1991:1), and 'his last and most moving official speech' (Kingston 21 December 1991).

If it looked however as if the significance of the Barunga Statement's unveiling was to be hijacked by Hawke's situation, it was not completely so. Galarwuy Yunupingu managed to claim back the importance of the occasion for Aboriginal Australia, whilst graciously acknowledging the role Hawke had played.

"Great leaders have to step down for other leaders ... Now is the time that he has to pass it on to the next leader, who will be Paul Keating, and maybe he will honour in the same manner as Bob Hawke has under his leadership the wishes and aspirations of the Aboriginal people" (Kingston 21 December 1991).

In this way Yunupingu made clear that whilst individuals have a role in such struggles, they are instrumental to an end purpose. The existence of the Barunga Statement and its prominent placement in the Parliament was to begin its resonant work as reminder and indictment for Australian governments}( of the imperative of restitution with Aboriginal people.

4.8 Parliament House- Barunga Statement in situ

The Barunga Statement now hangs on the first floor of the Parliament building, above the Members Hall in a short walkway leading into the room which houses 97 paintings of the Senate and the House of Representatives. Close by is hung Tom Robert's painting 'The Opening of Parliament' depicting the inaugural Federal Parliament, metres away are other key artefacts deemed to be precious in exhibiting notions of democracy and how this is played out through constitutional processes.

These artefacts are exhibited within four freestanding wooden display cases which stand symmetrically to each other. Behind glass in the four cases are: 1) a rendering of the 1297 Magna Carta, being a foundation document setting the concept of democratic government by the people, restraining the potential abusive powers of the

19 monarchy ; 2) Queen Victoria's writing table, with the Royal Assent for the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Bill (1900); 3) the 'Australia Act 1986', signed by the present Queen, Elizabeth II (this Act essentially removed the power of the British Parliament from being able to pass any laws which would have effect on Australian law); 4) the 1963 Yirrkala Bark Petition displayed with two other

20 Yirrkala Bark Petitions from 1968, and a Yolngu ceremonial pole •

Contextualised like this, the prestige the Parliament has bestowed upon both Barunga Statement and Bark Petitions is evident. Yet, an ambiguous correspondent message is also conveyed, whereby these artefacts appear in the Parliament's favour. Here a self congratulatory posture comes to the fore, in the exhibition of Parliamentary concern and magnanimity toward Aboriginal people. The concerns of Aborigines appear as embraced and their rights as citizens honoured within the British democratic tradition. This is highlighted in the opening paragraph of the didactic text accompanying the Bark Petition case, 'the three petitions displayed here are vivid examples of the fundamental right dating back to the thirteenth century of citizens to petition parliament concerning their grievances' . In the light of this proud claim it appears bitterly ironic to reflect upon the sluggish legislative response of

19 In the Westminster parliamentary system. this has become manifest through the separation of powers between the parliament, the judiciary, and the administrative base.

20 The Bark Petitions were official presentations from the Yirrkala people of North East Arnhem Land to the Australian Federal Parliament. In the case of the Ceremonial Pole presentation was made to the Government's representative at the time, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Ian Viner. 98 Governments in delivering the mechanisms for Aborigines to take full advantage of their rights as citizens.

The issue arises as to whether the display of the Barunga Statement and Bark Petitions in the Parliament has resulted in an inversion of their original function:

~ave they become appropriated objects, historised and mythologised to meet the settler-culture's visionary agenda? There appear to be no simple answers to such issues, for as argued by Thomas (1991), the appropriation of cultural material has a tendency to rebound on its appropriators; for each culture is further shaped by that which it takes for its own. The display of Barunga Statement and Bark Petitions are at once cogent reminders of Parliamentary responsibility and good faith in honouring the requests of Aboriginal people. In being received as both petition and gift, the Barunga Statement has brought with it obligations and clearly announced Aboriginal expectations.

The following two case study chapters continue development of the themes herein, regarding Aboriginal attempts to make coherent political statements through the strategic presentation of art. Particular consideration is paid to Aboriginal attempts to avoid the appropriative claims of the settler-culture through the use of counter­ appropriative strategies and secondly, the resonant effects of Aboriginal artworks over the long term. 99 CHAPTERS ART AND THE NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS 1 - The Tjukurrpa Mosaic

5 .1 Introduction

This Chapter discusses and contextualises the appearance and positioning of the 'Tjukurrpa Mosaic' artwork before the new Parliament House in the National capital, Canberra. In this task it recognises that the commission and placement of the Tjukurrpa Mosaic attracted considerable critical commentary from Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal observers alike. It was variously applauded as an Aboriginal contribution to the Bicentennial celebrations, dismissed for its apparently apolitical stance in the Bicentenary year, and castigated for supposedly lending the approval of all Aborigines to the settler-culture governing body through its major symbol, the new Parliament House. The analysis which follows herein and in Chapter Six investigates the validity of such claims, with particular attention to the following questions: What is the ability of the Tjukurrpa Mosaic to avoid the appropriative claims of the settler-culture, in essence, to 'speak' unfettered?; By tracing the Tjukurrpa Mosaic from the point of its original appearance and in recognition of the 'afterlife' (Benjamin 1991) an artwork may have, a supplementary question will be addressed: What role does the Tjukurrpa Mosaic have to play in a maturing of the national consciousness?

5.2 New Parliament House

Central Canberra, with its grand avenues, civic square, artificial lake, Parliament and national institutions, bowed from its inception.x to the high hopes of Federalism. Planned in 1912 as the Nation's capital by Walter Burley Griffin, it was to express a stately and respectful presence for the seat of government and its administrative base, just as its institutions were to both store and showcase the Nations's treasures. In this sense it perfectly exemplifies Gellner's (in Anderson 1983:15) argument that nations are 'invented'; the product of nationalist discourses and their accompanying material supports. Nearly 70 years on, the new Parliament House was designed and 100 built with equal aspirations, in that its architectural design and artworks were to clearly convey Australia's emergent maturity, purpose and nationhood (Beck 1988). The Parliament House Construction Authority (PHCA), charged by the Federal Parliament with the responsibility of managing the new Parliament House building project, determined that the Building should have an identifiably Australian ethos, which would be determined through a series of meetings with individuals inquiring as to what it meant to be Australian (Project Parliament 1990: 135). As Indyk eulogised 'it has a clear and unambiguous symbolic duty: it must stand as an

1 expression of the Australian democratic spirit' (1988:42) •

The results of the PHCA inquiry, were prepared as a report for the Parliament House Authority (PHA). From this report architects and designers developed the conceptual design base of the ~uilding, being the land as metaphor« and prime identifier of the Australian character and psyche (Andrew 1988:33). The ~uilding's art programme likewise evolved from the initial enquires of the PHCA, from which it was decided the art programme must be in sympathy with the ~uilding' s own objectives. Major themes to emerge encompassed a broad spectrum of Australian history, achievement and cultural and environmental diversity; this was to be coterminous with the Parliament's request for a need to reflect 'the changing human and social values underlying particular events' (Project Parliament 1990: 135).

The Art Advisory Committee (AAC) set up in 1981 by the PHCA, was responsible for negotiation, commissioning, purchase and placement of a wide range of contemporary Australian artwork for the new Parliament House2 (Andrew 1988:33).

Artwork was to both enhance the status of the ~uilding, and be an integral part of the Parliament Building's claim as one reflecting the nation's 'inspiration and

1 In contrast to this notion of the new Parliament House reflecting a democratic spirit, Senator John Button commented on its illustrious hill top site and imposing architecture, by drawing the analogy of the church in medieval times, also built upon high, to be closer to God, ' ... I'm not sure we are closer to God, certainly we are further from the people.' (22 June 1993, Episode 3 'Conserving Power', Labour in Power, ABC TV).

2 The AAC was chaired by Sir Laurence Muir with representatives of the Australian National Gallery, the Australia Council, and the principal architect, Romaldo Giurgola. 101 aspiration' (Project Parliament 1990: 135). In the choice of artworks for purchase and in their placement, artworks were to relate to each other, in telling the story of the nation. As narrative, the art was to be arranged 'chronologically' throughout the building complementary to the north - south processional axis of the Building 'symbolising the transition from past to the future' (Andrew 1988:32). Thus, as Indyk comments, in Forecourt, Foyer, Great Hall, Member's Hall, and Main Committee Room, the artwork placement may be read in terms of its 'signifying impulses' (lndyk 1988:44).

5. 3 Mosaic design brief and commission

The architects of the new Parliament House, Mitchell, Giurgola and Thorp, suggested the inclusion of a major piece of work by a Western Desert artist as part of the overall concept for the Building. They envisaged that a piece of Western Desert artwork might be successfully interpreted into a granite mosaic to be situated in the island of the Forecourt pool. The purpose of such a mosaic was described as creating a 'dedicated "presence" for Aborigines, whilst concurrently signifying 'the beginning of Australia's history' (PHA Background Brief n.d. :45).

'The invitation to Western Desert painters to design this pavement stands as a symbol of respect for the collective wisdom of the Aboriginal cultures: The wisdom and values of a culture which lived in harmony with the land, rather than imposing itself on the land. Since the iconography and style of Western Desert paintings is frequently one of itineries through the landscape, of special powers associated with particular places, and moments of meeting and coming together, this invitation seems to be particularly appropriate to the function of the Forecourt. Similarly, because the style of these extremely recent paintings appears to be derived from the monumental scale of the old tradition of horizontal sand paintings also made by Western Desert cultures, the Forecourt mosaic pavement may offer a medium in which the scale, orientation, and chromatic range of the 102

sand paintings may be explored in the Forecourt' (Brief for First­ Stage Invited Design Submissions: Forecourt Island Mosaic Pavement 18 February 1985). 3

In the above text it appears the design character of Western Desert art was to serve a number of purposes. It was to pay homage to Aboriginal culture; it was to be provide a metaphor for cultural diversity and the powers of the central governing body; and, perhaps serendipitously) with its simple design elements of dots, circles and wavy lines-r it was unlikely to present many problems in its transformation from design to granite mosaic form.

The Parliament Building was designed using the Land as its central metaphor - a metaphor regarded as integral to and definitional of an Australian sense of identity, values and character (Andrews 1988:33). In this context the choice of a design emanating from the desert region, as in the Mosaic, was read by Andrews as symbolic of the Australian heart and soul (1988:33). Seen in relief the Mosaic comes to approximate a 'shared' spiritual, historical and mythological legacy.

Having these purposes in mind, the Parliament House Authority commissioned five prominent Aboriginal Artists from Papunya Tula Artists Agency, via Alice Springs, in March of 1985 (see Appendix 1). The artists were asked to submit one painting

4 each, from which a final selection would be made by the Art Advisory Committee • To assist in the design process, the artists were invited to Canberra to view the proposed site"" and discuss the conceptual elements of the work, as it was to relate to the establishment of projected meanings and values for the New Parliament House. The commissioned designs were required therefore to be 'particularly appropriate to this national meeting place and its function for the Australian people' (1985:5).

3 Unpublished background briefing information supplied by Parliament House Art Curator, Peter Haynes.

4 The initial commission was accompanied by a fee of $5000 to each painter. The winning artist would then receive a further $15,000, 'for use of the design and for continuing consultation and collaboration with the Authority' (Brief for First-Stage Invited Design Submissions: Forecourt Island Mosaic Pavement 1985:2). 103 Designs were to follow specifications which outlined medium, size, and colour palette, so as to make for ease of correlation of the painting with the granite materials already selected (1985:2-3).

From the five artworks received Michael Nelson Tjakamarra's5 painting entitled 'Tjukurrpa' was chosen as the basis of the Mosaic design (see Appendix J) perceived I as it was to give expression to the commissioning criteria. The design)~ newly created for the commission, depicted a meeting of clan totems:x and utilisi&1 aspects of both the symbology and mythology of the WarlpiriJt to which Michael Nelson

6 Tjakamarra enjoys rights and privileges • The painted design measuring 1.4m x

1.4m was subsequently fabricated by mosaicists Aldo Rossi and Francis Colussi~ from over 100,000 cylindrical pieces of granite (Appendix K).

5.4 Unveiling of Tjukurrpa Mosaic

The Tjukurrpa Mosaic, in the forecourt of the new Parliament House, Canberra, was officially unveiled by Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, on 9 May 1988, as part of the opening ceremonies of the new Parliament House Building (~anberra Times 9 May 1988:36; '{be Australian 10 May 1988:1). The presentation of 'Tjukurrpa' artist Michael Nelson Tjakamarra to the Queen at the commemorative ceremony invites obvious comparisons with the presentation of artist Albert Namatjira to Her

Majesty in 1954. On the former occasio~ white Australia was seen to be parading the human product of successful assimilationist programmeSy._ and individual Aboriginal achievement, framed as it was in white terms (Amadio 1986:34; Hardy et al. 1992). On the surface, little seemed to have changed in the intervening years.

5 Michael Nelson Tjakamarra's name is variously spelt Jak:amarra, Jagamarra or Djak:amarra. Herein the spelling Tjak:amarra will be used.

6 Whilst Tjak:amarra created a 'new' design for the commission, the design does not belong to Tjak:amarra in the sense that a creative work has a creator or owner through purchase, gift or barter. Rather, individual myth sequences and totems of the Warlpiri belong to Tjak:amarra as a birthright and on-going responsibility. Because of the attribution of totems through kinship relations and conception sites, Tjak:amarra necessarily shares the 'stories' depicted in his paintings with others of his clan. It is therefore essential that Tjak:amarra's painted depictions accord respect for the ancestral figures and their actions. Not to do so would be an act of sacrilege. 104 The suited Michael Nelson Tjakamarra within the ceremony programme was allocated a precious 9 minutes to guide the Queen over the Mosaic, limiting severely~ it has been suggested, the opportunity for any 'real increase in understanding' of what the Mosaic might fully mean in this context (Kleinert 1988:94). Alternatively, it is possible to read the inclusion of Michael Nelson Tjakamarra's mosaic design as final recognition.- and elevated welcoming onto the stage of Australia's history for

7 Aborigines • Ironically, whatever view is taken, the significance of the occasion cannot escape the fact this ceremonious task was presided over by the ruling Monarch, arch representative of the vestiges of colonial power in Australia.

5. 5 Criticism of Mosaic

Four days of Aboriginal protest coincided with the opening of the new Parliament House (Hefner 9 May 1988; Hefner 15 May 1988:8). The opening provided yet another potent opportunity for Aborigines to express their outrage with regard to the

8 larger Bicentennial celebrations, and remindAof their continuing presence • Over this period of intense political action, the Mosaic too, did not escape Aboriginal critical attention.

The grounds of Parliament House are perceived to be a problematic and not wholly complementary placement for the Tjukurrpa Mosaic, for here the Tjukurrpa Mosaic is literally embraced, physically and symbolically by the extended arms of the Building. Incorporated in this way into perhaps the most outstanding symbol of colonisation and settler-culture power, it is. possible to read the Mosaic as decorative sanction and Aboriginal blessing of the building. It is this reading above any other that has led to inflamed comment and division within Aboriginal ranks. As the 1985 Brief for the Mosaic indicates, and lndyk (1988) analyses, the Mosaic is not

7 Albeit, this one monument cannot alone redress the imbalance of tribute that has been reserved for distinguished and powerful white male figures of Australian history (Bulbeck 1988:3).

8 Kevin Gilbert observed that for the traditional owners of the Canberra region, the Ngunnawal, the opening celebrations were particularly insulting, given the Parliament Building had usurped Ngunnawal ownership and site specific pride of place (Hefner 15 May 1988). 105 incidental to the ideologic purpose of the Parliament Building, but pivotal in substantiating the meanings that have been nominated for it by the settler-culture. Early plans on the inclusion and placement of the Mosaic clearly indicate that the Mosaic was to figure on the continuum of Australian history as foundational or pre­ history (Forecourt Mosaic, Background Information n.d.: 1), giving a beginning point to the 'birth of the nation' (Bennett in Bulbeck 1988:9). Through this physical arrangement of space, Aboriginal history was drawn ' ... into the story of the nation's unfolding unity' (Bennett 1988:9). Aboriginal history had been relegated to the past ' ... to a nomadic idyll' that existed before history 'really' began in 1788, and thu; suggests Bulbeck_, any notion of \conflicting interest' with settler culture might be successfully repressed (Bulbeck 1991:171). White Australia.) it appeared; had not only 'territorialised' and 'historicised'.¥. the land of Ngunnawal people (the Aboriginal owners of the Canberra region))' as a site for itself, it was also attempting to present all Aborigines within that historical landscape.

5. 6 An Aboriginal Statement?

As a cohesive political statement from Aboriginal Australia the Mosaic is without mandate, and contentious on a number of fronts. Not the least of these is the actual ,_y limited representative ability of the Mosaic, given,._its symbology was exclusive to the Aboriginal peoples of the Western and (parts of) the Central Deserts. Yet in regard to the principle of 'collectivity' as expressed by Deleuze and Guattari

9 (1990:59-60) , the Tjukurrpa Mosaic (as an creative expression which has emanated from an individual member of a marginalised grouping)~ cannot but be read as collectively representing all Aborigines. 'Collectivity', Deleuze and Guattari argue, occurs whether the marginal group is aware, agrees or disagrees with the representative form or action. Thus, the property of collectivity is problematic, given it can be mechanistic to acts of appropriation. This appeared to be the case for the Tjukurrpa Mosaic, whereby it could be broadly read as an 'Aboriginal' artwork and statementX sanctioning the settler-culture presence. This factor was

9 See Chapter One, Section 1.5, Aboriginal Art, Ideology and Politics, for an outline of Deleuze and Guattari's notion of marginal art having 'collective value'. 106 recognised by Kevin Gilbert where he commented, "White Australia has tried to exploit that (the Mosaic) as being symbolic of some sort of honourable dealing with Aboriginal people, as a meeting place", (Hefner (b), 1988). The role played by white officialdom and its professionals~ architects, planners, curators and parliamentarians -was particularly open to criticism (Hefner(b) 1988:8; Kleinert 1988). This is not to suggest a conspiracy theory of Government in appropriation of Aboriginal artwork. For without doubt it is the prerogative of commissioning agents to make their selection based upon how closely the artwork 'fits' both the stated commission requirements and its ideological framework; and in this instance, artist Michael Nelson Tjakamarra was in agreement that his design was a response to the brief issued by the AAC (Whitfield 1988). Yet, through the principle of collectivity and through the process of sign appropriation, it appeared the authority of the artist". and the artist's message had been wreste(

To the casual observer the Mosaic may appear as a seamless part of the overall architectural design or reliant for its interpretive cues from the imposing Building itself. The controlling actions of Government have coupled here with a seemingly unassertive artist body in unwittingly enabling the incorporation of the Mosaic into the service of dominant tropes (see Bennett 1988:9). An example of this may be found in the small in-ground plaque accompanying the Mosaic which does little more than confirm the design's title and artist, the years over which it was made, and those who fabricated it. Lack of on site contexualising information has lead to the suggestion by one Aboriginal wit that the Mosaic did not have 'a priori' status as a 'doorway' for understanding, rather its positioning was more akin to a doormat (Mundine p.c. 9 October 1992).

For critics Bulbeck (1991:170-171) and Kleinert (1988), the Mosaic facilitated an acceptable Aboriginal presence during the Bicentennial year, being 'selective appropriation in accordance with Eurocentric values' (Kleinert 1988:93). The artwork was considered to be sufficiently abstracted as to be non-confrontational, and without hinting at the complexities of the contemporary Black - White relationship (Kleinert 1988:93-95). At a simplistic level, the coloniser's perspective 107 seemed once again to have prevailed. It would seem the Mosaic's positioning relative to the Parliament is not commensurate with the rapprochement considered necessary between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australia; consequently the Mosaic appears to lend itself to appropriation. And so, the manifest need to claim the Mosaic back as an Aboriginal artwork and statement; but more so, to let it stand fully as an Aboriginal 'political colonisation of space' (Gilfedder quoted in Bulbeck 1988: 1). This was to come about through a deceptively simple act of reappropriation.

5. 7 Counter Appropriation - The Curse

In the lead up to the Bicentenary, the 'Treaty '88' committee was based in the ACTx and was coordinating an active campaign to see the governing Federal Labor Party

10 respond to its claims from preceding years that a treaty would be considered • from the point of its unveiling, the Mosaic inadvertently became a significant lever in this campaign. Claims were made at a press conference by 'Treaty '88' chairperson, writer, artist and activist Kevin Gilbert, that a 'curse' had been placed

11 within the Mosaic •

Understandably>such a claim gained significant attention from the mainstream media, promising as it did irresistible copy. The Australian newspaper (10 May 1988) reported in its leading page one story, 'An Aboriginal artist, who yesterday proudly showed the Queen the mosaic he designed for the new Parliament House, used it to place an elaborate curse on white Australia ... either that or Canberra has been treated to the best hoax of the Bicentenary' . Kevin Gilbert was reported as claiming the Mosaic to be ' ... conceived as a concentration of evil forces and was a 'payback' for the atrocities inflicted on Aborigines by whites' (The Australian 10 May 1988: 1). The story infers, if the claims were true, then non-Aboriginal Australia had been

10 See also Chapter Four.

11 The aims of the "Treaty 88 Campaign" might be broadly stated as to 'pursue a Sovereign Treaty' which might 'lay the cornerstone for a new Australia based on Justice, Peace and Human Rights for all', (Janson and Macintyre (eds): 1988: 1). 108 duped and injured by both Tjakamarra_, the artist concerned, and Aboriginal Australia. If the claims were a hoax, then all hilarity aside, white Australians were

12 foolish to have been so easily 'taken in' • Gilbert's curse claim may be read as a shrewd mobilisation of traditional conceptions of Aboriginal power, used to reappropriate and reinscribe the Mosaic with meanings useful to those who sought government action on a treaty document; yet, it was not generally appreciated as a humorous or particularly wise action.

Michael Nelson Tjakamarra's disclaimer with regard to the presence of a 'curse' appeared the day following Gilbert's announcement (Whitfield 1988). In conference, Tjakamarra (Whitfield 1988) made clear that the design of the Mosaic was not cursed, by himself or by other Aborigines. He had received permission to produce the design by those with direct and associated custodianship. As the design was not secret-sacred, permissible use could therefore be made of the symbolic lexicon shared by Warlpiri and Pintupi people. The design responded closely to the brief given by the Arts Advisory Committee~ of the new Parliament House, to which Tjakamarra had made positive remarks about his involvement: "I designed it for good purpose ... for both black and white". YetJas reported by the Canberra Times, the Mosaic was also intended by Tjakamarra to 'serve as a reminder of (Aboriginal) struggle for land rights' (Whitfield 1988). Tjakamarra's comments were further supported at the press conference by Charles Perkins and Aboriginal activist Faye Mundine (Whitfield 1988). The artist's reply as reported does not hint however at the personal hurt, anger and insult felt by Tjakamarra~ as expressed to his intimates (Johnson 1988:99; Kimber p.c. 30 July 1990). Despite Michael Nelson Tjakamarra's public statement with regard to the purpose of the Mosaic, he was positioned as a hapless pawn of government (Kleinert 1988), misguided in accepting such a commission, and wrong in placing it on Ngunnawal land. Here, on non­ ceded Ngunnawal land, a Warlpiri artwork makes its appearance, within the

12 Charles Perkins, then Secretary of the Department of Aboriginal Affairs defended both Mosaic and Gilbert with the comment that 'the meaning had been taken out of context by the media' (Whitfield 1988). 109 boundaries of a construction which praises and upholds a European constitutional model in an Australian setting. Its appearance is on one hand an exhortation of Aboriginal land ownership. Yet the question arises, is this land claim specific to the Warlpiri people, and thus at cost to the land ownership rights of the local people, the Ngunnawal? It seems in this instance the pan-Aboriginal statement was in danger of losing its currency, where local Aboriginal identity and rights go unrecognised or are refused.

Gilbert, in representing Ngunnawal people, made clear that Tjakamarra did not have the right to come onto the land of other Aborigines without permission and place ~ such an artwork~(Hefner 15 May 1988). His assertion that "Mr Tjakamarra, Mr Perkins and Ms Mundine had no right to speak outside their own tribal area"

(Whitfield 1988)~ is a powerful political tactic, invoking the authority of the Ngunnawalx and at once addressing the popular belief that urban Aborigines are not

'real Aborigines' I( who may share the same rights, privileges or depth of beliefs that Aborigines of remote Australia have. As Johnson states, Kevin Gilbert 'deserves credit for having the courage to acknowledge the differences that exist within the Aboriginal movement - in particular between urban and remote communities' (Johnson 1988:99). Gilbert's criticism of Aborigines speaking 'outside of their own tribal area', without the permission of the Ngunnawal people, is not however an all embracing or particularly consistent dictate, given it was not equally applied to the Aboriginal Memorial13 which was likewise created by Aborigines from far outside the Canberra region~ and attempted to make a pan-Aboriginal statement in its

14 placement in the Australian National Gallery •

Tjakamarra's expression of goodwill, and benefit for all Aboriginal people, appeared compromised, given the art object was to exist beyond his personal ambit of control. As has been demonstrated with the Elcho Island Rangga Memorial, objects seem to

13 Refer to Chapter Six.

14 Mundine comments that this difference in attitude probably relates both to the clearly stated political purpose of the Aboriginal Memorial and its less contentious home at the Australian National Gallery {p.c. 9 October 1992). 110 rarely share a general coded meaning across cultures, hencefm:th,.. their meanings are able to be readily appropriated and reinscribed.

In the week following his 'curse' claim, Kevin Gilbert put forth a more moderate position, describing the Mosaic in terms that embraced its positive creative spiritual power (Hefner 15 May 1988). It was an explanation that did not wholly refute his earlier claim, rather it attempted to describe the Mosaic as a work with inherent spiritual qualities which would be an active and suggestive force for justice. The Mosaic was called a 'payback stone' by Gilbert, and likened to having the power of a 'pointing of the bone'J an action that seeks to right wrongs~ and administer punishment (Hefner 15 May 1988).

Undoubtably Kevin Gilbert's 'curse' claim was prompted in part by his belief that Michael Nelson Tjakamarra and his art had been appropriated by the dominant culture. Michael Nelson Tjakamarra for his part reserved the right to create and present artwork directly to the wider public, believing it to convey a message of import. A number of points arise for consideration in a situation which sees Gilbert and Tjakamarra seemingly opposed to each other. There is no particularly united position that Gilbert and Tjakamarra share; nor should they, as people belonging to vastly differing kin and clan groups and having dissimilar experiences of colonisation. Yet the principles of 'collectivity' suggest that when Aboriginal political approach and beliefs are seen to conflicto.- it is both surprising and, some might say., divisive. In this case Gilbert's behaviour may be seen in terms of the differential discourses of political power and posturing within and beyond Aboriginal society (cf. Hall 1990:227-228). Gilbert" who was accepted as an 'elder' of both

Wiradjuri and Ngunnawal people, had acted on behalf of local concern~ in the larger context of wishing to promote the delivery of a treaty. The 'curse' on white Australia whether accepted in hindsight as mischievous or not, was a serious ) political ploy intended by Gilbert to 'haunt the Federal Government until justice was delivered to the Aboriginal people' (Hefner 10 May 1988). For Tjakamarra, it is clear that he saw his painting as also achieving political ends, in making the claim of 111 ongoing Aboriginal sovereignty .t and the necessity for goodwill and restitution between Aborigines and non-Aborigines.

Simple acceptance -rJ_;{ Tjakamarra's art and polemic ~appropriated by non­

Aboriginal Australia~ is paternalistic and problematises when, where and how Aborigines might creatively dialogue with non-Aboriginal Australians. Pursued at a simplistic level, this argument reflects the unadorned politics of opposition, a polarity where non-Aborigines always figure as 'baddies', and where the Aboriginal is without insight or abilities to negotiate the situation (see Muecke 1992: 190). In response to Kleinert's positioning of Tjakamarra and his Mosaic as passive, Vivienne Johnson provided a differing perspective (Johnson 1988:98). Johnson stated the need to recognise Michael Nelson Tjakamarra as self conscious in the role of artist, .a not a~ victim of the Government's appropriative vision (Johnson 1988:98). This interpretation proposed a strong and canny role for Michael Nelson Tjakamarra.{ and the Papunya Tula Artists> organisation through which the commission was coordinated.

5. 8 Reappropriation/The Resonant Object

Five years on from the controversy which surrounded Kevin Gilbert's initial action, the Mosaic was once again the centre of Aboriginal, Parliamentarian and media interest. On 27 September 1993, the Mosaic was used as the site for protest with regard to the Federal government's planned legislative response to the Mabo judgement. Considered a discriminatory and hurried proposal by many, between four and five hundred Aborigines representative of many communities nationwide gathered to signal the immense displeasure of Aboriginal people. The protest included speeches by Aboriginal leaders, the performance of Pitjantjatjara women dancing over the Mosaic in a potent reinforcement of land ownership, and the burning of a copy of the proposed Commonwealth legislation dealing with native title. Perhaps however the most staggering symbolic gesture of all was that of Mosaic artist Michael Nelson Tjakamarra, who claimed back 'his' Mosaic, in the apparent removal of the central granite stone within the Mosaic. The Mosaic, he 112 told those assembled, was representative of Aboriginal land and also a united Australia; Tjakamarra went on to warn the Government, "If they are going to give the land back then they can keep the mosaic. If they are not going to give the land back we will organise someone to take this whole thing out" (Hawes and Stevens 28 September 1993). Tjakamarra further repudiated the Federal government claiming, "This (forecourt) is no longer a meeting place for my people to meet as equals, as my painting represents, because the Government has still not recognised our people and our culture" (Gill 28 September 1993).

That Tjakamarra felt he had the right to do ~$ speaks loudly about his own belief tM'ti.J that he was still connected totemically"'and thus responsible for the Tjukurrpa within the Mosaic. However, in symbolically removing the central granite stone, Tjakamarra)t appeared>did not take into account other levels of ownership of the Tjukurrpa. A Sydney Morning Herald journalist reported the actions of some 20 Aboriginal individuals watching Tjakamarra, to 'warn him off' (Chamberlin 28 September 1993). This defensive action may be read as an exercise of their mutual responsibility towards Tjukurrp;u a custodianship from which they also cannot be alienated. Tjakamarra's action then may be considered highly contentious at many levels. The Mosaic has become for all major players, Tjakamarra, Gilbert, Government and differing Aboriginal communities) a political colonisation of space. S.A4~ Tjakamarra's Warlpiri work upon Ngunnawal land.t,_,_incorporated into a larger 'mythic' Australian historyiC by architects and government)( and reclaimed) both through Gilbert's curse, as a payback stone and Tjakamarra's symbolic gesture with hammer and chisel.

Tjakamarra's exercise of the authority of the artist with regard to his moral right over the artwork represents interesting legal grounds of dispute, particularly it say, future attempts were made to excise the Mosaic from the ground. Although the Commonwealth did commission the artwork, mere payment does not remove Tjakamarra' s ownership from his original work. Reasons for this might be identified in both Aboriginal law and through precedent set in law in the High Court of Australia's Mabo v Queensland judgement of 1992. Aboriginal convention with 113 regard to rights in painting sacred material would suggest, the artist maintains an

15 ongoing (inalienable) custodial relationship with the painted totemic imagery • Gray usefully enlarges Justice Toohey's ruling (Mabo v Queensland) to suggest traditional Aboriginal art to be a 'nature or incident' of the land and thus 'inseparable from traditional title to land' (Gray 1993:6). As a possible consequence.)

Gray argues 1 traditional Aboriginal art should enjoy the same type of protection accorded by the Mabo decision on native title, 'that is, that rights in art could not be alienated "outside the native system otherwise than by surrender to the Crown" > (Gray 1993: 10). Gray presents a further possible legal consequence of the decision:

~conceivably, while physical objects of art could be sold to non-Aboriginal people in a manner consistent with Aboriginal law, the traditional owners of the design would retain inalienable rights over the subsequent use of that design in a way perhaps akin to the moral rights of an author recognised by European law1( (Gray 1993: 10).

Perhaps of greatest significance here is Tjakamarra' s awareness, of his artwork as gift to the nation; a gift that was inalienable, necessitatel his strict guardianship so that meaning would not be subverted or appropriated, and a gift which obligated its receiver) the Commonwealth of Australia.

Criticised initially for its labile character in the various meanings that can be attributed to it, this very lability has ensured for the Tjukurrpa Mosaic Xa dynamism that may, over time, ensure the play of new meanings (see Benjamin, 1991); and as Gilbert claimed years ago, literally serve to 'haunt' the Government until justice is done. As artist Michael Nelson Tjakamarra has shown, the Tjukurrpa Mosaic as a symbol of Aboriginal sovereignty and Governmental responsibility can be activated at any time. The Tjukurrpa Mosaic does not obey the convention of the static artpiece, embalmed in the past. Importantly J the Tjukurrpa Mosaic functions as an indicator or signpost of relations between Aborigines and European Australians. Its

15 Refer to Chapters One, Three and Four. 114 very permanency of construction)( and pride of place before the Parliament)( literally sees it cemented into our national consciousness, and certainly, as Reynolds impl~ed over a decade ago, made part of Australia's historiography (1981:165-166). 115

CHAPTER6

ART AND THE NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS 2 - The Aboriginal Memorial

6.1 Creation - Curating The Memorial

'Yet memorials are far more than mere reflections of what they celebrate, for they add to the landscape a new medley of funerary and mortuary symbols. They not only remind us about the past but impress us with its significance and our loss, reinforcing our reluctant recognition that it is forever gone' (Lowenthall 1985:324).

The Aboriginal Memorial is a sculptural work of 200 upright hollow log coffins, iconic representations of those Aborigines who died under white governance and violence during 200 years of European colonisation (see Appendix L). Forty three artists from central and eastern Arnhem Land including Galiwinku, Maningrida, Milingimbi, Ramingining and also artists working through Mimi Arts at Katherine contributed to the Memorial in the painting of totemic designs upon hollow logs.

The 'Aboriginal Memorial' as artpiece was orchestrated through Ramingining Arts and Craft's Arts Officer, Djon Mundine, following a request from organisers of the

1988 Biennale of Sydney Jr that Aboriginal art from Ramingining be 'made available for exhibition. Like many other AboriginesJ Djon Mundine felt the placement of Aboriginal artworks within a major Australian Bicentennial Authority sponsored event, such as the 1988 Biennale to be hazardous, inviting comment that Aborigines were not opposed to the Bicentenary celebrations (Morphy and Taylor 1990:v). Mundine's decision to respond positively to the Biennale organisers request was rationalised in terms of his professional commitment to increasing 'awareness and appreciation of Aboriginal art', and his belief in the power of art as 'a communication medium, that often transcends language barriers' (Mundine 1988). On a more personal level Mundine stated his desire to make a political statement from Aborigines where there would not be an opportunity for its meaning to be 116 easily appropriated. This is remarked upon by Mundine as making a 'true statement' (Mundine 1988) or 'real statement' (Artlink 1990:v).

The idea for the Aboriginal Memorial 'crystallised' for Mundine after watching a video recorded television programme narrated by journalist John Pilger entitled 'The

1 Secret Country' • Within the programme Pilger attempted, in Henry Reynold's terms (1981), an historical 'rewrite' of the period of European settlement of Australia. In this 'rewrite', Pilger observed the deaths of Aborigines resulting from the violence and disease of colonisation as an atrocity, and sorely in need of official 2 recognition (albeit latent) and commemorative action • In casting Aborigines as foot soldiers~ defending their lands from European invasion, Pilger noted their lack of representation in war memorial statutory to have been noticeable (see also Bulbeck 1988; Fiske et al. 1987). This absence and the further notion of long awaited commemoration was to be partially addressed by Mundine's curated project 'The Aboriginal Memorial'. Its purpose was not to be wholly melancholy but as Mundine relates, it was to be multi-dimensional. The Aboriginal Memorial sought to both satisfy an Aboriginal political agenda, and have positive economic outcomes for Aboriginal artists (Morphy and Taylor 1990:v). As an arts adviser for the Ramingining community, Mundine had found it difficult to find an appreciative audience for Bone Coffins; accordingly) transformation of their status to that of 'artpieces' would require a 'tour de force' (Mundine 1988). As it eventuated_, the Aboriginal Memorial was to serve just such a purpose.

In a self-critical appraisal of these combined aspects, Mundine acknowledged criticism that the Aboriginal Memorial might be seen as a 'cynical commercial venture' (Mundine 1988; Mundine p.c. 9 October 1992). However, to assume that the Aboriginal Memorial is a shallow and insincere political and commercial ploy in

1 'The Secret Country' was originally screened on ABC TV, under the documentary series title 'Open File' on 19 June 1985, produced by Central Television Enterprises, London.

2 Pilger's comments follow not only the ideas of Henry Reynolds but also those subsequently expressed by Chilla Bulbeck (1988) ~e Stone Laurel: Race Gender and Class in Australian Memorials'!(. > 117 its conception, arrangement and public presentation is to dismiss it too lightly. It deserves a more complex reading, firstly, in terms of Mundine's own motivations and conglomerate perspectives as Aborigine, Art Broker, Curator and 'Politician'; and secondly, in the 'independent' life the Aboriginal Memorial may assume as it ·a.. takes its own place in the discourse of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal relations~~ the object of coming to terms with colonisation.

The Aboriginal Memorial after its exhibition at the 1988 Biennale (18 May - 3 July) was to be permanently sited at (Broadbeach) Surfer's Paradise, to assist with the reburial of skeletal remains of the Kumbumirri people (Morphy and Taylor 1990:vi). This idea was initiated when Kumbumirri representatives approached Ramingining artist, David Malangi (who was in Queensland at the time for an exhibition, and also to paint a mural), with regard to a possible ceremony to rebury the bones of

Kumbumirri people previously kept in the Queensland Museum. Mundine relates..~r that there were roughly 200 skeletons for which the Kumbumirri people wanted dilly bags made, to contain the bones. Malangi subsequently spoke with others at Ramingining, including Mundine in his role as arts co-coordinator. It was agreed that people of Ramingining would perform the ceremony, whilst the dilly bags would be produced by women, principally from Maningrida (Mundine p.c. 9 October 1992). Marking the ceremony would be the installation of 200 mortuary poles on the reburial site.

Mundine notes the Burial Poles3 being offered for use in this way as a 'nice gesture' and 'a great gesture' (1990:vi). There seems no doubt that this demonstrable courtesy from one Aboriginal group to another was indeed kind, if also unusual, in the context of two differing tribal groups not traditionally sharing the same mortuary

4 ceremony • Moreover, the gesture displayed Mundine's seemingly keen political

3 The term 'Burial Poles' is used here and elsewhere within this Chapter to refer to the Aboriginal Memorial or its components, as in 'burial poles'.

4 This factor sharply suggests postcolonial pan-Aboriginality as operational at both practical and conceptual levels between Aboriginal tribal groups. The legacy of colonisation has resulted in possibilities for one community's traditional practices being mobilised where another's is absent. 118 sense in devising this arrangement, in order to maximise pathos and impact during the Bicentennial year. The Aboriginal Memorial was to 're-establish an Aboriginal presence'x in a place where the people were without their traditional religionx' and where land rights was an abhorrent idea, in Surfer's Paradise, 'the real estate agents' Dreamtime' (1990:vi). Mundine approached the people at Ramingining about this idea,; they not only approved it but were also prepared to perform accompanying 5 rites (1990:vi) •

The production of burial poles for the Aboriginal Memorial was well under way when the Kumbumirri people experienced local difficulties.r that effectively stalled the project. These problems revolved around the inappropriate reburial site offered by the Surfers Paradise Council. Being next to a football stadium, Mundine felt the site was unlikely to be sacrosanct and that the Aboriginal Memorial would be open to vandalism. Further to this, some representatives of the Kumbumirri people wished to see the cremation of the skeletal remains in place of the erection of the Aboriginal Memorial (Mundine p.c. 9 October 1992). For Mundine, these appeared as local issues,v which need not be entered into, asserting I( 'that wasn't our problem - they had to settle that themselves; so we bought out of that' (1990:vi). Hence, in the context of possibly lost opportunity, Mundine literally 'hawked' his idea elsewhere.

Money, and not enough of it, was a significant problem with regard to the project continuing. Mundine notes the point during 1987 when the project had only approximately 50 Poles completed~ and no money to continue to paY. artists for their work (Mundine p.c. 9 October 1992). In conversation with Chips Mackinolty, at

5 Mundine further states however that only a few of the more significant, perhaps more well travelled artists, including Malangi, understood the concept of the larger political statement of the burial poles as iconic forms and Bicentennial protest (Mundine p.c. 9 October 1992). During the early stages, for a number of the artists this was a simple commission for which they expected to be paid (Mundine p.c. 9 October 1992). The Aboriginal Memorial as a 'memorial' has been established for many of the artists in the time since; especially when some individual artists saw the work in situ, visiting either the 1988 Biennale or the Australian National Gallery. Mundine suggests younger Aborigines of the region, particularly those 'schooled' in European political behaviour and convention, were immediately cognisant of the politically powerful potential of the Aboriginal Memorial (Mundine p.c. 9 October 1992). 119 that time working for the Northern Lands Council, it was suggested Mundine approach the Australian National Gallery for support (ANGt, (Mundine p.c. 9 October .1992). , This Mundine did, with the ANG through its Director James Mollison, accepting the offer to purchase the work 'without too much consideration' (1990:vi). It was agreed by the Gallery Council that money for the project would be paid in two instalments, in November 1987.x and at the beginning of the following fmancial year (Caruana p.c. 23 September 1992). This arrangement was agreeable to all parties, in that it allowed the artists to purposefully complete work on the burial polesk' without the additional pressure of having to undertake work of a more commercial nature in the generation of income (Caruana p.c. 30 October 1992). In purchase of the incomplete work, it can be assumed that Mollison's decision was as much based upon an astute professional opinion of the work's aesthetic worthiness, intended to enhance the Gallery's collection, as it was speculative, in the purchase of the political moment. In the intervening years this judgement has been rewarded, whe~"-the Aboriginal Memorialx has achieved a high public profile and status within the Gallery's collectionx and is recognised as an ANG 'visionary' purchase by its instigator Mundine (Mundine p.c. 9 October 1992)x and other commentators (Ward 1992:32,34).

6.2 The Aboriginal Memorial In Situ

Since 1991 the Aboriginal Memorial has been exhibited in Gallery One, the first gallery that visitors come across upon entering the National Gallery building. Previous to its prominent placement in Gallery One, the Aboriginal Memorial was situated downstairs in Gallery Nine, the ANG's indoor sculpture gallery. Here, literally downstairs and towards the rear of the building, it was a lesser light in terms of commanding visitor attention. The move it appears was prompted by differing and complementary desires. The ANG's curator of Aboriginal Art, Wally Caruana, explains that the Gallery wished to give visitors a 'unique experience' of

6 The Australian National Gallery (ANG) changed its name to the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) as part of its lOth birthday celebrations in 1992. It is referred to herein as ANG or NGA, depending upon the period under discussion. 120 Aboriginal culture, apparently unavailable elsewhere in the world. Perhaps more importantly, the Aboriginal Memorial in its current placement was to be a 'statement of the achievements of Aboriginal people', which can be read on many levels simultaneously, 'the aesthetic, cultural, political and historical' (Caruana p.c. 23 September 1992).

The motivated and literate public is made aware of the Aboriginal Memorial's purpose and historical significance by an accompanying didactic notice on the wallx and through an explanatory pamphlet that can be purchased in the Gallery's shop for a few dollars. Further attempts to inscribe meaning and context is found in the ground placement of the Burial Poles, where spatially they approximate the path of the Glyde River, which accords closely to the regions of each artist's clan and totems. Despite these attempts to 'deeply' contextualise the Aboriginal Memorial, its placement in the Australian National Gallery has attracted considerable comment as to its appropriateness. Criticism outlined below, related to possible compromise of meaning and also audience receptivity, is however somewhat tempered by the positive and persuasive factors which remain in the ANG's favour. The ANG was neither first choice nor ideal appointment for the Aboriginal Memorial; however it ~ must be recognisedJCAthe Australian National Gallery's fmancial capability and its commitment to providing a high profile, permanent and dedicated space for the Aboriginal Memorial were undoubtedly the Memorial's saving grace. Mundine comments that the Gallery provided a 'relatively neutral space as far as Aboriginal groups were concerned, and lessened the likelihood of factional fighting' (Mundine 9 October 1992). In this context, siting the Aboriginal Memorial in a venue such as the ANG, was a triumph of pragmatic concerns over those ideologic.

6.2.1 Museum as Institution of the State

But, how neutral a space is an art museum? According to the International Council of Museums statutes (1974), museums are broadly defined as, 121 'non profit making, permanent institution(s), in the service of society and its development ... open to the public, it acquires, conserves, researches communicates and exhibits, for the purposes of study, education and enjoyment material evidences of man and his environment' (CAMA 1985:3)1.

While this grand statement makes universal claims for objective museum practices, its projected neutrality appears somewhat of a 'fiction' (Greenhalgh 1989:95). It is perhaps near impossible for State-run cultural institutions to not promote the State

8 and its values, given the high dependency on the State as patron • In essence, the western art museum cannot but act ideologically in its collection, display and scholarship (see Bum 1990; Bennett 1988; Vergo 1989; Karp and Lavine 1991)., to both define culture and be its standard bearer (see Fiske et al. 1987:144). This need not be so damning an indictment of museums)( with the correspondent realisation that a clear and open political agenda is a kind of political honesty that could encourage larger community debate (Greenhalgh 1989:95).

The effect of the State or patron bodies~r is not, however.J total in terms of directing or constraining museums in their range of practices (Winkworth 1989). Museums continue to evolve and risk convention in attempts to remain relevant, attractive and competitive in attaining an audience share (Duffy 1992:9-10). Indeed, the museum's very authority and vast resources makes it fecund with possibilities in its duty and ability to represent cultural formations and artefacts~ for both pedagogic and entertainment purposes (Bennett 1988; Price 1989; Bum 1990; Karp and Levine 1991). Museums thus!( positively 'can legitimate beliefs, practices, people accomplishments and interpretations. By their exhibitions and programs, museums can assist in the generation and articulation of the symbols and statements by which

7 Such a code of practice is a far cry from the period of the European 'Great Exhibitions' (1851- 1914), where behind every exhibition there was a driving political force, promoting the imperial interests of nations (Greenhalgh 1989:94).

8 This situation is exacerbated by the legislative requirement for National museums to have trustees appointed by the Prime Minister. ii

122 a community might represent itself' (Kurin in Karp and Levine 1991:341). Given this reading, the Aboriginal Memorial landing in the Australian National Gallery's prime position_y stands officially legitimated and promoted as art_, not only of great aesthetic worth'< but of national symbolic value.

The Aboriginal Memorial's symbolic value for Aborigines and non-Aborigines may be further examined through its museum context, whereby museums are observed as having specific and official roles in the construction of versions of nationhood and identity (Gellner 1987; Bennett 1988; Karp and Lavine 1991). As Ernest Gellner relates, the cultural institution is centrally important in situating and sustaining a national culture: cno culture is now without its national theatre, national museum, and national university; they constitute as does an independent rate of inflation, the

9 tokens of sovereignty' (Gellner 1987:17) • Tony Bennett enlarges Gellner's argument by suggesting cultural institutions such as museums to be far more than token expressions of sovereignty; indeed, they present 11( 'potentially powerful cultural technologies of nationing' that enable an official fashioning of a post­ colonial national culture and identity (Bennett 1988:9). Within these museums and cultural institutions, art and artefact form the basis of an ideologic master-narrative of the history and identity of Australia (Home 1990). The way in which museums shape the master narrative of nationhood becomes obvious in an examination of institutional collection and curatorial practices, this being the _inclusion and exclusion, or presence and absence; of artefacts and their authors (Price 1989). In particular, the natural history or ethnographic museum)( in colonised countries (i.e. Australia) or in imperial nations (i.e. Britain) tells of the cultural ascendancy or 'becoming' of one ethnic groupx at the cost of the 'unbecoming' of another. Museum displays in this context inherently exhibit the imperial power of States, as in the Australian setting where the indigenous culture was initially savaged, only later to be resurrected in the museum context (see Clifford 1987). A potent reminder of the active salvaging of Aboriginal culture is found in looking at the

9 Australia too has these national edifices which jealously collect and guard the elite, the unique, or historically significant outpourings of Australian artistry and culture. Certainly, the National museums and cultural institutions of our major cities are material evidence of the national 'will' to develop a historical and national consciousness (see Anderson 1991:131). 123 collection and research programmes undertaken by the major ethnographic museums of Australia. These institutions hold over 150,000 items of Aboriginal material culture, reputed to have a market value of some 400 million dollars (Fourmille

10 1988: 150) •

In contrast to the lugubrious salvage project of the ethnographic museum (cf. Greenblatt 1990:171; Greenblatt 1991 :43-44; see also Clifford 1987), the art museum celebrates itself as the repository of the nation's treasures, whether gained through purchase, imperial plunder or bequest. The artwork within1 signifies the apex of human creative achievement, albeit the western art museum employs very limited definitions of cultural 'excellence' which leaves little room for recognising 11 the 'excellence' of cultural art and artefact outside the canon of western art •

Securing ~place for Aboriginal art in the art museum has been very recent (early 1980s) and appears to owe much to the commodity status it has acquired through the art market (Morphy 1992/1993).

6.3 The Museum: It gives. It takes away

It appears circumspect at this point to move forward, to consider firstly how artworks fare in museum environments, and secondly, to solicit the particular fate of the Aboriginal Memorial. The most immediate question to address ,is; does the art museum's valorising of the aspects of form, antiquity and aesthetics subsequently compromise and marginalise the Aboriginal Memorial as political statement?

Objects within or beyond the canon of western art in their removal from the site of production or utility are at once decontextualised, to be reinscribed in the context of

10 Greenblatt suggests the salvage project of museums to be melancholic, claiming them to be 'monuments to the fragility of cultures, to the fall of sustaining institutions and noble houses, the collapse of rituals, the evacuation of myths, the destructive effects of warfare, neglect and corrosive doubt' (1991 :43-44).

11 Museum collections in the past have traditionally ignored the utilitarian or craft traditions of women, worker and Aboriginal. These views have been contested on various fronts in recent years as elitist and in need of revision (Rowse 1985; Binns ed. 1992; Kelly 1984). 124 western museums (Vogel 1991:200-201). In essence, the artefact or artpiece is never totally decontextualised, but recontextualised or appropriated according to the particular authority of the environment and display (Foster 1985:183-184). Audience readings do not happen as a result of the simple authority of the artwork itself, but through numerous contextualising factors, such as the architectural environment of the museum (Bum 1990; cf. Berger 1972:24); the existing grand narratives (Home 1990); social origin and educational levels of the audience (Bourdieu 1984); curatorial policies (Saine 1990); and explanatory catalogue texts (Greenblatt 1990: 172). The temporal nature of material exhibits should equally not go unrecognised. Over time it could be surmised that the museum, due to its excellent conservation and surveillance techniques alongside curatorial practices, combine to ossify artwork in a number of ways (Bum 1990), not the least being the foregoing of the artwork as a dynamic and interactive public exhibit. These factors strongly suggest the independent authority of the artwork to not only be limited, but to suffer increasing irrelevancy.

By reference to the Aboriginal Memorial, these views have been partially contested by Virginia Spate'\ in her 1991 address 'Remembering the Future' 12 given to commemorate the Australian National Gallery's ninth birthday. Spate argued the political valency of the Aboriginal Memorial to have been strengthened in its resiting in Gallery One. Here it would act as entry point and conduit for reading and interpretation of the entire Gallery's collection of Australian art, and indeed larger notions of national cultural values expressed through art. Spate's confidence in the Aboriginal Memorial to play this role relates to her confidence in art patrons, who she believes approach their readings of artworks intelligently and with a willingness to interact. To assume they do otherwise,.. is.> she considers, patronising. One wonders if this argument might be equally applied in support of the relational placement of the Tjukurrpa Mosaic to the Parliament.

12 'Remembering the Future', Professor Virginia Spate, given at the Australian National Gallery, 10 October 1991 (transcribed taped recording). 125

No doubt, the resiting of the Aboriginal Memorial, and Spate's position, would be applauded by many museum critics, eager for museums to not only revitalise tired institutional practicesx but also respond to changed social conditions (Winkworth 1990; Home 1990; Vergo 1989; Bum 1990). Clifford (1988) suggests museums in their exhibitions should seek to question the boundaries of art in new ways. He posits a possible relevant exhibition strategyX whereby they might 'locate themselves in specific multicultural junctures' (1988:213). It is suggested the display of cultural objects in juxtaposition further encourages audience reflection and 'signals to the viewer not only the variety of such systems but the cultural relativity of his own concepts and values' (Baxandall 1991:40). Along with the emergence of museum practices influenced by 'new historicist' (Greenblatt 1990:164-170) and poststructural theorisation of the last few decades as exampled above, comes the challenge to the master-narratives, and the possibility of understanding cultures in ways that do not reduce the works to bathos~ but are illuminating of art and its author cultures. However, it remains the case that the greatest problem museums face in this high­ minded task is of accessibility; getting people inside the door (Bennett and Frow 1991){ and having them enjoy and understand their subsequent experiences (Home 1990; Adams 1990).

Given the above factors) it is apparent there may be no simple encounter with the work of art (Bourdieu 1984) in a museum context (Price 1989). The experience is highly mediated, dependent upon numerous externalities determined by the institution's own practices.-:, and; importantly ,~the social origin of the individual. As Bourdieu states~ 'A work of art has meaning and interest only for someone who possesses the cultural competence, that is the code into which it is encoded', possession of which equates to 'cultural capital' (Bourdieu 1984:2). Concurring with Bourdieu~ is the Australian research of Bennett and Frow (19911 which suggests there to be very strong relations of class, education and professional status to enjoyment and participation in museum culture or activities. They have found those without the requisite 'capital' are excluded by intimidation or perceived irrelevancy of museum exhibits and purpose (Bennett and Frow 1991:51-61; see also Berger 126

13 1972:24) . Considering these factors in relation to the Aboriginal Memoria~ it can be determined that whilst the Aboriginal Memorial may have considerable resonance within the art museum context, and is indeed dialogic for those who possess the requisite codes belonging to art and museums, it favours an elite museum audience. It may be perceived at this point that whilst the Aboriginal Memorial may have escaped the obvious levels of appropriation suffered in part by the Tjukurrpa Mosaic, it now fmds itself prisoner of the art gallery.

Holding these critiques in mind, some suggestion has emerged with regard to siting the Aboriginal Memorial elsewhere, such as in the ANG's outside sculptural

14 court • This J it appears J revolves around the corresponding desire for the Aboriginal Memorial to be more widely appreciated, and for it to literally weather and rot away, as would be customary for mortuary poles in use in Arnhem Land (Peterson 1976: 107; see Appendix M). Its slow demise may then act as a metaphor or be a complementary reading to hopeful future change in Aboriginal and non­ Aboriginal relations within Australia. This argument is somewhat reduced in the greater realisation that the Aboriginal Memorial was not made to reflect change as it may happen, but purpose-built as a permanent installationx in order to reflect the past in the future (Mundine p.c. 9 October 1992). Lowenthal)'s comment is useful here; .-when other relics have perished, commemorative creations survive as our only physical remainders of the past. They are deliberately made durable to recall treasured lineaments for as long as possible' (Lowenthay 1985:323-324).

More recently; there has been interest shown in displaying the Aboriginal Memorial entirely away from the ANG. Whilst any such move is unlikely, given the

13 Those without 'cultural capital' (i.e. the working classes), are dominated by being forced to recognise the dominant aesthetic through a range of institutional structures which uphold and disseminate cultural knowledge, which in tum denounces their own aesthetic (Bourdieu 1984:40-41). From this it might be concluded that exclusion is paradoxical by nature in that it does not diminish the authority of the canon, but effectively maintains the boundaries of elite culture (Bourdieu 1984; Fiske et al. 1987:147).

14 These views were independently espoused by Lesley Fogarty, Director, Aboriginal Arts Board of the Australia Council and academic Pam Hansford giving separate addresses to the Australian Art Museums Association conference held in September 1990. 127 difficulties of safely transporting such a substantial exhibit, it is worth musing upon the benefits of an alternate site of presentation. The Office of Minister for Aboriginal AffairsK have suggested it as a suitable surround for the 'Pool of Reflection).- directly beneath the Parliament House flagpole (Mundine p.c. 9 October

1992). The original curator for the work, Djon Mundine 7 expresses some consternation as to this particular idea, but agrees that the Parliament may allow for a potent and active Aboriginal presence, and as such, be a good alternate site to the ANG, and avoid the problems which arise through museum presentation (Mundine p.c. 9 October 1992).

Despite the levels of compromise that the Aboriginal Memorial may suffer in its current placement, it remains a political colonisation of space within the walls of the National Gallery of Australia. Social analyst Humphrey McQueen remarks this placement is little short of a 'time bomb' for the National Gallery. He contends the NGA's overarching desire to be sensitive to Aboriginal concerns has put them in an impossible position, where one gesture has literally ensured the Aboriginal Memorial will not be moved again without enormous outcry. It is argued the Aboriginal Memorial has 'acquired the status of sacred sight, if not site', and hence relocation would be interpreted as sacrilege (McQueen 1994:25).

6. 4 Memorial and resonating National consciousness

Considerable time has elapsed between the colonising past and an official acknowlegement of its less than glorious nature. In part this has been due to historical accounts which have largely been those of the colonising culture, whereas Aboriginal experience was rarely coherently put or understood. Settler-culture history as written~ rarely engaged the experience of the Aborigine except as Other or primitive, whereby they were the 'represented' >c. and not the presenters of self. Whilst this seems to have been a result of the authority of written (European) accounts over oral (Aboriginal) accounts (see Muecke 1992), it is misleading to accord the Aboriginal 'absence' to the tech@ of written language)\ and its pervasive 128 influence~ lor Castles et al have argued the European actively suppressed the Aborigine from the 'national memory' (1992:143).

In the absence and suppression of Aborigines as actors from European accounts, Curthoys claimed a decade ago (1983: 108) in her challenge to Reynolds (1981:156/8\ that an overarching Australian historical consciousness did not exist. In absentia for so long, Aborigines have begun their own programme of intervention in the invention and progress of the Australian nation. Aborigines will no longer be written out of history; indeed., they have begun to textualise their own historical and experiential conceptions. Interestingly, these texts are rarely in the so-called

15 authoritative accounts of the academic , but are to be found primarily in the work of artists in their narrations, dramatisations, poems, songs and paintings (Mudrooroo, Gilbert, Noonucal, Morgan, Yothu Yindi, Roach, Carmody). The works of Aboriginal artists in particular reflect an Aboriginal moral and historical consciousness, or collective memory, of the progress of colonisation. In their formulation, they shape and tell the past in ways that seek to politicise the memory and understanding of all Australians.

The Aboriginal Memorial and Tjukurrpa Mosaic are artworks which attempt to 8otk overturn the accounts of the coloniser-culture., whilst intervening in the on-going process of history-making and documentation. In so doing, both artworks selectively mine Aboriginal and European technological and mythic bases. This is not simple appropriation, rather it is myth robbery, in order to 'restore it. .. to reinscribe it in a countermythical system' (Foster 1985: 169). They reinforce the incidence upon which the myths and discourses of settlement and nationhood were formed in order to invert to themselves the values of egalitarianism, mateship, and a 'fair go'. In the particular example of the Aboriginal Memorial, it is a clever appropriation of the national sentiment of honouring those fallen in war. Here through myth robbery the Aboriginal Memorial finds a ready equation with the melancholic ANZAC tradition, of human tragedy and senseless waste. As Mundine

15 Aboriginal academics Sykes, Wilmott, Langton, Fourmille provide exceptions here. 129 points out, the equation of the Aboriginal Memorial's log coffins with the idea of European coffins and burial practices is deliberate, and makes for a 'cross-cultural' reference (Morphy and Taylor 1990:vi). The 'forest of poles' Mundine suggests may be likened to a 'war cemetery, a War Memorial to all those Aboriginals who died defending their country' (Mundine 1988). Mobilising Anglo-Australian traditions provides perhaps the best possible entry point for white Australians to come to terms with the atrocities of colonisation, albeit this entry point does not provide absolution but encourages national reflection, and restitution. The power of the Aboriginal Memorial relates not only to its specific Australian mythic context, but rather to the reception such emblems of war generally receive in modem nations. As Anderson has observed,the cenotaphs and tombs of Unknown Soldiers offer perhaps the most arresting symbols of modem culture, ' ... they are saturated with ghostly national imaginings' (Anderson 1983: 17). The use of national myths surrounding war presents us with opportunities to be conjoined across cultures. This is made clear when we accept Ernest Renan' s proposition that memories of

suffering~ are the bonds essential for nationhood (1990). Common interest7 he believes;) is not enough to bring people together as one : ' ... suffering in common unifies more than joy does. Where national memories are concerned, griefs are of more value than triumphs, for they impose duties, and require a common effort '(1990: 19). Such foundational requirements_,. are surely to be found in the Australian situation, but the nation must come to feel Aboriginal loss through colonisation as ? the loss of com@es, not as that endured by enemies or Others.

The Aboriginal Memorial and the Tjukurrpa Mosaic find their voice through a resonant suggestiveness in the strength and dignity of their monument and memorial forms)( and not through any trite polemic that might be layered upon them as

artworks. As national monument and memorial1 both works encourage active human remembrance and escape the commodified fate of so many other artworks, where meanings are so easily reduced or manipulated through marketplace exchange. Laid out before the Nation, the Tjukurrpa Mosaic and Aboriginal Memorial are likely to exist well after personal memory and the specific circumstances of their commissions have been forgotten. These artworks escape the immediate temporality of their 130 political protests, and become at once free standing yet connected to greater Australia's mythic joumeyings of finding the present in the past and the past in the present. As monument and memorial they may encourage and concretize human will{ in ways that legislative response perhaps cannot. This is the point where the ®lity of each artwork intersects fruitfully with each resonate character. As didactic and mythological tools their work has only just begun and, like the Barunga Statement, they will stand as potent reminders in the assertion of Aboriginal ownership and belonging to land, in spite of the progress of the new Australian.

As has been established throughout this and the previous chapter, the Parliament Building and National Gallery have been party to both a diminishing and distinguishment of Tjurkurrpa Mosaic and Aboriginal Memorial. In situ and in their ----..?--" mediated reproduction and circulation, in the networks of communication, the images and expanse of meanings that each evoke are subject to intense negotiation. Whilst competing somewhat with European 'truths' about colonisation, conceptual space is made for their entry into the National pysche as~· as an offer to share in historical consciousness. As sign vessels Tjukurrpa Mosaic and Aboriginal Memorial are overflowing; they bear, carry, reflect and resonate meaning before all who come before them in witness of the challenge to building the National self. Memory, a politicised memory prompted and shaped by the communicative structures and powers within the society , will then make all Australians active participants in the reconciliation process.

Finally, it is left to the curator of the Aboriginal Memorial, Djon Mundine to remark upon the memorial form, countering the view of some that memorials may ~ imply termination, given,. 'we seldom erect monuments to ongoing events or to people still alive' (Lowenthalf 1985:323). In his opening night speech at the 1988 Biennale, Mundine made clear that such a Memorial was not produced from a position of passive acceptance, or as simply a solemn farewell to the dead;

)lpeople only build monuments when they are in a position of some strength. You don't build monuments when you are being hunted or 131 losing a war. You build monuments when you are coming back the other wayk (Mundine p.c. 9 October 1992).

Over five years on from the opening night, Mundine reflects that the 'real' Memorials for Aboriginal people such as acts of legislature, (i.e. a Treaty, or a National Land Rights legislation), are yet to be put in place. In this sense LowenthaV' s further comment with regard to the purpose of the memorials and monuments form has considerable currency; 'We change the past, then, not only by altering antiquities but by using them as stimuli for subsequent creations' (LowenthaU 1985:324). And so the question arises, although not for further speculation here, what will be the subsequent creations ~ resonating Aboriginal Memorial and Tjukurrpa Mosaic? 132

CHAPTER 7 CONCLUSION: 'Bringing their dead with them'

7.1 Introduction

This thesis has attempted to identify the political nature and agency of Aboriginal art in cross cultural dialogue with the settler-culture. In so doing, three functionary purposes for Aboriginal art have been identified through the use of theoretical frameworks applied to case studies. Firstly, Aboriginal art has been presented as instrumental to Aboriginal resistance to settler-culture control in terms of subjection and subjectivity. In this way it has been proposed that art represents the continuance of Aboriginal culture whilst reiterating the ongoing claim of Aborigines that they are a sovereign people. Secondly, Aboriginal art has been positioned as a tool in instigating political dialogue which seeks recognition of this sovereignty. It is also a mechanism by which Aborigines may participate in the wider political process. Thirdly, Aboriginal art as a counter-narrative has been posed as a significant means by which Aborigines can intervene in the production of national myths .and discourses.

7. 2 Resistance

This thesis began with the contention that Aborigines have been actively resistant to the presence of the settler-culture. Yet due to the prevalence of European subject producing discourses and the relative technological capacity of the European to discipline the Aborigine, through means as various as guns, horses and State and Church managed governance (panopticism), Aborigines have appeared as weakened and 'docile' peoples. The introduction of Foucault's 'new economy of power' has offered the possibility of a viable counter argument, in the recognition that whilst settler-culture control has been both severe and damaging, its power has never been absolute. 133 In Foucault's reading, Power is not property, but an immanent force within the social body, thus it cannot be alienated, but may be mobilised through tactical means (1978; Dreyfus and Rabinow 1982). This is not to suggest deployment of power will inevitably result in success, for power always exists in relation to other force relations. Success in wielding power, or successfully limiting or controlling the actions of others within one's ambit is possible through the effective application of strategic and tactical means with regard to available resources. For Aborigines these available resources are not to be found in ownership and control of western capital or communication networks. Their prime resource bank might be perceived to be situated in Aboriginal cultural discourses, beliefs, forms and practices, understood in Foucault's terms to be 'local' or divergent' knowledges, and also in the strategic use Aborigines make of settler-culture forms.

It has been argued herein that Aborigines have sought to resist the coloniser's controlling sets of discourses through recourse to local knowledges. Embodied within Tjukurrpa and Aboriginality, local know ledges offer alternative and affirming knowledges of the self, distinct from the subject identity promoted by the settler­ culture, of Aborigine as abject Other. These know ledges in their appearance feature as counter-narratives, contesting the primacy of settler-culture discourses.

Tradition based Aboriginal art is an exemplary manifestation of Aboriginal local knowledges or discourses. In mapping the interconnections of the Aboriginal social totality, totemic art is at once an expression of lore and law, political power and social control. Thus its use in dialogue with the settler-culture might be accepted in terms of an Aboriginal world view as being entirely logical and strategic. It is the case however that these knowledges are not generally accepted by the settler-culture. Attempts to dialogue with the sole use of Aboriginal cultural discourses is problematised where the settler-culture remains ignorant of the logic and intention of Aboriginal actions. Aboriginal artworks then must counter the risks that they may not deliver their intended communiques, indeed, their meanings might be arrested and reinscribed through the process of appropriation. 134 Settler-culture appropriation of Aboriginal cultural forms is understood to be polyvalent, a result of the processes of circulation whereby there is a removal of signifying intent, or original use values and meanings. This may occur through the process of commodification, in the art object's marketplace exchange, or it may be an outcome of ignorance or the deliberate use and abuse of the cultural form and its meaning. Of particular concern to the argument herein has been Foster's reading of cultural appropriation as an act of aggression (1985). In the Australian context the settler-culture has been shown to be the aggressor, attempting to both sequester that which is of value to itself, and also to limit the fear engendered by the presence of the Aboriginal Other (Hamilton 1990; Lattas 1992). Accordingly, given the incidence of commodification and cultural appropriation, the obstacles before Aboriginal art in its use as a autonomous dialogic agent are acknowledged to be significant.

Discussion has sought to reveal the means by which cultural appropriation may be refused, resisted or deferred and therefore how Aboriginal art might retain its potential political agency. In the first instance it may be argued with the mobilisation of Aboriginal discourses that appropriation can never be total, given the artist remains connected through the agency of painted totems to the ancestral forces within the artwork; in essence artist and ancestral forces cannot be alienated from each other and original meaning remains ever present. This position is not however able to refute the possibility of the coexistence of other and contrary meanings ascribed to the artwork in its circulation. Using a poststructuralist approach Aboriginal counter-appropriative strategies may be observed to be in use. Counter­ appropriation involves the creative borrowing, incorporation and appropriation of settler-culture forms. These have been discussed in terms of 'mimicry', 'bricolage' and 'Aboriginalising'; their function being to reinscribe and undercut the appropriative agency of settler-culture discourses and forms. Although these strategies do not halt acts of settler-culture appropriation, they nonetheless make their claim upon the imperial culture's sets of discourses, and in so doing recreate and reassign cultural forms to be part of an Aboriginal armoury of resistance. 135 Poststructural and phenomenological analyses intersect where the possible means by which Aborigines might defer appropriation indefinitely is discussed. In the space of 'differance', cultures and their forms become incommensurable to each other (see Derrida 1992[1968]; Bhabha 1990). Here, there is no defining self by which an Other might be created and subject to, nor by which cultural difference might be known and assimilable. Whilst differance remains perhaps a future ground upon which cultures might interact, the related concept of 'wonder' is relevant to the present. Wonder is discussed as a specific reaction of surprise and awe to phenomena which is not immediately assimilable (Descartes 1985). This is particularly instanced by Greenblatt (1990) as occurring in cross-cultural instances of exchange. Differance and wonder have been applied to analysis where Aborigines have sought to manage the revelation of precious art and artefact in order to effect and enhance political dialogue with the settler-culture. These arguments have not been offered as generally pertaining to all situations where Aboriginal art may be observed or revealed. They are offered individually as Foucault has instructed, in their specific instances (1980: 145), and in these instances they have been shown to be efficacious.

7.3 Dialogue

The efficacy which is referred to above is the ability of Aboriginal artworks to avoid the appropriative claims of the settler-culture, in order that artworks might be instrumental in promoting and instructing dialogue. The ability to be communicative agents is enhanced by diverse enabling factors such as for whom the artwork speaks, the intended audience, its circulation routes, ownership, permanacy of exhibition etc.

The dialogic capacity of artwork has been examined through the use of Hal Foster's categories of the political in art, albeit prime attention has been given to his category 'art with a politic' (1985:153-155). Where Aboriginal art might be seen to fall into Foster's category of 'presentational art', its overt ideologic positioning appears to invite competing or oppositional perspectives, by which it may be disregarded as 'false'. Likewise, its topicality leaves the way open for it to eventually be 136 considered irrelevant. These factors do not mean presentational art is without effect or dialogic ability, but rather, they are likely to be truncated and limited in scope. In contrast, Aboriginal 'art with a politic' is that which like differance is unopposed and unassimilable to reductive coordinates and, like wonder, it bids audience wondering. 'Art with a politic' resonates over the long term, engaging its audience, inviting speculation and reflection. It is submitted that engendering audience wondering and speculation does not make artworks free floating and empty signs awaiting projections. It is the case instead that 'art with a politic' reverberates, and is truly dialogic as meaning is never fixed but accumulates over time according to the social and political environment within which it exists.

The case study examples documented within this thesis, the Barunga Statement, the Tjukurrpa Mosaic and the Aboriginal Memorial, are potent examples of 'art with a politic'. It is apparent that the dialogue they seek is tiered. In the first instance each piece appears to target the State in seeking recognition of Aboriginal sovereignty, restitution of rights and reparation of the relationship between the settler-culture and Aboriginal people. In the second instance, the instrumentalities of the State (Parliament and National Gallery of Australia) provide forums which facilitate address to the broader citizenry. Whilst this address may be limited in real terms to those hundreds of thousands of people who visit the National capital and have the opportunity to view and reflect upon these artworks, this need not discount their agency in communicating at a meta or symbolic level, whereby they are positioned to strategically influence through intervention in the shaping of national myths and discourse.

7.4 'Bringing their dead with them'

It is unknown at this point in time the degree of success each of these three artworks might have through resonant processes in shaping national myths and discourses. However, speculation of their future agency in this regard is perhaps possible with a return to the words of Henry Reynolds, who over a decade ago phrased the question to white Australians: How to deal with the Aboriginal dead? (1981:165). Reynold's 137 question was formed it seems, as a consequence of a grisly body count, in the 1 detailing of Aboriginal resistance to European colonisation • Answering his own question, Reynolds invoked the ANZAC tradition. In this nation which honours its fallen with the creed 'lest we forget', a radical rewrite of the national historiography with which Aborigines can proudly identify was suggested. The colonial past must be disinterred, unconscionable horrors recognised and recompensed, in order that Aborigines may 'bring their dead with them', into the present with justified expectation of an 'honoured burial' (1981: 165).

The response of white Australia to recognising the imperatives of Reynold's challenge might be cynically interpreted as a case of 'making haste slowly'. It seems the settler-culture's attempt to fmally settle the accounts of colonisation will be that which can be managed through the legislative process, as is evidenced in the Commonwealth legislation, Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation Act 1991, and the Native Title Act of 1993. Reconciliation, Aboriginal with non-Aboriginal Australians now appears as the latest in a long list of Government strategies which include 'protection', 'assimilation', 'self management' and 'self determination' (Nicolls 1993:703-707). It would be foolhardy to suggest Government legislation is not an essential feature of the reconciliation process, given its central role in enforcing social change, whilst serving to protect those who carry the burden of change. Yet, it needs to be affirmed, that for social change to be effective its carriage must also be evident at a level which resounds in the national consciousness. In this sense the words of former Prime Minister Bob Hawke (in his commentary with regard to a treaty document at the unveiling of the Barunga Statement) are no longer ironic, they are poignant, "but the important thing is what's in our minds and in our hearts" (Skelton 21 December 1991:7).

It would be both presumptuous and appropriative to suggest the Barunga Statement, the Tjukurrpa Mosaic or the Aboriginal Memorial are artworks which seek reconciliation commensurable with settler-culture notions. Certainly, Aborigines do

t Reynold's estimates 20,000 Aborigines to have been killed prior to Federation, 'defending their homelands, their sacred sites, their way of life' (1981: 165). 138 not seek a burying and subsequent forgetting of their dead. This is made clear in the statement made by Djon Mundine, curator of the Aboriginal Memorial where he asserted the Aboriginal Memorial was "not the hand of friendship - this is a bald statement"; the Memorial is for the settler-culture akin to "taking ones medicine", a bitter pill to swallow (p.c. 9 October 1992). What these artworks do seek in various ways, through the forms of petition, monument and memorial, is an acknowledgment of the coloniser past and a commitment to restitution and dialogue. They are not limp presentations waiting for settler-culture approval or welcoming into settler-culture historiography, rather they are pointed interventions in that historiography.

Settler-culture embracement of the purpose of these artworks will rely upon a contiguous recognition of colonisation as ever present, not relegated to some historicised past. In building the nation, the postcolonial nation, the interventionist role of the Barunga Statement, the Tjukurrpa Mosaic and the Aboriginal Memorial may prove to be significant. Distinct from simply lending the weight of their cultural heritage to the image makers and marketeers of the nation, these artworks signal their own terms of reparation with the settler-culture. Offered to the nation as inalienable 'gifts', these artworks in their receipt carry with them Aboriginal expectations and obligation, and are thus set to haunt the Government in seeking fulfilment of responsibilities -perhaps this is the curse of which Kevin Gilbert spoke.

Redoubtably the Barunga Statement, the Tjukurrpa Mosaic and the Aboriginal Memorial are artworks which 'bring their dead with them' in their weighty intentions and their grave presence. Finally, it is in settler-culture acknowledgment of the resonant capacity of each of these artworks '!:t the realisation may occur; it is no longer possible to continue along the duplicitous path of appropriating Aboriginal forms yet not settle the accounts of colonisation.

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Whitfield, K. (1988a) 'Aborigines find little to cheer', in The Canberra Times, May 10, p. 14.

Whitfield, K. (1988b) Mosaic not against Aboriginal laws', in The Canberra Times, May 11, pp?

Wickham, G. (1986) 'Power and power analysis: Beyond Foucault?', in Gane, M. (ed), Towards a Critique of Foucault, Routledge Kegan Paul: London, pp. 149-178.

Williams, N. (1986) The Yolngu and their Land: A System of Land Tenure and the Fight for its Recognition, Stanford University Press: Stanford, California.

Willis, A-M. (1993) Illusions of Identity : The Art of Nation, Hale and Iremonger: Sydney.

Winkworth, K. (1989) 'The Museum Inc: Public Culture and the Sponser' in Media Information Australia, no 53, August, pp. 67-74.

Winkworth, K. (1990) 'Some Common Ground for Museums and Galleries in the 90's'in Extending Parameters, Australia Council: Sydney, pp. 59-62.

Wolff, J. (1981) The Social Production of Art, Macmillan Education: London.

Wolff, J. (1983) Aesthetics and the Sociology of Art, Allen and Unwin: London.

Wright, J. et al (1985) We Call for a Treaty, Collins Fontana: Sydney.

Wright, T. (1991) 'Message 'very fitting' last act for Hawke', in The Canberra Times, Dec 21, p. 1.

Young, I.E. (1993) The Texture of Memory - Holocaust Memorials and Meaning, Yale University Press: New Haven and London. 161 Young, R. (1990) White Mythologies - Writing History and the West, Routledge: London.

Yunupingu, G. (1989) 'Why a treaty', in Social Alternatives, vol 8, no 1, p. 8

Zolberg, V. (1990) Constructing a Sociology 'of the Arts, Cambridge University Press: New York.

Zuidervaart, L.(l991) Adorno's Aesthetic Theory - The Redemption of Illusion, MIT Press: Cambridge, Mass., and London UK. 162 PERSONAL COMMUNICATIONS

Interviews (face to face)

Taped interviews with the following individuals were undertaken and transcribed. Where appropriate direct quotes have been used in the body of this thesis.

Richard (Dick) Kimber - Author on Aboriginal arts and culture, former arts advisor for Papunya Tula Artists' Cooperative, (30 July 1990).

Margie West - Curator of Aboriginal Art, Northern Territory Museum of Arts and Sciences, (3 August 1990).

Chips Mackinolty - former officer (media and communications), Northern Lands Council, (4 August 1990).

Djon Mundine - Arts and Crafts advisor Ramingining, Northern Territory, and curator of the Aboriginal Memorial, (9 October 1992).

Dennis Williams Tjapanangka - artist (Barunga Statement), former Central Land Council, Council member, (16 November 1992).

Father Frank Brennan - Advisor to Australian Catholic Bishops Council on Aboriginal Affairs, (26 November 1992).

Telephone interviews

Telephone interviews were conducted where it was impractical because of geographic distance to interview face to face, or where point clarification was urgently required. Handwritten notes were kept of each conversation.

Dr H.C. 'Nugget' Coombs - former Chair of the Council for Aboriginal Affairs (1968-1976), (28 March 1991).

Geoff Adlide - former advisor (communications and media), Northern Lands Council, (17 September 1992).

Wally Caruana- Curator, Aboriginal Art, NGA, (30 October 1992).

Informal Interview

Steve Fox (arts and crafts advisor, Yirrkala, Northern Territory), (13 April, 1993). 163 Correspondence

Some individuals responded to written requests or chose to follow up or reflect upon interview material with written correspondence.

Richard (Dick) Kimber, (21 March 1991).

Professor Annette Hamilton, (30 January 1992).

John Rudder - Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, (29 September 1992).

Wally Caruana, (23 October 1992). APPENDIX A

Source: Berndt, R.M. (1962) An Adjustment Movement in Arnhem Land, Cahiers de L'Homme, nouvelle serie II, Mouton and Co: Paris APPENDIX B

Yirrkala Bark Petition (1963) APPENDIX C

The Burnum Burnum Declaration, England, 26th ~anuary, 1988

I, '.Burnum '.Burnum, a no6feman of ancient }{ustrafia ao liere6y taK.!. possession of f£ngfana on 6elialf uj tlie ~original PeopCes.

In cfaiming tliis cofonial outpost, we wisli no liann to you natives, ou-t assure you tliat we are liere to 6ring you gooa manners, refinement am{ an opportunity to ma~ a 'Xpompartoo' · a fresli start.

9-fencefortli, an }{ooriginalface slia{( appear on your coins ana stamps to signify our sovereignty over tliis aomain.

~or tlie TtWre acfvancetf, we 6ring tlie compCt~fanguage of tftt Pitjantjatjara, we wi!{ teacli you liow to liave a spiritual refationsliip witfi tlie 1£artfi ana sfiow you fiow to get 6usfi footf.

'We:ao not intent! to souvwir, picf([e ana preserve tfte fieatfs of 2(XX) of your peopCt, nor to pu6fidy atspfay tfie s~Cttal remains of your !R.pya! 9/igfiness, as was aone to our QJuen 'Iruganinni for 80 years. ~itfier tfo we intent! to poison your water lioCes, face yourfCour 'lJJitli stryclinine or introauce you to liigfi{y to~ arugs sucli as afcolio{ ana to6acco.

'.Basea on our SOlXJO year fieritage, we ac/Qt,owCttfge tfie treea to preserve tfte Ca.ucasian race as of interest to antiquity, a{tliougli we may 6e incfinetf to comfuct t;qJeritnents 6y measuring tlie size of your sfoU{s for Cevels of inte{{igence. m pfetfge not to sterilize your young women, nor to separate your cliifaren from tfieir families.

'We give an a6so{ute unaertafjng tliat you ,s/ia{( not 6e pfacea onto tftt mentality ofgovernment liantfouts for tfie ne~ five generations 6ut you wi{( enjoy tlie fu{( 6enefits of }{ooriginal equality.

Jilt tM entf of two fiunarea years, we 'WILL maKJ, a ':treaty to val'ufate occupation 6y peacefu! means ana not 6y conqut.st.

~ina{(y, we sofemn(y promise not to ma~ a quarry of f£ngfana ana t;qJort your vafua6Ct minerals 6acf(.to tlie oftf country }{ustral'uz, ana we vow never to aestroy tfiree-quarters of your trees, 6ut to encourage 'Eartfi ~pair Jtction to unite peopu, corrununities, rtfigions ana nations in a common, proauctive, peaceful purpose.

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The Barunga Statement APPENDIX E

THE BARUNGA STATEMENT TEXT

We, the indigenous owners and occupiers of Australia, call on the Australian Government and people to recognise our rights:

To self-determination and self-management, including the freedom to pursue our own economic, social, religious and cultural development; To permanent control and enjoyment of our ancestral lands; To compensation for the loss of use of our lands, there having been no extinction of original title; To protection of and control of access to our sacred sites, sacred objects, artefacts, designs, knowledge and works of art; To the return of the remains of our ancestors for burial in accordance with our traditions; To respect for and promotion of our Aboriginal identity, including the cultural, linguistic, religious and historical aspects, and including the right to be educated in our own languages and in our own culture and history; In accordance with the universal declaration of human rights, the international covenant on civil and political rights, and the international convention on the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination, rights to life, liberty, security of person, food, clothing, housing, medical care, education and employment opportunities, necessary social services and other basic rights.

We call on the Commonwealth to pass laws providing:

A national elected Aboriginal and Islander organisation to oversee Aboriginal and Islander affairs; A national system of land rights; A politic and justice system which recognises our customary laws and frees us from discrimination and any activity which may threaten our identity or security, interfere with our freedom of expression or association, or otherwise prevent our full enjoyment and exercise of universally recognised human rights and fundamental freedoms.

We call on the Australian Government to support Aborigines in the development of an international declaration of principles for indigenous rights, leading to an international covenant.

And we call on the Commonwealth Parliament to negotiate with us a Treaty recognising our prior ownership, continued occupation and sovereignty and affirming our human rights and freedoms. APPENDIX F The Burnum Burnum Treaty l Salzburg, 27th January 1988 ~ 1?,Jcognising tfiat Jlustrafia was sett{u{ i11. 1788 6y tfie tJ3ritisfi, 6y neitfier peaceju{ means nor 6y conquest, L 13urnum 13urmun, a aescenaant of tfie 'Wurunc(jeri rr'ri6e, ao fiere6y affow 'Wiiite Jtustrafians to retain Jt6origina{ territory ·witli tlie foffow­ ing e;r_ceptions:-

1) :4.{{ cfiurdi ana refigious Canas.

2) :4.{{ (jovernment gazette/ 9{ationa{ ParR; ana :Forests in Jtustrafia.

3) yt{{ eaucationa{/scfioo{ property. 4) :4.{{ Worfa Jleritage Wi(aemess Parf\J in Yl.ustrafia. 5) Yl.fC Canas present{y oumea 6y (jovernment :Housing 'Departments wliere sucli liousing is occupiea 6y :4.6origina{ famifies.

6} yt{{ el(j.sting :4.6origina{ territories, private mu{ govcrnmwt. 7) :4.{{ Canas current{y ownea Inaepenaent Sovereig1t States in tlie .9/.ustrafian Capita{ rrerritory. 8) YI.{C gaofs ana prison property in Yl.ustrafia. 9) YI.Cf private{y ownea muftipfe occupancy Canas ana communes presentfy ownea 6y 'European Jllustrafians. '

'lN.e time perioa for tfiis to 6ecome effective is 31st 'Decem6er 1988.

Jl consequence of sucli important gestures wi{{ 6e :4.6origina{ 6{essing ana tlie rigli.t for a({ 'Wiiite Jllustrafians to earn tlieir spiritua{ p{ace witliin JJL6origina{ Jlustrafia.

Jlppropriate Cease6acf(arrangements into perpetuity wi({ restore tlie origina{ Ylus­ traCians to our riglitfuC position as reg a{ {anaCoras.

YI.{C YlustraCians are requestea to serious{y ponaer, pray ana meaitate in tfie sacrea 13ora 1Qngs ofyour liearts so tfiat we can jointCy wa{f(into tlie ne;r_t 'Dou6{e Cen­ tury witli fiope.

Signei: g~

J.c, .1/. .R, y 0 .J../ ,,._.....,.,.__ 6' t APPENDIX G . . .-rATIDn!NT av· Tits PRIMa "INISTIEIU· •• ' . . •• •. ·, •• . .... l. The oovern••nt art ar-• thac. tor ·a negotiated Treatv ·wa th .Aborl~(nal people...... : .. . ·• . ' . . '.· .. ·.. , ll .. " .':. •••• a. ·The oovern•ent 'aeea the next atep •• Aborloln~a decldlno •• .. . .. ••:· . 'what thev'belleve ahould be In the Treatv: ' . ., .. •• ...... •• . ' .' . ' •• •• ., ( . •• •• ~. ·The oovern•eni ws ll provide tbe neceaaarv auppott . tor ,., ',· . . . :, . . • . .. " .• .. ' . . • Aborlolna{· 'P.ople to cat'rJi · out· tbeiT · owa· ~ conauJ tat ton• ~ I • , • t; • . '· :. ~nd 'ne~otlaU~n.:· _thla 'could Include the· to....;tlon · ot '• . . . . . ••'• ·• ·: Co.•l ttee<, of aeven· aenlor Aborlolnea~. to' ~ver~e· !tbe :,_ '••• ...... : ...... ;''. ' •.. ' .. \ , I • • ~ •• ; • L. .~. •. ' .• ...... •• call. an · Australia-wid' · •••Uno or: •• 'i. :· .. • ••• •••••• ••• •'••!t! •• •• •• •• .. :·•• •••• .. •• •••• ..' . •

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P~omissory Statement of the Prime Minister R.J. Hawke 1988 APPENDIX H

Whale Dreaming1 The Barunga Statement Artist: Djwing Ngurrwuthun APPENDIX I

15 March 1985

On behalf of the Authority, I have pleas~re in inviting you to submit a design for the mosaic pavement for the Forecourt of the new ;Parliament House. The design required is a finished painting of the exact dimensions 1.4m x 1.4m (being the dimensions of the actual painted surface ·without borders or painted edges) in the medium of acrylic on canvas ·or cotton duck. The background colour is to be restricted to black or otherwise a combination of black and off-white. The positive areas of colour, i.e. on top of the background colour, are to be restricted to yellow, dark green, white, light grey, black, brown, pink-ochre and blood red. The painting is to be in the same style as the major paintings you have produced over the last five years. J The design must be delivered to the Authority offices in Canberra no :later than 27 May 1985. Your fee for the design will be $5,000 which will be paid to you within 30 days of the receipt of the design and the design will then tbecome the property of the Authority.

I Copyright in the design shall be retained by you. However, the Authority will have the right to exhibit the design and/or reproduce the design in catalogues and other publications associated with the Art Program for the new Parliament House. I look forward to your written acceptance of this invitation. Yours si y

J.D. FOWLER Assistant Secretary External Relations

Commissioning.letter fro~ Parliament House Authority to Papunya Tula Artists. Source: Parl1amentary f1les, Office of the Curator, Peter Haynes APPENDIX J

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Tjukurrpa Painting Artist: Michael Nelson Tjakainarra APPENDIX K

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Tjukurrpa Mosaic In situ: Forecourt Parliament House, Canberra APPENDIX L

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Aboriginal Memorial In situ: National Gallery of Australia APPENDIXM

HOLLOW LOG COFFIN - TRADITIONAL USE

Death in Aboriginal communities necessitates the undertaking of customary mortuary rites, the related practices of which differ from area to area. Mortuary Poles, such as used in the Aboriginal Memorial, are part of the funerary practices of Aborigines in far Northern Australia, they do not as a consequence have a general currency, and should be spoken of in specific terms.

In the account given by Peterson (1976), using Donald Thompson's field notes, ordinarily log coffins are functionary objects used in mortuary rites and ceremonies typically used throughout North East Arnhem land and adjacent islands, including Bathurst and Melville Islands to the west. The coffins are made by relatives, and are a part of the mortuary rite, their place being as repository of the deceased bones, long after the death has occurred.

A death necessitates that the body be ceremoniously dealt with in order that the spirit of the person is released, and does not remain in the camp to cause mischief or evil doings. A sand sculpture, known as a Wandjur, is sculptured in accordance to the deceased's clan. It functions to situate, contain and separate the spirit from the rest of the camp. Those individuals responsible for directly addressing the body in the process are considered 'unclean' until the mortuary rites have been completed, thereafter they must go through a ritual cleansing process, as must the ground upon which the body lies.

Preceding the placement of the bones in the hollow decorated logs, the bodies are painted and ritually sung over within a sand sculpture. Ordinarily, the body is then buried, to be exhumed at a later date when the purifying flesh is stripped from the bones. Methods of flesh disposal differ according to the region, and the type of burial, ie, platform in a tree or in the ground. This may include its return to the ground, placement in a hollow log known as Larkan Djammurmur, or strung up in a tree in a kind of dilly bag made of paperbark (Peterson 1976:100).

Exhumation involves drying the bones, to the point where they are ready to be red ochred, and the skull is painted with the clans design. The bones are then placed in an upright hollow log coffin, which are known and variously decorated according to clan and related totem. Peterson finally notes that the 'coffins are left standing, eventually decaying and disappearing without trace'. As is the way with much of Aboriginal material culture, its purpose is met through ceremony, not longevity (1976:97-108).