Indigenous Movements in Australia Author(S): Francesca Merlan Source: Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol

Indigenous Movements in Australia Author(s): Francesca Merlan Source: Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 34 (2005), pp. 473-494 Published by: Annual Reviews Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25064895 . Accessed: 24/09/2013 01:45 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Annual Reviews is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Annual Review of Anthropology. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 130.195.86.35 on Tue, 24 Sep 2013 01:45:54 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Indigenous Movements in Australia FrancescaMerlan School of Archaeology and Anthropology, Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200, Australia; email: [email protected] Annu. Rev. Anthropol. Words 2005. 34:473-94 Key socialtransformation The Annual Review Indigenous-settlerrelations, action, politics, of reconciliation Anthropology is online at religion, anthro.annualreviews.org Abstract doi: 10.1146/ annurev.anthro.34.081804.120643 The metaphor of "movement" has been applied in limited measure to action in andmore to recent events 1960s Copyright? 2005by indigenous Australia, (~ Annual Reviews. All rights and afterwards) than to earlier ones. This review characterizes move reserved ment in social-semiotic terms that allow consideration of such a no 0084-6570/05/1021 tion over a longer time span and range of social circumstances than 0473$20.00 is usual inAustralianist literature. Examination of a limited number of relatively well-documented cases from differing times and places reveals differences in the grounds of action and kinds of objectifica tion that movements appear to have involved and also a continuing shift toward shared indigenous-nonindigenous understandings and forms of activism in the face of persisting social differentiation. The arguably limited impact of indigenous movements needs to be con sidered in the light of systematic constraints on them. 473 This content downloaded from 130.195.86.35 on Tue, 24 Sep 2013 01:45:54 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions tion ofinauthenticity of action on this account Contents (see e.g., Goodall 1996, p. 274), I take these kinds of interaction as central matter INTRODUCTION ................. 474 subject in account of mobilization and MOVEMENT? IDEAS ABOUT my indigenous terms in which it INDIGENOUSRESPONSE .... 475 the moral and political has MOBILIZATIONS:CASES IN proceeded. treatment of TIME AND SPACE ............. 476 Any properly analytical movement must show how that notion is re ...................... 476 Kurangarra lated to broader of social action and ..................... concepts Jinimin-Jesus 477 what is about it.Movement is not, THE ADJUSTMENT particular MOVEMENT INARNHEM in the first instance, a category of critical social but a term of famil LAND ........................... 477 analysis everyday language FROMPROTECTIONISM TO iar to us from our social experience (women's PROGRESSIVISM: movement, peace movement, etc.). It focuses INDIGENOUSACTIVISM IN attention on social change and transformation as distinct from social THE AFTERMATH OF THE purportedly ordinary It in lit "SECONDDISPOSSESSION".. 478 reproduction. overlaps social science erature with such as mo DISADVANTAGE,LAND categories protest, bilization, collective action, and many oth TENURE, AND DEFERRED ers. Given our with movement as a ....................... 482 familiarity JUSTICE term of some of this liter RECONCILIATION ............... 485 ordinary language, ature a deal about the na CONCLUSIONS................... 488 presupposes great ture and objects of social movements (for im portant accounts, see Blumer 1951, Calhoun 1993, della Porta & Diani 1998 and ref erences therein, Gusfield 1981). Considera INTRODUCTION tion of what may usefully be included in the The indigenous people of Australia include categoryof indigenousmovements, however, Aborigines and Islanders (of the Torres Strait). cannotpresuppose such familiarity. Together, they comprise an estimated 2% of Movement is taken to involve (a) interac the total population. tion among a plurality of actors and types of Although indigenous people are a small actors (variously dispersed or solidary); (b) el minority, Australian indigenous issues tend to ements of meaning and action that are to some have a high profile nationally and internation extent grounded in, but also differ from, ex ally. Have "movements" been a form of ac isting cultural norms and ordered forms of tion over which indigenous actors exert con social behavior (see Gusfield 1981, p. 325; trol, through which indigenous interests are Burridge 1969; also della Porta & Diani 1998, defined and satisfied? The aim of this review p. 51); and (c) a focus on action as out of the is to illustrate the range of action that might ordinary in contrast with the everyday, under be considered movements, before a return is stood as such by participants (and often, also made to this question in conclusion. by others). Such out-of-the-ordinary action Indigeneity (like all identity categories) is inherently associated with efforts to build does not designate a fixed entity but sug up a shared space, or common vantage point gests processes of interaction and differen (Taylor 1985, p. 273), across felt, sometimes tiation. Indigenous mobilization in Australia explicitly identified discontinuities. Move has involved not only indigenous but also, ment thus involves an orientation of a commu in fundamental ways, nonindigenous actors nicatively purposive kind. This is not to assert and forms of action. Rejecting any imputa that actors have a sovereign self-consciousness 474 Merlan This content downloaded from 130.195.86.35 on Tue, 24 Sep 2013 01:45:54 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions concerning what they are doing and their con dramaticallyreduced everywhere by disease ditions. Nor need we suppose that the under andviolence), and technologicaldisadvantage standingsand descriptions guiding actors nec meant that, considered in broad terms, Abo essarilyinvolve notions of achievingspecific riginalpresence offered limitedimpediment kinds of change or transformation; in partic to settler occupation of the continent, com ular, that action should be undertaken in re pared with, for example, the occupations of lation to some objectified notion of society or North America and New Zealand. In many social order. In some cases, this may be true; ways, Aborigines rendered considerable assis in other cases, it is not. Extraordinary, com tance to settlement and not only opposition. municativelypurposive action may be based Consistent with the third emphasis, so in awide range of modes of objectification of cial anthropologists' attention devoted to tra the self and of situation. ditional life and institutions until recently took precedence over any explicit scholarly developmentof understandingsconcerning MOVEMENT? IDEAS ABOUT indigenous-nonindigenous interactions in the INDIGENOUS RESPONSE colonization and settlement of the continent. Until fairly recently, many views of Aus There were some notable exceptions. Elkin's tralianindigenous people and their cultures (1951) phase model of Aboriginal response to tended to overlook or downplay degrees settlement(approximately contemporaneous of creativity in their responses to colonization with similar acculturation models elsewhere, and continuing settlement such as might be e.g., in Americanist anthropology) at least implied by the notion of movement. Several accorded significance to interaction between factors appear to explain its limited applica settlers and indigenous people, and thus im tion. First was a widespread view of Aborigi proved on the prevailing romantic dualism be nal social orders as crushed by colonial impact tween the preservation of traditional life ver (Sharp1952; Burridge 1969, p. 39;Rowley sus destruction of it.Hartwig's (1965) Marxist 1970; McMichael 1984, p. 42). Second, and account of Central Australia shed light on the seemingly in contradiction with the above, conditions of Aboriginal-settler interaction. were notions of social orders as unchanging Berndt (1969) reflected on "The Concept [Charlesworth (1986 [1984], p. 383) terms this of 'Protest' within an Australian Aboriginal the "standard view"] (Bos 1988, p. 423). Third Context." was the valuation of social orders mainly to the He posited not the continuous existence of extent that they are thought to remain tra protest but rather its gradual and late emer ditional or distinct from the dominant soci gence in Australian Aborigines' responses to ety and its subcultures (Jones & Hill-Burnett change and disorder resulting from the im 1982, p. 228; Merlan 1998; Povinelli 2002). pacts of outside settlement. He found that Consideration of the social complexity of "external intervention and stimulus" (1969, indigenousresponse has eventuallyshown the p. 39) had everywhere been fundamental to inadequacyof any simpleresistance position protest and described Aborigines as heard in in response to earlier views of societal collapse directly, their voices amplified through exter

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