Indigenous Participation in Australian Economies II Historical engagements and current enterprises Indigenous Participation in Australian Economies II Historical engagements and current enterprises Edited by Natasha Fijn, Ian Keen, Christopher Lloyd and Michael Pickering Published by ANU E Press The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200, Australia Email: [email protected] This title is also available online at: http://epress.anu.edu.au/ National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Title: Indigenous participation in Australian economies, II : historical engagements and current enterprises [electronic resource] / Natasha Fijn ... [et al] ISBN: 9781921862830 (pbk.) 9781921862847 (ebook) Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index. Subjects: Aboriginal Australians--Economic conditions. Business enterprises, Aboriginal Australian. Aboriginal Australians--Employment. Australia--Economic conditions. Other Authors/Contributors: Fijn, Natasha. Dewey Number: 306.30994 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Cover design and layout by ANU E Press Cover image: Gudurr with photo of Dave Rust and Scotty Salmond 2008. Courtesy State Library of Western Australia image number 007852D Printed by Griffin Press This edition © 2012 ANU E Press Contents Figures . .vii Maps . ix Tables . xi Foreword . xiii Jon Altman Introduction . 1 Ian Keen and Christopher Lloyd 1 . Settler Economies and Indigenous Encounters: The dialectics of conquest, hybridisation and production regimes . 17 Christopher Lloyd Indigenous People and Settlers 2. Before the Mission Station: From first encounters to the incorporation of settlers into Indigenous relations of obligation . 37 John M. White 3 . Tracking Wurnan: Transformations in the trade and exchange of resources in the northern Kimberley . 57 Anthony Redmond 4 . Camels and the Transformation of Indigenous Economic Landscapes . 73 Petronella Vaarzon-Morel 5 . ‘Always Anangu—always enterprising’ . 97 Alan O’Connor Labour History and Stolen Wages 6 . ‘The Art of Cutting Stone’: Aboriginal convict labour in nineteenth-century New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land . 119 Kristyn Harman 7 . Indigenous Workers on Methodist Missions in Arnhem Land: A skilled labour force lost . 135 Gwenda Baker v 8 . Low Wages, Low Rents, and Pension Cheques: The introduction of equal wages in the Kimberley, 1968–1969 . 153 Fiona Skyring 9 . Aboriginal Workers, Aboriginal Poverty . 171 Ros Kidd 10 . Indigenous Peoples and Stolen Wages in Victoria, 1869–1957 . 181 Andrew Gunstone Indigenous Enterprises and Employment Schemes 11 . Between Locals: Interpersonal histories and the 1970s Papunya art movement . 199 Peter Thorley and Andy Greenslade 12 . An Economy of Shells: A brief history of La Perouse Aboriginal women’s shell-work and its markets, 1880–2010 . 211 Maria Nugent 13 . Policy Mismatch and Indigenous Art Centres: The tension between economic independence and community development . 229 Gretchen Marie Stolte 14 . On Generating Culturally Sustainable Enterprises and Demand-Responsive Services in Remote Aboriginal Settings: A case study from north-west Queensland . 243 Paul Memmott 15 . Dugong Hunting as Changing Practice: Economic engagement and an Aboriginal ranger program on Mornington Island, southern Gulf of Carpentaria . 261 Cameo Dalley 16 . Environmental Conservation and Indigenous Development through Indigenous Protected Areas and Payments for Environmental Services: A review . 287 Nanni Concu Contributors . 311 Index . 317 vi Figures Figure 1.1 Conceptual matrix of conquest and articulation 22 Figure 1.2 The production system of Van Diemen’s Land 26 Figure 1.3 Altman’s Venn diagram of hybridity 27 Figure 2.1 Howitt’s (1904) evidence of Yuin exchange practices 46 Figure 4.1 Charlie Ilyatjari uses an old camel wagon for his wood 84 carting business, circa 1960 Figure 4.2 Louis Wirultjukurnga and family with camels approximately 85 20 km north of Ernabella, 6 September 1960 Figure 4.3 Trading on the road at Yulpartji, 22 August 1958 86 Figure 4.4 Wise Men on a camel at Ernabella, circa 1960. Christmas 87 pageants were presented in the creek bed with a donkey carrying Mary and ‘Three Wise Men’ leading camels as the Ernabella Choir sang carols in the background Figure 5.1 Anangu display their craft work, Ara Irititja, 1960 102 Figure 5.2 Shearing at Ernabella, Ara Irititja, circa 1960 103 Figure 5.3 Building the first house for Anangu, Ernabella, Ara 105 Irititja, 1963 Figure 5.4 The vegetable garden at Ernabella, Ara Irititja, 1973 108 Figure 5.5 Water drilling near Ernabella, Ara Irititja, 1970 109 Figure 7.1 Stephen Bunbaitjun: Builder, Howard Island 137 Figure 7.2 Unloading logs 138 Figure 11.1 Kalipimpa Rain (more commonly known as Kalipinypa) by 203 Kaapa Mbitjana Tjampitjinpa, painted in 1976–77 Figure 11.2 Reverse of Kalipimpa Rain by Kaapa Mbitjana Tjampitjinpa 204 Figure 11.3 Kaapa painting in the backyard of Gwen and Owen 204 Daniels at Papunya, 1976–77 Figure 11.4 Untitled painting by Kaapa Mbitjana Tjampitjinpa, 1984 205 Figure 12.1 Shell-work baby slippers, maker unknown, La Perouse, 212 New South Wales, 1952 Figure 12.2 Shell-work Sydney Harbour Bridge, made by Mavis 212 Longbottom and Lola Ryan, La Perouse, New South Wales, Australia, 1986 Figure 12.3 Harbour Bridge, made by Lola Ryan, Dharawal/Eora 213 people, La Perouse, New South Wales, Australia, 2000 vii Indigenous Participation in Australian Economies II Figure 12.4 Boomerang, La Perouse Aboriginal community, 224 New South Wales, Australia, circa 1935 Figure 13.1 Maningrida Art Centre, 2005 234 Figure 14.1 The market participation model: complex demand and 254 supply chains and networks Figure 14.2 Myuma as the complex Indigenous adaptive system 254 Figure 14.3 A Myuma business card with corporate logo 257 Figure 15.1 Dugong caught in the Appel Channel between 264 Mornington Island and Denham Island, showing the mission rowboat used for hunting, 1916 Figure 15.2 Brian Roughsey and Prince Escott (both deceased) with a 265 modern reconstruction of a net used for catching dugong, 1976 Figure 15.3 Walbas in the Appel Channel between Mornington 266 Island and Denham Island Figure 15.4 Dugong caught by Robert Burns and George Dugong 267 (both deceased), showing double outrigger canoe used for hunting, Mornington Island, circa 1921 Figure 16.1 The logic of PES 291 Figure 16.2 Benefits and costs from the Indigenous estate under 293 different management options viii Maps Map 3.1 Sketch map of trade routes in the Kimberley region 61 Map 3.2 Contemporary Trade Routes in the Kimberleys and their 64 Major Items of Exchange Map 3.3 Wurnan channels overlaid on moiety blocks 65 Map 5.1 The APY Lands 98 Map 7.1 Methodist missions in Arnhem Land 139 Map 14.1 Operational location of the Myuma Group 244 Map 14.2 Plan of Myuma Camp in 2006 249 Map 14.3 Towns and pastoral stations in the vicinity of Camooweal, 250 with the Indjaladji-Dhidhanu territory and neighbouring traditional owner groups Map 15.1 Map of the southern Gulf of Carpentaria showing the 263 areas in the application and those determined under the Wellesley Sea Claim (National Native Title Tribunal 2005) Map 16.1 The Dhimurru IPA 297 Map 16.2 The Djelk IPA 299 ix Tables Table 7.1 Indigenous Male Mission Wages as a Percentage of the 143 Commonwealth Male Basic Wage Table 14.1 The Three Corporate Vehicles of the Myuma Group and 247 their Respective Spheres of Operation Table 14.2 Myuma’s Contribution to its Regional Economy, 2004–09 253 Table 16.1 Sample of Indigenous Protected Areas 294 xi Foreword Jon Altman This book is part of a bold intellectual quest to re-envisage and re-theorise the nature of Indigenous participation in the Australian colonial economy. It has arisen out of an Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage project between scholars at The Australian National University, the University of New England and the National Museum of Australia that was completed in 2011. This book is the second substantive publication from the project, following on from Indigenous Participation in Australian Economies: Historical and anthropological perspectives, edited by Ian Keen and published by ANU E Press in 2010. The title of this volume—Indigenous Participation in Australian Economies II: Historical engagements and current enterprises—suggests to me that the research project has grown beyond its original intent. The project’s key goal—to revisit historical, spatially diverse and now contemporary articulations of Indigenous and settler-state and settler-capitalist social and economic forms—is long overdue. It is an ambitious interdisciplinary collaboration; its team of researchers deploys the disciplinary lenses of anthropology, history, economic history, material culture and prehistory (or archaeology). Participating in the public conference held at the National Museum of Australia in November 2009, I was struck that the topic attracted an even wider set of perspectives than originally anticipated, as well as more scholarly interest. And just as the disciplinary perspectives grew so did the time frame under consideration. This raises important questions about how we characterise the temporal and spatial boundaries of the Australian colonial economy: is there still a colonial frontier out there? From an Indigenous perspective, is Australia post colonial or still colonial? As the project has expanded and evolved, it strikes me that it has been well managed by the lead researchers who have been happy not to steer any tight predetermined course. In his recent article ‘Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native’, Patrick Wolfe (2006) draws on his earlier work to make three points of great pertinence to this project. First, he notes that the colonial invasion and its transformative capitalist system were predicated on wholesale expropriation of the land and resources—the principal settler-colonial logic to eliminate native societies was to gain unrestricted access to territory.