Some Notes From Collishaw

The whole key is education, 'cause if not, in another 200 years, the only blackfellas that'll be alive are the educated ones. Because the uneducated, with all their social problems, will die. Capitalism won't stop and wait for you. 'Hey catch up to us, Jack.' It'll just keep going. And that's the way of the world.'

The opening quote introduces some now-familiar concepts:

·      Progress (it won’t stop and wait for you… that's the way of the world)

·      Education

·      Capitalism

Are juxtaposed with:

·      the uneducated, with all their social problems

Think back to Hobsbawm’s discussion last week:

“The nineteenth-century liberal ideology of social change”, with its emphasis on radical innovation, was characterised by:

·      deliberately not using or adapting the old ways

·      systematically setting itself against tradition,

·      expressing a general hostility to irrationalism, superstition and customary practices reminiscent of the dark past.

We can see from this:

·      The enlightenment continues to shape the way we view ourselves and our position in the world (our “social reality” - Gross).

So, starting with this weeks reading we know that it is not about what is and/or is not “traditional” or “authentic”, so much as the processes associated with the defining the authentic as authentic. The article’s principal question is: Who gets to say what is and is not “authentic”. In this respect it resonates with the readings on “invented traditions” from last week.

Thus, while the focus is on Aboriginal identify, these principals are relevant for other cultural groups as well, including white or Anglo- cultural groups. When going through these notes, think about what happens if each time the word “Aboriginal” appears, you replace it with the words “Anglo” or “white”.

Now –focusing on the question of who gets to say what is and is not “authentic” we also know from last week- especially from Richard white’s reading, that meanings and/or ideas about tradition or authenticity circulate or resonate in three different ways or on three different levels.

1. Meanings, traditions and/or ideas about authenticity circulate at the level of the individual.

·      Poststructuralist interest in meaning, emphasising its ambiguity, multiplicity and dependence on the reader's interpretation over the writer's intention, simply dissolved 'reality', and encouraged a drift to cultural relativism.

·      If the idea of 'Australia' is an invention, an active and creative process rather than something that has a prior existence and simply needs to be discovered, then it follows that it will be invented and embroidered in different ways by different people for different reasons. This could be taken to mean that there is no single Australian identity but only multiple identities.

·      how do questions of nationality and culture touch on the issues of multiple identities and the agency of ordinary Australians

2. Meanings circulate at a local-cultural level:

·      The bicentennial gloss of multiple identities, public commitment to multiculturalism, [and the idea of] multiple identities.

·      the Bicentennial Authority's commitment to pluralism

3. Meanings circulate at the national level.

What gets constituted as “real” or authentic at the national level

·      inevitably touches on questions of power and identity

·      there was a contest for supremacy going on among the different conceptions of Australia, and that contest was part of the wider struggles for dominance within Australian society

·      the contest for dominance in the public discourse of nation

So, drawing on White’s taxonomy, we can say that the Collishaw looks at the various different ways in which ideas about Aboriginality circulate. She also looks at the way in which these different circulations are similar to or different form one another.

More specifically:

·      To what extent do “official” determinations of Aboriginal authenticity correlate with the everyday lives of men women and children living, in this case, in Mount Druitt?

1. On the one hand, Collishaw examines the official framing of Aboriginality which occurs in the context of native title (for example), in the context of affirmative action in relation to employment and education, in relation to who can join the  Land Council and participate in administering the millions of dollars' worth of land…

The nation seems willing to value Indigenous people as the bearers of unique symbols of a transcendental past. Perhaps these symbols provide a sense of Australia's ancient mystery to urban people who are surrounded by global commercial images

“these signs of the classical  traditions that once dominated the continent and gave meaning to the country”

a unified Indigenous heritage, evidence for which relies on pre-European cultural forms such as tribal names, language remnants, cave paintings or artefacts...

a plethora of ancient cultural symbols and images are actively read into Indigenous identity and  people become conscious of being seen and judged against the use of, and familiarity with, such definitive markers of  traditions.

She calls this:

“fundamentalist identity politics”

“state-sponsored culture”.

Thomas describes this in terms of 'Primitivism'. He writes:

'Primitivism', typified by this sort of contrast, is something more specific than an interest in the primitive: it attributes an exemplary status to simple or archaic ways of life, and thus frequently shares the progressivist understanding of tribal society as an original and antecedent form, but revalues its rudimentary character as something to be upheld. At this level of generality, it is the conformity of contemporary primitivism with the longer tradition that seems striking.

2. However Collishaw defines this official framing as problematic.

“The complicated, contradictory and destabilising relationship with the idea of authenticity, “

The value attached to these traditions is ambiguous, both for contemporary suburban Aborigines and for the nation.

There is little 'radical alterity' among Aborigines in Mt Druitt; much of everyday life appears as mimicry, a reflection of the white urban cultural world

Thus: The expectation that suburban Aborigines will actively affirm the popular symbols of Aboriginality loads their sense of identity with a heavy burden.

A community's varied and complex ethno-racial heritage tends to be muted. Thus: “an Indigenous person often finds it difficult to take pride in non-Indigenous elements of their heritage.” Thomas describes this in terms of “pluralised identities”. He writes of the way Bran Nue Dae “lyricizes pluralized identities that emerge through historical dislocations rather than from a stable ethnicity.”

It leads to an overemphasis on relationships to “traditional cultures” and performances such as painting designs on buildings, schools sponsoring dance programs, and smoking ceremonies cleansing places of bad spirits... . As Collishaw relates, these relationships are often shallow, standing in for “a lifetime of gradual acquisition through immersion and participation”

3. Emphasis on the need to look at ideas about “traditional” or “authentic” Aboriginal identity in terms of  the everyday experiences of individuals as  that are ignored or appear “under water”.

She writes: “we [should] listen to voices that were hitherto talking under water.

Collishaw suggests that Aboriginal identity be linked to embeddedness in an  social world. That is,  is a social identity.

Local loyalties and connections that make social life meaningful.

These aspects of Aboriginality do not rely on the artificial revival of ancient practices, (although for some the traditional past does carry powerful significance).

The preponderance and power of extended networks of kin, which are characteristic of traditional societies everywhere and are 'still' apparent here, are, as we saw, taken for granted rather than celebrated. Not only are they not celebrated; a practice like 'demand sharing' has, as mentioned above, been disparaged in academic and public writing as a relic that anchors people in the past, handicapping individual strivings in this competitive world.

The identity of the Mt Druitt Aboriginal people I have met this year is secure, not so much because of their knowledge of Indigenous traditions, but because every family trajectory has been afflicted and inflected by the nation's laws, practices and ideology in relation to . Of course these past experiences are not valorised as culture.

Everyday ways of relating... the casual demeanour, sharing, laughter and teasing that can appear rude, elements of what Norrie refers to when she says, 'I wouldn't know how to define Aboriginality. I’ve never lived any other way.’ Let alone other propensities, such as swearing and drinking and other practices that so often lead to detention and jailing... This organic and genetic identity, affirmed through extensive kin networks, carries a sense of stigmatised difference.

Thus: Contemporary arguments about whether Aborigines 'should' be encouraged to 'cling to' traditions are not based on what is, but on what is imagined. They are being encouraged to exhibit elements of culture that do not reflect their current cultural milieu and that “delegitimise the ordinary ways people identify with their community”.

Why are these “fundamentalist discourse invoked?

But an older view, characteristic of my own youth, saw liberation from tradition as welcome progress. Tradition was 'old-fashioned', an altogether undesirable orientation. And this is the case with many Aboriginal people, young and old. Are they a threatened species of social life that should be revived ?

Ultimately what is at stake is “a struggle about the meaning of culture”.

A “conflict about authenticity and authority”.

This conflict takes place on multiple levels:

Discomforting challenges to what I call 'everyday ' come from other Aboriginal people, those suburban dwellers who have no trouble being bourgeois.

Similar challenges to 'everyday ' come from those who have tertiary education and thus are favoured for specified Indigenous positions in community or service organisations.

This can only be understood by taking into account the interests involved and the livelihoods, pride and honour that are at risk

5. Conclusion

Thus the fundamentalist assertion about a unified Aboriginal identity, which was so refreshing 30 years ago, has become frayed and often burdensome, as evident in chronic disputes about who is and who is not a true blackfella

She describes “ as a “capacious idea”, in the sense that there is no singular or universal  Aboriginal culture:

Rather than having found the Aboriginal community, I have met an Aboriginal community, and not one that can enfold al its members. There is not a single locally interacting group that forms a discrete Aboriginal community, even for intermittent or occasional events; there are instead various groupings, often out of touch or out of sorts with one another... While various groupings all have an intense interest in , each has investments in different elements of that capacious idea.

Those Aboriginal people like Bamey who reject ' culture' as what needs preserving, may be at the foaming, disorienting edge of a new wave.