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Australian Aboriginal Studies 2003
Euphemism, banality, propaganda: anthropology, public debate and indigenous communities
Gillian Cowlishaw
Initially, this article was a response to an essay by Peter Sutton which was widely distributed and referenced as an authoritative anthropological analysis of current conditions in Indigenous communities. The apparent general assent to Sutton’s arguments led me to mount a wider critical analysis of the essay’s scholary, ethnographic and theoretical weaknesses. I emphasise that the meanings generated within communities must be intended to, and that public debate and policy formulation should not be confused. While scholarship cannot be divorced from either policy or the public, anthropologists should be wary of participating in debates that cannot ‘solve’ any ‘problem’ outside of their own articulation.
Indigenous modes of representing social relationships: A short critique of the ‘genealogical concept’
Laurent Dousset
The first part of the article discusses briefly the notions of genealogy and kinship within the Euro-American epistemological context and advocates the necessity for a sharp distinction between these two domains. While being a useful tool, especially in comparative approaches, the collection of genealogies is nevertheless the enactment of the genealogical concept, which in turn is a particular mode for legitimising status associated to a culturally specific iconography. The second part of the article portrays ethnographic material illustrating, as an alternative to the genealogical concept, Indigenous modes for representing relationships between people in the Western Desert, and that do simultaneously include affiliations to and structuration of space. These indigenous modes and iconography for representing ‘genealogies’ reflect a cultural schema that can be summarised as an unalienable link (or identity) between people and locales on the one hand, and between relationships and routes/tracks on the other. A genealogy in the understanding of a Ngaatjatjarra-speaking person of the Western Desert is a representation of both social and spatial affiliation and structure.
The creation of Wilkinkarra (Lake Mackay) in Pintupi/Kukatja Dreamings
Lloyd D. Graham
Wilkinkarra (Lake Mackay), a huge salt lake in the Western Desert region of Australia, features extensively in the tjukurrpa (Dreaming) narratives of the Pintupi and Kukatja. In this article, fragments of the public versions of these stories (such as those found in the literature associated with Western Desert art) are compiled and collated to give an overview of how the lake came into being. It proves possible to cluster the individual story fragments around three major themes – snake ancestors, kangaroo hunters, and sexual jealousy. While it is clear that there is no single definitive account of the creation of Wilkinkarra, all three story groups contain references to a fierce bushfire that devastated the land and formed the lake. The article concludes with a discussion of the possible origins of the various narrative elements, and an assessment of the methodology used in the survey.
What is music analysis? Problems and prospects for understanding Aboriginal songs and performance
Steven Knopoff
Music analysis has played a consistently important role in studies of traditional Aboriginal songs in Australia. Some musicologists, including Catherine Ellis, Linda Barwick, and Allan Marett, have matched their extensive use of music analysis with critical and introspective concerns over the ethics and usefulness of music analysis for understanding Aboriginal songs and performance practices. These mirror concerns long-held by scholars working with other non-Western musics.
Different concerns over music analysis have arisen amongst historical musicologists specialising in the study of Western art music. Here the issues relate to a rejection of analyses that treat compositions as autonomous works of art, and a desire to deconstruct the ideological underpinnings of classical music. Some music theorists’ replies to these criticisms have pointed to some diverse and self-reflexive possibilities for music analysis.
Drawing ideas from all of these sources as well as from my own fieldwork and analysis, I conclude that, despite its inherent cultural trappings and other limitations, analysis can and does provide an invaluable means for understanding Aboriginal songs and performance, and that the subjective input of the music analyst - something which is recognised in analyses of Western art music - could be more accepted as a normal part of analysis of Aboriginal (and other non-Western) musics.
Arrernte rock-art: interpreting physical permanence in a changing social landscape
R. G. Gunn
Using the general outlines of custodians’ interpretations and the existing literature, this article examines the correlations of archaeological evidence and ethnographic information from a number of Arrernte rock-art complexes in Central Australia and presents an outline for interpreting and assessing the significance of Arrernte rock-art.
Dry rainforests: a productive habitat for Australian hunter-gatherers
Wendy Beck and Jane Balme
Most recent work on hunter-gatherer use of rainforests has concluded that, although they are resource rich, they are difficult environments for people to live. This is largely because of the inaccessibility of many of the resources. However, most of this research has been on tropical or ‘wet’ rainforest types. Dry rainforests (seasonal rainforest) have not been so extensively studied yet they have a wide distribution throughout the world and, in the past, had a much wider distribution. In Australia during the Pleistocene the distribution was much wider than the present Holocene remnants suggest especially in the northern and northeastern margin.
A comparison of plant resources from different rainforest types in northeastern New South Wales indicates that dry rainforests, in contrast to wet rainforest types, were potentially productive environments for Indigenous Australians in the past. Many of the species present in Australia’s dry rainforests would have been familiar to the first human colonisers. The food resources are easier to access than wet rainforest species and the plant parts available occur in different proportions to those in wet rainforests. Accessible seeds are particularly abundant and so the successful exploitation of the full potential of these forests relies on specialised technologies.
Australian ethnobotany - an overview
Philip A. Clarke
Australian ethnobotany maintains a common area of interest for a wide range of specialists, some of whom study the physical properties of plants and their potential for use by the wider community, while others focus upon the Indigenous cultural importance of plant species. Rather than being just an antiquarian pursuit, Australian ethnobotany offers a greater insight into Indigenous seasonal calendars, which is leading to changes in land management practices in some regions.
An assessment of the composition and nutrient content of an Australian Aboriginal hunter-gather diet
Richard M. and Pamela A. Smith
Detailed ethnographic records of hunter-gatherer subsistence diet among the Ngaatjatjarra Aboriginal people made by the ethnoarchaeologist, Richard Gould, in the Western Desert in 1969 have been analysed for nutrient composition using recent table of Indigenous foods. Over a period of five months the dietary staples of meat, fresh and dried fruit and grass seeds provided group members with ten kilojoules per day of energy comprising 124 grams of protein, 24.5 grams of fat and 411 grams of carbohydrate, together with adequate levels of those accessory food factors for which compositional data are available. The average diet contained a very low level of total fat (9.2% of energy) a very high level of carbohydrate (69% of energy, of which 40% of energy was present as whole grain) and total protein, including that of meat, to make up twentyone percent of energy. Meat itself, including its fat, made up 9.6 percent of total energy.
Comparison of the nutrient content with that of a modern diet designed to avert chronic disease showed some close similarities and indicated the absence of recognised risk factors for the chronic diseases found in the present Aboriginal populations of northwestern Australia.
The fats of life
Heather McDonald
Indigenous Australian and Western views of animal fat, at least since the 1960s, have been starkly opposed. Westerners have learned to be highly suspicious of dietary fat while Aboriginal peoples continue to extol the virtues and benefits of animal fat. More recent nutritional and biochemical research is bringing Western and Indigenous views of animal fat into closer alignment. Nutrition programs in Indigenous Australia need to take account of the differences between bush animal fat and domesticated (especially ruminant) animal fat. Health intervention programs need to find ways to separate good and bad plant oils.
‘Which bloke would stand up for Yalata?’ The struggle of an Aboriginal community to control the availability of alcohol
Maggie Brady, Joe Byrne and Graham Henderson
Legislation to restrict the supply of alcohol has been introduced in many rural communities across Australia over the past ten to fifteen years. Overall these restrictions have been at the instigation of Aboriginal groups. This paper records the history of the struggle of one Aboriginal community in South Australia to restrict the ready availability of harmful amounts of alcohol to its residents. Sixteen years after the first tentative attempts to control supply, the community succeeded in gaining legal controls over off-premises sales from three local outlets. During this period the community suffered great hardship, with many individuals experiencing poor health or premature death as a result of excessive alcohol consumption. Now, twelve years after the legislation was enacted, there is evidence that the community is a safer and better place to live for its residents.
Social evaluation of participatory planning practice at Old Mapoon Aboriginal community: opportunities for inclusive local governance
Mark Moran
The Queensland Government in Australia is increasingly utilising participatory planning as a means to improve infrastructure and service delivery to Indigenous settlements. In addition to technical and economic goals, participatory planning practice seeks to also achieve social development goals, including empowerment, capacity building, community control and ownership. This paper presents the findings of an evaluation of one such planning project, conducted at Old Mapoon in 1995. Despite various efforts to follow participatory processes, the plan had mixed success in achieving stated social development goals. This suggests some misunderstandings between the practice of participatory planning and the workings of local governance. It also presents some opportunities for participatory planning methods to be integrated into more inclusive forms of governance.