Current Indigenous debates, CDEP and 'cultura nullius'
By Bree Blakeman and Nanni Concu
Posted Wed Sep 3, 2008 8:32am AEST
Acknowledging the richness and diversity in Indigenous Australia will make policy debates a lot more complex, but to act otherwise is dishonest. (ABC News: Damien Larkins)
Debates about remote Indigenous communities, with very few exceptions, are crafted with a discourse of negation: people on the 'margins' of society, on the 'margins' of the economy with 'little or no education' who are nothing more than exiled economic citizens.
The implication is clear; as Helen Hughes said recently, Indigenous people can't read, they can't write, they don't have skills, [and seasonal fruit picking] is about the only thing they can do! Their communities are rendered as socioeconomic vacuums in our thriving settler state. When the debate is cast in these terms, one can understand the sense of urgency to educate Indigenous people, 'skill' them up and make them 'job ready' so we can break down, in Marcia Langton's words, 'the apartheid system of employment'. They are waiting for us to fill them out and colour them in with education and skills, to bring them into the real world and the real economy.
However, one feels entirely unconvinced of these debates when living in a vibrant remote Yolngu* community - one of some 200 on the 1.5 million square kilometres of Indigenous-owned land. Considered time in these communities will reveal very little 'missing' or 'lacking' in the social fabric. If anything, it is the visiting balanda or white person who feels on the margins, lacking in language, education and practical skills.
There are often more than five languages spoken in any one homeland, a great source of amusement as kin show off their skilled and often uproarious word play. Days are spent in the breast of kin and country, hunting and gathering food to complement shop-bought products, collecting bark and pandanus for painting and weaving (which later adorn walls in local and international art centres), and plugging in a few hours of CDEP work - mowing lawns, fencing, gardening - to ensure their fortnightly pay. The evenings are spent catching up with the latest gossip and sharing in music, dance and food.
Longer yearly cycles show a rhythm of movement between one's primary homeland, trips to town for reinforcements, and other communities and centres - maintaining socio-ceremonial networks that hold the wider Yolngu community together. Underlying these everyday activities is the ever present satisfaction in looking after kin and country, and in doing so 'following in the footsteps of the ancestors' and 'holding' Yolngu law.
These communities are not sociocultural vacuums and are not on the margins of anything. They are the centre of Yolngu lives and are filled with knowledge, skill and value that, though very different, are not exclusive to those of the encompassing settler state. From a Yolngu point of view these communities are 'promised lands' of unquestionable value as part of wider socio-ceremonial networks that make up their cosmological and social world.
It is true that many people on the homelands speak little English and do not meet national education benchmarks, but these are not primary indicators of social skill, status or value in Yolngu communities. Yolngu have a very different education and skill set, much more diversified than ours in many cases. These knowledges or skill sets are perfectly suited to the tasks most Yolngu dedicate their time and lives to, which make them successful, happy and valued members in their wide social networks.
This portrait is often dismissed with the argument that Yolngu are an exception and a geographically confined exception at that, and should therefore be subordinated to the national debate about CDEP. It is true that Yolngu are somewhat unique. They had a very late contact history, and many were never moved off their land. They still speak their languages, hold and practice their ceremony and live on land they own. But should this alleged 'exception' be dismissed and these communities be mainstreamed?
As terra nullius denied the existence of Indigenous land tenure, opening up land and resources to European settlers, so cultura nullius is being used to justify government and market policy efforts to overlay our own, often foreign values and visions, trading one cultural body of knowledge, skills, practices and values for another. The pretence of a sociocultural vacuum is functional to avoid the moral nuisances that arise when we address cultural diversity with mainstreaming and resocialisation. But we have to ask ourselves how morally sound such policies are.
The merit of CDEP in the full-colour version of life on the homelands in north-east Arnhem Land is that it accommodates and even complements Yolngu cultural responsibilities, priorities and values while delivering basic services to remote communities at low cost to government. CDEP gives Yolngu the opportunity to balance often conflicting systems of value and to choose how far they wish to move between the two. It allows communities to fulfil basic responsibilities to both kin and government on their own country, and largely on their own terms. A more coercive policy will inevitably bring the two systems of value into direct competition.
Yolngu are acutely aware of this pressure, as my adoptive sister (an enthusiastic CDEP worker) stated when discussing the recent CDEP debate and the pressure for Yolngu to move into labour market centres:
"If they stop CDEP we will not leave. We will still stay here on our country. We were not born with money, we were born with culture. It is indeed this way. The money is not sacred for us. That is balanda madayin [white people's sacred endowment]. This is how I feel. Money is not our madayin. We will stay here."
As history has proven, Yolngu are more than resilient. They will not disregard values at the heart of their culture and identity and it will be a sad day when government policy measures suggest they do.
Acknowledging the richness and diversity in Indigenous Australia will make policy debates a lot more complex, but to act otherwise is both morally and politically dishonest.
Bree Blakeman is a PhD student of anthropology at the Australian National University, and long-term resident of Yolngu Homelands. Dr Nanni Concu is an environmental economist at Charles Darwin University.
* The above discussion is confined to Yolngu country, stretching from Maningrida in the west to Blue Mud Bay in the south-east, because this is the area with which the authors are most familiar.
from: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/09/03/2353864.htm?site=news
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