It's time for Aboriginal spirit to rise in us all ...The didge is the sound of Mother Earth and is bringing forth the heart spirit, from the depths of our land. The Didge Spirit will guide us if we put aside our ego and be humble ... The vibrating sound of the didge is stirring for it reflects the wonderful sound of creation. Even the earth rotating as taped from outer space sounds like a didgeridoo ... By using it in creative ritual in day to day life and going into meditative, reflective and feeling spaces it becomes our soul companion helping open and clear the doorway to our spirit.In sympathy with such logic, the didjeridu, a chief ritual tool used in a fire walk at Toc IV, was played over the bare feet of prospective coal walkers with the purpose of guiding their journey. Such discourse and practice is consistent with essentialising patterns like those located in contemporary world music where the instrument is often perceived to resonate Mother Earth (Neuenfeldt 1994), and whose originators are imagined to be so 'in-touch' with their natural environment that they themselves are Nature. However, as a conduit between the sacred and profane (1994:93), the didjeridu's specified use in nascent performances ('didge healing' and the Toc IV fire walk) delivers us upon fresher ground.
For the disenchanted of Euro-origin, the world's aboriginal peoples have become the embodiment of the sacred. Indigenes are mobilised to serve varying purposes in different orbits. They are 'fetishised' at the global level (Beckett 1994); discursive mediators for the national imaginary (Lattas 1990; Hamilton 1990); and models for developing 'indigenous selves' (Mulcock 1997a).
As reflected in the popular imagination and consumption habits of contemporary Australia, non-indigenes have taken increased interest in Australian indigenous culture (religion, history, art, politics etc.). Aborigines are a highly desired source of inspiration. Andrew Lattas seems to have dominated much of the discussion here. Analysing the discursive products of contemporary 'bearers of nationalism' in Australian culture, Lattas commentates on the way Aborigines ('the primitive') have become a site for competing discourses about 'who we are' (the primitive ranges from the feared 'killer ape inside us' motif to a desired 'original' and 'sacred' essence). It is the latter to which Lattas devotes most attention, especially the ideas of those 'merchants of authenticity', leftist intellectuals and artists. In a discursis on what might be called the politics of truth and nothingness, Lattas is concerned with the forging, by these elites, of that which has become 'one of our most powerful myths' - the superficiality and spiritual corruption of the modern self. Pursuing a Foucauldian approach to power, those discourses rely on the positing of this sense of 'lack' - on a continuing belief that westerners are alienated from their selves and require the spiritual truths of the 'other' - to sustain their power and influence (Lattas 1990; 1991).
Aboriginality is thus mobilised to fill the void. 'Entrenched apocalyptic images of self-annihilation authorise selective appropriation of Aboriginal culture' (Lattas 1992:58). Settler Australians find, in Aboriginal culture, the perceived psychic healing qualities of timeless archetypal symbols (ibid:57), indigenes becoming a 'space of pilgrimage' wherein lost otherness is recaptured and the lacking, alienated settler self made whole (Lattas 1990; 1991:313; cf. Hamilton 1990:22-3; Marcus 1988). Lattas further argues that a 'redemptive function is being assigned to Aborigines' (1990:59). '[C]loaked in the shroud of Christ', the Aborigine, once 'crucified' (read slaughtered) is now 'resurrected' as the source of white redemption from the 'fall' of imperialism and 'the ravages inflicted by modernity' (1991:312-13). And, this 'interiorisation of Aboriginality', which is said to imprison Aborigines in a reductive healing role, 'is the means by which the West cannibalises this imaginary Other in the process of trying to constitute its own being' (Lattas 1990:61; 1992:57). Yet, what happens when we attempt to apply this interpretation to real circumstances of cultural borrowing?
Along with Aborigines, American Indian cultures, ever-popular repositories of essentialist meaning as a result of their fashionable co-option by North American and European countercultures,13 also provide a desirable range of signifiers at ConFest: tipis,14 cow hide garments, beads, hair styles, chants, percussion, and 'sweat lodges'15 are typical mediators. However, the subscription to American Indians (like other indigenes) is characterised by a diversity of motivations - subscribers possessing different reasons for 'playing Indian'. A brochure dating from the late 1980s (when ConFests were held at Walwa) seems to have targeted 'wanna-bes' with specious promises and temporary fantasia: the reader being introduced to 'Good Medicine Tipis of Walwa' and ensured that the proprietors hire and sell 'authentically constructed' tipis and canoes designed for 'a real Indian adventure'. Yet, for the growing numbers of alternative Australians who have become committed to the more permanent 'adventure', tipis are practical - they're ideal homes. Accordingly, the founder of 'Trident Tipis' (a New Enterprise Incentive Scheme [NEIS] funded enterprise) proposes that not only do his shelters - 'scaled to the original Sioux design' (though with acrylic canvas rather than buffalo and animal skins) - offer 'a return to a way of life that honours the cycles of nature, that puts us in touch with the Source of Energy that gives rise to all of creation' (from leaflet); they are also economical, durable and transportable.
Such processes are far from straightforward. There is indeed a tension characterising the process we know as appropriation, one recognised by Richards (1995:63) who finds that a 'fine line between reconciliation ... and plunder' underlies and problematises the endeavours of people like Daricha, 'New Age shaman' and director of the 'Centre for Human Transformation', who is said to borrow 'without shame, ready to wear anything that fits his evolving vision of the cosmos'.16 On the one hand, in the wake of Said (1978) cultural imperialism and its implications cannot be ignored. The recent history of pirating through which the 'other' has been removed, distorted and commodified as noble and wise, as profitably 'pure products' (Clifford 1988:ch.1),17 and marketed to those seeking spiritual growth, restoration and status enhancement, deserves attention as an appendage to darker, more conspicuous, histories of dispossession.
On the other hand, a great deal of 'othering' is conditioned by deep sympathetic awareness, first-hand knowledge and a serious commitment to social alternatives such that the appropriation involves spiritual (e.g. personal belief in spirits, gods and divine cosmos), practical (e.g. diet, medicine, agricultural methods, architecture), social (e.g. public ritual and communal living) and political (actions in solidarity) lifestyle tactics.18 And many alternative lifestylers (often widely 'travelled', and who may have themselves, to some degree, 'gone native' like Cohen's 'existential tourist' [Cohen 1979]) are as captivated by the religiosity and impressed by the simplistic practicality of the 'other' as they are sobered and horrified by the socio-historical contexts and consequences of colonialism. In a period recognised as one of mounting crisis for all of the planet's inhabitants, wherein a cornucopia of discourses, personal philosophies and nascent political, scientific and cultural agendas have drawn inspiration from the knowledge and practice of others (including indigenes), such cultures have become valorised and defended for their real and/or imagined social/ecological record.
There is then a need to traverse the 'morally muddy landscape' (Taylor 1997) of appropriation, especially within the context of 'alternative Australia', with the purpose of revision. An investigation of the way anthropologists and cultural commentators have interpreted the appropriation of Aboriginality by alternative cultural adherents is required. Marcus (1988), in a discussion of the way 'Ayers Rock' (Uluru) is 'becoming the sacred centre of a rapidly developing settler cosmology' (1988:254), attends to the way 'New Age pilgrims' rework Aboriginal law and cosmology through the distorting prism of an 'international mystical tradition'. Just criticisms are launched. Focusing on 'a feeling of the timelessness and essential universal truths' that Aboriginal beliefs offer, 'Aquarians' ignore the unique social, political and religious context of people's such as the Pitjantjatjara. Furthermore, they seek a unity which 'transcends all local differences' and encompasses all religious traditions (ibid:265). The implications of such processes are not to be taken lightly:
The universalising and egalitarian sentiments of mystical doctrine are used to deny the specificity of Aboriginal belief, to disregard entirely the wishes of Aboriginal custodians, and to insert settler Australia into the very heart of the secret Aboriginal knowledge on which their only recognised claim to land rests. (Marcus 1988:268)Yet, the approach is ultimately dissatisfying. First Marcus adjudges 'Aquarians' collectively guilty of the crime of 'cultural appropriation', by which is meant the undermining, via theft, of a people's belief system. Second, the people she accuses of such crimes are strangely absent from her article (except via newspaper reports). Third, without comparative evaluation, a vast range of other discourse and practice - from popular music and tourism to gender discourse (reflecting 'a conservative movement in Australian politics' [ibid:272]) - is also cast within a 'shame file' of 'cultural appropriation'. Therefore, not only does Marcus conflate 'appropriation' with expropriation and employ a somewhat empirically distanced approach, she adopts an homogenising strategy of her own. Unfortunately, a balanced discussion of such a complex issue is compromised by protective advocacy. We are left wondering what direction we should take, and what is the value of this kind of analysis. And what of 'the Rock'? Should non-custodians (including non-custodian Aborigines) forgo the pilgrimage, forget it exists, intentionally purge it from our 'idiosyncratic geographies of significance' (Gelder and Jacobs 1998:123)?
In a prejudiced attack on new social formations, Cuthbert and Grossman's work (1996) suffers from similar shortcomings. The authors point out that the New Age 'occupation' of indigenous 'others' is a result of the inversion of imperial discourse whereby those who once were characterised by lack and envy (and therefore targets of derision and hate), are now perceived to be rich in purity and verity (and, as such, a source of strength and wisdom [ibid:20]). Despite the validity of this interpretation, the authors have produced a selective and misleading account of a complex cultural phenomenon.
Cuthbert and Grossman introduce the concept of 'new feralism' to describe contemporary Australian New Age primitivism, claiming that, through their pre-lapsarian return to the wild and 'metaphorical search for Lebensraum' (1996:23), ferals are the cardinal boogey-men of neo-imperialism. Though it is early declared that 'the new feralism' is 'a domain partially aligned with New Age' (ibid, my emphasis),19 ferals ultimately become the wanton juggernauts of an incursive essentialism, leading the New Age occupation of indigenes.20 As 'feral' becomes effectively synonymous with 'New Age', ferals are dismissed as politically quiescent. In fact, 'the new feralism' relies upon the portraiture of morally bankrupt self-seeking aesthetes. Enter Neri and Reggae Al, whose comments (featured in Gibbs 1995) represent the evidence upon which 'the new feralism' rests. For Cuthbert and Grossman, 'the new feralism' seems most transparent in a phrase attributed to Reggae Al: 'Going tribal is what it's all about. The forest is a giant playground'. Performing intellectual gymnastics, the authors not only infer that all ferals regard all tribal peoples as child-like, but that their interests do not extend to redressing the history of dispossession by supporting native title and self-determination.
It should be acknowledged that 'connections' or identifications with indigenes are diverse. Towards one end of the spectrum we see fabrication, distortion and dubious claims to indigeneity, (Kehoe 1990; Rose 1992), 'fakelore' (Niman 1997:131-48), the reductive trivialising of complex religious systems into shallow therapeutic devices (Jocks 1996; Ziguras 1996:70), imperialist nostalgia (Rosaldo 1989), the adoption of a 'salvage paradigm' (Root 1996:100) and the commodification of imported cultural property (cf. Neuenfeldt 1998b). Identifications may be characterised by the kind of conflation of difference and denial of history found in indigenously inspired eco-nations expounded in New Age, environmental and eco-feminist tracts (Jacobs 1994). 'Post-settler' narratives of entitlement (Cuthbert and Grossman 1998) which resist and undermine the cultural authority and rights of indigenous peoples (Marcus 1988), lead to the erosion of cultural values and community cohesion as young indigenes are exposed to European (e.g. New Age) interpretations of their spirituality (Taylor 1997:200).
Towards the other end, one finds a sensitive cultural awareness and validation of indigenous authority in regard to knowledge and practice subscribed to. Recently, social commentators have begun to rethink 'appropriation' which, after all, as Morton reminds us, means to take something 'unto oneself and devote it to a special purpose' (1996:134). As he suggests, 'reconciliation necessarily entails a logic of redemption ... [which is] at the same time, personal and political, not simply subject to "discourse"' (ibid). Further, a 'mutually satisfying future' for Australians, he argues, depends upon appropriations. Mulcock (1997b:15,n8), pointing out New Agers' 'genuine attempts to honour indigenous people', laments:
[w]here are the balance of voices, the multiple perspectives that critical academic practice has the potential to portray? I feel the need to look for less judgmental and more complex models of cultural appropriation that embrace the diversity of voices and the lived experiences of people participating in this discourse.Furthermore, there is much evidence of a postcolonial attitude where, in contradistinction to Said - and Cuthbert and Grossman - appropriated cultures are positively valued and even benefit from borrowings. Ziguras (1996) suggests there may be an 'important difference between those from privileged groups who romanticise and exoticise abstracted images of another culture, and those whose sympathy is with the actual people who live that culture'. He asks 'can cultural appropriation foster closer ties and political solidarity between oppressed and privileged groups?' (1996:73). Taylor (1997), elicits a positive response. Researching the partly Native American inspired 'primal spirituality' of Earth First!, he argues cultural borrowing promotes respect, furthers the establishment of concrete political alliances, and can even enhance the survival prospects of indigenous cultures.21 Thus, he argues, cultural borrowing should never be dismissed out of hand as pernicious. In Australia, alternative lifestylers, besides playing the didjeridu and appreciating Aboriginal art and Dreamtime stories, are often engaged in struggles for native title rights, improved health-care and self-determination - for reconciliation. Many alternates, including eco-radicals, acknowledge prior occupation, are cognisant of histories of dispossession, and are consequentially empathetic. Such awareness and empathy has inspired support for Aboriginal land claims, especially where 'bioprospectors' are involved (e.g. WMC at Roxby Downs, Ross Mining at Timbarra, and ERA at Jabiluka).
As I have argued, cultural appropriation is essentially an ambivalent process; indeed 'painfully complicated' (Mulcock 1997a:6).22 Caution is therefore required. Blanket condemnation of 'New Age', 'Aquarian' or 'feral' appropriations of indigenes is not justifiable. Careful contextual research is required. Ethnography clarifies the status of cross-cultural borrowings as 'pernicious, beneficent, or something in between' (Taylor 1997:n9). While a critical awareness of the politics of othering should be retained in research, unbalanced assessments, 'witch hunts' and approaches relegating people to the status of self-redeeming cannibals should be avoided.
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Footnotes
Maps
Chronology
Appendices
Glossary of Acronyms and Abbreviations
References: A-L
References: M-Z
Chapter Six Contents
Thesis Contents