Actions Speak Louder Than Words?

In developments in the long running debate on whether there should be Constitutional recognition of Australia's Indigenous Peoples, it now appears a referendum is targeted to be held in 2017.  As one commentator has noted, there is a debate within the Indigenous Peoples of Australia as to the desirability of Constitutional recognition---or whether there should be a recognition of Aboriginal sovereignty. 

One of the first steps in preparing for a referendum is a consultation with representatives of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders to craft language that would be acceptable to them. 

And yet, with this focus on sensitivity to language, it might be something of a surprise that at the same time  it is being reported that "The parliament of Australia's Northern Territory turned down the request by an Aboriginal minister to speak in her Indigenous language." The request follows an incident in December 2015 where "Northern Territory MP Bess Price was ­chided by the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly for an interjection in her mother tongue, Warlpiri".

What value is there is Constitutional recognition versus the value placed on the use of Indigenous languages in daily life and the life of a state? One gives a sort of symbolic recognition, the other is about making space for an active exercise of an existent culture-- the official existence of which continues to be a vacuum in the Constitution. 

Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada

Forcible removal of children is recognised as a form of genocide in international law. This is part of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide http://www.hrweb.org/legal/genocide.htmlas well as more recently made part of the 2007 United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, at Article 7(2) http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/DRIPS_en.pdf. The international position on this practice is clear.

And so it is perhaps not surprising that Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission http://www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/index.php?p=3has concluded that the forced removal of generations of Aboriginal children  to residential schools is “cultural genocide.” http://www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/File/2015/Exec_Summary_2015_06_25_web_o.pdfThe Summary of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada explains the concept of “cultural genocide”:

Cultural genocide is the destruction of those structures and practices that allow the group to continue as a group. States that engage in cultural genocide set out to destroy the political and social institutions of the targeted group. Land is seized, and populations are forcibly transferred and their movement is restricted. Languages are banned. Spiritual leaders are persecuted, spiritual practices are forbidden, and objects of spiritual value are confiscated and destroyed. And, most significantly to the issue at hand, families are disrupted to prevent the transmission of cultural values and identity from one generation to the next.

But what is the significance of this finding? The term “cultural genocide” itself occupies a nebulous space within international law, according to this news analysis of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission findings. http://www.cbc.ca/news/aboriginal/cultural-genocide-label-for-residential-schools-has-no-legal-implications-expert-says-1.3110826. The question of “where do we go from here?” is addressed in this video from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission website. http://www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/index.php?p=3

                

New York catwalk: walking in the caves of Australia?

Fashion, fashion, fashion...who doesn’t like a pretty piece of garment? I do, I do – guilty on all accounts.

Left: guilty hands?!

One of the things that fascinate me the most is to see people wearing traditional cloth – I think that I mentioned that in one of my posts when referring to graduation day and seen my students’ parents wearing traditional cloth (what a proud moment). Now, the matter here today is when some of these traditional garments and arts become fashion, will I wear it? To be honest I do not know, will I be disrespectful? oi! I do not like that idea, but as said before, I am a fashionable person and I cannot say that I will not be tempted.

Anyways all of these thoughts came due to the news that in the recent New York Fashion Week two young designers (behind the label Rodarte) showed in their garments Australian Aboriginal art. They claimed that they have never been to Australia but have been inspired by books and other resources. They indeed do not denied where their inspiration came from assuring that the patterns referenced aboriginal art and that the hand prints were inspired by ancient cave paintings.

From pretty designs to theft
Megan Davis, the academic who heads up the UNSW Indigenous Law Centre and a member of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, noted that “the prints were an insensitive theft of her Australian Aboriginal culture.” She continues “It is completely insensitive to Aboriginal art and spirituality and land and how they are inextricably linked”. She did not stop here, mentioning that she “found the designs offensive”. In this regards she mentioned that there is the need to bear in mind that these people usually live in poverty and the “thought of seeing women walking around in this particular ready-to-wear collection sickens me. Because it is my culture and it is where I come from”.

From theft to License agreements
Rodarte responded to this enquiry by saying the following:

“We deeply respect and admire the work of other artists. Through the appropriate channels, we licensed the Aboriginal artwork that influenced prints in our collection. As a result, the artists will share in proceeds of the pieces inspired by their work.”

The source of the news indicated that they check with the Aboriginal Artists' Agency which represents Papunya Tula Artists in this matter, and the information was confirmed – Rodarte do have a licence.

This news today was shared by Robyn Ayres, Executive Director @ Arts Law Centre of Australia. She mentioned “Arts Law’s Artist in the Black service is proposing to develop some template documents for ethical collaborations between designers and Indigenous artists whereby guidance is provided in relation to protocols and best practice in this area.” I truly believe that this is an excellent idea and hopefully we will hear more about this in the near future.

My final thought: Will I wear it? I think that I will be killing two birds with one stone: being in fashion and knowing that some of the money will go to the aboriginal. Will I have the money to buy it? well, that is another story.

On tokenism and white people writing about indigenous peoples

Two weeks ago, the Australian Parliament held an event to show its official institutional support for the recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples in the Constitution. A link to a short video of the event is here, and contains brief glimpses of indigenous individuals speaking about their hopes and aspirations for the recognition process. Is this tokenism? Well, to a certain extent, it is. Most of the people that appear on this video are both indigenous and part of a “white-person-relatable” middle class. Which begs the question: why should their views matter, if they are to a certain extent assimilated (and, therefore, no longer “truly” indigenous)?

For one, there is no such thing as “truly” indigenous. Just like there is no such thing as “authentic” culture or cultural heritage. To think of indigeneity, or culture more broadly, in terms of authenticity implies a degree of essentialization that, to be quite honest, is counterproductive at its best, and plain evil at its worst. Allow me to explain that a bit further: by allowing people to be divided along lines of “authentic” and “non-authentic”, one necessarily creates the other, thereby playing into the hands of the racist policies one should be countering. Identity is not, by any standard, a watertight category, it is fluid, constantly evolving, multi-faceted. The fact that, back in the 1980s, Sandra Lovelace, and indigenous woman from Canada, got married to a white man, meant she lost her indigeneity, for legal purposes. Is that the way things should go? The UN Human Rights Committee said “no” back then, and it is surprising that things have not changed that much in the past 30 years, despite that forceful statement about identity not depending on one single factor, and one facet of identity not meaning the exclusion of others. But I digress.

Back to tokenism in the Australian process, the second reason why those peoples’ opinions should matter is precisely because, as Aboriginal peoples who got, for one reason or another, to be part of both worlds (the Aboriginal and the settler society), they are in a better place to mediate tensions, to understand both languages, to be themselves the catalysts for this important change. Without their presence, the whole process might be jeopardized simply by the inability to find a common language, or by finding a shadow of a common language that is plain condescending and paternalistic (reminiscent of early indigenous recognition processes in many Latin American constitutions).

So, these participants in the process are at least every bit as important as the “real” Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders, if not more so. This in turn relates to one of Sarah’s recent posts, about her place as a white person writing about indigenous issues. While I am in the same position (a non-indigenous person wildly interested in indigenous issues), and I am very careful not to essentialize, not to be paternalistic, and not to assume that I can any way fully comprehend the depth of the indigenous experience (just as I don’t think indigenous individuals can fully grasp the non-indigenous experience), I think my attempts at it are valid, precisely because of this “bridge” capacity of my interventions (however modest). Plus, it is by trying to step into one’s shoes that we develop empathy, something that is clearly in short supply in so many areas of human activity.

Written by Lucas Lixinski.

Tomorrow is another date!

Thanks to Prof Graham Dutfield we became aware of yet another date for your diary. Tomorrow the University of Leeds is holding the British Association of Canadian Studies. This time the University will have a round table of its Aboriginal Studies Circle covering different disciplines. Key speakers are: Prof Joy Hendry (Anthropology, Oxford Brookes University); Dr Colin Samson (Sociology, University of Essex); David Stirrup (Literature, University of Kent); and Dr Roy Tood (Sociology, University of Leeds). While too many cooks spoil the broth (soup) there is no doubt that the ‘Contemporary Development in Aboriginal Issues’ (as the colloquium is called) needs different types of spoons. Indeed, as you have noticed from our set of posts while tktotem covers only legal issues, we always need to touch other areas such as sociology, politics, and education and so on and so forth.

Hope you can make it and if you do, please give some feedback to us and we will be happy to post it here.

Full information can be found at this link.

The Aboriginal Embassy, Protests, Rights and the Constitutional Referendum

Sarah’s post about the protests in Australia around Australia Day – a day which several Aboriginal leaders refer to as “Invasion Day” – brings forth the issue of the relationship between indigenous peoples and settler societies. If, on the one hand, countries like New Zealand, Canada and the US have treaties whereby the indigenous peoples “ceded” their lands (the validity of that consent is the subject of much controversy), most countries in Latin America and Australia (as well as, to the best of my knowledge, Scandinavian countries) do not have such formal arrangements, and have attempted to establish their rapport with indigenous peoples in a more organic way as of late. Sure, followed by centuries of invasion, decimation and oppression, but now seemingly willing to genuinely achieve positive balance in indigenous peoples – settler societies relations in a non-assimilationist fashion.

But not all is this clear-cut, of course. Perhaps because Australia is the one English-speaking country where there are no Treaties, Aboriginal peoples have – and rightly so, I believe – chosen to treat the settler society as a guest in their country, or to see themselves as not Australians (to the extent “Australians” are the descendants of European colonizers). Hence the embassy, which has been around for 40 years. But a lot of this might change, should the referendum to amend the Constitution pass. Sure, Tony Abbott’s – the opposition leader in Australia – remarks were unfortunate, to say the very least, but there might be something to them. If the Australian Constitution aptly recognizes Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, then what role is there for an embassy, at least bearing the name of “Embassy”? Of course, the Aboriginal cause will not have achieved every single one of its goals with the mere passage of a constitutional amendment, but the core objective of its cause will need to be fundamentally reshaped, and it might be time to start considering that, while at the same time keeping putting on pressure for referendum.

Patrick Dodson’s (one of the members of the Expert Panel that produced the report released last week) op-ed piece published today (here) is a reminder of what is really at stake, and how one should not be detracted by the single violent incident of an otherwise remarkably peaceful and lasting protest – the Aboriginal Embassy.

Written by Lucas Lixinski