Marcia Langton

Australian Indigenous Knowledge and Libraries

In response to significant changes in the Indigenous information landscape, the State Library of New South Wales and Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning at the University of Technology, Sydney, hosted a colloquium, Libraries and Indigenous Knowledge, in December 2004. The two-day colloquium brought together professionals, practitioners and academics to discuss future directions in relation to Indigenous knowledge and library services. An expert and inspiring group of speakers and more than 90 active participants ensured that lively discussions did, indeed, take place.

Poverty in the Midst of Plenty: Aboriginal People, the ‘Resource Curse’ and Australia’s Mining Boom

The lessons of the resource curse case studies for the institution and policy environment in Australia are explored in this article, drawing on research conducted on the negotiation and implementation of agreements with indigenous Australians. We show how the resource curse theories are partially applicable in areas in which Australian indigenous communities neighbour mining operations and outline the legal frameworks in Australia that apply especially in native title matters. Also, we include in our analysis the application of the concept of the ‘social licence to operate’ that informs the mining industry relationship with these communities. We also discuss the way that these practices form the basis of the industry’s approach to ‘corporate social responsibility’, which, along with legal compliance with the statutory framework, are intended to ameliorate the disadvantages faced by those communities. Despite these reforms, however, little socio-economic improvement has been made in these communities and we look to the inequitable distribution of impacts on local peoples, issues of rent seeking and substitution, and the potential impacts of low levels of economic diversification, as explanations. Finally, we consider what institutional and other reforms might be effective in these circumstances.

Anthropology, Politics and the Changing World of Aboriginal Australians

Essentialism has become a fundament of Aboriginal activism in modern Australia, with the result that informed, first-hand empirical observations of anthropologists who chronicle the deterioration of life in many Australian Aboriginal communities tend not to be taken seriously simply because their authors are not ethnically ‘Aboriginal’. This problem has contributed to a relative absence of analysis of the economic history of Aboriginal Australians, fostering instead an approach that prioritises the political and cultural rights of indigenous people above the kinds of life-enhancing circumstances that are necessary for them to participate in the economy and create wealth. This kind of essentialism has also resulted in a disregard for the rights of indigenous people as individuals, rather than as communities seeking self-determination, especially with regard to the rights of women and children. The work of Professor Ronald M. Berndt and Dr Catherine Berndt should serve as an example for todays anthropologists in encouraging broader expert participation in debates on indigenous disadvantage, despite the threat of admonishment or criticism by Aboriginal rights activists wielding the weapon of racial priority or essentialism.

Koowarta: A Warrior for Justice: A Brief History of Queensland's Racially Discriminatory Legislation and the Aboriginal Litigants Who Fought It

The Koowarta case was one of several that began in the 1970s when indigenous people took action against racial discrimination and denial of rights to land by the Queensland government. The granting of mining leases over Aboriginal reserves instigated further litigation, including the Peinkinna and Wik cases. To understand the decision by the Queensland cabinet to deprive Koowarta of the land transfer of the pastoral lease purchased by the Aboriginal Land Commission, and the events that followed his case, this article details the history of ‘native’ administration in that state. Late in the history of this ‘protectorate’, the mining industry (and its generous treatment by the Queensland government) led to abuses of the Aboriginal peoples of the western region of Cape York Peninsula. The Koowarta case laid the ground for the recognition of native title in pastoral leases, a matter which John Koowartas neighbours, the Wik, Thaayorre and Alngith peoples, pursued with the same determination.

A Post-mortem of a Pulped Book: Making Sense of the Missed Opportunities of Deadly Woman Blues

When new books are reviewed, they are normally in circulation and available for purchase. This is not true, however, of Deadly Woman Blues: Black Women & Australian Music by Clinton Walker, which was only recently released by NewSouth Publishing, the publishing arm of UNSW Press, in February 2018, yet withdrawn from sale within weeks due to numerous complaints from the very musicians whose work and achievements it sought to celebrate. Before reaching most bookstore shelves, Deadly Woman Blues was resoundingly condemned by several of the most prominent of those musicians via their social media posts, letters to the editor, and news commentaries. Criticized for the lack of consultation and consent sought by Walker from many of the living musicians it discussed, as well as for the many factual errors and historical distortions found within its pages, NewSouth Publishing (2018) announced that Deadly Woman Blues would be pulped on 5 March 2018 with all corrections to be posted on its website. Walker (2018b) issued his own apology, citing the book’s ‘errors of fact’, that same day. Walker had conceived of Deadly Woman Blues as a generally-chronological biographical encyclopaedia aimed at recognizing the often-overlooked histories and achievements of black women in Australian music. Although not unproblematic, the book did not stop with entries on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander musicians, but also extended to expatriate musicians of the African diaspora and Indigenous communities of other countries. Even so, Deadly Woman Blues was promoted as a sequel to Walker’s earlier book, the highly-successful Buried Country: The Story of Aboriginal Country Music (Walker 2000a), which had spawned a tie-in documentary film (Nehl 2000), two double-CD albums (Walker 2000b, 2015b) and a stage show (Walker 2016). Deadly Woman Blues would not, however, be received as the triumph that Buried Country had been.

Trepang: China and the story of Macassan- Aboriginal Trade - Examining historical accounts as research tools for cultural materials conservation

Abstract The incorporation of the formal study of artists’ materials and techniques into conservation practice has formed the basis of a range of projects, programs and publications at least since the beginning of the twentieth century, when the Director of the Fogg Art Museum, Edward Forbes began to collect artists’ pigments for investigation and analysis. Of increasing interest to conservators is the way that trade and innovation impact on artistic production, including dates at which materials became available, centres of use, and the patterns of take up by artists. For conservators working in the Asia-Pacific region questions about Western artists’ materials are interesting and useful in informing decision-making. There is the danger, however, of embedding a discourse that privileges trade from the West as the most significant indicator of innovation in artistic practice. In Australia, across the continent and across the millennium trade goods from northern Australia were exchanged for material from the south. This trade supported the continued development of innovation in philosophy and practice in the performing and visual arts in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. By the seventeenth century, cultural innovation was supported by the important Asian north-south international trade in cultural material and commodities to China, through the Indonesian archipelago to the northern coastline of Australia. In return highly valued trepang (sea cucumber) and other items were traded from Australia through north Indonesia to China. In the late nineteenth century, Western artists’ materials from Europe were introduced into Australian Aboriginal art practice, and in the twentieth century an explosion of trade activity saw art materials produced in Europe and China purchased for use by Aboriginal artist and Aboriginal art traded across Europe, the Americas and Asia. This paper examines how the important trade routes, developed prior to European settlement, inform contemporary art making in Aboriginal communities today.

The ‘Wild’, the Market and the Native: Indigenous Issues in Wildlife Utilisation and Management

The coincidence at the end of the first millennium of remnant indigenous territories and high biodiversity values, the globalising market and the growing recognition of resource rights for traditional peoples requires special attention as a problem in biodiversity maintenance. New threats to indigenous life-ways in the era of the globalising market have been brought about by the increasing commodification of features of the natural world, instances of which are absolutely vital to the survival of ancient societies directly dependent on the state of their natural environment. For example, in June 1978, Inupiat leader Eben Hobson, then founding Chairman of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference and spokesperson for the Alaska Whaling Commission, appealed to the London Press Corps for understanding and support in the legal recognition of Inuit rights (Hobson 1978): “We Inuit are hunters. There aren’t many subsistence hunting societies left in the world, but our Inuit Circumpolar community is one of them”.