Robert Tonkinson

Aboriginal ‘Difference’ and ‘Autonomy’ Then and Now: Four Decades of Change in a Western Desert Society

In just a few decades, Aboriginal people living near Australias Western Desert fringe have experienced an extraordinarily intense trajectory of change: from a highly autonomous nomadic existence, through ‘first contacts’, the pastoral and mission frontiers, the devastating impacts of alcohol and of Western lifestyle diseases, the outstation movement, resource exploration and mining, a long but largely successful struggle for native title, and much else. In this paper, notions of ‘difference’ and ‘autonomy’ are used to explore these transformations. The situation among the Mardu is here linked to the gulf between government policies and lived Aboriginal experience. If the self‐management thrust of 1970s policies achieved partial restoration of Aboriginal autonomy, recent Federal Government policies are intent on intervention to reduce difference and claw back some of that autonomy. Their determination to force Aboriginal people out of their ‘dysfunctional’ ‘cultural museums’ (homeland settlements) and into greater economic engagement ignores the crucial underpinnings of security and identity among remote Aborigines. The retention of difference, albeit at considerable social cost and entrenched disadvantage, is still strongly preferred by Mardu to the kinds of engagement with the dominant society that not only assault their sense of self but also threaten to overwhelm whatever autonomy remains to them.

Spiritual Prescription, Social Reality: Reflections on Religious Dynamism

A spoken version of this paper was delivered at The University of Western Australia in October 2002, as the second Berndt Foundation Memorial Lecture, in honour of the late Professor Ronald and Dr ...

Landscape, Transformations, and Immutability in an Aboriginal Australian Culture

Aboriginal Australian societies are notable among hunter-gatherers for the seemingly contradictory co-presence of high mobility and a deep emotional attachment to their homelands. Totemic geography underlies people’s multiple linkages to place, and certain acts of the living may also be memorialized, inscribed, and objectified in landscape. Using examples drawn from a Western Desert people, I show that, despite a dominant ideology that stresses “immutability” and stasis, there is a lack of closure in their richly complex religious system, allowing the accommodation of an inevitable dynamism. Openness and flux are, in significant measure, consequences of broadly ecological variables in one of the world’s most marginal environments for human survival. Among these desert people, identity politics, though more complex than ideology alone suggests, are significantly constrained by a religiously saturated worldview.

From Dust to Ashes: The Challenges of Difference

A twist of fate took me unexpectedly, and in short order, from the red dust of the Western Desert of Australia to blacksands of volcanic ash in a chain of tropical islands in the southwest Pacific. This startling colour contrast seemed an apt metaphor to depict the much larger contrasts I encountered in the two field settings in which I have done research.1 To reflect on my life as an anthropologist, I explore here some of the implications of fieldwork in two different cultural settings. In my sometimes rapid movement from one milieu to the other, many expectations and biases were confounded, and I discovered that there was much for me to unlearn as well as learn. Embarking on fieldwork is like attacking a huge jigsaw puzzle whose pieces lie scattered, awaiting gradual assembly into a coherent, sense-making whole via continuous acts of comparison, overt and implicit. Much of the time, identifying the patterns and structures that underlie everyday social process is a hit and miss affair as we hypothesise our way forward. Most anthropologists favour the ‘extended case method’, which adds a temporal dimension to initial research through repeated visits to the same field site. Such returns deepen our knowledge of continuities and change processes over time and, significantly, allow us to differentiate between mere fads and other surface ripples and incipient structural change. I adopted this approach in both fieldwork areas, and in Melanesia added another dimension of comparison by working both on Efate Island, in a village of relocated Ambrymese, and in their homeland, Ambrym Island.2 By expanding research into one or more different cultures, an anthropologist normally enjoys advantages accruing from prior field experience, but the basic challenges, such as language learning, will be much the same.3 A

The Cambridge encyclopedia of Australia

1. The physical continent 2. The aboriginal heritage 3. History since European contact 4. Government 5. The economy 6. Society 7. Science and technology 8. Culture and the arts.

Red Professor: The Cold War Life of Fred Rose, by Peter Monteath and Valerie Munt

The cover blurb quotes Humphrey McQueen describing this very well researched and referenced biography as ‘unputdownable’; indeed, it is an engrossing read. (For readers interested in learning more ...

Australian Aboriginal Society and Culture: An Overview

This article provides a brief overview of Aboriginal Australian society and culture, past and present. After 1788, those hunter-gatherers who survived introduced diseases resisted the British colonists along an uncontrolled, often violent frontier. Processes of alienation, displacement, institutionalization, discrimination, and racism debilitated them. The First Australians became a small, powerless, oppressed minority, overrun by an expanding settler frontier. There is, however, considerable cause for optimism.

Applied Forum: The Hindmarsh Island Affair: A Review Article

So Byzantine were the ramifications of the bitter and long-running controversy surrounding the proposed construction of a bridge connecting Hindmarsh Island to mainland South Australia that it is a brave journalist indeed who would attempt to contain it between the covers of a single tome. Simons has admirably met the challenge, and the narrative she has woven from countless thematic threads is lively and pleasingly forthright, a warts-and-all account of this sorry affair. Only gradually, after amassing much evidence, does she conclude firmly for one side, yet wisely remains cognisant that there can never be a ‘true’ rendering, since in this case there are far too many beholders’ eyes. A skilled writer whose prose flows effortlessly, Simons has synthesised a massive amount of material via research, interviewing, interpreting what was and was not said, unearthing fresh data, sorting message from meta-message, and engaging in much essential reading between the lines. Adelaide, the setting for the series of public airings and judgments surrounding the affair, is, as Simons says, really a small place, ‘and there are only ever a few degrees of separation between combatants’ (p. 105). So not all the dirty linen can be aired, yet she manages to bring much fresh information to light and, more importantly, a large cast of players to life. She also includes a useful list of dramatis personae and a timeline, plus copious endnotes supporting her narrative. ‘Hindmarsh’, as the saga is often referred to today, was not only news in Adelaide but also an affair eventually played out under the gaze of the national media. It permanently altered both the community dynamics of the Ngarrindjeri Aboriginal people (within whose ancestral lands the island lies) and the lives of many others drawn into the fray, including a number of anthropologists. Their work came under close scrutiny, and the profession’s standing and objectivity were assailed by an array Anthropological Forum Vol. 16, No. 1, March 2006, 73–79