Words and Silences: Aboriginal Women, Politics and Land

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Words and Silences

PDF OUTPUT c: ALLEN & UNWIN r: DP1\BP4304W\PRELIMS p: (02) 6232 5991 f: (02) 6232 4995 e: [email protected] 36 DAGLISH STREET CURTIN ACT 2605

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Peggy Brock has worked with Aboriginal communities in South Australia, researching community histories and documenting Aboriginal historic sites. She lectures at Edith Cowan University in Aboriginal Studies and History, and has published a number of works, including Women, Rites and Sites (ed., 1989) and Outback Ghettos (1993).


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Words and Silences Aboriginal women, politics and land

Edited by Peggy Brock

ALLEN & UNWIN


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First published in 2001 Copyright © Peggy Brock 2001 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10% of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act. Allen & Unwin 83 Alexander Street Crows Nest NSW 2065 Australia Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100 Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218 Email: [email protected] Web: http://www.allen-unwin.com.au National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry: Words and silences: aboriginal women, politics and land. ISBN 1 86448 947 2. 1. Aborigines, Australian—Land tenure—Law and legislation. 2. Aborigines, Australian—Women. 3. Aborigines, Australian—Land tenure. I. Brock, Peggy. 306.0899915 Set in 11/13 pt Sabon by DOCUPRO, Canberra Printed by CMO Image Printing Enterprise, Singapore 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1


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Contents CONTENTS

Contributors

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1 Aboriginal women, politics and land Peggy Brock 2 ‘Speaking what our mothers want us to say’: Aboriginal women, land and the Western Women’s Council in New South Wales, 1984–85 Heather Goodall 3 Seeking justice: traditions of social action among Indigenous women in the southwest of Western Australia Pat Baines 4 The silence and power of women Deborah Bird Rose 5 The word of a woman: Ngarrindjeri stories and a bridge to Hindmarsh Island Diane Bell

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6 Aboriginal women and the Commonwealth Government’s response to Mabo—an international human rights perspective Hannah McGlade 7 Gendered landscapes: the politics and processes of inquiry and negotiating interests in land Sandy Toussaint, Myrna Tonkinson and David Trigger Notes Bibliography Index

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175 189 203

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Contributors Contributors

Pat Baines is an anthropologist who has worked alongside Nyungar people in the southwest of Western Australia for twenty years, assisting them in their efforts to protect places of spiritual significance. She lectures at Edith Cowan University and her particular interests are Indigenous spiritualities and the ways in which cultural traditions are maintained and managed across time. Diane Bell is currently Professor of Anthropology and Director of Women’s Studies at the George Washington University, DC, USA. On the basis of research spanning some 25 years, she has published widely on matters of Indigenous rights, religion, history, law, land and art as well as on feminist theory and practice. Her books include Law: The Old and the New (co-authored 1980); Daughters of the Dreaming (1983); Generations: Grandmothers, Mothers and Daughters (1987); Gendered Fields: Women, Men and Ethnography (co-edited 1993); Radically Speaking: Feminism Reclaimed (co-edited, 1996); and, most recently, Ngarrindjeri Wurruwarrin: A World that Is, Was, and Will Be (1998) which won a NSW Premier’s literary award. vii


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Peggy Brock teaches at Edith Cowan University. She is a historian who researches the interactions between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in Australia and Canada. Her books include Outback Ghettos: A History of Aboriginal Institutionalisation and Survival and Women, Rites and Sites: Aboriginal Women’s Cultural Knowledge (editor). Her recent research has been concerned with religious change and Indigenous Christian evangelism in British Columbia and central Australia. Heather Goodall is Associate Professor in Public History at the University of Technology Sydney. She is the author of Invasion to Embassy: Land in Aboriginal Politics 1770 to 1972, which traces the continuing significance of land in Aboriginal politics in New South Wales. Her current research includes ‘Black Soil Country’, an investigation of the social, political and cultural dimensions of rapid environmental change on the northern floodplain of the Darling River, affecting Aboriginal communities, graziers, townspeople and the incoming farmers themselves. Her doctorate involved extensive oral history research with Aboriginal people in northwestern New South Wales, where she is working with community groups in documenting heritage significance and in life story recording. Hannah McGlade is a Nyungar lawyer and writer. She wrote this paper out of concern about the lack of consideration of women in the native title field. Deborah Bird Rose is a Senior Research Fellow at The Australian National University. She is the author of Nourishing Terrains, Australian Aboriginal Views of Landscape and Wilderness (1996), Dingo Makes Us Human (winner of the 1992/3 Stanner Prize) and Hidden Histories (winner of the 1991 Jessie Litchfield Award). Writing in the fields of anthropology, history, religious studies and environmental ethics, her work focuses on social and ecological justice. Myrna Tonkinson has done research with Australian Aboriginal people in Western Australia and the Northern Territory. viii


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She has had extensive experience with land claims under the Northern Territory Land Rights Act, including serving as research officer to the Northern Territory Aboriginal Land Commissioner. Sandy Toussaint has worked with Kimberley Aboriginal people for several decades, including on the WA Aboriginal Land Inquiry. She is a senior lecturer in anthropology at the University of Western Australia, author of Phyllis Kaberry and Me: Anthropology, History and Aboriginal Australia (Melbourne University Press, 1999), and co-editor of Applied Anthropology in Australasia (University of Western Australia Press, 1999). David Trigger is Associate Professor in Anthropology, University of Western Australia. He has carried out academic and applied research in Australian Aboriginal studies since 1978. Dr Trigger published Whitefella Comin’: Aboriginal Responses to Colonialism in Northern Australia (Cambridge University Press) in 1992. His current research focuses upon contesting assumptions and worldviews about land, place and identity in Australia.

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Aboriginal women, politics and land PEGGY BROCK Aboriginal women, politics and land

Words and Silences: Aboriginal Women, Politics and Land discusses, from a variety of perspectives, the gendered nature of Aboriginal knowledge and relationships to the land within the context of the Australian political and legal system. The contributors consider who can speak and be heard in this cross-cultural environment; who is silenced; and why some Aboriginal women must remain silent even when their land is threatened. Only since the 1960s has the matter of Aboriginal rights to land become an issue in mainstream Australian politics. Before this period few non-Aboriginal Australians considered the implications of colonisation and dispossession for preexisting Aboriginal rights to land. Over the last 30–35 years there have been various attempts by Federal, State and Territory governments to recognise Aboriginal rights to land within the mainstream political and legal system. While these attempts represent a major shift in public acknowledgment of Aboriginal rights, they have required Aboriginal people to adapt their cultural understandings to a system which operates on very different lines. Aboriginal people have gained access to and some control of land, but their land claims have also resulted in confrontations with powerful mainstream economic and 1

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political interests. Aboriginal landowners have been forced into compromises which have been destructive of community cohesion and mores in their attempts to conform to requirements under various land rights acts. Some of the tensions which have arisen from land rights claims reflect the gendered nature of Aboriginal societies and the wider Australian society in which they are encapsulated. In the early days of the land rights campaigns and the implementation of land rights legislation, the major concern of Aboriginal people and their supporters was the recognition of Aboriginal rights to land. As these rights were recognised in various forms, it became evident that some people’s interests were being privileged over others because of the wording and interpretation of laws implementing land rights. Aboriginal women’s interests in land were not always given due recognition, either within their own communities or in the mainstream system. In this volume we analyse the complex social, cultural and political context of land issues, and how women’s interests are expressed, both within Indigenous communities and in the wider society. The following chapters consider: Aboriginal women’s interests in land in different regions of Australia; the way in which these interests have been reflected in land claims and site protection; and how women have organised themselves to protect their knowledge of and rights to land. In this chapter I give a brief account of land rights, native title and site protection laws introduced and implemented since the 1960s, and consider how Aboriginal women’s interests have been accommodated, or overlooked, in these laws and procedures. This discussion gives the legal and administrative framework to the chapters which follow. Australia is the only continent in the world where the whole of the landmass was deemed to be terra nullius by European colonisers and the land ocupied without any recognition of Indigenous prior ownership and occupation. In 1969 this attitude to land rights was contested in the Northern Territory Supreme Court by the Yolgnu people on Gove Peninsula who were attempting to prevent bauxite mining on their 2


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— Aboriginal women, politics and land —

land. In Milirrpum v. Nabalco Pty Ltd and the Commonwealth the plaintiffs ‘sought declarations that they were entitled to occupy land free from interference and the Commonwealth had no interest in the land enabling it effectively to grant the lease to Nabalco’.1 Justice Blackburn found against the Aboriginal people of the Gove Peninsula having a proprietary interest in the land capable of recognition in common law. He interpreted their connection with the land as spiritual, rather than economic; nor was he satisfied that the plaintiffs’ ancestors had the same links to the claimed land as the plaintiffs. Finally he argued that even if the Yolgnu had had any interests in the land they were extinguished when the Crown acquired radical title to that land.2 Aboriginal land rights in Australian law The failure of the Australian courts to find in favour of Aboriginal people claiming rights to land led to the search for another strategy to make land available to Aboriginal claim. The Federal Government investigated the option of legislating land rights for Aboriginal people. The Whitlam Labor Government appointed Justice Woodward, who had represented the plaintiffs in the Gove case, to report on The appropriate means to recognise and establish the traditional rights and interests of the Aborigines in and in relation to the land, and to satisfy in other ways the reasonable aspirations of the Aborigines to rights in or in relation to land . . .3

These terms of reference represented a great leap forward in recognition of Aboriginal rights in land. Woodward was not asked to investigate whether Aboriginal people had rights, but how to recognise rights which were assumed to exist. Following Woodward’s reports, land rights legislation was drafted for the Northern Territory, a region where the Federal Government had direct administrative control. The resultant bill was introduced to parliament, but the dismissal of the Whitlam 3


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Government in 1975 delayed the passing of the bill. The Fraser Government in 1976 passed a modified bill. The Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 (ALRA) established a procedure whereby Aboriginal people in the Territory could claim specified areas of land4 by putting their case to a Land Commissioner, who made recommendations to the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs. They had to prove they were the traditional owners of the land according to criteria set out in the Act. These criteria were based on anthropological models of Aboriginal land ownership and kinship. Subsequently other land rights acts were passed in the various Australian States (except Western Australia), giving Aboriginal people inalienable freehold title to varying amounts of land. South Australia made the largest allocations of land (18 per cent) to the Pitjantjatjara (1981) and Maralinga Tjarutja (1984) peoples of the remote northwest of the state.5 These two Acts specified the area of land made over to the traditional owners without specifying in the legislation who the traditional owners are.6 Unlike the ALRA which established a claims process, the Pitjantjatjara and Maralinga Tjarutja peoples decide among themselves, according to their own protocols, who the owners of particular lands are. In 1992 Australia fell in line with much (although not all7) of the western democratic world when the High Court established in Mabo and others v. The State of Qld that native title in common law does exist in Australia, overturning the legal concept of terra nullius. Similar rights had previously been recognised in Canada, New Zealand and the United States. In these countries recognition of native title (also referred to as aboriginal title) dates back to the time of non-Indigenous settlement when treaties between Indigenous peoples and colonial powers were signed acknowledging Indigenous prior rights in land. But it has only been in the latter part of the twentieth century that Indigenous groups have used the treaties and other evidence of their native rights to assert these rights through the courts and other quasi-judicial processes. The debates and conflicts over native title in Australia, therefore, 4


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follow, and to some extent have been informed by previous land rights legislation and the international experience. Eighteen months after the High Court brought down its judgment, the Federal Parliament passed the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth)(NTA), which established a procedure for mediating and determining native title claims. Unlike legislated land rights, which are defined in Australian law, native title is a pre-existing Aboriginal title to land, which is defined in Aboriginal law and recognised under Australian common law. The NTA does not, therefore, define what native title is. Native title claimants delineate native title as they understand it in their own law.8 Nevertheless these native title rights can only be exercised after they are recognised by the Australian judicial and bureaucratic system (see Chapter 6). Under the NTA native title claimants must prove to a non-Indigenous authority that their title to a particular piece of land existed prior to colonisation and that they have maintained ‘connection’ with the land since colonisation. They must also prove that they have inherited their rights from the pre-colonial owners of the land, and show that their rights have not been extinguished in the interim. It took Eddie Mabo and his co-plaintiffs ten years to establish their native title claim to the Murray Islands. More recently it took the Miriuwung and Gajerrong people, operating under the NTA, four years to obtain a ruling in the Federal court recognising their claim over parts of the east Kimberley. This judgment has been appealed to the High Court, so it may be many years yet before these people can exercise their native title rights. There is another important form of land-based law in Australia, which, if not unique to Australia, is rarely found outside this country. This legislation protects significant Aboriginal sites. From an Indigenous perspective it is a much weaker form of land law than statutory land rights or native title in common law, as the protection offered does not give Aboriginal people any direct control over, or legal ‘ownership’ of a threatened site. When site protection laws work effectively (from an Aboriginal perspective) they prevent physical damage or desecration of sites from activities such as mining and 5


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tourism. Site protection, which does not transfer or impact on the legal ownership of a site, has probably generated more ongoing public controversy than other forms of Aboriginal land tenure. The first major confrontation over site protection, which led to national and international media coverage, was at Noonkanbah, an Aboriginal-owned pastoral station (leasehold title), in the Kimberley. Mining exploration destroyed a significant site, which the Western Australian Aboriginal Heritage Act of 1972 could not protect in the face of government determination to proceed with mining. Other prolonged and acrimonious confrontations have occurred between Aboriginal people, developers and government over protection of sites near Alice Springs, Coronation Hill and Hindmarsh Island. Attempts to deal with the distribution of land resources between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, whether through the courts or parliament, start from an assumption that there are two distinct systems of land tenure: an Indigenous system which is ‘traditional’ and unchanging; and a non-Indigenous system based on property law transplanted from Britain. This law is also ‘traditional’, with its roots going back centuries, but it is perceived to be flexible and adaptable. It can be changed or modified by parliament or by judicial interpretation. A dramatic example of this adaptability is the recognition of women’s property rights over the last century. In current discourses about land, this codified law is contrasted with Indigenous Australians’ law. Aboriginal people are perceived not to have ‘property laws’ as such, rather they are said to have a ‘spiritual connection’ to the land, a ‘relationship’ with the land which is as ill-defined as family relationships. They nurture the land, but do not exploit it. They have communal, rather than individual rights to land. And they have ‘tradition’, which is backward looking rather than progressive; unchanging and inflexible. These rights to land cannot be generalised, nor can they be transplanted or adapted. As Justice Wootten pointed out in 1995, there is a danger that even where native title is recognised, it is considered to be something less than an ‘owning’ relationship with the land. Indigenous Australians are expected to use the land 6


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for hunting or performing ceremonies, rather than having proprietary ownership of the land: On this view the land belonged to no one—we are back to terra nullius with grafted on to it a few superficial usufructuary rights [rights of use but not of ownership] which may become of decreasing importance or be abandoned as Aboriginal people are drawn more into the western economy and western lifestyles.9

The history of recognition of Indigenous rights to land has moved from a denial by our colonial forebears that these rights exist, to a questioning of the founding myth of terra nullius in the latter part of the twentieth century. Justice Blackburn’s judgment in the Gove case reflects these changing understandings, but also the inability of other Australians to recognise that Aboriginal rights could have survived the dramatic changes of the last two centuries. Land rights, native title and site protection legislation represent non-Indigenous Australians’ attempts to incorporate Aboriginal traditional rights to land perceived as ‘backward looking and inflexible’ within the Australian legal system. While Aboriginal people were consulted in these attempts to make the two land systems compatible, the ensuing legislation represented non-Aboriginal understandings of Aboriginal law. The only exception to this generalisation is the Pitjantjatjara Land Rights Act, where the initiative was with the Pitjantjatjara people, although they had to compromise with the legislators and the range of interests they represented.10 Site protection legislation was also drafted on behalf of the Aboriginal people; rarely were they consulted. In fact the early site protection laws were passed to protect Aboriginal heritage, not for Aboriginal people, but for the wider Australian community.11 Aboriginal women and land The understandings of Aboriginal rights to land that informed the ALRA in the Northern Territory were based on 7


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anthropological knowledge of the time. The research, consultation, drafting and passing of the Act were undertaken by men. Aboriginal people were only considered in the guise of the (post)colonial ‘other’: an undifferentiated group, whose persona was male, and whose relationship with the land, while localised, conformed to common, anthropologically established criteria. At the time the Act was drafted, new understandings of Aboriginal relationships with the land were emerging from a new generation of anthropologists, including feminist anthropologists.12 While this revisionist anthropology did not influence the wording of the Act, it did question its early implementation, because the Act did not take full cognisance of women’s rights in land, or matrilineal (maternal) lines of descent and inheritance. There is now an established body of literature which analyses cross-cultural gender relations.13 I will not review this literature here—rather, I will discuss how earlier misconceptions have impacted on women’s ability to lay claim to land. I will briefly consider implementation of the ALRA in the Northern Territory (a more detailed discussion can be found in Chapter 7); conflicts over site protection; and then make preliminary observations about the implementation of the Native Title Act of 1993.14 Under the ALRA, Aboriginal claimants must prove to an appointed Land Commissioner that they are the traditional owners of the land according to criteria set out in the Act (s. 3(1)): ‘traditional owners’, in relation to the land, means a local descent group of Aboriginals who (a) have common spiritual affiliations to a site on the land, being affiliations that place the group under the primary spiritual responsibility for that site and for that land; and (b) are entitled by Aboriginal tradition to forage as of right over that land.15

Although the legislation does not specify what a local descent group is, there were assumptions made in the early claims that 8


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a local descent group was a patriclan—that is—that rights to land were handed down through the male line, and that men held primary spiritual responsibility for the land. The bureaucratic structures within which claims were pursued ensured that this interpretation predominated. The Northern and Central Land Councils, which were established to help traditional owners with their claims, were almost totally male institutions in their early years. The anthropologists and lawyers hired to research and prepare claims were also predominantly men.16 These structures and the assumptions they reinforced made it difficult for women to present and articulate their rights to land. In Aboriginal societies where knowledge and religious control, rather than material possessions, determine power and authority, these institutional and ideological barriers were serious impediments to women’s rights. In many Aboriginal communities, power and authority are gender specific. Unlike western societies, where gender has been a marker of empowerment (male) and subordination (female), gender in Aboriginal societies defines different fields of influence and empowerment. This gender-specific authority is protected by maintaining a separation between male and female spheres. This separation and the female authority it protects were threatened by the ALRA. In 1983 Rowell observed, the participation of Aboriginal women in land claims has been limited by popular misconceptions about their role and status in Aboriginal society, which were passed from the white European tradition to the anthropological tradition, and from the anthropological tradition to the legal tradition. Somehow Aboriginal tradition was overlooked.17

It is not clear from the literature to what extent Aboriginal men were complicit in this process of disempowerment. By 1979–80 in the claims to the Utopia and Willowra pastoral leases Aboriginal women’s knowledge and rights were recognised, both by their own researchers, legal representatives and land councils, and the land commissioner hearing the claims. The women were not treated as secondary and supportive, but were given a similar hearing to men, and were 9


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able, where appropriate, to present their knowledge and claims separately from the men.18 After these claims it was also recognised that the local descent group included female members; and that rights to land were inherited matrilineally as well as patrilineally.19 This assertion of women’s rights was important for women both within and outside their communities. Under the ALRA all traditional owners of a claim must be listed. If women are excluded from these lists, then their future rights in land as well as their status within their own societies have the potential to be undermined, as written documents replace, or at least supplement, oral tradition as the repository of Aboriginal cultural knowledge. Site protection procedures, although set out in legislation, operate on a more ad hoc basis than land claims in the Northern Territory and elsewhere. Perhaps this is the reason that they have attracted so much controversy. As with land rights legislation, each State and Territory has its own laws; although, unlike land rights, since 1984 there is also the federal Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act, which can override State legislation. Sites may be threatened by destruction or desecration anywhere in Australia: in the city or country; on land under Aboriginal claim, or on non-claimable land. The location and significance of sites is rarely known by people outside the relevant Aboriginal community, nor is it made known to outsiders unless sites are threatened. This situation has the potential for conflict, a potential that has been realised on numerous occasions. This ‘silence’ on the part of Aboriginal people bemuses and infuriates developers who want access to land on which sites are located (see Chapter 4). They have accused Aboriginal people of fabricating sites to prevent development of resources. This accusation was most fully articulated in the conflict over the proposal to build a bridge to Hindmarsh Island in the mouth of the Murray River in South Australia (see Chapter 5). The misunderstandings and misrepresentations inherent in cross-cultural communications are at their most perplexing when sites that are the responsibility of women are at risk. As 10


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Rose illustrates in Chapter 4, women may be overlooked during consultation over sites, even when developers have notified Aboriginal communities of their plans. The longrunning dispute over a dam at Junction Waterhole near Alice Springs is a case in point. Yet it was the single-minded determination of the female owners of the threatened sites which first galvanised the Central Land Council and then the Federal Minister for Aboriginal Affairs into acting to protect the sites by invoking the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act.20 This is the only time the Act has been successfully used to stop a development, although the Federal Minister has been called upon in other disputes, such as that over the Swan Brewery development (Gooninninup) in Perth and the Hindmarsh Island bridge in South Australia, to intervene to override state legislation. The native title claim process on the surface does not appear to disadvantage Aboriginal women as the Aboriginal Land Rights (NT) Act did. As noted the Native Title Act does not define who traditional owners of the land are, it acknowledges that Indigenous people must do this. A review of native title claims submitted to the Native Title Tribunal up to October 1998 indicates that women are often included as registered claimants. Of the 775 claims registered, just under half named women among the registered claimants; many others list women among the ‘other claimants’. A number of claims list a woman as the sole registered claimant (see Chapter 3). While these lists indicate that women are directly involved in the native title process, and are often the initiators of claims, they tell us nothing of the politics behind these claims. Anecdotal evidence suggests that in many communities the claims process has created stresses between and among families and individuals. Some of these tensions are also gendered. The form they take varies greatly from region to region and community to community depending partly on whether the community has strong and continuous links to the land, or whether these continuities have been disrupted by the non-Indigenous presence on the land. It is not possible to research this process while so many claims are still to be determined—such an 11


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analysis will have to wait many years. At this time one can make the general points that the gendered nature of Aboriginal societies is reflected in the native title claims process, and is likely also to be influenced by it (see Chapter 3). In most Aboriginal communities, but particularly in more urbanised ones, women hold the genealogical knowledge which is essential to any native title claim. In many communities, but particularly more remote communities, women are influential behind the scenes both in initiating claims and negotiating compromises between different interests within their communities. This activity is not necessarily apparent to outside observers. Words and silences In 1989 I edited a book, Women, Rites and Sites, in which contributors discussed the status of women’s cultural knowledge in Aboriginal societies. I commented then: It is important for the future of Aboriginal women that past [non-Aboriginal] views of their status and cultural roles are reviewed and revised, because in the last 10–15 years a new issue has emerged to complicate the already complex question of knowledge and authority in Aboriginal society. That issue is rights to land, as set out not in Aboriginal law, but in legislation and conservation practice.21

This volume considers the politics of Aboriginal women and land within that legal and political context. It investigates the impediments these women have encountered trying to communicate their concerns and interests in land. Often they have found both their words and silences have been misrepresented or misunderstood within Australian political discourses. The contributors have all had long associations with Aboriginal people and communities. Their understandings and interpretations of the gendered nature of Aboriginal societies are, inevitably, influenced by their own experiences and vary as a result of these experiences. They provide insights into the complexities of Aboriginal social and cultural knowledge, and 12


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how it is articulated both through words and the withholding of knowledge, as well as music, dance and ritual. Each Aboriginal community has its own history, set within the broad framework of colonisation, with its own strategies for surviving an often hostile recent past. The chapters by Goodall, Baines, Rose and Bell discuss in some depth the position of women in Aboriginal communities in the far west and northwest of New South Wales, the southwest of Western Australia, the southeast of South Australia and the Victoria River region of the Northern Territory. These cultural/historical analyses are set in the context of the politics of land in the late twentieth century. The chapters by McGlade, and Toussaint, Tonkinson and Trigger take a more general perspective. Rather than focusing on particular communities, they consider issues of representation of women in Aboriginal organisations nationally and internationally, and in land rights claims in the Northern Territory, the Seaman Land Inquiry in Western Australia and in land negotiations in northwest Queensland. Pat Baines’ and Heather Goodall’s studies of women in the southwest of Western Australia, and the north and far west of New South Wales, respectively, are set in historical context. Goodall introduces us to the women who formed the Western Women’s Council in the early 1980s. She recounts how their people were colonised and dispossessed of their land. In the twentieth century many were also removed from their families as children. These women have had to relearn their history and culture because of this past and Goodall describes a number of bush camps which have enabled women to go out by themselves, exchange reminiscences and gain cultural knowledge from each other away from men and other domestic distractions. An important aspect of these camps was the opportunity for the women to teach their children about the land and its meanings. It was an opportunity which many of these mothers had missed out on as they were either taken away to reserves or forced to work as domestics for nonIndigenous families. Baines contextualises Nyungar women’s involvement in native title claims within the history of their activism in the 13


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south-west of Western Australia, as she has witnessed it over the last twenty years. Her careful and empathetic observations are, perhaps surprisingly, supported by the writings of both male and female observers from the time of the earliest contact between Nyungars and non-Nyungars. While these writers present young Nyungar women as slaves and drudges in thrall to their husbands, they acknowledge that in old age women are respected, knowledgeable and influential members of Nyungar society. We may be sceptical of some of the motivations of the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century observers of Nyungar society, yet these writers could not help but be impressed by the strong and insistent old women. Baines illustrates how this strength together with the moral and social imperative to protect and communicate cultural knowledge continues into the present. Elders, both male and female, believe they have failed in their duty to their successors when they cannot protect them from premature death (all too common in Indigenous societies) and loss of knowledge which links them to their past. The process of submitting native title claims is just the latest hurdle in a long history of fighting to maintain cultural and religious connection with the land and all it stands for. Both Diane Bell and Deborah Bird Rose examine the implications for Aboriginal women of the desecration of sites which are significant to them. Bird analyses the politics of land and gender which led to the disturbance of a site, and the subsequent healing of that site. Bell discusses the highly politicised controversy over the building of a bridge across the mouth of the Murray River from Goolwa to Hindmarsh Island in the southeast of South Australia. At present the possibility of any healing of the site threatened by the bridge construction seems very remote. In 1993 a group of Ngarrindjeri women were concerned that the proposed bridge would desecrate a women’s site. They began a long and protracted campaign to prevent the building of the bridge, which involved both the State and Federal Governments and led to the establishment of a Royal Commission. This case, more than any other, has brought before the Australian public the complex issues 14


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involved in the politics of land and the gendered nature of Aboriginal relationships with the land. In the first part of her chapter Bell gives a succinct overview of the chronology of the Hindmarsh Island affair and how Ngarrindjeri women’s words and the meanings behind them were undermined and violated as their veracity was questioned in the media and the courts. She then discusses how feminist anthropologists have also had to battle to have their words and the knowledge they reflect accepted. Finally Bell considers the fragmented evidence she has uncovered in her research of Ngarrindjeri beliefs which challenges the findings of the Royal Commissioner, Justice Iris Stevens, who concluded that the Ngarrindjeri women had deliberately fabricated their claims to the threatened site and the Seven Sisters’ Dreaming story to which they made reference. While Bell considers words and the difficulty Ngarrindjeri women have had having their words accepted, Rose discusses silences. She outlines how gendered and factional politics within an Aboriginal community resulted in harm to a women’s site, ending her chapter with an account of how the women negotiated among themselves the ceremonial healing of the site. The communal politics were played out within the context of two dimensions of silence: an active assertion of control; and a passive condition, the silence of the conquered. She argues that under colonial regimes, silence which had been associated with knowledge, power and insight within Aboriginal oral cultures came to mean absence of knowledge. Thus, when Aboriginal women (or men) speak out about a site which is threatened with destruction, they are accused of ‘fabrication’ of knowledge. To avoid these accusations Aboriginal women are forced to make knowledge, which was hidden and protected by silence, transparent and uniform. This undermines the system of knowledge in Aboriginal society, and the power of both men and women which is premised on the withholding of knowledge. In popular understandings the women of the Victoria River region are considered to have experienced less disruptions to their lives through colonisation than the women in New South 15


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Wales and southern Australia. These four chapters suggest that no Aboriginal communities have been able to avoid the need to reconceptualise and adapt cultural understandings to the realities of the politics of the late twentieth century. All have had to develop strategies to maintain community cohesion and to communicate knowledge through the generations which connect them to the land and the past it represents. The final two chapters of this book move beyond the community basis of the politics of land and consider whether Aboriginal women suffer from systemic discrimination in the various land rights regimes that have been implemented over the past 30 years. Hannah McGlade, an Indigenous lawyer, analyses the Federal Government’s response to the High Court’s Mabo decision. She concludes that the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth), the Indigenous Land Corporation and the social justice measures which were introduced in response to the decision fail to specifically address Indigenous women’s concerns, or ensure adequate representation of women where they might be able to influence policy and government practice. McGlade then considers whether Indigenous women can seek redress of their concerns through international human rights bodies. She concludes that international human rights law does recognise the rights of Indigenous women to self-determination and land, but that Australian governments have not recognised these obligations and maintain an ongoing patriarchal and colonial regime in relation to Aboriginal women. Toussaint, Tonkinson and Trigger ask similar questions to McGlade about systemic discrimination of Indigenous women in tribunals and courts in Australia. They start by reviewing some of the anthropological literature on this subject, then consider the impact of the Aboriginal Land Rights Act (NT) on Indigenous women and the Report of the Aboriginal Land Inquiry in Western Australia in 1983/84. In contrast to the early land rights claims in the Northern Territory, the Land Inquiry, chaired by Paul Seaman, took cognisance of women’s evidence and ensured that they had a voice through their submissions. In the end this proved to be an academic exercise as the report was never acted upon by the Western Australian 16


16


Government. The authors end their chapter with three examples of negotiations over land in Queensland: a statutory land claim; a land transfer; and a mining project agreement, the controversial Century Mine. Their conclusions, in contrast to McGlade’s, are that Aboriginal women’s knowledge and interests in land have found public expression in the operation of the ALRA in the Northern Territory, the Land Inquiry in Western Australia, and in the negotiations over land in Queensland. All authors in this book agree on the gendered nature of Aboriginal societies, but do not attempt to establish a dichotomy which contrasts men’s rights with women’s, or to suggest that one sex is more powerful in terms of knowledge and political influence than the other. Rather, we are introduced to different understandings of how these gendered relations are played out, both within Aboriginal societies and the public arenas in which Indigenous peoples are forced to perform if they are to retain any rights to land. It is clear from the research recounted here that Aboriginal women from very different communities throughout Australia face similar issues in their political struggles to have their rights in land recognised. Communities which have experienced long-term contact with colonial regimes may have special problems maintaining continuity of communication of knowledge through this period, but all Aboriginal peoples encounter common difficulties in having their voices heard and their rights acknowledged. This book investigates how Aboriginal women express and communicate their knowledge to gain a public voice and a recognition of their rights in land.

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2

‘Speaking what our mothers want us to say’ : Aboriginal women, land and the Western Women’s Council in New South Wales, 1984–85 1

HEATHER GOODALL ‘Speaking what our mothers want us to say’

Dispossession can take many forms. Access to country can be blocked by guns and fences. It can be rendered difficult by removing possibilities of teaching about its meaning. Or it can be denied by undermining confidence about living on and caring for country. Aboriginal women in New South Wales, where colonialism has been powerful for so long, have been grappling with all these forms of dispossession. In this case, winning the land back is only the first step in restoring ownership. Like relationships between mothers and daughters, relationships with country need to be revitalised and refreshed, by frequent contact and experience, in order to continue strongly. Women in western New South Wales acknowledge the link between the two: learning between mothers and grandmothers and children is easier when people have free access to their land and the knowledge it holds for them. The relationships between generations and the relationships between women and country have been severely challenged in New South Wales, but women in the west have been exploring ways to restore them both. This was evident in the Western Women’s Council, which organised a series of bush camps in western New South Wales during 1984 and 1985. Land was a primary focus, but the 18


18

— ‘Speaking what our mothers want us to say’ —

women involved were seeking more than a straightforward political exercise. In the early 1980s, the bush camp was a new way of carrying out political discussions and community planning in New South Wales, reflecting the desires by local communities to express their claims to land in a tangible form by getting out of town meeting halls and into the bush.2 The Women’s Council participants eagerly took up this innovation, developing and shaping the way it worked. The process of camping out for these women opened up a space to explore a range of relationships which were often tense: generational ones, between mothers and daughters, elders and children; between women from different areas with different histories; and between different types of places, such as the town and the bush. The women can be seen to be grappling with a deeply challenging question. How can Aboriginal women re-assume their sense of confident belonging to their own land when colonialism has worked for so long to separate and alienate them from their country? Their story can be told partly through the voices of all the women taking part in the meetings, whose serious, formal meetings as well as some uproarious campfire yarning were recorded at the time,3 but also through the memories of some of the key participants.4 Maureen O’Donnell, from the far western area, now lives in Broken Hill. Isabel Flick (now deceased) and her niece Barbara Flick are women from the northwest. These three women’s similar experiences of colonialism allowed them to collaborate in the way they contributed to the Women’s Council. But they have also had experiences shaped by the unique cultures and histories of their language groups and country, to the point where they now speak slightly different dialects of Aboriginal English, and brought different skills to the work of organising.5 Maureen and Barbara were among the initiators of the meetings, and were both in their mid-30s when the Women’s Council was most active. Isabel Flick was in her late 50s at the time, and was one of the elders to whom the organising women looked for advice and direction. Many women participated from both the far west and the northwest6 and the 19


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number of elder women was extraordinary. Maureen’s mother, Nancy Bates, along with Amy Quayle, May Hudson, Dorrie Hunter, May Barlow and Elsie Jones are revered figures in the far west. From the northwest came similarly respected elder women: Barbara’s mother, Isabel Walford Flick was present, along with Melva Nicholls, Shirley Mason and Julie Whitton. There were younger women too, in their early 20s or late teens, including Maureen’s daughters and Barbara’s younger sisters, and many children, whose voices weave in and out of the recordings of the meetings and whose sleepy mumbles are there too around the campfire. Present as well was Karin Donaldson, a non-Aboriginal artist who had recently moved to Wilcannia and who has since then worked closely with the Aboriginal community there.7 This chapter will trace the ways these western women tried to use their growing access to land to redress the damage done by colonialism. The western area of New South Wales contains two regions which are commonly but roughly designated as the far west and the northwest (see Figure 2.1). The Aboriginal communities on these lands were traditionally associated with two large networks of related languages, the Paakantji on the western Darling and the Kamilaraay in the northwest around the eastern tributaries.8 There were affinities for the Paakantjirelated groups with the cultures to the west, while the Kamilaraay groups had associations with the north. But they were all linked by a network of material and cultural trade across the western grasslands in what is known as the Riverina cultural area. The area commonly called the northwest encompasses the northern floodplain of the Darling River. Its fertile black soil plains, many rivers, more regular rainfall and proximity to the coast meant it faced an earlier invasion with sustained violence through the 1830s and 1840s, followed by rapidly rising sheep and settler populations. This led to early disruption and modification of Aboriginal lifestyles. Although many Aboriginal people worked on sheep properties and lived in camps until the 1920s, there was earlier intervention by government ‘protection’ policies from the turn of the century, 20


20


21


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particularly with the proliferation of managed stations or ‘missions’ and the removal of children from their families. The far western region was less inviting for invaders: its red soils are sandy, with few permanent rivers away from the Darling, its plains broken frequently by rocky ranges. It was too dry for sheep and too distant to be attractive to white workers until minerals were discovered in the ranges. The cattle industry eventually took up the plains, but did so on vast properties which employed high proportions of Aboriginal labour. The late date of colonisation and the relative dependence of the pastoral industry on Aboriginal workers meant there was little government ‘protection’, few ‘missions’ and very few children removed until after the Second World War. The northwest and the far west each suffered dramatically in the mid-1930s from enforced government ‘concentration’ of Aboriginal communities, but for the far west this was one of the earliest impacts of government, and Aboriginal people escaped relatively rapidly back to the many remaining pastoral camps or unsupervised town camps. For the northwest, the concentrations of the 1930s were the culmination of three decades of intervention and there were very few pastoral properties to which to escape once the war revived the wool economy.9 Colonialism fell heavily on Aboriginal women where government activity was high. The removal of children was most often aimed at girls, and when they were taken to distant apprenticeships they could no longer learn about their own country. When, and if, they returned home, they were closely supervised by staff of the Aboriginal Protection Board, a government body responsible for the administration of Aboriginal affairs in New South Wales. They were often subjected to staff indoctrination to accept European lifestyles, such as nuclear family living and withdrawal from public socialising into the private domestic sphere of ‘home-making’. They were discouraged from the public socialising, extended family living and travelling to see kin which Aboriginal people continue to favour.10 This power to remove children caused suffering to individual young people and to their immediate families which 22


22


is now becoming well known,11 but just as severe was the impact on community land relations. The Protection Board’s drive from the mid-1930s to forcibly concentrate scattered Aboriginal communities onto a few central managed stations was tenaciously resisted by Aboriginal people. They consistently protested that this would cost them their jobs with known employers and that it would take them away from their own homes and country. These moves to concentrate people on large stations were only finally carried out by threatening the whole community with the loss of their children if they refused to climb onto the mail vans and cattle trucks to be shifted.12 Child removal was deeply implicated in the dispossession of communities. The life stories of the women who attended the Women’s Council meetings in the 1980s demonstrate the differences in experience caused by these differing regional histories. Maureen O’Donnell has recalled her childhood on stations in the far western corner country.13 She grew up during the 1940s on the cattle stations around White Cliffs. Maureen herself went to work as a domestic on one of these stations when she was thirteen, but she did not feel isolated or vulnerable in the way girls who were apprenticed further east felt. Those girls were sent to work on properties where there were few other Aboriginal people and often none at all. On the properties where Maureen grew up, there was a strong presence of Aboriginal people, mostly related kinsfolk, and as a result a strong sense of indigenous community life and social support and control. There was too a confidence among women about surviving on the land, using both old and new methods. As Maureen recalls: It was mission days, but we didn’t live on missions, we lived on properties. All the families were there . . . you still had that family unit and all that there . . . the younger kids and the grownups . . . and it was really good. In those days, young girls did lots of hunting. We used to do a lot of men’s work in those days, we didn’t have to do it, it was a relaxation . . . as something that we liked doing . . . I mean it was to do with the land and we was

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— Words and Silences — very close to the land those days. That was the privilege we had when we was young. I used to visit Mutawintji14 long before it became a national park . . . My brother took me out there when I was really young and he showed me a lot of Aboriginal stuff which would still be out there, ’cause he told me then you couldn’t take them away, they had to stay there forever, and he planted them [hid them] back in the place which later became Mutawintji. So he was looking after it all the time . . . I don’t think people realise that, but that was known. My father and brother were great bushmen and they took me around and showed me those things. And I’ve always been very proud of my mother because she’s been a part of everything we’ve done . . . To this day she still comes to the bush with us . . . I think she missed the bush very much when they decided they had to come into town [in need of ongoing medical treatment]. My mother and auntie had it pretty tough at White Cliffs when the men used to go away working. I remember how they used to get their meat . . . They used to hunt goats, chase them into short dumps and when they’d locked them up in there they killed ’em, themselves, that was food for us. And they done all the hunting themselves, same as me, after I lost my husband I done a lot of my own wood and water carting and hunting for myself and I taught my kids all that, and now they’re all hunters today . . . and they in turn is learning they kids . . . and out west here you’ll find it’s mostly done . . . that sort of thing is mostly happening a lot out here in the west . . . you don’t see much of it anywhere else any more, it’s sad to see . . . but we keep it alive, it’s still being taught out here by our families.15

The continuing role of Aboriginal workers on pastoral properties gave Maureen and her community ready access to their land during the time of her childhood. They did not feel dispossessed because they could move relatively freely over the land they knew to be their own. Maureen explained: In those days, people never really thought to fight for their land back because they always had access to it, by working round the properties. And you could go on to [white]

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— ‘Speaking what our mothers want us to say’ — people’s properties, they didn’t keep you off, not like now . . . Most of the old people knew one another and they worked around and they [the white lessees] used to have them [the Aboriginal workers] on their stations. Well, I think our forefathers and fathers would have been the ones that brought them stations to what they is today. They done all the work on ’em and they didn’t get paid much but I think it was a way to be close to the land and that for ’em . . . The pay was very weak, but I mean they was not just working for the pay, but they was working just to be on the country.16

Such recollections are in strong contrast to those just a couple of hundred kilometres away. The stories of three northwestern women, Isabel Flick, her sister-in-law Isabel Walford Flick and Melva Nicholls, who were in their 50s and 60s when they attended the Council camps, show these differences. Isabel Flick was born in 1927 and her whole early life was shaped by her family’s need to flee coercive government intervention.17 First her family had to escape from her mother Celia’s Pikampul country around Thallon because the Queensland Government was carrying out sweeps through the countryside, forcing all the Aboriginal people caught to be incarcerated in Cherbourg Mission. The Flicks moved to the country of Mick Flick, Isabel’s father, around Collarenebri in New South Wales, but did not come into town for fear of losing their children. Isabel recalled a sense of anxiety hanging over their bush camps as they felt they were constantly hiding from the police or the Board. Their family memories show how powerful the child removal policies were in curtailing people’s use of their land. They did not have free access to wide tracts of pastoral land in the way Maureen’s family had had. From the 1900s the larger properties in the northwest were cut up into smaller selections and soldier settlement blocks. This dramatically changed the management practices over this land, with smallscale family labour becoming the norm on the smaller blocks. One by one, the large camps of Aboriginal people, which had supplied so many stock and domestic workers to the big 25


25


properties for decades, were broken up and the people moved into town camps and government stations. So the Flick family came to know only the single properties on which Mick Flick worked, with the fences between properties obstructing their movement onto neighbouring blocks. Eventually coming into Collarenebri during 1937, seeking medical treatment like the Bates family had done to the west, the Flick family had to face the racial segregation of the town’s ‘public’ school and participated in the campaign to desegregate it. The continuing segregation, and the family’s determined presence among those protesting, made the Flick children vulnerable to removal. Isabel recalled a police visit to their home, when Celia was preparing to go to Tamworth for prolonged eye treatment: And I saying better homes

remember the coppers talking to her one day . . . something about . . . ‘because the kids would be off’, and then him saying something about these and . . . ‘Oh, they’d be a lot better off’.

Hastily, Isabel’s parents arranged for her and her older brother Joe (Barbara’s father) to be sent to stay with Granny Jane, her mother’s mother, who was at Toomelah Protection Board Station, where the children could go to the mission school and remain, at least for a short time, safe from removal. Most families were not so lucky in avoiding removal for apprenticeships. For those brought up on the many northwestern government stations and apprenticed locally, the experience allowed them at least to develop some familiarity with the surrounding country which was otherwise denied to them. Isabel Walford (born in 1927, later married to Joe Flick and to become Barbara’s mother) had such an experience, learning about the properties where she was apprenticed from Brewarrina station after their family experienced the enforced movement from Angledool in 1936. Yet their experiences were very different from those further west, where the strong presence of Aboriginal kinfolk allowed both protection and learning about the land. In the northwest, the few remaining large properties which continued to have Aboriginal workers’ 26


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camps seldom employed Board apprentices, as they would draw domestic labour from the camp. So the indentured ‘apprentices’ were usually sent to the smaller properties, where there were seldom other Aboriginal workers, and where conditions were much lonelier and less regulated. Melva Nichols grew up on Pilliga Mission, from which her father worked on surrounding farms, which were the subdivided remains of the big pastoral runs of which the family were traditional owners. Her story is typical of those of northwestern women who were apprenticed within the region.18 Melva was first ‘trained’ as a domestic by working in the mission manager’s home, where cleaning and laundering replaced her school lessons: Oh, it was very hard there. There was no limit to time. I suppose we were more like slaves. If there was any laundry or scrubbing to do, they’d just come across and open the door and say, ‘I want Melva out of the class’, and away I had to go and do it.

Then she was sent to a small holding in the area, where the wife was chronically ill. Melva was the only domestic for the family of seven children and she cooked for the workers at shearing time. When the owner was short of staff, he began to demand heavy outdoors work of Melva as well, and threatened her with violence, so she walked off, reaching the distant property where her father was working fearful that she would be sent back: And Dad was frightened, and he said: ‘What are you doing here?’ And I said: ‘I thought I earnt my food by keeping the house clean and helping with the meals and tending to the shearers and things’—I said—‘he wanted me to chop wood . . . I chopped as much as I could, it took me about three to four hours to cut the little bit that I did and he was gonna whip me with this great big whip, so I did it anyway and I came away’. Well, he took me up to his boss and his wife, and then they wanted to take me back and I got a bit scared. I said to Dad, ‘I’ll only get into trouble there because he was going

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— Words and Silences — to whip me as it was’, so he took me home and they [the mission manager] was going to send me away and . . . as a matter of fact they did come there to take me in the night time, but Dad came home and he stayed at home, he took the gun to the Inspector . . .

By the early 1960s conditions in the far west had caught up with those in the northwest. The post-1945 subdivision of large properties had imposed a grid of obstructive fences there too and mechanisation had severely reduced the labour needs of the remaining large properties. Aboriginal people had become acutely aware of being locked out of their country in the way northwestern people had experienced at least one generation before. For Maureen O’Donnell, this was a very personal, first-hand experience: . . . ’Cause now you’ve got fences up everywhere. It’s very hard to get out onto properties, there’s too many fences today which blocks people off. Like I said, we used to go onto them before and there was no problems—now it’s got even worse. Back a bit, when they started puttin’ up those fences and we couldn’t get onto our land, we knew that we had to fight to get back to our land. Once the fences became there we had no access to our land at all.

She saw this as the beginning of conscious political activity by her community. They were struggling to carve a place for themselves in the towns like Wilcannia into which they had decided or been forced to move, but at the same time were trying to maintain contact with their own country.19 Families visited places important to them to tend graves or hunt and fish, but it was increasingly difficult to gain access to properties. The rivers close to towns became an even larger focal point for Aboriginal social, economic and cultural life. These were the few remaining areas to which people could bring their children, teach them about their country and gain some food as well, in a period where increasing unemployment was dramatically reducing Aboriginal incomes. This sustained much traditional knowledge and practice, but it could not make up for the fact that there was now far less first-hand 28


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familiarity with the broad expanses of plains and privately leased river frontages. (See Isabel Flick’s observations about the nature of traditional skills taught to her, p. 51.) During the early 1970s a shift in political climate brought Federal Government funding to new service organisations run by Aboriginal people. The Aboriginal Legal Service had the most impact in western New South Wales during the late 1970s, arising from the work of a network of Aboriginal activists whose lives had already become entwined. These were mostly men, often fellow shearers and unionists, but included some women who had been community activists in resistance to the Welfare Board during the during the 1950s and 1960s.20 This network stretched across the two western regions delineated above and represented here on the map on page 21. The pressures of postwar economy and politics had begun to draw activists and organisations of both the northwest and the far west together, although community-level contacts remained more limited. When the western communities broke away from the Sydney-based Legal Service in 1977, they formed the Western Aboriginal Legal Service (WALS), which included most communities west of Walgett. The eastern tip of what is usually regarded as the northwest, the Walgett–Moree– Boggabilla area, was excluded from WALS only on the basis of some minor political differences among Aboriginal staff. The WALS and other service organisations brought an influx of expertise as young, enthusiastic and professional staff came to work in the rural offices, offering fresh approaches to using the law to solve the ongoing conflicts of living under colonialism.21 Barbara Flick has explained that the new funds and staff were seized upon by older men and women to achieve long-held goals of protecting sites and regaining land. It was the old people who saw that once Aboriginal people had their own organisations and some resources, this was an opportunity to be able to do something rather than just talk among themselves . . . They knew that things were wrong and they used the Legal Service as a backup to support them to make sure that these things happened. So we came in behind a lot of the activities that were always

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— Words and Silences — initiated by them. I think they could see our willingness to take instructions from the elders—we saw it as important as well but the instructions certainly came from them.22

Concurrently with the growth of the service organisations, the mid-1970s had seen a rise in assertiveness of the long running campaign for the recognition of land rights in New South Wales. This campaign was fuelled by the growing frustrations described by Maureen O’Donnell, of people newly denied access to their lands despite long colonisation, as well as the long traditions of land demands from people in the more eastern parts of the State, who had been excluded earlier from their lands. This campaign was still being expressed by formal meetings in halls and by street marches in 1976 and 1977, which were effective in eventually forcing the New South Wales Government into a Select Committee which would recommend the implementation of land rights. However, the other manifestation of the rising assertion of rights to land was more attempts by family and community groups to visit their own country, particularly in the far west where exclusion had been so recent.23 The more formal, public forms of political action—the meetings and deputations, as well as the leading roles in demonstrations—had generally been filled by men. It was their travel which was funded when they went to represent the regions at meetings. Where women were involved, they tended to be the younger women who had already had better access to western education. Older women found it often impossible to get to meetings where they wanted to have a voice. Barbara Flick has recalled that the meetings about land rights in the late 1970s changed this process, because the emphasis shifted to the knowledge of older people rather than the more western skills of meeting organisation and political formalities: That’s how it all began . . . Isabel [Flick] and Julie [Whitton from Toomelah] in particular were travelling to Dubbo for big meetings of the New South Wales Land Council and meeting up with Dorrie Hunter, Nancy Bates and Evelyn Bates and Margie Ann Whyman and Maureen O’Donnell.

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— ‘Speaking what our mothers want us to say’ — Before that, all the women who were good strong activist women in the northwest and in western New South Wales, and who were sometimes the unsung heroes in the struggle, had found that it was the men that got resources to get together to talk things over, and that women were sometimes left without resources and had to struggle to move around the country.

By 1980, however, two key positions in the WALS had, with strong community support, passed to women. Maureen O’Donnell had taken on the role of Chairman of the Board of Directors and Barbara Flick had been employed as Coordinator. Between them they brought family and political links from across both the far west and the northwestern regions of the WALS area and the eastern wing of the northwest which had not formally been incorporated into the WALS structure. They were two outspoken and committed women in positions of power over resources at the same time as having sympathetic male colleagues and staff. This brought the resources of a major organisation for the first time to the assistance of women and in particular older women. It ensured that many senior women were able to attend the crucial meetings from 1980 to 1982 in which community goals could be fed into the land rights campaign. This did not mean that meetings were indulgently funded: petrol money and food was all that could be offered. But it meant that older women could more often find a way to get there. Increasingly, these meetings were planned as bush camps.24 This shifted the setting for discussion and decision-making dramatically. No longer were the formal rules of meeting order from parliamentary or union organisation the necessary structure of Aboriginal decision-making. Instead, people could spread out, participate in informal and relaxed community discussions and do so with a strong sense of their own land beneath them. A number of bush camps allowed people to explore the idea. The Flick and Murray families at Tulladunna in 1981 had protested the loss of Aboriginal land at Wee Waa, and the damage done to land by the cotton industry, while 31


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simultaneously supporting the family of Eddie Murray, who had just died in police custody. The large body of people in the west who had lived at Menindee, the concentration site on the Darling south of Wilcannia, had camped there a number of times during 1982 to revitalise links between families and the land, while the families who had been forcibly moved off Angledool in 1936 returned there to camp late in 1982 to reinforce their claims to the country. The meeting to which everyone involved with the Western Women’s Council refers is the Mutawintji Blockade, held in spring in 1983. While this was on far western land, in the corner country northeast of Broken Hill, it brought together men and women, of all ages, from across the two regions. This meeting was a major political reassertion of control over a very important cultural site. The Mutawintji hills shelter deep waterholes and springs which make it a fertile oasis in the middle of arid plains. Its cave walls were richly decorated with ancient peckings and paintings over millennia, which are the cultural treasures of the Paakantji-related people. Its Snake Cave was known to be a powerful, restricted site to which only initiated men could go. The hills had been occupied by a pastoral leasehold for a long period since the invasion but had been taken over by the National Parks Service and made a public site in the late 1960s. Although national park status offered some environmental protection, the park management gave no recognition at all to the continuing presence and interests of the Aboriginal owners, now mostly living at Wilcannia and Broken Hill. The continued pressure from the traditional owners, men and women like Jim James Bates and May Barlow, brought about an extraordinary event, in which people from right across the western regions participated in support. The ‘Mootwingee National Park’ lost its anglicised spelling and regained its owners. The tourist buses coming out along the road from Broken Hill that October long weekend in 1983 saw brightly repainted signs along the road which carried the blunt message: ‘Mutawintji: Closed by the Owners’. At the gates to the park, they were met by 200 Aboriginal people and their supporters, 32


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and were invited to listen while elders of the Paakantji-related language peoples, such as Alice Bugmy, May Barlow and Dorrie Hunter, explained the significance of the park and why it must be returned to Aboriginal control in order for it to be made available to the public in a more culturally respectful and knowledgeable way. Maureen explained women’s participation in the blockade: Well the womans was the greatest majority of the people out at the Mutawintji Blockade, making the plans, talking with people, meeting with people and really showing people what the land meant for them. And it wasn’t just done for a joke, we really are part of the land.25

The involvement of women such as Maureen and Barbara, and women from across the two regions, allowed them to draw on the lessons they had learned from the earlier bush camps and to add a new layer of activities. These expanded the camp from being an effective public relations and media event addressed to white Australian and international tourists, to one which had an even more important purpose in educating young Aboriginal people from the western communities. Both Maureen and Barbara have independently recalled how they saw this as a central part of their contribution to this meeting and to the growing idea of how a bush meeting could work. As Maureen explained it: They all used to say before, ‘Don’t bring and my argument’s always been ‘That’s taught!’ and I take kids to everything they’re a very important part of teaching

kids to meetings!’ the way history’s because I believe . . .26

Barbara recalled the Mutawintji strategies: The kids at the Mutawintji Blockade were taken on tours of Mutawintji so they could understand what the issues were that people were protesting about. They were smoked after they returned from the powerful sites, so they were exposed to ceremonial activity connected with the sites. They were told stories about those places by older people. And they

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— Words and Silences — participated in making T-shirts that said ‘Mutawintji— Closed By The Owners!’ So they were able to participate in and learn about what was taking place.27

Isabel Flick also recalled the sense of unity, discipline and learning that she valued at the blockade: The good thing about it was we had the older people more or less guiding us and the younger ones were learning, and it was a good time, we were all together at the blockade at Mutawintji, we camped there for a week. There was no 5-star accommodation, but plenty of unity, we had real unity. In one end of where we camped, we set that aside for people if they wanted to have a drink or a singsong after [a meeting] well the young ones went down there, but it was a very well disciplined blockade. Because I think everyone recognised the importance of being able to talk to all the people who came in buses from everywhere and to get their reaction to that, which was really good, it was very supportive really. The men’s job was to provide the food and to teach the younger ones how to do that, so there was a lot of men and boys’ stuff going on there, and women and girls’ stuff. And us older ones, while we were having a game of cards we were still planning what we could do to bring about the changes.

Out of these experiences, the women from across the two regions who had been building their relationships over these years developed the idea of a Western Women’s’ Council, which would formalise the growing role of women and give them a more forceful voice. They saw themselves as continuing to work closely with men in the region, and drawing on their assistance wherever appropriate in order to mount the Women’s Council activities. But their vision was that the Women’s Council would allow them to hold bush meetings, to confer, to learn and to teach in ways they felt worked best for them and their children. The council was formally established soon after the Mutawintji Blockade, at a WALS meeting in Bourke, but building on the long-established connections between women across the two regions, which went beyond the boundary lines of the legal service organisations. For Maureen O’Donnell the 34


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goals of the Women’s Council always involved land as well as concerns about strengthening communication between women and their children and grandchildren. The meetings were an opportunity for allowing elder women to pass on knowledge and directions about how to proceed: Womans has always been very interested in land, that’s why we call the land ‘our mother’. We want land to go hunting on and fishing, and to teach our kids. And owning land has always been very important to womans out west. Womans have always protected, as best we could and as far as we was allowed to go, to protect our land. And our elders always told the womans where the places were and how to protect them . . . it was passed on to us by our elderly womans . . . When the womans was meeting we had to talk about our land and what we should be doing with it, and the elders tellin’ us. We also talked about the kids and trying to get our kids back on the right track and getting land back for them, so they can get out onto it and work, and do the things we used to do . . . ’Cause now you’ve got fences up everywhere.

For Isabel Flick, a woman of the older generation from the northwest, the reason for having bush meetings for the Women’s Council involved the strategies of community land rights work, but for her too, the importance of having ‘a lot of time to talk’ was central: We knew that we needed to get back into the community. We knew that was one of the important things, to get back into the community, not just to have meetings in Sydney. The message got around better that way and more people were involved. We had women from Menindee to Bourke, and Enngonia, and to Toomelah and Walgett. It was good for us to get together and talk about land and what we could do. And it was important for a lot of reasons . . . It gave us a lot of time to talk about the issues that were affecting each community and they really identified all the same needs. We needed a base to work from, and we were hoping that

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— Words and Silences — we would be able to negotiate with the authorities on how we would address different issues.28

The Western Women’s Council held two bush camps, the first at Mount Grenfell in October 1984 and the second at Winbar in April 1985. While the Mount Grenfell camp revealed the warm enthusiasm of women across the region for a means of meeting other women and learning more about each other’s country, the Winbar camp posed more practical problems, leading the women to speak frankly about the tensions and the challenges they faced. Mount Grenfell Mount Grenfell, near Cobar, is an important site, rich in artwork, whose stories linked the two western regions. This symbolic linking was well reflected in the attendance at the camp. Between 60 and 100 women and children arrived from the broad western areas, from Toomelah to Dubbo to the Darling junction with the Murray, beyond the artificial boundaries of the legal service and other organisations. The camp occurred over two days, with the women sleeping out for one night in tents they had set up themselves. Maureen saw their inclusive approach as one of the great strengths of the early Women’s Council meetings: The meetings should be just open for any woman who likes to come along . . . and we used to get womans from way up the top end of the river and way down the other end at Balranald.29

Barbara explained the extensive participation: The links between women were much broader and not contained. I think men are more territorial in many ways. The women’s common experiences of family and their traditional roles of looking after family and making sure that things happen, of organising and always making links, extended beyond what the men were able to do. And they became much more intimate relationships than men enjoyed

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— ‘Speaking what our mothers want us to say’ — . . . so the relationships between people and the shared experiences, especially among the older women, made us strong—a block for us to build on . . . and they weren’t too worried about lines on a map or other sorts of boundaries. It was more their experience of . . . being women and all that that entailed that allowed more open participation and allowed them not even to think about boundaries.30

The sense of openness had been discussed at the Bourke establishment meeting, and it was reiterated at the meeting held at the end of the camp at Mount Grenfell. This revealed frustration with the bureaucratic methods imposed on many Aboriginal organisations over the previous decade as well as a deep suspicion of government motives in demanding complex administrative structures. The discussion at the meeting turned to methods of organising the next meetings and raising money, and many in the group audibly endorsed the following: Woman: It’s a bit hard when you got to check with this one and that one, then see somebody else . . . before you do anything . . . We just all came here, we were just a group of people, and all got on well together, sat down and did things in our way that we like to do . . . Woman: Yeah . . . it’s better if we can just get together . . . Maureen O’Donnell: . . . I think if we can keep right away from constitutions and all that too, we’d be better off because they restrict you, we could just try to get funds here and there, maybe raffles or something, but we don’t want these restrictions, constitutions and that coming in because we’re run by the government then. We want to run as a body of women. Barbara Flick: We talked about that at Bourke, we don’t want any committee or anything like that, we don’t want nobody in with no power struggle or all that rubbish going on like that, we just want to be a group of women and if somebody has time to write letters and get money well that’s alright, but nobody has more say than anyone else. And just everyone come together . . .31

The Women’s Council camps were alcohol free. The decision to have dry camps was innovative in New South Wales 37


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and highly contentious. Over past decades, restrictions on alcohol use were seen as solely the result of government and publican discrimination. Young Aboriginal activists have often made flamboyant use of alcohol as a mark of political assertion. The effects for children and for elderly women, who still seldom drink, have been destructive and alienating. There had been some distracting alcohol abuse at earlier bush camps, and it had been difficult to censure and control aggressive male drinkers. Women may have felt it was easier to assert control over disruptive drinking in an all-female group. Maureen O’Donnell: It’s really important, because we have to look after old people and kids, we have to do the right thing and not have any grog at all, we don’t want to be teaching our kids to have anything to do with that . . . Elderly woman: There’s too much drinking and gambling . . . you don’t see people, if you don’t drink or go to the pub, people don’t even come around to see you . . .32

The decision to have totally dry camps was a deliberate strategy to reclaim the bush camp as a safe and respectful ground on which women and children could communicate. It was a radical decision in 1984 to ban grog, but at the Mount Grenfell camp this worked very effectively, allowing a relaxed atmosphere and bringing wide endorsement at the meeting.33 At the Winbar meeting, to be discussed below, the decision was challenged, generating an intense debate on the importance for women of persisting with dry camps. There were other anxieties for some of the older women in camping out on country which was not their own. The Women’s Council goal of bringing women together from across a broader area than the regions of traditional culture meant necessarily venturing onto country which was unfamiliar to some of the older women. This was particularly the case with a site like Mount Grenfell, which is close to a highly populated mining town and had been subject to heavy white pastoral and mining pressure to disperse the traditional owners. Although the families associated with the site have now begun to trace each other and re-establish their connections to the 38


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site, sixteen years ago in 1984 there was no-one who could readily take direct responsibility for welcoming visitors. Karin Donaldson, as a newcomer to Wilcannia at this time, felt her role was to support the very elderly women she had come to know from the far western area. She became aware of their discomfort as they talked about hearing ‘Dreaming’ figures during the night at the camp and tried to interpret the meaning of the sounds, uncertain whether it meant a welcome or a warning.34 Theirs was another level of awareness of land and the presence of tradition. This was the knowledge which the younger women were seeking to nurture and allow to be transferred, but which was not easy to reconcile with the other goals of wide geographic and cultural inclusiveness. There were no other aspects of the night on this camp which were fearful. Instead the campfires were places of comfort and welcome, cementing new friendships and renewing relationships. The recording of one of the campfire gatherings gives a glimpse of the relaxed confidence of all the women there.35 Voices can be heard regaling the campfire audience which are not heard at all at the formal meeting, despite good-natured joking about ‘But, Aunty, you was talking all night last night!’ They shared uproarious stories, told with great style and comic timing, ranging from gently ironic to scathingly satirical. Many were about apprenticeships on lonely stations and about other early work experiences. But these stories seldom dwelt on the loneliness or the fear that so many girls like Melva Nicholls felt. Instead they were funny stories about navigating a bizarre and unfamiliar material culture, in which shirts were put on (clothes) horses and one never had any idea when a Kelvinator would turn out to be a refrigerator or a carpet sweeper. Many of the hilariously funny stories were about travelling. Some were about women’s fears about the strangers they had to deal with during train travel when they were young, and often they were recountings of visits to the city and becoming lost, demonstrating naive innocence or rustic confusion. Underlying all these stories was a sense of the dangers posed for women in travelling in the whiteman’s transport and world, which went beyond the rural 39


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fears about the city, although that element was there also. What was apparent in all those stories was the sense of uneasiness about travel: fears of vulnerability, both cultural and sexual, an unfamiliarity with the map or the codes for places controlled by whitefellas, and the need to seek support and comfort among kin, or at least among other Aboriginal people. The frustrations of discriminatory racism and hostility were expressed and then resolved as people laughed over their own traveller’s tales among women who understood exactly their experiences. Some stories were about travels of another kind, in which some women remembered visits to their community by Aboriginal men from more traditional communities situated further west in the central deserts. These stories suggested a different form of uneasiness, an anxiety that traditional life held powerful forces which could be used to entrap women, particularly those who now did not know the conventions and protocols. A deep awe of traditional power as well as a sense of loss of knowledge added another dimension to women’s fears about travelling. Another group of stories were about the country towns in which most of these women now lived. They told funny stories which were, underneath, stories about courageous women keeping the peace and protecting other women and children in tense domestic conflicts, which invariably arose from the fearful effects of grog. These were sad situations, but in the voices of these expert storytellers, they became rueful, exasperated, ironic and funny stories to be shared. And finally there were the amused stories of assertion against whites in this alienated world. One story about city misadventures had a group of country Aboriginal people sitting exhausted on a footpath, having been repeatedly rejected by cab drivers as they tried to get to their relations’ house. When commanded to move on by a white shopkeeper, one cracks: ‘You took over all the rest of our land. Be fucked if you’re going to get this bit of footpath too!’ The warmly-shared stories all suggest why it was so important for these western women to re-establish their confidence about independent movement across and living on their own country. 40


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Teaching kids was an important goal for everyone who came to Mount Grenfell and during the daytimes the site was a superb one for focusing activity around children. It was also well chosen for introducing women of the northwest, whose graphic art style is largely associated with tree and wood carving and ground sculpture, to the artwork of the far western ranges, to which many of the tracks of the northwestern stories continue and which is represented by cave paintings. Barbara Flick recalled the impact the paintings made: The influence of the sites at Mount Grenfell are far reaching. It connects the people probably as far east as Brewarrina, down to Byrock and out to Wilcannia and Menindee and possibly other places . . . There’s paintings at Gundabooka and at Mount Grenfell that depict the Fisheries at Brewarrina. A lot of the women hadn’t seen the caves that are painted profusely in that area, so we spent some time looking at the paintings and talking about what they might mean and seeing the connections with, in particular, the water symbols around Brewarrina.36

The children were well able to be drawn into that exploration, accompanying the women on walks around the caves, hearing about the connections between areas that the paintings show, being taught about how to be respectful around the paintings, and picking out the babies’ handprints among the many hand stencils on the cave walls. The women commented frequently during their meeting at how happy the kids were: ‘Look at these kids: they’re no trouble here, this is their country; they can run and jump and climb a tree; nothing worries them.’ 37 During the meeting the children all chorused their enjoyment in learning about the paintings as well as in climbing all over the rest of the rocks. The discussion with the kids about what they had learnt allowed Maureen O’Donnell to express her frustration over lack of access to such places, to the amusement and warm approval of the other women. She pointed out to the children how the paintings demonstrate the connections between the past and the present: 41


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— Words and Silences — Maureen: All this was our own country—we could walk anywhere . . . Now we got to ring up the whitefellas to tell us we can come into these places like . . . You reckon we should have to ring up the white fellas to come to our own place? Kids, lots of voices: . . . NO!! Maureen: No, that’s right, ’cause it’s our own country, eh? Many women’s voices, lots of laughter: Go on! You’ll be turning them all into radicals now! Maureen: This our country, we shouldn’t have to ask the whiteman can we come in here, eh? . . . ’Cause those drawings tell us this is our own country, because our people owned it before white people ever come here . . . And we’d just like to learn more about this, come out and learn more about it. Kids, lots of voices: Yeah. That’s right. . .38

For the organising women, like Maureen and Barbara, there was also a strong focus on assisting mature women to learn from older women. Maureen has explained that she sees her work as being the implementation of her mother and elder women’s directions. The camps were planned to allow older women to feel as comfortable as possible in expressing their views. I believe we get our teaching from our elders and I believe everything you do your elders got to say you can do it and give you that support . . . If you don’t take your elders with you, you can get into big strife because you’re only a mouthpiece for your elders, put it that way, and our elders pick out their mouthpieces, you know each family picks out their own speaker, so we’re only speaking what our mothers want us to say. Oh they were good for all of us because it brought us all in as one . . . and in the night they all sat down at their different little camps and told stories and they all came together . . . it was really wonderful. It’s good for everyone because we come away lifted . . . I don’t know how to say it, but I always feel that way after a meeting with the elders that you come away . . . restrengthened . . . and those times were really wonderful and it gave us the spirit we needed

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— ‘Speaking what our mothers want us to say’ — to keep going fighting. And having all those womans there, and the elders and the younger womans and the kids—everybody just loved it.39

This was an exciting process for older women as well as the younger ones. Despite their anxieties about camping out on unfamiliar territory, many of the older women were deeply moved by the experiences they had there, as this exchange between several of them suggests: Elsie Jones: Everybody looked after me and I enjoyed their company . . . I lived round Wilcannia for years, and we’ve been trying to do [something] to keep the old language and the country going, and this is something we’ve never had before, this is the first time, and I think it’s a good idea and I hope to see many more . . . Aunty May (Hudson): . . . I’m really pleased with this sort of set up here, because there’s a lot of ladies here in this camp now that I never met before, didn’t even know about. Melva Nicholls: Well it took us back to our young days . . . that’s what I enjoyed . . . and the camping out . . . May: It’s taken me back too. I’m even glad I brought my old Aunty Amy with me. I wanted to take her to Pooncarie with me, but she couldn’t come, but I managed to bring her this way with me though! Aunty Amy: It was great coming out here . . . seems more relaxed here . . . Elderly woman: Yes, its better than any holiday, ’cause when you go on a holiday you got to worried about washing and cleaning the place up, whereas you can just relax, you can be free here . . . it’s different altogether . . . Woman: Yeah I want to get my mum to come . . . Melva: That painting up there is beautiful to us, that’s valuable to us, well it’s the first time for me to see anything like that, and I think it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen . . . Oh, I enjoyed it, and I’ve met some lovely people too. May: Oh I did too, and a lot of the girls I’ve seen here today, they’re strangers to me but they’re like sisters . . . yes, I’ve had a wonderful time, I’ve enjoyed every bit of it, even to

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— Words and Silences — the walk up to the caves. I can’t walk very far, but I managed to get there and back. Melva: I’m going to tell all my old mates that I played with, I’m going to coax them out too. I don’t like going home . . .40

As recently as June 1998, Nancy Bates, now in her 80s, was eager to talk to Barbara Flick about the Women’s Council: . . . the first thing she talked about was remembering the women’s camps and how much the older women enjoyed the chance to travel and to get together. Because most of the money and resources during that period of time was used for men to travel and negotiate and older women in particular didn’t get much chance at all to move around. So it’s a very strong experience that those older women remember.41

What was less anticipated was that older women valued learning from each other. In the end, many felt that this process addressed the scars left on individuals and communities by colonial policies. Barbara Flick stressed the enriching process of sharing experiences which she saw occurring at the camps. For the northwestern women, more affected by removals and apprenticeships, this had a special meaning: They were also interested as older women I think in the history of being apprenticed out on pastoral properties and they discovered that this was a common experience across the west. And it was one that they loved to talk about and exchange stories about. That experience was one that bound them as well for that generation. Camping on the country acted as a trigger for the older women to remember stories about their own childhood and a lot of stories about being apprenticed and being marginalised in the small country towns in which they grew up in. There was lots of humour about the experiences they had and there was also a lot of sad stories about being blamed for other people’s wrongs and being powerless to try and defend themselves . . . but the result of that was that a lot of oral history was passed on while people were camping on the country. Melva Nicholls, who’s often talked about the police activity and being searched in curfews in Walgett and her

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— ‘Speaking what our mothers want us to say’ — experience of being apprenticed from Pilliga on white people’s properties, was really excited that she could come to the camps with other people. I think a lot of women felt marginalised in their own towns when the majority of the population had moved on and didn’t think that these experiences were particularly interesting or useful any more. So it was good to get together the women who did believe that and for them to share those experiences. I think they found that telling those stories individually was less empowering than for them all to tell their own stories to a bigger audience, which was the women and kids right across the region. So that’s one way that history becomes more real I think when it is passed on in that manner. And certainly to us it’s a less threatening way to tell that part of our history. It’s not just some record that young people were taken away by government under the apprenticeship system but it was made into real stories about their lives and how it affected them and what they thought when they were younger and growing up about where this might lead them. And an extension of that was that they wanted to impress on us that there had been previous struggles, that we weren’t the first people as a younger generation who tried to do some political work. But that there had been people before us, like Pearl Gibbs, and that they wanted us to carry on this tradition and make sure it was acknowledged. So those were exciting times, they were good times. Most of those old women are now gone so it’s important that it happened and that there is some documentation.42

Winbar Winbar was chosen for the second Women’s Council camp because the property was under a claim mounted by the Western Regional Land Council, on behalf of local land councils in the area. The camp was held over the long Easter weekend in 1985, with a plan to arrive on Friday and leave Sunday, camping over two nights. The land had been vacant 45


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for ten years, but the New South Wales Government was still most reluctant to consider it accessible to claim. The legal struggle over the validity of the claim was underway and the Aboriginal case looked strong, although it was to take many years to succeed. The Women’s Council hoped to add their weight to the campaign to win acknowledgment of the legitimacy of the claim. But the women’s camp was a conscious challenge not only to the land laws and leaseholders who had kept Aboriginal people off their land, but to the internalised fears which had made it hard for many Aboriginal people, particularly women with vulnerable children, to take assertive political action. Barbara Flick has explained their defiant mood: We didn’t get permission to go onto Winbar, we just went there. But there were lots of trips, Weinteriga and Winbar, both places that were finally returned to the Western Regional Land Council . . . There were many trips to those places, firstly, when people thought that it was possible that they could be returned, but also because they felt strong after the Mutawintji and Mount Grenfell experiences and with the activity of the legal service before we went to Mutawintji. Because people felt very strong about returning to that country and defying locked gates and things like that that had stopped us in the past. I think we had decided by then that the locked gates weren’t going to stop us any more. So we just started moving out on there and asserting our native title rights. I think people had decided that enough was enough and that they would once again start moving onto their country, and if we were challenged that we would face that challenge.43

There was a great sense of anticipation because of the delay in having the meeting, which had been planned for November 1984, but had been delayed because of some tragic deaths. There was great eagerness among the older women to meet again and this time more very young women had been able to come along. The camp unfolded in many ways much as Mount Grenfell had done, with lots of bush tucker and two long evenings around the campfire as the women delighted in 46


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sharing their stories. There were, however, factors which made this camp harder. Like Mount Grenfell, Winbar lies roughly in the centre of the two regions, but it is much further away from any towns. As a river property, it was accessible only by black soil roads and there had been rain immediately before the camp so the roads and paddocks were still wet and boggy. This made travel and setting up the camp harder, as well as making hunting and collecting bush tucker much less predictable than it had been during the dry spring camp at Mount Grenfell. One group hunting on Saturday became bogged off-road and, having not left detailed plans with the camp about where they were going, had to dig themselves out without help. The tensions generated by such difficulties were evident in the meeting recorded on Sunday afternoon, which revealed much about the practical obstacles facing these women as well as about their courage in confronting problems and demanding resolutions. The first activity at this meeting was to discuss a series of letters which the women had said they wanted to write. These were each deeply involved with land issues. The claim at Winbar itself was discussed and a letter about it drafted to the New South Wales Government. There was grave concern about a planned Australian Army base, to carry out ‘large scale manoeuvres’ involving extensive tank exercises, which was planned for the land near Mount Grenfell. There was not only the importance of Mount Grenfell itself, as a site linking stories from across the whole of the west, but also its importance to the Women’s Council as the place of their moving previous meeting. The women’s letter was written from their standpoint as mothers, demanding that the Federal Government recognise that the impact on many occupation sites as well as the magnificent art galleries ‘will destroy us and our children. It is our duty to protect these things for our future generations. This responsibility has been passed on to us by our old people. We will strenuously resist any moves to install the Army in our country.’44 Then there was a long discussion about the need for land and funds to allow women like the Women’s Council to help the children of families devastated 47


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by alcohol. The women’s letter pointed out that substantial funds were being spent on rehabilitation facilities for alcoholics, but little attention was being paid to the children then left unattended. Women’s and children’s refuges and holiday camps for children, with teaching from older women about bush tucker, medicines and law were their priorities, each envisaged as taking place on newly acquired lands under Aboriginal control. In a demonstration of their sense of connection to Aboriginal land politics nationally, the Women’s Council expressed concern about the Federal Government’s proposal to offer uniform national land rights, the so-called ‘Preferred National Land Rights Model’. This was seen as a betrayal of the Five Principles which the Labor Government had committed itself to at the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Peoples in Geneva in July 1984. The women expressed anxiety that the minimal conditions they had won in the New South Wales Land Rights Act (1983), such as inalienable freehold title, would be wiped out and that there would be similar losses for people in other States. Finally, the Women’s Council sent a message of congratulations to the Far Western Regional Land Council, which had just successfully purchased a large, river frontage sheep property, Weinteriga, against opposition from some local white property owners. Then the meeting turned to consider the problems they had encountered on this camp, and many women spoke in reflective self-criticism as well as in some tense exchanges. The continuing questions of generational relations were important, but they had been exacerbated by the problems with weather. The goal of teaching children had not been fulfilled as well as women had hoped. There were less focal places at Winbar than there had been at Mount Grenfell, where the caves and paintings offered such rich sites for teaching. At Winbar the extensive lands offered great opportunities for learning about bush tucker and medicines, but on this occasion the wet roads and boggy paddocks made hunting trips impractical and fishing impossible. The women, now together after a longer delay than they had hoped, were so excited to be spending time 48


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together that they had been absorbed in each other’s news and company. As a result, the children were at a loose end, spending some of the time sitting in a tent and ‘bored silly’. The women reiterated their commitment to teaching children, reflecting frankly and ruefully on how their own eagerness to meet again had distracted them from organising new activities for the wet conditions. There was a long discussion then about the ways they could have done things differently and plans began not only for another camp but for smaller camps and bush trips from each community. A more disturbing problem had been the challenge by some of the younger women to the rules about no grog, as well as the desire to keep away from towns for the duration of the camp. These young women had disappeared on Sunday morning without informing anyone, gone into the town of Louth, begun drinking there and then returned to the camp, with takeaway alcohol, just before the meeting. In the conditions of the remote camp, with boggy roads all around, the women in the camp had became extremely alarmed when the young women’s absence was noticed. By the time they returned, their families were relieved that they were safe but furious that they had flouted the desires of the majority of the women in the camp, showing no respect for themselves and their elders. One mother seized her daughter’s carton of beer and hurled it, unopened, into the scrub. And there it stayed. Her sister is said to have found it years later, label faded but still unopened, a silent monument to a mother’s fierce determination to stop grog from destroying a time that was deeply important to her and her family. While some anger was expressed directly to the young drinkers during the meeting, much of the censure was put in an indirect way. The two major organisers, Barbara and Maureen, had been in the group of hunters who had become bogged on Saturday. They talked about their own errors of judgement, seeking to press home by example that everyone had to take responsibility for their actions, to take responsibility for each other. The two incidents made disturbingly clear to all of them how vulnerable they were in the remote area, 49


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and how fragile was their hold now on independence out on their own land. One older woman commented: ‘ . . . it frightens you to think how dangerous the country is . . .’ 45 It was this issue which gave the matter its hard, tense edge in the discussions: the ability to hunt and get bush tucker was central to these Aboriginal women’s challenge to their practical dispossession. The question of young women drinking was serious, but it was symptomatic of the need to consider the strength and responsibility it would take if women were seriously to take back control of travelling and camping safely on their own land. This intense desire to be independent and self-sufficient, to re-establish genuinely women’s freedom to move about their country, was reflected in the meeting and is evident in the memories about the camps. Maureen O’Donnell had said frequently at the meetings that women needed to have these skills in order to teach their children how to survive ‘if hard times strike’.46 In Maureen’s reflections on her own history, she saw her self-sufficiency on the land as one of her major responsibilities to teach her own children, and she was proud of the way they were now teaching their own children.47 Many of the northwestern women were fiercely determined that they too would relearn the skills they had lost. Barbara Flick has recalled how this was an area where the differences in experience between the far west and northwestern regions were as important as the similarities. This was bound up with the overall effect of challenging the alienating impacts of colonialism: The reason we camped at Winbar was once again to affirm the return of the country and to take the kids back because we always believed that there wasn’t much point in having land or country if you weren’t making a concerted effort to take children back and get them to know the country and to learn about it and to be on it. So it was a women’s camp at Winbar which included western New South Wales women and north west women. There was Shirley Mason, from the northwest, who’s now left us. People in the northwest who for a long time had stopped eating a lot of bush tucker,

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— ‘Speaking what our mothers want us to say’ — having coming back after apprenticeships and living in government houses . . . And one of the things Shirley talked about a lot during that meeting was how good it was to be back in the country and to eat our own food and to prepare our own food. So we ate a lot of kangaroo and emu and made damper and johnny cake. It seemed that through government policy and programs of housing and separating Aboriginal people in northwestern New South Wales, they’d forgotten about a lot of these things and how they felt about it. Whereas the women in the far west were still eating a lot of bush tucker and still camping a lot in the bush.48

Isabel Flick’s memories of Winbar suggest the bittersweet experience it was for older women of the northwest: We found a lot in common, even though I think we’ve lost more of the language than the people down Wilcannia way, where they were still able to practise theirs, while we are trying to retrieve stuff, so that was something that we all felt they had an advantage in that. But we had lots of common work experiences on stations and for some of us in apprenticeships. And the thing was, even though some of the stories were sad, we were able to laugh at some of the things our people endured to sort of become educated. The bush foods were a really important part of the camp at Winbar. And the women did that, that was all women. It was a learning thing for me too because even though as a kid I was taught how to fish and look for bait and stuff like that, but to see the younger ones bringing back a kangaroo or an emu and actually cleaning it and stuffing it and cooking it, it was a real educational time for all of us.

At Winbar, this desire to feel confident in travelling, living and teaching on one’s own country, was reiterated by many women including Barbara Flick when she spoke to the meeting: I like to be independent and I haven’t got enough skills to be really independent . . . Maureen’s got more skills than me that are really valuable. We like to think that we can get a mob of women and kids together and take off into the bush and we can be self-sufficient. And I think its really important that we do that . . . but there are a lot of

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— Words and Silences — responsibilities that go with that sort of thing . . . and we got to remember that all the time . . . It’s a big deal for us to come out here: we’re away from doctors, we’re away from towns, we’re away from telephones . . . all those sorts of things . . . we can have a gun and we can get tucker and we can feed ourselves, and it is a big deal, not many women can do that sort of thing these days and be totally independent. But if we want to do that, we’ve got to be conscious all the time of what we’re doing, every little decision we make, we have to think . . . Like we were driving along the road, shooting at this emu and we said, ‘Will we chase it? Yes’. We made a silly decision that was really quick and that got us bogged. So next time—we don’t do that! Maureen and I talked about it after . . . next time, if we’ve only got one car, we stay on the roads . . . and we think about other people. And that’s something that we learnt . . . But nowhere else around here is there a women’s council that does this, nowhere else do women go into the bush like this and be independent of men, and I think we have to learn to do that. And if we want to do that we have to be really responsible and learn how to do that too.49

Despite the tensions, there was a strong endorsement by the end of the meeting for the idea of further camps, more opportunities to meet across the regions and to learn about each other’s country. There was general agreement with Maureen about how the day-to-day experience of both of the camps had been different from those which women had attended with men: . . . We all get in here and do cooking and that’s real good . . . I never seen that happen when we went to meetings with mans . . . its not like this at all. Here we’ll get up and feed each other’s kids and all look after one another . . .

Pleasure in each other’s company and a sense of the value of their coming together had been the goal of the Women’s Council and the Winbar meeting repeated in many voices what Barbara had said at the close of the Mount Grenfell camp. 52


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— ‘Speaking what our mothers want us to say’ — This camp’s been different from camps we’ve been to with the men, because you end up talking about government and submissions and all that and you don’t have time for women to spend together and just tell stories about what happened in the older women’s lives and there’s a lot of concern about the breaking up of families and all the grannies getting left with the grandkids, and we thought we could do something about it . . . Maybe get some money and set up holiday camps or set up camps like this or at Winbar and just show ’em around and just have a good time with them . . . ’cause most of the time if you’re stuck at home you’re just watching television . . . Or you never get time to see your kids or you never get time to talk to your mother or your aunties or anything like that and we thought it’d be good just to get out into the bush and spend some time together . . . Mainly just to have a good time, doesn’t matter too much what we are doing out here just as long as everyone has a good time and has a yarn to each other . . .

There were no formal Women’s Council camps after Winbar, because personal tragedy intervened again. Deaths and sickness led key people to move out of public life for varying periods of time. It became harder for many women to take time off for extended camps as they were increasingly called on to fill the many administrative jobs which sprang up in the mid-1980s in local land councils and organisations. Maureen O’Donnell has also been concerned about the increasing formalisation in representation for meetings. ‘. . . Like, they have womans’ meetings now, but they’re not in the sense we used to have ’em, where anybody can come along and you’d feed ’em and give ’em petrol . . . Not ‘it’s this one invited from this group and that one invited from that group . . .’ They are not the way womans’ meetings should be run . . . They should be just open for any woman who likes to come along . . . and we used to get womans from way up the top end of the river and way down the other end at Balranald . . . it was fantastic’50

Another important change which Isabel Flick has identified were the amendments to the New South Wales Land Rights 53


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Act in 1988, which shifted attention from cultural to commercial uses of Aboriginal land, and made it harder to organise activities like the camps.51 But the desire to organise local camps has continued and has particularly drawn on the experiences of the Women’s council. There was a women’s camp to protect Bulla Bulla Tank, a birthing site near Mount Grenfell, later in 198552 and there have been annual community camps at Angledool, in the northwest. The far western communities have continued to work on their cultural revival, as Elsie Jones had talked about at Mount Grenfell. One of the projects they are undertaking is a community history, with Karin Donaldson, based on the life story of Eliza Kennedy. Called The Keewong Mob, the book is based around a series of camps which were held by community members since 1986 on their Ngiyampaa country. The most recent camp has been the momentous handback of Mutawintji to its traditional owners, in July 1998, where many young people took major organising and speaking roles. Many of the participants of the Women’s Council camps met again at Mutawintji and the elderly women, like Nancy Bates, were just as eager as the younger women to reminisce about their strong memories of the camps. For Barbara Flick, the camps had been a major force in strengthening relationships across the regions and for teaching the children who had now assumed their place as leaders. The land had been a place for healing old wounds but also for passing on knowledge: At Winbar, those women all came again from the northwest and from Bourke and Walgett, and shared once again with women from Wilcannia and Menindee the experience of being on the country, with the kids and sharing the stories. And Winbar for me was the time when a lot of the story about apprenticeship was told long in to the night. People remembered and recalled and prompted each other, just sitting round the campfire at night with the sky full of stars and the kids going to sleep and they were listening to those stories. It was a conscious decision we made about these women’s camps being a place of education, of passing on

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— ‘Speaking what our mothers want us to say’ — stories to kids and a lot of that happened around the campfire at night, it was a time for stories when everybody was settled and we’d share a meal together. It was just beautiful being out in the bush and people’s swags around the campfire and the really little kids would go to sleep and be covered over. And as the older kids would listen to these stories, some of them would comment on how similar these stories were by saying, ‘That happened to my granny too’ or ‘My granny told me that she’d been sent out to work on that station too’ . . .53

In planning the ceremony to mark the handback, Maureen was insistent that Aboriginal women’s presence must be felt. I said that it’s important that a woman’s point of view come across. I wanted to get up and have my say, ’cause I was there in the beginning too.54

In her speech, Maureen pointed to her grandchildren, who were playing in the sand in front of the dais where the New South Wales Premier and many politicians and Aboriginal organisational representatives were to speak. Maureen did not talk about the high-level political conflicts and negotiations which had had to be undertaken to extract this victory from a reluctant government. Instead, she focused on those young children, repeating what she has said in many contexts. That the struggle was for them, and that it is made meaningful because they are there to listen and learn from the experience of living on their land. We take the kids out to Mutawintji and have meetings, we take school kids out on the bush, that’s part of their schooling . . . Its been a great thing since we regained Mutawintji. It’s a lot better going out there now knowing that you own it, you’re a part of it. We was always a part of it, but just to have that recognised is really something . . . and when they said it can never be taken away from us, well that made me feel real good.55

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3

Seeking justice: traditions of social action among Indigenous women in the southwest of Western Australia 1

PAT BAINES Seeking justice

The decision by Indigenous women of the southwest of Western Australia to initiate native title claims raises interesting questions about whether this involvement is regarded by themselves and others as continuing traditional responsibilities or a new activity. Successful native title claims are based on continuing association with land, and while this association need not be fixed or frozen it must be shown to be of the same stuff and substance as past associations. The older women I spoke with about native title claims pointed out that both men and women were taking on responsibilities to try to get back access to land and recognition of native title. Nyungar traditions place the responsibility for caring for country and speaking about families’ stories about their connection to the land on the oldest healthy member of a family regardless of their gender. While I accept that this is the basis for transmission of cultural knowledge, in this chapter I focus on women’s lives across time. There are reasons for taking this approach. Indigenous women of the southwest have not been treated with the same degree of attention as men in the writings or, later, in the newsreels made by the invading European population. Male leadership and ‘activism’ has been documented on television 56


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— Seeking justice —

and in the local newspapers in relation, for example, to the contested site of Gooninninup (referred to later in this chapter)—so that Indigenous men like Robert Bropho and Clarrie Isaacs are often referred to as ‘activists’. But the participation of southwest women in the protection of sacred places or in attending meetings to do with developments of various kinds has gone largely unreported. Secondly, Indigenous women’s experience of colonisation was not identical to that of Indigenous men because women were usually the ones sought out for sexual favours (Stannage (1979, p. 120) quotes William Knight who in 1870 commented on ‘the early age at which the young native girls are abandoned by shepherds and labourers at outstations’.) Their children were the ones referred to as ‘half castes’. Women were the ones taken into white homes as housemaids. Finally, in the era of State-provided housing (following the bulldozing of the Aboriginal reserves in the 1970s, and to the present), Indigenous women have come to be referred to as ‘bosses’ of their homes. The social duties of senior women, while in part overlapping with the duties of senior men, are, nonetheless, not identical to them. Therefore the situation of Indigenous women across time must be considered in its own right, not to exclude Indigenous men but to ensure the legitimacy of women’s participation in the native title process. The lack of commentary in historical times about Indigenous women’s social action may threaten the integrity of Indigenous women’s present performance in native title matters. The central argument of this chapter is that there is a long tradition of social action by southwest Indigenous women which seems to draw on a continuity of strong, sometimes outspoken, female ancestors. What this chapter shows is that Indigenous women of the southwest have worked on two fronts for many years. On one front they have always worked to look after their kin and have at times had to confront members of the invader population whose behaviour has threatened the wellbeing of the family. On the second front, Indigenous women have, alongside Indigenous men, become increasingly active in working ‘for their people’. 57


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In this chapter I draw on three sources of information about southwest Indigenous women: southwest Indigenous women’s own comments on their involvement in the native title process; nineteenth- and early twentieth-century observations in the writings of invader–settler men and women on the place of older Indigenous women within Indigenous communities of the southwest; finally, I set the historical statements from the nineteenth and early twentieth century alongside observations from my own research over the last twenty years working as an anthropologist with southwest Indigenous women and men. This allows me to offer an explanation as to why some women and not others have submitted native title claims, and secondly, to show that the strength of women claimants in coping with the demands and stress of the native title process comes from the cultural tradition of the responsibilities of older women. The Nyungar People The Indigenous people of the southwest portion of Western Australia live within an area of country which stretches from just north of Gingin and Moora, eastwards to just beyond Merridin but west of Southern Cross, and southwards including Hyden and the Stirlings to the south coast. The western boundary is provided by the Indian Ocean. The Indigenous people living within this area once belonged to a number of separately named communities (once called ‘tribes’ by nonIndigenous people, a term which now offends some Indigenous people), covering distinctive areas of southwest country. The Anglo-Celtic invasion with its associated introduced sicknesses, massacres and forced movements of people, has changed the way Indigenous people of the southwest refer to themselves. They use a nomenclature which unites distinctive groups as ‘Nyungar’.2 The term ‘Nyungar’ means ‘man’, a fact that cannot go unnoticed in a discussion about southwest women. It perhaps reflects the tendency for Indigenous men to be more visible than Indigenous women, possibly to dominate at the 58


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interface between cultures. More recently, partly in response to the native title claims process, southwest Indigenous people are naming themselves more precisely as ‘Balardong Nyungar’, ‘Bibelmen Nyungar’ or ‘Warjuk Nyungar’ (to cite examples), that is, re-adopting the old names of specific stretches of country (Tindale, 1974, gives approximate boundaries of these countries). Indeed, some Indigenous people of the southwest are making even finer distinctions, identifying whether they are riverine or estuarine groups, coastal or hills peoples within the new double nomenclature. This is an important part of the process of reclaiming past knowledge. Such knowledge was not always transmitted down the generations for a number of reasons, including decisions of ancestors to edit the transmission of knowledge across the generations; the failure of successors to remember what they once were taught; or simply the vagaries of losses of knowledge as a result of premature deaths. For the purposes of this chapter, however, I will use the generic terms: Indigenous or Nyungar people. In part this is to indicate that what I am writing about is generalisable—it is about cultural practices rather than individual performances. It is also a way of protecting familial knowledges from exposure while at the same time supporting the content of that knowledge. Nyungar people have suffered not only invasion of their country but also denials of their continuing knowledge of the traditions handed on to them by their ancestors (Elkin, 1938, 44; Berndt and Berndt [1964], 1985; Berndt, 1977). These accusations that Nyungar elders have reinvented their traditions were never innocuous comments as they have given grounds for the dispossession of Nyungar people. My assertion is that the Indigenous women of the southwest have accepted the cultural injunctions to care for country and look after successors from their forebears and, in so doing, are demonstrating their dedication to ensuring cultural continuities. The commentary of Indigenous women claimants The effort required to put in a native title claim and to continue to watch over the claim for months and years, is 59


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strenuous and stressful. I have heard older Indigenous women of the southwest reflect aloud that they would ‘really like to give the whole thing away, except . . .’ They testify repeatedly that they are not acting for themselves but for their successors. They clearly indicate that they are fulfilling social obligations such as those their own elders took on before them. They respond to a social imperative—what Nyungar people refer to as something which they have ‘gotta’ perform. In families in which younger, more highly educated members have sought to take on the task of putting in the native title claim in place of their elders, the senior members of the older generation have expressed their indignation and hurt. For the task of putting in a native title claim is not something which may be separated from active elderhood. This does not preclude younger family members assisting an elder but there is resistance to younger people spearheading the endeavour. The point is that younger people are not authorised to bring out the knowledge belonging to a family if there is any person in the generation above them who is still acknowledged as the living custodian of familial tradition. The exception is where an old person, who has already passed on knowledge to her/his successors, has already authorised the senior people of the next generation to act on her (or his) behalf. Even then the senior but ‘retired’ grandmother (or grandfather) would expect her descendants to talk over what they are thinking and doing with her. In a case where an elderly grandmother was neglected by those who had put in a claim, word began to circulate to register her concern, within her extended kin network and indeed beyond it. I was later told that the woman putting in the claim had been to consult with her elderly relative. In ‘seeking justice’, (to cite an expression used by one senior female native title claimant), southwest women perceive their actions as framed by the culturally prescribed responsibilities of their social position. They draw on the strength of knowing that what they are doing is right and places them in a long tradition of the commitment of elders to their successors. However, this perception is not always shared by their successors. Challenges to the rights of grandmothers to submit 60


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claims have occurred. Younger but senior members of a branch of an extended family may mount a claim in the place of a more senior person from another branch of the family. These situations have created tensions where the older person expresses the view that the younger person has acted improperly and without ‘proper respect’. I am aware that on occasion messages of regard and respect have been sent to appease the offended elder (I have been asked to deliver such messages). Younger persons acting in native title matters have justified their actions in expressions such as ‘I’m doing this for everybody’.3 They make this claim by drawing on the way elders have devoted themselves to doing things ‘for their people’. Yet by claiming a wider legitimation than the family and kin, a significant change in that legitimation has occurred. Normally grandmothers who are recognised as elders make the submission of a claim as an integral part of grandparenting duties. Individuals who make a native title claim on behalf of their people draw on another source of cultural justification which can be traced back as early as the 1830s when Nyungar elders tried to deal with colonisers. It is important to note that familial seniority and being a grandparent may not occur together. A relatively young person may be a ‘grandparent’ as Nyungar people are grandparents to children of nieces and nephews as well as to their own sons and daughters. In this way a younger member of a set of siblings may become a grandmother/grandfather before her/his own children are themselves parents and, more importantly, when the generation above her/him is still actively performing the duties of grandparenting and seniority/elderhood. The cohesion of an extended family may be challenged when people, who are senior within their own immediate families but not within the extended family, initiate and submit a native title claim in the name of the extended family. Such issues of authority have been resolved by ensuring that all the senior people within each of the sub-branches of an extended family are included in discussions. The decision of senior family members to include or exclude younger members of their extended families in the 61


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process of a native title claim is influenced by the interest shown by the younger people in what is happening and whether they have in the past been willing to be taught their cultural heritage. Younger people who have diligently listened to the stories their elders have told are noticed and marked as future holders of responsibilities for cultural and spiritual matters. I have tried to explain this carefully because the situation is never static and younger people may suddenly demonstrate a commitment not previously evident. It is important to note that gender plays no part in determining the suitability of a younger person for inclusion. However, past respectfulness or disregard, as well as present dedication of time and energy are crucial to the selection of those chosen to be named as supporters of the primary native title claimant. Looked at from another perspective senior women (and senior men) are bringing down moral judgements on their successors. In doing this they draw on culturally acknowledged authority. This authority to judge and measure those around them goes beyond the extended family and may be brought to bear on all those stakeholders who are part of a native title case. While it is possible to gain an understanding of current Nyungar cultural perceptions, it is more difficult to obtain an historical perspective. In the next section of the chapter I consider the available literature before discussing oral traditions and current practices. The colonial encounter and Indigenous women: first signs The historical records describing Indigenous women in the southwest offer tiny windows of illumination regarding the position of women within the first decades of colonisation, although it is difficult to ascertain what is ethnocentric bias, and what reflects pre-invasion social practices. Despite these concerns there is some agreement in sources produced by male writers of the time in their observations of Indigenous women. They agree that young women are treated as slaves and drudges by their men, but their status in society changes as 62


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they become older. Three very different commentators: George Fletcher Moore, an early colonist; Archdeacon Wollaston; and Bishop Rosendo Salvado make similar observations. George Fletcher Moore, writing in 1878 after observing Indigenous people in the Perth region over many decades, commented on the practice of polygyny (men having several wives) and noted, ‘Women are the mere slaves of men. They must construct the hut, make the fire, provide roots for themselves, and give a share to their husband; while he does not always share his game with them’ (p. 80). Wollaston, archdeacon in the Anglican church, who travelled extensively throughout the southwest on horseback, reflected often in his journals on the situation of Indigenous people. In his 1841 journal he wrote, The married women are the most wretched specimens of humanity ever beheld—many of them mere walking skeletons. They are treated by the other sex with the utmost indifference, having to perform all the drudgery of savage life, carrying the children in a bag at their back, or astride upon the shoulder . . . [the men] frequently quarrel and fight with each other; chiefly about their wives. (Wollaston’s emphasis) (Bolton, Wollaston Journal 1, p. 132/133)

Wollaston also noted that many people he encountered in 1841 appeared malnourished, but were reluctant to leave their own stretches of country. They preferred to eke out a livelihood within their own country, despite the impact of land clearance on their resources, ‘Met with several other natives. Among them were two most wretched looking Old People, Man and Wife, so feeble from disease, old age and want of food, as scarcely to be able to work . . . the infirm and the aged appear to be utterly neglected’ (Bolton, Wollaston Journal 1, p. 150). Salvado writing a decade later made similar observations: How pitiful is a woman’s lot . . . if the birth is too painful or she has the bad luck to be a third daughter, she is at the mercy of an unnatural mother. When she is a young girl if food runs out and people are starving, she will serve as a meal . . . when she is grown up her life is not worth

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— Words and Silences — twopence to her own husband. (Storman [Salvado], [1851] 1977, p. 83)

These sentences certainly represent Salvado’s assessment of the situation of Indigenous women in the 1850s. Salvado provides the sources of information on which he based his judgements. He claims to have heard about practices of infanticide and cannibalism in times of extreme need from an Indigenous male who became one of his helpers who asserted that since the conversion of Indigenous people to Christianity the practices had ceased. Certainly, Salvado tells us that he witnessed (as opposed to being told about) Indigenous women fighting and he was party to ‘rescuing’ (or so he believed) orphaned girls who were taken to Perth and brought up by nuns. Later, however, Salvado (Storman, p. 169) does add a rider to his generalisations: The old people are treated with respect by all who know them—indeed, veneration of them goes so far that others put aside for them the most sought-after roots and the best parts of the catch, no matter how far they are from camp at the time. Women at this time of life possess great influence; indeed, if native women ever know happiness, it is in their old age.

George Fletcher Moore (1878/1978), who settled in the Swan Valley just north of Perth, has an entry in his dictionary of Indigenous words which points to the ceremonial transformation of senior women into a very special order of grandmother: Monyo. A ceremonious meeting arranged for the purpose of conferring upon certain elderly females the character and office of Moyran, or grandmother. Upon these occasions presents are interchanged between the Moyran and the person conferring the distinction, who is usually some man of influence in the tribe . . . She can henceforth no more be carried off for a wife or female drudge, nor be made victim of revenge. Her influence is henceforth powerful with her tribe, either in stirring them up to war, or in allaying and reconciling quarrels. She is even permitted, if she thinks fit,

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— Seeking justice — when dispute is anticipated, to mingle among the threatening combatants, and deprive their spears of their barbs (p. 55).

These varied sources which indicate senior women were active and authoritative members of their communities are supported by other evidence from early colonial writings. There are references to senior women’s involvement in funeral rituals, healing the sick and the other essential activities in Nyungar society. The question of course may be asked whether cessation of the ceremony of ‘monyo’ meant that elderly women no longer had this special position within Nyungar society or, whether in calling all elderly women ‘grandmother’, the rights and responsibilities pertaining to the ‘moyran’ were transferred to them. The writings of non-Indigenous women in later decades suggest that Nyungar women continued to be strong and outspoken. Ethel Hassell (n.d.), who lived in Jerramungup in the lower southwest between 1878 and 1886, had close associations with Nyungar women in the region. Yilgar, ‘a particularly dreadful looking woman who had been very free in her remarks . . .’ (p. 8) was a senior woman who taught Hassell about the country and Nyungar protocols, The [Indigenous] girls did not dare speak as plainly as I did and to tell the truth I was half afraid of her, for she was an uncanny old creature. She seemed in a mysterious way to know everything that went on everywhere. My brother used to call her ‘Yilgar the spy’, for when my husband came home she always was there to open the gate and walk to the homestead beside his horse telling him of everything that had gone on in his absence. All the men disliked her, and my husband always used to say he would make her his overseer, for she could tell him how the sheep were looking at the out stations, and where the horses were running, thus saving him many a weary and fruitless ride. Yet she rarely stirred away from the camp and her information was invariably correct. She was about the oldest woman in the tribe and well versed in all the tribal law and traditions and a great stickler for their being kept up. She had the greatest aversion to two half caste children who lived with their

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— Words and Silences — father a shepherd and their mother a black woman on one of the out stations. (Hassell, 120)

Yilgar was probably in her 60s at the time Hassell knew her. There was another old woman, Gimbuck, on the station: ‘Yilgar and Gimbuck (another old woman) are great cronies and are indeed about the oldest natives on the station, but they never reveal any native law without consulting each other . . .’ (p. 32). Later Hassell recounts, There is a weird legend which I never could get any of the women to discuss with me. Even now through the mists of long years old Yilgar’s face of horror comes before me, when I asked her to tell me about the ‘woolgrum york’ and I still hear sharp tones of enquiry ‘where you hear of woolgrum, that blackguard, Missus?’4 When I told her my husband had told me something about it she waited for him as he was coming home to supper and told him I was still a young girl and he had no right to tell me of blackguard things. (p. 197)

We learn of two elderly Nyungar women, Balbuk and Ngilgie, in the first decades of the twentieth century through the writings of Daisy Bates. Bates described Balbuk as ‘old Balbuk—the last Kalleepgur of what is now Perth’ (Bates in Bridges 1992, p. 1). ‘Balbuk was born at what later became ‘‘Hooper’s Fence’’—native name Woorurdrup’ (p. 2). Bates, in journalistic fashion, described Balbuk as a person who had broken every moral law of her group, but she never broke her totem food-laws, and she never failed to perform propriatory services to the magic snake . . .’ (p. 11) When [Balbuk] returned to Perth her old tracks had been fenced in by the ‘jangga’ [white people—literally evil spirits] and houses, roads, yards and paddocks lay across her path to rock hole and root patch. Balbuk broke through fence and paling and house to go along ‘her own road’. Her white friends time and again rescued her from long imprisonment, but to the end of her life she savagely resented the closing of her old tracks. (Bates in Bridges, 10)

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The image that emerges from Bates’ description is of an older woman who actively asserted her attachment to country. She was a woman of ‘rage and strength’ to use Daisy Bates’ own words. Setting aside an alleged act of murder, which would have marked Balbuk within her own community as a person to watch out for, there are nonetheless indications that Balbuk envisaged herself as a person to stand up to alien dictates. Her acts of trespass were testimony to her knowledge that she moved within a country which had been transmitted to her by her ancestors and for which she still held a responsibility. The threats of imprisonment for moving across what was hers to care for were not strong enough to prohibit Balbuk’s actions. The fact that non-Indigenous people intervened to prevent her from being imprisoned and that magistrates dealt leniently with her must have confirmed to Balbuk that her claiming of rights in country was approved by the ancestral powers who aided her against the violating actions of the colonising invaders. Like Balbuk, Ngilgie broke marriage rules when she deliberately chose a young man who was ‘neither janga nor yunga’. Ngilgie adapted women’s gathering role to her changing circumstances. She gathered to herself creatures which would either be a source of food (eggs and milk), or, in the case of the dogs, who could alert her to malevolent spirit presences as she was living outside her own country. ‘Ngilgie has a strong masterful personality, and wherever she abode, her path was marked with altercations and affrays, either with natives or with the white servants of successive mistresses.’ (Bridge, 106) She was also the holder of knowledge of her country, ‘Ngilgian knew every winnaitch [sacred, forbidden] spot from end to end of her boojoor [homegrounds] and many a tale would she tell of the evil fortune or death that came to the jang-ga who destroyed winnaitch tree or spring or sacred ground’ (p. 112). The moral authority of Ngilgie, like Balbuk, was vested in her knowledge of the meaning of her country and her acts of warning intended to protect it. The picture that emerges of both Indigenous women, even if we admit the possibility that Daisy Bates may have been 67


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projecting on to them, is that they were in later years anything but submissive. They were both willing to stand up to the non-Indigenous authorities. Yet both spoke English and had significant relationships with non-Indigenous people, who became friends. Another aspect of female authority is glimpsed in the writings of non-Indigenous diarists. Both Wollaston and Hassell mention allowing Indigenous women into their kitchens. Hassell recalled, ‘I was in my bedroom when I heard a noise in the kitchen and, on going out, found Yilgar and Gimbuck [senior Indigenous women in the Jerramungup area] with a strange woman in the kitchen examining my saucepans and plates’ (Hassell, 36). The hearth is the locus of female power within Aboriginal societies for it is at the hearth that the woman exercises control over the food cooked to ensure that no food is contaminated by malevolent forces of sorcery. The presence of senior women at Ethel Hassell’s hearth raises the question as to whether these senior women saw it as their responsibility. It is clear that while non-Indigenous observers characterised Nyungar women as exploited by their husbands, they recognised that older women were authoritative and powerful within their own societies, and willing to assert that authority to protect country and cultural knowledge. We will now consider Nyungar stories of ancestral women, which I will then contextualise with the image of the land as a woman’s body. Weeping Women Dreamings in southwest country Two similar stories are told in the form of Dreaming stories which concern ancestral women who have become part of the landscape. They lived, not in ‘time immemorial’, but in a post-invasion society. Versions of these stories are known in a number of families and kin groups. I will simply outline the essence of these stories without identifying the specific parts of Nyungar country to which these stories pertain. They are expressed in a particular part of the country as land or rock 68


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formation.5 Both stories recount a continuing, unending remembrance of children who died. One of the stories is directly related to people being forced to move away from the areas of Anglo-Celtic occupation. In the process of moving away, a baby died and the story says that the stream pouring down a particular hillside is the mother crying for her child. Indeed the hill is referred to as the weeping or crying hill. The second story is one in which children suffering from an epidemic sickness brought by the Anglo-Celtic invader try to cool themselves by jumping into a river and die as a consequence. The rocks and waterfall in the river are seen as the mother, now embodied in stone, weeping for her children. In both these stories the land holds the signal details which are testimony to the events which are held in remembrance. It is evident that in both stories there is a merger here of the mothering land—the land as a mother—and the humanly embodied mother whose child returned to the spirit world and to the land. The anthropological and historical literature underplays the grief which Indigenous women have felt as they have failed to hold their successors in human embodiment. Indeed the mass dying from influenza and tuberculosis and measles are part of an indictment against one’s living predecessors. Nyungar elders emphasise that they have ‘survived’. They underline in their testimonies to a non-Indigenous world just how extraordinary this is, for they have survived against the odds. The malevolent acts of the invaders in damaging and desecrating country and the dangerous forces they brought with them in alien food and foreign diseases are recognised as a cause of the harm that has come to Indigenous people. Yet Indigenous grandparents have suffered anguish at their powerlessness to prevent the deaths of children from sickness, the forced removal of their successors, the deaths of their young people from suicide. The answer to the company of accusatory voices who judge the malperformance of the mothers and grandmothers is then a twofold one: firstly, that despite all that they have been through, Nyungar people still survive; and, secondly, that the terrible things—the deaths of successors— 69


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have not been forgotten but are taken up by the mothering land herself as perpetual reminder. Thus when Indigenous women speak of their responsibilities to think about future generations, about their successors, it is against the backdrop of a land which itself recalls the grief of failed care. There are, for some grandmothers, reproaches which come from within their own lived experience of young people who died prematurely. There is the blight/reproach which the drinking of alcohol, the sniffing of volatile substances and the taking of a range of drugs by young Indigenous people puts on their elders. The elders, male and female, seek by their solicitous care and unswerving example to stem the destructive tide. Yet among the older people themselves are the casualties of acts of self-destruction particularly from alcohol consumption. Sometimes the older people who would continue to behave as elders are worn down by the anger of their successors. The grieving held in continuing sign within the land meets and flows together with the burden of pain born by the living embodiment of the caring land. There is a third place of weeping within the landscape of the southwest which provides a way of offering a commentary on the first two. The breast-shaped hills with misty clouds encircling them in ‘misery rain’ are two young women.6 These two young women would not follow any instruction from their elders but acted in a sexually provoking way, causing communal troubles. Their undisciplined and wayward behaviour led to their being incarcerated forever within the earth. These crying young women are to be avoided. I add this last Dreaming story because it acts as a counter-vision to the distress of those who have lost their children. In the first two stories it is the invasion of alien peoples with unknown sickness who damaged country, which led to premature and untimely deaths. While I cannot state with any certainty when these two young women lived, that is, whether their wilful promiscuity was a postcolonial event, the issue which they embody within the landscape certainly was. The sexual congress between the men of the invading settlers and Indigenous women produced offspring whose smell and colour caused concern (Hassell, 120–). 70


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The intellectual problem of the wilful pursuit of fertility does not produce a fertility site but a dangerous place within the landscape. I recite this story in outline not to embarrass or offend Indigenous people but because I realise that some of the southwest women who are noted in the European records as worthy of special attention appear to have knowingly disregarded social norms of their own society. Their forcefulness was expressed in the taking of partners who breached the marriage rules of their people, or, who were offspring of cross-cultural relationships. By recognising a seamier side of Indigenous womanhood, I am forced to ask whether the contemporary position of Nyungar women making native title claims draws on both traditions of strong senior women: able to intervene in disputes; but also a tradition of feminine assertiveness, even wilfulness in the face of situations which were novel. It was an intimate familiarity with the invader–coloniser which allowed Indigenous women to cheekily oppose fences and regulations about dog ownership and so on. The demography of the southwest allowed for both transitory and lasting relationships between Indigenous women and non-Indigenous men to be formed. In forming these associations, Indigenous women produced offspring who embodied a new reality. The children were both associated with the invader as a physical embodiment of the invader as well as with the people of the land. The landscape of the southwest has not only held saintly, heroic women within its storied forms but also the intransigent and mischievous. The point I am trying to make is that Nyungar authority draws on a strength which is both beneficent and malevolent. Nonetheless, there is an editing of lives to erase the less than exemplary performance which only leave traces in the landscape of the southwest. I was told a story in the early 1980s about an Indigenous woman who lived in the vicinity of the New Norcia mission and was speared to death for breaking social rules and was left hanging on a fence. Indigenous people avoided the locality and memory of her deeds which then became lost to future generations. If they 71


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return to the land there is a vague unease that harmful and dangerous forces may be abroad, but they are not transformed into a permanent marker of remembrance. The historical literature does not provide much indication of the gendered identity of ancestral beings such as the Waugal. The Waugal (rainbow serpent) is generally spoken of quietly and respectfully as ‘Old Boy’. However, one elder, when he was alive described the ancestral presences within the country he called home as having both male and female Waugal abiding within them. Similarly, stories of the mamara (wutarjis/paljat) refer to these small bush spirits as ‘little men with long beards’; the same elder told me he had also seen little old women. Stories told to Ethel Hassell of the time when animals were people describe beings of both genders. It is important to state the gendered nature of these stories, as the early anthropological literature generally excluded Indigenous women from the sacred sphere. In fact the stories support the notion that in ‘the early days’ the gendered beings representing male and female were present within the country and the creators who shaped the land. Spirit children dwelling within the land waiting to be born are likewise both female and male children. There were also female and male totems, Balbuk and her uncle Joobaitch being warr (male) and yongar (female) respectively. Mother land and Nyungar women’s care of country The Hindmarsh Island case highlighted the problems associated with articulating Indigenous women’s knowledge. Knowledge about procreation and women’s bodies, knowledge which is women’s business, may not be spoken publicly before mixed audiences. The secrecy accorded to some orders of knowledge allows for non-Indigenous scepticism about the unrevealed content. The spiritual world which imbues Nyungar lives with meaning has both good and bad ancestral women and men embedded within it. Daisy Bates discussed in her writing what 72


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appeared to her to be a selective transmission of stories, so that some stories of ancestral beings were being excluded over time. In the 1980s I discovered other editings in transmission of knowledge. This selective recounting of stories appears to veer away from female beings. This, I would suggest is because women are remembered differently. Indeed there is at least in the contemporary world an emphasis upon the woman since the land is most often (although not solely) conceptualised as a mother, whose body is the land. Contemporary women have within the land women’s special places concerned with procreative processes. They have significant female ancestral powers from whom to draw strength. In giving birth to children Nyungar women are linked with the very identity of the land. Womanhood within Nyungar cultural traditions is not then an empty or weak identity. Individuals may become weak or bad through their own comportment—breaking the Nyungar rules—but in being mothers they are truly of one with the land. As the Waugal, most often referred to as ‘Old Boy’, came to have singular and special importance in stories about country, the conceptualising of the whole land as a mother’s body seems to have taken place. It is as if the stories of Dreaming women, almost certainly secret stories largely for women’s ears, had been given a visible but generalised form. The fact that the whole earth is regarded as a mother emphasises the considerable significance of women. Interestingly it does not go together with a masculising of the sky. Many of the stories about the star beings have ceased to be told in the southwest. The female earth is not dichotomised with a fathering heaven. Much of the southwest was matrilineal and it is still said that ‘children follow in the mother’s line’ or ‘fall on their mother’s side’. It is clear that Nyungar women are not a disadvantaged, disregarded part of Nyungar society, rather, as mothers and grandmothers they are central to continuities of spirit and of being. I would suggest that this has always been the case based on evidence drawn from Indigenous men’s stories told to 73


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non-Indigenous persons. Green (1984, p. 21) found an example of a Dreaming story recited by Mokare, an Indigenous man of the Albany area, in 1830 (at the beginning of the Anglo-Celtic invasion–settlement) to Captain Bourke: A Dreamtime woman named Watari found a large snake which she ate without offering to share it with her husband. He was furious and beat her with his stick. In great pain Watari dragged herself towards the sea, gouging the course of the Kalgan River as she went . . . the body of Watari became Green Island.

George Fletcher Moore ([1884] 1978, p. 19) provides another example in his dictionary of southwest Indigenous words: Dedam. A name given to two stars, one male, the other female, of which the following story is told: Dedam the man speared Dedam the woman, because she let his brother’s two children stray away. The children are represented by two small stars at some distance higher in the heavens. The spear is represented by two stars standing one each side of the woman’s body.

What these two stories give us are two female bodies within the natural environment—one an island, the other signified by a star. Although these ancestral beings are signs within the land and sky for women being disciplined for breaching cultural rules and therefore go to support the physical punishment of women by men, they are important too in supporting the creative part of women in shaping the earth and being present within the earth. Women were not excluded from the creation stories of the Indigenous peoples of the southwest. One of the most remarkable entries in Bishop Salvado’s memoirs is a Dreaming story told of the moon and the sun. I should perhaps contextualise this by noting that western traditions associate the sun with masculinity: The moon which is of the male sex for them [Indigenous families of the New Norcia area], is a being with evil designs. His wife is the sun, and she is a friend to the natives, just

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— Seeking justice — as he is an enemy. The moon wanders through the sky accompanied by many dogs which he sends to earth to kill something for him whenever he feels hungry; when he comes down himself he often steals the natives’ children, but he is forced by his wife, the sun, to give them back, because their family is already too large. (Storman [Salvado], p. 128)

As the earth has been feminised in speaking about one’s country, here the sun (and the day) are also feminised (and following Hallam, 1975, one might wish to suggest that fire belongs in this complex). Thirty-odd years after the AngloCeltic invasion the Indigenous people of the northern wheatbelt expressed anxieties about their children being taken from them by night. The text is ambiguous as to what the theft of children is about (food or successors/progeny). The sun is stronger than her husband because she can compel him to act. Caves where the moon has come down and left imprint are part of southwest traditions. Salvado also notes that Indigenous people ‘believe the stars are joined in marriage and have children’ (Storman [Salvado], 128). Gendered identity is then transposed on to the natural world as is the idiom of kinship. Against Salvado’s account of a powerful sun woman must be placed his range of comments about the place of women within the Indigenous society of the Victoria Plains. The point is that women have become translated into the land of the southwest, so that the maternal land embraces within herself ancestral women. The generalised feminine has running alongside it the memorialising of particular women. It is possible that we have become almost complacent at the imaging of the land as a human body, most often as a female body. It is not only the body of a woman as woman that is emphasised but the body of the woman as mother which is underlined. There are many examples of Indigenous individuals across the country referring to the land as a mother. Nyungar people of the southwest speak in the same way of their country. Anthropological research has in the past emphasised the importance of male ceremonies for caring for 75


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country, without bringing to the fore the concept that care is exercised towards a mothering land. It was often in small ritual acts that the importance of mothering was perpetually recalled. Grey noted in 1841(cited by Hallam, 1975, p. 14), ‘The natives have a . . . law that no plant bearing seeds is to be dug up after it has flowered; they call them (for example) the mother of Bohn, the mother of Mudja, etc . . . I have never seen a native violate that law . . .’ (II, 292). Tonkinson has observed that the Mardu of the Western Desert, when harvesting tubers, leave the older ‘mother tubers’ intact. The reference to mothering plants, to the female earth body which contains within its bounds both female and male ancestral bodies, is not made by way of analogy. Although I once heard a southwest Indigenous man refer to ‘Mother Earth’ as in the earth, the usual way in which the term is used suggests the immediacy of the perception, ‘the earth is our mother’. The earth is not like a mother but acts and performs as a mother. The earth is where southwest Indigenous people exist prior to their births in human bodily forms. The earth is where the spirits return at death. The earth provides food and supports and nurtures all life. Swain (1992) has suggested that disinherited Indigenous peoples of the settled areas use the term ‘Mother Earth’ to give them a generalised sense of identity with the land. I am suggesting here that many Indigenous people belonging to the country of the southwest see the relationship as generative and actual. The image of mother is a central or core icon in the southwest country and legitimates the position and acts of southwest women as mothers and grandmothers. Remembered grandmothers: ‘the good old girls’ and ‘the real old identities’ In the early 1980s the conversations of older Indigenous women of the southwest were punctuated with thumbnail sketches which recalled deceased ancestors. Referred to as ‘dear’ and ‘good’ (as were their male counterparts, for this 76


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was not gender-specific memorialisation), these grandmothers had become encapsulated in vivid vignettes. The stuff of these memories was either a gloss on repetitive acts of kindness or on extraordinary encounters of humans with the realm of the spirit beings. While I do not want to retell in detail what is the proper property of Nyungar families to tell or recount, I will illustrate in broad strokes the kinds of images which were being perpetuated. Some ‘good old girls’ may be remembered with their kangaroo dogs forever catching a feed for their grandchildren in the hungry ‘horse-and-buggy days’ (many decades are indeed recalled by Nyungar people as hungry times). Others are recalled on repeated journeys from their homes on the reserve, walking into country towns bag in hand to buy food for their successors. To travel along those particular roads was to remember these daily performances of ancestors forever (and still) in dedicated motion on particular tracks which they in their human lives had trodden repeatedly. There are other more individual stories of, for example, a grandmother who protected her grandchildren from a malevolent spirit who sought to make them sick (this is of course a counter-memory to the story of the children who could not be saved from sickness). An aging granddaughter recalled with laughter as she pointed at the paddock where the event occurred, how her grandmother had pulled out a poisonous snake instead of a goanna from a hole in the ground when she was hunting for food. Another grandmother is remembered as ‘a Nungar doctor’ who delivered many Nyungar babies. Then there was the grandmother who was always ‘up with the morning star’. When recalling such ‘good old’ ancestors, the less perfect moments of their lives are erased, as diacritical indicators of dedication are given to stand out in brief but sharp clarity. Indeed one has sometimes to delve if one wishes to hear even the positive details beyond the purposively remembered, encapsulated lives. What is significant is that the memorialisation of these grandmothers places them either at locations which were their homes, and, therefore, focal points within the landscape (and future places and sites of spiritual significance for their 77


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successors); or sets them within the countryside of the southwest so that their benevolent presences become confirmation of the goodness of the mothering land. By repetitive acts of goodness, living grandmothers whom I knew were already having stories attached to their beings. The heaped praise and respect which was accorded to the final living members of a grandparental sibling set disregarded any omissions of care. I was taken to visit ‘dear old people’ who, had I known them 30 years before, might have been mentioned with less fond appellations. In their last years only that which would be of future use to their successors was recalled over and over again. Visited grandmothers: ‘the secret life of the family’ In the early 1980s the elderly grandmothers to whom I was taken to visit (by middle-aged women who, often, were grandmothers themselves) lived in many different country towns of the southwest as well as in the city of Perth. Often I was taken to the door through a carefully planted garden, which battled the summer heat of the wheatbelt, and led into an immaculate lounge room to be sat down in the midst of a collection of testimonials of two kinds: ancestral presences or contemporary talent. Photographs of signal grandmothers (and grandfathers) surrounded by children and grandchildren were carefully arranged around the room. They were set amidst the trophies won by successors on the sports field, and the paintings of southwest landscapes often painted and sent home from younger male relatives in prison. While we drank tea, we were shown photograph albums (or, sometimes metal biscuit tins or old leather handbags). The photos were of the days on the reserves situated just outside the country towns. There were photos of grandmothers standing beside their homes of corrugated iron and sacking around which they too had planted gardens. Then there were the photos of travelling, of horsedrawn sulkies loaded with children. As we surveyed these photos the elderly grandmothers would recite to us who was 78


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in each, sometimes providing thumbnail sketches of their own beloved grandmothers and grandfathers. It was both a duty of remembrance and an act of transmission of knowledge across the generations. The cleanliness and tidiness of these grandmothers’ homes was the result of a duty of performance which was required of them. The living grandmothers performed other duties of care towards predecessors and successors. They swept around their own homes to create a place testifying to the alert wakefulness of their care for their successors (signs and footprints of uninvited presences would be evident in the well-swept, well-raked ground around the house). Some grandmothers would then move on to perform the same duties of sweeping with a branch around ancestral graves in the country cemeteries. These visits to the graves of deceased ancestors were sometimes performed on a daily basis. As individuals were remembered performing this task it formed the basis for a future performance. Some performed these duties at the cemetery less frequently, choosing instead to sweep around the places where their grandmothers had once lived. In one case this was around the tree which the grandmother had planted. However, in some houses, concealed from the sight of visitors, the best clothes of deceased ancestors were kept in the safety of a wardrobe in the grandmother’s bedroom. The care of that clothing, which had once covered an ancestral being, symbolises the transfer of the ancestral presence from cemetery to the heart of home. The unseen clothing and the photographs act as constant reminders that the living are not alone. These grandmaternal homes I sometimes heard referred to as ‘fall-back points’. They were certainly writ large in the duties of visitation by descendants. These houses were sites of familial memories scarcely distinguishable from neighbouring (often State) houses in the street, except, perhaps, by their insistently drawn curtains which prevented outsiders peeping in. These acts of remembrance contrast with those of an earlier generation of grannies in interesting ways. Those grandmothers are recalled within the landscape of country: speaking in the Nyungar language to the Waugal (rainbow serpent); or 79


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carrying away a shrieking frog (kwiyar—some southwest frogs scream out when alarmed) to avert the signalled demise of close kin, and so on. They are memorialised within an outdoor world (the homes they had made on reserves were often bulldozed). The grandmothers I met, most of whom have now themselves returned to their homes in the land, were associated with western-style housing. They had sought to bring their deceased loved ones inside these houses and thus transcend the shift from camps and humpies and shacks to houses. There are testimonies to the post-death appearance of grandmothers and grandfathers coming to the doors and entering the homes of their successors. The actions of generations of senior women became invisible to outsiders unless they were privileged to be invited into the domestic domain where continuities of responsibility and action were made apparent. This ‘secret life of the family’, as one grandmother referred to it, was a duty of action which ensured the transfer of knowledge to successors. The senior women who are now helping their families document native title claims have in their backgrounds these grandmothers and mothers whose acts were of dedicated service. There appears to be a process of translation and transformation. The repetitive acts of care of the grandmothers of the early 1980s eventually crystallised and became pithy, brief but vivid stories of the ‘good old girls’ and ‘real old identities’. These vignettes cast the grandmothers forever within the landscape of their successors. The grandmothers who are ‘really up in years’ cease to tell stories of their ancestors. One exceptionally old woman, much loved by many generations of successors, would only repeat over and over: ‘Poor fella gone now, poor fella finished now’ as I sat with her looking through a photo album, in her room, which was the sleepout (a place at the boundary of house and outside world from where she was said by her kin to converse with ancestral spirits and keep harmful spirits away). Over time, remembered ancestors become nameless ancestral beings turned into natural embodiments of rocks and water. Although the loss of names may result from past taboos 80


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on repeating the names of deceased persons, I found in the 1980s that there was little interest in the names of ancestors whom one had not personally known. However, a few individuals were already seeking to write down family trees which went back to the start of colonisation. In the 1990s the native title process has made the construction of genealogies obligatory. The senior women who are currently making native title claims stand in a cultural tradition in which senior women were accorded space for social action. The current performance, while novel in terms of the legal prescriptions that have to be followed, is consistent with the aims and intentions of successive generations of senior Nyungar women. In ‘seeking justice’, senior Indigenous women today follow the exemplary performance of grandmothers who issued warnings against harming places within the land and brought down verdicts on the malperformance of farmers who ignored them and damaged places of spiritual significance. Caring for country was not an exclusively female prerogative, but Nyungar grandmothers did not shrink from challenging acts of wanton and dangerous destruction, whoever the perpetrator. Women protecting sacred places The Old Swan Brewery on the west bank of the Swan River below Mount Eliza and near Perth’s central business district became a contested site in the 1980s. The old brewery outlived its usefulness as a place for making beer and the red-brick building of nineteenth-century industrial design was scheduled for redevelopment. The brewery had been sited to take advantage of clear spring water. This place of confluence of river estuary and spring had always been held in regard by Indigenous people as a sacred site called Gooninninup, a resting place of the Waugal. Gooninninup is an area which is of spiritual importance to women as well as men. In 1989 a camp was set up by Indigenous people associated with the area to try to prevent the redevelopment of the brewery site. The camp 81


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(labelled by the media ‘the protest camp’) at Gooninninup, beside the Old Swan Brewery, was occupied by both men and women, together with some children, who lived in tents carefully organised according to the proprieties of family and kinship. Senior and younger Indigenous women joined with the men in the protest, although the really old people did not usually sleep over at night, and so did not have to listen to the hooting and abuse from the adjacent highway. Men tended to emphasise the ceremonial importance of the area, while the women recounted spiritual insights including visions and revelations they experienced as they slept and lived at the site. These revelations were crucial in reaffirming the continuing spiritual power of the place. In the film Always was, always will be Edna Bropho recounts her nocturnal experiences of hearing the whistles of ancestral presences, letting the living know that they are present before departing. Edna Bropho, wife of Robert Bropho, was involved in and provided leadership in many protests over land. She had provided crucial leadership at the camp on Heirisson Island which was set up to draw attention to the then imminent destruction of the sacred site of the Bennett Brook (Baines, 1988). She had been present at ‘protest’ camps which had fought for housing for Nyungar people. With her sister and cousin she has made a native title claim to Munday’s Swamp on land now belonging to the Perth Airport. I have watched Edna Bropho over almost twenty years and so am able to record something of her concerns. At Bennett Brook she stood between her two old uncles, Willy Worrell Senior and George ‘Chunky’ Anderson, when she spoke about her concern that a gas pipeline might harm the beauty and sacredness of the location. She was present at the meeting which sought (but failed) to prevent the building of a boat ramp opposite the ‘home’ of the Waugal near Success Hill. She was at the meetings in the Helena Valley which tried to prevent a housing development on Nyungar camping grounds on the bank of the Helena River (both the Swan and the Helena River are registered sacred sites associated with the Waugal). She attended the meetings at the camp of Mabel and Johnny Moore situated 82


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in one of the last remnant stretches of bushland in the Swan Valley. These are but a few examples of Edna Bropho’s vocal and unfailing efforts to protect places of spiritual significance to Nyungar people. Her life prior to her native title application had been one of endless dedication to protecting the land for her successors. Edna Bropho has also spoken out on social and welfare issues, voicing her concern at public meetings for grandchildren who inhale volatile substances; and testifying to a Native American chief who visited her community in the Swan Valley of her concern for successors suffering ill health, poor housing and their need for clean water. She lamented before a company of witnesses her deep grief at the premature and terrible deaths of her successors. When native title claims are placed within the sphere of an individual woman’s life, it becomes clear that promoting a claim is simply one more unavoidable task. Other Indigenous women played important roles at the Gooninninup camp, both in testifying to the knowledge handed on to them (often secret familial stories) and in sharing their personal revelations at the site. Despite being forced after months of residence to cease to camp on the sacred area, the Indigenous people who were consternated by the plans for the area, particularly, an application for a number of liquor licences, worked with me to put together a report providing evidence of the spiritual meaning of the location. One Nyungar woman known for her quiet commitment to healing and to the care of her people, reflected for some months on whether or not she would place her family’s secret knowledge of Gooninninup in the report. In the end she gave me permission to include some of her familial secret knowledge, as well allowing me to record her sighting of the Waugal when she was present at Gooninninup. This latter experience was to prove vital evidence in the court case, for I was asked whether there were any contemporary revelations. It was in the context of recording testimonies and stories about Gooninninup that a meeting took place at the foot of Mount Eliza and within sight of the sacred site of Gooninninup.7 At the meeting women as well as men were 83


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required to testify before others of their knowledge of the location. The meeting had been set to take place around a fire so that the smoke from wood from the area swathed us in its scent and acted to cleanse our presence at the sacred site. We gathered in a circle. A senior woman who had knowledge of the significance of the land began to speak. She spoke very softly and the women, including myself holding the tape recorder, clustered around her in a tight intimate circle in the middle. The Indigenous men present remained in the outer circle but moved further away. Thus it was that the telling of women’s business was witnessed by the men who stood just out of earshot, and was only heard by the women present. When the same woman gave testimony in court in relation to the granting of liquor licences, she explained that she could not tell the significance of the area to women publicly. Again we are encountering an Indigenous woman who had time and again attended meetings to seek to protect sacred places within the environs of Perth. Murdidj Yorgas clever, strong women: power and authority of Nyungar women Recently, travelling through one of the northern suburbs of Perth I saw a car windscreen which had written across it ‘murdidj yorgas’ which translates as ‘strong/clever women’. It points to two things. Firstly, that the Nyungar term is still in currency and, secondly, that it is something to boast about. Before dismissing Balbuk and Ngilgie as improbable exemplars of Indigenous womanhood, since they seem to lack a commitment to Indigenous social mores, it is necessary to explore the pivotal role of the murdidj yorgas. Again I shall draw on the oral traditions of the southwest to contextualise the term. In 1988 the Indigenous filmmaker Tracey Moffatt produced a film in Western Australia called Moodeitj yorgas, Solid Women. The film was made as a tribute to Wongi academic Gloria Brennan, who in her middle years had died of cancer. 84


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The notion of strong and talented women is part of Nyungar cultural representations. I knew one elderly woman who was described by other Nyungar women who knew her as murdidj. When I asked why she was described in this way, one interlocutor explained to me that you could never tell whether this particular murdidj woman had been drinking or not. The Nyungar woman in question accepted the ascription with a burst of laughter. Indeed she did run an unusual household into which she would accept the maimed and the winyarn (usually translated by Nyungar individuals as ‘poor fella’)—homeless women and their children, battered elderly whitemen and so on. She was able to deal with the local police, should they arrive on her doorstep, with bold, jocular assertiveness. She performed a ‘magic’ with her pension money which disappeared when the demands for assistance were too much or inappropriate (she spoke to me privately of her many hiding places) but could make it reappear should she need to meet proper demands for her help. She collected unusual dogs. So far nothing I have said would identify this murdidj yorga from many other Nyungar women, for it is a style of being a Nyungar woman. In more hostile terms she might be accused of ‘big timing it’ or worst still of being kat wara (‘off her head’). Her life history had been touched by tragedy. It has also been disrupted by drinking phases in which she saw strange and terrible forms. Nonetheless, her ability to stop drinking in order to care for successors as well as her recovery from an encounter with a spirit being who had made her sick, marked her out as more than ordinary. In her latter years when I drove with her to visit her aging kin and to sit and ‘yarn’ and to remember the exemplary grannies (female and male) of her childhood and girlhood, she was chided for failing to come sooner, yet she was received with a certain deference. In the 1980s I knew a number of women who were referred to as murdidj. What they had in common were their tales of deeds of fierce assertiveness. One told me before witnesses that she had hit her de facto over the head so hard that blood had flowed all over the place and he had had to 85


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go for stitches. The company laughed at the altercation and I was shown the stitches. Tilbrook (1983, p. 148) provides a similar account: A non-drinker, Annie Stack did not approve of others drinking. On one occasion she found her husband . . . in the hotel and when he did not come out immediately she called him, she was so angry that she entered the hotel and struck him. The blow must have been heavier than she intended, for she broke his arm.

Tilbrook says that Annie Stack was known as ‘Queen of the Aborigines’ who could acquire food on credit from shopkeepers in the country town of Toodyay on her word. Another grandmother, who described herself as ‘straight out’, and was referred to as murdidj by some of her female kin, had a group of women, including myself, howling with laughter as she recounted her forthright dealing with a police raid on her house. She greeted them as they climbed over her walls and crept up her path. Another recited an account of dealing with police who came to her house without a warrant. There are stories still current of older women bringing down judgment on white farmers, telling them that their failure to listen to Nyungar warnings about clearing particular sacred areas of country would lead to harm coming to members of their families or themselves. The assertiveness of clever women may contend with the authority of senior women who are recognised as ‘good’ rather than murdidj (clever). Academic performance has certainly marked some younger women as murdidj (‘solid’ is also used as a designation for capable). Speaking out: the responsibilities of older Indigenous women The image of outspoken and authoritative older women is a thread which is discernible in the ethnographic literature as well as hinted at in the historical texts. Behind the negative comments on the physical appearance of older Indigenous women in early descriptions of them, it is apparent that they 86


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took their responsibilities for caring for country and watching over the social wellbeing of their kin network very seriously. Native title applicants, women who have led their sibling sets to put in claims, have tended to be older women, women who have some interesting characteristics in common. Some, but not all, as young women worked for non-Indigenous households. They were either accorded respect or stood up for their rights. One woman told me how she refused to wash the dirty socks belonging to the ‘master’ (a farmer) of the household. She was only persuaded to undertake the task after her ‘mistress’ made her a cup of tea. When, eventually, she washed the socks, the act was transformed by the act of the nonIndigenous woman waiting on her Nyungar housemaid. Another common thread joining these women is that as younger women, they participated in the emergence of Indigenous organisations.8 Working for their people In the early 1980s the Aboriginal Advancement Council, which I visited regularly for months on end, was run by an Indigenous woman from the southwest. Mrs Lorna Humes, supported by her family and kin, looked after a wide range of concerns ‘for her people’. She worked together with the Aboriginal Housing Board to assist families who had got into arrears with the payment of rent on their State houses. She helped new arrivals in Perth find out what had happened to their pension monies when they had not received them after moving to the city. She bought paintings and carvings from Indigenous people to put on display in the upstairs gallery for resale. She organised break dances for teenagers and baby shows for mothers. She organised exhibitions of paintings by imprisoned Nyungar artists. A photographic display was put up to celebrate National Aboriginal and Islander week. Once Mrs Humes took me to a meeting with a host of government agencies to talk about the future of Cullacabardee Village, an Aboriginal housing development on the edge of 87


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town. She organised macrame classes. I was exhorted to try to persuade retailers to supply us with food that was past its use-by date so that hungry Indigenous families in town could be fed. Mrs Humes was asked by Kimberley people to investigate a postmortem which had occurred in Perth when it was alleged that some of the internal organs of a Kimberley man had gone missing. The list goes on and on. I am trying to give some idea of the breadth and the variety of things which might be done for one’s people. Indeed, the boundary between the responsibilities of Mrs Humes as elder and grandmother and her responsibilities as Manager of the Advancement Council, were sometimes hard to draw. The environment of the Aboriginal Advancement Council was familial. Mrs Humes’ sisters, daughters, cousins, her husband and son, all helped. Indeed, her husband, Mr Sullivan Humes, had mounted his own special project ‘for his people’, making inexpensive but respectable coffins in which those who died in town and outside their own country could be taken home. The women made cups of tea for old people who dropped in. Some of the old people who visited the Advancement Council slept out at night under bridges on the Swan River. I provide these observations not because I am unaware of the politics of the Aboriginal organisations in Perth, as described by Howard (1981) but because Howard fails to consider the wide range of activities which each of these Aboriginal organisations tended to fulfil. I am aware that Mrs Humes had her critics within the Indigenous community and that she also expressed fierce concern at times at the management practices of other Indigenous agencies. Whatever their flaws and the tendency for each emergent agency, first and foremost, to be a service provider for a particular network of kin, these Aboriginal agencies, set up in the 1980s, may have provided a training ground of sorts for dealing with the native title process. The Aboriginal Advancement Council was also a place where a number of the women who now are making native title claims used to meet. There were heated discussions and 88


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daily searches of the West Australian newspaper for any news concerning southwest Indigenous people. It was a place to which Indigenous news was phoned in. Support was given to those who were making efforts to protect places of spiritual significance (Baines, 1988). Like the homes of the active and serving grandmothers, the Aboriginal Advancement Council also worked to ensure the transfer of knowledge across the generations. However, rather than being a nodal point in the landscape of a single kin group, its reach was wider and its activities involved much negotiation with government agencies. Those Indigenous southwest women who gathered at the Advancement Council were linked to one another by shared experience, by their stories of life in missions and of the children who had been taken away (and of those who had escaped through the wit of their mothers or grandmothers who had hidden them under flour sacks or darkened their face with charcoal to make them look less fair). They talked of their ancestors. Mrs Humes’ own mother was remembered for being imprisoned in ‘The Brig’ (the room that served as a prison) at Moore River Native Settlement. As a young woman, she stood up to the men who ran the settlement; detention was the reward for ‘cheek’. The women talked about the times spent as housemaids on farms around the southwest. Experiences of coercion and years of servitude are the stuff of remembered injustice. There were remembered role models in social action. Mrs Humes spoke with deference of her relation Mrs Elizabeth Hansen who had been accorded recognition for her service to her people by being awarded the Order of Australia. In one of my field notebooks I found a speech which I heard delivered by Mrs Hansen asserting the need for Aboriginal land rights. Mr Clarrie Isaac’s mother had also received the Order of Australia for the soup kitchen she ran to feed her people. The Advancement Council was then a location where women who stood up for their rights were remembered, where the social injustices which southwest Indigenous people had suffered were considered and ways in which to right those injustices were discussed. Indeed the old people who came in to sit a bit and talk brought back memories and details of the 89


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suffering of Aboriginal people. It was during the macrame sessions that I heard story after story of the stolen generations. Activities which appear to be the stuff of assimilation could actually frame the moments during which spirits were made indignant and people were committed to the search for justice. The women sometimes dreamed dreams which they tried to realise. One of Mrs Humes’ cousins, who unfortunately passed away before she was able to make a native title claim (true indeed of Mrs Humes herself), tried to establish a rural community where Nyungar old people could go and live, and where Nyungar children could spend holidays. It was another enterprise in which a woman, not alone, but with her family, sought to create a better world for Indigenous people. The project did not succeed but the attempt was made. The Aboriginal Advancement Council was not alone in being a place in which Indigenous southwest people talked about the situation of their people. I became familiar with some of the other agencies and while I am aware of the times of tension between the various agencies, I know too that there were other times when the agencies would support one another against perceived government attempts to cut their funding. It is apparent that the various Aboriginal organisations, sometimes with non-Indigenous support or ‘backers’, became training grounds for dealing with, what one rather inebriated man at a meeting at the Advancement Council aptly called ‘circle talk’. ‘Circle talk’ is the talk of government representatives whose words were words of the bureaucratic processes which constricted Indigenous lives. The use of non-Indigenous acquaintances to challenge the bureaucratic regulations was a strategy used by grandmothers I knew. I was asked, for example, to phone the State Housing Department to find out why some State houses were not being maintained. It was in Aboriginal agencies that I became familiar with the practice of writing to the person at the top, usually the appropriate State or Federal minister, or the ombudsman, or the prime minister. Often the letter would be handed from the minister to people working for him or her, but sometimes an answer came down directly from the top. Indigenous people 90


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looked to the person with the power to change something. This calling to account of the minister himself (occasionally herself), placed Indigenous administrators and managers of Aboriginal organisations on an equal footing with those to whom they wrote. Some Indigenous women moved from Aboriginal organisations to working for government departments. They were generally employed in positions directly concerned with Indigenous welfare (housing, employment and health), where they became familiar with non-Indigenous modes of operating. Perhaps this has given them some resilience in the lengthy and stressful native title process. Concluding reflections The native title process may disadvantage Indigenous applicants because of lack of funding and the length of time it takes to get through the various hurdles of the process. Indigenous women and men may feel great indignation that it is once again the Indigenous and original occupants of the great south land who must prove their continuity of association with country (I have heard this said on a number of occasions). However, I have sought to show that Nyungar women are not intimidated by the social status of the tribunal staff with whom they must speak. They have been schooled by their involvement in Aboriginal agencies and through the protests which sought to protect places of spiritual significance from harm, or simply by learning to survive against the odds within the wider society, to stand against the structures created by Australian society. The native title process which requires proof of continuous association with an area of country can only strengthen the resolve of grandparents and elders to work for the future generations.

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4

The silence and power of women DEBORAH BIRD ROSE The silence and power of women

Silence can be powerful. It can also be a symptom of powerlessness. My purpose in this chapter is to examine two dimensions of silence: silence as an active voice, and as a passive condition. I take active silence to be characteristic of an Indigenous system of knowledge, as well as of religious and political life. Passive silence derives from the deployment of power to stifle or destroy people and their knowledge. This form of silence is thus characteristic of regimes of terror (Mackinnon, 1987), and is a principal tool in colonisation. As is well known, colonisation depends on erasure; the political economy of knowledge within which colonising practice is embedded generates the silence of the conquered. Where silence previously existed as an active voice, the practices that stifle and ultimately erase thus work a double damage: not only suppressing people’s audible voices, but reconfiguring the meaning of their silences as well (Mackinnon, 1987). The quality of silence expresses power relations; it is, of course, gendered. Generations of anthropologists, ethnographers, and untrained observers have recognised the existence in Australian Aboriginal culture of a domain of knowledge and action restricted to men and organised around gradations of initiation. The interior of this domain has long been 92


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— The silence and power of women —

regarded as sacred. From generation to generation, in contrast, women anthropologists, ethnographers and untrained observers have argued for the existence, in some parts of Australia, of a parallel domain of knowledge and action that is restricted to women, organised around gradations of knowledge, and sacred on the inside. It seems that while the men’s domain is readily accepted as an integral part of Aboriginal social and cultural reproduction, the existence of a women’s domain must be argued afresh in each instance, and its relationship to the reproduction of Aboriginal society and culture must be demonstrated. One of the many consequences of this asymmetry is the burden it places on Aboriginal women who choose to take public positions concerning the existence of restricted knowledge, sites, and/or actions. Demands for information by colonising forces create a double bind for Aboriginal people which arises most visibly in public arenas such as land claims and sacred site protection. This double bind captures Aboriginal men and women differently, as I have argued elsewhere (Rose, 1996, 1999a), and the processes of trying to protect sacred places and to achieve greater control over land remain not only contentious but also potentially invasive and oppressive. The core issue concerns cultural survival. Australia is now a signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Article 27 of which ‘provides that groups must not be denied the right to enjoy their own culture’ (Dodson, 1995, p. 13). The demand to reveal that which is meant to be concealed has caused anguish for many Aboriginal people, and has led both to voluntary silence and to violent silencing. Twenty years of land claims in the Northern Territory have shown that even beneficial legislation can be invasive in its demand for information and in its silencing of women. Contestations over large issues like gold and uranium mines have become arenas of violence that go far beyond anything produced by the Aboriginal Land Rights (NT) Act 1976. Increasingly, those opposing native title interests are taking an extreme adversarial approach. On current evidence, one should expect more violence, more silencing, more defilement. 93


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My path of investigation takes me into a colonising sphere where silence, metaphysics and politics collide. In a number of disputes over sacred sites (Coronation Hill, Alice Springs dam site, Hindmarsh Island bridge, among others), one prong of the argument against Aboriginal people has been structured this way: formerly nothing was said about the place being sacred; that former silence indicates absence – nothing was said because there was nothing to be said; people’s current assertion that the place is sacred thus constitutes a shift from absence of knowledge to assertion of knowledge; such a shift is best labelled ‘invention’. The logic involves a number of assumptions about oral culture, the meaning of tradition, and the opacity of Indigenous people, and these assumptions have been the subject of excellent critique (for example, Merlan, 1991; Nicholls, 1996; Wiener, 1995 among others). Modern western thought is built on the idea of progress, and this idea is also a theory of knowledge: of its expansion, its refinement, its movement toward completion, its moral ground. The modern theory of knowledge does not require a presumption that silence must amount to an absence of knowledge; there is ample scope for the idea that knowledge can be concealed. But the moral ground of this theory depends on representing its own knowledge as the measure of all knowledge, and representing as a universal good the idea that knowledge is becoming ever more complete. It thus argues forcibly against the concealment of knowledge, justifies the appropriation of knowledge, and renders plausible the idea that silence in others signals an absence of knowledge. As this theory of knowledge has developed hand in hand with the loss or suppression of westerners’ love and desire for mystery so silence, which once also signified insight (Mortley, 1986, p. 161), increasingly has come to denote only absence. The modern theory of knowledge is thus monocentric in the extreme. It claims the ability to know the whole of the universe (Davies, 1992), and thus claims that the whole universe is knowable—by a few of the members of a particular historically-situated culture, of a particular species on a particular planet in a small pocket of what may be one of an 94


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infinite number of universes. This claim is vigorously policed (Haraway, 1988), and the question of what counts as knowledge is a site of epistemological and social violence. An example of such violence is the attempt to exclude from scholarly discourse evidence that might be labelled subjective rather than objective. Violence may be concealed or naturalised in respect of abstract knowledge, but it is vividly evident in real world contestations. In the densely conflicted colonising domain where race, gender, and theories of evolution and progress intersect, the silence of Indigenous women has appeared as a natural fact. When Indigenous women refuse to be silenced, the response of opposition is often massive. Aboriginal knowledge systems In the Aboriginal societies with which I am familiar, knowledge is conceptualised on the one hand as eternal, and on the other as open both to innovation and to loss. Barbara Glowczewski, who studied with Warlpiri people, writes that ‘the Dreaming appeared to me not like a mythical time of reference but as a parallel space–time, a permanency in movement, with which the Warlpiri have a relation of feedback’ (Glowczewski, 1988a, p. 10, see also Laughren, 1993, p. 76). If Dreaming is a permanency in motion interacting with the contingent world, there must always be tension between received wisdom and newly gained wisdom, between the generations of the past and the individuals of the present. One of the best analyses of how this tension is managed is offered by Wafer and Green (1989). Their study of Arrernte traditions in the Simpson desert forms part of a ‘claim book’ which is a portion of the evidence put forward in the Northwest Simpson Land Claim. Wafer structured his analysis in the first instance around contrast, showing how Arrernte traditions differ from conventional views of written religious traditions: Aboriginal traditions in general have not been systematised by the kinds of processes that written records make possible, through the juxtaposition and comparison of different

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— Words and Silences — versions of the tradition. There is no canonical version of Arrernte traditions, comparable to the canonical books of western theology. The creation of a canon requires written records, so that different versions of the traditions can be compared, a single version elevated to the status of orthodoxy, and other variants declared secondary or heterodox.1 (Wafer & Green, 1989, p. 44)

When we step aside from contrast, and attempt to look at Aboriginal knowledge systems in their own terms, we find that the structure of knowledge is embedded in the metaphysics of power and contingency. This is to say that the structure of knowledge is part of the message, and indeed may be a significant and enduring aspect of the knowledge system (see Bradley, 1998).2 The communication of knowledge from generation to generation by human beings is both its strength and also its fragility. Wafer describes the contingencies of knowledge in these systems: A major characteristic of oral cultures is that different parts of their traditions are preserved in the memories of different people, with the inevitable overlaps and gaps. It is not usually the case that any one individual has an overview of the whole of the tradition. In the case of overlap, it is quite common for different individuals to know different versions of the same part of the tradition, because of the way variations occur as the traditions are transmitted over time and across geographical distance. (Wafer & Green, 1989, pp. 44–5)

Michaels (1994, p. 88) links orality to the political economy of knowledge: . . . Warlpiri graphics are a writing system that does not subvert the authority of living people, and does not permit the identification of historical change as Western literacy does. Warlpiri graphics oppose publication and public access. They do this partly by limiting denotation . . . recalling stories without asserting any authorised text or privileged reading.

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So how, one asks, do people ever manage culturally or socially to cohere? The answer is through their shared practices, one of the most socially significant of which is ceremony: For Aboriginal people in general, the proof of the consistency of their tradition, and of their consensus with regard to it, does not lie in their adherence to some type of theoretical synthesis of the tradition, comparable to a creed, but in their ability to perform the appropriate ceremonies . . . the tradition is validated in a series of concrete situations, rather than by reference to an ideal model preserved in writing . . . This makes it very context-specific. (Wafer & Green, p. 45)

Knowledge is held to be immanent in the world—that is its power. Thus the process which western thinkers might label ‘innovation’ is understood by many Aboriginal people as the process by which Dreaming impels itself into the world of human action (Glowczewski, 1988b, p. 2; Myers, 1986, pp. 51–4). ‘New’ knowledge comes into being because people discover it or are given it (Merlan, 1998 for several examples). The underlying presumption is that a plenitude of knowledge always and already exists in the world. Knowledge moves into and out of human ken; it may be revealed or concealed, made known or kept hidden, but it is always there. Many anthropologists have been fascinated by the intellectual frisson between Aboriginal people’s concepts of continuity (permanency) and their appreciation of and intense involvement with the contingent world (in motion). Stanner gave the case its most pithy expression in 1965: Like other aborigines, the Murinbata believed that their tradition was old, continuous and true. On the evidence, I had to conclude that, historically speaking, it was shallow, selective, and neither true nor false; as Lauriston Sharp said neatly: ‘somewhat adjusted to meet the exigencies and accidents of the inescapably real present’. (Stanner, 1989 [1965], p. 241)

In sum, permanency in motion is constituted and kept alive through the tension between the new and the received, the revealed and the concealed, and through a system of signs 97


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which cross-reference one domain with another, leading people into a lifelong quest to achieve knowledge and wisdom. To interfere with this political economy of knowledge by coercing standards of transparency and uniformity is to strike a blow to the heart of the whole metaphysics of knowledge. Politics of knowledge Knowledge is transmitted from one generation to the next in forms that are malleable, many-voiced, and in search of interpretation. Eric Michaels, in his work with Warlpiri people (1985, 1986), emphasised that knowledge is currency, that it circulates according to an economy of country, seniority and gender, that it is the basis for much of the authority of the most senior people, and that it is certainly not available to all (see also Rose, 1994b). In Aboriginal societies knowledge is land-based; personal authority, personal achievement, the authority of seniors, and the integrity and autonomy of local groups depend on the control of knowledge through restrictions on its dissemination. Such a system is subverted through any form of ‘freedom of information’. If there is one thing that is absolutely not free, in Aboriginal society and culture, it is knowledge (Michaels, 1985). Silence could indicate an absence of knowledge, but in Aboriginal societies it most frequently points to a withholding of knowledge. It is thus a complex form of metacommunication (Bateson, 1973, pp. 152–4). Silence in the active voice asserts that knowledge is being withheld. Like Bateson’s example of the nip that announces itself as play (not aggression), or Geertz’s (1973, pp. 3–30) example of the wink, silence in Aboriginal discourse announces the presence of a realm of knowledge and practice which is specifically not being communicated.3 Such an announcement signals power relations: the management of knowledge—hints and glimpses of its existence; concealment or disbursement; withholding, layering, promising, denying; winks and nips. Active silence bears the multi-stranded message that the overt information (silence) 98


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is an index to another form of information (restricted knowledge). Aboriginal societies reproduce themselves through time by managing knowledge (Myers, 1986 is excellent on this topic). Control of knowledge is central to every key social relationship: gender relations, senior–junior relations, land and resource ownership, relationships established through marriage, trade and ceremonial relations. All are marked, mediated, produced and reproduced through controlled management of knowledge. Silence is crucial: control is exercised through judicious management—opening and closing, revealing and concealing. A great many misunderstandings have arisen out of the mistaken view that there is a simple opposition between a category of ‘secret/sacred’ on the one hand, and a category of ‘public’ on the other. The idea is that if something is not restricted by age, gender, or initiation status, then it must be freely available to all. This erroneously conceived opposition fails to take notice of the fact that knowledge is land-based and managed by groups of people who have specific rights, and that strangers have no rights at all (see also Devitt, Green and Sutton, quoted in Wootten, 1992, pp. 73–4). Strangers and non-owners must ‘always ask’ (Myers, 1982). Access to knowledge is achieved through social relations that are founded on the right of those who own knowledge to keep it. The opposition between ‘secret’ and ‘public’ is a close relative of the pervasive sacred/profane dichotomy which framed so much anthropological thinking in earlier decades, and which has framed so much of the thinking and practice of the western world generally. Lurking within this opposition is a gendered analogy—sacred/profane; man/woman. Kaberry (1939) refuted this set of oppositions on the basis of her work in the Kimberley, as have numerous anthropologists since that time. Built upon categories that are held to be discrete, and themselves built upon the bodies that can be thought to provide a ‘natural’ basis for these categories, this opposition further elides the many and varied gradations of rights through which Aboriginal people organise the social management of 99


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knowledge (in addition to Michaels, 1985, 1986, see also Anderson, 1995; Keen, 1994, pp. 226–54 and Morphy 1991, pp. 76–7). The right to hear, the right to speak, the right to see, the right to learn, the right to produce or perform—none of these can be assumed to be equivalent. Further, each is constrained by context; the right to speak in one context may not be translatable to a right to speak in a different context. The right to know of something does not automatically imply the right to speak; spouses, for example, have the right to know a great deal, but not being landowners in the country of their spouse they are not automatically authorised to transmit what they know to people who are not themselves landowners. I am confining myself to speech and silence, but I must note that words are not the only means by which knowledge and rights are communicated. Sign language, gestures, songs, dances, and designs are all forms in which information is communicated and are all constrained within a system in which knowledge is achieved and transacted. Further, the opposition between public and secret domains creates an impression that within each domain meanings will be relatively clear and well established, that once you know where you are with respect to the secrecy boundary, so to speak, you then do know where you are. In fact, boundaries of secrecy change with time (for example, Hercus, 1989; Michaels, 1986, pp. 4–5; Morphy, 1991). It is also the case that the achievement of understanding takes place over a lifetime, and even within a domain classed as secret the density of meanings that can be brought to the multivocal symbols (verbal, visual, performative) ensures that understanding is not equally shared among participants (Keen, 1994; Morphy, 1991; Munn, 1973; see also Turner, 1989, pp. 167–95). Interpretation of existing information is always ongoing— knowledge, in this system, is not a closed hermeneutic circle. Finally, the opposition between secret and public elides the fact that there are many social, ritual and symbolic references back and forth across a borderline that restricts. Most profoundly, boundaries of restriction remain permeable because secret/sacred information is not focused on some other world, 100


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but rather concerns precisely this world. Secrecy is focused most predictably on sites where Dreaming action is bringing/has brought the world into being.4 Embedded in the here and now of the living world, Dreaming alludes to a spirituality of immanence, and to practices which ensure continuity in a world of flux. Gendered knowledge/gendered land Dreaming women and Dreaming men walked separately, and their separate sites of action, creation and negotiation form the basis of gendered sites (see Bell, 1994). In the Victoria River country of the Northern Territory, for example, what people must or must not do in regard to gender-defined areas varies from place to place. Some are so heavily restricted that persons of the other gender cannot even approach; others allow access but restrict knowledge. There are places where men can visit but not camp, or look but not look too long and too hard. Then, too, there is women’s exclusive country. Men cannot go to that place, and if they go near they must cover their heads and look the other way. Men cannot drink the water that flows directly from that place, nor may they eat any food that the women hunt there, nor ought they to look at smoke rising from that country. This area with all its food, water, sites, smoke, its visual imagery and its knowledge is defined as women’s country totally and absolutely (Rose, 1992, p. 51). In many Aboriginal societies there is a women’s secret domain and a men’s secret domain, and neither wholly encompasses the other. Yet if women and men are to continue to share a cultural world there must be communication across the borderline of exclusion. As Bell (1993, p. 183) notes, this is a delicate matter for any anthropologist to probe. Her insightful analysis explicates practices of sharing across boundaries of exclusion (pp. 182–205). For women, as for men, secrecy is both a sign of power and a practice by which power is sustained. The power of women, like the power of men, and like the power of the 101


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group of men and women, countrymen together, is managed, sustained and expressed in various grades of speech and silence. Silence, damage and healing I turn now to examine silence, damage and the power of women in the context of an event in the life of a women’s sacred site near a community I will call ‘Bushtown’.5 As I discuss in greater detail elsewhere (Rose, 1992, pp. 108–9), the relationship between Aboriginal people and their country is reflexive—damage to country, and to Dreamings in particular, causes death or injury to the people who are responsible for the site, and vice versa. I draw on the concept of reflexivity in order to pursue a line of thinking that leads into the politics of silence and action. A Dreaming site and the group of site owners are reflexive counterparts to each other; thus the ‘health’ of the group depends on the state of the site and the condition of the site reflects the wellbeing of the owners as well as impacting upon it. In the logic of reflexivity, damage indicates that something has been amiss with those responsible for the site. Thus, care of sites is inescapably, indeed often exuberantly, political, and people’s ‘right to enjoy their culture’ is achieved through their right to the politics of care and ownership. The damaged site, which I will refer to simply as the Site, is located near Bushtown, and is focused on a large eucalyptus tree. In 1981 it was registered with the Aboriginal Sacred Sites Protection Authority of the Northern Territory (now the Aboriginal Areas Protection Authority). The area is declared to be exclusive to women and thus closed to men; it includes the tree and the surrounding area to a distance of approximately fifteen metres. When the Site was registered, Diane Bell was working with the Aboriginal Sacred Sites Protection Authority, and she documented the Site and provided tomato stakes and surveyor’s tape to mark a temporary boundary fence. A bush track came very close to the Site at that time. 102


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Men knew of the existence of the women’s area and averted their heads or shaded their eyes as they went past. This arrangement was not only acceptable, but deemed to be appropriate. In driving past with a suitable attitude of respect, men acknowledged the presence of this women’s Site. During the course of Bell’s visit, local women performed a ceremony for the Site. In Bell’s words: Women gather at this site to perform Jarada ceremonies in which young girls are taught of the significance of the area and of the importance of performing Jarada in which they reaffirm their relationship to land. While I was at . . . [Bushtown] the women painted up, sang and danced at [the Site] and also sang one evening at a place located at the back of the camp [Bushtown].6 (Bell, 1981, p. 14)

Her statement that the women sang at camp as well as at the Site highlights a significant feature of secret business: that men must know that women do have secret business, without fully knowing what that business is. Public demonstrations of secrecy are an art form of which Aboriginal people are masters. In June of 1984 I was employed as a consultant anthropologist to the Aboriginal Sacred Sites Protection Authority with a brief to visit a number of communities in the Victoria River district and to respond to a variety of concerns which had been communicated to the Authority. One such concern was a request for a woman anthropologist to visit Bushtown in reference to damage done to a secret women’s site. Almost immediately upon my arrival at Bushtown I was taken to the Site by two women who were locally and regionally acknowledged to be strong ‘business women’. By this time, almost three years after Bell’s visit, the tomato stakes and surveyor’s tape had disappeared. There was nothing in the area to indicate to an outsider that this was the location of a registered Sacred Site. The damage consisted of two holes, each about 30 centimetres deep and 60 centimetres across, located about ten metres from the tree. I was told that these holes were ‘too close’ to the tree, and that the women had not been consulted by the men who dug the test holes. These two women, and 103


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subsequently others as well, evaluated the damage as bad but not disastrous. As temporary measures I arranged to have fencing materials sent out by the Authority, and located a Sacred Sites sign which several women erected at the Site. In a series of informal interviews, I learned the women’s story of how the damage occurred. They said that men from the Department of Transport and Works had come to Bushtown to locate a site at which to sink a new bore. Acting, as they saw it, with respect for Aboriginal law, they went to the Bushtown office (run by men) for orientation. They dealt exclusively with two senior men, both of whom were leaders of the dominant political faction, and one of whom was an owner of the area. These men showed them numerous Dreaming sites where they could not test and gave them access to the areas where they did test. The story seemed clear enough, but it was soon to become more complicated. Bushtown women held a meeting at the Site to discuss responsibility for the damage and to decide what to do about it. About fifteen women attended, and a number of them were considered to be senior Law women. It quickly became clear that the proximate causes of the damage were not difficult to define. The area was not properly marked as a Sacred Site; women had not been consulted and thus had not had the opportunity to keep the area restricted. But these proximate causes were shown to have deeper ramifications. Why was there no fence? And why did the women allow the Transport and Works men to travel up and down the road toward the Site knowing that they were sinking holes at regular intervals? The first question was answered fairly simply. Bushtown women had been advised by the Authority to try to obtain fencing materials locally. At that time the only fencing materials available in Bushtown were either owned by the Cattle Company or controlled by the dominant political faction. The women had not wanted to be indebted to the men of the Cattle Company or to a particular faction for the protection of the Site which empowered them. Accordingly, they had decided to wait until they had another opportunity to request fencing 104


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materials directly from the Authority, and in the meantime the damage was done. The second question was more complex. Several senior women said that they had seen the men ‘fly past’ every day on their way to dig holes and that never once had the men stopped to ask permission. Other women asked why they had not approached the male community leaders and told them to stop the Europeans. The ensuing discussion was convoluted in ways that are characteristic of political discourse in which people want to disagree without opening areas of greater conflict. Through allusion, indirection and hand language, the senior women expressed the view that they had fundamental disagreements with the political faction which was then dominant in the community and that to approach the leaders for access to Europeans would have placed them in the position of owing something to a faction from which they were determined to preserve their independence. Throughout the discussion it was taken for granted that the women did not perceive that a direct approach to European male strangers was a reasonable option. Lack of fencing and lack of consultation were proximate causes. The ultimate cause of the damage was addressed as a deficiency of responsibility for the Site. The fact that the Site had been damaged was taken as evidence that the people responsible for the Site must have been at fault, and the question of responsibility raised questions of ownership. The women used allusion and innuendo to make their points, for nobody wanted to make overt statements of blame which might further rupture social relationships which were, on the evidence, already damaged. They took questions of ownership back about two generations in order to define the ‘real’ owners of the Site.7 They then traced out relationships of the living women to the real owners. At this remove, real owners were defined by knowledge; the real owners were those who had taken care of the Site during the course of their lives and had transmitted their knowledge of the Site to the current senior women. Some Bushtown women were closely related genealogically to the real owners but had minimal knowledge of the 105


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Site and little interest in women’s business. Other Bushtown women were more distantly related to the real owners, but their knowledge of the Site and interest in women’s business was strong. The knowledgeable women had been reluctant to assume responsibility for the Site because they did not want to appear to be stealing responsibility from others, but in the face of damage it was clear that something had to be done. The group of Law women in this meeting included a few women whose regional knowledge and standing marked them as leaders and whose genealogical links to country removed them entirely from the Bushtown area. These women led the meeting toward the decision to designate the local knowledgeable women as bosses for the Site. This decision allocated to them responsibility that superseded that of those women who were more closely linked genealogically but were less interested in the care of the place. Now that it was clear who the bosses were, the women addressed the question of care. Several senior women said that formerly there had been knowledge in the form of song, dance and design of the Site, and that currently their knowledge was deficient. At this point one of the senior Law women from elsewhere took a leading role. Drawing in the ground, she depicted designs which she owns and which she said were appropriate to the Site. The designs were all abstract; what she proposed was that they be invested with meaning appropriate to the Site. She also suggested that a song (yawalyu) which she owns, and which she had transacted to Bushtown women some years ago, be used for this Site. The bosses linked her suggestions to their knowledge of the Site’s unique features and its position in more extended networks of Dreaming significance. The meeting concluded with a discussion of the road, and the women decided that it had become a problem. They took the problem back to the settlement where men and women discussed it informally overnight. Men and women together made a decision to close the road to men, and men assumed the responsibility of respecting and enforcing this regulation. 106


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The next step was to heal the Site. The local bosses organised a regional gathering at the Site, and about a week later women came from surrounding communities. There was a total of 65 women drawn from at least six language groups and five or six communities. During this time the men had decided that as the women were travelling on ‘business’ the roads were not safe to men. They declared all the roads in the area closed to Aboriginal men. The ceremony at the site involved singing and dancing women’s restricted songs, both jarata and yawalyu. As the different groups of women danced they showed designs and objects which belong to women, are secret and derive from different countries. I was told that they were introducing other Dreamings to the Site. My understanding of the displays was that they were intended both to define the participants in relation to their own country and knowledge, and more securely to fix the Site within a regional network of knowledge and care. Throughout the course of the ceremony, which occupied most of the day, there was frequent interaction between the women at the Site and the men back in camp. The men were kept captive in Bushtown because they were unable to travel, and women went back and forth between Site and camp to get items which were needed for the ceremony. They demanded food, tobacco, and ochres, as usual, and they made a nice political point when they took the boomerangs from the wall of the Bushtown office. In appropriating a ‘male’ object from the site of factional political power, they asserted the primacy of their Law. An object that has been inside gendered Law becomes dangerous in its own right and could never be returned; the blank wall in the office would testify to these events. Among the Bushtown women there was considerable discussion as to who would dance, who would paint the designs and how the designs would formally be shown. The ceremony would accomplish certain changes: the bosses would become bosses, the designs would become specific to the place. In the course of the day the allocation of roles in dancing, painting and showing designs would make it clear how each person 107


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stood in relationship to the Site and to each other. All of these actions would be witnessed by the people who were there, and by the Site itself. Ritual action changes things; that is its purpose. This ritual action changed persons and designs and, in reforming a community of care, it healed the group and healed the Site. The ceremony was concluded with an assertion, made collectively by all the women present, that the Site was once again whole. At no time were the holes filled in or in any way disguised. They remain, I believe, as a permanent marker of a significant event in the life of this secret and sacred women’s site. But the Site itself, as Dreaming, and as the reflexive counterpart to its owners, was rejuvenated and made ‘happy’ and ‘good’.8 Once the Site had been healed, and the excitement and danger of women’s business had subsided, I explored some of the political aspects of this event in greater detail. The fact that the two senior men who managed the dominant faction had not consulted women was not characteristic of Bushtown men’s usual respect for women’s business. And the fact that other men discussed the damage with the Authority and agreed to close the road to the Site was the type of response which my previous experience had led me to expect from Bushtown men. Their response, however, can also be read as an involvement in community politics. In supporting women’s claims to the right to protect their site, they were also scoring points against the faction which had ignored these rights. I asked the two leading men why they had not advised the Europeans that there was a women’s site along the road. They both stated that it was not appropriate for them to discuss a women’s site with other men. This answer is perfectly adequate up to a point and indicates a dilemma which many Aboriginal men face. When Europeans seek advice about sacred sites and speak only to men they inflict an injustice on both men and women. According to Bushtown people, it is wrong to put men in the position of being obliged to speak for women and it is equally wrong for women to become dependent on men to speak for them. Frequently men respond to requests for information concerning women’s information with silence. 108


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That silence runs the risk of being interpreted as an absence rather than a withholding. In this case, however, the gender argument, real as it is, also masked local politics. The dominant faction in Bushtown was opposed by two other factions and each of the two senior knowledgeable women was a leading figure in these opposing factions. The politics of control of information led two senior men to monopolise access to Europeans in an attempt at brokerage. The strategy was not successful in the long run, as I have indicated. In sum, the absence of consultation about the Site was an instance of community politics played out through land ownership and gender, as well as an instance of the politics of ownership played out in the arena of community factionalism. The outcome seemed a clear win for the non-dominant factions and for gendered Law. The longer term consequences, however, may be more problematic. People used to use this track to go fishing; men, women and children travelled it together, and as they drove (formerly walked) past the Site they put themselves in proximity to Dreaming, acknowledging its power in their lives, and submitting to the authority of that Law. The closing of the road opened a gap between sacred ground and daily life. As I consider that gap I see the importance of proximity in both speech and silence. If the Law no longer interacts with the world of everyday life it may become ever more abstract and distant, and daily life may become ever more disenchanted. In this way current politics of protection, while sustaining the sacred geography of many people’s homelands, may also undermine the long-term proximities and interactions that keep Dreaming presence in dialogue with daily life. Without that interaction with the daily world, knowledge may become distant, inaccessible and, perhaps, ultimately a matter of heritage rather than a culture of living traditions. Slouching toward oblivion Active silence is a form of meta-communication; it says that something is not being said. It falters when one party refuses 109


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to accept the multiplicity of messages and instead chooses to interpret silence as an index of absence. Under colonising regimes of racial and gender inequity, power is exercised in the determination of absence. It is a form of violence, erasing the living presence of active subjects. At the outset I referred to the way we apparently have to argue anew from generation to generation for the need to take women seriously as social actors. In my case study I showed that many Bushtown men take Bushtown Law women seriously; they have a shared interest in the long-term survival of their own society and culture. The evidence with regard to public debates about Indigenous knowledge in land claims and heritage protection points clearly toward the view that a powerful segment of Australian society apparently has no commitment to the longterm survival of Indigenous societies and cultures. In fact, the debates begin to sound like a squeaky door. The same issues get raised, the same things get said. Most of what has been said on all sides of the debates has been said numerous times in a wide variety of contexts—radio, television, press releases, popular press, academic journals, conferences and the witness box. A few examples of recent controversies will illustrate this point. The Northern Territory Government’s proposal to build a dam near Alice Springs was opposed, and public debate focused primarily on the issues of Aboriginal sacred sites that would be damaged or destroyed by the dam, although there were environmental and economic concerns as well. The Minister for Aboriginal Affairs appointed the Honourable J.H. Wootten to report to him under the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act 1984 to enable him to consider whether a declaration should be made to ensure that certain Aboriginal sites be protected and preserved (Wootten, 1992; 1993). The Minister decided to recommend that the Aboriginal sites be preserved, and so the matter now stands. A crucial point concerning silence was made by a Committee of Inquiry set up by the Northern Territory Government in 1984: 110


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— The silence and power of women — The gulf between European and Aboriginal cultural attitudes to the acquisition and spreading of knowledge often makes it difficult for Europeans to appreciate why Aborigines appear loath to discuss a site until a development proposal appears to be well under way. Aborigines, working under long inherited laws of protection through secrecy, prefer not to mention the existence of a sacred site, let alone its significance, until it is almost on the point of being destroyed. Europeans find this approach to be very frustrating and, because they do not understand it, will claim that Aboriginal people find sites only after development proposals have been announced. From the Aboriginal point of view this appears to be a surprising attitude since Aborigines know that they must maintain secrecy unless, as in the case of Werlatye-Therre [a site that would be affected by the proposed dam], the release of that knowledge is perceived, ultimately, to be the only way to protect an area. (quoted in Wootten, 1992, p. 31)

Gender adds urgency to the issue of secrecy. As the Bushtown example shows (and it is just one among many), failure adequately to consult in the first instance frequently disadvantages women. A regular consequence of inadequate consultation is that women’s information appears either as an optional add-on, or as an after-the-fact attempt to make up for a deficiency in the previous information. The Coronation Hill controversy (see Cooper, 1988; Keen, 1993; Maddock, 1988; Merlan, 1991) involved mining interests, Jawoyn and other Aboriginal people, the Aboriginal Sacred Sites Protection Authority (later the Aboriginal Areas Protection Authority), conservation interests, State and Federal Governments, anthropological and other experts, the media and the general public. At issue was a proposed gold mine in an area of which part was held to be dangerous because of Dreaming activity and presence. The Resource Assessment Commission acted ‘as a kind of referee to evaluate incompatible interests’ (Keen, 1993, p. 345), and as is well known, the Hawke Government declared the area to be part of Kakadu National Park in 1991. 111


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During the years when Coronation Hill was brutally contested, the arguments that were brought to bear by opponents of Aboriginal rights and interests included the charge of fabrication. Right from the start the Northern Territory Government asserted that Aboriginal people had invented the site. Barry Coulter, Treasurer of the Northern Territory, stated in 1986: Australia is on the brink of a recession, and we have platinum, palladium and 350 000 ozs of gold locked up in Coronation Hill but we cannot go ahead and mine it because, all of a sudden, it has become a sacred site. It was not a sacred site fifty years ago. (quoted in Maddock, 1988, p. 305)

The challenge that Aborigines were perpetrating a hoax, and thus making cynical use of the legislation, was countered with evidence showing the existence of pertinent beliefs prior to any possibility of material or political gain. Thus, while external documentation was not the basis for a decision about the significance of the site to Jawoyn people, it was a factor in countering charges of cynical manipulation of tradition. The Hindmarsh Island bridge debates took the relationship between Aboriginal people’s knowledge and external documentation and twisted it 180 degrees. In the course of the Inquiry conducted by Royal Commissioner Mrs Iris Stevens, there appeared to be a strong view that there was no anthropological verification of Aboriginal people’s stated beliefs prior to the commencement of the controversy. The first step in the logic was that silence is equivalent to an absence of knowledge (like Coronation Hill). In Hindmarsh a further proposition was that the written record offered nothing in support of the Aboriginal women’s argument against the proposed bridge (this view depends on a particular reading of the evidence, of course). The next step in the logic was that if the record is silent, that silence must indicate absence of knowledge among the Aboriginal people whose views are purported to be represented in the record. From this premise, it follows that the disclosure of information signals its recent fabrication. The next step applies 112


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this logic to anthropologists: if the earlier anthropological record is silent, and if an anthropologist investigates and finds current evidence of a belief system, then the contemporary anthropologist must be involved in fabrication. In a number of instances, arguments about the validity of sacred sites rests on particular views about Aboriginal tradition. Coronation Hill raised with particular vigour questions of the definition of ‘tradition’ (Keen, 1993; Merlan, 1991; see also Rao, 1995). Merlan’s analysis of Brunton’s use of the term ‘tradition’ is particularly insightful around a double bind that can be summarised: if it has changed, then it is not really tradition, and if it has not changed then it is an anachronism that impedes Aboriginal people’s ability to live meaningfully in the present. In the first instance it cannot qualify as the kind of tradition that need be taken seriously when weighed against competing interests; in the second it ought not to be taken seriously when weighed against competing interests. Thus for Aboriginal people’s own good as well as for the good of the nation, tradition ought to carry no substantive weight. Merlan (1991) and Keen (1993) offer excellent discussions of the changing quality of Aboriginal traditions, and the impossibly narrow prison that modernist interpretations would make of the concept. One of the most invidious aspects of the modernist view is the idea that ‘tradition’ and the future are inescapably incompatible. The idea that the past can (and in its more coercive mode, must) be transcended is, of course, one of the key pillars of modernity. Wielded as a weapon against Aboriginal people, this supposition appears to suggest that Aboriginal traditions have current value only as museum displays offering a nostalgic glimpse into a lost past. In contrast, and with great eloquence and authority, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Mick Dodson sidesteps this oppressive modernity: Far from being dead, passive, or conservative, the past is dynamic, active, and potentially revolutionary. It has been, and continues to be, a powerful reality in which we can root

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— Words and Silences — our autonomy, our sense of ownership of ourselves, and our resistance against assimilation. (Dodson, 1994, p. 11)

If Aboriginal traditions are in motion in time and space, if they are dynamic, flexible, and open to the future, as well as the past and the present, is it credible to argue that they must at any moment be adhered to by all the relevant people in the group? The answer clearly is no. Merlan (1991) discusses with especial sensitivity the fact that in the Coronation Hill controversy there were times when there was a substantial lack of agreement among Jawoyn people about the best ways to manage the site. Keen (1993) discusses the Resource Assessment Commission’s assessment of the question of majority rule. My case study of the site that was damaged and healed shows an uneven distribution of knowledge, and the achievement of continuity through the politics of place. It is clear that people’s right to ‘enjoy’ their culture must include their right to disagree as well as agree, to contest as well as to affirm. Wootten maintained the confidentiality of secret/sacred information in his Alice Springs dam site investigation. Even so, the investigative processes are invasive. One of the custodial women described her experience of the process vividly: This is a permanent dreaming place and only the Traditional owners used to hear these stories that their grandparents told them. Now they are going to hear this story all over the place. This dam has made the story really come out into the open; the story that used to be really secret. Now other tribes are going to hear about it. It used to be secret for the Arrernte mob. Well now everybody is going to learn, and the white people as well are going to learn about it. The country story that used to be hidden . . . Now they know about that place all over the world, about the dreaming as well . . . We are giving away another secret now, and it will be heard all over the world, if there is a protest against building the dam. We’ll have to give away our secrets again. (quoted in Wootten, 1992, p. 74)

As one reads this one needs to bear in mind that the anguish this woman expresses does not concern the exposure of gender 114


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restricted information, as that was kept concealed. Her pain centres on the loss of control over places and knowledge, and the shaming sense that knowledge that is properly enjoyed as a matter of living one’s own life has been turned inside out to become an object of scrutiny by an unlimited number of strangers. Conclusions Whatever the final outcome of attempts to seek protection, whether in land claims or in heritage protection, the processes are a solid demonstration of the fact that Aboriginal people are supplicants, and that the decisions are made by others. Not only must they produce themselves, their beliefs and their ‘traditions’ as objects for hostile scrutiny, but there is no guarantee that this process will produce for them the outcomes they seek. As Gelder (1991) discusses with respect to Coronation Hill, and Russell (1994) with respect to the ‘Iron Princess’ dispute, self-determination is largely absent from this process, as is any strong sense that Aboriginal law has a standing in Australian society. In other studies I have spoken of ‘deep colonising’ (Rose, 1994a; 1999b); I refer to a cluster of practices which, under the guise of self-determination or self-management, probe ever more deeply into the conditions of Aboriginal people’s lives and bodies, severing people from the sociality of connections within which they are embedded and reconstituting them as defenceless individuals. Current practice for land claims, including native title claims, and for the protection of Aboriginal heritage have the potential to further deep colonising; they are curtailing the social reproduction of Aboriginal culture by confining it in a prison of tradition, external documentation, consistency and consensus. These same processes are pinning secrecy beneath the bright light of external scrutiny and debate. It is not reasonable for Aboriginal people to sustain the cultural continuity they have thus far struggled to achieve, nor is it possible for them to expect to ‘enjoy’ their culture when 115


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the Law and their lives are scrutinised, debated and debased in a form of public vivisection. Many Aboriginal people are now considering whether silence may be the better option, not because it will be understood as meta-communication, but because it may be less destructive in the long run than speech. Scholars also face a double bind. We keep bringing our expertise to bear on the same issues; we refine our understanding in the process, and often we become more eloquent. But we do not educate those whose interest is only in power. It cannot be said that these debates further any knowledge system; increasingly they appear to debase far more than they enhance. Looked at from the perspective of defilement, I wonder if our engagement in these debates simply serves to sustain a pretence of open debate in a plural society, while we hover at the periphery of the destruction that continues around us.

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5

The word of a woman: Ngarrindjeri stories and a bridge to Hindmarsh Island DIANE BELL The word of a woman

. . . the claim that the ‘women’s business’ required the prohibition of the construction of the bridge was fabricated . . . The purpose of the fabrication was to obtain a declaration from the Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs, the Honourable Robert Tickner MP, pursuant to section 10 of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act (1984), to prevent the construction of a bridge between Goolwa and Hindmarsh Island. Report of the Hindmarsh Island Bridge Royal Commission, Commissioner Iris Stevens (1995, p. 299)

Women’s worlds1 Was it possible that Ngarrindjeri women could have a separate religious domain, one that was their business, one from which men were excluded, one of which the ethnographic record was ignorant? The Hindmarsh Island case turned on women’s words: one said ‘sacred and restricted’, another said ‘never heard of it’. Warring women’s words. Did everyone need to know the content of a tradition for the word to be true? An anthropologist wrote ‘CONFIDENTIAL: TO BE READ BY WOMEN ONLY’ on an envelope 117


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— Words and Silences — Table 5.1 1993–4 Bridge business 1993 1994

April October 20 April 3 May 12 May 26 May 9 July 10 July 8 August

Bridge approved Protection sought under Aboriginal Heritage Act (S.A.) (1988) Protection sought from Federal Minister, Robert Tickner Destruction of sites authorised by State Minister Temporary emergency declaration by Tickner Professor Cheryl Saunders appointed Reporter Report goes to Minister Tickner issues 25-year ban Binalong Pty Ltd goes into liquidation

containing sacred, restricted women’s words. A proposed bridge joining Hindmarsh Island to the mainland at Goolwa would damage a site complex which was central to Ngarrindjeri wellbeing. The State Minister authorised destruction of the site, which had been registered under South Australian legislation. Ngarrindjeri women asked the Federal Minister to hear their words. He took the word of his female staffer that the evidence in the two confidential appendices was consistent with the words in the report of the woman lawyer to which the anthropologist’s report and confidential appendices were attached. The Federal Minister issued a 25-year ban. The site complex could be protected. Worthy women’s words. Would the ban withstand appeal? Off to the court on technicalities. Yes, ruled a Federal Court judge, justice required that the confidential appendices be read. Must read those words. But who has those words? The confidential appendices turn up on the desk of a South Australian Minister, the Member for Hindmarsh. Did he look? He brandished the envelope in parliament. Shame. Off to the back bench. Dangerous women’s words. Who else may speak women’s words? Journalists, anthropologists, museum experts and Ngarrindjeri, along with courts and parliament join in the contestation of Ngarrindjeri knowledge. Whence this story of a site sacred to women? Was it really a Ngarrindjeri women’s story? How could it be validated? Where was the written record? A South Australian Royal Commission found fabrication—a deliberate act to thwart the building of the bridge. Lying women. 118


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— The word of a woman — Table 5.2 1995 Bridge politics 7 February 15 February 6 March 10 March 26 March 19 May 6 June 8 June 27 July 7 December 19 December

Federal Court quashes Tickner’s ban Tickner appeals quashing Ian McLachlan, Member for Hindmarsh, brandishes envelope McLachlan resigns Nanna Laura Kartinyeri’s letter tabled in Parliament Dorothy Wilson’s and Dulcie Wilson’s claims of ‘fabrication’ on TV Channel Ten Doug Milera’s claims of ‘fabrication’ on TV Channel Ten SA Government announces Royal Commission Doug Milera retracts Tickner’s appeal dismissed Report of Royal Commissioner Iris Stevens

Can the site be protected? Accused of fabrication and without protection from the State heritage legislation, 35 women and men lodge a new application under the Federal heritage legislation. There is a woman Federal Court judge appointed to hear more words, and a woman Minister deputised to read the report. Perhaps the women’s words can now be heard and respected as privileged to women. But no. The government changes midway into the process. The new Minister refuses to appoint a woman to receive the report. The Ngarrindjeri women weigh their options. They continue to talk to the judge and continue to ask for a woman Minister. But there are further breaches of confidentiality and more case law urging disclosure. The women decide the confidential parts of their stories are not safe. Withdrawn women’s words. What now with the remaining words? The woman-lawyerjudge-reporter tells the Minister the site is significant, but there are not enough confidential words to warrant protection. More challenges. Can a Federal Court judge be appointed as a reporter under the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act (1984)? Whoops. Off to court again. Another technical error. Bury those lawyerly women’s words. Can development proceed in the face of such confusion? Change the law, says the parliament. Vexatious women. Be still. But the women will not be silenced. Their stories are fascinating and deserve to be heard. More words. I put in two years of writing and research. Ethnographic words. More 119


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— Words and Silences — Table 5.3 1995–6 Heritage business 1995 1996

8 June 19 December 16 January 19 February 2 March March April April–May 28 May 30 May 27 June 22 August 6 September 17 September 26 September

Tickner announces intention of a new Federal Inquiry New application lodged Senator Crowley names Jane Mathews as Reporter Chapmans seek $12 115 317.36 in damages John Howard wins Federal Election Women’s evidence Men’s evidence Women’s confidential disclosures Crocodile Farm (WA) case re: confidentiality Ngarrindjeri withdraw all confidential information Report to Minister John Herron Justice Elizabeth Evatt reports on heritage legislation High Court rules Mathews appointment ineffective Mathews report tabled—special legislation proposed Herron tables Evatt Report

contesting. Further, these words are not the words of just any women. These are stories of women from the so called ‘settled south’, politicised women, bold, outspoken women. Could assimilated people have traditions worthy of protection? Who decides what constitutes tradition? What is worthy of recognition? Not it seems the words of the Ngarrindjeri who have fought to protect the site, who are yet to have their day in court, who watch as the first bridge pylon is driven into their ruwi (land), into their ruwar (bodies). Violated women’s words. Feminist words These moral, political, legal and ethnographic dilemmas I might have pondered at a distance had a telephone call in December 1995 not brought me into the ongoing Hindmarsh Island case. Until then, save for a summer of research for my honours thesis, the southeast was not where I had done fieldwork. Of course I knew of the case. From the library in the Australian Embassy in Washington DC, where I read of the political intrigue, the case appeared to embody many of the critical issues facing the Australian nation. What is to be the relationship between the settler population and the original 120


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— The word of a woman — Table 5.4 1996 Hindmarsh Island Bridge Act 1996 1997

17 September 23 December February 22 May 29 May

1998

5–6 February

1999 2000

1 April December March–

Special legislation proposed High Court: Wik decision Hindmarsh Bill voted down Hindmarsh Island Bridge Act commences Chapmans seek $62.62 million in damages (now c.$20 million) High Court hears challenge to Hindmarsh Island Bridge Act High Court rules 5 to 1, the Act is constitutional Bridge construction commences Chapmans sue under Trade Practices Act

peoples? Does Reconciliation2 have any substance? What of the people land rights forgot? The case also addressed issues central to my practice as an anthropologist. What is the nature of women’s relationship to land? How do we create fora in which women may be heard and respected? How do women and men maintain separate yet interdependent religious worlds? How do we read historical records which are for the most part silent on the religious lives of Indigenous women? Over the past 25 years I have explored these questions as matters of theory and practice. As a consultant to the Australian Law Reform Commission, Aboriginal Legal Aid Services and Land Councils, I had pondered the ways in which we consult with women, the consequences for resource allocation and legislation, the politics of sacred sites, the gendered nature of human rights (Bell 1983a, 1984/5, 1987, 1992, Bell and Ditton 1980/4). With respect to my engagement with feminist epistemologies and the ethnographic method, I have written of standpoint theories and critiqued the postmodern turn in anthropology (Bell 1993a, b). For me the relationships between theory and practice, between so-called applied and academic anthropology, between anthropology and law are evolving fields. I refuse to be constrained by the lack of settled theory and prefer to forge ahead; to address fieldwork dilemmas as they arise; to work within an ethical framework; and, where invited, I respond directly to critics (Bell 1990, 1991, 2000). I do not shy away from controversy. Nor do I find it 121


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surprising that anthropological critiques meet with some resistance and even overt hostility. It is more comforting and less threatening to believe that the ‘natives’ are remote, elsewhere, an exotic ‘other’ of travellers’ tales, than to have them represented as one’s fellow citizens and as peoples whose beliefs may impinge on more than the imaginings of the far distant past (Bell 1986). So what can be distilled from my years of practising anthropology which might illuminate women’s words, especially contested women’s words? In 1976 as a graduate student, I went into the field to study Aboriginal women’s religious beliefs and practices in Central Australia (Bell 1993a). I was told by the old men of the discipline that I would be back soon because there was little to be learned. When I got back, notebooks dripping with data, one response from a male colleague was, ‘Well how could I know that? I’m a man’. From women I heard, ‘I couldn’t do that. My supervisor told me to work on ‘‘serious’’ topics’. Clearly there has been a need to reclaim women from the historical record and an accompanying need to generate new data. I call it the ‘first principle’ of feminist research, that is, if you want to know what a woman thinks: ask her. In the 1970s, as feminist social scientists, that’s where we were: theoretically unsophisticated and data poor. ‘Starting thought from women’s lives’, as feminist philosopher Sandra Harding (1990, 1991) terms it, is still a radical idea, but her splendid text exploring the epistemological ramifications of according woman the status of ‘knower’ was not available in the 1970s when I was first advocating feminist ethnography. When male researchers asked about women, an Aboriginal man could say ‘just women’s business’ and leave it at that. And it really was their business. Aboriginal men had their own religious knowledge and much of the inner meanings of songs, symbols and stories were restricted to men. Words recorded and books published before a time when authors expected their ‘subjects’ to read their ethnographies provide access to male business for contemporary scholars. On the other hand, early accounts of Aboriginal women’s restricted knowledge are 122


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— The word of a woman —

scarce. This has been a double-edged sword. Women have been able to keep their knowledge out of the public domain but, when challenged by a print-oriented society, they have few texts, albeit restricted and problematic, to which they might refer. More recent work, where there has been acknowledgment of gendered knowledge, has been undertaken and published in a different political climate. ‘Where are the women?’ It’s a question which, when asked of many mainstream texts, is answered by silence, qualified cautions and/or apologies regarding the omission of women. Ask the question on a routine basis and be accused of being single-minded rather than being interested in less distorted ethnographies. A decade of work in the public domain on Aboriginal land claims and the recognition of Aboriginal customary law taught me the question mattered a great deal. If women are excluded from past ethnographic accounts, they will be excluded from emerging decision-making processes where their non-participation will be passed off as ‘tradition’, in what becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy (Bell 1983b). Here then is my second principle of feminist ethnography. Decentring the male is not just a methodological move, it is a profoundly political move. ‘Where are the men?’ I would be asked. Of course they were in my ethnography. Indeed whole chapters were devoted to their ‘business’ (Bell 1993a, pp. 182–228). But they were there as brothers, fathers, husbands and so on. They were not, for the most part, at centre stage. I was writing with woman as the knowing subject and according her agency. Here I am grateful to the feminist philosophers of the 1980s and 1990s for their articulation of this strategy as one which is more likely to generate knowledge of value than those which non-reflectively accord value to the words of the powerful, within whose grasp it is to declare one version as preferable to another. Taking the proposition from dialectical marxism that an epistemic privilege attaches to oppressed, Nancy Harstock (1983) argued that to operate effectively woman must know something of the culture of the powerful as well as her own. Those at the centre have little 123


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need to be conversant with the logic of the decision-making processes of the less powerful. Despite the protestation of the practitioners of normative science, there is no gender-blind approach. The assertion of such is itself an exercise in power. In terms of studies of Aboriginal people, once ‘man the hunter’ has to coexist with ‘woman the gatherer’, man the definer of symbols becomes a political animal and power plays around gender are made visible. It is then possible to recognise women as knowing agents, and to discern a gendered system of checks and balances. Women could refuse to get the food if they didn’t like the decision to hold a ceremony or to move camp. However, on the colonial frontier, under policies of protectionism, assimilation and self-determination, new resources significantly altered these negotiations. Woman may be the recipient of some of these resources but they tend to be ones which support her in domestic, private and personal roles, not in public, political ones. Writing of feminist research methods, Shulamit Reinharz (1992, pp. 53–4) emphasised the need for context. What is the wider political canvas onto which these changes are being written? Obviously it makes a difference whether it is the colonial frontier of the nineteenth century or the post-Mabo era of the twenty-first century.3 Unfortunately, in terms of gender, in neither context could women be described as enjoying the benefits of equal opportunity or access to political power and resources. So-called male dominance in Aboriginal society has a political and legal history, one from which all men, Indigenous and non-Indigenous benefit. For example, in terms of land claims, it matters if women are recorded as ‘traditional owners’ under the terms of the Aboriginal Land Rights (NT) Act, (1976). One argument runs that surely the important thing was that title to the land would be held by Aboriginal people. But women need to be consulted on questions of alternate land use and often hold views regarding development which run counter to those of their menfolk. While one might protest that under the policy of self-determination it was ‘up to them’ (i.e. Aborigines) to decide who was part of the decision-making 124


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polity, the fact that lists of ‘traditional owners’ were generated impacts on who is consulted and who is taken seriously. It also has an impact on who does the consulting; whose research is valued; and whose research is marginalised. If only men need to be registered as traditional owners then only men need be consulted on matters of land use, royalties and development. The consultations will be crosscultural but male to male. I quickly learned that in desert societies women had interests in land and a role in decisionmaking. Researching this role is a fraught task. Finding ways wherein women might give evidence in land claims is a continuing struggle (Rowell 1983, Bell 1984/5, Keely 1996). As women began to address their rights and responsibilities in land, to tell through their stories and songs and dances and designs, the meaning of ‘women’s business’ shifted and expanded. As Aboriginal Land Commissioners heard women’s evidence, (sometimes offered in performances) and as the court adjusted to hearing evidence that was restricted to women, it became clear there was a need for special measures if women were to be heard. Evidence restricted to men did not present much of a problem for courts dominated by male judges and attorneys (Neate 1982). Through land claim preparations and hearings, it became more and more obvious that desert women had a ritual life of their own (Toohey 1979) which celebrated the same sacred sites and stories as did men’s but that women’s ceremonies focused on the material conditions of women’s lives. When I was doing consultancies for Aboriginal land councils and legal aid services, the work had a bottom line, be it in dollars or acres. No longer was I accused of imposing my politics on a society innocent of feminist theorising. Now I was the bearer of ‘tainted data’. Wasn’t I politically involved in what I was doing? Feminist research was ‘subjective’. The older reports of men were ‘objective’ because they didn’t have this feminist taint. Men spoke for society; women could only speak for and about women. If my data could be contained we could have business as usual. Here my work led me to explore the third dimension of the feminist ethnography I was 125


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undertaking. I began to write more explicitly of notions of feminist reflexivity. Yes, I was a woman working with women. My gender made some of my work possible. But what made my work any less faithful to my fieldwork than that of men working with men? Historically women anthropologists have been more likely to include themselves as part of their ethnographies, whereas men have variously shied away from such ‘confessional’ styles; keeping the personal separate from the professional writing and resisting any suggestions that their gender impacts on their practice. By making the self visible in their writings, feminist ethnographers make themselves vulnerable to attacks on their ‘objectivity’. Less reflexive ethnography can masquerade as ‘objective’ and avoid such attacks. The postmodern turn in anthropology licensed a rash of reflexive writing but, for the most part, these experimental moments avoided questions of gender and, in their declaration of a crisis of representation, erased the early ‘experiments’ of women (Bell 1993b). With respect to writing gender onto the disciplinary agenda in my own work I have argued thus. Let’s specify who is the generator of the knowledge. For example, I have two children so it could be assumed I knew something about sex and childbirth (Bell 1993a, p. 26). What would be the impact on a male fieldworker if he were a sole parent in the field? Are there any accounts of this?4 A number of accounts of women in the field with children spring to mind (Cassell 1987; Bell et al. 1993; Holmes 1998). Because I was divorced and economically self-sufficient, it was assumed I could be trusted with women’s secrets. There was a great deal that was women’s business about which men knew next to nothing and the very existence of which they feared (Bell 1993a: 162ff.). Male fieldworkers don’t need to overcome the image of the dependent spouse. How many, I wonder, are asked how they support themselves? I certainly was. Let’s acknowledge that knowledge is embedded in social relationships, of trust, friendship, and shared history. As men and women of certain ages, interests, marital status, sexual orientation, religious inclinations and so on, we form different sorts 126


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of relationships (Reinharz 1992, p. 58ff., Lewin 1995). But it goes deeper. Let’s explore what is the quality of the knowledge that is generated at the centre and how it differs from that generated at the margins. Here the writing of women of colour in the USA (hooks 1990, Hill-Collins 1990, Williams 1991) began to filter into my enunciation of feminist ethnography. By 1990 it was well established in Australia that Aboriginal women in the desert regions had a separate religious life and I had begun to unpack the epistemological ramifications of my research. This intellectual history, of which I’ve written in greater detail in the ‘Epilogue’ to the second edition of Daughters of the Dreaming (Bell 1993a, p. 276ff.) begins with a naive feminist empiricism (there is fieldwork yet to be done with women, questions yet to be asked of women), progresses to a more reflexive engagement with standpoint theory (all ethnography is partial, perspectival and situated), a critique of the postmodern turn of the 1980s (the proposition that there are no universal truths, is itself a truth claim) and sustains an enthusiasm for the ethnographic method (it is more than mere fiction). In short I am not prepared to reject ethnography as a practice or a genre of writing as fatally flawed.5 The ethnography that I advocated was clear concerning its politics, explicitly situated in time and place, stylistically experimental—as much women’s writing has been (Bell 1993b)—and one informed by fieldwork with subjects who talk back, question and challenge. For me theory still arises from practice; fieldwork is a still a defining feature of anthropology and not all texts (be they field or library generated) are equally worthy. Why do I continue to advocate a feminist ethnography? Why not simply argue for more ‘balanced’ ethnography?6 There have been some interesting experiments by male/female teams but rarely are the two fieldworkers equally matched in terms of resources, status and depth in a particular area. Too often the woman is the junior partner. I think it is possible to argue that feminist ethnographies are as honest and ‘balanced’ as one can hope for in a social science, wherein all knowledges are embedded in the social relations of their generation. Indeed, following Sandra Harding (1990) I would 127


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argue feminist ethnographers generate less perverse, less tainted knowledge, than those written as if from ‘nowhere’. Ngarrindjeri Words Shifting from the desert to the so-called ‘settled south’ in the post-1992 Age of Reconciliation, no longer is all Aboriginal action regarding land in the remote communities of the desert or far north. Since the 1992 Mabo decision and the 1993 Native Title Act peoples in the ‘settled south’ are lodging claims and the merit of these actions is being tested in a climate of mistrust. One hears: ‘These are not real people. They no longer speak an Aboriginal language. They have no ceremonies. They are only in it for the money.’ The sources on their ‘culture’ are missionaries, reclamation linguists, anthropologists working with ‘memory culture’ and welfare records. There one reads of ‘culture loss’ and of people who know little of traditional value. In popular culture the gap has been filled by New Age fantasies of lost tribes. These apolitical people will bequeath their ancient wisdom and then fade away so as not to challenge the lives of the white settler population (Bell 1997). All other peoples are ‘tainted’. In this schema, the romantic north is pitted against the settled south. This conceptual distinction, I have suggested, we maintain at our own peril (Bell 1999). Out of this environment in the mid-1990s came the case that has attracted so much media attention, that has split the anthropological community and that has generated mountains of legal transcripts and seemingly endless work for lawyers. It is a profoundly gendered case and attacks on those who have worked with the Ngarrindjeri women reek of contempt for women as ‘informants’ and women as ‘researchers’. The term ‘feminist’ is used as shorthand for ‘fabricator’. Ironically the resistance to according women’s words value is often qualified by reference to those ‘remote’ desert people. We all know desert women have sacred sites and ceremonies but not the ‘politicised’ people in the south. I distinctly remember the 128


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resistance to accepting the former as received wisdom and there are traces in the written record to support this memory (Dussart 1988, p. 41). So what can we and do we know of the Ngarrindjeri? Although there is some debate, most agree that Ngarrindjeri lands extend from Cape Jervis to Swanport on the Murray River to Kingston in the southeast. The Ngarrindjeri nation, some would say constellation, of clans and dialects, includes the Tangani (Tanganekald, Tangane), Yaraldi (Jaralde, Jaraldekald), Warki (Warkend), Ramindjeri and Portaulan (Potawolin). Today there are possibly 3000 Ngarrindjeri, the majority of whom live in the southeast of Australia with significant populations in Adelaide, Murray Bridge, Tailem Bend, Meningie, Gerrard, Berri, Glossop, Raukkan and Point Pearce and a smallish number at Mannum. Knowledge of the Tangani, people of the Coorong and Hummocks, comes to us through a variety of sources, including Milerum (Clarence Long) (c. 1869–1941), key informant to ethnologist Norman B. Tindale, whose nanny was a Ngarrindjeri woman and whose close relationship with Milerum is well-attested in both his published and unpublished work (Tindale 1986). The Yaraldi, whose territory takes in the east side of the Murray River and Lake Alexandrina, feature in a number of sources but are best known through A World That Was, researched some 60 years ago by Ronald and Catherine Berndt but not published until 1993. Their key informant was Albert Karloan (1846–1940), a Yaraldi man and, to a lesser extent Pinkie Mack (1858–1954), whose father was George Mason, Sub-Protector of Aborigines east of the Murray River and whose mother was Louisa Karpeny (1821– 1921), an early source on Ngarrindjeri life. The Ramindjeri, who live along the rugged coast of the Southern Ocean west of Goolwa, were possibly the earliest of the Ngarrindjeri to make contact with non-Indigenous peoples. Whalers and sealers at Encounter Bay and on Kangaroo Island generated few written records but stories of their deeds have survived (Bell 1998, pp, 425–31). Pastor H.A.E. Meyer’s (1843, 1846) sketch of the language of the Encounter Bay 129


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people and his brief account of their culture are early and excellent accounts. However, it is some two generations behind the contact frontier. The Warki living on the north and west side of Lake Alexandrina are mentioned by surgeon Dr Richard Penney (1842) writing under his pseudonym, Cuique. The Portaulan and others who came into the mission at Point McLeay (Raukkan) on the banks of Lake Alexandrina are featured in the writings of the Revd. George Taplin (1859–79, 1873, 1878, 1879) who between 1859 and 1879 kept a journal of his interactions with his charges. Over a century later, there is the PhD thesis of Philip Clarke (1994) written from the perspective of a cultural geographer. Each of the aforementioned Ngarrindjeri groups had its own ecological niche and the stories reflect these differences (Clarke 1995a). There are stories of the lakes and those of the ocean. There are also local variations on Ngarrindjeri-wide Dreamings. For example, there are a number of variations in the story of one of the major creative heroes, Ngurunderi, whose pursuit of a giant cod and his errant wives tells of the coming into being of the mighty Murray River, a range of fish species and the separation of Kangaroo Island from the mainland (Bell 1998, pp. 91–103). There are even accounts of the creation of the Murray River by different Dreamings (Bell 1998, pp. 99). In the Hindmarsh Island, Murray Mouth, Goolwa region, the territories of Tangani, Ramindjeri, Yaraldi and Warki intersect and overlap.7 It is an area where the river water of the Murray, flowing through the lakes, meets the salt water of the Southern Ocean. It is an area rich in bird and fish life, a place where stories and ngatji (totems) proliferate. Tindale’s trade map and Taplin’s journal indicate the Goolwa/Murray Mouth area was a multi-purpose meeting place (Bell 1998, pp. 549–58). It is an area in which I would expect to find a number of Dreamings interacting as well. In Ngarrindjeri Wurruwarrin: A World that Is, Was, and Will Be (1998), I have teased out a number of the strands of Ngarrindjeri culture and read the words of contemporary Ngarrindjeri against the written and material record to suggest 130


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ways in which their stories might be contextualised in terms of personal, family and community histories and politics. I have indicated the importance of the ‘respect system’, wherein one respects and honours the land, the elders, the dead and spiritual beliefs (Bell (1998, pp. 61–5). As for the intricacies of the politics of knowledge, I have presented a number of factors which constrain the revelation of gendered knowledge (ibid., pp. 385–92). From the fragmentary archival, historical and contemporary records a pattern emerges. There are a number of ways of being Ngarrindjeri and the people with whom I am working, diverse though they be, are united both in their commitment to preventing sites in the area of the Murray Mouth, Goolwa and Hindmarsh Island from being desecrated and in the emphasis they place on feelings, located in the stomach and said to be a source of wisdom (miwi). I depict Ngarrindjeri culture as a weave of diverse strands, personalities, histories, experiences and stories, where the whole is stronger than any one part but where the whole is rarely more than ever glimpsed. Two occasions on which I have heard of a vision of the whole in Ngarrindjeri stories concern weaving (Bell 1988: 542–4) and the land (ibid., p. 252). Both relate back to the body. One weaves from the tight core at the centre of a sister basket, from the pulanggi, the navel, from the site of the miwi (ibid., pp. 543). The other talks of the integrity of land in terms of a healthy body (ibid., 252, 267–8). In the Royal Commission of 1995, Justice Iris Stevens focused on one strand, one oral tradition, the contents of which she could only infer from fragments (Fergie 1996). She not only found deliberate fabrication to thwart development, but she also pronounced on the status of Ngarrindjeri mythology with respect to the Pleiades constellation. The Seven Sisters’ story was ‘never part of the Dreaming of the Ngarrindjeri people’ (Stevens 1995, p. 278). Her finding of fabrication rested on ‘four pillars’. One. There was no gender exclusivity in Ngarrindjeri culture. Two. There were no written records predating the 1994 report of Dr Fergie which supported the women’s claims. Three. The ‘women’s business’ had 131


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most likely been imported from more traditional peoples of the Western Desert. Four. Only one woman knew of the ‘women’s business’. I invite the reader to examine the evidence adduced for these ‘four pillars’. Work through the transcript of the Royal Commission, the report of the Commissioner (Stevens 1995), the interlinear texts of the Berndts (1993), the transcript of Chapmans v Luminus and others (2000) and the work of people who have long standing knowledge of the Ngarrindjeri. It is a complicated story. Few have bothered to read all the primary materials. This is not surprising as they are voluminous and still growing. It requires patience to unravel the fabrication claims and to envision other ways in which the strands might be woven. Yet this is exactly what I am suggesting needs to be done. In my view the research on which the Royal Commission was based is flawed. The four pillars are shaky, if not already demolished (Mathews 1996). Here I focus on the story of the ‘Seven Sisters’ which underpins certain beliefs and practices associated with the area.8 It is a story about which I learn more the more time I spend in the area. That knowledge is revealed as one gains the confidence of one’s ‘informants’ and demonstrates competence is not a novel anthropological claim. That people only reveal as much as necessary to protect a place and do so at the last minute is no novelty either (Bell 1983a). I had been researching Ngarrindjeri mythology associated with the Pleiades since January 1996. I had been told snippets. I had read snippets. At Easter 1998, Veronica Brodie, custodian of part of the story, chose to make a portion of her knowledge public (Bell 1998: 578). It begins with Ngurunderi’s cave which is situated under Signal Point [at Goolwa]. From the cave he looked across to the island. Ngurunderi felt it was his responsibility to look after the sky, the bird life, the waters, because he made the environment and the island. He was god of the Ngarrindjeri. His connection with the Seven Sisters was that he sent a young man, Orion, after the Seven Sisters to chase them and bring them back. They didn’t want to be caught so they

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— The word of a woman — headed up to the sky, up and up and over the Milky Way and hid there and became the Seven Sisters. When they want to come back to see their Mum, who is still in the waters—near where the ferry crosses, just a little over towards the mouth, to the south—there has to be a clear way, so they can return and they’ll be returning shortly, when it gets cold, that’s when they disappear from the sky. Then they come back down and go under the water to be with their mother. Their mother belonged to the Warrior Women of the Island.

Under appropriate and negotiated circumstances, I would not be surprised if more details were to be revealed. The ways in which knowledge of the ‘Seven Sisters’ has been disclosed has led some to suspect ‘invention of tradition’. Any claims about this Dreaming are mired in the politicisation of Ngarrindjeri women’s restricted knowledge. So, rather than begin with the way in which the story emerged during the Royal Commission, I am going to reconstruct what can be known from the pre-1994 sources. Caution. I am dealing with fragments. We almost always are, even in the desert. Caution. I don’t pretend to know all there is to be known of this story. New information keeps emerging and it is not ‘invention’ in the sense of a ‘product of one’s contrivance’ (OED). There is continuity with past accounts. Contexts within which oral knowledge has been transmitted can be documented. For example in the ‘memory culture’ texts to which I have turned for background, ceremonial life is declared gone by the 1880s but in 1951 there was a reenactment of the 1830 expedition of Charles Sturt down the Murray River at which Ngarrindjeri people painted up and danced. Such occasions are shunned by the purists as not a ‘real ceremony’. For the participants there were mixed meanings. Ceremony celebrated their rights to the land and their law but they were performing at the request of the colonisers who had forbidden their ceremonies and only, it seems, allowed ceremonies on occasions when the ‘natives’ could mark a moment in colonial history. I knew that Pinkie Mack had sung the ‘pata winema’ song in 1951. I had traced the history of the song from the 133


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1880s to the present and had demonstrated that its transmission was both oral and communal (Bell 1998, pp. 155–66). Further research of the 1951 celebration turned up an ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) tape of the reenactment and I heard for the first time Ngarrindjeri ceremonial singing. It was not a lone voice singing into the tape recorder or wax cylinder of a researcher but full-bodied group singing with dancing feet, cries and responses. As soon as I heard it, I made a copy, cued my tape and played it for Ellen Trevorrow, the great-granddaughter of the lead singer, Pinkie Mack, on the ISD phone line. This is a new way of doing fieldwork and is remarkably efficient. Ellen’s mother, Daisy Rankine knew the song. The men could name it. Without that fragment I would not have known to ask about that particular initiation song. On the basis of these sorts of experiences, I am extremely reluctant to sound the death knell of Ngarrindjeri ‘memory culture’. Back to historical record. The earliest Ngarrindjeri reference to the Pleiades I have located comes from the Revd Taplin (1973, p. 18). There he makes the mention of the ‘Manchingga’ as one of the deceased warriors who have gone to heaven along with Wayungari (Mars) and Nepelli (the brother-in-law of Ngurunderi). The latter two are well-known, central figures in Ngarrindjeri Law. But who is/are the Mantjingga? Taplin offers no translation and does not return to the matter. In Norman Tindale’s papers there is a note that Milerum volunteered in the 1930s that Mantjingga was the Pleiades (Tindale and Long n.d.). The next major account of the Pleiades comes from David Unaipon’s (1924–25) handwritten account of the rites of passage of young girls, whom he calls yatooka (yatuka) in the story of the ‘Mungingee’. The story is reproduced, almost word for word by Ramsay Smith (1930) but has been deemed too flowery in its style to be ‘authentic’ and David Unaipon too worldly to be trusted. However, his accounts of Ngarrindjeri stories are laced with references to distinctively Ngarrindjeri beings such as muldarpi, Nepelli and Ngurunderi. Could the Mungingee of Unaipon be the Mantijingga of Taplin’s record? Certainly Unaipon has the Mungingee sitting in heaven alongside the 134


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other warriors, as did Taplin (Smith 1930, p. 00). Then, in reviewing the language tapes of Elaine Treagus (1966), I found David Unaipon had volunteered a fragment of the story of the Pleiades and added that the story is well known. There he calls it Manjinggi. Here a further helpful context is that David Unaipon’s father, James Ngunaiponi, was possibly Taplin’s source for the earliest reference to the Mantjingga. The next set of references to the Pleiades appear in the Berndts (1993, pp. 163–4) who name the yatuka as the story underpinning one of the two male initiation cycles and as one of the four major mythic cycles. The Berndts (ibid.) say the Pleiades represents six girls and a young man. Their informant was Albert Karloan, a Yaraldi man, whose text connects the story of the yatuka with the seasons and the Pleiades. ‘Yatuka yarela p’rak manda yika p’rakunil inambul luwaldhaldham itji Waiyungrai ngunumpulunil manda itji riwuri ngokunil ngunandja.’ (‘Girls will rise because they are rising for the summer time that one Waiyungeri sinking because that one spring disappearing from us.’ (Berndt et al. 1993, p. 367) The Berndts (1993, p. 154ff.) also provide an account of women’s initiation which entails body scarring. On a drawing of George French Angus from the 1840s the body scarring of a puberty rite is clearly visible on a young girl and Tindale (1931–34, p. 61) mentions that these cicatrices relate to one’s ngatji (totem) and hence, I would add, to the land. In Unaipon’s account of the Mungingee one of the rites of passage for the young girl is enduring pain, as in body scarring. In the Tindale papers there are also references to the Pleiades. ‘They were girls but one was a boy who went to them for fire because his fire had gone out and he did not return’ (Tindale and Long n.d., p. 1). Tindale also recorded stories of Ngarrindjeri interest in the skyworld and the ways in which seasonality and the movement of heavenly bodies is intertwined (Bell 1998, p. 588). Tindale’s ‘informant’ Milerum was a man of the Coorong but his story is similar to that of Karloan regarding the composition of the Pleiades. Then we have Mrs Annie Rankine (1969), daughter of Milerum, who recounted a story wherein she linked the 135


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seasons with the Seven Sisters in a way which echoes the text of Karloan.9 My father used to tell us children of a special group of stars which is called the Seven Sisters, and before they were moving we weren’t allowed to swim because the dandelions were in bloom then, and it was said that when the dandelions are out the water is still chill, and this is why our people are very strict and don’t allow us to swim. When the flowers all died off and the stars moved over a bit further, this is when we were allowed to swim because in that time the dandelion flower which cause a fever to anyone would not be out to make us sick. So this is how we were taught the old people’s way of living. Many a time I tried to sneak past, go down to the lake and get away from my dad, but he would be waiting right on the dot for me, and then one whistle from him; we’d know that straightway we had to run, we knew we were wrong. All this will be in my memories and I’ll never forget, because it remains so dear to me; taking notice of my father, being brought up that way; this will ever be in my memories. And that’s all I have got to say on the stars.

This is the only account from a woman which I have found to date in the written record. Lola Cameron Bonney (Clarke 1994, p. 123, Bell 1998, p. 585) stated that ‘all Aboriginal people were believed to have originated from the Seven Sisters’ but left no written account of the details. During the Mathews Report, the men revealed childhood knowledge they had of the Dreaming being sung and danced in the camp (Bell 1998, p. 583). This refers clearly to the men’s side of the Dreaming. More references keep turning up. In their remarkably similarly-argued reviews of my book both anthropologist Ken Maddock (1998), who provided assistance to the Chapmans in the Mathews report and journalist Christopher Pearson (1998), whose columns about Hindmarsh Island concern conspiracy and fabrication, mention an 1852–55 manuscript by William Wells. There is recorded a story of the fear of ‘Mull Darby’ (muldarpi) followed by ‘they believe all the stars are black men that have died and the Seven Stars are black men 136


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sitting around a fire (of course they are smoking)’ (Wells 1852–55, p. 99). It is not clear whether the ‘Seven Stars’ mentioned here are in fact the Pleiades or another constellation such as Orion which, according to Tindale, the Tangani called Ngawiri, the seven boys (Tindale and Long, n.d.: see also Berndt et al. 1993, p. 165, Clarke 1977, p. 136). Philip Clarke (1995b) who testified at the Royal Commission that the Pleiades were not part of Ngarrindjeri tradition (his PhD not withstanding) has also located another reference in a newspaper of 1887 from Billy Poole of the Lake Albert area of the Pleiades as the eggs upon which another constellation, the turkey, was sitting (Clarke 1995, pp. 119, 123, 1997, p. 136). These two accounts of Wells and Poole are interesting. In one the eggs may be seen as a reference to fertility and a seasonal one at that. There is indeed a star, Vega, in the constellation Lyra which appears in the winter sky and signals the beginning of the mallee hen egg-laying season (Tindale and Long nd: 3). The star, lawarikark, is named after the mallee hen, lawari. The reference to smoking reflects the postcontact situation and the continuing importance of stars in Ngarrindjeri story telling. They also indicate that there are many fragments concerning Ngarrindjeri beliefs about the skyworld. In assessing the stories, it would be helpful to know something of the sources. We know something of Milerum and his daughter Annie Rankine, David Unaipon and his father, and Albert Karloan as Ngarrindjeri, albeit with different backgrounds and perspectives. William Wells, writing of the Seven Stars as men sitting around smoking was an Englishman who travelled through Ngarrindjeri country. Unfortunately Wells does not name his informants on the matter of stars, so we cannot know to which family or area they belong. But we do know how he regards most Aborigines. Wells (1852–55: 61) writes of ‘the idelest [sic], filthiest, the greatest thieves and liars, the most ignorant and treacherous villains that are to be found on God’s earth’. My research indicates that there were many references to the Pleiades in Ngarrindjeri lands which were recorded before the Royal Commission of 1995. They are fragments 137


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but there are themes and references which resonate well with what we know of Ngarrindjeri from other sources. In my own fieldwork I have explored the various ways in which people talk about seasonality and the stars. This is not just talk. The Ngarrindjeri with whom I worked did not swim until the dandelions had finished blooming. Yes the dandelions are an introduced plant, but in my view it is seasonality which is being remembered and remarked. I have seen the caution regarding swimming too early in the season being transmitted to children and being enforced, just as Annie Rankine, Milerum’s daughter, wrote in 1969. In Ngarrindjeri Wurruwarrin (1998, pp. 573–86) I offer ways of reading these fragments. Here I simply ask, in the face of all these references what is one to make of the Royal Commission finding of fabrication? Here we have ‘ethnographic fact’ at odds with ‘legal facts’ and that ‘fact’ has been made much of in the media commentary on feminists and fabricators. Will women’s words ever be enough?

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6

Aboriginal women and the Commonwealth Government’s response to Mabo—an international human rights perspective HANNAH MC GLADE Aboriginal women and Mabo

Aboriginal women throughout Australia come from nations which value and respect the woman’s role, rights and responsibilities in their cultures and communities. This is particularly so in relation to the land, which is often described as our ‘mother’. Aboriginal women have their own women’s business and sacred sites. Today, Aboriginal women are an important part of the land rights movement and some of these well-known ‘fighters’1 include: Bonita Mabo, wife of Eddie Mabo whose case before the High Court resulted in the recognition of native title in Australia; Yvonne Margarula and Jacqui Katona who opposed the Howard Government’s plans for uranium mining at Jabiluka in the Kakadu National Park, the traditional lands of the Mirrar people; Gladys Tybingoompa from the Wik people who also helped set important legal precedent in land rights and whose celebratory dance outside Parliament House lifted many hearts. For most of Australia’s history Aboriginal people’s struggle for land went unrecognised by the colonisers, their governments and the judiciary. This denial was based on an international law doctrine known as terra nullius, meaning ‘empty land’ or land occupied by people without rights because 139


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of a perceived lack of social and political organisation. This racist legal fiction was discarded by the Australian High Court in their 1992 decision, Mabo v State of Queensland 2 in which the existence of native title in common law was recognised (see Chapter 1). Colonisation was based on the belief of male superiority and domination. As a result Aboriginal men and women have not only been dispossessed of their lands but had their traditional roles distorted, misrepresented and disrespected. Many Aboriginal men have internalised the patriarchal values and beliefs of the colonisers.3 This history of colonisation and the imposition of patriarchal values has impacted on Aboriginal women. This chapter investigates the disadvantage and discrimination Aboriginal women have suffered as a result of this history by examining the first national land rights policies developed by the Commonwealth Government,4 in response to the High Court’s 1992 Mabo decision.5 I find that these responses fail to recognise Indigenous women, and arguably perpetuate a level of systemic discrimination. In the second part of the chapter I consider the various international human rights instruments which have relevance to, and may be utilised by Aboriginal women pursuing their right to land and selfdetermination. Commonwealth Government’s responses to the High Court Mabo decision The Commonwealth Government responded to the High Court Mabo decision with three initiatives: The Native Title Act 1993 (Cth); The Indigenous Land Corporation (ILC); and a commitment to further social justice measures for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. I will consider how these initiatives and their implementation impacted on Aboriginal women and their rights to land. The Native Title Act 1993 (Cth) (NTA)6 Native title as defined by s. 223 of the Act seems to reflect the content of native title at common law.7 The NTA therefore 140


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— Aboriginal women and Mabo —

appears to avoid the problems associated with the Northern Territory Aboriginal Land Rights Act and its bias towards the traditional anthropological model which favoured patrilineal or male descent.8 This Act and its implementation has influenced subsequent land rights legislation in Australia; its influence on the NTA cannot be discounted.9 In the Mabo decision, native title is described as a communal right which is held by the whole of the relevant Aboriginal community. Native title under Mabo is also ‘inalienable’ because it cannot be sold, only surrendered to the Crown (or government). Under the NTA, however, native title is to be held by a registered body corporate10 ‘on trust’ for the native title holders.11 The registered body corporate is granted power to ‘surrender, transfer or otherwise deal with’ the native title under various circumstances pursuant to regulations made under the Act.12 While these provisions of necessity place native title in an economic and commercial framework, they also pose a significant risk to the more disempowered members of the community, including women. The NTA established the National Native Title Tribunal (NNTT) to facilitate the making of agreements among Aboriginal people, government, industries and individuals. The NNTT also has an arbitration role in relation to future acts which may interfere with native title, such as mining leases and compulsory land acquisitions. It is unclear how many Aboriginal women are making native title claims and utilising the NNTT processes (see chapter 1). Native title claims and applications under the future acts’ processes are overseen and directed by tribunal members who are appointed by the governor-general under s. 111 of the NTA. Tribunal members are appointed because of their special knowledge in relation to: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander societies; land management; dispute resolution; or any other matters considered relevant to the members’ duties. In 1998 there were 20 members on the tribunal: twelve non-Aboriginal men; six non-Aboriginal women; and two Aboriginal men. Apparently, the government does not believe that Aboriginal women meet the relevant criteria!13 141


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The NNTT has not had a great deal of success in mediating agreements between native title parties. Clearly, Aboriginal women’s superior knowledge of culture, family and dispute resolution is not being fully utilised despite the serious problems of overlapping claims and disagreements among Aboriginal claimants. Under s. 209 of the NTA the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner is required to prepare and submit a yearly report on the operation of the NTA and, in particular, the effect of the Act on the exercise and enjoyment of Aboriginal peoples’ human rights. These reports, produced from 1994 onwards, contain a wealth of important information, however, issues relating specifically to Aboriginal women do not appear to have been canvassed. Under section 209 the Federal Minister for Aboriginal Affairs could have directed the Social Justice Commission to prepare a report on Aboriginal women, however, the Commissioner’s office was abolished by the Howard Government in 1997. The Native Title Act 1993 also establishes a process by which Native Title Representative Bodies (NTRBs) are established. The NTRBs assist Aboriginal people in the research, preparation and making of claims for native title or compensation under the NTA. They also assist in the resolution of disputes between claimants. NTRBs are determined by the Federal Minister for Aboriginal Affairs in accordance with section 202(3)(a) of the NTA. Under this section, the minister can only determine a NTRB if he is satisfied that the body is ‘broadly representative of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the area’. In 1995 there were 23 determined NTRBs in Australia.14 ATSIC has undertaken a review of their effectiveness, considering matters such as their roles and responsibilities, jurisdiction, workload and resource need.15 The review found that there was some uncertainty as to the meaning of representativeness under s. 202(3)(a) and recommended that NTRBs move to establish organisational structures, including governing boards or committees, which broadly reflect the native title interests in their area of operation.16 No Aboriginal women were included on the review 142


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body and gender issues appear not to have been specifically addressed. There have been no empirical studies into the representation of women on NTRBs. It is clear, however, that while some Aboriginal women are involved in Representative Bodies, others have been excluded from these bodies. Representativeness in terms of gender should therefore be included in s. 202(3)(a) (Cth). The Indigenous Land Corporation The ILC is a statutory body established in 1995 by the Land Fund and Indigenous Land Corporation (ATSIC Amendment) Act 1995. The ILC assists Aboriginal people acquire and manage land for the purpose of generating economic, environmental, social or cultural benefits. The ILC receives a fixed allocation of monies per year for its ten-year term (until June 2004) and a total amount of $253 million will be received by the ILC during this period. The ILC is administered by a board of directors who are appointed by the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs. In 1998 there were seven directors, one of whom was an Aboriginal woman.17 The ILC was established in recognition of the fact that many Aboriginal people will be unable to gain their native title under the stringent test posed by the High Court in Mabo, and also in light of the history of Aboriginal dispossession and removal. Land which may be acquired must be culturally significant, either in terms of traditional, historical or contemporary attachment.18 The three main stages of ILC activity are: the identification of land needs and priorities in each region; land acquisition and management; and support to Indigenous landowners where appropriate. The ILC proposes a close working relationship with the NTRBs and ATSIC regional councils as an essential part of their activity.19 The ILC have developed national and regional land strategies and guidelines. However, they have no strategies or policies relating to Aboriginal women. 143


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Social Justice Measures The Commonwealth Government’s third response to the Mabo decision was a commitment to social justice measures for Aboriginal people. In view of this commitment ATSIC was requested to consult with Indigenous peoples and communities and report to government. ATSIC’s report Recognition, Rights and Reform makes a number of important recommendations in relation to matters including: constitutional reform; political representation; regional agreements; health; housing; education and training; intellectual property; Treaty negotiations; customary law; and economic development. Again, Indigenous women’s issues appear not to have been specifically addressed in the report.20 However, ATSIC does recommend that the Commonwealth ensure that in respect of all actions flowing from the report recommendations, full consideration is given to implications of proposed actions for Indigenous women and that Indigenous women are adequately represented in all forums, involved in developing or monitoring the implementation of those recommendations.21 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission or ATSIC (established in 1990 prior to the Mabo finding) is the peak representative Aboriginal body in Australia. It has an important role in Aboriginal affairs and is described as the Australian model of self-determination. ATSIC has a close relationship with the NTRBs (which it funds), the ILC (with which it liaises) and is responsible for the government’s final response to the Mabo decision, the commitment to social justice measures. ATSIC is considered a self-determining body because its budget is determined by ATSIC regional councillors, who are elected by the Aboriginal people of Australia. There are 35 regional councils in Australia and these councillors in turn elect 17 commissioners which make up the ATSIC board. The board is described as ‘the premier policy making body in Indigenous affairs, principal adviser to the government, and a 144


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powerful advocate of Indigenous interests across the whole range of government agencies’.22 In 1998 of the 17 people elected by the regional councillors to the Board, only two were Aboriginal women.23 The Minister for Aboriginal Affairs was entitled to nominate a further two members—the ATSIC commissioner and an additional regional councillor.24 Of the 19 members therefore, only two are Aboriginal women. Statistics at the regional council level are slightly better. At the 1996 election, 23 per cent of all councillors elected were women.25 However, ATSIC has had female leadership under the founding chairperson, Ms Lowitja O’Donoghue.26 ATSIC also had an Office of Indigenous Women (OIW)27 whose purpose was to advise on the impact and effectiveness of programs on Aboriginal women. The office was, however, disbanded in 1997 due to the severe cuts to budget that ATSIC faced (up to $453 million), and also because of the concern that women’s issues ‘were not getting sufficient corporate attention across ATSIC’.28 Following the office’s closure, ATSIC managers throughout Australia were required to implement a number of strategies to ensure women’s issues are properly addressed.31 There has been no assessment or report into the effectiveness of these measures. A national advisory committee made up of ATSIC women councillors, the Women’s Indigenous Advisory Committee, is currently developing policy papers on women’s issues for consideration by the board. However, advisory committees do not have the power to make final recommendations or decisions on matters. An international human rights perspective The above examination of institutions and frameworks shows that the Commonwealth Government’s response to Mabo is not sensitive to Aboriginal women. Arguably, a level of systemic discrimination is therefore being perpetuated against Indigenous women. This raises the issue of whether Aboriginal 145


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women have rights under international law to native title and self-determination. Although the position of Indigenous women is not specifically addressed by international human rights law, there is a growing recognition of Indigenous peoples’ rights.30 One of the most important rights being pursued internationally is the right to self-determination, which is described as the right of Indigenous people to determine and pursue their own political, economic, social and cultural development.31 Indigenous peoples’ rights to traditional land, which are part of the wider right to self-determination, are now recognised by international law. There are a number of international instruments, discussed below, which are relevant to Aboriginal women’s right to self-determination and land. These instruments include: the International Covenant for Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), International Labour Organisation Convention 169 (ILO 169), the International Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the Draft Declaration on Indigenous Peoples.32 International Covenant for Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) A key provision of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights with respect to Indigenous rights is Article 27 which provides that: In those states in which ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities exit, persons belonging to such minorities shall not be denied the right, in community with other members of their group, to enjoy their own culture, to profess and practice their own religion and to use their own language.

Australia has signed the Optional Protocol to the ICCPR which allows individuals who have exhausted domestic remedies, to complain to the UN Human Rights Committee, the expert committee which oversees the Convention. This Article and 146


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the Optional Protocol provide significant scope for Aboriginal people to pursue claims and agitate grievances.33 Aboriginal people in Canada have utilised the ICCPR on a number of occasions, with levels of success. A relevant case is Ominayak, Chief of the Lubicon Lake Band v Canada, a complaint to the UN Human Rights Committee against the Canadian Government for the appropriation of Cree land and resources. The committee found that the government’s actions were a contravention of Article 27 as they threatened the life and culture of the Lubicon Cree.34 Indigenous women in Canada have specifically benefited from Article 27 as a result of the complaint Lovelace v Canada.35 The case concerned a former provision of the Indian Act which directly discriminated against women by depriving them of their native status and its consequent rights, upon marriage to non-Indian men.36 These provisions were defended by government and tribes on the basis that they protected the groups’ cultural integrity, however, the Human Rights Committee found that Sandra Lovelace and other Indigenous women were denied their rights under Article 27. The Canadian Government responded to the international pressure resulting from the decision by repealing the discriminatory provisions.37 In 1994 the Human Rights Committee adopted General Recommendation No. 23(5)38 clarifying the scope of Article 27. Most importantly, the committee found that states are obliged to take positive measures to protect a group’s culture, which can involve a way of life associated with the use of land and its resources. The committee also found that the enjoyment of Article 27 rights may require states to enact positive legal measures to ensure that Indigenous peoples can effectively participate in decisions affecting them. No cases concerning Australian Aboriginal people have yet been decided by the Human Rights Committee, although this is probably only a matter of time. The Article is particularly relevant to the Ngarrindjeri women whose culture and religion was improperly subjected to and scrutinised by a South Australian Royal Commission (and deemed ‘fabricated’) and for 147


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whom legal protection under the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act 1984 (Cth) was subsequently denied by the Commonwealth Government. The Ngarrindjeri women appear now to have exhausted all domestic remedies and would therefore be in a position to communicate with the Human Rights Committee under the Optional Protocol.39 International Labour Organisation Convention 169 (ILO 169) The International Labour Organisation (ILO) adopted Convention 169 in 1989,40 however, it has not yet been ratified by the Australian Government.41 There has been some controversy surrounding ILO 169 among Indigenous peoples as it explicitly limits Indigenous peoples’ right to self-determination under international law, which may entail secession, or separation, from the nation state. Thus Article 1 (3) provides that ‘The use of the term ‘‘peoples’’ in this Convention shall not be constructed as having any implications as regards the rights which may attach to the term under international law’.42 However, there are a number of important provisions in ILO 169 which recognise Indigenous peoples’ right to selfdetermination in an internal sense. Thus governments are required to: consult Indigenous peoples on all legislative or administrative matters which may affect them directly;43 establish means by which Indigenous peoples can participate at all levels of decision-making of elective or administrative bodies responsible for policies or programs which affect them;44 and support the full development of Indigenous peoples’ own institutions and initiatives.45 Part II of ILO 169 relates wholly to land and provides that governments shall: recognise Indigenous peoples’ rights to ownership and possession of traditional lands;46 guarantee effective protection of this right, particularly through the use of adequate land claims procedures;47 recognise Indigenous peoples’ ownership of natural resources;48 and respect the 148


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procedures established by Indigenous peoples for the transmission of land among their members.49 Article 3(1) of ILO 169 stipulates that ‘The provisions of the Convention shall be applied without discrimination to male and female members of these people’. This provision is quite narrow and appears to be based on the presumption that Indigenous men and women are equal (despite the effect of patriarchy in our communities) and that the simple prohibition of formal discriminatory treatment will ensure equality. This approach does not reflect the current concern with genuine equality in international law. This concept was confirmed by the International Court of Justice in its 1965 decision in the South West Africa Case wherein Judge Tanaka explained that ‘The principle of equality before the law does not mean the absolute equality . . . but it means the relative equality, namely the principle to treat equally what are equal and unequally what are unequal . . .’.50 The Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples The United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Peoples (WGIP) is an expert group established under the SubCommission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities.51 Since 1982 the WGIP has met annually with Indigenous peoples and their representative organisations for the purpose of reviewing developments pertaining to the promotion and protection of Indigenous peoples’ human rights. In 1985 the WGIP resolved to produce a Draft Declaration on Indigenous rights. The Draft Declaration, which was finalised in 1994, contains important provisions relevant to Indigenous peoples’ rights to self-determination and traditional lands. Under international law, a declaration reflects standards that nation states should aspire to. It is not binding upon states, unlike treaties or conventions, which are binding.52 However, many international conventions originated as declarations. Also, it has been argued that some rights contained 149


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within the Draft Declaration may be accepted as binding under customary international law.53 The Draft Declaration must be considered and adopted by the General Assembly, the peak UN body, and it is envisaged that this will occur within the International Decade of the World’s Indigenous Peoples (1994–2004). Currently the Draft Declaration is being considered by the Commission for Human Rights (CHR) which is made up of governments, as opposed to the WGIP which consisted of independent experts sympathetic to Indigenous peoples.54 In order to continue the involvement of Indigenous peoples in the Draft Declaration a resolution was adopted by the CHR establishing an ‘openended inter-sessional working group’55 which allows the further participation of Indigenous peoples and organisations for the purpose of elaborating and considering the Draft Declaration. Delegations from Australia who have regularly participated in the WGIP and the CHR include ATSIC, the various Aboriginal land councils, the Foundation for Aboriginal and Islander Association (FAIRA), the National Aboriginal and Islander Legal Services Secretariat (NAILSS), Secretariat National Aboriginal Islander Child Care (SNAICC), the National Committee to Defend Black Rights (NCDBR) and the Indigenous Woman Aboriginal Corporation (IWAC). Ms Helen Corbett, the longest-serving Australian Indigenous delegate, has represented NCDBR and IWAC at the UNWGIP since 1987.56 The right to self-determination enunciated in Article 3 has been the most controversial aspect of the Draft Declaration. This Article provides that Indigenous peoples have the right of self determination. By virtue of this right, they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.57

Governments have opposed the wording of Article 3 (particularly the use of the word ‘peoples’) and are fearful that the provision will be given its full meaning in international law, which may mean that Indigenous peoples have the right of secession or separation from the nation state.58 Many 150


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Indigenous peoples have reiterated that while they may not seek this option, it would be absolutely unacceptable for the right to be restricted to a purely internal one.59 Indigenous peoples’ rights to traditional land and resources are recognised in Part VI of the Draft Declaration. Under this part, Indigenous peoples have rights to ‘own, develop and control’ traditional land, seas, air, flora and fauna.60 Governments are obliged to gain full consent for projects or developments affecting the land or resources and land which is confiscated or used without consent shall be subject to compensation.61 Indigenous peoples’ right to conservation and protection of the land is also recognised.62 Indigenous women’s rights to land and self-determination are protected by Article 43 of the Draft Declaration which states that ‘All the rights and freedoms recognised herein are equally guaranteed to male and female Indigenous individuals’. This Article is one of the first to be adopted by consensus at the CHR.63 Article 43 appears to be stronger than the relevant ILO 169 provision which merely prohibits discrimination against Indigenous women. The guarantee of equality in the Draft Declaration should also be taken to refer to real and genuine equality and not simply formal or substantive equality. However, Indigenous women’s specific needs and issues are not fully addressed by the Draft Declaration. Only Article 22 which deals with the right of Indigenous peoples to ‘special measures for the immediate, effective and continuing improvement of their economic and social conditions’ requires that particular attention be given to the special needs of Indigenous women (and elders, youth, children and disabled persons). This issue was raised by Helen Corbett on behalf of IWAC in a 1995 intervention to the WGIP,64 supported by eight peak Aboriginal organisations65 While this document is unique in the protection of Indigenous people’s rights, it avoids reaffirming, strengthening or complementing Indigenous women’s rights as contained in other international documents, especially the . . .

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— Words and Silences — Convention for the Elimination of . . . Discrimination Against Women.

It was further recommended that the Draft Declaration adopt a ‘positive statement of Indigenous women’s rights’. Indigenous women’s right to denounce and discard patriarchy and to practise and revitalise traditional cultures based on respect for women should also be included in the Draft Declaration.66 Such a provision would be consistent with the Articles in the Draft Declaration which address Indigenous peoples’ rights to ‘practise and revitalise their cultural traditions and customs’ in relation to sites, property, ceremonial objects, repatriation of remains, histories, philosophies, literature and names.67 However, such an amendment to the Draft Declaration is unlikely considering that the Indigenous representatives involved in the Commission for Human Rights Working Group are under enormous pressure from hostile governments and have repeatedly stated that there is to be ‘no change, alteration, or deletion’ to the Draft Declaration.68 International Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) The International Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) is the primary international instrument which prohibits racial discrimination.69 The ICERD does not make any reference to women’s experience of racial discrimination.70 Recently, however, the ICERD released General Recommendation XXV in which it was ‘recognised that some forms of racial discrimination have unique and specific impact on women . . .’ and further called upon states in the required reporting process to describe ‘factors reflecting and difficulties experienced in ensuring for women the equal enjoyment, free from racial discrimination’ of the rights contained in the convention. ICERD protects the random extinguishment of native title by government and is therefore an important ‘safety net’. It achieves this by virtue of Article 5 (d) which provides that states are to ‘undertake and eliminate racial discrimination in 152


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all its forms and to guarantee the right of everyone, without distinction as to race, colour, or national or ethnic origin, to equality before the law’ in their enjoyment of a number of civil rights, including the right to (v) own and (vi) inherit property. In Mabo v Queensland (No. 1)71 the High Court determined that Aboriginal peoples’ right to own and inherit native title is protected by these provisions of ICERD. ICERD is overseen and supervised by an expert committee known as the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.72 At its 51st session in August 1997 the committee adopted General Recommendation XXIII (51)73 concerning Indigenous peoples in which it was noted that Indigenous peoples are still being discriminated against and deprived of their land by colonists, commercial companies and state enterprises. The committee thus called upon states’ parties to recognise and protect the rights of Indigenous peoples to own, develop, control and use their communal lands, territories and resources and, where they have been deprived of their lands and territories traditionally owned or otherwise inhabited or used without their free or informed consent, to take steps to return these lands and territories.

Indigenous peoples’ right to self-determination was further supported by the committee who called on governments to ensure that Indigenous peoples have equal rights in respect of effective participation in public life, and that no decisions relating to their rights and interests are taken without their informed consent.74 Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) The Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) was ratified by Australia in 1983 and is implemented domestically by the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (Cth).75 The government is presently supporting the preparation and drafting of an Optional Protocol to the CEDAW 153


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which will allow individuals to make complaints of breaches of the convention to the expert CEDAW Committee.76 Women’s rights to full and equal participation in decisionmaking are enshrined in CEDAW through a number of provisions including Article 7 which obliges states to take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women in the political and public life of the country and . . . shall ensure to women, on equal terms with men, the right . . . to participate in the formulation of government policy and the implementation thereof and to hold public office and perform all public functions at all levels of government.

The rights in CEDAW were elaborated on at the 1995 Fourth UN World Conference on Women which developed the Platform for Action, an international document outlining twelve critical areas of concern for women, the purpose of which is to provide a basis for ‘evaluating and reforming each country’s domestic policy on the status of women’.77 As part of the Australian Government’s obligation to develop implementation strategies under the platform, the Office of the Status of Women made a commitment to ‘encourage greater involvement of Indigenous women in decision-making at all levels’. This response is clearly inadequate as it is limited to the involvement of women only in ATSIC. Although Indigenous women are not specifically addressed by the convention,78 the CEDAW Committee appear to be quite aware of the situation of Indigenous women and have brought several matters to the attention of the government.79 For example, at the committee’s 17th session in 1997 it made note of positive measures with respect to Aboriginal women’s specific health concerns, the issues of family violence in the community, reconciliation and the role of Indigenous women, and the decision of the High Court in the Mabo case. The committee noted with concern the lack of data concerning violence in the Aboriginal community and assessment of relevant programs. The committee made three particularly important recom154


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mendations with respect to Indigenous women, land and selfdetermination. Firstly, that the government collect statistical data on the participation of Indigenous women in the workforce, in decision-making, politics and administration, and in the judiciary. Secondly, that the government include Indigenous women representatives when it makes its next report to the committee. Thirdly, and most importantly, that in light of the Mabo and Wik decisions the government ‘develop the necessary legislative and policy measures to ensure women’s equal access to individual ownership of native title’. Conclusion In 1984 the Office of the Status of Women (located within the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet) established a national task force to inquire into and report on Aboriginal women’s needs and aspirations. As the report ‘Women’s Business’ noted, Aboriginal women were particularly concerned that their status as land custodians be equally recognised and demanded that the National Aboriginal Conference (a now disbanded national Aboriginal representative body) and the Commonwealth Government ‘recognise the status of women as land owners’.80 Government’s obligation to consult equally with Aboriginal women was also a major recommendation of the report.81 Aboriginal women’s business was further addressed by government in the 1990 House of Representatives Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs in their report entitled Our Future, Our Selves.82 The committee, in their consideration of Aboriginal women’s needs, recommended that ‘strategies need to be developed to ensure that Aboriginal women are listened to and actively involved in decision-making processes’ and that Aboriginal women be adequately represented in policy and decision-making forums. Other recommendations were made with respect to the Women’s Business report, the Office of the Status of Women, and the disbanded ATSIC Office of Aboriginal Women. 155


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Aboriginal women’s right to self-determination and land is recognised under international human rights law. Governments are required to undertake positive action to ensure Indigenous peoples’ right to land and culture, and positive legal measures to ensure equal participation and self-determination. Governments are also obliged to ensure that Indigenous women have equal access or genuine equality with respect to these rights. This situation is currently being monitored by the Committee on the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW Committee). The government’s responses to native title and self-determination fail to recognise or include Indigenous women. This is not a case of mere oversight or negligence. Many Indigenous people speak of colonisation as an ongoing process83 and this is also true of patriarchy and the patriarchal governments which continue to marginalise Indigenous women, and deny full and equal rights to land and self-determination.

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7

Gendered landscapes: the politics and processes of inquiry and negotiating interests in land SANDY TOUSSAINT, MYRNA TONKINSON AND

DAVID TRIGGER

Gendered landscapes

It is 1789, one year after British colonisation began. Arthur Phillip, Governor of the British settlement of New South Wales, has befriended Bennelong, a local Aboriginal man whose name has since been etched into wider Australia’s social and physical history by the area which bears his name at Bennelong Point in Sydney. Less well-known is Bennelong’s wife, Barangaroo; she is pregnant. One day Bennelong approaches Governor Phillip and requests permission for his and Barangaroo’s child to be born at Government House. Such a request is based on Indigenous custom whereby the site of one’s birth becomes one of the ways in which an association to land is established. By giving birth at Government House, Barangaroo and Bennelong will, in accordance with their own beliefs and practices, provide their child with rights to an important piece of land, not only as a Dreaming site but also as a potential ‘increase site’, an area where British resources are thought to be plentiful. Governor Phillip, who has been incorporated into the kinship system by Bennelong and Barangaroo, refuses on perhaps well-meaning but naive grounds. In his view, Barangaroo will be better off giving birth at a nearby hospital away from Government House. Governor Phillip cannot agree to the request because he believes that

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— Words and Silences — Barangaroo will be more comfortable at the hospital. Archival records do not show where Barangaroo eventually gave birth but she is sighted some days later wandering the settlement with a newborn child in her arms (Grimshaw et al., 1994, pp. 9–11).

The events recounted here are based on an account from 1789 by Lieutenant Collins, Aide to Governor Phillip. They suggest that from earliest encounters between Aboriginal and nonAboriginal people, Indigenous women were asserting their rights to land. The encounters between Barangaroo and Governor Phillip are significant for a number of reasons: they indicate how Barangaroo and her husband tried to incorporate Governor Phillip into their kinship system; how Barangaroo tried to maintain rights to land for her offspring by giving birth at a particular site; and Governor Phillip’s lack of understanding of these culturally specific matters. But most of all, these actions indicate the gendered nature of Indigenous relationships to land and ways in which interests in land are negotiated. In this chapter we move beyond the cultural aspirations of Bennelong and Barangaroo to another time and place, while keeping in mind their concerns and staying focused on similar themes—the significance of gender in negotiations for Indigenous rights in land during the 1980s and 1990s. Following a brief discussion of relevant anthropological literature on the politics of representation, we focus on three issues central to an understanding of gendered identities in land claims and native title cases: how might women’s participation and status in negotiations over country be characterised; how are the Indigenous rights of men and women to land represented in land-related inquiries and native title claims; have women been advantaged or disempowered through such negotiations and claims argued before tribunals and courts? We consider these questions in the context of several case studies, from the Northern Territory, Western Australia and Queensland, each representing a particular historical and legal setting. 158


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— Gendered landscapes —

Aboriginal societies and gender in context The position of women in Aboriginal societies has attracted the attention of observers since the earliest days of contact. Explorers and others commonly perceived relationships between men and women in terms of European prejudices about ‘savages’ as people for whom women were chattels and slaves (see Chapter 3). Early anthropologists gave more insightful accounts, but often continued the assumptions about women as lesser persons, excluded from the most important areas of knowledge, action and authority. Starting with Phyllis Kaberry (1939), some female anthropologists sought to correct these biased perceptions by providing substantive accounts that showed women filling important positions and enjoying complementary, if not always equal as interpreted within European systems of thought, status with men (Berndt 1970, 1981; Goodale, 1971; Hamilton, 1980, 1982). Kaberry (1939), whose work on women and land has been persuasive in several Kimberley native title claims (for example Ben Ward and Ors on behalf of the Miriuwung Gajerrong People, heard by Lee, J. in 1998), wrote half a century ago: The women seemed to be just as desirous as the men, when the opportunity offered, of visiting their horde countries, the increase sites, and gunin [resting place] of the totemic ancestors; they seemed just as deeply convinced of the economic superiority of their territories over all others, including even those of their husbands. This sentiment probably springs from long residence during childhood, knowledge of economic resources, sacred sites, myths, totemic affiliations and kinship ties with other individuals who also belong to the country. (p. 177)

An approach which endeavoured to correct gender imbalance and highlight women’s perspectives and experience was further developed in the 1980s. It located women in their own exclusive, gendered world of equal religious and political significance to that of men. Diane Bell’s (1983) work is well known in this regard. Focusing on central Australian 159


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communities, Bell argued that men and women occupied separate and equal domains, including rights and responsibilities in land, that were like mirror images of each other. In recent years there has been recognition that in Aboriginal societies, as in all societies, men and women share interests, knowledge, aspirations, agendas and responsibilities and interact across a spectrum of activities in which their relative status and power vary. Francesca Merlan (1988) has provided a detailed review of the literature on gender which need not be recycled here. In keeping with Merlan, and the interpretations of Victoria Burbank (1988; 1994) and Sandy Toussaint (1995), it is important to stress that past tendencies which have assumed oppositional and ‘either/or’ analyses (for example ‘traditional’ or ‘contemporary’, ‘hierarchical’ or ‘complementary’), have imposed limitations on the descriptions and interpretations of women’s situations, women’s relationships to men and women’s and men’s relationships to land. In our assessment, much more attention needs to be paid to the complex ways in which gender is given meaning, informs behaviour and shapes social structures in Aboriginal societies before comprehensive understandings of gendered relationships to land can be reliably articulated. We emphasise that men and women within the intricate webs of kinship share knowledge and interests, and that it is essential to see Aboriginal societies in terms of the complex interrelationships between people of different categories, not least that of gender. As will be elaborated below, it is not productive to view gender relations in terms of the opposition of men’s and women’s interests (cf. Povinelli, 1993; Merlan, 1988). Rather, those interests and the rights, obligations and actions associated with them are inextricably entwined in dynamic and complex ways. Thus, while inequalities and contestation can be discerned and must be analysed, any interpretation that assumes gendered exclusivity as primary or inevitable is bound to be partial and distorted. There is another angle in the literature that needs to be raised here, which is whether the colonisation and domination 160


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of Aboriginal societies has resulted in various diminutions or enhancements of the status of Indigenous women. Some observers, for example, have claimed that Aboriginal women had greater autonomy, based partly on their economic contribution to subsistence, in precolonial times (Kaberry, 1939; Bell, 1983). Others have argued (Barwick, 1970; Lilley, 1989; Tonkinson, 1990) that changes wrought by governments, and Aboriginal relations with pastoralists and missionaries, have resulted in women gaining greater independence, at least in their social relationships with the men of their communities. These contrasting interpretations will be examined further in light of the literature on land-related legislation. We commence with the Northern Territory, where land rights legislation has the longest history. Gender and Indigenous rights in land: the Northern Territory experience Examination of the presence and participation of women in the land claim process in the Northern Territory over the period since the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act (ALRA) was introduced in 1976, reveals change both in the internal gender relations of Aboriginal communities, and in the external perceptions and structures that have influenced those communities and relationships within them. Briefly, in the early period of the land claims hearings, the prevailing perception was that, while rights in land did not depend on gender or age, adult men were principally responsible for the religious and other obligations involved in maintaining ties to land, and were the ones with authority to speak about it and demonstrate the legitimacy of the group’s claims. In a 1983 study on the development of a register of ‘traditional owners’ or senior custodians, Sue Kesteven and Diane Smith provided an acute observation of what was occurring in a particular area, Western Arnhem Land, but probably with parallels in many other areas as well (cf. Rowell, 1983). They affirmed that both women and men were involved 161


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in decision-making in matters relating to land, and that at times women were ‘crucial actors’ and ‘strategic mediators’. However, Kesteven and Smith also noted that: [m]any organisations in Western Arnhem Land Aboriginal affairs tend to promote and reinforce an administrative inclination towards oversimplifying the land ownership picture . . . taking the patrilineal model of land tenure as being the only principle that requires consideration. (1983, p. 89).

Another source of distortion reported by Kesteven and Smith was the tendency of Aboriginal men to give abbreviated genealogies, often omitting women and children, while women ‘tend(ed) to be more socially inclusive’. This underlined the importance of consulting women as well as men. Deborah Bird Rose, among others (Mearns, 1994; Edmunds 1996), cautions against repetition of gender based inequalities in future native title cases. She (1995, p. 3) suggests ways in which the twenty-years-plus operation of the ALRA, especially in relation to the land claims process, often overlooked women, muffled their voices, or at best allowed them limited participation only: In a successful claim, Australian law recognises the authority and integrity of the claimants’ Law by granting the land. One result is that a set of law persons has been empowered, and their empowerment feeds back into the on-going life of country and community . . . Getting land back is a superb demonstration of the power not only of Law but of the person who holds it and demonstrates it. Men have been massively advantaged economically, culturally, psychologically, and in terms of their long range prospects for political action. The disadvantage for women is not only, or even predominantly in matters of secret/sacred knowledge. Rather . . . for many women (not all) [it] encompasses the full dimension of their right to speak with knowledge and passion about their status as land owners.

Rose (1995, p. 2) thus argues that ‘[l]and claims (under the Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976) have conferred a massive advantage on senior Aboriginal men vis-à-vis senior 162


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Aboriginal women’. Somewhat counter to this assertion, Lilley (1989) expresses the view that land rights legislation (indeed colonisation itself), has provided opportunities for women to assert greater claims to the reproduction of society and the Aboriginal polity. Perhaps situated somewhere between these two authors, Mearns (1994) describes the establishment and operation of the Sacred Sites Authority in the Northern Territory as, initially at least, depriving women of their traditional authority and responsibilities for sites; but she concludes that women have subsequently seized opportunities to assert their traditional rights within the new structures and organisations concerned with land and sites. We can note how the last ten years or so of land claims in the Northern Territory has seen a pervasive awareness of gender equity as a desirable goal. Aboriginal land councils and other Indigenous representative bodies have adopted policies that see all research ideally carried out by field teams of Indigenous and non-Indigenous men and women. Anthropological research has been particularly influential here. While there are always exceptions and contradictions to a general principle (for example, some senior women may confer with known male anthropologists—especially those with whom they relate as classificatory kin—on matters connected to women’s ceremonies and land), it has commonly been the experience that Aboriginal women and men will have different knowledge and will prefer to divulge their knowledge to researchers of the same gender. Recognition of the gendered division of labour has been embraced to a lesser extent in the case of lawyers working on land-related matters. Lawyer Annie Keely (1996, p. 175) argues for the appointment of a female Land Commissioner to deal with situations of restricted female evidence (see also Bell (1998) in relation to the Hindmarsh Island bridge dispute). Keely (1996, p. 175) comments that while male claimants who divulge secrets to Land Commissioners are making some compromise, ‘. . . it is only women claimants who, in order to prove their claim to the male Commissioner, have had to breach Aboriginal Law which requires that certain information 163


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remain restricted only to certain women’. This proposition, however, is subject to debate, and no evidence is provided to support it. While Keely calls for the appointment of a female Land Commissioner to deal with situations of restricted female evidence in claims, she states also that there is a gender imbalance among the lawyers and anthropologists, suggesting that there is an equal ‘shortage of experienced women’ lawyers and anthropologists doing land claims. Although this may well be the case with lawyers, it is not always so among anthropologists. As noted, the anthropological work of land claims is invariably done by female–male teams, and, among anthropologists there is no shortage of experienced women. It should, however, be acknowledged that such women may not always be able to make a commitment to undertake extensive anthropological fieldwork within the time-frame imposed by government and adopted by the courts and Indigenous representative bodies. Some commentators argue that more women than men undertake applied research. Bell (1993, pp. 285–6) puts the view that as a result of women anthropologists being ‘locked out of much more prestigious research’, they undertook extensive applied research and became increasingly aware of the social conditions of Aboriginal life, an experience which has been crucial to the involvement of women in land claims. Bell also posits that women’s interest in ethics and applied work ‘fitted in with other obligations’ (presumably child care). Initially, women’s participation was focused on the revelation of secret women’s business to match the secret men’s business that became de rigueur in land claims. Indeed, it can be argued that the possession of gender-specific knowledge has become an essential element in proving claims to land. Rose points out that most of the mundane evidence has continued to be elicited from men, which is then embellished with the presentation of secret men’s and women’s business to select groups, with the former carrying greater weight in terms of time, resources and the overall importance accorded to it. Rose argues that women have not been well served by this pattern: ‘What matters in land claims, I contend, is not whether women reveal secrets. The important issue is whether women have 164


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opportunities fully and freely to give their evidence’ (Rose, 1995, p. 4). A combination of factors, including the influence of various schools of feminist thought, practice and politics, the involvement of women anthropologists and the inclinations and strategies of Aboriginal women, have combined to bring about a sharp rise in the profile of women in the land claims process during the past twenty years in the Northern Territory. It is also interesting to note that the National Native Title Tribunal, established in 1994 in accordance with the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth) as a result of the High Court’s 1992 Mabo decision, has taken this trend further by appointing female tribunal members as well as female anthropologists and lawyers. Gendered inquiries: the Aboriginal Land Inquiry in Western Australia Unlike the situation for some Indigenous groups in the Northern Territory following introduction of the ALRA in 1976, it is only since 1993 and implementation of the Federal Government’s Native Title Act that some Aboriginal women and men in Western Australia have had the opportunity to lodge claims regarding their rights and interests in land. This does not mean, however, that Indigenous peoples, anthropologists and others in that State have been without avenues to express land-related issues or, indeed, that there are no parallels to be drawn between Western Australia and the Northern Territory. The most significant example can be found in the establishment of the Aboriginal Land Inquiry (ALI) in 1983, required by a newly elected State Labor Government led by Premier Brian Burke to research and report on Indigenous land issues in Western Australia. Headed by Justice Paul Seaman, and often referred to as the ‘Seaman Inquiry’, its initial appointment of a male anthropologist only was challenged by Aboriginal women and other interested parties to the extent that a woman anthropologist was appointed soon after the Inquiry 165


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commenced its task. It was also the case that Western Australia took advantage of some of the lessons learnt through the Northern Territory experience where, for example and as raised above, recognition of Indigenous women’s rights in land had not always been adequately incorporated into the inquiry process. Drawing on extensive ethnographic and archival data gathered throughout Western Australia during an eighteen-month period of research and analysis, Seaman, in the Inquiry’s Final Report, noted that: In my (1984a) Discussion Paper I said: ‘The [land] hearings have proceeded and will proceed upon the basis that many Aboriginal women have interests in, or in relation to the land, which often cannot be discussed with men, but which are complementary to the interests of Aboriginal men in, or in relation to land. I have the impression that the importance of women’s interests in land has not been widely recognised’ . . . The Inquiry has been conducted upon that basis . . . A number of women anthropologists have assisted at hearings. Overall the numbers of men and women at the hearings were roughly equal (1984b, p. 5, 1.24, 1.25).

Observing the intricate nature of gendered relationships to land, Seaman provided detail which acknowledged that while at some land-based hearings Aboriginal men discussed their beliefs and showed male members of the Inquiry ‘special objects connected with Aboriginal tradition’, it was also the case that Aboriginal women followed a ‘similar course with women anthropologists’ (1984b, p. 12, 3.24). Noting the ‘diversities of Aboriginal land laws and lifestyles from one end of the State to the other’ (p. 45, 7.45), and the different ways in which Indigenous groups relate to land (spiritual, economic, residential, historical, as a result of succession, and so on), Seaman’s conclusions were that: Men and women of the group are responsible for preserving the land in its present state, for gaining and passing on religious knowledge of its creation, and for performing land-sustaining ritual. Interference with the land and its

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— Gendered landscapes — important spiritual places has consequences not only for the land itself, but for those who are charged with the responsibility of its maintenance. (1984b, p. 12, 3.27)

Evidence for such en-gendered conclusions was drawn from the investigative work of the ALI, including land-based submissions from Indigenous and non-Indigenous individuals and groups, and the earlier findings of Kaberry (1939) and Catherine Berndt (1970; 1981). Such material not only revealed the nature of women’s and men’s relationships to land, it also showed how certain transformations had occurred. In a submission lodged with the Inquiry by a Kimberley community, the ‘Nurtuwarta Community’, women’s interests and rights are clearly privileged in a way which may not have occurred in circumstances prior to contact: This group of women would like to claim a tract of land halfway between Fitzroy Crossing and Jubilee Station. It comprises the land around the old Jubilee homestead called Nurtuwarta, the site of the old reserve. This group calls themselves the Nurtuwarta Community and would like to have the land there under this name. They are all members of an extended family group. Traditionally the land belonged to the deceased husband of Mirondo Forrest, and she moved there as a young woman. Her children were born there and her husband is buried there along with many other [family members]. (Public Submission (unpublished) No. B14. 198, Nurtuwarta Community, Aboriginal Land Inquiry, 1983/4)

In another submission to the ALI, also from the Kimberley, Wangkajunga women emphasised their ‘own sacred sites’ in the southern desert region, and concern for the ‘safety of their ritual objects’. The women also stated that a number of areas ‘to the south-east of Christmas Creek [pastoral station] are regarded as sacred places . . . one . . . is restricted to men but the others are open to both women and men’ (Public Submission No. B14. 170, The Women of Wangkajunga Community Inc., Christmas Creek, WA, Aboriginal Land Inquiry, 1983/4 (see also Bolger 1984/5 for further discussion on Wangkajunga women’s interests in land)). 167


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Despite the fact that women were consulted about land, and women’s evidence was to provide a key aspect of the Inquiry’s findings, such enlightened material gained little for Indigenous women and men with respect to recognition of rights and responsibilities in land. The State Government, in part as a result of intense lobbying from sectors of the mining industry and a hostile Coalition then in opposition, rejected the Inquiry’s findings, putting in its place a weakened version of the ALI’s Final Report titled the ‘Aboriginal Land Tenure Bill’ which did not become legislation (Libby, 1990; Toussaint, 1995). The State clearly failed to honour its electoral promise to implement land rights legislation. While the Inquiry process reflected the gendered nature of Indigenous relationships to land, it was insufficient to contest the power and authority of sectors of government and industry bent on denying recognition not only of the rights and responsibilities of Indigenous women and men as these relate to land, but also a system of land tenure which did not conform with the aspirations of the Western Australian Government. In this example, like the one which follows, the politics of negotiation cannot be described as occurring between mainly women and men (which is not to suggest that such politics were absent), but between Indigenous peoples and the State. Gender and the negotiation of rights in land: the case of the Gulf country in northwest Queensland Three negotiations concerning land, set in northwest Queensland, illustrate and reflect the positions of Aboriginal men and women in dealings with both the state and private sector industry. In a statutory land claim (1982), a land transfer (1993) and a mining project agreement negotiation (1997), men and women have participated with equal vigour and intensity in expressing their views and aspirations. The Gulf cases thus suggest no systematic diminution of women’s interests occurring through such processes. Indeed, there has arguably been an emergent trend for women’s interests to be 168


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enhanced, through the apparent rise of matrifiliation as a principle on which connections with land operate within the Indigenous polity. The first case is the Nicholson River land claim, lodged under the 1976 Northern Territory legislation, but involving claimants living in Queensland adjacent to the State border. In the process of deciding the basis on which people would assert traditional connections to particular areas within the claimed block of unalienated Crown land, the matter of ‘primary spiritual responsibility’ was discussed among Waanyi people. This is one of the key aspects of the definition of ‘traditional ownership’ given in the ALRA. While the matter of translating Indigenous concepts of relations with land into the terms of the statute is complex, the core issue was whether a person should appropriately assert a primary spiritual responsibility for only their ‘father’s country’ or the land of their mother’s patriclan as well. This involves the issue of whether matrifiliation had become recognised as a significant principle by which primary Aboriginal rights to land are inherited. The fact that Waanyi people considered this in terms of a person’s mother’s father’s country (or ‘estate’, to use the common anthropological term) underscores that it was patrifiliation that in the past, in this region at least, had been the primary principle concerning connections to land. That is, persons’ connections to their mother’s mother’s (or father’s mother’s) estates were generally regarded as not as important as their rights to their father’s father’s or mother’s father’s country; a person’s primary spiritual responsibility was to be asserted either to their own patriclan estate alone or to their mother’s patriclan estate as well. After much discussion, the decision was to include as claimants those who had both mother’s father’s as well as father’s father’s country within the claim area. This represented a transformation in the system of traditional land tenure whereby links to ‘mother’s country’ were asserted as just as important (in terms of ‘primary spiritual responsibility’, as defined in the Act) as ties to ‘father’s country’. There are some complex issues involved in various attempts to characterise the 169


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complementary nature of these inherited rights and interests; they entail the well-recorded differences in Indigenous land tenure systems of the Gulf region, between what have been glossed as rights of ‘ownership’ of ‘father’s country’, and ‘managership’ in relation to ‘mother’s country’ (Maddock, 1983; Morphy and Morphy, 1984). There is no opportunity to go into this distinction here. However, several points are germane to explaining why matrifiliation has become a principle by which Aboriginal land rights are asserted. The first is that, apart from the ‘ownership’/‘managership’ distinction, this is part of a continent-wide phenomenon. As Peter Suttton (1998, pp. 45–6, 67–9) has written of this process of change within Indigenous law, matrifiliation becomes an increasingly important principle of relations with country as sedentarisation (when people become less mobile, living in towns and permanent communities), disruption to previously followed marriage rules, nonAboriginal parentage and other social changes occur. David Trigger’s long-term research in the Gulf country of northwest Queensland and northeast Northern Territory has produced results consistent with the general point made by Sutton for the entire continent apart from the Western Desert; namely, that ‘patrifiliation has been the privileged pathway to land rights under classical Aboriginal tenure systems’ (Sutton 1998, p. 52). The emergence of greater concentration on matrifiliation in cases like the Nicholson River land claim is part of a general pattern of transformation in Indigenous systems of land tenure. This transformation results in increasing status and empowerment for Aboriginal women in that they are able to directly transmit primary rights to land to their children in a way now recognised in Australian law. The high status of women in the Nicholson River case was further underscored by the fact that, due to their greater longevity, there were simply more senior women than men of equivalent age available to provide information on customary law in relation to the land claim. While these women were at times somewhat reticent about naming country, rendering relevant songlines in public, and generally providing cultural 170


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knowledge to the researchers (who were on occasions using video tapes), they became key witnesses at the hearing of the claim in front of the Aboriginal Land Commissioner and associated legal personnel. The women were at times introduced by younger persons such as their middle-aged sons; however, they were subsequently focused upon as highly knowledgeable claimants concerning genealogies and the broad social history of the claimant group. Similar issues arise in the second Gulf country case to be dealt with here, where Ganggalida people requested the relevant Queensland Government minister to transfer a small coastal reserve to Aboriginal ownership in 1993. This group’s application proceeded in terms of a section of the Queensland Aboriginal Land Act 1991 allowing such a transfer to occur insofar as the Minister can conclude that the owners in Australian law will be Aboriginal people ‘particularly concerned with the land’ according to Indigenous traditions and customs. Similarly to the Waanyi case in the Nicholson River claim, Ganggalida people had to decide who among their group should be asserted as holding ‘traditional’ rights to the area concerned. Trigger’s research in this coastal country since 1978 had indicated that the ideal system of land tenure involved both men and women having primary ownership rights to their father’s estate. However, it was clear from the beginnings of his investigations that people had a very broad range of other significant ties to particular areas, based on the circumstances of their personal histories. They had ties to the estates of their other three grandparents, to their spiritual ‘conception’ sites, places of birth or where close senior relatives were born, died or were buried, and so on. These latter types of rights or connections with particular sites and tracts of land were mobilised in the context of negotiations such that they were asserted as equally significant as patrifilial links to fathers’ estates. While this was not accepted by all involved in discussions, and a small number of people stressed that the ‘old ways’ of privileging rights to the father’s country should remain paramount, the general 171


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view was that Australian law should recognise all kinds of rights to land that were now part of Ganggalida historical experience. As in the Waanyi case, this positioned senior Ganggalida women to be key arbiters in designating the wide range of ties and connections of younger people to various portions of the coastal country. Not only were senior women generally more meticulous in presenting the details of genealogical connections (cf. Powell 1999), but also they once again were able to stress the importance of their children’s ties to the estates of their own patriclans. In the Ganggalida case this process represented both cultural continuity and change. The knowledge of discrete estates and their associated spiritual and material features has been maintained together with acknowledgment of the identity of earlier generations of patriclan members. In the genealogies prepared for the land transfer, the upper level typically is an individual or set of siblings or parallel cousins, for whom the named estate on the genealogy (that is, the one group members are now stated as affiliated with) is their patriclan country. However, contemporary living claimants as represented among the descendants of these forebears, assert rights and interests in a range of such countries along the coast in terms of the many criteria mentioned above, thus seeking legal recognition of ties that are just as often traced through their female ancestry as their male relatives. The final example from the Gulf country concerns negotiations over Century Mine during 1997. This was a highly politicised set of negotiations about an agreement on a very large new mine to be constructed within what Aboriginal people asserted was ‘Waanyi country’. The development also entailed a long pipeline and port which involved several other linguistic groups. This was a case where there was considerable factionalism within and among the Indigenous families and groups involved (Trigger, 1997). Local women took a leading role in this process of politicking within the Aboriginal domain. A smaller number of women, as compared to men, became involved in the more overt aspects of the highly politicised dealings and 172


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confrontations with the mining company and the State Government. In public meetings, most leading representatives of the Aboriginal parties were male, and it was a range of Aboriginal men who most vigorously presented views—nevertheless, there were individual women who participated publicly at such times, presenting both pro- and anti-mine positions as they existed across the Indigenous communities. Women present at highly volatile public meetings would at times seek to calm down men who were extremely upset and vocal in arguing with the company and government personnel. On one occasion, a middle-aged man’s mother and several close female relatives with her, called to him to stop his abuse of the non-Aboriginal representatives present. They later indicated that they had been embarrassed about his abusive language, but probably more importantly for them, they were worried about his health should he become too upset and possibly violent. Once again, the case of the mine negotiations shows women taking a major role in matters of public interest within the Indigenous domain. While there is some indication that women have been less aggressive in the ways they have gone about presenting their views in some settings, the recent northwest Queensland cases do not support any conclusion that women’s interests have been relegated to a second-class position in the course of negotiations over land claims and resource development projects. The rise of matrifiliation as a principle within Indigenous law concerning relations with land, has been commensurate with the expression of female agency in negotiations, and both are evidence of a general increase of women’s influence and role as documented in research over the past two decades. Conclusions In this chapter we have drawn upon research from the Northern Territory, Western Australia and Queensland to address the question of gender and Indigenous rights in land. 173


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We have particularly broached the matter of whether Aboriginal negotiations with government and industry have disadvantaged or benefited women. In general, we suggest that women’s knowledge about and interests in land eventually found public expression via the operation of the ALRA in the Northern Territory, that women as well as men took leading roles in processes of the ALI in Western Australia, and that women in conjunction with men played significant negotiating roles in land claims and resource development projects in Queensland. Throughout the chapter we have also addressed the gendered nature of Indigenous political life and consequent implications for ways in which rights in land are inherited and articulated. In the native title era certain transformations have occurred in Indigenous systems of land tenure. One particular change we have identified is the emergence of matrifiliation as an important principle in some regions. We have argued that the Indigenous landscape is an ‘en-gendered’ one in many respects, and that gender emerges as a significant factor in Aboriginal negotiations over land. In this context, the joint participation of women and men should continue to be acknowledged by researchers. The case materials we have presented indicate the centrality of the state as a major determinant of outcomes for all members of Aboriginal communities as they attempt to deal with the legacy of a colonial history.

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Notes Notes

Chapter 1 Aboriginal women, politics and land 1 H. McRae, G. Nettheim and L. Beacroft, Aboriginal Legal Issues, The Law Book Company, Sydney, 1991, p. 104. 2 Graeme Neate, Aboriginal Land Rights Law in the Northern Territory, vol. 1, Alternative Publishing Cooperative Ltd, Chippendale, NSW, 1989, p. 35; F. Brennan, Sharing the Country, Penguin Books, Ringwood, 1991, p. 24. 3 A. E. Woodward, Aboriginal Land Rights Commission. Second Report, AGPS, Canberra 1974, p. 1. 4 Unalienated Crown land outside town boundaries, not set aside for public purposes; and land held by Aboriginal people. N. Peterson, Aboriginal Land Rights Handbook, AIAS, Canberra 1981, p. 32. 5 See P. Toyne and D. Vachon, Growing Up the Country, McPhee Gribble/Penguin, Melbourne, 1984. 6 The traditional owners wanted the land to be owned by the entire people, rather than divided up among local groups. Legal ownership is vested in a corporate body comprising all traditional owners. McRae, Nettheim and Beacroft, Aboriginal Legal Issues, pp. 151–2 7 For example, Scandinavian countries. Henry Minde, ‘Sami land rights in Norway: A test case for Indigenous peoples’ Indigenous Law Bulletin 4 (28), 2000. 8 Native Title Act (Cth) s 223 9 H. Wootten, ‘The end of dispossession? Anthropologists and lawyers in the native title process’ in Native Title: Emerging Issues for Research,

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10 11

12

13

14

15 16

17 18 19

20 21

Policy and Practice eds J. Finlayson and D. E. Smith, CAEPR, Canberra, 1995, pp. 101–18, 110. P. Toyne and D. Vachon, Growing up the Country. For example, the South Australian Aboriginal and Historic Relics Act, also the Western Australian Aboriginal Heritage Act, of 1972, ‘an Act to make provision for the preservation on behalf of the community of places and objects customarily used by or traditional to the original inhabitants of Australia . . .’ (italics added). L. R. Hiatt, ‘Traditional land tenure and contemporary land claims’ in Aboriginal Landowners, Oceania Monographs, ed. L. R. Hiatt, University of Sydney, Sydney, 1984, pp. 11–23. For example Diane Bell, Daughters of the Dreaming, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1993; Peggy Brock (ed.), Women, Rites and Sites: Aboriginal Women’s Cultural Knowledge, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1989; Francesca Merlan, ‘Gender in Aboriginal social life: a review’ in Social Anthropology and Australian Aboriginal Studies eds R.H. Berndt and R. Tonkinson, Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra, 1988. The amendments to the NTA passed by the Howard Government in 1998, following the High Court decision in the Wik case, has changed the way native claimants claim and negotiate over their land. An assessment of the first five years of the operation of the NTA is therefore apposite. McRae, Nettheim and Beacroft, 1997, 178. Meredith Rowell, ‘Women and land claims in the Northern Territory’ in Aborigines, Land and Land Rights, eds N. Peterson and M. Langton, AIAS, Canberra 1983, pp. 256–67. Rowell, p. 264. Rowell, p. 259; Neate, p. 52, Hiatt, p. 19–29. Neate describes the intricacies of different lines of descent, inherited rights and individually acquired rights to land in chapter 3 of his book. There is also a vast anthropological literature on kinship among Northern Territory communities. Kumantjayi Ross, ‘The dam’ in Take Power Like This Old Man Here, ed. A. Wright, IAD Books, Alice Springs 1998, pp. 308–10. Peggy Brock (ed.) Women, Rites and Sites. Aboriginal Women’s Cultural Knowledge, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1989, p. xxii.

Chapter 2 ‘Speaking what our mothers want us to say’: Aboriginal women, land and the Western Women’s Council in New South Wales, 1984–85 1 Maureen O’Donnell, Broken Hill, 10/11/98. This chapter has benefited from the generous, frank and stimulating contributions of Maureen O’Donnell and Barbara Flick at many stages of its drafting. We all wish

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— Notes —

2

3

4

5

6

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to dedicate the chapter to the memory of Isobel Flick, who died in February 2000 after a lifetime’s work fostering women’s independence and strength. Local desires were essential in this process but some New South Wales Aboriginal people, particularly those involved in national political networks such as the Federation of Land Councils, had become increasingly aware of the bush camp as a form of meeting and community consultation widely used in remote areas such as the Northern Territory. Tape recordings were made by Karin Donaldson at the request of the Women’s Council participants at the Mount Grenfell meeting, during the formal meeting, 21/10/84 and around the campfire, 20/10/84 and at the Winbar formal meeting, 7/4/85. These tapes are in the possession of Karin Donaldson and Barbara Flick (both currently living in Wilcannia). Interviews were recorded by audiotape with Maureen O’Donnell, 10/11/98 (by phone from Broken Hill); Barbara Flick, (25/10/98) Sydney; Isabel Flick 2/11/98 (by phone from Gunnedah) and by notes with Karin Donaldson, 29/4/99, (by phone from Carcoar). The noticeable difference in the transcripts is that speakers of Paakantjirelated languages, like Maureen O’Donnell, usually use ‘womans’ and ‘mans’ as the plural form of woman and man. There were many women involved with the Women’s Council, including Margie-Ann Whyman, Norma Kennedy and Alma Bates. Others are named in the body of this chapter, but many are not. Everyone who participated brought their own unique contribution which shaped the course and outcome of the council. Karin’s work encouraged a flowering of artistic work among young Paakantji people. Her own paintings of elders Jim Whyman and Ethel Edwards became widely used posters which are icons for the assertion of contemporary Aboriginal culture, honouring the lives of elders for both their traditional knowledge and their life histories. She contributed significantly to the innovative Far Western Regional Land Council publication, The Story of the Falling Star, which used graphic design approaches to link a strong sense of contemporary, vibrant Aboriginal youth and culture with life histories of pastoral times and with a powerful traditional story. While this is a useful grouping for the purposes of this chapter, such a binary division significantly oversimplifies the language patterns in the areas. The major language/culture group on the southern bank of the Darling–Barwon is the Ngiyampaa. Its eastern dialect groups have tended to have similar historical experiences with the Kamilaraay groups. Notably, the Ngiyampaa-speaking people around Brewarrina were drawn in with the Yuwalaraay (a closely related language to Kamilaraay) and the Murawarri in the major Board-managed station

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at Brewarrina. The people of the western Ngiyampaa-related language, the Wongaipuwan, were drawn in with the Paakantji groups in their encounters with their colonisers. There are important language and cultural groups along the Culgoa, such as Murawarri, whose culture and social relations had affinities to the peoples both to their west and their east. Heather Goodall, Invasion to Embassy: Land in Aboriginal Politics 1770 to 1972, Allen & Unwin and Blackbooks, Sydney, 1996, Part IV, ‘Under the Dog Act’. Heather Goodall, ‘ ‘‘Saving the children’’: Gender and the colonisation of Aboriginal children in NSW, 1788 to 1990’, Aboriginal Law Bulletin, 2, 44, 1990, pp. 6–9; Heather Goodall, ‘ ‘‘Assimilation begins in the home’’: The state and Aboriginal women’s work as mothers in New South Wales: 1900s to 1960s’’ in Aboriginal Workers: Special Issue on Labour History, Ann McGrath and Kay Saunders (eds) with Jackie Huggins, vol. 69, 1995, pp. 75–101; Barry Morris, Domesticating Resistance: The Dhan-gadi Aborigines and the Australian State, Berg, Oxford, 1989. The intense pain of the removal policy has been strongly documented in Bringing Them Home: Report of the National Inquiry into the separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, 1997, written by Sir Ronald Wilson and Michael Dodson. The story of the storytelling can be found in Peter Read, A Rape of the Soul So Profound, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1999. Goodall, Invasion to Embassy, ‘Land, Children and Power’, pp. 115– 24. Maureen O’Donnell, interview, 10/11/98. Mutawintji is a site of high significance to people of the Paakantjirelated languages, located two hours northeast of Broken Hill. As discussed later in this chapter, the story of its restoration to Aboriginal management was a major concern for the Western Women’s Council. Maureen O’Donnell, interview, 10/11/98. Maureen O’Donnell, interview, 10/11/98. Quotes about Isabel’s early life from interviews conducted by Heather Goodall, Sydney, 30/11/78 and by Karen Flick, Collarenebri, July 1994. Quotes from Melva Nicholls from an interview with Melva and her husband Don in Walgett conducted by Heather Goodall, 3/8/77 (Tape T41). For glimpses of different aspects of the multidimensional challenges facing Wilcannia and far western Aboriginal people, see C. D. Rowley, Outcasts in White Australia, Penguin Books, Ringwood, Victoria 1971, and Jeremy Beckett, ‘George Dutton’s Country’, Aboriginal History, 2, 1, 1978, pp. 2–31. M

M

11

12 13 14

15 16 17 18

19

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— Notes — 20 These people included Will Webster from Menindee, William Bates from Wilcannia and his extended family from Wilcannia and Broken Hill, (of which Maureen O’Donnell is a member), Tombo Winters and George Rose from the Fernando family, (of which Isabel Walford Flick is a part), Stephen Gordon and Essie Coffee from Brewarrina, Isabel Flick from Collarenebri, the Monro and Craigie families from Moree and Julie Whitton from Boggabilla. 21 Lawyers like Peter Tobin in 1973 at Brewarrina but covering the whole west; and John Terry, based at Wilcannia in 1976; then the first young WALS lawyers, Stephen Fitzpatrick, Eric Wilson and Anna Smith and their senior solicitor Tony Parker. 22 Barbara Flick, interview, 25/10/98. 23 Along with the useful role played by sympathetic professional staff in Aboriginal organisations, like the lawyers mentioned earlier and teachers like Brian Doolan and Kathy Bannister at Wilcannia, the important long-term role of archaeologist and linguist Peter Thompson must be noted. He has been important in both the northwest and the far west. He had developed family links among the Aboriginal communities in Moree and Toomelah with his first marriage to Lyn Craigie from Moree. Then, after divorcing, he began a long partnership with Edna Hunter of Wilcannia. Peter moved to Wilcannia to live with Edna and her family in 1975 and remained within the Aboriginal community there until 1998. His deep interest in language learning and restoration has combined with his constant and practical assistance in facilitating bush trips for his family, providing time, support and battered vehicles to make it easier for older people and children to pile on and head out of town for their country. 24 There was also a slowly growing relationship between some New South Wales activists and ‘traditionally-oriented’ Aboriginal communities living in central and northern Australia, with whom New South Wales organisations were in increasingly frequent political alliance over land and legal issues. This allowed growing familiarity with the use of bush meetings for community consultation in remote areas. 25 Interview, 10/11/98. 26 Interview, 10/11/98. 27 Interview, 25/10/98. 28 Interview, 2/11/98. 29 Interview, 10/11/98. 30 Interview, 25/10/98. 31 Mt Grenfell, meeting recording, 21/10/84. 32 Mt Grenfell, meeting recording, 21/10/84. 33 Mt Grenfell, meeting recording, 21/10/84. 34 Interview, 29/4/99. 35 Mt Grenfell, campfire recording, 20/10/84.

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— Words and Silences — 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52

Interview, 25/10/98. Mt Grenfell, meeting recording, 21/10/84. Mt Grenfell, meeting recording, 21/10/84. Interview, 10/11/98. Mt Grenfell, meeting recording, 21/10/84. Interview, 25/10/98. Interview, 25/10/98. Interview, 25/10/98. Winbar, meeting recording, 7/4/85. Winbar, meeting recording, 7/4/85. Mt Grenfell, meeting recording, 21/10/84. Interview, 10/11/98. Interview, 25/10/98. Winbar, meeting recording, 7/4/85. Interview, 10/11/98. Interview, 2/11/98. Information from Peter Thompson, who conducted the ‘site clearance’ survey. The women’s trip was organised by Edna Hunter, Dorrie Hunter’s daughter. 53 Interview, 25/10/98. 54 Interview, 10/11/98. 55 Interview, 10/11/98.

Chapter 3 Seeking justice: traditions of social action amongst Indigenous women in the southwest of Western Australia 1 Some Nyungar elders were asked to read this chapter and no objections were raised. 2 The preferred academic spelling, but also spelt variously Nyoongar, Noongar, etc. 3 Indeed I have heard older claimants themselves describe their actions in this way to deal with challenges to whether or not they have the right to make a claim in a particular area. 4 The woolgrum is half woman, half frog (the offspring of bullfrogs breathed upon by a jannock—never half man). Ethel Hassell recites rather indiscreetly how men who have been banished from their group may catch a woolgrum and then turn her into a woman. The woolgrum, the half and half being, perhaps provides a model for later Indigenous women. 5 No disrespect of ownership of these stories is intended. 6 I have used what I was told here, the speaker authorising me to retell what he told me, although I have only taken his authorisation in this limited way. 7 Not actually at the place where people had camped because some of

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— Notes — the Indigenous company associated with the site had restraining orders which prevented them from going into the immediate vicinity of the sacred area where they had camped. 8 The film The Coolbaroo Club captures some of the boldness of those Indigenous people who sought to provide their own people with a place to meet to dance and enjoy themselves.

Chapter 4 The silence and power of women 1 One would want to note that the Bible is by no means a simple or uncontested canon. What is at issue is the idea of orthodoxy, and the desire of outsiders to have a consistent canon. 2 Alter (1981) makes a similar point in his analysis of narrative structures in the Bible. The structure itself communicates metaphysical meaning. 3 The nip that is play says: this bite does not denote what it would denote (aggression) if it were denoting itself. Active silence communicates in a similar way: it is silence that does not denote what it would denote (nothing) if it were denoting itself. 4 Many scholars have discussed the range of concepts which seem to intersect in the domain that is now commonly called Dreaming or Dreamtime. Morphy (1996) delves into the history and metaphysics of the term. 5 A draft of this chapter has been read by the Aboriginal women who are involved in this case study. At their request, I refer to the community as ‘Bushtown’. 6 Jarada is one type of women’s business. 7 The use of the term ‘real’ owner to define the earliest remembered generation in charge of the site is a consistent pattern in the Victoria River region. It has the potential for vast misunderstandings; for example, when people are asked in court who the real owners of the country are, they may reply that they are all dead. 8 In recent years the Site has fallen on hard times, as the local missionaries are deeply disapproving of Aboriginal women’s business.

Chapter 5 The word of a woman: Ngarrindjeri stories and a bridge to Hindmarsh Island 1 The various accounts of the Hindmarsh Island case (legal, political, economic and anthropological) can be traced through the official reports of Saunders (1994); Fergie (1994): Stevens (1995); Mathews (1996); commentaries and analysis by Mead (1995); Kenny (1996); Nile (1996); Brunton (1999); and a range of media representations, for example, Pearson (1998); Hill (1999).

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— Words and Silences — 2 The Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation is a bipartisan group of Indigenous and non-Indigenous persons. It first met in 1992 and has as its agenda to ‘build bridges’ for a better understanding between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and the wider community. Some of the Ngarrindjeri seeking to protect the site at Goolwa/Hindmarsh Island/Murray Mouth have expressed the view that the Royal Commission (Stevens, 1995) and much media coverage have been hostile to the spirit of reconciliation. 3 The 1992 High Court decision re Mabo opened up the possibility of renegotiating the relationship between the settler and the Indigenous population on the basis of a new understanding of the doctrine of settlement. The court found that, with reference to the case of Eddie Mabo of the Torres Strait Islands, Native Title was part of the common law of the land; terra nullius was a convenient but flawed historical narrative; and that where native title had not been extinguished by a lawful act, it persisted. This paved the way for the Native Title Act of 1993. 4 Cassell’s (1987) collection includes one man’s reflection on her topic of ‘children in the field’, but he was there as a child not a sole parent. The presence of women with children in the field makes visible what is otherwise non-remarkable. 5 Interestingly, George Marcus (1999), after being part of the declaration of the postmodern turn in anthropology in the 1980s, turned his critical gaze in the 1990s to the future of ethnography. 6 There have been excellent ethnographers who have undertaken sound fieldwork and written with great sensitivity of Aboriginal society. Fred Myers (1986), for instance, wrote of Pintupi self, but it was a gendered self. His under-representation of women as informants is acknowledged, but in a footnote. I have seen no reviews which address the issue of ‘balance’. 7 See Bell (1998: 551) for documentation of the mapping of clan territories by the Berndts and Tindale for this area. There is little overlap in terms of their identification of clan boundaries, but both depict the area as having Tangani, Warki, Ramindjeri and Yaraldi interests. 8 The Pleiades is an open (or galactic) cluster. In many cultures it is associated with young women. At several hundred million years old, it is about a tenth of the age of the solar system and thus may be considered an adolescent of the skyworld. Under magnification, thousands of stars can be seen but with the naked eye only six or seven are clearly visible. It is interesting that the Ngarrendjeri make mention of six or seven and have an explanation for the seventh. 9 Philip Clarke cites the first two sentences of this account in his PhD thesis (1994: 123) and omits the rest. Thus the reader does not see how

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— Notes — the rules of conduct enunciated in the story were being enforced in Mrs Annie Rankine’s time.

Chapter 6 Aboriginal women and the Commonwealth Government’s response to Mabo—an international human rights perspective 1 As Mary Magulagi Yarmirr explains, many Aboriginal women see themselves not as ‘women’s libbers’ but ‘fighters’, ‘Women and land rights past present and future’, in Our Land is Our Life, ed. Galarrwuy Yunupingu, University of Queensland Press, 1997. 2 (1992) 175 CLR 1. 3 See J. Atkinson & O. Coralie, ‘We Al-Li ‘‘Fire and Water’’: A Process of Healing’, in Popular Justice and Community Regeneration Pathways of Indigenous Reform, ed. Kayleen Hazlehurst, Praeger, London, 1995, at p. 204. 4 See D. Bird Rose, ‘Land rights and deep colonising: the erasure of women’ in Aboriginal Law Bulletin, 3, 85, October, 1996 at p. 6; Annie Keely, ‘Women and land: the problems Aboriginal women face in providing gender restricted evidence’, in Aboriginal Law Bulletin, 3, 87, December 1996, at p. 4; F. Gale, ed. We Are Bosses Ourselves: The Status and Role of Aboriginal Women Today, Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, AIAS, Canberra, 1983; H. Goodall & J. Huggins, ‘Aboriginal women are everywhere’ in Gender Relations in Australia, Domination and Negotiation, eds K. Saunders & R. Evans, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Group, NSW; M. Langton, ‘Grandmothers’ law, company business and succession in changing Aboriginal land tenure systems, in Our Land is Our Life, ed. Galarrwuy Yunupingu, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, Brisbane, 1997, at p. 84. 5 Under the initial Labor leadership of the Keating Government and subsequently the Howard Liberal Coalition Government. 6 This discussion relates to the Native Title Act prior to the Howard Government’s 1998 amendments. 7 Section 223 of the NTA 223 (1) The expression ‘native title’ or ‘native title rights and interests’ means the communal, group or individual rights and interests of Aboriginal peoples or Torres Strait Islanders in relation to land or waters, where: (a) the rights and interests are possessed under the traditional laws acknowledged, and the traditional customs observed, by the Aboriginal peoples or Torres Strait Islanders; and (b) the Aboriginal peoples or Torres Strait Islanders, by those laws and customs, have a connection with the land or waters; and (c) the rights and interests are recognised by the common law of Australia. 8 M. Langton, ‘Grandmothers’ law, company business and succession in changing Aboriginal land tenure systems, in Our Land is Our Life ed.

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12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

21 22

23 24 25

26 27 28 29

Galarrwuy Yunupingu, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, Brisbane, 1997 at p. 92. For example, the recent Miruwung/Gajerrong case before the Federal Court. See Part II, Division VI of the Native Title Act, 1993. The registered body corporate is required to provide names of the common law native title holders under s. 57 and this information will then be included under the Register established by s. 192. s. 56(4) (c) pursuant to the Regulations to the Act. Lady Deane, wife of the Governor-General, Sir William Deane, who has called for reconciliation between women has been advised of this matter. There are also many Land Councils who are not NTRBs. ATSIC Review of Native Title Representative Bodies, 1995. At p. 16. This is Ms Louise Wheeler, a Victorian ATSIC Councillor. Indigenous Land Corporation, National Indigenous Land Strategy 1996–2001, 1996 at p. 7. Indigenous Land Corporation, National Indigenous Land Strategy 1996–2001, 1996 at p. 14. It is arguable, for example, that the issue of family violence, a severe problem devastating Aboriginal communities and recognised by ATSIC under their Family Violence Intervention Program (FVIP), should have been canvassed in the report. Rec. no. 74 in ATSIC, Recognition, Rights and Reform, 1995a. http://www.atsic.gov.au/ However, ATSIC’s position as ‘principal adviser’ to government is not entirely clear as government also have their own advisory body, the Indigenous Policy Unit (replacing the Office of Indigenous Affairs) within the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. These are Ms Josie Crawshaw, Commissioner for NT North and Ms Leonie Dickson, Commissioner for Tasmania. The Commissioner is now elected by the Councillors. Aboriginal women’s lack of representation in the ATSIC structure was raised by Helen Corbett on behalf of the NCDBR at the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Peoples, 11th session, July 1993. See ATSIC, The Australian Contribution, 1993, at p. 67. And former CEO Ms Patricia Turner. Established in 1986 under the former Department of Aboriginal Affairs. Patricia Turner, ATSIC CEO, in memorandum dated 3 April 1997. For example, Regional Council to be encouraged to address women’s issues and establish women’s advisory committees, State Managers to report on women’s issues at State Managers’ meetings, performance indicators to include gender, planning documents across ATSIC to address women’s issues.

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— Notes — 30 For a detailed analysis of Indigenous rights in contemporary international law see James Anaya, ‘Indigenous rights norms in contemporary international law’ Arizona Journal of International and Comparative Law, 8, 2, Fall, 1991. 31 See Article 3 of the Draft Declaration on Indigenous Peoples. This right has also been emphasised and elaborated domestically by the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (RCIADC), the former Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commission, and ATSIC. 32 Both the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and the United Nations have Websites containing information on these covenants and conventions. 33 See further the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Third Report, 1995, AGPS, Canberra, at p. 62. 34 However, by the time the complaint was adjudicated by the Committee the government had offered a compensation package which was rejected by the Cree but found adequate by the ICCPR Committee at p. 72. 35 At pp. 67–8. 36 By contrast, Indian men did not lose their status, in fact their non-Indian wives gained status. 37 However, Canadian Aboriginal women assert that the repealing legislation, BC–31 is itself discriminatory. See Canada Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, v. 4 Perspectives and Realities, Canadian Communications Group, 1996 pp. 37–53. 38 CCPR/C/21/Rev. 1/Add. 5. 39 Kartinyeri v The Commonwealth [1998] HCH 22 (1 April, 1998). 40 This is a revision of an earlier ILO convention adopted in 1957 which was considered inappropriate because of its assimilationist approach. 41 Ratification of ILO 169 was urged by the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade on Australia’s efforts to promote and protect human rights in 1992 and recommended by ATSIC in 1996. The Australian government consulted various bodies on ILO 169 in 1996 but failed to ratify. 42 For further analysis of this issue see L. Strelein, ‘The price of compromise: should Australia ratify ILO Convention 169?’ in Majah, Indigenous Peoples and the Law, eds. G. Bird, G. Martin & J. Nielsen, The Federation Press, NSW, 1996. 43 Article 6(1)(a). 44 Article 6(1)(b). 45 Article 6(1)(c). 46 Article 14(1). 47 Article 14(2) & (3). 48 Article 15 (1) & (2).

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— Words and Silences — 49 Article 17(1). 50 See S. Pritchard, ‘Special measures’ in Racial Discrimination Act 1975: A Review, Race Discrimination Commissioner, 1995, at p. 187. 51 Which in turn was authorised by the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). 52 However, treaties do not automatically become part of domestic or national law and do need to be implemented by legislation. In the Teoh case, the High Court found that international treaties and declarations may give rise to an expectation of natural justice. However, the government has proposed to overrule this decision through proposed legislation. 53 See J. Anaya, ‘Indigenous rights norms in contemporary international law’ Arizona Journal of International and Comparative Law, 8, 2, Fall, 1991. 54 The Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), which must adopt the Draft Declaration after the CHR, and the General Assembly, are also made up of governments. 55 S. Pritchard, ‘Working Group on Indigenous Populations in ed. S. Pritchard, Indigenous Peoples, the United Nations and Human Rights, Federation Press, Leichhardt, NSW, 1998. 56 Ms Corbett is also one of the founders of the National Committee to Defend Black Rights (NCDBR) whose successfully lobbying led to the establishment of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (RCIADC). 57 The language used is identical to that under Article 1 of the ICCPR. However, the Human Rights Committee which oversees the ICCPR has determined that this right under the ICCPR does not extend to Indigenous peoples. 58 Many Indigenous peoples, particularly in the US, are already recognised as sovereign nations. 59 As the former Aboriginal and Torres Strait Social Justice Commissioner, Mr Mick Dodson explained, Indigenous peoples’ right to selfdetermination ‘goes to the very heart of our fundamental rights as First Peoples . . . As such it is not for governments to ‘‘bestow’’ self determination upon us, nor to seek to delegate, or to dictate the terms of our rights to self determination in any way’. See ATSIC, The UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations, Thirteenth Session, July 1995, Geneva, The Australian Contribution 1996, at x. 60 Article 26. 61 Article 27 and Article 30. 62 Article 28. 63 It was adopted at the third session of the CHR Working Group in 1996 by the CHR members and Indigenous participants. Interestingly, the New Zealand government indicated that it was willing to consider

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— Notes —

64 65

66

67 68

69 70

71 72 73 74 75

76

77

additional language to ensure and include the rights of Indigenous women under the Draft Declaration: see UNPO Monitor at http://www.unpo.org/iwgip/wed2am.htm See ATSIC, The UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations, 1995, The Australian Contribution, ATSIC 1996 at p. 19. Including the New South Wales Aboriginal Land Council (NSWALC), Secretariat of the National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care Services (SNAICC), National Committee to Defend Black Rights (NCDBR), IINA Torres Strait Islander Corporation, Foundation for Aboriginal and Islander Research Association (FAIRA), Kimberley Land Council (KLC) and Aboriginal Provisional Government (APG). This point was made by aboriginal women speaking of the devastating effects of family violence before the Canadian Royal Commission. They agreed that there was a need for improved services but saw that ‘the best hope lies in restoration of traditional values of respect for women and children and reintegration of women into family, community and nation decision making’: http://www.inac.gc.ca/rcap/index.html See Articles 12–14. S. Pritchard, ‘Commission on Human Rights Working Group (CHRWG) Third Session 27 October–7 November 1997’, in Aboriginal Law Bulletin, 4, 10, March 1998, at p. 11. It was signed in 1966 and made ratified or made binding in 1975. In this sense it reflects the lack of awareness of the interaction between race and gender. See further H. Astor ‘A question of identity: the intersection of race and other grounds of discrimination’, in Racial Discrimination Act 1975: A Review, Race Discrimination Commissioner, AGPS, Canberra, 1995. (1988) 63 ALJR 84. The Committee is established pursuant to Article 8 of the Convention. General Recommendations can be described as interpretative statements which assist countries in their reporting requirements. See Indigenous Peoples: 18/08/97 CERD. General Recommendation 23.CERC/c/51/Misc.13/Rev4. Evidence indicates though that Aboriginal women rarely utilise the Act and may be discriminated against by the relevant statutory body on the occasion that they do so. See H. McGlade ‘Reviewing racism: HREOC and the RDA 1975’, Aboriginal Law Bulletin, 4, 4, July, 1997 at p. 12. One of the main drawbacks of all of the Optional Protocol complaint mechanisms is that they require individuals to have exhausted all domestic remedies. Office of the Status of Women, Fourth UN World Conference on Women: Platform for Action, Australia’s Implementation Report, Commonwealth of Australia, April 1997, at p. 276.

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— Words and Silences — 78 Although it does require governments ensure that the provisions apply to women in rural areas: Article 14. 79 Consideration of Reports—CEDAW July 1997 at http://www.austlii. edu.au/ahric/cedaw/comments-july97.html 80 P. Daylight and M. Johnstone, Women’s Business. Report of the Aboriginal Women’s TaskForce AGPS, Canberra, 1986 at p. 61. 81 Ibid at pp. 1–2. 82 House of Representatives Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs, AGPS, Canberra, 1980. 83 The term ‘postcolonial’ is therefore somewhat of an anomaly, see further J. Purdy, ‘Postcolonialism, the emperor’s new clothes’, Social and Legal Studies 5, 3, 1996, p. 405–26.

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— Bibliography — Morphy, F. and Morphy, H. (1984) ‘Owners, managers and ideology: a comparative analysis’, in Aboriginal Land Owners: Contemporary Issues in the Determination of Traditional Aboriginal Land Ownership, Oceania Monographs, ed. L. Hiatt, University of Sydney, Sydney, pp. 46–66 Morphy, H. (1991) Ancestral Connections: Art and an Aboriginal System of Knowledge, University of Chicago Press, Chicago ——(1996) ‘Empiricism to metaphysics: in defence of the concept of the Dreamtime’, in Prehistory to Politics: John Mulvaney, the Humanities and the Public Intellectual, eds T. Bonyhady & Tom Griffiths, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne Morris, Barry (1989) Domesticating Resistance: The Dhan-gadi Aborigines and the Australian State, Berg, Oxford Mortley, R. (1986) From Word to Silence, II, The Way of Negation, Christian and Greek, Hanstein, Bonn Munn, N. (1973) Warlpiri Iconography, Cornell University Press, Ithaca Myers, F. (1982) ‘Always ask: resource use and land ownership among Pintupi Aborigines of the Australian Western Desert’ in Resource Managers: North American and Australian Hunter–Gatherers, eds N. Williams and E. Hunn, AAAS, Washington, DC, pp. 173–95 ——(1986) Pintupi Country, Pintupi Self: Sentiment, Place and Politics among Western Desert Aborigines, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC Neate, Graeme (1989) Aboriginal Land Rights Law in the Northern Territory, Vol. 1, Alternative Publishing Cooperative Ltd, Chippendale, NSW Nicholls, C. (1996) ‘Literacy and gender’, Journal of Australian Studies, 48, pp. 59–72 Office of the Status of Women (1997) Fourth UN World Conference on Women: Platform for Action, Australia’s Implementation Report, AGPS, Canberra Pearson, C. (1998) ‘A twist in the tale: yarns and symbols’, Australian Financial Review, 17 August Penney, R. (‘Cuique’) (1842) ‘The Spirit of the Murray’, South Australian Magazine, June–July. Reprinted (1999) with an introduction by Robert Foster in the Journal of the Anthropological Society of South Australia, 29, 1, pp. 1–87 Peterson, N. (1981) Aboriginal Land Rights Handbook, AIAS, Canberra Peterson, N. and Langton, M. (eds) (1983) Aborigines, Land and Land Rights, AIAS, Canberra Povinelli, E. (1995) Labor’s Lot: The Power, History and Culture of Aboriginal Action, University of Chicago Press, Chicago Powell, F. (1999) ‘Generation and gender differences in genealogical knowledge: the central role of women in mapping connection to country’, in Connections in Native Title: Genealogies, Kinship and Groups,

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— Words and Silences — eds J. Finlayson, B. Rigsby and H. Bek, Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research, Research Monograph No. 13, Australian National University, Canberra, pp. 59–72 Price Cohen, C. (n.d.) ‘Developments of the rights of the Indigenous child under international law’, St. Thomas Law Review, 9, 231 Pritchard, S. (1995) ‘Special measures’, in Racial Discrimination Act 1975: A Review, Race Discrimination Commissioner, AGPS, Canberra ——(1998a) ‘Commission on Human Rights Working Group (CHRWG) Third Session 27 October–7 November 1997’, Aboriginal Law Bulletin, 4, 10, March ——(1998b) Indigenous Peoples, the United Nations and Human Rights, The Federation Press, NSW Purdy, J. (1996) ‘Postcolonialism, the emperor’s new clothes’, Social and Legal Studies, 5, 3, pp. 405–26 Rankine, A. (1969) ‘Old Ways and New’, ms. No. 1439, recorder unknown, 11/3/1969, AIATSIS, Canberra Rao, A. (1995) ‘The politics of gender and culture in international human rights discourse’, in Women’s Rights, Human Rights: International Feminist Perspectives, eds J. Peters and A. Wolper, Routledge, New York Read, Peter (1999) A Rape of the Soul So Profound, Allen & Unwin, Sydney Reinharz, S. (1992) Feminist Methods in Social Research, Oxford University Press, New York Rose, D. (1992) Dingo Makes Us Human, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge ——(1994a) ‘Flesh and blood, and deep colonising’, in Claiming Our Rites: Studies in Religion by Australian Women Scholars, eds M. Joy and P. Magee, Australian Association for the Study of Religions, Wollstonecraft, NSW ——(1994b) ‘Whose confidentiality, whose intellectual property?’ in Claims to Knowledge, Claims to Country: Native Title Claims and the Role of the Anthropologist, summary of proceedings of the conference session on native title, AAS conference, University of Sydney, September 1994, produced by the Native Titles Unit, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, Canberra ——(1995) Women and Land Claims, Issues Paper No. 6, Native Title Research Unit, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, Canberra ——(1996) ‘Land rights and deep colonising: the erasure of women’, Aboriginal Law Bulletin, 3, 85, pp. 6–13 ——(1999a) ‘Does cultural survival have a gender? Indigenous women and development in Australia’ in Gender, Planning and Human Rights, ed. T. Fenster, Routledge, London ——(1999b) ‘Indigenous ecologies and an ethic of connection’, in Global Ethics for the 21st Century, ed N. Low, Routledge, London

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— Bibliography — Ross, Kumantjayi (1998) ‘The dam’, in Take Power Like This Old Man Here, ed. A. Wright, IAD Books, Alice Springs Rowell, Meredith (1983) ‘Women and land claims in the Northern Territory’, in Aborigines, Land and Land Rights, eds N. Peterson and M. Langton, AIAS, Canberra, pp. 256–67 Rowley, C. D. (1971) Outcasts in White Australia, Australian National University Press, Canberra Russell, D. (1994) ‘The Iron Princess dispute: issues of politics and power’, Australian Aboriginal Studies, 2, pp. 18–27 Saunders, C. (1994) Report to the Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs on the Significant Aboriginal Area in the Vicinity of Goolwa and Hindmarsh (Kumarangk) Island, South Australian Government Printer, Adelaide Seaman, P. (1984a) The Aboriginal Land Inquiry in Western Australia: Discussion Paper, Government Printers, Perth ——(1984b) The Aboriginal Land Inquiry in Western Australia: Final Report, Government Printers, Perth Smith, W.R. (1930) Myths and Legends of the Australian Aboriginals, Harrap, London Stannage, C.T. (1979) The People of Perth, Perth City Council, Perth Stanner, W. (1989) On Aboriginal Religion, Oceania Monographs 36, University of Sydney, Sydney Stevens, I. (1995) Report of the Hindmarsh Island Bridge Royal Commission, South Australian Government Printer, Adelaide Storman, E. J. (ed.) (1977) The Salvado Memoirs, University of Western Australia Press, Nedlands, WA Strelein, L. (1996) ‘The price of compromise: should Australia ratify ILO Convention 169?’, in Majah, Indigenous Peoples and the Law, eds G. Bird, G. Martin and J. Nielsen, The Federation Press, NSW Sutton, P. (1998) Native Title and the Descent of Rights, National Native Title Tribunal, Perth Swain, T. (1992) ‘Reinventing the Eternal. Aboriginal Spirituality and Modernity’, in Religion and Multiculturalism in Australia, ed. N. Habel, Australian Association for the Study of Religion, Adelaide Taplin, G. (1859–79) Journal: Five Volumes as Typed from the Original by Mrs Beaumont, Mortlock Library, Adelaide ——(1873) ‘The Narrinyeri’. Reprinted in The Native Tribes of South Australia, ed. J.D. Woods, E.S. Wigg & Son, Adelaide, pp. 1–56 ——(1878) Grammar of the Language of the Narrinyeri Tribe, South Australian Government Printer, Adelaide ——(1879) Folklore, Manners and Customs of the South Australian Aborigines: Gathered from Inquiries Made by Authority of the South Australian Government, E. Spiller, Acting Government Printer, Adelaide

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— Words and Silences — Tilbrook, L. (1983) Nyungar Tradition: Glimpses of South-western Australia 1829–1914, University of Western Australia Press, Nedlands, WA Tindale, N.B. (1931–4) Journal of Researches in the South East of South Australia, vol. 1, Anthropology Archives, South Australian Museum ——(1974) Aboriginal Tribes of Australia: Their Terrain, Environmental Controls, Distribution, Limits and Proper Names, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA ——(1986) ‘Milerum’, in Australian Dictionary of Biography 11, 1891– 1939, eds B. Nairn and G. Serle, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, pp. 498–9 ——(n.d.) Anthropology Archive, South Australian Museum, Adelaide Tindale, N.B. and Long, C. (n.d.) The World of Milerum, Stage A, vols 1–10, Anthropology Archive, South Australian Museum, Adelaide Tonkinson, R. (1990) ‘The changing status of Aboriginal women: ‘‘free agents’’ at Jigalong’, in Going It Alone: Essays in Honour of Ronald and Catherine Berndt, eds R. Tonkinson and M. Howard, Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra, pp. 125–48 ——(1991 [1978]) The Mardu Aborigines: Living the Dream in Australia’s Desert, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, Fort Worth Toohey, J. (1979) Land Claim by the Alyawarra and Kaititja, Report by the Aboriginal Land Commissioner, Mr Justice Toohey, to the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and to the Administrator of the Northern Territory, AGPS, Canberra ——(1982) Daly River (Malak Malak) Land Claim, Report by the Aboriginal Land Commissioner, Mr Justice Toohey, to the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and to the Administrator of the Northern Territory, AGPS, Canberra Toussaint, S. (1995) ‘Cultural realities and partial truths: gendered ethnographies in northern Aboriginal Australia’, unpublished PhD thesis, Anthropology, University of Western Australia Toyne, P. and Vachon, D. (1984) Growing Up the Country, McPhee Gribble/Penguin, Melbourne Treagus, E. (1966) Archive Tape, LA 3462A, AIATSIS, Canberra Trigger, D. S. (1997) ‘Reflections on Century Mine: preliminary thoughts on the politics of Indigenous responses’, in Fighting over Country: Anthropological Perspectives, eds D. Smith and J. Finlayson, Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research, Research Monograph No. 12, Australian National University, Canberra, pp. 110–28 Turner, D. (1989) Return to Eden: A Journey Through the Promised Landscape of Amagalyuagba, Peter Lang, New York Turner, P. (1997) ATSIC CEO memorandum, 3 April Unaipon, D. (1924–5) ‘Legendary tales of the Australian Aborigines’, ms. Copy (MLA 1929 Cyreel 1134), Mitchell Library, Sydney ——(1925) ‘The story of the Mungingee’, The Home, February, pp. 42–3

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Index Index

Aboriginal Advancement Council, 87, 88, 89, 90 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), 142, 144–5, 150 Office of Aboriginal Women, 155 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act, 10, 11, 110, 117, 119, 148 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, 12 Aboriginal Areas Protection Authority, 102, 111 Aboriginal English, 19 Aboriginal Heritage Act 1988 (SA), 118 Aboriginal Housing Board, 87 Aboriginal Land Act 1991 (Qld), 171 Aboriginal Land Commissioner, 125, 171 Aboriginal Land Councils, 121

Aboriginal Land Inquiry (WA), see Seaman Land Inquiry Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 (ALRA), 4, 7–9, 10, 11, 93, 124, 141, 161, 162, 169, 174 Aboriginal Land Tenure Bill, 167 Aboriginal Legal Aid Service, 121 Aboriginal Legal Service, 29 Aboriginal Protection Board, 22, 23 Aboriginal Sacred Sites Protection Authority, 102, 103, 111 Aboriginal Welfare Board, 29 Alice Springs dam site, 94, 110, 114 sacred sites near, 6 ancestors, 76–81 Anderson, George ‘Chunky’, 82 Angledool bush camps, 54 Arrente people, 95

203


203

— Words and Silences — Australian Law Reform Commission, 121 authority gender-specific, 9 Balbuk, 66, 67, 72, 84 Barangaroo, 157–8 Barlow, May, 20, 33 Bates, Daisy, 66–7, 72 Bates, Evelyn, 30 Bates, Nancy, 20, 30, 44, 54 Bell, Diane, 102, 103, 159 Bennelong, 157–8 Bennett Brook, 82 Berndt, Catherine, 129, 135, 167 Berndt, Ronald, 129, 135 Binalong Pty Ltd, 118 Blackburn, Justice, 3, 7 Bonney, Lola Cameron, 136 Bourke, Captain, 74 Brennan, Gloria, 84 Brodie, Veronica, 132 Bropho, Edna, 82–3 Bropho, Robert, 57, 82 Bugmy, Alice, 33 Bulla Bulla Tank bush camp, 54 Burbank, Victoria, 160 Burke, Brian, 165 bush camps, 13, 19, 31, 35, 36–55 passim artwork and, 41 bans on alcohol, 37–8, 49 children and, 41 educational role of, 33 political role of, 19 role of elders in, 35, 42–3 see also Mt Grenfell, Winbar bush tucker, 46, 51 Bushtown, 102–9 Central Land Council, 9, 11 Century Mine, 17, 172–3

Chapmans v Luminus, 132 Cherbourg Mission, 25 children removal of, 22–3 circle talk, 90 Clarke, Philip, 130, 137 colonialism impact of, 20, 62–8, 174 colonisation Indigenous women’s experience of, 57 community cohesion destruction of, 2 maintenance of, 16 connection with land, 5 spiritual, 6 Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), 146, 153–5, 156 Corbett, Helen, 150, 151 Coronation Hill sacred site, 6, 94, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115 Coulter, Barry, 112 Crocodile Farm (WA) case, 120 cross-cultural communications problems of, 10–11 Crowley, Senator, 120 Cullacabardee Village, 87 cultural continuity, 115 cultural knowledge, 12 Aboriginal system of, 15 communication of, 14 expression of, 13 withholding of, 13 cultural survival, 93 deep colonising, 115 discrimination against Indigenous women, 16 dispossession, 18, 140 removal of children and, 23 Dodson, Mick, 113–14

204


204

— Index — Donaldson, Karin, 20, 39, 54 Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 146, 149–52 Dreaming women stories of, 73 elders, 91 responsibilities of older women, 86–7 right to submit native title claims, 60–2 role as guardians of knowledge, 14 Evatt Report, 120 Evatt, Justice Elizabeth, 120 Far Western Regional Land Council, 48 feminist ethnography, 127 reflexivity, 125 Five Principles, 48 Flick family, 31 Flick, Barbara, 20, 29, 30, 31, 36, 41, 42, 46, 49, 50, 51, 54 Flick, Celia, 26 Flick, Isabel, 19, 25, 30, 34, 35, 51 Flick, Isabel Walford, 20, 25, 26 Flick, Joe, 26 Flick, Mick, 25 Foundation for Aboriginal and Islander Association (FAIRA), 150 Fraser, Malcolm, 4 Gajerrong people, 5 Ganggalida people, 171 gendered nature of Aboriginal society, 2, 12 generations

relationships between, 18 Gimbuck, 66, 68 Glowczewski, Barbara, 95 Gooninninup, 11, 57, 81–4 see also Swan Brewery development Gove case, 2–3, 7 grandmothers ancestral significance of, 76–81 Gulf country land claims, 168–73 see also Nicholson River Hansen, Elizabeth, 89 Hassell, Ethel, 65, 68, 72 Hawke, Bob, 111 healing of land, 102–9 Helena River, 82 Herron, John, 120 Hindmarsh Island bridge dispute, 10, 94, 112, 163 Royal Commission, 14–15, 117, 131, 137 sacred site, 6, 14, 72, 117–39 passim see also Seven Sisters’ Dreaming Hindmarsh Island Bridge Act, 121 Howard, John, 120, 142 Hudson, May, 20 human rights see international human rights Humes, Lorna, 87–8, 89, 90 Hunter, Dorrie, 20, 30, 33 Indigenous Land Corporation, 16, 140, 143–4 Indigenous Women Aboriginal Corporation (IWAC), 150 information use by colonising forces, 93

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205

— Words and Silences — International Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), 146, 152–3 International Covenant for Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), 93, 146–8 international human rights, 139–57 passim law, 16 perspective on post-Mabo policies, 145–55 passim International Labour Organisation Convention 169 (ILO 169), 146, 148–9 Iron Princess dispute, 115 Isaacs, Clarrie, 57 Jabiluka, 139 Jawoyn people, 112, 114 Jones, Elsie, 20, 54 Joobaitch, 72 Junction Waterhole, 11 Kaberry, Phyllis, 99, 167 Kamilaraay language group, 20 Kangaroo Island, 130 Karloan, Albert, 135, 137 Karpeny, Louisa, 129 Kartinyeri, Nanna Laura, 119 Katona, Jacqui, 139 Keely, Annie, 163, 164 Kennedy, Eliza, 54 Kesteven, Sue, 161 knowledge Aboriginal systems of, 95–8 based in land, 98 communication of, 96 gendered, 101–2 management, 99 permeable boundaries of secrecy, 100–1 politics of, 98–101

rights and, 99, 100 social relations and, 99–100 knowledge see cultural knowledge land basis of knowledge, 98 cultural understandings of, 1 gendered, 101–2 healing, 102–9 as mother, 70, 72–76 tenure, 6 women’s rights in, 2, 7–12 land claims, 60–62 in Northern Territory, 161–65 see also native title Land Fund and Indigenous Land Corporation (ATSIC Amendment) Act 1995, 143 land rights, 1, 2 in Australian law, 3–7 campaign for, 30 communal, 6 compromises, 2 government recognition of, 1 laws, 2 legislation, 3, 4 marches, 30 law gendered, 109 Mabo decision, 4, 16, 124, 128, 140–1, 165 Commonwealth Government responses to, 140–5 Mabo, Bonita, 139 Mabo, Eddie, 5, 139 Mack, Pinkie, 133, 134 Maddock, Ken, 136 Maralinga people allocation of land to, 4 Margarula, Yvonne, 139 Mason, Shirley, 20

206


206

— Index — Mathews, Jane, 120 matrifiliation of land tenure, 174 McLachlan, Ian, 119 Merlan, Francesca, 160 Meyer, Pastor H.A.E, 129 Michaels, Eric, 98 Milera, Doug, 119 Milerum, 135, 137 Milirrpum v Nabalco Pty Ltd and the Commonwealth see Gove case Miriuwung people, 5 Mirrar people, 139 missions, 22 Moffatt, Tracey, 84 Mokare, 74 monyo, 64, 65 Moore River Native Settlement, 89 Moore, George Fletcher, 63, 64, 74 Moore, Johnny, 82 Moore, Mabel, 82 Mt Grenfell bush camp, 36–45 murdidj yorgas, 84–6 Murinbata people, 97 Murray family, 31 Mutawintji, 24 Blockade, 32–4 handing back to original owners, 54, 55 Nabalco see Gove case National Aboriginal and Islander Legal Services Secretariat (NAILSS), 150 National Aboriginal and Islander Week, 87 National Aboriginal Conference, 155 National Committee to Defend Black Rights (NCDBR), 150

National Native Title Tribunal (NNTT), 11, 141–2, 165 Native Title Act 1993 (Cth) (NTA), 5, 8, 11, 16, 128, 140–3, 165 native title claims, 2, 4–5, 141 debates over, 4–5 by Nyungar women, 56–91 passim process, 11, 12 right to submit, 60–2 women’s participation in process, 161 see also land rights Native Title Representative Bodies, 142 women’s representation on, 143 New Norcia mission, 71 New South Wales Land Rights Act 1983, 48 1988 amendments to, 53–4 Ngarrindjeri, 132, 134 culture, 130 Dreamings of, 130 people, 128–31 women and Hindmarsh island, 15, 117–39 passim Ngilgie, 66, 67, 84 Ngunaiponi, James, 135 Nicholls, Melva, 20, 25, 27–8, 39, 44–5 Nicholson River land claim, 169–71 high status of women in, 170 Nookanbah, 6 Northern Land Council, 9 Northwest Simpson Land Claim, 95 Nurtuwarta Community, 167 Nyungar people, 58–9, 65 dispossession, 59 reclaiming past knowledge, 59

207


207

— Words and Silences — Nyungar women native title claims and, 13–14, 56–91 passim power and authority, 84–6 social action tradition, 57 Weeping Women Dreamings, 68–72

Preferred National Land Rights Model, 48 ‘protection’ policies, 20–1 Quayle, Amy, 20

O’Donnell, Maureen, 19, 23–5, 28–9, 30, 31, 33, 34, 41, 42, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 55 O’Donoghue, Lowitja, 145 Office of Indigenous Women, 145 Office of the Status of Women, 155 oral culture, 15, 96 Our Future, Our Selves report, 155

racial segregation, 26 Rainbow Serpent see Waugul Ramindjeri people, 129, 130 Rankine, Annie, 134, 135, 137 Rankine, Daisy, 134 Reconciliation, 121 Resource Assessment Commission, 111, 114 ritual role of, 108 rivers as meeting place, 28–9 Rose, Deborah Bird, 162

Paakantji language group, 20, 33 pastoral properties role of Aboriginal workers on, 24–5 Pearson, Christopher, 136 Penney, Richard, 129–30 Philip, Arthur, 157–8 Pikampul country, 25 Piliga Mission, 27 Pitjantjatjara Land Rights Act, 7 Pitjantjatjara people allocation of land to, 4 Pleiades see Seven Sisters’ Dreaming political activity beginnings of, 28 polygyny, 63 Poole, Billy, 137 Portaulan people, 129 power gender-specific, 9

sacred sites damage to, 102–9 healing, 102–9 location, 10 significance, 10 women’s protection of, 81–4, 139 see also site protection laws Sacred Sites Authority, 163 Salvado, Bishop Rosendo, 63, 74, 75 Saunders, Cheryl, 118 Seaman Land Inquiry, 13, 16, 17, 165–8, 174 Seaman, Justice Paul, 16, 165, 166 Secretariat National Aboriginal Islander Child Care (SNAICC), 150 segregation see racial segregation Seven Sisters’ Dreaming, 15, 131–2, 132–8

208


208

— Index — four pillars of fabrication, 131–2, 138 see also Hindmarsh Island silence as absence, 94, 109 active, 92, 98–9, 109 concealed knowledge and, 94, 98 control and, 15, 98 dimensions of, 15, 92 passive, 92 power and, 92–116 violent silencing, 93 voluntary, 93 Simpson Desert, 95 site protection laws, 2, 5–6, 7, 10 Aboriginal consultation about, 7 Smith, Diane, 161 Smith, Ramsay, 134 Social Justice Commission, 142 social justice measures, 16, 140, 144 Stack, Annie, 86 status of Indigenous women, 161 Stevens, Justice Iris, 94, 112, 117, 119, 131 stolen generations see children, removal of Swan Brewery development, 11, 81–4 Tangani people, 129, 130 Taplin, Rev. George, 130 terra nullius, 2, 4, 7, 139 Tickner, Robert, 117, 119 Tindale, Norman B., 129 Tjarutja people allocation of land to, 4 Toomelah Protection Board Station, 26 Toussaint, Sandy, 160

traditional owners of land definition under ALRA, 8 register of, 161 Trevorrow, Ellen, 134 Trigger, David, 170, 171 Tybingoompa, Gladys, 139 UN Human Rights Committee, 147 Unaipon, David, 134, 137 United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Peoples, 48 Utopia, land claim, 9–10 Victoria River, 15–16, 101, 103 Waanyi people, 169 land claim, 171, 172 Wangkajunga people, 167 Warki people, 129, 130 Warlpiri people, 95, 96 Waugul, 72, 73, 79, 81 Weeping Women Dreamings, 68–72 Wells, William, 136, 137 Western Aboriginal Legal Service, 29–30, 31 women’s meetings, 31 Western Regional Land Council, 45 Western Women’s Council (NSW), 13, 18–55 passim formation, 34 goals, 35 Whitlam, Gough, 3–4 Whitton, Julie, 20, 30 Whyman, Margie Ann, 30 Wik decision, 121 people, 139 Willowra land claim, 9–10 Wilson, Dorothy, 119 Wilson, Dulcie, 119

209


209

— Words and Silences — Winbar bush camp, 45–55 passim Wollaston, Archdeacon, 63, 68 women age-related status, 63 colonial impact on, 161 position in Aboriginal communities, 13, 159 power, 101–2 women’s knowledge, 93 women’s business, 72, 139, 164 Women’s Business report, 155

women’s country, 101–2 see also Bushtown Women’s Indigenous Advisory Committee, 145 Woodward, Justice, 3 Wootten, Justice, 6, 110, 114 Worrell, Willy Snr, 82 Yaraldi people, 129, 130 Yilgar, 65, 68 Yolgnu people, 2–3 see also Gove case

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210

Words and Silences: Aboriginal Women, Politics and Land

Women and Politics in the Third World (Women in Politics)

Women, Political Philosophy and Politics

Conflict, Politics and Crime: Aboriginal Communities and the Police

Broken silences: interviews with Black and White women writers

Fighting Women: Anger and Aggression in Aboriginal Australia

Words from a Wide Land

Contemporary Feminist Utopianism (Women and Politics)

Walking a Tightrope: Aboriginal People and Their Representations (Aboriginal Studies)

Righting Feminism: Conservative Women and American Politics

Buying back the land: Organisational struggle and the Aboriginal Land Fund Commission

Walking a Tightrope: Aboriginal People and Their Representations (Aboriginal Studies)

A Book Of Silences

Riders of the Silences

Riders of the Silences

France and Women, 1789-1914: Gender, Society and Politics

Gender and American Politics: Women, Men, and the Political Process

Gender and American Politics: Women, Men, and the Political Process

Women and Politics in Iran: Veiling, Unveiling, and Reveiling

Women, Gender, and World Politics: Perspectives, Policies, and Prospects

Riders of the Silences

Riders of the Silences

Riders of the Silences

Combinatorics on words: Christoffel words and repetitions in words

Black Words, White Page: Aboriginal Literature 1929-1988

Words, words, words: the translator and the language learner

Words and Life

Adversary Politics and Land: The Conflict Over Land and Property Policy in Post-War Britain

Combinatorics on words: Christoffel words and repetitions in words

Adversary Politics and Land: The Conflict Over Land and Property Policy in Post-War Britain

Truth and Words

Words and Silences: Aboriginal Women, Politics and Land

Women and Politics in the Third World (Women in Politics)

Women, Political Philosophy and Politics

Conflict, Politics and Crime: Aboriginal Communities and the Police

Broken silences: interviews with Black and White women writers

Fighting Women: Anger and Aggression in Aboriginal Australia

Words from a Wide Land

Contemporary Feminist Utopianism (Women and Politics)

Walking a Tightrope: Aboriginal People and Their Representations (Aboriginal Studies)

Righting Feminism: Conservative Women and American Politics

Buying back the land: Organisational struggle and the Aboriginal Land Fund Commission

Walking a Tightrope: Aboriginal People and Their Representations (Aboriginal Studies)

A Book Of Silences

Riders of the Silences

Riders of the Silences

France and Women, 1789-1914: Gender, Society and Politics

Gender and American Politics: Women, Men, and the Political Process

Gender and American Politics: Women, Men, and the Political Process

Women and Politics in Iran: Veiling, Unveiling, and Reveiling

Women, Gender, and World Politics: Perspectives, Policies, and Prospects

Riders of the Silences

Riders of the Silences

Riders of the Silences

Combinatorics on words: Christoffel words and repetitions in words

Black Words, White Page: Aboriginal Literature 1929-1988

Words, words, words: the translator and the language learner

Words and Life

Adversary Politics and Land: The Conflict Over Land and Property Policy in Post-War Britain

Combinatorics on words: Christoffel words and repetitions in words

Adversary Politics and Land: The Conflict Over Land and Property Policy in Post-War Britain

Truth and Words

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