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"Dreamtime" no longer an acceptable term

Published on May 18, 2008 by lorenz Posted in aboriginees, anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, language, Pacific Oceania

The West Australian and South Australian education departments have made lists of appropriate and inappropriate words to describe Aboriginal people and culture, The Australian reports.

– Dreamtime is no longer an acceptable term to describe the collection of Aboriginal creation stories, and should be referred to as The Dreaming or The Dreamings.

– The structure of traditional Aboriginal society should not be described as primitive – but as complex and diverse

– The term native should be replaced by indigenous groups or language groups.

– Instead of saying myths and legends, teachers should say Dreaming stories, teaching from The Dreaming or creation stories.

– Aborigine should not be replaced by the term Aboriginal person.

– Rituals should be called ceremonies

– religion should be avoided in favour of spirituality

– tribal should be shunned for traditional.

– tribe should be replaced by Aboriginal people,

– horde should be replaced by language groups

– instead of clan the term family groups should be used

The list of terms was developed with input from a wide variety of sources, including departmental staff, Aboriginal organisations and academics.

>> read the whole story in The Australian

>> Download “Aboriginal Education for all Learners in South Australia” including the section on sensitive terms and issues (pdf)

The West Australian and South Australian education departments have made lists of appropriate and inappropriate words to describe Aboriginal people and culture, The Australian reports.

- Dreamtime is no longer an acceptable term to describe the collection of Aboriginal creation stories,…

“A new approach to the collection of traditional Aboriginal music”

Published on February 28, 2007 by lorenz Posted in aboriginees, anthropology in the news, culture traditions, fieldwork / methods, music, technology

The days of anthropologists taking recordings away to Canberra where they might as well be lost to the community forever, are now gone according to ABC Radio (Australia) in a story about the National Recording Project. Its aim is to document the traditions of Indigenous Australia.

What’s different here is that performers, and language experts from the communities are recognised as co-researchers, alongside the university based musicologists, linguists and anthropologists. Instead of the music being recorded onto tapes and taken away to vast archives in the southern cities, it’s recorded digitally and is stored on solar powered local computers in remote communities.

>> read more at ABC Radio

In their paper The National Recording Project for Indigenous Performance in Australia: year one in review, the authors Allan Marett, Mandawuy Yunupingu, Marcia Langton, Neparrnga Gumbula, Linda Barwick and Aaron Corn write in the abstract:

Many Indigenous performers now keep recordings of their forebears’ past performances and listen to them for inspiration before performing themselves. In recent years, community digital archives have been set up in various Australian Indigenous communities. Not only can recordings reinforce memory and facilitate the recovery of lost repertoire, they can also provide inspiration for creative extensions of tradition.

>> read the whole paper (pdf, 596kb)

There are several related papers in the Sydney eScholarship Repository

“Aboriginal knowledge is science”

How internet changes the life among the First Nations in Canada

Multimedia Music Ethnography of Yodelling and Alphorn Blowing

Aboriginees in Australia: Why talking about culture?

The emerging research field of medical ethnomusicology: How music fights AIDS

On the Roots of Ethnic Music: Identity and Global Romanticism – Open Access Musicology Journal

A link between food resources and social hierarchies?

Published on July 13, 2006 by lorenz Posted in aboriginees, anthropology in the news, books, culture traditions, ecology nature, Pacific Oceania, persons and theories

In a portrait on the website of The National University of Australia, anthropologist Ian Keen, tells about his research among Aboriginees in Australia. Among other things, he wanted to find out why pre-colonial Aboriginal societies tended to be more egalitarian than some of their counterparts elsewhere in the world:

In a paper published in the journal Current Anthropology, Keen argues that for any society to develop lasting social hierarchies, it must have access to plentiful, localised resources that could be defended. In this event, some people can assume authority over others. On the northwest coast of North America, for example, recent hunter-gatherers enjoyed a stable climate and concentrated, defendable resources, especially plentiful salmon. As a consequence, these societies developed such enduring inequalities as inherited chiefly office and marked social classes, while some even kept slaves.

In contrast, Aboriginal societies did not develop such enduring inequalities. (…) Keen argues this relative egalitarianism was the result of constraints arising from variable food resources and an unstable climate, meaning there was limited scope for people to assume dominion over others by asserting exclusive access to territory and resources.

Keen explains:

“It’s not exactly an environmental determinist argument, but it is suggesting that those conditions imposed restraints. I make the assumption that wherever they can, some humans will take the opportunities given to them to establish some kind of dominion over others. So my paper argues that even if people knew how to dominate one another, and wanted to do so, the opportunities were not there.

>> read the whole article

Brian Hayden, an archaeologist at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, is not convinced and criiticizes that Keen does not put enough weight on the ecological and economic aspects of complexity that develop among some hunter-gatherers in Australia.

Keen is the author of the book Aboriginal Economy and Society. The website of the book is quite informative. If you click on Supplementary Materials you’ll find several cases studies and several pages about aboriginal technologies. In the paper Variation in Indigenous Economy and Society at the Threshold of Colonisation, Keen tells about more about his book:

Just how similar and how distinct were Aboriginal societies in different parts of the continent at the time of British colonisation of Australia? The book I am currently writing attempts to answer this and related questions by comparing the economy and society of seven very varied regions of the continent as they were at the threshold of colonisation.

(…)

Such a comparative study is long overdue. There have been no recent systematic comparisons of Aboriginal ways of life in different parts of Australia, comparable to, for example, Marshall Sahlins on Polynesia or Rubel and Rosman on New Guinea.

>> download the paper (pdf)

Indigenous? Non-Western? Primitive? The Paris Museum Controversy

Published on June 26, 2006 by lorenz Posted in aboriginees, anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, indigenous people / minorities, maori, Us and Them

Musee Quai Branly, a new major museum in Paris, dedicated entirely to well, how should it be called “non-Western arts”?, “indigenous arts?” has opened last Friday. Although the organizers named the new museum in Paris after the street it was built on after stirring criticism for floating the idea of a “primitive arts” or “first arts” museum, we read news headlines like “Paris unveils tribal art museum” (BBC), Paris welcomes new museum of indigenous art (Financial Times), and the Los Angeles Times informs: Parisians and tourists had their first chance Friday to visit Paris’ new primitive-art museum

Why do we need such a huge museum for non-European art?

“We want to show that this type of art is equivalent to European art. We want to place it on the same level”, said Patrice Januel, the museum’s director and curator.

But many people oppose the idea of categorising African, Asian and Pacific art as separate from Western art, according to the Telegraph:

Criticism ranges from claims that an institute dedicated to ethnic art is a patronising reinforcement of racist stereotypes to complaints that it relies heavily on items plundered in the ex-colonies. Some historians also suggest that the museum could “ghettoise” the works by isolating them from other art forms. (…) Among African observers, doubts persist. One Johannesburg critic said the museum would prompt bitter cries of “return the pillaged colonial loot”.

The museum is designed around a jungle theme. This design risked perpetuating colonial stereotypes, historian Gilles Manceron said according to The Guardian. It’s quite “natural” inside as well.

The New Zealand Harald describes the interior:

Inside, the sensation is of spirituality, with random shimmerings of light dappling the floor like sunbeams that pierce a rainforest canopy. The floor gently slopes, and the pillars are daubed in ochre coatings to make it look as if they have strangely taken root there.

Objects are arranged according to the continent of origin.

Patrick Lozes, president of an umbrella group of several hundred black associations called Cran, said he feared the new museum’s “archaic way of showing the past” would accentuate divisions rather than heal them, according to the New Zealand Harald:

“It’s an extension of a certain colonialist vision. Today we should emphasis migration and the mixing of people and not try to artificially separate the various strands of French society.”

The Courier Mail (Australia) on the otherhand writes about indigenous artists who are quite positive about the museum. The contribution to a wing of the Musee Quai Branly might be the largest and most significant permanent display of indigenous art outside Australia. Artist Gulumbu Yunupingu says:

“This place is a sacred place. I feel something here. It’s bringing us healing. These people recognised my hand, my work.”

Ap /Los Angeles Times reminds us:

Issues about France’s colonial past are still sensitive here — just last year, parliament passed a law requiring schoolbooks to highlight the “positive role” of French colonialism. The term was later stripped from the legislation, but the law was an embarrassment for France.

>> English homepage of the museum

Or rather start here:

>> Multimedia Presentations: Instruments and music of the world – draped garments – nomad settlements – it’s natural!

PS: Savage Minds has also blogged about it

UPDATE
A good summary: Al-Ahram Weekly: Museum of the oppressed

Musee Quai Branly, a new major museum in Paris, dedicated entirely to well, how should it be called "non-Western arts"?, "indigenous arts?" has opened last Friday. Although the organizers named the new museum in Paris after the street it was…

Aboriginees in Australia: Why talking about culture?

Published on June 6, 2006 by lorenz Posted in aboriginees, anthropology in the news, culture traditions, indigenous people / minorities, Pacific Oceania, Us and Them

In the Australian magazine On Line Opinion, Anthropologist John Morton criticizes public views of Aboriginess in Australia and argues for avoiding the term culture:

Ever since Europeans first came to Australia, public views of Aborigines have veered between two extremes. Aborigines have been promoted either as disgusting savages or as admired paragons, uncivilised riff-raff or as noble bearers of their culture – bad or good, but never ordinary.

As we now enter a new phase of Aboriginal affairs, Indigenous Australians once again enter the public mind as radically different types of people. On the one hand, we are bombarded with material about dysfunctional communities plagued by drug and alcohol abuse, rampant violence, uncontrolled children and chronic sickness. On the other hand, we routinely hear about “the oldest living culture in the world”, Aboriginal people caring, sharing and looking after country, and the profound qualities of Aboriginal art.

In these circumstances, it’s hard to know what “the oldest living culture in the world” might be. Indeed, it’s hard to know what people are talking about at all when they refer to “culture”.

(…)

We’ve heard a lot of arguments about the “true” nature of Aboriginal culture in recent weeks. Some say Aboriginal culture fosters violence against women and children. Others gainsay this and suggest that violence is cultural breakdown stemming from neglect and marginalisation by mainstream Australian culture. There are many more axes to grind in relation to employment, health and education, but always with a view to promoting a good or bad image of Aboriginal people, not to mention a good or bad image of the “mainstream culture” which provides Aboriginal services.

(…)

This blame game doesn’t give us “the truth” about Aboriginal or any other culture. It simply reduces the extremely complicated relationship between Aboriginal communities and all the arms of the state (governments, bureaucracies, the police, land councils, schools, health centres, etc.) with which they engage. Recourse to “culture” always seems to deliver imagined parodies of real life, transforming it into something inordinately valuable or completely worthless.

British cultural critic Raymond Williams once remarked that “culture” is “one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language”. (…) In fact, it’s an empty word: you can fill it with pretty much anything you like. That’s why it functions so well in slogans.

In the meantime, there are many people both inside and outside Aboriginal communities who recognise that there are big problems in Aboriginal affairs. It’d be good if they could all be allowed to get on with the job of finding appropriate solutions to those problems without “culture” getting in the way.

>> read the whole article in On Line Opinion

From Stone Age to 21st century – More “fun” with savages

Ancient People: We are All Modern Now

Our obsession with the notion of the primitive society

The Culture Struggle: How cultures are instruments of social power

“Quit using the word ‘culture’ wherever possible”

In the Australian magazine On Line Opinion, Anthropologist John Morton criticizes public views of Aboriginess in Australia and argues for avoiding the term culture:

Ever since Europeans first came to Australia, public views of Aborigines have veered between two extremes. Aborigines…