“…As they lived in small tents, waiting for the promised new housing, jobs, and schools, government policy swiftly changed, unleashing what felt like a new wave of violence. Aboriginal people could not receive funding for infrastructure on their customary country, but were now told to shift to arbitrarily determined “growth towns” (Markham and Doran ) or in the welfare suburbs of the capital city. Gigi, repeating her points : The film we made was about the lifestyle we been living, we trying to show to other people how we been struggling through life. We decided to make this movie, it’s about me … because every time I have all my family I have to put them up in my house.…”
Using forms of “improvisational realism,” the north Australian‐based Karrrabing Indigenous Film Collective mimics and plays with strategies of fabulation and faux realism to provoke audiences into new ways of understanding the multileveled worlds Indigenous families inhabit and think about. Successful as their filmography has been, Karrabing works nonetheless enter a culturally saturated visual contract that threatens to tip their productions back into a recognizable, morally responsible, set of resemblances. This visual or social contract is not of the Karrabing’s making but interpolates a response, which we explore here by way of keywords: ethnography/documentary, cultural maintenance, training, collaboration, and transparency.
“…As they lived in small tents, waiting for the promised new housing, jobs, and schools, government policy swiftly changed, unleashing what felt like a new wave of violence. Aboriginal people could not receive funding for infrastructure on their customary country, but were now told to shift to arbitrarily determined “growth towns” (Markham and Doran ) or in the welfare suburbs of the capital city. Gigi, repeating her points : The film we made was about the lifestyle we been living, we trying to show to other people how we been struggling through life. We decided to make this movie, it’s about me … because every time I have all my family I have to put them up in my house.…”
Using forms of “improvisational realism,” the north Australian‐based Karrrabing Indigenous Film Collective mimics and plays with strategies of fabulation and faux realism to provoke audiences into new ways of understanding the multileveled worlds Indigenous families inhabit and think about. Successful as their filmography has been, Karrabing works nonetheless enter a culturally saturated visual contract that threatens to tip their productions back into a recognizable, morally responsible, set of resemblances. This visual or social contract is not of the Karrabing’s making but interpolates a response, which we explore here by way of keywords: ethnography/documentary, cultural maintenance, training, collaboration, and transparency.
“…In the NT, under a parallel conservative administration, there were policy proposals, including one called ‘Homelands Extra’ in 2013, that purported to fulfil the needs of homelands people but instead focused administrative attention and financial support on larger residential centres that were for a short time called ‘Territory Growth Towns’. While this policy language has been reframed as the larger towns have not grown but have economically stagnated or declined, the effect has been to further marginalize those living at homelands (Markham and Doran ).…”
Section: Policy and Programme Prescriptions For Cultural Reformmentioning
In the 1970s, Aboriginal people in remote Australia took decisive steps to decentralize from government settlements and missions to live and make a living on their ancestral lands at places that have become known as homelands. Over time, this migration garnered some state support and saw the emergence of new facilitating institutions. But in the last decade homeland living has been discursively demeaned by politicians, and policies have been put in place to undermine the possibility of residing and making a livelihood in these smallest, most remote places mainly located on Indigenous-titled lands. As Indigenous territorial rights expand, the state looks to extinguish possibilities for current and future generations to utilize the land and its resources for livelihood. In this article, I draw on evidence from political discourse, policy documents and programme design and implementation to outline this state project to eliminate a contemporary lifeway. I provide ethnographic evidence from work with Kuninjku people in Arnhem Land that documents this destruction. I engage with the work of Raphael Lemkin to document and theorize the techniques being deployed in terms of the logic of cultural genocide. I end by asking what homelands people might do to push back and what role anthropologists might play in such a process.In the situation as it exists at present there is no means of providing for alleviation of the treatment of populations under occupation until the actual moment of liberation. It is then too late for remedies for after liberation they can at best obtain only reparation of damages but never restoration of those values which have been destroyed and which cannot be restored. (Lemkin 2008:94-5)
“…Some of the cultural destruction is the result of past policies of oppression, such as removal of children and dispossession of traditional lands (Tonkinson, 2007), but much is simply the consequence of the enduring juxtaposition of traditional Aboriginal and contemporary Western socio-economic systems. As models of infrastructure and service provision predicate upon economies of scale (large populations) (Markham and Doran, 2015) and sedentary populations encroach upon remote communities, such communities increasingly appear 'non-viable', 'uneconomic' or 'unsustainable'. Culture then becomes seen as the cause of disadvantage, leading to a prevailing paradigm in policy circles of assimilation into the mainstream as the solution (Pickering, 2000).…”
Desert regions of the world comprise about 25% of the world's land surface and are home to 500 million people, yet are often portrayed as extreme places with resident communities marginalised from mainstream development. Australia has a relatively vast desert region, covering about 70% of the continent and home to about 200,000 people. As in most desert regions around the world, perceptions of hardship and isolation are enduring images with communities seen to be stoic yet in need of subsidies from the 'mainstream' economy. The multi-dimensional nature of the debate about the future of Australia's desert region often leaves policy makers with little overarching synthesis to guide public policy. This article draws together research on climate change, energy, housing and transport to provide a transdisciplinary analysis of how the desert region could become a highly liveable and prosperous area for existing and new residents.
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