I’ve ignored this blog during the uni term, but now it’s over I realise that there were many interesting points I could post. It’s anthropology after all. The first discussion that comes to mind regards racial identity. Aborigines, for example, are being asked to prove their Aboriginality to receive land grants and other benefits. The right of providing those benefits can be argued, but that’s another topic. Instead, I want to question what it is to be Aboriginal.
If a person has only one Aboriginal parent, are they still Aboriginal? What if only one grandparent was? Or is it less about blood and more about upbringing? Is someone raised in an Aboriginal community Aboriginal? What if a (hypothetical?) full-blood Caucasian person grows up in such a community, learning to live off the land, to paint Aboriginal style, is involved in ceremonies, provides for his/her family in the Aboriginal way? Could they be considered Aboriginal?
Some would say that being Aboriginal means less these days, or in certain towns, because they follow western ways – living in houses, buying food from a supermarket. In the Australian Journal of Anthropology, Lorraine Gibson recites an encounter between a white Australian and an Aboriginal elder carving out a canoe for a traditional museum. The white man discredits the work because it’s being done with a chainsaw. The Aboriginal responds by asking whether the other drove to the museum in his horse and cart.
Why shouldn’t a culture be allowed to evolve, making use of advances available around them, and still be considered to be the same culture. Does Aboriginality imply a stagnant culture? If so, isn’t every culture doomed to extinction? And with today’s rate of progress, wouldn’t the concept of culture be meaningless? I’d hate to think so.
Ooh yes! Posts on anthropology!
The hypotheticl of the full-blood Caucasian growing up in an Aboriginal community totally reminds me of Carrot growing up in the dwarf community and completely unswerving in his belief that he is a dwarf. I wonder if such a thing comes down entirely to the individual and his/her own force of belief … which is odd, yeah, cos it’s so much within the wider societal context.
I’m reading this book at the moment, Aboriginal Music: Education For Living, as research for the novel. And there’s a very interesting example of how the music that was once required for the gathering of food was then rendered completely useless by the advent of the grocery store.
But yeah, I totally understand the horror and fear about Aboriginality meaning a stagnant culture … what a fucking awful thought! But funnily enough, something as (apparently) frivolous as fan culture makes me quite certain that no way in hell will the concept of culture ever be meaningless. It may be redefined in a thousand billion ways but people always always find concepts to bind them to other people, concepts of commonality even if that may be something as (apparently) frivolous as a television show.
Just saying … :p
(btw, yes, Murray, it is indeed moi, the short dark loud one from writing group … I go by ‘dri’ online cos my real name is so damned distinctive and instantly identifiable in this dominant white culture … *lol*)
Hi N.. OK, hi dri. You’re right. New cultures will always be appearing, but if they can’t change, they’ll be out of date before they’re even recognised. I said this more to point out the inconsistency in requiring Other cultures to conform to a stagant definition of culture while we go on adapting our own – because Westerners no more have a culture than we have an accent…
Great point about Carrot. Wish I’d thought of it. Trust the pop culture writer to beat me to it. And once again I’m amazed at how much Terry Pratchett manages to pack into his novels. The man is brilliant.
You’ve also intrigued me with this book on Aboriginal music. Please tell me more.
Ha, yes, good point! I guess coming from my very changing ethnic background, the concept of a stagnant culture is completely new (foreign! hehe) to me. Btw, seriously, Murray, you would not believe — actually, you prolly would — how fascinating it is to trace the changing Indian culture through Bollywood! Not just about the economics and India in terms of a wider global community but what gets me the most is the changing — and NOT changing — attitudes to morality and sexuality. *nods*
I know, right? Until reading your post, I hadn’t actually considered Carrot in that particular anthropological light. Totally makes me love Pterry all the more. Remind me to bring you the newest one, Nation, when I see you next. Verrah fascinating in terms of racial identity.
The book on Aboriginal music is by Catherine Ellis, took me a fair bit of hunting and total serendipidity to locate. Still haven’t finished it, mostly cos I’m panicking about my ability to write scenes set in an Aboriginal community, even if it is urban. (Shocked me to realise that I have no Aboriginal friends at all, what kind of city dweller am I?!) But yeah, it is possibly a book right up your alley cos she writes it very much from an ethnomusicologist perspective and therefore combines a view to Aboriginal society as well as music. Prolly a little outdated though cos it was written around 1985. I’m so tempted to travel to Adelaide where she set up the Centre for Aboriginal Studies in Music just to see if there are updated texts.
Btw, I can’t remember how much of my novel you’ve read. Do you? Cos then I can send you the scenes you’ve missed …
I just want to tell you that your blog is very interesting, bookmarked