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Maddison, Sarah --- "Voice and Diversity in Indigenous Politics" [2009] IndigLawB 14; (2009) 7(11) Indigenous Law Bulletin 19

Voice and Diversity in Indigenous Politics

By Sarah Maddison.

Between 1977 and 2007 the federal political response to deteriorating conditions in many Aboriginal communities escalated from one of ‘increasing concern’ to an apparent ‘national emergency.’ In the intervening three decades, policy has been repeatedly reoriented, from ideas of self-determination towards mainstreaming, and from a focus on reconciliation towards intervention. Commentators and politicians have debated the symbolic versus the practical; paternalism and coercion were proposed as antidotes to dependency. Yet for all these sharp divergences, very little seems to have changed; Indigenous people today occupy the same peripheral political space that they did thirty years ago; if anything they have become more marginal to an Australian polity captured by a mythical ‘mainstream.’ While Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people still struggle to make themselves heard, successive Australian governments have failed to substantially improve the status and life chances of this continent’s original inhabitants.

In recent years, concerns about Aboriginal disadvantage, dysfunctional communities, welfare dependency, child abuse, alcohol and violence have come to dominate political debate. The general message seems to be that these elements make up the sum total of Indigenous life. Behind the headlines, however, lies a complex and thriving contemporary political culture. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people today grapple with the often-uncomfortable intersection between their fractured (but not abandoned) traditional and cultural life, the legacies of colonisation, and their own diversity across the continent. The intersections of history, culture, experience and identity have produced an extraordinarily intricate political culture that, in general, is very poorly understood by non-Indigenous people.

A significant barrier to understanding the complexity of Indigenous political culture lies in the widespread failure to recognise the diversity of Indigenous peoples and their aspirations and demands. Historically, Aboriginal people have known and understood far more about non-Aboriginal people than non-Aboriginal people have known about them. Indeed Aboriginal people have often deliberately limited the sharing of information about themselves with non-Aboriginal people as a means of limiting non-Aboriginal control over their lives.^[1] To some extent this is still true today. Aside from anthropologists and other researchers, whose knowledge is often contested by Aboriginal people themselves,^[2] how many in the dominant culture can say they understand Aboriginal sociality or political culture?

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people often lay at least part of the blame for this ignorance at the feet of the mainstream media. There is a tendency in much mainstream media coverage to ignore differences between Indigenous peoples in order to limit the full scope of their political demands. Yet maintaining political and social diversity has always been important to Indigenous Australians, as it is for any minority group keen to avoid being swallowed by the dominant culture. Although Australian Aboriginal people are the only collective of Indigenous peoples anywhere in the world to have united under one flag, Aboriginal communities in Australia remain intensely, and proudly, local.^[3] Perhaps because of the relatively small population, Australian Indigenous peoples recognise the need to present a united front as a single people if they are to be heard on the national stage.

Nevertheless, the political reality is that ‘Indigenous people’ in Australia understand themselves as belonging to their own nation and language group, and within these their clans and kin groups. ‘Aboriginal people’ are in fact Wiradjuri, Yanyuwa, Goreng Goring, Jawoyn, Pitjantjatjara, Wongkadjera, Yawaru and all the other hundreds of nations that have survived the invasion. Accordingly, debate and disagreement, as Galarrwuy Yunupingu has pointed out, is ‘as would be expected from a dynamic and culturally diverse community’.^[4] Michael Mansell also made this point in evidence before the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs during the 1993 negotiations over native title legislation. Mansell told the committee:

We are no different from any other people anywhere in the world. We have different lifestyles and different communities. We have different political attitudes and we have different aspirations. Even though there are many common threads which run throughout the Aboriginal communities in Australia, we tend to encourage the differences because they are healthy. The worst aspect of political life that can be imposed on Aboriginal people is that we must all speak with one voice and say exactly the same thing.^[5]
Still, despite Mansell’s assertion of the importance of healthy disagreement, there is a strong tendency for Aboriginal people to smother tensions and disagreements. Given the intense media interest in any sign of trouble in Aboriginal communities, there is a prevailing pressure on communities to appear trouble free, meaning that many less prominent community issues are sidelined from general discussion, and often remain unresolved. Many Aboriginal people regard this pressure as a distinct double standard, as Jackie Huggins has argued:

…when Blacks publicly analyse and criticise each other it is perceived as infighting. However, when non-Aboriginals do the same it is considered a healthy exercise in intellectual stimulation. Why is the area of intra-racial Aboriginal debate such a sacred site?[6]

Larissa Behrendt agrees, suggesting that non-Aboriginal people are ‘quick to label any type of internal dispute as evidence that the Aboriginal community is incapable of running its own affairs’.^[7] But as Megan Davis asks, ‘why is it that blackfellas have to reconcile their views if there is a fundamental, ideological difference of opinion? We should be able to partake in a robust discussion of policy and ideas’.^[8]

There are sound reasons for Aboriginal leaders and activists to display a degree of wariness about revealing internal conflicts and contradictions. Disagreements have often been used to embarrass key figures, or to undermine their credibility. Patrick Dodson describes this as a tendency by Australian governments to ‘divide and rule’ Aboriginal people in their efforts to suppress Indigenous resistance.^[9] The racialised divisions that have historically been imposed on Aboriginal people were, at least in part, a conscious attempt to limit Aboriginal protest and resistance.^[10] Complex systems of classification and control were an intrinsic part of the colonial administration aimed at ‘exterminating’ one type of Aboriginality and replacing it with a more acceptable, ‘sanitised’ version.^[11] One type of classification was determined according to descent or ‘degrees of blood’ and is the familiar, overtly racist trope of ‘half-caste’, ‘quarter caste’, ‘octoroon’ and so on. For much of the 20^th century, these terms were used as an institutional guide to evaluate an Aboriginal person’s character; this barometer of ‘Aboriginality’ formed the foundation for many state policies, including child removal. For example, a child with ‘less Aboriginal blood’ was considered more likely to assimilate into broader Australian society, and was therefore more likely to be removed from his or her family.

A related, but distinct, mode of classification concerned the degree to which an Aboriginal person could be said to have become ‘civilised’ or remained ‘tribal’.^[12] Paradoxically, Aboriginal people have, over the years, been typecast according to an array of inconsistent identities: both the ‘noble savage’ and the hopeless fringe dweller; both the violent abuser of women and children and the primitive, childlike native in need of paternalistic ‘care’.^[13] These imposed definitions of Aboriginality were, according to Louise Taylor,

a blatant attempt to manipulate and disempower, a way to divide and confine, a chance to restrict and deny.[14]
This dynamic has contemporary manifestations, and contributes to the ongoing anxiety that difference and debate between Aboriginal leaders and activists must be smothered in order to present a united front to the political mainstream. Non-Aboriginal Australia has at best failed to recognise, and at worst deliberately silenced, the diversity within Aboriginal political culture. In turn, in order that their ideas might penetrate the general political discourse, many Aboriginal people themselves have felt a need to smother their disagreements and present at least an illusion of homogeneity. Addressing this dynamic will be a key challenge for any new national representative body. To truly represent a voice for Indigenous people, such a body must provide a forum for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander diversity; if it is to be a sustainable and credible organisation, it must allow for fuller expression of internal difference.

Struggle, Disappointment, Re-engagement

Despite continual political disappointment, it has been a hallmark of Aboriginal politics that Aboriginal leaders and activists are seemingly endlessly prepared to engage with governments that repeatedly let them down. William Tilmouth suggests that Aboriginal people have always made the best of the political circumstances in which they have found themselves, being prepared to ‘participate, negotiate, resist or comply with the pressures imposed on them, as they see fit and within the opportunities provided’.^[15] Geonpul scholar Aileen Moreton-Robinson makes a similar point, arguing that Aboriginal people have been creative in their engagement with white Australian society, creating cultural forms that ‘take account of the ambiguous existence that is the inevitable result of this engagement.’ This ambiguity adds to the complexity of Aboriginal resistance because,

… rather than simply being a matter of overtly defiant behaviour, resistance is re-presented as multifaceted, visible and invisible, conscious and unconscious, explicit and covert, intentional and unintentional.^[16]
No period illustrates this point more clearly than the last term of the Howard Government. Following Howard’s election win in 2004, and with the impending demise of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (‘ATSIC’) (announced during the election campaign), there was widespread concern among Aboriginal leaders and activists about their diminished capacity to be heard on the national stage. Former AFL star Michael Long highlighted this concern by initiating what became known as the ‘Long Walk.’ In November 2004, Long set out from his home in Melbourne to walk to Canberra to demand a meeting with the former Prime Minister. Long had previously rejected a seat on the Howard Government’s National Indigenous Council (‘NIC’), and he set off on his walk intent on persuading the Prime Minister that he needed to listen to Aboriginal people other than those on the NIC.^[17]

At around the same time, in a different part of the country, another group of around a dozen Aboriginal leaders attended a two-day meeting at Port Douglas convened by Noel Pearson. The meeting was an effort to resolve some of their differences, particularly those between Pearson, with his acceptance of the Howard Government’s position on ‘mutual obligation’, and Patrick Dodson, who continued to advocate for the recognition of inherent Indigenous rights. The goal in Port Douglas was to develop a more cohesive response to the Howard Government; indeed, the meeting seemed to produce what was later described as a ‘fusion of two competing paradigms based around rights and responsibilities’.^[18] Pearson claimed the meeting was a ‘turning point in the psychology of the nation’s Indigenous leaders’; Dodson and Pearson released a joint statement in which they claimed that the group at the meeting had decided to ‘combine their energies’ to

advance the situation of Aboriginal people from an abysmal state of social and economic inertia to a circumstance more closely approaching the reality of non-Aboriginal Australians.^[19]

The Port Douglas meeting also prepared the ground for Michael Long to engineer the first meeting in seven years between Howard and the Yawuru brothers Michael and Patrick Dodson, who had been two of the of the previous Government’s more vocal critics. After the meeting with Howard, Patrick Dodson claimed there was ‘a lot of fruitful ground for collaboration’ between the Government and Aboriginal people.^[20]

But despite this behind-the-scenes work to re-engage with the Howard Government, early optimism was soon replaced by bitterness. By May 2005, Patrick Dodson was again pointed in his criticism, telling the National Reconciliation Planning Workshop that:

We offered engagement at every level only to be ushered to the corner and told to wait in the queue of rejected petitioners. We were told to continue to dream, but were given no encouragement of any outcome that would give our children any hope of something better for the future. Michael Long showed humility and leadership for us all in walking from Melbourne to Canberra only to be part of a photo opportunity and then to be politely ushered out the door of the parliament.^[21]

Finding a New Voice

Dealing with this lack of respect and continuing to re-engage seem to be part of the struggle for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders and activists. But, since 2005, these struggles have been increasingly invisible to the wider public as Indigenous people have been without a national voice. Larissa Behrendt has suggested that what may be seen as ‘seemingly contradictory aspirations’ among Aboriginal leaders and activists can in fact ‘work together to produce a more comprehensive and representative process of representing rights’.^[22] Every political community contains a diversity of views and experience, which ensures that all members of that community — women, children, old, young, urban, remote — are represented. These differences are intrinsic to any community or movement, but can be highly creative and productive rather than simply negative or divisive.^[23]
As in non-Aboriginal politics, however, differences that are not well managed can blow apart a fragile capacity to articulate an effective political voice on the national stage. This will be the key test for the national representative body currently under development. Coming to grips with this diversity, and the challenges it poses, may also help Aboriginal leaders and activists work together more effectively. In his 2007 Mabo Lecture, Mick Dodson highlighted the continuing threats to Aboriginal culture and survival, calling for ‘strong leadership, from men and women, young and old, city and country, all of us together’. He further argued that:

we’re getting slaughtered by the colonial imperative to steal our land, to strip our culture, and to demoralise us as peoples and nations. What I think I’m on about is self-defence — we must defend our identity and our inheritance in the land and sea. And as we resist — and we have always resisted in many different ways — I say that we must pull together as nations, forever connected to the land and fortified by our law and culture, to make decisions for ourselves in determining our future.^[24]
Working towards a new national representative body provides a unique opportunity to ‘pull together’ as Dodson suggests. This must be done if the new body is to have any credibility with the politicians and bureaucrats in Canberra. But it should not mean that the diversity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander political culture continues to be suppressed. Quite the opposite. A sustainable body will give voice to this diversity in all its richness.


Dr Sarah Maddison is Senior Associate Dean in the faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of New South Wales.

^[1] Barry Morris, ‘Dhan-gadi Resistance to Assimilation’, in Ian Keen (ed.), Being Black: Aboriginal Cultures in ‘Settled’ Australia (1988), 49.

^[2] For example the ‘Bell-Huggins’ debates between Indigenous women and the white anthropologist Diane Bell, discussed in Aileen Moreton-Robinson, Talkin’ Up to the White Woman, (2000), 119-125.
^[3] Larissa Behrendt, Aboriginal Dispute Resolution (1995), 27.
^[4] Galarrwuy Yunupingu (ed), Our Land is Our Life: Land Rights — Past, Present and Future (1997), xv.
^[5] Michael Mansell quoted in Frank Brennan, One Land, One Nation: Mabo — Towards 2001 (1995), 73.
^[6] Jackie Huggins ‘Always Was, Always Will Be’, in Michele Grossman (ed), Blacklines: Contemporary Critical Writings by Indigenous Australians, (2003) 65.
^[7] Larissa Behrendt, Aboriginal Dispute Resolution (1995), 94-95.
^[8] Megan Davis, ‘Aboriginal Leadership and Welfare Reform: You’re Not the First, Noel’, Online Opinion, 8 September, 2005, available at <http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=166> .
^[9] Patrick Dodson, ‘Beyond the Mourning Gate: Dealing with Unfinished Business’ (The Wentworth Lecture, AIATSIS, Canberra, 12 May 2000).
^[10] Pat O’Shane, ‘Aboriginal Political Movements: Some Observations’(13^th Frank Archibald Memorial Lecture, University of New England, Armidale, 14 October 1998).

^[11] Marcia Langton, ‘Aboriginal Art and Film: The Politics of Representation’, in Grossman, above n 6, 116.

^[12]Murray Goot and Tim Rowse, Divided Nation? Indigenous Affairs and the Imagined Public, (2007), 31.
^[13] George Morgan, Unsettled Places: Aboriginal People and Urbanisation in New South Wales (2006) 141.

^[14] Louise Taylor, ‘Who’s your Mob? The Politics of Aboriginal Identity and the Implications for a Treaty’ in Hannah McGlade (ed), Treaty – Let’s Get it Right!, (2003), 90.
^[15] William Tilmouth, ‘Saying No to $60 Million’, in Jon Altman and Melinda Hinkson (eds), Coercive Reconciliation: Stabilise, Normalise, Exit Aboriginal Australia, (2007), 231.
^[16] Aileen Moreton-Robinson, 2003, ‘Introduction: Resistance, Recovery and Revitalisation’ in Grossman, above n 6, 128.
^[17] Michael Gordon, ‘Give us Some Hope’, The Age, (Melbourne) 4 December 2004.
^[18] Paul Kelly, ‘Black leaders offer new accord’, The Australian, (Sydney), 4 December 2004.
^[19] Patrick Dodson, and Noel Pearson, ‘The Dangers of Mutual Obligation’, The Age (Melbourne), 15 December 2004.
^[20] Stuart Rintoul, ‘Long Walk Over, Longer Journey Ahead’, The Australian (Sydney), 4 December 2004.
^[21] Patrick Dodson, speech delivered at the National Reconciliation Planning Workshop, Old Parliament House, Canberra, 31 May2005, available at <http://www.reconciliation.org.au/i-cms.isp?page=110> .
^[22] Larissa Behrendt, Achieving Social Justice: Indigenous Rights and Australia’s Future, (2003), 14.

^[23] See Sarah Maddison and Sean Scalmer, Activist Wisdom: Practical Knowledge and Creative Tension in Social Movements, (2006).
^[24] Mick Dodson, ‘Tides of Native Title’ (The 2007 Mabo Lecture, AIATSIS, Cairns, 7 June 2007).