Publication: Oceania
Publication Date: 01-MAR-05
Format: Online - approximately 7378 words
Delivery: Immediate Online Access
Author: Batty, Philip
Article Excerpt
INTRODUCTION
Arguably, there are now more non-Aboriginals working to 'empower' Aboriginals than ever before. In a speech delivered in the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly in 2002, John Ah Kit--the first Aboriginal to hold a ministerial post in the Northern Territory--pointed to the 'enormous growth in the number of non-Indigenous people' working in Aboriginal community organisations (N.T. News 2002:1). Indeed, in the Northern Territory, a mass of white 'community workers' currently form an extensive network of Aboriginal organisation employees, some of whom have worked for such bodies since their inception.
My intention here is not to criticise the non-Aboriginals who work in Aboriginal organisations, nor indeed their Aboriginal employers. Neither am I mounting a case for the 'Aboriginalisation' of Aboriginal organisations. Rather, I wish to investigate the working relationships that have emerged between blacks and whites involved in the project of Aboriginal self-determination. It seems to me that these partnerships work as significant sites of administrative and cultural mediation, both delineating and channelling the aspirations of Aboriginal people and government. As Mitchell Dean has proposed, one of the most important ways in which the modern state seeks to govern is through 'a swarm of experts, specialists, advisers and empowerers' (Dean 1996:211).
There are a number of significant examples of such relationships. If we focus for instance on Central Australia, one can identify people such as the lawyer Geoff Eames (now a Supreme Court judge), who worked with Wenton Rubuntja in establishing the Central Land Council (see Faine 1993); Phillip Toyne (former Director of the Australian Conservation Foundation), who worked with Donald Fraser in creating the Pitjantjatjara Council (see Toyne and Vachon 1984); the Congregational Minister, Jim Downing, who worked with Yami Lester in establishing the Institute for Aboriginal Development (see Lester 1993). No doubt one could identify many similar partnerships in other regions of Australia.
While these relationships have played a critical role in the implementation of projects of Aboriginal self-determination, they appear to have escaped detailed attention in the literature. The paucity of work in this area can perhaps be attributed to the constraints imposed by the policy of Aboriginal self-determination itself. Its logic does not readily accommodate notions of intensive engagements between blacks and whites. On the contrary, it presupposes the impossible notion of an autonomous Aboriginal subject, located in an essentialised space beyond the bounds of ordinary social dependencies. It is not surprising therefore that these relationships remain poorly theorised. Indeed, at the level of practice, non-Aboriginal employees of Aboriginal organisations rarely figure in the official representations of the organisations they work for, even if they themselves are often involved in the construction and promotion of such representations.
In this article, I trace the emergence of these working partnerships and show how they eventually became a central element in the operations of the policies of Aboriginal self-determination--even if this occurred more by accident than design. I will also examine the face-to-face interactions of the people embroiled in such relationships, paying particular attention to the interpersonal strategies they employed in attempting to achieve their objectives. My main contention here is that such partnerships facilitated the formation of various strategic forms of Aboriginal subjectivity, or agency, which helped operationalise the policies of Aboriginal self-determination. I will begin by briefly clarifying some of the key assumptions underlying these arguments.
ABORIGINAL SUBJECTIVITY AND THE STATE
First. What do I mean by the term 'subjectivity' in this context? As is commonly accepted in contemporary cultural theory, human subjectivity refers to the sense we have of ourselves as 'subjects', imbedded in a wider social environment populated by other subjects. Accordingly, subjectivity should not be seen as an 'essential' entity that exists beyond the realm of ordinary social discourse, but as a social product (see Easthope and McGowan 1992; Jenkins 1996). In this sense, subjectivity is not something that emanates from a non-human, transcendental source (e.g. God); rather, it is constituted through mundane interactions with other selves, ideas or objects. In this way, 'the subject is always linked to something outside of it' and 'it is this linkage that the word "subject" insists on' (Mansfield 2000:3).
I therefore view 'Aboriginal subjectivity' as a social product--irrevocably linked to the social realm in which it is constituted--just like all other forms of human subjectivity. This seems like an obvious point. Nonetheless, the popular mythologies surrounding the nature of Aboriginal subjectivity and the construction of essentialised indigenous subjects in some scholarly literature (see Wolfe 1999) perhaps requires a reiteration of this basic point.
Second. To what extent is Aboriginal subjectivity constituted through the administrative technologies of government, and how did partnerships between Aboriginals and non-Aboriginals help 'facilitate' this process? In addressing this complex question, I have drawn on the work of Michel Foucault--particularly his notion of 'governmentality' and its later development by others (see Burchell, et al. 1991; Dean 1999; Foucault 2001; Hindess 1996; O'Malley 1996; Rose 1989). Space does not allow for a comprehensive elaboration of this work, nonetheless I will try to summarise the essential points and its relevance to my arguments.
Foucault rejected the Rousseauian notion of the human self as a naturally free agent that is oppressed and ruined by the 'civilized' powers that surround it (see Rousseau 1984). Following Nietzsche, Foucault developed a very different conception of the self. He argued that the 'individual is not to be conceived of as a sort of ... primitive atom' that is 'crushed and subdued' by power (Foucault 1980:98). On the contrary, he believed that power plays a central role in the production of human subjectivity and, moreover, forms the primary vehicle through which power is distributed throughout the social sphere--in fact, he argued that the self 'is an effect of power' (Foucault 1980:98). Thus, according to Foucault, to understand the constitution of subjectivity and the self, we need to consider the power relations that are productive of subjectivity. One of the main objectives in this article is to examine how such power relations--particularly governmental power relations--shape Aboriginal subjectivity. This brings me to the next Foucauldian notion I wish to outline here.
Foucault proposed that, in liberal democratic societies, 'governmental power' has assumed a pre-eminent role in shaping human subjectivity. Nonetheless, he did not think of governmental power as emanating from an all-encompassing, coercive authority. On the contrary, he proposed that modern democracies seek to govern 'through the regulated choices of individual citizens ... construed as subjects of ... self-actualisation and self-fulfilment' (Rose 1996b:41). In other words, far from attempting to force individual subjects to bend to its will, liberal forms of government seek an alignment with the aspirations of individual subjects--to enrol them in the operations of government itself. Thus the incorporation, channelling and enhancement of human subjectivity has emerged as a key preoccupation in the 'art' of modern government. I will argue that the policies of Aboriginal self-determination--and the...
NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.
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