Elsevier

Journal of Rural Studies

Volume 25, Issue 4, October 2009, Pages 404-413
Journal of Rural Studies

Leaching the poison – The importance of process and partnership in working with Yolngu

Dedication: We wish to acknowledge and dedicate this paper to our co-author Dr. Raymattja Marika-Mununggiritj who passed away in May 2008, before this paper could be published. She was an important role model for our community and her work has inspired us and her memory continues to live on in our hearts. We also wish to acknowledge and dedicate this paper to another colleague Mrs. Badangthun Munyarryun, who passed away in 2007, whose work about the ngathu metaphor in the Yirrkala school inspired and motivated our paper.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2009.05.007Get rights and content

Abstract

The popular construction of rural places as ‘white’ spaces has significant repercussions for ethnic, Indigenous and ‘other’ groups who do not always fit within prescribed dominant processes. This paper provides new insights for rural scholarship through an engagement with Indigenous specific experiences of governance and decision making in rural and remote areas. Drawing on powerful Yolngu metaphors from northeast Arnhem Land, Australia, it makes Yolngu law and perspectives visible. Like the cycad nut that has poison within its flesh, so have government impositions on Indigenous people in remote areas. This paper is written to leach the poison out, to let it be cleansed.

Introduction

Like the cycad nuts

That have poison within their flesh

So has our Government's policies and attitudes

Leach the poison out

Let it be cleansed

Issues of governance and decision making in postcolonial contexts are the consequence of the construction of places as ‘white’ spaces, in which the hegemonic status of whiteness denies the diversity of rural populations (Bonnett, 1996, Dyer, 1997, Pini, 2003, Gibson and Davidson, 2004, Nelson, 2008). The ‘whiteness’ of these spaces is constructed as culturally neutral and ‘never has to speak its name, never has to acknowledge its role as an organizing principle in social and cultural relations’ (Lipitz, 1998, 1). Indeed, in some rural areas whiteness is ‘(re)scripted as a solution, rather than as a source of, inequalities’ (Vanderbeck, 2008, 1132). Emerging research into issues of race and ethnicity in rural studies is demonstrating the unfair stigmatisation of the rights of particular groups in rural settings. Holloway (2007) demonstrates the racialization of rural landscapes through her engagement with Gypsy populations and Hubbard (2005) discusses opposition to asylum centres as racialized and sexualized fears. Scholars discussing diversity in rural communities in relation to Belizean rural youth (Haug, 2002), schools of Mauritius (Erikson, 1993), ethnicity in China (Harrell, 1995) and Indigenous issues in schools in Pakistan (Kazi, 1987) provide evidence of the ways that the needs of diverse communities often do not fit within the state's neat management categories and are therefore alienated in policy approaches.

Australian scholars argue that ‘whiteness’ in Australian countrysides is not simply the presence of ‘white’ ethnicities but that ‘whiteness’ erases and silences other ethnicities (Gibson and Davidson, 2004). There is reluctance to recognise the ‘governmental status’ of Indigenous groups in the management of resources (Palmer, 2006) and in making decisions for their own lives. Power imbalances and institutional racism are embedded within formal governance structures that emanate from the state (Carter and Hill, 2007). In July 2007, when we first started to write this paper, the Australian Howard Government announced an Intervention in Indigenous Affairs which we believe provides evidence of racially motivated discrimination into the lives of Indigenous Australians denying Indigenous agency and governance1. Using the Intervention as an example, this paper contributes to rural scholarship by providing Indigenous counter-knowledge for understanding rural/remote places and guidance on how best to work with Indigenous people when governing from a distance. In this paper, we talk from a Yolngu perspective. Yolngu are the Indigenous people living in northeast Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, Australia. Whilst there is uniqueness in our discussion about Yolngu, we believe that our discussion resonates with experiences of Indigenous groups around the world who also challenge state governance structures (see Sparke, 1998, Koschade and Peters, 2006, Shaw et al., 2006).

The application of ‘white’ bureaucratic procedures and impositions in so-called ‘remote’ areas is of significant concern to us. The structures and processes framed by governments operating at a distance (O'Malley, 1998) position ‘others’ as ‘rural’ or, in the case of Indigenous people in Northern Territory Australia, as ‘remote.’ Indigenous specific cultural governance and decision-making structures are then also imagined as being ‘remote’ from the ‘mainstream.’ For Indigenous Australians, however, it is connection to country2, to our physical and spiritual homelands, that makes one feel ‘in place.’ We are not remote, but at home on our country despite its distance (geographically and ontologically) from ‘mainstream’ administrative centres. We challenge the idea that it is Indigenous people that need to have their ‘capacity built,’ based on Eurocentric understandings of capacity (see Howitt and Suchet-Pearson, 2006), and argue that bureaucrats, policy makers, researchers and others wishing to work with Indigenous people need to learn to see outside their own cultural frameworks.

Issues of visibility and voice are fundamental to challenging colonial power relations and racialised rural landscapes and decolonising academic disciplines (Smith, 1999, Louis, 2007). Postcolonial theorist Gayatri Spivak (1988) articulates the issue of visibility and audibility of research participants by questioning whether the Subaltern can speak. Spivak seeks to reorient the task of postcolonial studies to examine the operation of power that has so effectively silenced and objectified the subaltern and challenges academics to speak with rather than to speak for or merely try to listen to the historically mute subaltern.

This paper addresses Spivak's challenges through co-authorship between three senior Yolngu women and one non-Yolngu postgraduate student. By working together, we want to engage with Smith's (1999, 125) concept that research should be ‘about bringing to the centre and privileging Indigenous values, attitudes and practices’. By repositioning our discussion from the particularity of Indigenous context we seek to unsettle the universal claims of dominant society and ‘whiteness’ in rural imaginaries and scholarship (Louis, 2007, Howitt et al., 2008).

As authors, we do not aim explicitly to position our paper within a research paradigm, rather we draw our authority as traditional owners, from our contextualised experiences and knowledges. In a similar way to Watson and Huntington (2008) we challenge the traditional ethnographic positioning of non-Indigenous authors as ‘subjects’ and Indigenous people as ‘objects’ of research. In Watson and Huntington's (2008, 259) words: ‘this narrative style serves to recognise the authorship not normally accepted as legitimate expertise unless the ‘consultant’ is cited as evidence’. We hope that the authority of Indigenous ways of knowing can be embraced by the readership, to contribute to Whatmore's (2004, 1362) ideas of ‘actively redistributing expertise beyond engaging with other disciplines or research fields to engaging knowledge practices and vernaculars beyond the academy.’ This autoethnographic approach is a mechanism of inserting Indigenous perspectives within a Eurocentric paradigm (see Pratt, 1992, Butz and Besio, 2004) and in so doing reconfiguring these spaces.

This paper has been written and developed through a series of conversations between the four authors to ‘situate’ our knowledges through ‘conversation’ (Haraway, 1999). It stems from our concerns and frustrations working within existing structures and processes and the associated impacts. The writing has been a cross-cultural process in which we have worked together to articulate ideas, concerns and commentary on current Indigenous affairs policy. We come from different perspectives and we want to explicitly recognise these differences. However, we collected ideas and prepared it together, as women – just like the appropriate process for collection of ngathu (cycad nut) discussed in the paper. We worked collectively to bring forward our experiences from Yolngu and Ngapaki perspectives.

We decided to use the term ‘we’ in this paper because we are working together3. Writing as ‘we’ is not intended to create a dualism of Yolngu/non-Yolngu as we recognise the multiple and fluid identities between and within these groups (see Shaw et al., 2006). Neither do we wish to position Yolngu perspectives as superior. Instead, writing from Yolngu perspectives, we engage with the specificity of experience in an effort to unsettle the dominance of hegemonic ‘whiteness’ in rural spaces (see Howitt et al., 2008). ‘We’ do not purport to represent the diversity of voices of our community in our discussion here. However, we draw on our communal knowledge traditions and metaphors to discuss issues of process and governance that are important to all Yolngu. As per Yolngu custom, we requested permission to share these metaphors from the custodians of the knowledge and sought clarification about the messages for broader audiences. In this way we are confident that the custodians of the knowledge share our concerns and our arguments in this paper.

We are writing this paper to give our readers tools to read, see and act differently, to argue for flexibility in thought, policy and practice. In this paper we want to share with you Yolngu metaphors and their relevance to issues of governance and decision-making. One mechanism to leach the poison from the imposition of external processes is to digest them through our own decision-making processes and ensure autonomy over decisions affecting our lives. We share what we see as the differences between Ngapaki (non-Yolngu, literally translated as ‘white’) and Yolngu decision-making structures and illustrate ways that our community has been able to successfully merge the two to ensure Yolngu autonomy. We consider adoption of people on an individual scale to develop personal accountability relationships. Throughout the paper we draw on a range of our experiences to discuss our concerns and contextualise processes within Yolngu intellectual frameworks. Through this process we hope to encourage our readers to reconceptualise us from being ‘remote’ from them to being in place, on country. Reimagining these spatial relationships may offer insight into reimagining institutional and procedural relationships with Indigenous people. Or as Rose (1999) puts it, to become ‘ethically available’ in relationships with us and our country.

Section snippets

The importance of metaphor

Yolngu have used metaphors since time immemorial to share strong messages about how we should live and work. We want to work with you through this paper to understand these Yolngu metaphors and how they affect us and our lives and, as Barnes (1991, 118) does, argue for ‘taking metaphors seriously.’ A metaphor is the application of an imaginary idea or word to something that is not literally applicable, and can be used by people striving to make sense of change and unfamiliarity in their lives (

Ngathu, the cycad nut

At the right time of the year, Yolngu women gather to collect ngathu, cycad nut, from the bush. The nut contains dingu, poison, in the form of cyanide. Therefore, there are strict protocols and processes that must be observed in order to ensure no poison remains when the nut is ground into flour to make sacred bread. If the process is done too early, you die. It must be picked in the right season, it must be leached and processed properly. We sought permission from Senior Elders of the Gumatj

Yambirrpa, the fish trap

The Yambirrpa (fish trap) metaphor talks of the importance of working together. We worked with Senior Rirratjingu clan elders, the custodians of this story, Laklak Marika and Dhuwarrwarr Marika to share this story in the right way. When it is the right season, Yolngu men, women and children go together to a special area to collect and place rocks in a structure, the Yambirrpa, to trap fish. As you can see in Fig. 2, a Yambirrpa is a collection of rocks constructed in a circular shape. The

Differences between Ngapaki and Yolngu decision-making structures

Part of the challenge of framing appropriate and effective accountability procedures in cross-cultural and multicultural environments revolves around issues of decision making and accountability structures. There are some fundamental differences between the ways that Indigenous and non-Indigenous people make decisions (Smith, 1999). Yet there is reluctance to recognise the ‘governmental status’ of Indigenous groups (Palmer, 2006) in imbalanced formal state institutional governance structures (

Yolngu governance for success

‘Governance capacity is greatly strengthened when Indigenous people create their own rules, policies, guidelines, procedures, codes etc. and design the local mechanisms to enforce those rules and hold their own leaders accountable’ (Hunt and Smith, 2007, xvii).

The legitimacy of Indigenous governance arrangements, and therefore Indigenous support for them, depend on two things: having representative structures that reflect contemporary understandings of ‘proper’ relationships and forms of

Yolngu relationships and adoption

Institutional structures that recognise Yolngu governance are one way of reframing accountability relationships. Many Yolngu also seek to achieve this with their personal relations through adopting Ngapaki and teaching them Yolngu ways.

I must teach in a way that keeps the knowledge alive, and makes the students feel that once I have shared my knowledge with them, then they are in a way obligated to me, that we have responsibilities together, which come from the knowledge we have shared together

Living in two worlds

Despite our focus on the two different ways of being, Yolngu and Ngapaki, the complexities of contemporary Yolngu society in which two worlds are meshed must also be recognised. Contemporary Yolngu live in a materialised world developed through our interactions with the Western world, but we still value our ceremony, beliefs and customs. One of the challenges that we face in today's society is that we have to balance between two worlds. That of what the Western society imposes on us, and that

Conclusions

When the structures of governments are inflexible, Indigenous institutions and individuals must bear the burden for bridging the divide between the two worlds. This is not just a challenge for Yolngu, but one acknowledged by Indigenous groups around the world (Smith, 1999, Howitt and Suchet-Pearson, 2006, Koschade and Peters, 2006, Shaw et al., 2006, Louis, 2007). There are few people and institutions that are able to effectively work between two worlds and have a thorough understanding of the

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the senior custodians of the ngathu story and the Yambirrpa stories for sharing these stories for publication. We would also like to thank Dr Sandie Suchet-Pearson and Prof. Richie Howitt for their assistance in reading drafts of this paper.

Glossary of Yolngu terms

Bapurru
funeral ceremony, also means clan
Balatj
stick
Bathi
bag
Bilma
clapsticks
Binjurr
spear
Buku walang
always alone
Dhapi
initiation ceremony
Dingu
poison
Djamarrkuli
children
Djan'kawu
Ancestral sisters
Djinbulk
point
Djungaya
clan executor
Gana
alone
Gapu
water
Gumatj
clan group name
Gongurru
orange gum tree blossoms
Gurrutu
kinship
Gutharra
grandchild
Lirrwi
coals
Mari
grandparent (mother's mother or mother's mother's brother)
Ngapaki
non-Yolngu, whitefella
Ngathu
cycad nut
Raki
string
Rangan
without husk
Ranganmirri
with husk

References (56)

  • D. Butz et al.
    (2004)
  • J.L. Carter et al.

    Critiquing environmental management in indigenous Australia: two case studies

    Area

    (2007)
  • D. Demerrit et al.

    Dialogue, metaphors of dialogue and understandings of geography

    Area

    (2002)
  • Dhimurru

    Dhimurru Website

    (2007)
  • R. Dyer

    White: Essays on Race and Culture

    (1997)
  • T.H. Erikson

    Ethnicity and Nationalism

    (1993)
  • M. Hanne

    Opening Address. Narrative and Metaphor Across the Disciplines

    (1996)
  • D. Haraway

    Situated knowledges: the science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspectives

  • R. Howitt et al.

    Philosophy: indigenous geographies – critical article

  • R. Howitt et al.

    Rethinking the building blocks: ontological pluralism and the idea of ‘management’

    Geografiska Annaler – Series B: Human Geography

    (2006)
  • Hughes, I., 2000. Ganma: Indigenous Knowledge for Reconciliation and Community Action. Participatory Action Research...
  • J. Hunt et al.

    Indigenous Community Govenance Project: Year Two Research Findings

    (2007)
  • A. Kazi

    Ethnicity and Education in Nation-building: the Case of Pakistan

    (1987)
  • R.A. Kearns

    Narrative and metaphor in health geographies

    Progress in Human Geography

    (1997)
  • B. Koschade et al.

    Algonquin notions of jurisdiction: inserting indigenous voices into legal spaces

    Geografiska Annaler – Series B: Human Geography

    (2006)
  • G. Lakoff et al.

    Metaphors We Live By

    (1980)
  • G. Lipitz

    The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics

    (1998)
  • Cited by (51)

    • Expanding the biocultural benefits of species distribution modelling with Indigenous collaborators: Case study from northern Australia

      2022, Biological Conservation
      Citation Excerpt :

      Although this region is considered culturally strong, there are increasing threats to cultural integrity and language (Marmion et al., 2014). Yolŋu Elders are very concerned about cultural decline and have instituted many strategies to maintain the strength of Yolŋu culture such as bilingual schooling and Learning on Country programs (Marika et al., 2009). Critical weight range (CWR) mammals are a subset of Australian native mammals identified as most at risk from decline and extinction.

    • The “White middle-class farming woman”: Instagram and settler colonialism in contemporary rural Australia

      2022, Journal of Rural Studies
      Citation Excerpt :

      The first instance was an article by Ramzan, a Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjaraut woman, challenging dysfunctional depictions of rural First Nations people and their exclusion from dominant rural narratives, such as about farming and drought (Ramzan et al., 2009). A second piece published was by Marika, a Yolngu woman, contributing to an epistemological framework of Yolngu metaphors to remove the poison of rural governance (Marika et al., 2009). Overall, we have identified an omission of class and race in rural gender studies, and a refusal to engage with the breadth of First Nations’ scholarship about settler colonialism and Indigenous land and sovereignty, which should be central to Australian understandings of rurality.

    • Warlpiri experiences highlight challenges and opportunities for gender equity in Indigenous conservation management in arid Australia

      2018, Journal of Arid Environments
      Citation Excerpt :

      They testify to the destructive social impacts of colonisation and racism and also to Indigenous women's resilience, leadership and achievement in family, community and broader domains. Australian Indigenous women, often in cross-cultural collaborations, have also contributed strongly to gaining recognition of the key role of Indigenous ecological knowledge in conservation (e.g. Baker et al., 1992; Daniels et al., 2012; Ens et al., 2012c; Marika et al., 2009; Paltridge et al., 2005; Walsh and Douglas, 2011; Walsh et al., 2013). In arid Australia, as is common in Indigenous societies globally (Pfeiffer and Butz, 2005), women and men tend to harvest different natural resources (e.g. Bryce, 1992; Devitt, 1988) and have separate rituals as well as rituals they participate in together (e.g. Hamilton, 1981; Keen, 2004; Payne, 1989).

    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text