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1 Spaces of Indigenous cultural performance as spaces of resistance Dr Deirdre Howard-Wagner Department of Sociology and Social Policy University of Sydney 2 Spaces of Indigenous cultural performance as spaces of resistance Abstract Indigenous cultural performance and cultural activities in mainstream social spaces have been given limited consideration by sociologists as acts of resistance. The paper adopts a sociological approach to consider social spaces in which Indigenous cultural performance and cultural activities take place as ‘heterotopic spaces’ (Foucault 1986; Hetherington 1997). The paper considers these ‘heterotopic spaces’ as sites of broader political projects of decolonisation, expressions of Indigenous sovereignty, and resistance to the dominance of whiteness. In doing so, the paper attempts to develop ideas around Indigenous resistance in the context of expressions of Indigenous cultural performance and cultural activities. Key words: Indigeneity, culture, identity, subjectivity, resistance and whiteness 3 Spaces of Indigenous cultural performance as spaces of resistance Introduction In Newcastle, representations of Indigenous culture and Indigenous cultural performances in social spaces provide local Kooris and Gooris a space to represent and share Indigenous culture, protocols and genealogy with one another and non-Indigenous peoples. Indigenous culture is reflected through ceremonies, contemporary and traditional performance, such as the smoking ceremony performed by local Elders or traditional dance performed by young Awabakal dancers annually at Newcastle’s Cultural Stomp festival. It can involve showcasing, talking about, and sharing Indigenous experiences, such as the Reconciliation tent at Cultural Stomp. It can involve the incorporation of Indigenous cultural protocols into an event, such as Surfest opening with a ‘Welcome to Country’ in which Indigenous Elder Bill Smith welcome surfers and spectators to the land and then Awabakal dancers such as the Ginjada Dancers perform a traditional Aboriginal dance. Representations of Indigenous culture and cultural performance can take place as separate Indigenous cultural festivals or events such as the Birabahn Cultural Festival or theatre performances such as Kin Tucka Tiddas. What each has in common is that each space operates as a heterotopic space. This paper considers how heterotopic social spaces, in which Indigenous culture and cultural representations are performed in Newcastle, operate as a space in which subjectivity, freedom, power relations and resistance are expressed (Foucault 1986).i Hence, it explores how the ‘heterotopic space’ operates as a space that re-orders the 4 dominant social order. It demonstrates how, in this very re-ordering, the heterotopic space can operate as a site of resistance to colonising practices and the dominance of whiteness and its dominant social and cultural representations, politics and practices. Spaces of Indigenous cultural performance as heterotopic spaces The consideration of social spaces in which Indigenous culture is performed as heterotopic spaces emerges from Foucault’s original ideas about heterotopias – ‘places of otherness’ – in Of Other Spaces (Foucault 1986) and The Order of Things (Foucault 1989). Heterotopias as spaces exist in relation to other spaces (Foucault 1989 xvii; Hetherington 1997: 43). In considering Foucault’s ideas about heterotopias, Hetherington (1997: 46) notes that, the heterotopic space ‘ruptures the order of things through their different mode of ordering to that which surrounds them’. Heterotopic spaces can ‘…facilitate acts of resistance and transgression (Hetherington 1997: 46). Furthermore, as Hetherington (1997: 46) points out, for Foucault, they act ‘as spaces for the means of alternative ordering through their difference and Otherness’. It is ‘through their juxtaposition with the spaces that surround them they come to be seen as heterotopias’ (Hetherington 1997: 46). In this context, the heterotopic space is a social and political space for alternative forms of social production, which reflects an Indigenous culture and genealogy comprised of identity, politics, community and culture. The heterotopic space can represent a site of freedom and resistance. Heterotopic spaces can operate as spaces in which Indigenous peoples either indirectly or directly engage in interrupting the production and reproduction of the dominance and normativity of the social and cultural 5 practices of whiteness. They can also operate as spaces that disrupt past and ongoing practices of colonisation and dispossession. For example, in 2008 Bangarra –Australia’s national premier Indigenous performing arts company – performed its dance production Mathinna at Newcastle’s Civic Theatre. Mathinna is performed as a sequence of powerful representations about Australian colonisation and Indigenous child removal. The various dance sequences represent, for example, Mathinna’s experience of removal from her Indigenous family and community; her adoption and later abandonment by the Governor and Lady Franklin of Tasmania; her experience of the paternalism and the violence toward her; and, her struggle with alcoholism and self-loathing. The audience is confronted with the complexities of colonisation and Indigenous child removal, demonstrating the interconnections between this individual Indigenous woman’s experience and her alcoholism and self-loathing. Her life comes to a depressing end shortly after she returns to her people who live on an Aboriginal settlement. Having defined the meaning of the heterotopic space in the context of the present paper, I now wish to explore the meaning of resistance as it is used here. Resistance as an everyday act In part, I am interested in resistance in the context of social action, social practice and subject-formation. Thus, in this context, I wish to consider resistance as an everyday act and in the context of power relations. This differs from considering resistance as extraordinary or momentous as it is traditionally considered in the social movement literature (Guidry, Kennedy & Zald 2000: 18). 6 In developing their typology of resistance in the context of social movements, Hollander and Einwohmer (2004: 536-538) argue that the core features of resistance are the ‘act’, the ‘intent’ and ‘opposition’. Nonetheless, they point out that there is a distinction between resistance as an act of collective mobilisation and resistance as an everyday act (Hollander and Einwohmer 2004: 540). Unfortunately, for the purpose of this paper, Hollander and Einwohmer’s (2004) sociological analysis of types of resistance provides only a cursory and rudimentary consideration of power and subjectivity in the context of conceptualisations of resistance. Alternatively, in considering the work of Manuel Castells around resistance identities, Paul Havemann (1998: 14) points to the primacy of Indigeneity to resistance. That is, Indigeneity as a subject position rests with primary identity that sits with Indigenous peoples’ ‘right to define and perpetuate their traditions, culture and languages, hierarchies, customs, modes of governance and mode of land use’ (Havemann 1998: 14). Practices of resistance involve expressions of Indigeneity as primary identity, and this resistance identity is ‘constructed by reinforcing the connectedness of kin with places, languages and traditions over time’ (Havemann 1998: 14). Similarly, Deirdre Howard-Wagner (2009) demonstrates how Indigeneity as a subject position is deployed to resist the practice and terms of citizenship, challenge historical norms, and resist the dominance of social and cultural practices of whiteness. I shall develop this idea shortly, but first I wish to consider how power is conceptualised here. Arguably, a contemporary sociological analysis of resistance in the context of social spaces that features an analysis of subjectivity and agency, should also feature an analysis of power relations. Yet, I believe there are limitations with adopting a hegemonic 7 conceptualisation of power in this context. Magowan (2000: 310), for example, points to the limitations of such an approach in explaining Indigenous cultural performance in the context of Bourdieu’s (1991: 2) notion of ‘recognition’ (reconnaissance) and ‘misrecognition’ (meconnaissance) of symbolic power that reduces performative dialogue to symbolic power or symbolic violence of ‘active complicity in relation to the state’ (Magowan 2000: 310). The examples explored here of Indigenous cultural performance as act of resistance go beyond relationships with the state to everyday acts of Indigenous resistance to broader processes of colonisation, dispossession, whiteness and power relations. Alternatively then, Michel Foucault’s thoughts on resistance in the context of power relations may be a more useful way of framing resistance in the context of Indigenous cultural performance. For example, a closer reading of the Methods section of Foucault’s History of Sexuality Volume One (1976) and The Subject and Power (1994) demonstrates that Foucault offered an analysis of power relations in the context of resistance, subjectivity and identity.ii Moreton-Robinson (2000 & 2004) and Howard-Wagner (2009) have already applied Foucault’s ideas about power relations and resistance to explain Indigenous resistance to the social and cultural practices of whiteness. Aileen Moreton-Robinson (2000), for example, explains how power and resistance work through Indigenous subjectivities via the articulation of alternative representations of Indigenous culture and Indigenous subjectivities. Indigenous subjectivities operate as a form of resistance and allow for a different positioning of Indigeneity than that represented in dominant practices and 8 discourses (Moreton-Robinson 2000: 30). This approach allows for a consideration of resistance as positive and as empowerment and freedom (Foucault 1994). I, for example, explain how Indigenous discourses and practices as a form of resistance ‘expose and disrupt whiteness, as relations of power, in negotiations for the recognition of Awabakal sites and acknowledgement of local Awabakal history’ (Howard-Wagner 2009: 40). My work demonstrates how resistance contains a certain political value, which is accorded to the self as an Indigenous subject and that Indigenous subjectivity as an ethical subjectivity is constructed in relation to a long history of power relations (Howard-Wagner 2009). That is, ‘faced with a relationship of power, a whole field of responses, reactions, results, and possible inventions open up’ (Foucault 1994: 340). Subjectivities work through resistance, but, as a form of resistance, that are not fixed or static (Howard-Wagner 2009: 49). In this context, practices of resistance emerge out of resistance to the performativity of whiteness as an expression of power relations and as a mode of action upon actions (Howard-Wagner 2009: 49). Representations of Indigenous culture and performance can also contain an overt political value, such as a reference to the struggle for Indigenous right. That is, resistance contains a certain political value, which is accorded to the self as an Indigenous subject. That is, ‘faced with a relationship of power, a whole field of responses, reactions, results, and possible inventions open up’ (Foucault, 1994: 340). Practices of resistance emerge out of a resistance to the dominant cultural and social arrangements and practices and institutional operations of whiteness, but are also shaped by these arrangements, practices and operations of whiteness. Resistance is thus also a process of desubjectification. 9 Let me now apply this consideration of resistance to a consideration of social spaces as heterotopic spaces of resistance by drawing on examples of Indigenous cultural representations and performance in Newcastle. Indigenous cultural performance as ‘resistance’ in Newcastle Mainstream festival in Newcastle, such as Surfest and Cultural Stomp, often incorporate Indigenous cultural protocols, such as a performance by the Awabakal Traditional Dancers, a smoking ceremony by local Elders. The often also include an Indigenous event, such as the Indigenous surf classic that forms part of Surfest or a talk on the Stolen Generation in the Think Tent at Cultural Stomp. These events can form heterotopic spaces within the festival space itself. For example, a panel discussion on the Stolen Generation, comprised of Indigenous people who were removed from their families and communities and non-Indigenous people involved in current restorative projects addressing the effects of the Stolen Generation, discussing the effects of colonisation and Aboriginal child removal. Such representations of traditional and contemporary Indigenous culture in Newcastle can be explained as a form of what postcolonial and whiteness theorist Homi Bhabha (1994) defines as hybridity in the context of how it effects a transformation (Young 2004: 189). That is, Indigenous cultural performance can be interpreted as operating as a ‘strategic reversal of domination’ (Bhabha 1994) and reflecting a resilience of resistance to colonisation (Jefferess 2008: 29). For example, the very act of incorporation of Indigenous cultural protocols provides a space within dominant spaces for providing an alternative to the dominant social and cultural practices of whiteness. This practice is thus 10 a form of resistance. Yet, here resistance is not an overt political act or an organised form, but operates through what Foucault (2009) refers to as the ‘practice of freedom’ as a ‘counter-conduct’ to dominant mainstream social and cultural practices. The very act of incorporation of Indigenous cultural protocols is thus transformative in nature. Yet, the program remains emblematic of the dominance of the social and cultural practices of whiteness. As I have discussed in detail elsewhere, the incorporation of Indigenous cultural protocols in the form of a ‘welcome to country’, dance performance or smoking ceremony into mainstream cultural festivals can operate to ‘reproduce asymmetrical relations of power’ in which non-Indigenous organisers determine how Indigenous community will be incorporated into a festival program (Howard-Wagner 2006: 6). As I observed while conducting ethnographic research in Newcastle, rather than consulting the Indigenous community or local Kooris and Gooris in the design and development of a program, festival organising committees often decide what it wants to incorporate and approach an Indigenous person or group to invite that person or group to perform at the festival (Howard-Wagner 2006). Alternatively, events such Coming Together Day in 1993, the opening of the Mixed Mob exhibition in 2001, the Birabahn Cultural Festival in 2002 and the annual NAIDOC week activities, operate as heterotopic spaces in which Indigenous people have selfdetermination over the program and the core program is limited to traditional and contemporary Indigenous performance and representations of Indigenous culture, as well as showcasing, talking about and sharing Indigenous experiences. For example, the Birabahn Cultural Festival was held to mark the opening of the Birabahn Building (named in honour of both the Eagle-hawk totem of the Awabakal 11 peoples and Governor Macquaries’ dedicated Chief of the Awabakal tribes (Schaefer 2009: 321)), which houses both the Wollotuka Institute and Umulliko Indigenous Higher Education Research Centre at the University of Newcastle. It was organised by staff and students from the Wollotuka Institute, as well as local Kooris and Goori. This cultural festival operated as a ‘heterotopic space’ that ‘ruptures the order of things through their different mode of ordering to that which surrounds them’ and ‘…facilitate acts of resistance and transgression (Hetherington 1997: 46). It is a social space that differs from the social space of mainstream cultural festivals – it is an alternative ordering (Hetherington 1997). The Birabahn Cultural Festival, for example, included a ‘welcome to country’, traditional dance performance, a corroboree, talking circles, a contemporary Indigenous play, Indigenous films, an Indigenous art exhibition, an Indigenous music festival featuring national and local Indigenous artists and story telling. Various festival events such as the screening of the film Stranger in My Skin and performance of the play Get Up and Dance, for example, operate as a space for the expression of the effects of colonisation, dispossession and child removal and Indigenous journeys to understand and reconnect with identity. ‘Get up and Dance’ is a contemporary play about the experiences of a young Goori boy who grew up in an Aboriginal community near Armidale as he searches for an understanding of his Aboriginal identity. Local Indigenous playwright Ray Kelly wrote it. Similarly, Kin Tucka Tiddas is a contemporary performance choreographed and produced by Ngoroe-kah, a local Koori performance group in Newcastle. Ngoroe-kah describe the performance as: 12 Six women serv[ing] up a selection of tasty tales, missing moments and passion pudding … which describes what being an Indigenous woman means – the pressures, expectations, sisterhood, herstory, laughter, music, triumph and the sustenance women provide for their culture. The performance involves the articulation of stories collected from Indigenous women and their own experience, which transpires from a long history of power relations and whiteness, a history that has shaped and created contemporary Indigenous subjectivities. At stages in the performance, a contemporary corroboree is performed around a large Indigenous artwork/sculpture that forms part of the set on the floor of the stage. Here resistance is productive and constitutive via body, personhood and space. This theatre performance is a representation of what Bhabha refers to as ‘hybridisation’ involving representations of both traditional and contemporary Indigenous culture – it is ‘a third space’ that disrupts, transgresses and displaces (Bhabha 1994). The hybridisation of Indigenous culture operates as a ritual protest and an example of performative politics, engendering new possibilities (Bhabha 1994). Through this performance, cultural display becomes a medium for establishing intercultural relations of power and politics via a performative dialogue between the performers and their audience. The audience too is brought into this third space. The third space that also operates as a heterotopic space in that it is a site of empowerment, resistance, transgression and a re-ordering of social order (Hetherington 1997). Kin Tucka Tiddas evidences how Indigenous cultural performances and cultural displays can both showcase and share experiences and articulate representations of Indigenous culture, as 13 well as operate as a political strategy and a form of everyday Indigenous resistance. Here Indigenous cultural performance and cultural displays operate as forms of Indigenous resistance to whiteness through which freedom is expressed as an ethical behaviour related to the constitution of the Indigenous political subject. These ethical subjectivities shape Indigenous cultural practices as forms of resistance. (Foucault 2003: 30-33). Conclusion The above examples, and other representations of Indigenous culture that I observed, evidence how cultural performances and activities that operate in ‘heterotopic’ spaces of subjectivity, freedom, power relations and resistance (Foucault 1986) in which local Kooris and Gooris either indirectly or directly engage in interrupting the production and reproduction of the dominance, normativity and privilege of whiteness. The significance of the heterotopic space is that it is a social space in which the performance of Aboriginal culture operates to challenge, contest, invert and reverse conventional and received understandings of social spaces (Danaher, Moriarty and Danaher 2006: 48) of whiteness and social relations between Indigenous and white Australians traditionally constituted within those spaces. It is a re-imagining of the social space. 14 i The author of this paper is white female academic and Indigenous rights activist. The empirical reflections presented in this paper are based on three years engagement in fieldwork in Newcastle that consisted of an six months of establishing relationships in the field followed by eighteen months of intensive sociological ethnographic research and a further twelve months of ongoing engagement with the research setting. During this time, the researcher also wore the hat of activist, giving something back to the Indigenous community as determined by local Kooris and Gooris. ii For Foucault (1976: 95): ‘Where there is power, there is resistance, and yet, or rather consequently, this resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power’. So, rather than simply being oppressive, power is positive in that it produces realities, it produces domains of objects and rituals of truth (Foucault 1977: 194). Therefore, while power is omnipresent, it is fluid relational and productive. This is what Foucault refers to as power relations. References Bhabha, H. 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