Paper short abstract:

Can a bicultural approach capture the co-production of ways of becoming in a settler-Indigenous town like Alice Springs? This paper evaluates bicultural understandings among town residents and in ethnographic analyses of difference in a town long shared by Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.

Paper long abstract:

The remote service town of Alice Springs in Central Australia has always been a place shared by Indigenous and non-Indigenous people from a diversity of social and cultural backgrounds and places of origin. This paper discusses the value of a bicultural conceptual approach in capturing everyday interactions and the co-production of ways of becoming and belonging in this settler-Indigenous town. Based on 19 years of ethnographic research with non-Indigenous and Indigenous people in the town and surrounding regions, it evaluates how bicultural understandings expressed by a variety of town residents compares with their lived experiences and day-to-day social practice. It questions ethnographic analyses of contemporary formations of inequality and relations that continue to reinforce biculturalism in the face of more complex formations and ambivalent articulations of diversity and difference. It argues for theoretical and ethnographic approaches that move beyond social categories as the starting point for analysis, in order to better understand social and cultural dynamics in contemporary Indigenous-non-Indigenous settings.

Paper short abstract:

Using examples from the Warlpiri diaspora project, this is an attempt to build a conceptual map of biculturalism by examining the ideas of cultural distance, cultural competence, double consciousness, social networks, social code-switching, habitus, divided habitus and intermediary figures.

Paper long abstract:

This paper attempts to deepen my reflection on the Warlpiri bicultural adepts I encountered in the Warlpiri diaspora by developing a conceptual map of the terrain of biculturalism. This involves a move beyond the recognition of cultural difference to the evaluation of cultural distance and the meaning of cultural competence. It is also congruent with the critique of the exoticising tendency of anthropology and its tendency towards the assumption of cultural continuity. The constant experience of difference by conspicuous minorities led Du Bois to theorise 'double consciousness' as black minorities in America continually self-monitor how they are being perceived by white people. Theories of the intercultural explore how Australian Indigenous culture is moulded by interaction with the encapsulating settler society and its successive projects, even in remote Australia. For the few who excel in being able to move in the dominant culture questions arise about the limits of social code-switching, the limits of managing diverse social networks and the persistence of the natal habitus (or perhaps a divided habitus [habitus clivé]). Are there similarities between the Indigenous bicultural adepts and the experience of social class ascendancy within the dominant culture, such as ambiguous feelings of pride in and estrangement from the natal culture? Are there similarities with the migrant experience? State-centric approaches would investigate the ways in which the promotion of the bicultural adept as a policy goal is part of the statecraft of colonial governance. But is the bicultural adept inevitably an intermediary figure?

Paper short abstract:

In Central Australia, cultural difference is seen as self-evident for community development projects that seek "Two-Way" cultural engagements. In this paper I argue that difference is performed as both the problem to be overcome and the crucial ethic for negotiating development practice.

Paper long abstract:

Community development in Central Australia proceeds on the notion that development projects happen at a self-evident interface between Yapa (Indigenous) and Kardiya (non-Indigenous) culture. In these settings, development discourse stresses that "Two Way," intercultural or bicultural approaches are central to successful project outcomes. In this paper I suggest that this orientation produces contradictory desires for non-Indigenous development staff: at once to build strong relationships and to be liked by Indigenous people, while maintaining a distance that is professionally appropriate, where segregation is itself a form of solidarity (Bessire 2014:206). I argue that that the development project performs a version of Indigeneity through the concept of "community" that must always be held separate. This results in what I refer to as "sanitised relatedness"—using Kowal's (2015) concept of sanitised difference—between Yapa and Kardiya. Importantly, the distinctiveness of Indigeneity in my analysis is understood as entangled with forms of community development practice. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and participant observation in Central Australia, and focusing mainly on the non-Indigenous actors in these settings, I attend to the making of difference, where cultural separation is both the problem to be overcome and the crucial ethic through which Kardiya staff negotiate their work and presence in Central Australia.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores Noel Pearson's concept of bi-cultural 'orbiting', drawing on ethnographic and historical material from his hometown of Hope Vale.

Paper long abstract:

In the debate about remote Indigenous futures, the question of how people should live or should be allowed to live is primarily a question of where. While the 'left' support the maintenance of distinctly-Indigenous practices on far-flung outstations, the 'right' encourage mainstream economic engagement in towns and cities. Noel Pearson, who's positioned himself in the "radical centre", has offered an appealing compromise: by "orbiting" in and out of remote settlements for education and work, Aboriginal people can "walk in two worlds and enjoy the best of both" (2009: 34).

Anthropologists have questioned the assumptions underlying Pearson's compromise. Burke (2013) argues that the orbiting model rests on a narrow definition of Indigenous 'culture', focused on tangible things (such as languages, stories and art) at the expense of less easily objectified practices (such as kin connectedness, localism and demand sharing). A "fairly lengthy disembedding" from these latter aspects of remote life would in fact be required before "bicultural adepts" could engage in the kind of physical and social mobility that Pearson both embodies and prescribes (2013: 316).

This paper builds on Burke's argument, drawing on ethnographic and historical material from Pearson's hometown of Hope Vale. I'll show that he's one of many Guugu Yimidhirr people who have embraced opportunities outside of the ex-mission since the 1960s, and returned temporarily or permanently. However this group's willingness and ability to orbit was preceded by and produced social changes that differentiated them from those who remained deeply embedded in the town's "Blackfella domain" (Trigger, 1986).