We
know what we are, but know not what we may be
Hamlet Act four, Scene five.
A major challenge
for policymakers (and ex-policymaker analysts such as myself) is to (i) comprehend
the reality of contemporary Indigenous cultural life and cultural priorities,
and (ii) to then find ways to incorporate those values into the design and
implementation of current policy frameworks and policy priorities. The reality
that delivering on these challenges is important to First Nations citizens is
reflected in the fact that they invariably argue to be involved in policy development,
formulation and implementation through mechanisms such as arguing for co-design
and or for the use by governments of community-controlled organisations to
deliver services on the ground. The rationale for policymakers to take the inclusion
of cultural perspectives in policy formulation seriously is that doing so is likely
to make policy implementation more effective.
Nevertheless,
despite the attempts made to date by mainstream policymakers to meet First
Nations’ aspirations, with the most obvious example being the priority reforms identified
in the National Agreement on Closing the Gap, progress has been slow and
partial. Moreover, there is no accepted consensus amongst mainstream
policymakers that these are more than optional elements in the design of policy.
Amongst political conservatives, there exists serious ideological opposition to
embedding acknowledgment of culture and cultural priorities within policy frameworks.
This opposition is based on the political dividends that can be harvested from taking
advantage of populist ignorance or even overt opposition to anything that
differs from the nation’s Anglo-Saxon cultural precepts. The risk for First Nations
interests then is that even apparent progress can be subject to ongoing
pushback (link
here) and unless successfully countered or resisted, to eventual roll-back.
Of course, one of
the difficulties in protecting culture and in translating it into policy frameworks
(and policy institutions) is to acknowledge that culture is dynamic, not
static, and nor is it homogenous; observations that can be validly made about
both mainstream and First Nations’ cultures. And to add to the complexity, there
are increasing indications that both First Nations cultures and to a lesser
extent mainstream cultures are manifesting characteristics that might be
described as inter-cultural (link
here). Thus, to the extent that we undertake any cultural analysis, it
ought to take these possibilities into account. So, for example, Melinda Hinkson
& Benjamin Smith in their 2005 Oceania article Introduction: Conceptual
Moves Towards an Intercultural Analysis (link here) conclude with the following
statement:
It
is in such observation of the interaction between representations and the lived
circumstances of Aboriginal people that the question of what is at stake in the
development of an intercultural analysis comes most starkly to the fore. The
notion that Aboriginal people might simply make a choice between two worlds, or
simply move between them, selecting the best both have to offer, fails to
comprehend the processes through which representations, cultural identities and
lifeworlds are produced and reproduced. An intercultural analysis matters
because it is arguably the only frame through which our conceptualisations of culture
might be made to articulate with its lived expressions.
I am not
suggesting that the notion of intercultural lifeworlds and analyses are in any
way a solution to the challenges facing policymakers to incorporate Indigenous aspirations
into their policy design and implementation activities. Nor are they a panacea for
Indigenous interests whose aspirations for cultural acknowledgement remain unmet.
Indeed, it arguably adds to the complexity of the challenges facing both sides
of these issues.
Rather my point
in making these comments was less ambitious but still important. I wanted to contextualise
two significant research outputs I cam across this morning related to the West Kimberley
which gave me cause for some optimism and which I felt deserve the (limited)
wider dissemination that I can offer through this blog post.
The first was a
doctoral thesis (link
here) written by Arjati Schipf and titled Closing the Culture Gaps:
Policies and Codesign in Remote Western Australia. A Long-Time Story of a
Community-Based Kimberley Aboriginal Organisation. This thesis provides a theoretically
based account of the role and inner workings of the Kimberley Aboriginal Law
and Cultural Centre (KALACC), a remote community-based Aboriginal Community
Controlled Organisation located in Fitzroy Crossing, Western Australia.
The second was an
innovative digitally based educational resource project (link
here) titled (somewhat misleadingly) Barlili: Devonian reef of the
Kimberley – Geoheritage. The project has developed a dedicated website (link here) with the more
informative title Living Water: River, Land and Sea Country of the West
Kimberley. The Living Water website includes a selection of test and visual
resources addressing the cultural importance of country and the Martuwarra /Fitzroy
River catchment to the regions Aboriginal population.
I have spent the
morning scanning through both these research outputs, and while neither is
perfect, they are both major achievements in making the case for the ongoing relevance
and importance of living cultures and their continuing links with the land, its
macro and micro environments, and importantly in the case of the Living Water
website, of the importance of history, both deep history and post colonisation
history. Importantly, in different ways, both make the case persuasively that mainstream
policymakers have much more to do in relation to incorporating culture into
policy design, development and implementation.
Both these
research outputs are worth a look from anyone interested in the importance of
culture and the challenges of meshing it with national policy frameworks. I
especially recommend the short two- and three-minute videos included on the
Living Waters website of elders and younger community leaders talking about aspects
of history, country and culture. They overflow with insights that mere textual
descriptions can never achieve.
What is left unresolved
by both these research outputs is how policymakers might move forward in incorporating
First Nations cultural aspirations into policy while mitigating the very real
and arguably inevitable risks of pushback and rollback. Even were policymakers
to successfully incorporate West Kimberley perspectives into local policies,
that still leaves vexed issues around how to mesh national policy frameworks with
local aspirations and priorities across eight jurisdictions and perhaps some 60
to 100 regional areas. These issues should
be an important research agenda for the future: they will require deep
understandings of the cultures, and core priorities, of both First Nations communities
and policymakers.
27 October 2024
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