by Lucien Noël
‘There is no Other, but multitudes of others who are all others for different reasons, in spite of totalizing narratives, including that of capital’ – Michel-Rolph Trouillot, 2016
In Designs for the Pluriverse (2018), Arturo Escobar argues that “the contemporary crisis is the result of deeply entrenched ways of being, knowing, and doing”, and that “to reclaim design for other world-making purposes requires creating a new, effective awareness of design’s embeddedness in this history” (p.19). Colour-blind race ideology is centred on the belief that one’s race or ethnicity should not influence how they are treated in society. In Australia, a colour-blind race ideology has extended Western liberal concepts of multiculturalism through its implementation within government legislation and practice. Whilst this ideology attempts to value humanism and inclusivity in practice, its establishment within a capitalist and neoliberal framework ignores the racial origins of pre-existent power dynamics, as well as deeply colonial histories which continue to implicate marginalised groups today. With Escobar’s statement in mind, I will begin by critically analysing the practical implementations of a colour-blind ideology in its ostensible management of First Nations issues and peoples in Australia, with particular focus on how their designs contribute to the Yolngu peoples’ struggles for a systemic acknowledgement of their autonomy in northeast Arnhem Land, and the inability of current legislation to adequately address and deal with First Nations cases of domestic violence. These examples will demonstrate why racial equality can only be achieved through an effective implementation of a politics of recognition. I will then explore First Nations ways of being currently taking place at a local level that can provide designs for a such a politics in Australia. Extractive capitalist and neoliberal frameworks continue to exacerbate colonially entrenched dynamics of power. As such, we must turn to these enduring ontological designs centred on pluralistic modes of governance and a politics of recognition that extends beyond the human.
Problematising Colour-Blind Race Ideology
A conceptualisation of multiculturalism as non-racialism has been ideologically inscribed as a mainstream Australian consciousness. This has been done through colour-blind repressions of race that perpetuate a dominance of whiteness within governing systems and institutions. A colour-blind ideology is premised on disregarding the racial origins of historical facts, which allows racism to be viewed abstractly and isolated from its formative nature in the construction of Australian nationalism (Annamma et al. 2017, p.151; Jayasuriya 2002, p.42). In the context of resolving First Nations domestic violence, this has meant strategies have been implemented without understanding historical perspectives of colonisation, assimilationism and dispossession. For example, the WA Best Practice Model for Victims of Domestic Violence was written on normative notions of equality that do not acknowledge the deeply imbued nature of racism in the lived realities of First Nations people (Hovane 2007, p.1). These inscriptions go unnoticed because the people who subscribe to the colour-blind race ideology position themselves as racially enlightened, despite reproducing their power in a colonial government within a system of white supremacy (Annamma et al. 2017, p.154). Consequently, institutional constructions of multiculturalism in Australia are highly problematic because they are not established on a politics of recognition but rather a politics of exclusion, where wilful ignorance is favoured to maintain a culturally homogenised notion of mainstream Australian nationalism. Whiteness thus becomes the unspoken norm and the standard to which other groups are compared, making it near impossible for First Nations communities to establish their own protocols in dealing with problems such as domestic violence through government-led practices. Like other tools of white supremacy, this conception of multiculturalism positions itself as one that supports the marginalised whilst simultaneously suppressing them in practice (Annamma et al. 2017, p.152). As such, colour-blind concepts of nonrecognition are inadequate to deal with Australia’s undeniable divisions based on race, cultural diversity, and economic disparity because they discreetly perpetuate racial inequality by assuming a culturally homogenous nationalism based on whiteness.
A politics of non-recognition is further problematised when we observe how the present Australian policy rhetoric towards First Nations issues has been established with a commitment to mainstreaming and ‘closing the gap’. Although some of these policies are well-intentioned, they attempt at remedying diverse and complex First Nations issues through highly generalised processes that assess their success by comparing them to an undifferentiated mainstream of whiteness (Morphy 2013, p.185). After persistent and resilient First Nations activism in the late 1960s, the Commonwealth’s Aboriginal Land Rights Act (ALRA) was passed in 1976 in the Northern Territory.However, despite a dominant rhetoric of self-determination, the recognition of First Nations autonomy was never explicitly acknowledged or articulated, with Morphy (2013) stating that the ALRA was implemented primarily to reform First Nations forms of sociality so that they fit the mould of a mainstreamed notion of ‘Australian’ individualism (p.181). For example, the infrastructure of local Yolngu enterprises was consequently removed and replaced by government support in the form of grants and welfare payments (Morphy, 2013, p.182). A similar rhetoric is embedded in more recent examples of First Nations issues, where policies that have aimed to ‘close the gap’ on First Nations disadvantage have involved employment in the mining industry, encouraging previously autonomous First Nations communities to participate with a colonially-embedded capitalist economy. Such practices ignore and devalue the autonomy of First Nations peoples because it sees their assimilation into the state’s construction of a typical Australian way of life as a fundamental process in achieving equality.
Implications of a Colour-Blind Ideology on First Nations Communities
Observing a First Nations domestic violence context further highlights how a politics of nonrecognition has all-encompassing effects on First Nations communities and their abilities to create meaningful protocols to manage their issues. The 2015 ‘Not Now, Not Ever Report’ presented in Queensland resulted in changes to state-wide domestic violence policies and practices, which ultimately concluded that bystanders have a “moral and ethical obligation to act” (Special Taskforce on Domestic and Family Violence, quoted in Ponzio 2017, p.54-55) when they witness domestic violence, despite the risk of getting harmed themselves. However, such a policy fails to acknowledge the complex social factors and relationships within First Nations communities that may prevent individuals from intervening. Factors include the pressures of living in close-knit communities and spatially isolated areas, as well as having to respect the different levels of authority as members of kinship-based relationships. There is also the concern that speaking up could contribute to perpetuating negative stereotypes of First Nations peoples and undermine their desire for individual and community solidarity (Ponzio 2017, p.56). We can thus observe that a politics of non-recognition is highly ineffective in managing First Nations issues because they fail to see their complexities and their exacerbation through state legislation and (in)action.
Australia’s political rhetoric of non-recognition diminishes First Nations autonomy because it denies that national governing systems are established upon logics of differentiation in which all racialised peoples are considered subjects of the state. In 1967, the Australian government introduced an ‘indigenous identifier’ in the census, wherein the sociocultural and demographic characteristics of First Nations peoples could be compared with the larger ‘national’ population. Such distinctions have become integral aspects of Western democracy, but it has diluted the heterogeneous and geographically dispersed populations of FN peoples by forming a singular Indigenous population (Morphy 2013, p.182). For example, the normalisation of family violence in First Nations communities has led to generalised protocols that ignore the diverse circumstances of First Nations incidents, ignoring how First Nations women who speak out about being victims of violence can be punished by the community through victim blaming and dehumanisation (Ponzio 2017, p.66). In a Yolngu land rights context, legislation in 2013 was focused on developing centralised communities in the form of ‘growth towns’, where the government controlled where residents lived as well as the terms and conditions of rent (Morphy 2013, p.182). Here we see a complete disregard of First Nations autonomy and their connections to Country by treating them as subjects of the state that can be freely moved according to government agendas. Their autonomy is never addressed at an institutional level because (a) they are intentionally diminished within colour-blind and exclusionist race ideologies, and (b) because members of state and federal institutions see them as a threat to the social, political and economic advantages that people in positions of power have maintained over other citizens and especially First Nations people. It is imperative that we contextualise these practices as extensions of First Nations displacement onto missions and reserves during the initial stages of invasion. Such impositions not only continue to systemically undermine the autonomy of these groups but attempts to diminish it entirely.
The functioning of current institutional and governmental designs in Australia relies on ignoring diverse First Nations articulations of autonomy within settler-colonial systems. Since the early 20th century, First Nations peoples have mobilised as a singular race, which has allowed them to make distinct political claims as custodians of the land (Ang 2001, p.111). The extent to which Australian governments have acknowledged this collective mobilisation as a commitment to First Nations solidarity has varied significantly, instead often leading to homogenised notions of Indigeneity. This ignores how oppressions and histories of First Nations peoples take on very complex and entangled forms within their lived realities which cannot be addressed in policy with collective representations of a national Indigeneity. Current legislation ignores that due to their own diversity which entails social, cultural, and demographic variation, and because of the implications brought upon them by colonialism and dispossession, First Nations peoples have faced major difficulties in articulating themselves as autonomous societies within the state (Morphy 2013, 185). How does one revitalise the knowledges of a particular clan or nation group when colonialism destroys communities and creates infinite implications, spanning from the dispossession and displacement of First Nations peoples from their lands to their attempted ethnocide through forced assimilation? At a government level, this may include funding local services run by community members or revitalising the Yolngu ‘two-way learning’ education system that was abolished under John Howard’s government in 2008, which implemented Yolngu knowledges, law, and language within local schools to parallel the Western curriculum (Morphy 2013, p.181-183). However, it is possible that the answers may not be found within institutions like the federal government, with its origins and agendas implicating what Tony Fry (1999, as cited in Escobar, 2018) describes as the “defuturing effects” of modern design (p.16). Such firmly established colonial designs perpetuate unsustainable systemic conditions that eliminate possible futures. Instead, it is important to examine community-led First Nations articulations of autonomy that are providing decolonial cultural frameworks from the bottom-up.
Relative Autonomy and Local Universes
Yolngu articulations of relative autonomy allows for interactions between cultural groups whilst ensuring they remain self-determined. Despite institutional pressures, the Yolngu have maintained a relative autonomy, in which they acknowledge their encapsulation within the state but are also highly committed in developing relationships with non-Yolngu Australians, valuing what Morphy (2013) describes as ‘a mutual recognition of and respect for difference’ (p.176). This has enabled them to engage with parts of the wider society without compromising their core aspects of living, being, and becoming. Their practices emphasise the parallels between their own cultural practices and other ways of living and doing, which has allowed their hunter-gatherer subsistence economy to be transformed to supplement a larger mixed economy between the Yolngu and the settler-colonial state. The new positioning of the Yolngu economy has subsequently contributed to the development of local land management and associated ranger programs who also coordinate cultural and environmental tourism within the area (Morphy 2013, p.184). Although these programs are underpinned by the hunter-gatherer economy, the Yolngu acknowledge the importance of the programs to the wider regional economy and their cruciality in developing relationships between themselves and external groups without compromising their knowledges or presence on Country. Yolngu interactions place importance in a relative autonomy that recognises and embraces the co-existence of different knowledges, demonstrating that First Nations groups who share similar modes of governance are already well-aligned with a politics of recognition and pluralistic ways of being.
Such examples of relative autonomy are already contributing to what Escobar (2018) describes as an emergent “ontological-political field” (p.4) that goes beyond Western-centric constructions of dualisms, providing alternative ways of seeing grounded in relationality. In fact, a “pluriverse of socionatural configurations” (Escobar, 2018, p.4) has been foundational to the knowledges that have governed First Nations groups in Australia since time immemorial. Such a pluriverse considers the land as a spiritual entity which designs relationships for all life. Through this way of seeing, relations between people and the land become the template designs for society and social relations (Graham, 1999, p.109). Hokari’s (2011, p.97) understanding of Gurindji ontological designs acquired through his time living with them in the region now known as the Victoria River area of the Northern Territory is particularly helpful:
“The world is not an object to be maintained. Instead, people can exist because the world is alive and keeps its morality, and the world exists because people are alive and keep their morality: the world maintains you as you maintain the world.”
This way of seeing is entirely conscious of what Escobar explains as the “double movement of ontological designing”, where in designing our world, “our world designs us back” (2018, p.4). Neoliberalism and capitalism function through an active ignorance of its design implications, which creates an illusion of equal opportunity whilst perpetuating the deeply entrenched nature of colonial power dynamics and socioeconomic status. The creation of the individuated self within these designs has not only disconnected social relations in which people have sought security through identities founded on ownership, but they have been instrumental in perpetuating imposing ways of being that treat alternative knowledges as Other (Graham, 1999, p.110). In contrast, Gurindji knowledges see the self as highly relationised and part of integral to webs of interconnected knowledges without an epistemic centre (Hokari, 2011, p.104-105). The maintenance of this web of knowledge is grounded in shared cultural exchanges with different communities and your relating to sacred sites specific to the land you are from. Both practices are grounded not only in the relationised nature of the self, but also the relationised nature of knowledge, which is “created anywhere”, with one’s mobility bringing it “everywhere in all directions” (Hokari, 2011, p.106). Whilst the federal institutions that continue to govern Australia have cultivated increasingly individualised citizens, persisting First Nations systems of relative autonomy can provide promising alternative ontologies that are grounded in the relational nature of truth.
Towards Alternate Futures
Without a politics of recognition, equality is impossible. Without equality, multiculturalism is impossible. Current Australian political rhetoric shows us that racial equality is an elusive ideal. Government institutions have actively evaded discussions on race and its cruciality in the formation of Australia as a nation, recognising minority groups only when they assimilate into the dominant white culture; the state’s desire for cultural homogeneity is discreetly continued under the subterfuge of a misconceptualised sense of multiculturalism; assimilationist agendas continue to exacerbate the lived realities of First Nations peoples and pressure communities to diminish their autonomy by attempting to absorb them into an unspoken mainstream of whiteness. A critical analysis of these processes highlights that an implementation of a politics of recognition in this country requires significant systemic reform. However, it seems an auspicious moment to think that federal governing systems will embrace decolonial ways of being, because they would actively subvert the state’s unmitigated authority. With this in mind, it is imperative that we, as people, connect with our own lineages and knowledges in ways that do not impose and rather help cultivate more pluralistic designs for knowing, doing and being. Yolngu values of relative autonomy and the Gurindji’s recognition of inherent difference provide enduring examples of how a politics of recognition can function in practice, emphasising how autonomy can be maintained within a coexistence of different knowledges. It is important to note that these knowledges are by no means centred on the concept of utopia and are rather grounded within the constant negotiation of different needs emerging from sociocultural, economic, and spiritual diversity. As Graham (1999) aptly states, “[T]here never was and there never will be a paradise – neither an Indigenous one, a religious or moral one, a worker’s, futuristic, technological or even a physical one” (109) but speculating designs of a society that acknowledges the necessity of compromise, as well as the interconnectedness of all life, is a promising one, especially in attempting to untie the colonially entangled nature of current inequality in Australia. As we have learned, this is only possible if difference is addressed, and the inherent nature of diversity is accepted. George Rrurrambu Burarrwanga of the Papunya-originated Warumpi Band (1985) may not have stated it any clearer:
Blackfella, whitefella
It doesn’t matter what your colour
As long as you a real fella
As long as you a true fella
All the people of different races
With different lives in different places
It doesn’t matter what your name is
We got to have lots of changes
We need more brothers if we’re to make it
We need more sisters if we’re to save it
…Are you the one who’s gonna stand up and be counted?
Are you the one who’s gonna be there when we shout it?
Are you the one who’s always ready with a helping hand?
Are you the one who understands this family plan?
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