Gendering Aboriginalism: A Performative Gaze on Indigenous Australian Women

Katelyn Barney

doi:10.5130/csr.v16i1.1440

Abstract

One of the most common Aboriginalist representations of Indigenous Australian people is, as Indigenous female performer Lou Bennett points out, ‘basically a man, out in the desert, black skin, flat nose with a lap-lap on, standing on one leg, resting against a spear’. Her comment raises many issues. In what ways are discourses of Aboriginalism gendered? How does Aboriginalism affect performance and specifically Aboriginal women performers? In exploring these questions, I examine Aboriginalist representations of Aboriginal women performers by white male scholars and the role of women anthropologists in the production of Aboriginalist discourse about Aboriginal women. Drawing on interviews with Indigenous women performers and musical examples of their songs, I explore the impact of Aboriginalism on non-Indigenous expectations of Indigenous Australian women performing in contemporary music contexts, the strategies performers use to work within and against these constructions and my own relationship to Aboriginalism.

Highlights

The  bitter  smell  of  coffee  lingered  in  the  air  like  smoke  and  the  echo  of  laughter  and  music whispered in my ears
Katelyn Barney is project manager and managing editor of The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit at the University of Queensland. Her doctoral research focused on the performance practices  of  Indigenous  Australian  women  who  perform  in  contemporary  music contexts
Rey Chow, Writing Diaspora: Tactics of Intervention in  Contemporary Cultural Studies, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1993, p. 58

Summary

—INTRODUCTION

The  bitter  smell  of  coffee  lingered  in  the  air  like  smoke  and  the  echo  of  laughter  and  music whispered in my ears. Other Indigenous women performers, like Deb Morrow (Figure 3), attempt to openly  resist Aboriginalist constructions of Indigenous performance by not drawing on any  typical  musical  elements—such  as  didjeridu,  clapsticks  or  the  use  of  Aboriginal  languages—that could be identified by audiences as forms of traditional Indigenous  Australian  musical  expression. By asking questions about Aboriginalism I am  drawing  attention  to  the  ways  this  discourse  works  to  create  and  sustain  expectations of what Indigenous Australian women performing contemporary music  should sound and look like, and how Indigenous Australian women respond to these  expectations. Despite the positive aspects of my attempts to resist Aboriginalism, I cannot  escape  the  fact  that  I  am  a  non‐Indigenous  female  scholar  engaging  in  a  representation  of  Indigenous  Australian  women,  and  that  I  am  constructing  or  producing knowledge about Indigenous women performing contemporary music. As  Attwood  asks,  is  it  ‘possible  to  have  any  worthwhile  non‐Aboriginal  knowledge about Aborigines or is it inherently flawed because of the political—that is colonial—circumstances in which it was created?’93

—CONCLUSION

—ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

—NOTES