Performing protest, articulating difference: Environmentalists, Aborigines and the Kuranda Skyrail dispute

Abstract

During 1993 and 1994 the Cairns to Kuranda Skyrail became a hot political issue in North Queensland. The responses of the local community to the construction of this passenger cable car through the Barron Falls National Park and the newly listed Wet Tropics World Heritage Area, were varied but quickly became polarised as being either for or against the project. The Skyrail became a heated topic of debate in both the private and public domains, in the homes of local people, in the cafes and bars and other meeting places, eventually spilling out into the streets in the form of demonstrations, and into the rainforest itself in the form of the blockade and direct action by some of the protesters. In this paper I explore the articulation of different Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal responses to the Skyrail. Although the responses were polarised as pro- or anti- the development, I do not interpret the Skyrail dispute as a simple binary contestation, either of values, world views, ideologies, or primordial loyalties. Nor do I see it as a mere struggle of two opposing social groups, the powerful against the powerless, Aboriginal against non-Aboriginal, greenie against developer, and so on. Rather, I attempt an escape from the categorical imperatives that otherwise constrain interpretation, by focusing my discussion on the discursive fields and practices which produce them. I develop my argument by highlighting a particular moment of protest within the Skyrail dispute. Such moments, I suggest, are the key to a better understanding of how political identities are made. Identities are not given, but are produced situationally They are not something composed out of the inherent properties of individuals, but are the result of practice. The relationship between sameness and difference is produced and articulated performatively, and it is as such a productive enunciation that the Kuranda Skyrail dispute can best be understood.