Indigenous Diaspora and the Prospects for Cosmopolitan ‘Orbiting’: The Warlpiri Case

Abstract

This paper introduces one of the first attempts in anthropology to apply the notion of diaspora to Fourth World circumstances—namely, the Warlpiri of central Australia, many of whom have permanently migrated to towns and cities, but retain strong connections to their home settlements. Coincidently, the research project on the Warlpiri diaspora (2009–12) overlapped with an intensified public policy debate about the decline in social conditions on remote Aboriginal settlements and controversial governmental responses. Prior to those responses, Aboriginal public intellectual Noel Pearson had already proposed ‘orbiting’ as a solution to some of the social problems in remote settlements. These conjunctures set the scene for a comparison to be made between the results of ethnographic enquiry and policy advocacy covering similar ground. Results from the Warlpiri diaspora project indicate that some Warlpiri women have acted well in advance of any official endorsement of orbiting to move permanently to distant locations. But the success or otherwise of such a venture seems to depend on intimate factors that fall outside the usual purview of government policymaking. While the Warlpiri diaspora research is supportive of some of the assumptions of the orbiting policy, it also suggests other kinds of successful orbiting outside of workplace careers and the understating of the cultural implications of orbiting. Ultimately, experience-near ethnography, including that which is orientated to the intercultural, as necessitated by the realities of diaspora, stands in a critical relationship to the oversimplifying tendencies of policy advocacy.

Keywords:

• Walpiri
• Indigenous Diaspora
• Orbiting
• Public Policy
• Intercultural Ethnography

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the encouragement and editorial assistance of Francesca Merlan, Nicolas Peterson, Ian Keen and Philip Taylor. I am also indebted to two anonymous reviewers, whose critical reading of an earlier version prompted me to adopt a more coherent framing of this argument.

Notes

1. See the Australian Research Council Discovery Project (DP0987357) 2009–12, Indigenous Diaspora: A New Direction in the Ethnographic Study of the Migration of Australian Aboriginal People Leaving Remote Areas.

2. In these approximate figures, derived from the Australian Bureau of Statistics census data and my own research, I have included the large Warlpiri minority (approximated at 40 per cent or 170 people) at the settlement of Ali Curung (Warrabri) among the Warlpiri home settlements, although Ali Curung does not appear to have the dominant Warlpiri ethos of the four named settlements (see Bell 1983).

3. In using the word ‘homeland’, I am not intending to confine it to the smaller outposts of the outstation or homelands movement, which gathered momentum in the 1980s (see House of Representatives Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs 1987), but as a more general description of the totality of Warlpiri traditional country and the main Warlpiri settlements. Similarly, I use the term ‘homeland settlement’ to refer to the larger government settlements, not the Warlpiri outstations or homelands of the 1980s and 1990s, most of which had fallen into disuse by the time of my fieldwork (2009–12). The main exception is Nyirrpi, which started as an outstation in part of the Warlpiri homelands movement in the 1980s and grew into a settlement in the 1990s (with its population at approximately 250–300) with its own store, school and police station.

4. The classic account is Meggitt's Desert People (Meggitt 1962), and there is now an extensive specialist literature on the Warlpiri, which is comprehensively listed on the internet: www.anu.edu.au/linguistics/nash/aust/wlp/wlp-eth-ref.html.

5. The terminology of ‘orbiting’ has more recently been subsumed under the Cape York Institute's four-pronged leadership program, which is aimed at different age groups. See the website of the Cape York Institute for Policy and Leadership: www.cyi.org.au/bemore.

6. While most of the 100 Warlpiri people temporarily evacuated to Adelaide in 2010 because of the feud have since returned to Yuendumu or other Warlpiri settlements, a few have remained in Alice Springs and Adelaide. This seems to be an abiding pattern (of incomplete return), since I also encountered, in Alice Springs, small numbers of refugees from a previous feud at Yuendumu and Willowra.

7. The Aboriginal English word ‘jealousing’ means making someone else jealous, because one has more than someone else. See ‘jelisim’ in the Aboriginal Kriol dictionary: www.aiatsis.gov.au/aseda/does/0739-Kriol.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Paul Burke

Paul Burke is a Visiting Fellow at The Australian National University, School of Archaeology and Anthropology