Culture in a Sealed Envelope: The Concealment of Australian Aboriginal Heritage and Tradition in the Hindmarsh Island Bridge Affair

Abstract

This article analyses the Hindmarsh Island Bridge controversy in South Australia to argue that the legislative requirements for the presentation of indigenous culture and society conceal the extent to which this culture and society are themselves elicited by the very form and process of the legislation. The anthropological task of articulating a relational view of culture and identity in a legal and political domain which makes invisible the relational bases of its own procedures of knowledge and identity formation is one of the main challenges that emerges from the controversy. This article examines the versions of Ngarrindjeri culture and religion that were aired during the Royal Commission into the Hindmarsh Island Bridge in 1995 and speculates on the failure of both anthropology and the state to consider the relational nature of social knowledge and culture.

Academism and the politics of culture in the Pacific

“…Weiner (1999) also discusses the Hindmarsh Island Bridge affair and investigates how both anthropology and the state legislature failed to recognise fully that Aboriginal tradition was relationally constructed and transformed by anthropological and legislative discourses. Because I encountered his article (Weiner 1999) after completing a draft of this paper, I was not able to do justice to his argument in my discussion.…”

Cultural Rights and Culture Defense: Cultural Concerns

“…The Hindmarsh Bridge Island litigation in Australia also shows the dynamics of intragroup tension (Weiner, 1999;Tonkinson, 1997;Lyndall, 1996). A group of aboriginal women objected to a proposed bridge between the Australian mainland and Hindmarsh Island because they claimed it would jeopardize their way of life.…”

Law's Anthropology : From ethnography to expert testimony in native title

“…Arguably, the most successful contemporary strategy has been anthropology's repositioning as curator, decipherer, historian and commentator on contemporary Indigenous 16 See, for example, the various papers from a panel on 'Elitism and Discrimination within Anthropology' held at the 1993 Society for Applied Anthropology (Baer 1995;Cassell 1995;Harrison 1995;Johnston 1995;Nader 1995;Paredes 1995;Singer 1995;Smith 1995;Tashima and Crain 1995). 17 See Bell (1998); Brunton (1996); Clarke (1996); Fergie (1996); Hemming (1996Hemming ( , 1997; Kenny (1996); Lucas (1996); Simons (2003); Tonkinson (1997); Weiner (1995Weiner ( , 1999Weiner ( , 2001Weiner ( , 2002. Later accounts by some of the key Aboriginal participants indicate that there was probably a diversity of honestly held Aboriginal views about the disputed area, rather than a simple fabrication by one group (see Rowse 2006). art, particularly the internationally recognised Western Desert art movement.…”