Customary Assets and Contemporary Artistry: Multimodal Learning and Remote Economic Participation

Abstract

The role of artistry in transformative maintenance of law and custom is a theme widely researched and discussed in Aboriginal arts related literature. However, it is the aim of this paper to contribute to a wider discourse about learning and economic participation in remote Australia, and in particular the role of multimodality as a significant asset. The paper draws from relevant literature and two case studies; one from Keringke Arts, and one from Eastern Arrernte teacher and artist, Kathleen Kemarre Wallace. In customary form, multimodality combines and recombines various modalities — including dance, song, sand drawing, body painting and design, storytelling, stories, rhythm, petroglyph and ochre-painted rock art — enabling the intergenerational teaching and learning of rich cultural heritage in ways which connect that experience to the law and custom of the homelands. Multimodality, as it is used in this paper, draws on the concept of ‘form-relationality’; the way various modalities are combined and recombined, as elements which together describe a body of knowledge and yet separately provide myriad detail. Although beyond the scope of this paper, multimodality is also a mediating influence between contemporary and customary elements and contexts. This paper considers the complexity of multimodality as an asset in a contemporary arts market.

Other Views of Northern Australian Aspirations: Pre‑Notions, Ideologies and Remoteness

“…Adding yet another layer of complexity to policy development in remote and very remote Australia, human, cosmological and ecological structures in the modern outback (see Figure 8.2) reflect an extensive temporal continuity that existed pre-colonisation (Lovell, 2015;Maru et al, 2014). This continues to contribute to a presence in which 'Aboriginal people, lands, culture and socio-economic concerns are writ far larger than in a national context' (Woinarski et al, 2014, p. 33).…”

“…In combining 150 program areas down to five priorities, the national IAS argued a framework within which children attend school and adults go to work in safe communities will ensure the wellbeing and health of residents (Australian Government, 2014b). This does not readily account for the ways that markets may intersect with and value remote Aboriginal custom, capacity or advantage (Larkin, 2009;Lovell, 2015;Zander et al, 2014), nor value Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander longitudinal temporal and sovereign corporate knowledge (Ardill, 2013;Babie, 2013;Morrison, 2015). The IAS is aligned with Australia's liberal welfare policy, which is one of the major mechanisms through which the nation redistributes wealth in ways that provide for the marginalised and disadvantaged (Whiteford, 2015).…”

“…The flow of local enterprise back into settlements or membership cohorts and the concept of an interface of customary, market and state interests is not entirely new and has some features common with social enterprise (International Comparative Social Enterprise Models, 2013). Assessing from the settlement level, mixed markets appear to mesh market-type behaviours of customers who are prepared to pay for products and services with the local producers who have the assets required to provide them (Lovell, 2015).…”

“…Mixed markets are conceptualised from the standpoint of non-Indigenous researchers who have used national data sets to seek evidence of the remote industry activities of which they also have practical experience. Customary economies are embedded deep in the Aboriginal mediation of changing socioeconomic, cultural and natural human ecology (Lovell, 2015;Wallace & Lovell, 2009) and include forms of human capital aligned with Aboriginal standpoints and sovereignty (Ardill, 2013). The focus of mixed-market analysis to date has been how the interface where residents access market opportunity is counted (or not) through the systems of national data collection that inform policy.…”

National Data: Reflecting Northern Australian Aspirations?

“…Aboriginal residents often undertake customary activity despite market or non-market ability to value or transact it (Lovell, 2015). Natural and cultural resource management, into which Indigenous ranger programs fit, is undertaken through both the mixed-market and customary structures.…”