Part Two
The hidden resources of Folk Media
Arts, crafts, song, dance, pageantry, stories.
We now turn to ethnography because today’s new ethnographies are “intensely personal, saturated with self-reflexivity … concerned with social justice … more significantly, these efforts function as imperative links for connecting our lived experiences with the lives of others” (Herrmann A.F. & DiFate, Kristen (2014) p.300). An observation that returns us to the discussion on SEWB and how the men’s sheds’ story and the stories of the individual shedders may now have become linked. A shedder observed to me that “almost all of [the shedders] have been through trauma of some sort themselves” so it can be read that such drama, and how the individual has or is facing or overcoming their demons, is an important part of the art being shared through stories. These men are now the survivors who walk and work together with their shed’s ambience and support coming together to inspire them to share their stories that constitute hopes and dreams. Through this sharing of stories, and the conversations so inspired, the shedders challenge the hegemonic discourses of yesterday.
As the shed’s folk media becomes increasingly more inclusive, the shedders thinking and self-expression changes to broaden horizons and pathways to wellbeing thus allowing ‘mateship’ to become ‘companionship’. This reading therefore gives direction to the episteme (Foucault (1989)) that underpins the shedders’ stories, to that of friendship or companionship. So although friendship, as a term, was used only rarely, for one shedder told me the sheds provided a “buddy” while another claimed the sheds are “99 percent friendly”, such observations are able to provide structure to my argument that it is the companionship, leadership and adversity being shared within the sheds which comes together to create the expressions of drama and passion which, when blended, constitute the necessary ingredients for social and emotional wellbeing (Herrmann & DiFate (2014)). There can be no doubt the men’s sheds’ story is complex because the Sheds deal not only with crisis as they also provide comfort and support as the shedders come to grips with life and the eternal search for wellness. We have already noted it is an unfortunate fact that far too many men have found themselves ill-equipped linguistically to face the complexities of modern life, hegemonic masculinity or the toxicity within neoliberal language.
However, by drawing from many diverse sources I have tried to demonstrate how Place, acting as a strategic principle, its folk media which helps to define a Purpose and people as a community can be drawn together to share their stories. I am now to argue it is these stories which will develop and evolve our language because as our linguistic world expands we dip deeper into our metaphysical consciousness to tap our artistic creativity to connect with and formulate self-expression which both develops our informal learning potential and adds purpose, direction and compassion to artistic expression. I can now propose that the Art of Conversation dwelling within the heart of Folk Media is drawn upon and prospers in organisations such as the men’s sheds simply because of three defining attributes. The first attribute is that it is part of the natural order of society that there exists an innate desire to converse. We have already explored why desire should never be suppressed by abstention, political or ideological demand since, “it is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feelings, and indispensable for the life and progress toward well-being of individuals and of humanity”. The second is that folk media cannot be censored for to censor art is to censor the freedom to be heard, an aberration that social democracy can never condone since it has long been recognised as a crime against humanity to stifle protest. The third attribute is that folk media, as it requires no technological interface, is defined by a compassion that is constantly reaching out seeking to join with adjacent humanity.
But if Folk Media is so important to our social and emotional wellness why is it not recognised as such in our contemporary world? Colonialism and the secret language of corporations Appropriation, privilege, racism and the politics of Imperialism. “Marika would often be summoned from his work in southern, urban Australia to return to Arnhem Land to preside over mourning ceremonies. “His input at funerals was essential,” she writes (150). She goes on to explain that these ceremonies may last for months and involve the travel of several hundred kin from far places to the funeral ground (depending on the status of the deceased). They require extensive planning, financing and organisation of hospitality. The songs and dances are performed episodically each day close to the immediate bereaved family who are camped in isolation with the body. Great funeral ceremonies are the climax of life and explore all the Yolngu arts – body and coffin painting, feather and string regalia, making of sacred emblems, song cycles and powerful emotive dancing. Wandjuk was needed to fulfil his managerial role as the ‘mortuary man’” (150). (Isaacs, J. (qtd) Jacklin, Michael. 2005, p.12) The quote that greets you to this chapter demonstrates the simple reality of a very complex form of performance art. Here, as the quote shows, Indigenous arts come together as a celebration of how the ancestry of life provides a social and emotional relationship between humanity and its environment to create a relationship and belonging that has sustained and nurtured the Aboriginal people of Australia from the beginning of consciousness (Rose 1996).
Such Indigenous arts are today recognised or named as ‘Folk Media’ but, as we shall see, such arts have been known for eons by various names by various peoples because these are arts birthed in a time when humanity first came to recognise that people were somehow interconnected with the life that teemed about them (Klapproth 2004; Rose 1996). So, although such art may appear as a simple handprint on a rock face, that handprint exists to immortalise a world that is as complex as the networks of life it celebrates. As we explore folk media, its arts and the cultural economies they celebrate we shall see how they combine to share knowledge with a strategic spirituality that strengthens the bonds of social and emotional wellbeing between people, their communities, the land and everything in that land. That Australia still faces ‘unfinished business’ when speaking of the relationship with its Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people is as much an ignorance of, rather than a clash of, cultures (Jacklin 2005). It is evident that the racism faced by Australia’s Indigenous peoples spawned an ignorant, arrogance that viewed Aboriginal arts as mere commodities that were able to be transferred between cultures without recognition of the inherent knowledge they represented or the intellectual property rights (Holcolmbe 2010) of its artists. While such ignorance historically disregarded Aboriginal art as being much, much more than what could be ‘seen’ or what could be ‘owned’ it was an overt racism that ultimately still refuses to acknowledge that Aboriginal art forms come together to signify a philosophy and a spiritual import that “touches on the sacred” (Jacklin 2005 p.1). In language ‘Folk Media’ is derived from the performing arts (Mass Communication Concepts) that are traditionally based within drama, song, dance, puppetry and pageantry. However, in social life ‘folk media’ still represents an ancient source of cultural symbolism since it encompasses all of the tools of human creativity including social discursive practices (Klapproth 2004; Bronner 1978; Pinker 2014), non-verbal communication, body art, ritual practices and culturally sacred crafts and artefacts.
Unfortunately, in Australian contemporary society there exists a language/folk media dichotomy because Anglo Western language exhibits the hegemony of a positivistic and scientific outlook (Hymes, 1996 p.115). Therefore, I would take up the argument that it is actually the linguistic paradigms related to this hegemony that continue to suppress many of the crucially important narrative functions of folk media in our modern vernacular (Hymes 1996 p.116). Catherine Ford (2013) in her article on Peter Sutton, the Adelaide anthropologist, linguist and author writes, “[Sutton] gravitated towards “a people whose societies had undergone catastrophic damage” – the Aboriginal people of Cape York. “I was deeply sympathetic to their condition,” he recalls. Did his experiences as a Christian Scientist predispose him to life up north? “Definitely,” he says. “I was among co-outsiders”. This exchange clearly demonstrates how difficult it is to deconstruct anthropological myths simply because of the ‘baggage of common knowledge’ brought to the narratives being related. For example, the film, Ten Canoes demonstrates how oral narratives can be transformed into tangible data (Holcombe, Sarah 2010 p.24) but one needs to ask when deconstructing such data for what purpose is this data being utilised? Is the film produced as entertainment, or is it proposed to be educational and thus to whom is it being directed and therefore at what level? Such questions are extremely relevant to Western readings as they relate to ‘authenticity’ and beyond this to the relevancies of knowledge ownership. But it is here that we can see that Western cultural readings are often paradoxical (and ironic) as can be discerned by the warning relating to the film ‘Ten Canoes’ that, “[t]eachers may need to alert students to the fact that since the characters are re-enacting traditional Indigenous lifestyles, they are not clothed” (Ten Canoes study guide).
So when a ‘scientific’ approach to such discourses is taken it must be asked is this to be a methodological study or an epistemological review for each employs different methods to investigate ‘reality’ and therefore they will often provide two very different world views, but why is this so? Put simply it is contextual because while traditional knowledge is deeply rooted within the changing dynamics of its environment, Corporatised science needs to recast cultural knowledge as something that can be frozen in time and space so it can be captured, essentialised and transferred (Agrawal, Arun 2004; Holcolmbe 2010).
The recasting by Anglo Western discourses of the Dreamtime ‘narrative’ is an example of how scientific thinking attempted to understand the “on-going creation of the world” as a ‘religion’ which could be placed into a hierarchy of conceptual beliefs. Deborah Bird Rose (1996) speaks of how the conceptions of ‘Dreamtime’, ‘Dreaming’, ‘history’ and ‘story’ intersect in the Aboriginal world explaining that the understanding of the narrative relating to the “on-going creation of the world” are similar throughout Aboriginal peoples (p.26). However, such conceptions become clearer when a folk media reading is applied for, as is seen in the opening quote, Aboriginal conceptions and beliefs are conveyed within an art form (a poetry) that is beyond the ability of words alone as discourse. So, to the initiated, there are within the narratives relationships and meanings that continually draw upon specific mythological and ancestral belief structures which come to represent a negotiation that defines the past to redefine the present.
Here the paradigmatic linearity within Anglo Western metaphorical thinking can be used to highlight the dichotomy between the fictional and the real. As the metaphorical nature of our conceptual system varies from culture to culture the narrative relating to the Dreaming or the “on-going creation of the world” (Rose 1996; Klapproth 2004) is an excellent example of how a metaphorical concept can be extremely challenging to translate. Stanner (1990) says of the Dreaming “one may thus say that, after a fashion - a cryptic, symbolic, and poetic fashion - the tales are 'a philosophy' in the garb of a verbal literature”. It has been explained that the Dreaming represents “a poetic key to reality” which organises and transmits in narrative form and ritual a dramatization of the fundamental principles “governing the Aboriginal universe” (Stanner 1990; Klapproth 2004 p.68). However, such attempts to ‘understand’ the Dreaming shows how this symbolic universe with its intrinsically mythological narrative remains a ‘closed’ system simply because it is a discourse and a ceremony (thinking) that is foreign to Anglo Western culture. This means that as such it cannot be subjected to analytical or scientific study because, as it is ceremonial and spiritual, language by itself does not have the ‘key’ or coding necessary to unlock its metaphorical underpinnings. Klapproth (2004) emphasised the way that Aboriginal narratives mediate preparatory training for the “graded admission to the multi-layered universe of traditional Aboriginal knowledge and understanding” (p.269). Aboriginal narratives can be seen as a mediation for they negotiate culturally important issues rather than utilise the Anglo Western argumentative structure. So, by using mediation “they weave the core concepts to be reflected on into a narrative framework” (p.269).
Therefore, this weaving of mythological and metaphysical concepts demonstrates how Aboriginal narratives are able to convey the lore of the spiritual world with the present day in a seamless, symbolic manner (p.334). Folk media, as practised by the Aboriginal people, is an artistic ritual that draws lore and life into the present. The artist/artists recreate symbolic forms of an ancient nature that act as a vehicle for the metaphorical spirits that reside within them. As these forms are recreated they re-activate the spiritual powers that connect and reconnect the community with its humanity (emotions/feelings), its environment (reality) and the country (birth/place). This ability represents a form of art that is able to create a direct relationship (lore) that continually draws upon the mythological. Thus folk media performs a crucial role in the Aboriginal universe because, whether it be through song, dance, narrative, painting, carving or creating cultural artefacts it makes the artist the potential custodian of the myths and songs associated with the spirit beings of that site (Stanner 1990). I am arguing that it is through this connection that Aboriginal folk media can be perceived as land based. Here, through folk media, the land or ‘Country’ represents a World View that is timeless and as such it becomes a symbolic as the spiritual connection is provided by life and Creation itself. Thus there can be no ownership for this connection is immortal with the Dreaming providing the eternal actors (Stanner 1990). So, through folk media, the actors vivify the land to make it socially and emotionally relevant to the living therefore, folk media itself represents the charter that is a relationship to a specific Country or tract of land.
This connection with Country can be perceived through the painting of Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula (Appendix 1) for he blended his heritage and his country with the present via modern aesthetics. The artist, John Kean credited Johnny Warangkula with developing the dotting method that illustrated vegetation, a technique that later became popular with Western desert painters. Because this modern style provides a three dimensional quality to an ancient complexity, the painting ‘Water Dreaming at Kalipinya’ (Appendix 1) can be read simply as a map of Country that depicts its water courses, soaks and the response to rain by the birdlife. Because it draws upon Warangkula’s Watermen ancestry the painting can also be seen to represent the Tjuringa (sacred objects), the ceremonial sites and the activities of the ancient Watermen and the Egret ancestors and therefore it is this negotiated blending and the mediation that makes this painting a strictly Aboriginal story. This blending of relationships to Country and ancestry via negotiated stories represents the richness and depth of Aboriginal folk media. And it is this blending of art forms which reaches beyond words and speech into the spiritual world of the metaphysical to where conceptions about time, place and identity are negotiated and renegotiated in order to establish an understanding of the Self and where humanity might stand in the universe.
However, as Anglo Western discursive practices took precedence in Australia the resulting loss of cultural diversity meant that many Aboriginal concepts and their associated folk media lost authority before Christian and scientific demands (Klapproth 2004 p.23; Povinelli 1993 p.242). This hegemony thus led to the rich spiritual relationships that existed between the Aboriginal people and their environment being over ridden by a pragmatism conveyed within language that refused to recognise the art (as a form of knowledge) that was able to celebrate or translate the meanings behind Aboriginal practice and belief (Povinelli 1993 p.241). Importantly, as has already been related, traditional Aboriginal communities have a layered system of knowledge or lore (Ochre) that is shared publicly, secretively or sacredly by an ancient Aboriginal folk media which is today represented by oral storytelling, songs, ritual performances, visual representation and games (Ochre; Klapproth 2004 p.23). So, while this ancient folk media plays a universal function by bringing the Aboriginal people together into a cohesive community it also provides for the selective distribution and sharing of knowledge. Here, although Aboriginal folk media can be perceived in Anglo/Western culture as merely ceremonial, the hidden processes that honour and celebrates lore as an ancient process between humanity, the land and the sea, are the actual practices that represent the combined knowledge of humanity itself. Ultimately therefore, the lore represents the sacred processes that create, strengthen and maintain the cultural economies inherent within Aboriginal people and their communities.
So, it is unfortunate that to Anglo Western ears and eyes the practice of Aboriginal folk media is merely a symbolic construction (performance) of a mythological narrative (story) that is expressed through language as an internalised ordering of reality because such ignorance led to the cultural and economic deprivation of the Aboriginal people. This reflection therefore demands a recognition that Aboriginal folk media suffers in translation because the discourses are foreign (as in this instance to Anglo Western culture) and that language itself is limited, since there are often no words able to adequately describe the continual reordering of existence (Klapproth 2004 p.75), that folk media celebrates. For example, in Anglo Western language the Aboriginal narrative merely speaks of humanity, the spirit and the mind as active constituents of Australia for millennia (Rose 1996 p.20). However, in Aboriginal lore humanity, the land and the sea become as one for “nourishing terrains are the active manifestation of creation” (p.23). That such complexity goes beyond language and discourses alone are manifold. However, through folk media such intrinsic knowledge of environment and existence can be manifested through a combination of decoration, costuming, song, dance, stories and games which for millennia have linked personal and social identity to land and country. At this point it can be argued that language itself is the source of the narrowness of thinking in Anglo Western cultural practice simply because the paradigms of time, space and causality are being conceived as something physical. That such conceptions have been limiting thinking for centuries is observed by such as Homer who proclaims, “Ah how shameless – the way these mortals blame the gods. From us alone they say come all their miseries yes but they themselves with their own reckless ways compound their pains beyond their proper share” (The Odyssey).
It is such paradigms within Anglo Western language that led Povinelli (1993) to observe that Aboriginal power, identity and history originated in the ability to associate and disassociate contemporary time and space (p.1241). This represents an important concept since in Australia many of the problems of racism and associated ignorance have been said to have come from the imposition of the English language on the Aboriginal people of Australia as ‘their’ language. It has been argued that this imposition caused an immediate disconnect between the way the different speakers understood events, constructed notions of causality and agency, how people came to be connected with their environment and ultimately therefore, how much they were able to blame and punish others (Boroditski 2010). I have already addressed how in Corporatised language time, space and causality are paradigms which are conceived as linear. It has been argued that this linearity was constructed so ‘things’ could be owned, divided, split, sold or bartered because they are ‘some-thing’ that can be economically evaluated. However, in contemporary times the paradigm of ‘ownership of some-thing’ was also extended to include digitalised knowledge. Thus, factual data is now conceived as a commodity in Anglo Western language and this paradigm ‘wrote’ Aboriginal lore out of Anglo Western thinking because it, “does not acknowledge Indigenous knowledge management systems and protocols” (Holcombe 2010 p.23).
It is this discussion of paradigms that brings the language of corporate neoliberalism into focus. Recent history shows how indigenous policy changed from the paradigm of ‘self-determination’ to champion ‘mainstreaming’ and ‘normalisation’ (Altman 2007 p.2). Today, for example, the language of the neoliberalist speaks of Aboriginal people exhibiting “maladaptive cultural traits” which requires them, in order to participate in ‘mainstream’ Australia, to abandon their ‘chosen lifestyle’ or re-educate themselves. Here, the economic imperative is the driving force behind the paradigm being argued which demands the abandonment of ‘Indigenous systems and protocols’ because the Aboriginal model of communal property “stands in contradiction to the imperatives of development” (Garond 2014 p.9). Historically therefore a corporate dogma has evolved which inherently blames its victims in that so called ‘dysfunctional’ Indigenous people in remote, “‘pockets’ of un-individualised ‘communes’ … cannot integrate … because their values are even further removed from that of the mainstream” (Garond 2014 p.12).
These neoliberalist paradigms underpinned Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s (2015) comment that Indigenous people living in remote communities do so after making a ‘lifestyle choice’. The corporatist pragmatism being stressed is that “the cost of providing services in a particular remote location is out of all proportion to the benefits being delivered” (SMH). So, the binary being drawn is between the costs of the ‘benefits being delivered’ from a traditional ‘way of life’ on the one hand and an application of the economic imperative on the other. Here it is evident that Tony Abbott was attempting, in language, to isolate people from the history of Country simply because these folk existed outside of the dogma represented by the economic imperative. However, as we have seen, integral to Aboriginal culture is the relationship to Country and an understanding of how Kinship relationships are represented. This belief system is central to Aboriginal life because as Dianne Biritjalawuy Gondarra demonstrates in this quote, kinship speaks in many ways and in many tongues. “My yäku (name) is Dianne Biritjalawuy Gondarra. I am a Dhurili woman from North East Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory. I live in Galiwni’ku community on Elcho Island. My language is Dhangu, but I also speak Djambarrpuyŋu, which is the common language on Elcho Island. I speak 12 other Yolngu (Indigenous people of North East Arnhem Land) languages as well as English. Through my gurrutu (kinship relationships), my ringgitj (clan-alliance), my baapurru (paternal clan) and my maalk (skin name), I am related to every Yolngu person, all of the land and everything in the land within North East Arnhem” (Guardian 31st Oct, 2014).
So, while it is evident that the conceptions and metaphors within Corporatised language are demonstrably too narrow to actually describe, for example, the kinship and relationships that the ‘remote communities of Aboriginal people’ have with their Country, there also exists in Abbott’s language a political cancelling of Aboriginal sovereignty. For here it can also be argued that as the whole of Australia and its surrounding seas have an ancient history of Aboriginal use. It is the social and emotional relationships within their folk media which continues to provide a contemporaneous living relationship to Country and the, “nourishing terrains of Indigenous Australians” (Rose 1996 intro). Here, it is also instructive to note that Rose (1996) goes on to explain that “[t]here is no place without a history; there is no place that has not been imaginatively grasped through song, dance and design, no place where traditional owners cannot see the imprint of sacred creation”. Which means that, when applied to ongoing research in Europe, it can be argued that the survival of humanity itself hinges on the kinship and relationships that are being created and recreated constantly within communal social and emotional interactions. Therefore, today’s societies and their interactions are still intrinsic to ancient cultural economies which have been specifically developed and supported within folk media for millennia.
For example, psychologist, Susan Pinker (2014) argues the kinship (belonging) created by face to face contact alone underscores the feeling that we are all part of a caring group whereby it is this belief that brings to us resilience. It is further argued that an understanding of kinship shows how caring for another motivates pride and therefore any obligation that we then feel is channelled into our sense of identity. Therefore, it can be seen that the language of ‘kinship’ differs remarkably from the language of the social sciences simply because the inherent celebration of the folk media within ‘kinship’ is capable of both providing and sustaining a much broader sense of identity rather than merely defining our individuality or identity. Therefore, I am arguing that while we can hear what people are ‘saying’ through an understanding of their language and we can ‘see’ via the paradigms of language what it is being represented. Unless we then apply the poetry of folk media we remain blind to the spiritual and metaphysical connections. The reality is that although face to face contact is important for social connection. It is only through the interactions produced through Place, Purpose and Companionship which are capable of providing the fulcrum for the crucial understanding between often disparate ideas which allows for an union of minds that opens the door to the arts inherent within folk media to foster, “a way that will recognise and respect an inner state” (Bird 1996, p.91).
However, paradigms within Corporate language are not been the only influences that narrowed the binary opposites of mass media. It is ironic that it took a global pandemic to instil a sense of shared existence that promoted the thinking that societies, in order to survive, need to foster within people more communal interactions that enhanced a sense of belonging. This is because modern mobility, technology and the lack of communal conversations are having injurious effects on people’s physical and mental wellbeing (Pinker 2014). This recognition serves to highlight many of the detrimental effects on society and particularly the individual that can be attributed to ‘mainstream’ living. I am arguing the limitations that contemporary living places on face to face contact, the lack of ‘safe’ or open spaces for conversation or gathering, the inability to commune in ‘natural’, uncommercialised environments and even the information versus emotional support dichotomy are having “profound implications” on social interaction. Although communal gatherings have long been recognised as being necessary to build trusting and empathic relationships between individuals and their local communities (Pinker 2014). It is now an imperative that our communities, as a matter of some urgency, create more pageantry to promote and celebrate a duty of care and democracy that the binaries promoted by the economic imperatives of Corporatised governance counteract.
For example, I found it rather ironic that as the #BlackLivesMatter protests spread globally many governments and authorities stood firmly against the expression of grief the movement represented. The irony, for me, was that as the death toll from Covid19 grew exponentially the resulting lockdowns meant that people coming together to express grief were perceived as potential spreaders of infection while sport, shopping and travel were considered essential. The problem, as I perceived it, was the Wealth before Health binary underpinning some of the governance was not broad enough to acknowledge that a suppression of grief will often engender anger if the communal duty of care is not celebrated in accordance with culturally appropriate expectations. This is because as Jacklin (2005) acknowledges, it is the celebration of dea