Establishing and Maintaining the Integrity of the Tribe

Background

The cause of our confusion over tribal identity, boundaries, lore and protocols to move forward together as neighbours is colonisation. In the 10 generations since the arrival of James Cook to this continent a series of catastrophes have occurred:

  • Loss of land;

  • Loss of capacity to hunt and provide;

  • Loss of access to sacred sites;

  • Loss of family through massacres, murder and disease

  • Creation of mission prisons;

  • Compulsory bans on language and cultural practices;

  • Imposition of foreign religion and putting down of traditional spirituality;

  • Deliberate breaking up of families;

  • Stealing children;

  • Introduction of alcohol, drugs and damaging diets;

  • Distortion of truthful history of the invasion and occupation of the continent;

  • Resistance to reparation of stolen lands and wages.

The ongoing result of this is intergenerational trauma. We experience it, they ignore it.

Consequences of this trauma include:

  • A sense of guilt by Western society about what was done to us and a strategy to downplay or deny it;

  • Being seen by Western society as the lowest of the low - sometimes paternalistic, sometimes patronising, frequently dismissive of the situation we have been forced into;

  • A deep gap in knowing who we really are; our core identity;

  • A deep sense of loss of our culture and self-esteem;

  • A lack of confidence and low expectation of what can be achieved in life;

  • A dependence on hand-outs as little other choices are available to many

Current policies and practices of Government suggest this is unlikely to change:

  • There is a reluctance to effectively deal with social determinants that maintain our trauma, for example deaths in custody; poor housing; poor infrastructure in created communities; inappropriate education systems; false historical record; feeble attempts to create jobs and wealth in artificially-created (previously Government- or Church-run missions/prisons) communities.

  • Native Title processes introduced to divide First Nations Australia; this has been very successful in getting First Nations people fighting each other right across the continent at the most damaging level imaginable, our core identity.

The Way Forward

The first principle to reclaim our identity is for us to own the process

Currently, we are using a system entirely created and maintained by Western society. Features of this system include:

  • The concept of tribe; we have been forced into tribal groups that do not reflect our pre-Colonial status;

  • The naming and designation of tribes; The Tinsdale map of languages explicitly says it should not be used to determine tribal boundaries, although it provides them and these have become commonly-used to distinguish tribal boundaries;

  • Some groups are not present on the map at all;

  • Some groups have been given tribal status but are seen locally as clans;

  • Some groups have been put together and declared nations;

  • The boundaries have all been imputed by Western society;

  • Arguments against these boundaries have fallen on deaf ears to date;

  • For native title claims to be eligible for inclusion each person must be allocated to a core family. The ultimate decision maker for this is a white person (anthropologist).

  • First Nations people fight over inclusion and spend a huge amount of time denying the claims of others rather than finding lost claimants;

  • When denying the identity of others, they are using Western definitions of tribes, tribal boundaries and core families;

  • Stolen Identity First Nations people (people who were cut off from family, clan and country in the early waves of invasion during the first 100 years) have little chance to prove connection to country because of accidental and mainly deliberate strategies to hide or deny Aboriginality for the sake of survival;

  • In the second hundred years Stolen Identity First Nations people are called Stolen Generations First Nations people and they have exactly the same problem. Taking children is a practice that is thriving today with a greater percentage of First Nations children being taken from their parents than ever before.

The second principle is for us to establish our own principles for determining identity, boundaries and belonging:

  • This is primarily a job for men to protect the integrity of the tribe (it has the right energy);

  • Existing tribal groups are sovereign entities and have the right to make decisions over their own identity;

  • Tribal identity is best done in the context of regions; we sit down together and sort out the issues;

  • We design and align with our own dispute resolution process;

  • We leave the decision of who represents each tribe to the tribes but encourage an inclusive approach (actively seeking to identify all tribal members) in selecting representatives. Once agreed, these decisions are the ones used by all tribes in all matters relating to the region;

  • We discuss the impact of colonisation on patriarchal and matriarchal lineage, where people are born, traditional relationships and the validity of these relationships now;

  • The impact of these and other issues of multiple tribal identities and shared apical ancestors.

The third principle is that the timeframe these decisions cover is millenial

This means long term decisions for the future.

Reviewing tribal identity and boundaries has been a constant process for First Nations people on this continent as tribal groups spread across the landscape.

The last ice age was a significant event in which massive redefinition of boundaries was required as the waters rose and people’s land was lost.

The fourth principle is that we establish a list of key protocols for assessing identity:

  • The importance of language;

  • The importance of totems and shared spiritual beliefs;

  • The importance of skin groups, moieties and traditional intertribal relationships;

  • The importance of shared initiations and other ceremonies;

  • The clarification of meetings, meeting grounds, fighting grounds and gathering grounds;

  • The importance of traditional ways of defining boundaries;

  • The importance of Storylines, shared Storylines, Dreaming stories, shared Dreaming stories, dance and shared dances;

  • The importance of how preciously insignificant places from a pre-colonial view have become very important in a post-colonial view because there are towns, identified resources and potential resources which will benefit Traditional Owners;

  • The issue of pan-tribal or an Aboriginal nation’s identity, for example mountain people, people of the snow, south-east regional people;

  • The revisiting of core families, who they are, how they were identified, who in being included, who is excluded, the accuracy of the information.

Core family 1

First contact information
- First photograph
- Birth certificates
- Baptism certificates
- Marriage certificates
- Death certificates
- Trove, newspaper reports
- Colonial reports
- Stories with one verifiable Western source
- Stories with two verifiable Western sources
- Stories with one verifiable Aboriginal source
- Stories with two verifiable Aboriginal sources
- Contradictions in stories

Assessing their strengths

Core family 2 - Repeat