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Volume 11.2 / October 2006

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Playing Hopscotch: How Indigenous Women Performers Resist Aboriginalist Constructs of Race

Katelyn Barney
School of Music
The University of Queensland

I said if you're thinking about being my baby
It don't matter if you're black or white
I said if you're thinking of being my brother
It don't matter if you're black or white ( Jackson 1991)

Introduction

In his song ' Black or White', Michael Jackson tells us 'it doesn't matter if you're black or white'. Despite Jackson's suggestion that race is not an issue and leaving aside the blurred nature of Jackson's own racial identity, in the Australian context certainly race does matter � whether you are 'black' or 'white' impacts on social positioning and power within Australian society. If a person does not do not fit into either category they can feel powerless, voiceless and invisible.

Aboriginalism is a discourse that impacts on whether or not Indigenous people 'fit' in and takes many forms yet one of its most powerful and resilient aspects is that it is 'predicated upon a racialised perception of the social world' (McConaghy 2000, p. 29). Described by McConaghy (2000) as Orientalism in the Australian context, the Aboriginalist project focuses on Indigenous identities and constructs Aboriginality as a fixed, static, a-historical category, frozen in time, 'authentic' only if unchanging, and ignoring the socially constructed and dynamic nature of Aboriginality (Bradford 2001; Bradford 1999; Hemming 2000; McConaghy 2000). Aboriginalism also sustains the rigid binary opposition of black/white which feeds into other binaries such as traditional/non-traditional and authentic/inauthentic which have the effect of hiding the diversities and complexities which exist within difference (McConaghy 2000, p. 126). Indigenous women performers are acutely aware of these essentialised categories of Aboriginality, and contemporary music has provided them with a space where they can resist and challenge Aboriginalist constructs of race and enter into a process of reflection on their racial identities. In this paper I will draw on first-hand interviews with Indigenous Australian women performers to explore how a number of Indigenous women singers express their own sense of racial identity and negotiate their way through the problematics of the Aboriginalist binaries of black/white, traditional/non-traditional and authentic/inauthentic by asking the questions: How do Indigenous women speak and sing against Aboriginalism and maintain control over their identities? Can they resist the reduction of Aboriginality to an essentialised object? Is it possible for them to challenge imposed binary oppositions through their contemporary music?

My research approach

The research data used in this paper is drawn from several sources including books and journals, media articles, and first-hand interviews with Indigenous Australian women performers and commercial recordings of their music. Interviews involved in-depth discussions with Indigenous Australian women who perform contemporary music, and they are used here as a means of dialogic interaction to develop an understanding of how Indigenous Australian women performers express and reflect on their racial identities through contemporary music. The examples of songs by Indigenous Australian women discussed in this paper are drawn from commercial recordings. These recordings are used to illustrate the performers' statements and demonstrate the links between the performers' spoken words and their songs. It is important to acknowledge that my aim in this paper is not to attempt to define Aboriginality but to focus on the words performers themselves use in relation to their music.

Aboriginalism and Aboriginality

Moreton-Robinson argues that while race is implicit in the construct Aborigine, it is not identified as being implicit in the category white Australian and 'in contrast to whiteness, Aboriginality as a racial construct is identified with blackness and is named and attached to Aboriginalism ... because it is deemed a valid discursive practice' (2004, p. 82). Moreton-Robinson further asserts that 'Aboriginalism is socially constructed by whiteness' as the representation of what it is not (2004, p. 82). According to the Aboriginalist regime, the category of 'Aborigine' is constituted by 'Aborigines living in traditional settings, observing the cultural practices handed down over tens of thousands of years' (Bradford 1999, p. 104), an image which is deliberately ignorant of the impact of colonisation and the interactions with Indigenous people since colonisation. Indeed for this construction to sustain its power and authority over Indigenous people, whiteness must be absent. Another feature of the Aboriginalist project is the idea that Aboriginality is incompatible with modernity and represents 'Indigenous Australians as "other" in relation to [the] privileged perspective of the colonial masters' (McConaghy 1997, p. 39).

McConaghy reminds us that a central project of Aboriginalism is the construction of normative and prescriptive statements of what it means to be a 'real' Indigenous Australian (McConaghy 1998, p. 125). These essentialised constructions of Aboriginality as a single global construct dismiss the diversity among Aboriginal people (Hodge 1990, p. 203), impose identity on Indigenous Australians, and contain and limit the possibilities for Indigenous people to be self-representing (McConaghy & Snyder 2000, p. 78). Indigenous Australian women performers are particularly aware of and know about these Aboriginalist constructions of what constitutes a 'real' Indigenous Australian. Performer Lou Bennett points out that:

It's OK for whitefellas to have different looks and have different characteristic - physical, spiritual, emotional, yet an Aboriginal person is locked in this tiny little box and this little ball and they can't step outside that. You know, the statement that well their not "real" Aborigines, they're not "traditional" Aborigines because they're shooting with a gun you know or they're listening to the radio or look they're drinking Coca Cola well yeah come on give us a bloody break. And it's that whole perception, it's that colonial perception about what an Aboriginal person is supposed to be (Bennett, L. 2003, pers. comm., 21 July).

As Lou's comment suggests, Aboriginalist constructions of Aboriginality are based on a biological notion of race which has been used historically as a tool for colonising and controlling Indigenous Australian people (Attwood 1992, p. xi). This is evident in the history of racial categorisation used by colonial administrations to classify Aboriginal people as 'full blood', 'half caste', 'quadroon', 'octoroon' and so on depending on their skin colour and percentage of Aboriginal blood (McConaghy 2000, p. 132). As Huggins (1998, 18) notes 'biological racist definitions such as "half caste", "quarter caste" and "part Aboriginal" have widely been used by whites as a divide and rule tactic to insist that these groups are not "full-blooded"'. In this way, Aboriginalism insists that the category of 'Aborigine' is constituted by 'full-blooded' Aborigines and silences those voices that lie outside Aboriginalist constructions of 'authentic' Aboriginality (Bradford 1999, p. 101-103). Aboriginalism has also 'influenced government policies and practices which have in turn determined Aborigines' terms of existence' (Attwood 1992, p. ii), and notions of racial purity have become the measure of both 'authentic' and 'inauthentic' traditional Indigenous Australian culture in some contexts (Moreton-Robinson 2000, p. 80).

Today, the Aboriginalist categorisation of the 'real' or 'essential' Aborigine continues to have a stranglehold on what kinds of Aboriginal identity are considered authentic and is a particularly strong feature of contemporary racism. Dodson argues that essentialised biological definitions of Aboriginality continue to be imposed on Aboriginal people today. He writes that 'there would be few urban Aboriginal people who have not been labeled as culturally bereft, fake or "part Aboriginal" and then expected to authenticate their Aboriginality in terms of percentages of blood or clich�d "traditional" experiences' (Dodson 2003, p. 28). For example, some researchers have compared 'non traditional' Indigenous people to this imaginary ideal of the 'traditional' Aborigine (McConaghy 2000, p. 132). Certainly, 'biological metaphors inevitably shroud discriminatory ideas of "purity" of inheritance ... setting the stage for other essentialised, exoticised or simply degrading images of Aboriginal people' (Dunbar-Hall & Gibson 2004, p. 68). A further complexity however, as McConaghy notes, is that biological and essentialist notions of Aboriginality are useful in some contexts, such as assisting Indigenous Australian people in land claims and compensation for colonial oppression (McConaghy 1998, p. 129) because they give Aboriginal people a powerful place to speak from which is theirs alone.

Some critics of Aboriginalism argue that 'Aboriginality' is primarily a construct of the West which only came into use after colonisation, distinguishing people that the Europeans thought of as 'natives' or 'originals' from themselves. Several Indigenous scholars highlight that, in contrast to Aboriginalist representations of Aboriginality which focus on biological notions of race, social constructions of Aboriginality allow Indigenous Australian people to negotiate their own identities and also empower Indigenous Australian people to resist Aboriginalist representations of Aboriginality. Indigenous Australian people have also emphasized that Indigenous identities are not just a product of Aboriginalism. Dodson writes that 'alongside the colonial discourse in Australia, we have always had our own Aboriginal discourses in which we have continued to create our own representations, and to re-create identities which escaped the policing of authorized versions' (Dodson 2003, p. 38). Langton (1993, p. 31) contends that '"Aboriginality" is a social thing ... it is created from our histories' and discusses Aboriginality in terms of a relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians by suggesting that this relationship is continually being renegotiated, as is the concept of Aboriginality itself. Huggins (1998, p. 18) also rejects Aboriginalism's suggestions that Aboriginality is tied to biological notions of race and argues that 'skin colour has little to do with the inner cultural principles that guide Aboriginal people. Providing that Aboriginal people show genuine commitment and active participation in their own community affairs, their degree of colour is irrelevant'. However, this notion of Aboriginality as constructed has also been critiqued. Lattas (1993, 254) argues that while there has been intellectual energy 'directed at establishing Aboriginality as something that is invented through European involvement' he suggests that Indigenous people have also created images of themselves for specific purposes and 'what is often ignored is the sense of autonomy from the control of the "Other" conferred by images of the past'.

As we have seen, Aboriginalism sustains powerful binary oppositions between black and white which privilege one form of oppression over another (Moreton-Robertson 2000), obscure diversity and deny the fluid, contested nature of black and white and the histories of intercultural contact and racism in Australia. These binaries ensure that incommensurable phenomena are presented in oppositional terms and compared and contrasted within a universalist framework (McConaghy 2000, p. 91). The repressive black/white binary still maintains its hold on the general public (Tizard & Phoenix 2002, p. 2) and is grounded in the assumption of two oppositional cultures which are exclusionary and dissociative (McConaghy 2000, p. 259).

Music, Race and Identity

It is useful here to briefly discuss the relationships between music, race and identity. It has become accepted in much social science research that race is socially constructed, historically malleable and culturally contextual (e.g., Zack 1998; Leeds Craig 2002; Gunaratnam 2003; Knowles 2003). Knowles (2003, p. 1) reminds us that:

Race and ethnicity operate on the surface and in the deep structures of our world. Intricately woven into the social landscapes in which we live, race is all around us; a part of who we are and how we operate. It is outside on our streets and inside ourselves. It is part of the way the world operates. It couldn't be closer to home or further away.

Knowles further suggests that race making is about the 'making of selves in dialogical relationships within things composing the social interface' (Knowles 2003, p. 35). Rather than the fixed or innate concept constructed by Aboriginalism, Gunaratnam suggests that race is 'in a constant state of production and negotiation with other forms of difference' (Gunaratnam 2003, p. 32). Depending on the context, race can be visible or invisible and can create moments for tolerance or moments for racism. Leeds Craig (2002, p. 9) asserts that race 'is a set of socially constructed boundaries, practices, and commonly held meanings mapped onto population whose members themselves represent wide physical and social diversity'.

While a number of scholars have emphasised the connections between music and identity (eg., Frith, 1988; Macdonald, Hargreaves & Miell 2002; Stokes 1994; Turino 1999), attention has only recently turned to engage more actively in examining music's dynamic role in marking aspects of racial difference, otherness and whiteness. This is evident in two edited collections: Western Music and Its Others (2000) and Music and the Racial Imagination (2000). Born and Hesmondhalgh analyse the connections between music cultures, race and otherness and emphasise the 'centrality of discourses of ethnicity and race and the continuing prominence of Orientalist, primitivist, and exoticist tropes in popular music' (Born & Hesmondhalgh 2000, p. 11). They note the relative lack of attention in music studies to the relationships between music cultures, race and colonisation (2000, p. 7) and suggest a number of reasons for this sparsity of literature by pointing to the historical status of music as a non-representational medium and the continuing reluctance in musical scholarship to consider the political aspects of music cultures (2000, p. 7). Taking the lead from Said's Orientalism, the volume attempts to take initial steps in the direction of exploring the relations between the inequalities of race and the history, theory and the analysis of music (2000, p. 8).

Similarly, Radano and Bohlman (2000) note that while the subject of race (and whiteness studies) has been a trend in cultural studies and anthropology, there has been a paucity of literature on music and race within musical scholarship (2000, p. xiii). They assert that 'a spectre lurks in the house of music, and it goes by the name of race. For most observers, it hovers and haunts barely noticed, so well hidden is it beneath the rigors of the scholarly apparatus' (2000, p. 1). Radano and Bohlman remind us that 'to talk about race and music means crossing boundaries ... and accepting that race is everywhere in music' (2000, p. 37). They suggest that musical sound is embedded in race and can give voice to racial differences, bridge or overlap racial differences and resist silence and racial oppression (2000, p. 37). Radano and Bohlman encourage researchers to 'hear the racial in sound' (2000, p. 3) and in this paper I aim to take up their call for music researchers to engage in race's musical aspect and begin to speak to racial ideas from a musical perspective (2000, p. 5).

Radano and Bohlman point out that 'race lives on in the house of music because music is so saturated with racial stuff' (2000, p. 1). For example, think of when white singers performed in black makeup in the nineteenth century Minstrel shows, of Midnight Oil's lead singer Peter Garrett performed the politically-charged song 'The Beds are Burning', or white people performing hip-hop. Yet how many of us actually engage with and reflect on performers and their performances as representations of race? I now turn to focus on the ways in which several Indigenous women performers simultaneously reflect on their racial identities through music and resist Aboriginalist constructs of identity.

Lou Bennett: Contesting the Black/White Binary

Lou Bennett is an Indigenous Australian female performer who is based in Melbourne. She identifies as a Yorta Yorta woman and is originally from Barmah in the country region of Echuca, Victoria. She was a member of the female trio Tiddas who disbanded in 2000, and since then Lou has released a solo album entitled Time Out (2001). Discussing her Aboriginality, Lou states that:

It's ... important for me to recognise that my father is white ... and to show that there is another cultural group within a cultural group. And there's a lot of us now a days you know all of my nieces and nephews, my brothers and sisters, my aunties, my uncles. They, we're not this pure blood and this is the other part about identifying as tribal or full blood, or half caste or quarter caste. It's amazing how our race can be identified in those segments, segmenting us.

Lou asserts that she has come to a point where she is at peace with her mixed racial identity:

Being black and white. Amy [Saunders] used to get up on stage, one of the Tiddas, and say well you know Lou and I ... we're reconciled, we're reconciled within ourselves you know having a white father and a black mother ... and on both sides. And to us, you know it's a funny little statement to make, but in itself it's a true statement. We've been searching for that all of our lives up until this very point and still will go on searching for some type of strong identity instead of having to sit on the fence, one leg over in the black side, one leg over in the white side (Bennett, L. 2003, pers. comm., 21 July).

Here Lou directly refers to whiteness as an element of her identity which in and of itself can be seen as a form of resistance. Indigenous Australian academic Denise Groves suggests that there is 'a notion that if you start talking about whiteness you are diluting your experiences or your authenticity as an Aboriginal person' (1998, p. 83). Lou resists this perception by talking about her racial identities as a combination of both black and white in which neither identity is dominant or has power over the other. Lou's resistance to the black/white binary is most prominently expressed through music in her song ' My Face' featured on her solo album Time Out (Figure 1):

Figure 1. Lou Bennett. Time Out (2001)

My face is not black
My face is not white
My face is brown can you recognise me?
I used to sit on this fence
That's where you would've seen me
I used to sit on this fence for my security

The line 'can you recognise me' draws attention to the invisibility of her position between black and white. According to this black/white binary, individuals who do not fit in either category are not recognised as valid or legitimate. Discussing the meaning and significance of the song, Lou remarks 'I thought well I've gotta stop going and saying well I'm just this or I'm just this. There's a combination and I'm not going to sit on the fence but I'm going to create my own identity'" (Bennett, L. 2003, pers. comm., 21 July).

Lou does not position herself in a fixed space but acknowledges the multiple subjectivities of her identity, and via her music she is able to resist the binary opposition of black/white which is sustained by Aboriginalism. McConaghy states that 'the deconstruction of binaries ... are powerful forms of oppositional work' (McConaghy 2000, 94). Lou also acknowledges that:

It used to be a disadvantage to be black or to be part black where I grew up. Now it's an advantage. It's shown me so many ways of dealing with my identity and feeling strong and coming back to loving myself ... And through my music and through dabbling in trying to trying to bring out emotions that I can't necessarily explain fully in words I've been able to do that in music (Bennett, L. 2003, pers. comm., 21 July).

Through her music, Lou has been able to express her sense of racial identity, attempt to break down the binary between black and white, and resist singular essentialist Aboriginalist notions of Aboriginality. Music performance also provides a platform for Lou to challenge the idea that her experiences are less 'authentic' than those of other Aboriginal people and to educate non-Indigenous people about the diversity of Indigenous Australian people and identities.

Kerrianne Cox: Shades of Brindle

Aboriginalism depends on colonial power, and as Attwood (1992) reminds us it is predicated on an overarching relationship of power between coloniser and the colonised which sustains white power and privilege. A consequence of the Aboriginalist desire to maintain power and control over Indigenous subjectivities is that some individuals, histories and families have become lost and feel a sense of continued unbelonging as part of this process. It is important to note that:

The process of colonisation in Australia has brought with it the added burden of struggles for the survival of Indigenous Australians, not only of body, but in recognition of identity ... for numerous Indigenous Australians, there was a sense of 'unbelonging', that is, being not one or the other in their identity. You're not white enough to be white and your skin isn't black enough to be black either, and it really came down to that (Brady & Carey 2000, 273).

Aboriginalism insists that each individual must be either black or white but not both, yet this does not reflect the reality of Indigenous lived experiences. Darwin based performer Ali Mills points out that some Aboriginal people like herself 'just play hopscotch everyday of our lives, don't we? We just don't know which foot, which circle to be in, which culture? Am I going to black today or am I going to be white?' (Mills, A. 2004, pers. comm., 19 August).

Kerrianne Cox is an Aboriginal Australian singer-songwriter from Beagle Bay, Western Australia. She has released two albums Just Wanna Move (n.d) and Opening (2001). Kerrianne uses contemporary music as a platform to discuss the identity issues which fair skinned Indigenous people face and to reflect on the history of racial categorisation. Her song ' Shades of Brindle' on her album Opening (Figure 2) depicts the problems of findings a place between black and white worlds:

Figure 2. Kerrianne Cox. Opening (2001) .

Shades of Brindle
Torn between two worlds
Trace the tracks to the old and new
The history lines
Tell me how you define
Well, we belong to contemporary times
What is black? And what is white?
When shades of brindle draw the line
(Lyrics by Helen Maran)

Kerrianne's song points to the realities of intercultural contact in Australia since colonisation and the racial categorisation which was used to control and contain Indigenous Australian people. She resists the Aboriginalist focus on Aboriginality located in a distant past by singing about the diverse histories of Indigenous people. Her question 'what is black and what is white' points to the essentialised and fixed/unlived nature of the terms and highlights the loss of identity for children who do not easily fit into either category. This sense of grief about 'unbelonging' is aptly captured by Kerrianne in the following comment:

Living in between black and white worlds can be a lonely place to be. For there are times when we are judged and looked down upon by our own people as well as by the white people. We who are not full blood, we who do not speak our native tongue, forgotten and lost are our traditional dances, our songs of our ancestors. Who will come and teach us? For who are they to judge us now? We are today's people striving to find our identities and wanting to belong (Cox CD notes).

Through ' Shades of Brindle', Kerrianne depicts the legacy of colonialism from which many individuals became lost between black and white worlds. As a result of this colonial history and Aboriginalist definitions of what constitutes a 'real' Aborigine, Indigenous Australians like Kerrianne are attempting to build new bridges and define their own sense of identity in order to have legitimacy within Australian society. Discussing her identity in relation to music, Kerrianne asserts 'music and going out to the world strengthened me. It made me look until I saw my inner self, the real self' (Cox cited in Tweedie 2001, p. 187). Using song as a medium, Kerrianne has been able to find a place between black and white worlds, make sense of her own racial identity, challenge fixed Aboriginalist constructions of Aboriginality and highlight the complexities of identity construction for some Indigenous Australians.

Monica Weightman: Lost Generation

For other Indigenous Australians, not only have individuals become lost between two worlds but so too have histories and families. Talking about her family history, Monica Weightman states 'we don't know our mob because of all Australia's history ... so we lost contact with that' (Weightman, M. 2004, pers. comm., 13 July). As a result of this Monica asserts 'there's always been a part of me missing, there's a part of me that knows I don't quite fit here, and I don't quite fit there. For so long I didn't feel white or black, I just felt different' (Weightman, M. 2004, pers. comm., 13 July). Monica expresses her on-going search for her history and an understanding of her identity in the title track of her second album Lost Generation (Figure 3):

Figure 3. Lost Generation - Monica Weightman (2004)

I'm searching for my lost generation
I get so far and stumble and fall
I'm getting caught in complications
Cause I've gotta know just where it is I'm from
I wanna go home to see my mothers
My home a labyrinth across the sea
They say I'm Murri and I hear the Islanders
My father's people Island Too Far Away

Monica states that Lost Generation is about 'that need to feel identity ... and feeling that identity but still not being able to identify' (Weightman, M. 2004, pers. comm., 13 July).

Further in relation to her identity, Monica acknowledges that:

I am one number in thousands of Indigenous people who have been estranged from their culture in one way or another, by one means or another and really it's time for us to come home. It's a result of the politics of the day, the stolen generation, assimilation, all that. We're out there, in between two worlds, you know, scared because we don't know, scared because we think we should know, scared because we're not 'authentic' (Weightman, M. 2004, pers. comm., 13 July).

Monica's statement emphasises how Aboriginalist discourse can cause Indigenous people to feel illegitimate because they do not meet the Aboriginalist ideal of 'authentic' Aboriginality.

Radano and Bohlman (2000, p. 8) assert that music can occupy 'a position that bridges or overlaps racial differences' and in Monica's case she is able to express her racial identity through her music because 'I put it in songs, I don't know how to quite verbalise it'. Monica is in the process of coming to an understanding of her Indigeneity. Using her music she is able to educate both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people about the diversity of experiences and identities of Indigenous people and resist the Aboriginalist binaries of black/white and authentic/inauthentic.

Conclusion

Aboriginalist discourse has been very successful in constructing what can be referred to as 'an essential Aboriginal subject', that is a description of what it means to be 'a real Aborigine' (McConaghy 1998, p. 127). As their songs and experiences show, Indigenous women performers are actively resisting Aboriginalist constructions of Aboriginality and illustrate the dynamic and socially constructed nature of Aboriginality through their words and songs. Lou points out that 'Not all Italian people are the same, not all American people are the same, thank god, not all Australian people are the same. So why do Aboriginal people have to be the same? And that's a question I like to throw at an audience to say well come on think about it' (Bennett, L. 2003, pers. comm., 21 July).

Contemporary music, then, has provided a platform for some Indigenous women performers to challenge Aboriginalist constructs of race and make sense of their racial identities. Without doubt, 'music can be used increasingly as a means by which we formulate and express our individual identities' (Hargreaves, Miell & MacDonald 2002, p. 2). Music also provides a space for agency to be enacted. 'We use it not only to regulate our own everyday moods and behaviours, but also to present ourselves to others in the way we prefer' (Hargreaves, Miell & MacDonald 2002, 2).

Monica, Kerrianne and Lou each express their own sense of racial identity according to their experiences and background and in doing so actively challenge the Aboriginalist binary of black/white and fixed Aboriginalist notions of Aboriginality by talking and singing about the spaces in between racial distinctiveness and the blurred nature of black and white. Through the sounds, words and performance of their songs they are able to resist Aboriginalist constructs of race, affirm the multiple subjectiveness of their identities, and play their own kind of hopscotch in order to create a new discourse of what it means to be Indigenous Australian women.

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Lou Bennett, Kerrianne Cox, Ali Mills and Monica Weightman for their participation in this research project. I am also grateful to Liz Mackinlay and Matt Hade for their helpful feedback on earlier drafts of this paper.

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