Papers
Ceci n'est pas un 'basket'
Margie West
June 2004
In Arnhem Land today there is a strong and vibrant fibre tradition that has continued to diversify and develop over the years. The major change is that items once essential to people's survival now circulate as objects of desire within the mainstream Australian economy. In this relatively new inter-cultural exchange, the western labelling practices applied to Indigenous fibre items have been used deliberately or unwittingly as 'weapons of exclusion and closure' 1 that have resulted at worst in the cultural erasure of local meaning. Indigenous attitudes to and terminology for their own fibre items reveals a very different discourse, in which multiple readings are encoded in seemingly mundane items.
The varying discourses for interpreting and understanding Arnhem Land fibre art have also influenced certain changes in customary artistic practices of the region. So today, the production of contemporary items such as bags, baskets mats, fishtraps and so on, has become mainly the artistic domain of the women. This, as well as the type of items they make today, has resulted from the contact history of the region - which is as recent as fifty years ago in some areas.
In the Territory's remote north, items of so called art and craft became essential components in the pioneer economy. At the mission stations established throughout Arnhem Land in the early twentieth century, Indigenous labour was essential for their economic viability. At Goulburn Island's Methodist Mission for example, concerted efforts were made to evangelise the women and children though education in the gentle arts of embroidery sewing and basketry. Here and at other Methodist missions the women were encouraged to produce 'culturally neutral' items shaped for western consumption to raise money for their education and housing.
Any money from such sales passed into head office is in a very direct way a help to the evangelisation of these people and a means of allowing them in a measure the privileges of civilised comforts and customs. 2
In her study of the mission period, Lovitt describes these western-style items as being framed within the mission narratives about conversion and therefore divested of their own cultural meanings. These were not the primitive manufactures of authentic Aboriginal people she argues, but re-contextualised or civilised items, in the sense described by Nicholas Thomas as converted artefacts. 3
During this early contact time the generic naming of bags and baskets often as dilly bags became common - disguising the regional diversity of these items whose varying materials, techniques, size, shape and functions are reflected in specialised Indigenous taxonomies. As the fibre researcher Louise Hamby also notes, even the common term of weaving - borrowed from the textile arts, obscures the differences in construction techniques used by people to create their material items. While some do employ a classic weaving methodology, the most common techniques are twining, looping, as well as coiling.
In addition, the exclusive encouragement of women to produce fibre items created an artificial gender division in production, as customarily men were also versed in the fibre techniques for making their domestic and ceremonial items. As a result, women have been consistently been paid less than men for the items they make, and have also maintained a relatively low status as producers compared to the male bark painters and carvers. This marginalisation of fibre artists and their products continued with the development of the more organised, government-subsidised arts industry beginning in the 1970s. Here the framing narratives of acculturation and Christianity were replaced by western notions of art and craft.
The Aboriginal Arts and Craft industry as it is invariably referred to, has continued to rank items on a scale equivalence from fine art through to the utilitarian. In line with current theoretical debates, this art/craft hierarchy has been contested. Since then, more attention has been paid to the fibre items made by women - from the smallest of their decorative string necklaces to the new sculptural forms being produced by a handful of women in central Arnhem Land. Recent exhibitions of bags, mats, fish fences, and traps position these items as sculptural works in an attempt to reframe western understanding about them. While this has effected a greater appreciation of these objects, it has merely translated them from one western category to another.
Despite the disadvantages of cultural translation, Indigenous people themselves have not been silent in the dominant discourse. In their interaction with outsiders, they have used the commerce in cultural items as a means of both participating in the cash economy as well as asserting their own cultural value. Although often filtered through the linguist, anthropologist or art adviser, we are gaining a better understanding about the seemingly ordinary items Aboriginal people make.
From their own narratives we know that fibre items play a central role in people's religious ceremonies and mythologies from Arnhem Land. According to ancestral beliefs, the origins of everything, including the material items that people make, are attributed to the agency of particular creative beings. In some cases the beings themselves are manifest as an actual fibre item, whose activities are celebrated and reaffirmed during the performance of rituals or even in the act of manufacture.
When I make a mat it reminds me of my grandfather, great grandmother, my mother and father and the old people. I remember. I will keep doing it until I pass away. I know this is true because of my ancestors the wanggar (Creator Beings). I still remember. It's like the same thing a man does with his bark paintings - about the first creation. I do the same thing that my ancestors have given me. I've got that from my ancestors and I still remember. I remember when I make these things - it's in my heart. That's my feeling.4
Transformed by their ancestral associations, fibre items become powerful metaphors for ancestral agency, which on a deeper level is connected to the regenerative cycle of all life forms. While these creative forces are controlled through ritual by the men, they are most obviously manifest in the fertility of women and in this context, many fibre items are regarded as symbolic containers of life, associated with female fertility and procreation. These analogies are evident in the body terminology applied to inanimate objects.
Language in Arnhem Land is genderised and woven items can belong to either gender, for example in Burarra things are distinguished by the masculine prefix an- or the feminine jin-. According to linguist Margaret Carew (pers.com. 1995) ceremonial baskets here are called called jin-buka 'her stomach or uterus', and the pandanus mats are often called either jina-bakara 'her stretchmarks', or jin-gochila 'her stomach' (where stretch marks appear). The string bag jerrk, also translates as 'baby net' and is synonymous with the uterus or womb. Apart from obvious shape analogies, these terms refer to the ancestral use of conical bags and mats as containers for unborn children or spirits. In one myth for example the Djangk'awu Sisters carried their spirit children in their mat, releasing them along the way, so here the act of 'opening the mat' symbolises birth. This metaphor is reproduced during ritual when in the past, novices were hidden under conical mats during initiation ceremonies to symbolise their 'rebirth' from childhood into manhood.
The ancestral associations of customary basketry forms (as well as the other readings relating to status, social grouping and so on), indicates that any hierarchical classification according to form/significance has little meaning in Yolngu thought. Even the introduced technique of coil-basketry has been incorporated into women's stylistic repertoires and by teaching each other along lines of residence and kinship it has spread across the width and breadth of the Top End. The incorporation or development of novel techniques is not seen by artists as culturally empty but rather as a positive indicator of the maker's individuality and an expression of unity with others who share the same stylistic techniques.
The very act of gathering materials from one's country to make a fibre item is in itself a confirming activity and from women's statements about their baskets it's clear that they have effectively adapted outside techniques for their own cultural agendas and requirements. So while there is no doubt that non-Indigenous people have incorporated Indigenous creativity into their own world view as converted artefacts they did not necessarily achieve this 'conversion' in Yolngu eyes. Rather, it could be argued that these items became artefacts of engagement, reflecting the active rather than passive role that Indigenous people undertook in these contact exchanges.
The Indigenous language of fibre art is slowly being translated to a wider audience and with it, an assertion of cultural value that certain outside narratives have obscured for decades. The way people talk about their fibre items as markers of identity, memory, individuality, and religious value shows how objects are embedded in the very fabric of their society. While we may acquire a mat or a bag because its shape or utility appeals to us, it travels to us across a vastly different cultural terrain. The emotions that this transaction can evoke are described by Laurie Guraylayla when talking about her aunts Mary Mirdaburrwa and Mable Mayangal.
These two old ladies whenever their works are sent to big cities they get worried because part of this weaving is in their hearts and in their country, you know the country. Plus their spirit is far away. They miss their spirits you know... And before they're sending their weaving to Maningrida Arts and Crafts they talk to it first like, "You will be leaving me and I will be going somewhere else and we will be thinking of you." Yes that's true.5
- Losche, Diane, 1992 Tangled Identities: Anthropological Discourse and Craft, In Noris Ioannou, Craft in Society, an anthology of perspectives. South Fremantle, Fremantle Arts Centre Press,
- Goldsmith, Rev GT, 1931, Our Women Folk, In The Women's Auxiliary for Foreign Missions (WAFM) Link, Nov,1, 9. p6.
- cited in Lovitt, Carolyn, 1996, Containing Aboriginality: a Social History of the Basket Industry in the Methodist Missions of Arnhem Land, Batchelor of Fine Arts, University of Melbourne.
- West, Margie, 1995, Interview with Minni Marabachiba, Yilan. 8 June, translated by Peter Danaja. Museum & Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Unpublished notes.
- West, Margie, 1995, Interview with Laurie Guraylayla, Jimalawa 9 June, Museum & Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Unpublished notes.
