Noel Pearson is a
lawyer, Director of Cape
York Partnerships, and
a prophetic figure in
Australian Indigenous
society. As such he lives
on the perilous scree
between cultures. He
addressed the Earth
Dialogues 2006 in
Brisbane on July 23 on the subject of identity. Here
are some extracts from his keynote address.
How we view ourselves and how we view
others in society – in other words how
we identify – is critical to whether, in
circumstances of diversity, we are able to find and
maintain unity.
Identity is key to both violence and peace
between the peoples of the earth. If identity is not
always the cause of conflict between humans, it
inevitably becomes the marker of conflict.
Opponents and friends in any social conflict
are marked according to some form of identity,
whether political, cultural, religious, social or
economic.
Identity is ever-present in most forms of conflict.
It is invoked or denied in order to justify the basis
of enmity or amity between humans.
I have long considered that we labour under
impoverished conceptions of identity, and have
long believed that we need a better metaphor
for popular comprehension of how peoples with
varied identities come together to form a united
nation.
The American metaphor of the ‘melting pot’ is
the most famous of the identity metaphors. But for
people concerned that the melting pot implies an
utter assimilation of all the diverse ingredients into
a muddy soup – the melting pot is not an adequate
capturing of the diversity of identities within a
nation.
But when we ask, “Is there a metaphor which
captures our common understanding of identity in
society?” the answer is no. Rather there are a few
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It is the same with groups. Groups may be
formed around a dominant characteristic such
as ethnicity or religion – but the individuals or
subgroups that make up the group will also harbour
layers of identity.
I first thought about layered identities when
I considered my own Aboriginal identity. I am
patrilineally descended from a group whose
language, Guugu Warra, is now extinct. My great
grandfather spoke this language and his estate
was called Bagaarrmugu in the language of the
neighbouring nation called the Guugu Yimithirr.
My great grandfather spoke his own language as
well as Guugu Yimithirr and many other languages
of neighbouring groups. Multi-lingualism was a
necessary feature of life in classical times.
My grandfather became a Guugu
Yimithirr speaker – a language his
people spoke, but did not own
in classical times
With the colonial destruction of the Guugu
Warra speakers, my grandfather, who was removed
to the Cape Bedford Lutheran Mission, became
a Guugu Yimithirr speaker: a language his people
spoke, but did not own in classical times.
My great grandfather who continued to live
a traditional life remained in contact with my
grandfather who lived in the mission; my family’s
connection with our ancestral lands was therefore
not broken.
My father and I grew up in the mission as
Guugu Yimithirr people, which we are in terms of
the history of the past century, but not in classical
terms.
My mother was born in Kuku Yalanji country,
Guugu Yimithirr’s neighbours to the south. From her
I learned the Kuku Yalanji language.
As well as local clan affiliations, there are larger
group affiliations around language and cross-clan
kinship and land tenure systems.
It is simply not possible to understand traditional
Aboriginal identity in a singular, reductive way.
On top of the complexity of traditional identities,
there are the identities that have arisen out of my
history.
I am a member of a community that was gathered
together by governmental fiat into a mission, where
Page 3
the place of my Indigenous Australian people in
this their own country.
I have a strong intellectual appreciation for all
those who serve in our country’s armed forces. I
consider few things more honourable in citizens
than service in the armed forces. In this I share the
humility of Samuel Johnson.
But on ANZAC day, which is the subject of
a growing patriotic identification on the part
of younger generations of Australians, I feel a
faint nausea. Two of my maternal Aboriginal
grandparents served in France in World War I, but
still I feel alienated about ANZAC Day. I suspect
I feel alienated because my grandparents’ service
to their country did not make them citizens when
they returned to Australia.
I feel alienated because I find it hard to stomach
the sight of white Australians saying “Lest We
Forget” at the shrines of ANZAC whilst vigorously
seeking to forget what happened to the country’s
indigenous peoples.
People once used a dead metaphor
– “balkanisation” – to evoke the splitting of a
field into sects, groups, little nodes of power.
Now, on the dismembered corpse of Yugoslavia,
whose “cultural differences” have been set free
by the death of Communism, we see what that
stale figure of speech once meant. A Hobbesian
world – the war of all on all, locked in blood-feud
and theocratic hatred, the reductio ad insanitatem of
America’s mild and milky multiculturalism.
Against this ghastly background we now have
our own conservatives promising a “cultural war”,
while ignorant radicals orate about “separatism”.
They cannot know what demons they are
frivolously invoking. If they did, they would fall
silent in shame.
Reasoning and individual choice
must guide the resolution of these
competing affiliations
Indigenous Australian identity is often said to be
so intimately connected with the organisation of
our traditional society that it will cease to exist if
we embrace modernity.
In the modern world people are far too eager to
categorise all other people according to a system of
singular, exclusive identities.
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The
unity
of
the
nation
depends
upon
the
strength
of
its
bonds
and
the
bridges. This
is
both
a matter of
quality
and quantity of
the
bonding
and
bridging
institutions,
networks
and
relationship facilittors.
A
country that relies on bare
patriotic devotion
of
individuals
and
groups
to
the
nation
does
not
gain the strength that
comes from the overlapping
connections
between
citizens
based
around
a
full
range of
commonalities.
Bonding
ties
are
important
because
they
give
expression
to primary
and proximate relationships
in society. Bridging ties are important because they
increase
recognition
of
wider
affiliations
between
individuals
right
across
society –
even
between
cultural strangers.
Sen
puts
his
finger
on
the
main
problem
with multiculturalism,
and
this
crucial
insight
fl ows
from
the
analysis
of
what
I
have
called
layered
identities and Sen has called ‘affiliations’.
vague concepts that swirl around in the collective
consciousness.
Segregation, separatism, apartheid, ethnic
cleansing, the clash of civilisations lurk in the
background of discussions on assimilation and
integration across the world.
We do not have a proper theory of
identity upon which to base an
optimal model. The prevailing theory
of identity, including that theory which underpins
multiculturalism, is flawed.
There are two great problems with the dominant
popular understanding of identity –
Firstly, the identity of a group in society is
assumed to be singular – arising from some salient
characteristic such as ethnicity or religion.
Secondly, the identity of an individual within
such a group is also assumed to be singular – again
arising from some salient feature of the group of
which she is taken to be a member.
I first thought about layered
identities when I considered my
own Aboriginal identity
I have long considered that individuals and
groups possess ‘layers of identity’. These layers
include identification with cultural and linguistic
groups; religions; places of birth, upbringing,
residency and death; local and regional geographic
communities; regional, provincial and national
polities; professional, literary, recreational,
philosophical and other sub-cultural groups.
Each individual harbours many layers of identity.
She shares many of her layers with her closest kin,
but there are some layers that she does not share
with them.
She shares these other layers of identity with
other members of society, sometimes long distant
from and unknown to her. In the same way other
members of her family share layers of identity
with other strangers in society, which she does not
share.
Page 2
my paternal grandfather and grandmother rebuilt what would become the Pearson clan out of the
ruins of traditional society.
We live in and are intimately connected with a
place called Hope Vale – we know its place-names,
the events that have taken place there, we know
its contours: its sand dunes, rivers, rainforests,
mountains, swamps and reefs. We have camped and
fished and hunted and walked around this place
which we love dearly and which we would not
hesitate to call ‘home’, even though our traditional
country is not at Hope Vale.
We also identify as Christians and specifically
as Lutherans. We connect with the members of
another Lutheran mission nearby at Wujal Wujal, on
the basis of our traditional, maternal (my mother is
from there), and Lutheran connections. We also feel
a connection with our fellow Aboriginal Lutherans
at Hermannsburg in Central Australia and Yalata in
South Australia – though we do not know them.
Stranger still we feel a connection with that
relatively small group of German and Scandinavian
descendants of Lutherans in Australia – one of
the more culturally insular denominations it
must be admitted – with whom we share a
common conviction in Martin Luther’s theological
proposition that we are saved by the grace of God,
and not by our own straps.
Even stranger still, we feel some remnant
connection with Neuendettelsau in Bavaria, from
which the Lutheran mission to Cape Bedford was
launched in 1886. It is, in the striking words of one
of our Indigenous pastors, a spiritual wellspring for
the people of my village.
We also identify as Bama. Variants of the word
Bama mean Aboriginal person in the languages
across Cape York Peninsular. Of course we
also identify as Murri Aboriginal people from
Queensland, as distinct from Kooris down south
and Noongahs out west. We also identify as
Aborigines of Australia, who share a common
layer of identity from Tasmania to Cape York, from
Brisbane to Perth. The Aboriginal flag – one of
the world’s greatest flags if I may say so – is also a
potent symbol of our identification.
When it comes to patriotism my feelings
about identity are more volatile. Of
course I am an Australian, but I am not
necessarily a proud one. I feel too troubled about
Page 3
As is obvious from the title of his recent book
– Identity and Violence – Amartya Sen is trying to
find solutions to much more severe conflicts than
we will ever face in Australia. However, his general
argument is, I believe, useful for us Indigenous
Australians and for non-Indigenous Australians
when we try to find the answers to the questions
about my people’s place in this country.
Sen’s main thought is that we should recognise
‘competing affiliations’ or ‘competing identities’.
Taken out of context, those expressions may
sound alarming. But Sen is not at all referring
to ‘competing loyalties’ or lack of loyalty to the
sovereign state where one lives. On the contrary,
Sen’s thought is that globally we could reduce
what is usually labelled ‘sectarian’ or ‘ethnic’ or
‘religious’ conflicts by recognising the plurality of
our identities and their diverse implications.
I do not think that recognition of Indigenous
Australians’ identities must lead to disunity and
isolation. The goal of indigenous policy should be
simultaneous successful integration and recognition
of the survival of Indigenous Australian distinctness.
Rather than being mutually exclusive, I believe
that successful integration is a precondition for the
survival of distinctness and vice versa.
Sen does not ignore the fact that what I have
called the layers of identity often compete with
each other. It is reasoning and individual choice
that must guide the resolution of these competing
affiliations – not fundamentalism and an illusion of
singular identity. Individuals and groups are assisted
in this process of reasoning by having a more
mature theory of identity and a model for unity
and diversity which is not reductive or essentialist.
I wish to add a dimension to the concept of
layered identities that is borrowed from the literature
on social capital. Professor Robert Putnam, in
his now well-known writings on social capital,
identified two forms within societies – bridging
social capital and bonding social capital.
Bonding social capital refers to relations
among relatively homogenous groups (such as an
ethnic, religious or socio-economic group), and
it strengthens the social ties within the particular
group. Bridging social capital, on the other hand,
refers to relations between heterogeneous groups,
and it strengthens ties across such groups. Examples
of bridging social capital include the civil rights
movement and ecumenical religious organisations.
Page 4
‘Culture’, implying ethnicity and religion is not the only layer of identity. There are many other layers of identifi cation with which individuals in a particular ethnic or religious group will affi liate. Societies that sponsor ‘cultural’ diversity to the exclusion of other affi liations reinforce the problem of ethnicity/religion being seen as the dominant singular affi liation. Cultures become identity blocs.
A
mature society will be one where individuals
ultimately
pr
ior
itise
their
competing
affi liations
according
to
a
reasoning
which
is
alive
to all
of
their affi liations
across
society. The
challenge
for policy is to supply this under
standing
of layered affi liation, and how this can be consistent
with diversity and national
unity.
www.brisbanefestival.com.au/earthdialogues