Aboriginal leaders fight to retain cultural heritage

Aboriginal chic is sweeping Australia, but indigenous leaders complain that culture vultures show scant respect for their heritage. Kalinga Seneviratne of Inter Press Service reports.

SYDNEY (IPS): Earlier this year, the Australian airline QANTAS turned its brand new Boeing 747-400 aircraft into a flying work of Aborigine art.

The plane still has the airline's distinctive red tail with kangaroo motif, but the rest of the aircraft is a splash of the earthy browns, reds and dark greens with white dots that is characteristic of native Australian art. The plane turns heads as it jets in and out of Heathrow, JFK or Narita.

Aboriginal art designs and symbols have long been used to sell Australian products and promote tourism, but indigenous leaders say those who make money out of their heritage show little respect for the Aboriginal people.

QANTAS says it painted the plane precisely out of respect for Aboriginal art and to promote it worldwide. But it is crass commercialization for John Ah Kit, executive director of the indigenous land council Jawoyn Association.

"The fact that the designs were drawn from the culture of the Yanyuwa people of Borrooloola was given scant attention," he says. "What was being promoted was the airline, not Aboriginal culture. And the use of the Aboriginal design was about market positioning, not a celebration of the Yanyuwa people."

"The profit from a single plane-load of passengers would be more than enough to pay for a much-needed kidney dialysis machine for Borrooloola," Ah Kit notes.

Said Ah Kit at the recent Global Cultural Diversity Conference in Sydney: "For the marketers, Aboriginal culture is merely a commodity, there to be strip-mined for commercial profits."

Ah Kit also pointed out that the boomerang has been used as a symbol of Australia even "during the time when our people were not recognized as citizens, and our original title to our lands was deliberately ignored under Australian law".

Tourism has become one of the country's top foreign exchange earners. A government survey in 1992 found that nearly half of visitors to Australia came to experience Aboriginal culture. The country now earns more than US$30 million a year from the sale of indigenous crafts and Aboriginal performing arts.

Aboriginal groups themselves have begun promoting their culture to reinforce their confidence as the original owners of the Australian continent.

Marcia Langton, who chairs the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Council, agrees pride in Aboriginal culture is crucial to their struggle for land rights and racial equality.

"The celebration of our traditional lands and laws through the production of arts and crafts has been part of a process of 'taking back' our country by denying and opposing media and other stereotyping of our people." she says.

But many non-Aboriginal people are making money out of their culture, Ah Kit told IPS. He believes the time has come for the Aboriginal people themselves to take the initiative to improve national legislation to protect intellectual property rights.

"Our involvement in the industry has to be streamlined in a way that people coming to Australia wanting to purchase arts and crafts know fully well that it is a genuine product make by Aboriginal people from the communities," he said in a recent interview.

The National Indigenous Arts Advocacy Association (NIAAA) warns that if copyrights laws are not amended before the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, many non-Aboriginal people will make big business out of indigenous arts.

NIAAA information officer Terri Janke says people will be looking for marketing symbols in the run-up to the games, and indigenous designs are likely to be a popular choice. "Though we are quite happy for that to happen, we're concerned non-Aboriginal artists will be doing Aboriginal designs to meet that need."

Aboriginal arts and crafts are handed down from generation to generation, so the copyright belongs to the community, not to an individual. The Australian Copyrights Act poses problems since it only applies to art in the material form and with a known author.

This means that although an Aboriginal folk story should belong to an entire community, under Australian law the first person who puts it down on paper owns the copyright, says Janke.

Aborigine storyteller Pauline McLeod works with indigenous dance troupes and recites traditional stories in English to bring Aboriginal culture closer to mainstream society, especially to young Australians.

Though well known in Australia through television appearances, McLeod says the indigenous arts and performing industry is still run by the white community and not controlled by Aborigines.

There are more than 700 stories in Aboriginal folklore about how animals got their ways. To get copyright protection under the law, the storyteller has to tell his or her own version.

Under Aboriginal tradition, a storyteller needs the permission of the community to recite the story in public. "That's what we do, and the copyright fee goes to the community who gave permission to tell the story," says McLeod.

McLeod says while she cannot stop non-Aboriginal people from telling indigenous stories, they want to make sure their culture is presented correctly.

The Aboriginal community scored a rare victory in December when a federal court judge ordered a carpet company to pay A$188,000 (US$139,000) in damages for "pirating the cultural heritage" of indigenous Australians.

It was the first copyright case in Australia to assess the relevance of indigenous law and the notion of traditional collective ownership of Aboriginal artwork.

The carpet firm had used works by renowned Aboriginal artists like George Milpurrurru, Banduk Marika and Tim Payunka, copied from a National Art Gallery catalog, on carpets made using cheap Vietnamese labor and sold here at US$3,000.

McLeod welcomed the landmark decision, saying: "It should stop people from ripping off Aboriginal people and our culture."

Noting how the historic 1992 Mabo High Court ruling on native title paved the way for national land rights legislation and the indigenous land fund, Ah Kit views the latest legal victory as the impetus for national recognition of their cultural rights.

Ah Kit sees no problem in incorporating communal copyrights into Australian law. "We will have to ensure everyone is happy," he says. Non-Aborigines should be allowed to reproduce an indigenous bark painting on a T-shirt, tea towel or other products if the community gives its permission.

What the Aboriginal people are fighting for, says Janke, is their right over indigenous art and culture: "They should receive royalties for use of their work and stop inappropriate reproduction of their material."