Aboriginal Rights

» woorama - Taboos and Sexism: Aboriginal Cultures Misrepresented

This article by Linda Barwick provides some excellent rebuttal to my argument in Chicks With Didges. She makes some excellent points, most of which I agree with.

"This aims to clarify some misunderstandings of the role of Didjeridu in traditional Aboriginal culture, in particular the popular conception that it is taboo for women to play or even touch a Didjeridu.

While it is true that in the traditional didjeridu accompanied genres of Northern Australia, (e.g. Wangga and Bunggurl) women do not play in public ceremony, in these areas there appears to be few restrictions on women playing in an informal capacity. The area in which there are the strictest restrictions on women playing and touching the Didjeridu appears to be in the south east of Australia, where in fact Didjeridu has only recently been introduced. I believe that the international dissemination of the "taboo" results from it's compatibility with the commercial agendas of New Age niche marketing.

My understanding of Aboriginal culture in Australia has been formed as an academic ethnomusicologist, through acquaintance with the ethnomusicological and anthropological literature as well as through personal contact, during classes and fieldwork, with the Aboriginal people in a number of communities in South Australia, the Northern Territory and New South Wales.

It is true that traditionally women have not played the Didjeridu in ceremony. However let us review the evidence for Aboriginal women playing Didjeridu in informal situations. In discussions with women in the Belyuen community near Darwin in 1995. I was told that there was no prohibition on women playing and in fact several of the older women mentioned a women in the Daly River area who used to play the Didjeridu.
In a discussion with men from Groote Eylandt, Numbulwar and Gunbalanya it was agreed that there was no explicit Dreaming Law that women should not play Didjeridu, it was more that women did not know how to. From Yirrkala, there are reports that while both boys and girls as young children play with toy instruments, within a few years, girls stop playing the instrument in public. There are reports that women engage in preparation of Didjeridus for sale to tourists also playing instruments to test their useability. Reports of women playing the Didjeridu are especially common in the Kimberley and Gulf regions the Westerly and Easterly extremes of it's distribution in traditional music. The Didjeridu has only begun to be played in these areas this century where it accompanies genres originally deriving from Arnhem Land (Bunggurl) or the Daly region (Wangga, Lirrga and Gunborrg)

The clamour of conflicting voices about the use of Didjeridu by women and by outsiders has drawn attention to the potential for international exploitation and appropriation of traditional music and other Aboriginal cultural property. In addition, the debate has drawn to international attention the fact that there are levels of the sacred and the secret in traditional Aboriginal beliefs, many of them restricted according to gender. Perhaps the Didjeridu in this case is functioning as a false front, standing in for other truly sacred and restricted according to Aboriginal ceremonial life that it can not be named in public. In this way, the spiritualising of the Didjeridu not only panders to the commercial New Age niche, but also serves as a means of warning non-Aboriginal people to be wary of inquiring too closely into sacred matters."

Written by Linda Barwick
REF
The Didgeridoo, From Arnhem Land to Internet
Perfect Beat Publications

-- posted by woorama