Representing the Rainbow: Aboriginal culture in an interconnected world.

Merlan, Francesca

Abstract: Stories known and told by Aboriginal peoples as recollections of their past experiences are increasingly being brought into the framework of recent, intensified efforts to recognise and validate Aboriginal culture by collections of narrative and other materials intended for a wider recipient public. This is illustrated by an example of a story about a place, part of a personal and shared store of such stories, which as told locally had retained a situatedness and openness to regular reformulation deriving from its embeddedness in everyday life. Gradually, however, such stories are becoming part of a repertoire of representations being produced as authoritative and illustrative for a wider recipient public, in this case in the broader context of the shift of land tenures and management schemes in remote areas and parklands. In this new context, formulated to communicate to an outside, non-participant observer, such stories are typically invested with a new character representative of Indigenous/non-Indigenous `difference', and beyond the producers' reach and capacity to adjust them. The process involved illustrates some of the tensions between forms of validation and the opening of spaces to new forms of inequality. In this picture, the desires of Indigenous Australians to have stories and histories recorded must be kept in mind.

Keywords: stories, orality/literacy, practice, heritage, objectification, public culture

The last 25 years in Australia have been characterised by `culturalism' (Kahn 1995), that is, by moves to recognise, validate and also to domesticate (Hage 1993) forms of cultural difference associated with subnational collectivities. Australia has developed a view of itself as `multicultural', celebrating the cultural forms of expression of its various immigrant communities. And since about 1970, many liberal-thinking individuals and social institutions have abandoned the view, predominant through the first half of the century, that Australia's Indigenous peoples would necessarily assimilate into the Australian `mainstream', and have assumed instead that they should be assisted to maintain their cultural distinctiveness, as well as to improve their living conditions, through a politics of `self-determination'. This recent quarter-century has seen the growth of an Aboriginal land-rights movement (piecemeal, with continuing debate over national implementation of land-rights measures);(1) the development of heritage legislation which can be used to protect Aboriginal as well as other legacies; and an unprecedented declaration of national parks, the management of which includes the presentation to the public of Aboriginal perspectives on land, sites and 'natural' heritage.

As recreation areas, parks and tourist developments are created, Aborigines are often asked to provide information about the character of places and their Indigenous use. Frequently, too, they are asked what might be appropriate tourist uses of places. In the demand made upon Aboriginal peoples to produce information for consumption by others becomes visible the embeddedness of their representations of places in situations, occasions, events--in the practical projects of living, and in the recall of such occasions. There also becomes evident a certain reluctance on their part to detach representations from that embeddedness, from what was the living context of the formation and reformulation of narrative.

Researchers collect information from Aboriginal peoples, much of it past-oriented, concerning such matters as how they moved about and used places; whether there is anything special about places that might restrict use of them; whether there are places where visitors are not allowed to go; whether there are places where men may go but not women and children; what rock paintings mean and whether they are more or less restricted; what sorts of things they may and may not be allowed to do in places; and so on. Subsequently, the results of such information gathering are prepared as `interpretative' materials, reduced to writing and made into displays for presentation to the public. Such transformations are typically associated with giving to the information a more fixed and canonical character than it appears to have in Aboriginal ways of telling about places, which tend to have a `narrative' rather than a `definitive' character--that is, to be about what happened at a place, rather than about what the place `is' essentially. Research endeavours (and perhaps those particularly focused on special-purpose consultancy issues, as opposed to those where the researcher becomes a longer-term participant in daily life) tend to produce a rational-critical focus upon questions about the properties of places as if these were enduring, rather than subject to readjustment in the processes of living.

To some extent, all the matters mentioned above concerning the conditions of use of places and others, are of importance to Aborigines and may be things they have talked about or decided practically in determining where to go, how to move about, what to do, and so on. There may of course be places which they have not visited recently and so do not have much to say about them, either as human `camp' or enduring `country' imbued with Dreaming (see Myers 1986 for this dual character of places). But my concern is not so much here with disused places, as with ones that remain fairly well known but concerning which Aboriginal persons do not generally make abstract, defining statements about their significance.

People can tell stories about such places and talk about what they know of their own and others' use of them over time. Such stories may strongly suggest what Aborigines think is right and wrong to do there, or what is likely to happen there. They may be prepared to specify conditions of tourist visitation. But they may not give essentialising formulations about the place and may resist questions which seem to try to wrest such formulations from them. In many cases, it is unclear in any event whether Aboriginal persons would apply to outsiders their own former standards of use of a place. When they say something less than definitive about places, or when they appear to change what they say, they may be criticised for their lack of certainty or their readiness to change their story. But one might instead see the lack of definitiveness as part of a tradition of the ongoing determination of meanings in practice, and a disinclination to articulate meanings detached from the practical projects and occasions which have typically been the moments for continuing confirmation and reformulation of meaning. The substantial embeddedness of oral tradition about places in the practical projects of being there, and recalling those events, amounts to a suppleness of tradition which allows and presupposes continuous reformulation of meanings.

Gunlom is a large Arnhem plunge-pool, now within Stage Three of Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory. Like all deep Arnhem rock-pools, Gunlom is associated with Bolung, Rainbow Serpent. People say that when they were foot-walking around these areas, they were careful because of the Rainbow in the deep part of the water. They did not camp at the rock-pool but some distance away, on the nearby South Alligator River. From the early 1950s, however, there was uranium exploration and some mining in this area, and a great deal of use of the pool for swimming by outsiders. In fact, in 1975 Gunlom was incorporated as a recreation reserve, and since 1987 has been part of Kakadu National Park.

Although the shallow water is not thought to be too dangerous, many older Aborigines, especially, say that a Rainbow Serpent lives in the deeper part of the pool into which a waterfall drops seasonally from the high cliffs above. When you ask them if there is still a Rainbow in the water today, as I and others have done, you may get any answer from `yes' to `maybe' to `I don't know', to the idea that the Rainbow may have been killed or driven out by the increased usage of the area. This kind of decontextualised or abstract question, which aims to produce a definitive answer, in fact may produce a variety of answers. Yet on occasions when I have been camped there, I have known people to attribute unusual gusty storms to the Rainbow's anger at such extensive use of the place. This kind of occasion is very likely to be taken as confirmation of the Rainbow's presence, obviating any question about whether the creature `is' or `is not' there. I suspect it is largely through this kind of occasion that the traditions about the Rainbow have been most strongly reproduced. When there are no such manifestations which suggest or indicate the Rainbow's presence, Aborigines may suggest that tourist use has helped to `quieten' or settle the Rainbow, which is thought to be a dangerous and destructive force. There is a feeling that outsiders can settle and deplete the power of the Rainbow, who may, however, react with special force to the presence of unknown Aboriginal persons. Here and elsewhere, occasional tourist drownings are attributed to the Rainbow Serpent, and often cause Aboriginal people to shake their heads and say that outsiders do not know or understand the country or take care the way they should.

So the existence of the Rainbow can be confirmed in a number of different ways and through various kinds of occasions. It can be seen as `settled down' due to repeated visitation by outsiders, or as being angered by human visitation and use of the area. Aborigines who tell about previous events tend not to moralise. Their attitude is that, as with all complex processes and events, only time and the unfolding of other events will show the significance of what happened or maybe reveal alternative interpretations or shed another light on things. There is not likely to be any rule-like statement forthcoming about use of the pool, or what will happen, in abstraction from the situations, or the recalling of situations, in which such meanings are invoked and their relevance reproduced.

Another example will illustrate what I have called the tendency towards a `narrative' rather than a `definitive' mode of representing the significance of places. Edith Falls (or Leliyn, as it is called) is, by now, a very well-known tourist spot 48 km northwest of `Katherine. It is a steep-sided plunge-pool, with a seasonal waterfall. Aborigines used to move across this country, using this place as a main stopover between Katherine and other major water sources and destinations on the Katherine River, the South Alligator and the Ferguson. People who regularly frequented Katherine town would also go up the escarpment and into the Edith River system where they could be in the bush and still have a relatively short walking trip into town. Thus, Leliyn was near to town by Aboriginal standards in the days of foot-walking and bush life, but fairly far by European standards. It remained something of an Aboriginal retreat up until World War II.

The war period was a watershed as far as use of this place went. The massing of troops around Katherine saw much greater use of all such potential recreation areas than before. This intensification of use by Whitefellas is memorialised in the stories of those older Aborigines who moved around this area north of Katherine. During the Katherine Land Claim, in the 1980s, they told of large bleached bones being found in a cave at Edith Falls, which they took to be the bones of the Rainbow Serpent. Now, in the recent period of much-intensified tourism, many visits to this place have been made and Aboriginal understandings of this place are much sought after. Questions are asked: `What is the story of this place?' `Is there any way in which this area is restricted?' Those who know some details of what Aboriginal persons say might ask: `Does the story of the finding of the bones mean that the Rainbow Serpent is dead and gone?'

But my experience is that the way Aborigines themselves talk about this place--which, as I have explained, has been a bit of a remote spot and a preserve for them and outsiders alike--emphasises continuing situational interpretation of what the place is like and whether the Rainbow exists, rather than any simple statement as to whether it is alive or dead. Consider the story told by an older Jawoyn man, SB,(2) about this place a few years ago. The part I give you here features confrontation between the army and the Rainbow Serpent during the wartime period:

 Well this thing they been go
 all the army
 they been go down la water
 and that diver man him get that glass and put nose
 he got hole inside
 well that man been go
 him find out that thing with a red, one like this sort of
 lid
 he said him turn back hey I find `im
 something there with a red
 well three man been go down
 get that thing arrow
 they said oh go get that
 we pick'im up that thing
 they get that thing rope underneath the water
 and then they said put that thing when you kill'im
 hook'im up
 they said all right
 well anyway
 two bloke they been go in inside
 get in with a hook
 well they said all right we'll hook'im up
 take this fella outside
 you know he been try that rainbol
 now that bulldozer been pull'im grader
 bulldozer and grader
 they said come on keep pull'im
 nother three bloke been stand'in up with a rifle
 well they said all right
 we get it now
 keep pull'im all the way
 all the way him head been come out
 try get'im that lot people
 now they shot'im with a rifle
 they said go on pull'im outside
 pull'im break'im
 him like that buffalo rib-bone
 yeah all right we got it now
 and next minute they said all right
 another canoe they said ah just leave'im
 they said all right we leave'im here
 next minute when they come back they see'im layin
 down
 that nother bloke been layin down there inside
 might be him wife or him husband
 well this rainbol come along
 nighttime
 he took that dead body
 ... that nother one of him mate
 he took his body take'im inside
 ... soon as one Chinaman oh one army been get killed
 there
 that thing rainbol been kill'im
 what he been swim around there la water
 now that two rainbol been talk about we kill this man
 they been kill'im drowned'im
 one trousers and one shirt been layin down there
 they been try waitin for him how long that man come
 out
 they said all right
 that man gone all right
 rainbol been kill'im
 rainbol him been kill'im im
 anyway they been get out front there
 and camp now big rain been come
 big storm
 just forget about, go away from this place
 nother way we might get killed
 well you know they all went away
 that rainbol he never been dead
 gerrung wal-joyinay
 because that nother one
 him wake'im up from that hole Edith Falls
 well that man he said all right you can't find'im
 that dead body been layin' down there
 but that body he been go in la water
 that's the way he been kill'im every people
 that story he been say all right
 we'll have to get out from this place
 nother way all the army gone
 they been all go way now
 all the army been gone
 any more been stop there they gotta get killed
 they sposeta get killed that mob people

Standard English line-by-line gloss:

 Well, this story, they went
 all the soldiers
 they went down to the water
 and the diver got a mask and put it on
 there was a hole [under water]
 well, that man went
 he found something red, like this sort of lid(3)
 he said, it's turned back, hey, I've found something
 something red
 well, three men went down
 with that arrow kind of thing [spear-gun]
 they said, Oh go get it
 we'll get that thing
 they got the thing [with a] rope underneath the water
 and they said, put that thing in, when you hit [spear] it
 hook it up
 they said, all right
 well, anyway,
 two fellows went in [the cave]
 got in with a hook device
 they said, OK, we'll hook it up
 take this creature outside
 you know, they tried with that Rainbow
 a bulldozer and grader pulled on it
 bulldozer and grader
 they said, come on, keep on pulling
 another three men were standing up with a rifle
 well they said, OK
 we'll get it now
 keep on pulling it right out
 all the way, its head came out
 that bunch of people tried to get it
 then they shot at it with a rifle
 they said, go on, pull it out
 pull it, break it
 it was like buffalo rib-bones [large in size]
 yeah, OK, we got it now
 and then they said, OK
 another boat [`canoe'], they said, oh, just leave it
 they said, OK, we'll leave it [the Rainbow body] here
 and then when they came back they saw it lying down
 another one was lying down there inside [the water]
 maybe its mate
 well, a Rainbow came along
 in the night
 and took that dead [Rainbow] body
 ... another one of its mates
 it took its body down underneath
 ... a Chinese person, oh, soldier got killed there
 the Rainbow killed it
 what it did, it swam around there in the water
 and then the two Rainbows discussed it, We'll kill this
 guy
 they killed him, drowned him
 a pair of trousers and a shirt were lying down there
 they [others] waited to see how long before the man
 would come out [of the water]
 they said, all right
 that man's really gone
 the Rainbow's killed him
 the Rainbow's the one that killed him
 anyhow, they got out of there
 and camped, a big rain came up
 a big storm
 [let's] just forget it, go away from here
 otherwise we might get killed
 so, you know, they all went away
 that Rainbow had not died
 it hadn't died
 because the other one
 was waked up from its pool at Edith Falls
 well, the man said, OK, you can't find it
 its dead body was lying down there
 but the body went into the water
 that's the way it [Rainbow] gets everybody
 so the story goes, he said, OK
 we'll have to get out of here
 so all the army left
 they all went away
 the whole army went
 if any had stayed they would've been killed
 they were meant to be killed [if they had stayed]

SB's first story describes the attempt to cage the Rainbow and pull it out. People see something red in the water--an indication of the special nature of the creature. But they pull it out anyhow and leave the body. Another comes along in the night and it returns to the water. The next episodes involve the killing of a person, first said to be Chinese, later an `army' (soldier). Efforts of the army to eradicate the Rainbow are foiled by its return to the water, and the presence, unknown to them, of more than one Rainbow. The Rainbows between themselves plan to kill the `army'. The soldiers are afraid and decide the best thing is to `bleed out' (go away) and leave the Rainbow. There is also physical evidence of the Rainbow and its size in the reference to bones, which are still said to be present near Edith Falls and `like buffalo rib bones'.

The story seems to tell triumphantly of the army's inability to kill the Rainbow. Caging it does not work, nor does violent extraction by `grader and `dozer, because, even after it apparently dies, it can come back to life. The story features verbs of violent agency (hook up, pull, shoot, break), a measure of the effort put into their task by the army. One thing they don't know is that the Rainbow is multiple--it breeds in the water, and so even the death of one would not necessarily destroy `it'. The existence of Rainbow `bones' does not unequivocally spell the death of the creature for, as Munn (1970) has shown, one of the modes of ancestral transformation into landscape is the externalisation of parts of the body by Dreaming beings who may continue to act, create and move.

In this story, the Rainbow is seen as dangerous. Often, it is described as combining male and female properties. It shows aversion as a native of place to the foreign sweat and smells of persons it does not recognise, and it makes a stormy response to intrusions by unknown persons. It is associated with rock-pools and deep water, and Aborigines usually say that one should not `bogey' (bathe, swim) in such water. To do so is to risk making rain clouds form and high winds blow. The Rainbow may swallow its victims and/or is sometimes depicted as having put them on its back and carried them to their doom. These ways of thinking about the Rainbow, and its significance as a native of place who responds angrily to foreign intrusions, raises issues of certain kinds for Aborigines, more or less explicitly, when they see outsiders swimming in these pools and behaving incautiously. `Do these outsiders have no law?' is one question they sometimes ask as they see visitors move around in ways that seem to them incautious, even foolhardy. But others are: `Is there a new law? Are we in new times? How and to whom does the new law apply: to outsiders or to Aborigines?' Thus, Aboriginal persons may have to live with considerable indeterminacy, and I have often seen people swimming in rock-pools, fishing there, but always with these kinds of ideas in mind, which may become more or less relevant, depending on events.

SB's story illustrates how what he has to say about the Rainbow's existence is embedded in narrative, indeed, a narrative that appears to hark back to some events that took place around the time of World War II. Such stories as these often suggest the efforts of outsiders to eradicate the Rainbow and, like SB's, may strongly suggest that such efforts remain incomplete. But to ask him general questions like, `Is the Rainbow still there?', I have found, is to press for a kind of answer which would detach representation from the practical occasions through which the Rainbow tradition has been reproduced by him and by other Aborigines.

When people like SB are asked about places like Edith Falls--`What is the story?', `What may tourists do here?', `Is there any place they should not go?', or the like--the questioners are looking for straightforward, definitive and generalisable answers. The principal object of such questions is to get someone like him to make of his memories and thoughts a series of remarks or descriptions about the place which can be displayed as `the' Aboriginal significance of the place, and extended beyond his capacity to formulate either exemplary stories or answers to these questions. Such canonical forms of representation strive for an authority which is independent of the range of activities within which meanings were and are made and modified. These are kinds of descriptions framed `for an observer about an object observed but not participated in'; all such descriptions assume an observer's stance (Taylor 1985:255). From such a point of view, remarks and descriptions should be definitive and enable us to be able to say with clarity what has happened, what the events `mean'; for example, `Is the Rainbow dead?' and `Is that what its bones signify?'. SB's story tells of the Rainbow's apparent death and its revitalisation through the actions of another Rainbow. It compares and relates the Rainbow to 'buffalo rib bone' but without ever exactly specifying how that relationship is to be understood. In these ways, SB's story illustrates something even more fundamental about Aboriginal `culture' than such epitomes could. Understanding is a grasping of what things mean and knowing how to interpret them and how to respond in the course of events, and is not about giving a definitive representation of them as an independent reality.

This paper provides some ethnographic perspective on what has been a longstanding series of debates about the differences between oral and written traditions. It is reminiscent of Derrida's (1967) discussion of the tension between views of speech as direct, unmediated truth-telling versus writing as a source of fixity and rational-critical thought. What has been said here does not support the view of oral traditions as unmediated truth-telling. Rather, it supports the view that oral traditions like those considered here necessarily have a suppleness deriving from their embeddedness in practices which provide occasions for their regular, even if minute, reformulation. There are certain aspects of the Rainbow tradition, though, that are clearly more general `ground', or background, against which the figural quality of particular real-life and narrated events stands out. These more general aspects include the association (widely, throughout much of northern Australia) of the Rainbow Serpent with particular kinds of topographic features, in particular, deep and dark waterholes, and a set of ideas about the nature of interaction between people and places that tends to arouse the Rainbow Serpent to destructive response. Against this general background, narrative details make sense and allow Aborigines to presume that storms, clouds and rain may be attributed to the Rainbow on particular occasions. Thus, for example, in SB's story of the army and the Rainbows, any question about whether it/they are alive or dead is to be understood through the narration of events, rather than through any explicit questioning or articulation of their condition or presence.

The aspiration of researchers and consultants to establish more fixed and generalisable understandings about places derives from their view of aspects of their task as ultimately oriented towards a. wider recipient public. That public will necessarily have an observer's stance, and thus an orientation towards representations which are general and enduring beyond producers' reach and capacity to adjust them. Researchers who work with Indigenous communities for long periods also develop an understanding of the potential incongruities between efforts to produce publicly consumable information and the extent to which the vitality of tradition depends upon a degree of instability and constant readjustment of it in living practice. Today, given the disposition of dominant liberal societies to preserve difference, ongoing Indigenous association with parks and heritage areas occurs to some extent within contexts of documentation of them.

NOTES

(1.) The recent land-rights movement has culminated in the High Court Mabo judgement of 1992, and the passage of the Native Title Act 1993. The former recognised the persistence of `native title' with respect to a claims case in the Torres Strait; the latter recognises the possibility that native title may survive elsewhere in Australia and sets out a complex regime according to which native title claims cases may be pursued and other interests accommodated. One important effect of both is to recognise the `justiciability' of native title at the common law, thus giving it a status relatable to, and within, the Anglo-Australian system of law and making it potentially tractable within a rationalised regime as defined by the Act.

(2.) Due to his recent death, in order to prevent offence but also leave a trace of acknowledgement for locals and family, the name of the narrator has been reduced to initials.

(3.) SB was tapping on the lid of a tin of Log Cabin tobacco, which is bright orange.

REFERENCES

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Munn, N. 1970 The Transformation of Subjects into Objects in Walbiri and Pitjantjatjara Myth. In R. Berndt (ed.), Australian Aboriginal Anthropology, University of Western Australia, Perth, 141-56.

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Taylor, C. 1985 Theories of Meaning. In Human Agency and Language: Philosophical Papers, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, 248-91.

Francesca Merlan Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, The Australian National University, Canberra francesca.merlan@anu.edu.au