Selves and Others

Abstract

Although she is speaking of Western Arrente “culture,” the words of Austin-Broos (1996) seem to apply equally well to describe a contemporary Aboriginal identity, or more precisely to anticipate this chapter’s focus, to facets of an Aboriginal self that may be widely shared at Numbulwar. It can be seen as “an extremely complicated one; both new and intractable, repositioned and yet unassimilated, dominated and yet recalcitrant.” This complexity emerges as the “primordial” identity is engulfed by “an order of dominance bent on incorporation and production of ’ethnicity.’ ” Yet, “integral to this ethnicity are also dimensions of ontic experience from the past sustained unconsciously in the present” (5).

Is it in the lineaments of our psychological natures that my flourishing as a member of my culture makes me less able to confront the challenges of a radically new future?

—Lear 2006:64