Remote Freedoms

Politics, Personhood and Human Rights in Aboriginal Central Australia

Sarah E. Holcombe

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781503606487
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Kultur- & Sozialanthropologie

What does it mean to be a "rights-holder" and how does it come about? Remote Freedoms explores the contradictions and tensions of localized human rights work in very remote Indigenous communities.

Based on field research with Anangu of Central Australia, this book investigates how universal human rights are understood, practiced, negotiated, and challenged in concert and in conflict with Indigenous rights. Moving between communities, government, regional NGOs, and international UN forums, Sarah E. Holcombe addresses how the notion of rights plays out within the distinctive and ambivalent sociopolitical context of Australia, and focusing specifically on Indigenous women and their experiences of violence. Can the secular modern rights-bearer accommodate the ideals of the relational, spiritual Anangu person? Engaging in a translation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights into the local Pintupi-Luritja vernacular and observing various Indigenous interactions with law enforcement and domestic violence outreach programs, Holcombe offers new insights into our understanding of how the global rights discourse is circulated and understood within Indigenous cultures. She reveals how, in the postcolonial Australian context, human rights are double-edged: they enforce assimilation to a neoliberal social order at the same time that they empower and enfranchise the Indigenous citizen as a political actor. Remote Freedoms writes Australia's Indigenous peoples into the international debate on localizing rights in multicultural terms.

Chapter 1

The Act of Translation

Emancipatory Potential and Apocryphal Revelations

The study of language use, enhanced by ethnographic witnessing, opens up a possibility of considering how human rights might actually be universal.

Hastrup 2001, in Englund 2006: 47

IN LATE 2009 THE UNITED NATIONS proudly noted that, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was the most translated document in the world, at that stage clocking up 370 translations.¹ Since then, there have been approximately 100 more translated versions added to the UN website. The Pintupi-Lurijta version was, as far as I can ascertain, the 464th translation, going on line in October 2015.² It was also the first translated version in an Australian Indigenous language. Why has it taken this long for the Declaration to be translated into an Australian language? One of the reasons for this was that, according to linguist Jane Simpson, who called attention to this gap on the sixtieth anniversary of the Declaration in 2008: “Translating it would not be easy” (Simpson 2008). Although this was somewhat of a throwaway comment on an informal blogging site, it is useful to recall here because, though the product of a translated version is of intrinsic value in itself, just as valuable is the translation process as an anthropological project. The fact of intercultural complexity, as revealed in the dialogical processes of interpretation, is deeply revealing. As Pitarch, discussing the translation of the Declaration into the Mayan language Tzeltal, indicates:

In the case of translation between European languages—which share a history of moral and European ideas derived from Christianity and the Enlightenment—the difference is hardly perceptible . . . In contrast, between more distant languages and cultures, the linguistic translation implies an intercultural translation. (2008: 91)

In the translation context, the semantic properties of English and possible equivalent Anangu concepts are juxtaposed, and the limitations and possibilities of the universal human rights discourse are imagined. The dialogical properties of the Declaration are almost limitless—as the concepts embodied within it range across “Anglo key cultural concepts” (per Wierzbicka 1997) such as “freedom,” “conscience,” “reason,” “equality,” and the concept of “rights” itself, as well as other deeply held cultural constructs, including private property, freedom of information, the rule of law, and the notion of “social order.” Although this chapter draws extensively on this idea of language embodying “key cultural concepts,” I prefer to preface the idea with the term “English” rather than “Anglo.” This recognizes that the English language, rather than the racialized category Anglo, has been the vehicle for a global cultural movement (see Pennycook 1994, 1998; Rafael 1988).³

The discussions held with the Anangu translators, as these revealed competing points of anchorage between Anangu conceptions of personhood and English conceptions, were as of much analytical interest as the final translated outcome (see Appendix). Nevertheless, although there are some distinctive and closely held Anangu values that do butt up against key English cultural values, the point of elaborating them is not to render them as secondary or as culturally relative lesser versions of the “universal.” Rather, it is to acknowledge the limitations of this universal rights discourse and to develop or build on other areas of possibility. In doing so we begin to imagine a local culture of human rights even at the same time as it is clear that the state (in this case notably the Northern Territory government) is deeply dismissive of many rights fundamentals such as those embodied in the rule of law, as outlined in Articles 6 to 11. As will be discussed, these are the apocryphal revelations of this chapter’s title.

This chapter examines the translation process, taking on Merry’s challenge that there is a critical need for conceptual clarification of culture in human rights practice (2006a: 11). This process of translation and dialogue has actively exposed many of these assumptions while drawing out specific Anangu interpretations and thus local priorities that challenge these assumptions and indeed operate as valid in their stead. This then opens the conversation to an emergent multicultural conception of human rights (per Santos 2002).

It was important, nonetheless, that the final translation remained true to the moral and political principles espoused in the Declaration; otherwise we were simply on our own tangent and creating another “Kalgaringi” or “Barunga” statement. This was challenging in many ways as the dry legal and instrumentalist language is, frankly, somewhat repellent. And there are a number of Articles that are not immediately relevant for many remote living Anangu, but this is not to say that in the future this may not change. Indeed, in this vein the translated version might also be regarded as a first-generation draft, just as the translated Luritja version of the Bible is updated as language and experience change.⁴ As a result, the two translators, the linguist (Ken Hansen) and I, simultaneously had our eyes on the present context and making the ideas as locally relevant as possible, while also considering alternative future contexts and the possible educational value of the norm-making instrument: its emancipatory potential. During the many translation sessions when we worked on various drafts, there was a real sense that the Anangu translators, principally Lance Macdonald and Sheila Joyce Dixon, were part of a global conversation. In this conversation we discussed the historical evolution of “rights” and their pluralist and inclusive ideology and imagined the many other groups that have also translated the Declaration and their diverse contexts. Yet, the first concerted translation came after more than a year of fieldwork visits, as initial discussions focused only on core concepts and principles.

The need for a concerted translation of the thirty Articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Preamble emerged when it became clear that very few of the Anangu whom I was working with, including community leaders and trained translators, had heard the words “universal human rights.” This language was not available to these, and presumably other, Aboriginal people in remote communities. And although I am far from suggesting or advocating a simple equation of translation equals emancipation, it seems to me that this almost universal lack of awareness (via lack of dissemination) of this language is symptomatic of the state’s attitude to human rights. It is the regulatory dimensions, which principally entail responsibilities, that are the focus of government attention under the gloss of “good governance.” As a result, the possibility of Anangu engaging across the whole spectrum of rights has not been enabled, as the title of the Land Rights News piece about this translation project: “Translating Rights for All,” suggests. This same news piece goes on to state: “Unless you know about your rights, how can you speak up for them and also think about them and what they might mean for you?” (Land Rights News 2015: 9). The last section of this chapter articulates several of the more explicitly local renderings of a range of Articles and what they mean for Anangu, or at least how they were interpreted by the translators as locally meaningful.

I readily acknowledge that “it is an established fact in Translation Studies . . . that if a dozen translators tackle the same poem [or document], they will produce a dozen different versions” (Bassnett in Englund 2006: 60). Yet beneath the variations, Bassnett observes, ought to exist an “invariant core” that is common to all translations of a single work. Although I hope the translation team (Macdonald, Dixon, Holcombe, and Hansen) have found that invariant core, as this is an intercultural dialogue it can only be approximate as issues of commensurability are foregrounded.

This chapter is fundamentally a methodological one, as it explores the dialogical work of this translation as a socially situated practice. This concept of dialogue is useful, as it seems to me that one of the core properties of the Declaration is its potential as a point of conversation. Such a focus aligns with postcolonial theorists who, as Bassnett and Trivedi point out, now perceive the extent to which translation of texts such as the Bible was a one-way process and foundational to colonization. So as one recognizes this, translation projects can now offer a “reciprocal process of exchange” (Bassnett and Trivedi 2002: 5). Nevertheless, being a nonlinguist, though with a long-term familiarity with the language, when I first began this project I underestimated the complexity of the translation task, thinking of it as an end in itself. Perhaps in the vein of Englund’s critique of the African Malawian translation of the Declaration:

Many activists and officers in both government and NGOs shared the usual lay person’s idea of translation as a straightforward matter of explaining an issue expressed in one language in the words of another. Any native speaker with sufficient knowledge of English would qualify for the task, an attitude that accounts for activists’ failure to see the relevance of lexicographical research before embarking on translating a new discourse. (2006: 55)

It was with this possible criticism in mind that, after the first translated draft was finally completed, I then engaged the linguist Ken Hansen (for instance, Hansen and Hansen 1992) and began the process again.⁵ We used the draft I had developed with MacDonald and Dixon as the basis, in what could be regarded as an accumulative endeavor, while continuing to work with Lance Macdonald in Papunya. Hansen’s key issue in the translation concerned its communicability, and he wanted to ensure that all Anangu, no matter how elderly or possibly indifferent, could understand and make sense of it. For instance, I was keen to keep some English words in there, such as “freedom,” because these are useful and indeed powerful words to know. However, his response to this particular word was: “some fellow putu kulilpayi” [can’t hear: haven’t heard of that word], to the nodding agreement of Macdonald. Likewise, our first translated renderings had, according to Hansen, followed an English logic of grammar and thus of ideas flow. (This was in part due to Macdonald’s experience in court translation and the expectations of the lawyers in that context.) The final version more overtly subjectivized many of the dry generalized human rights concepts with localized sentiment and values than our earlier translation had done. Hansen, rather like the translation of the Bible he also undertook as a Lutheran linguist in 1981, with a revision in 2005, was able to infiltrate the “full innerness of the other’s spirituality” (Hill 2002: 77). Hansen’s empathy actively enabled an intersubjective encounter. The process was thus an intercultural interpretive exercise and an exercise in possible conversion, this time of the secular kind.

Implications of Translation

The act of translation of a new (English) discourse into the local vernacular is not an innocent one. As I have begun to suggest, embedded in the introduced language of English was the justifying logics of early colonialism. The language of English brought with it a radical rupture to the Aboriginal self in their becoming Aboriginal through the gaze and the controlling effects of the colonizers (see Rafael 1988; Pennycook 1998). As Bassnett and Trivedi state:

The notion of the colony as a copy of the translation of the great European Original inevitably involves a value judgement that ranks the translation in a lesser position in the literary hierarchy. The colony, by this definition, is therefore less than its coloniser, its original. (2002: 4)

As they point out, this metaphor of the colony as a translation, as a copy of the original elsewhere on the map, is now recognized. Although the implications this has for Australia, as for other settler colonies, are different from those that have been decolonized, such as India and the Philippines, the point is that it was the original inhabitants whose language (and cultures) were rendered lesser. In many parts of Australia, Aboriginal people were actively discouraged from speaking their mother tongues (Trigger 1992; Harris 2013) and Standard Australian English has become established as the language of the powerful. The deep and abiding monolingualism of Australian governments has consolidated this pattern. And the policy history of bilingualism in Aboriginal schools has been volatile (Caffery, McConvell, and Simpson 2009); indeed, it is no longer funded by government in the Northern Territory.⁶ Estimates of the numbers of languages at contact have ranged from 250 to 650, depending on the criteria used for language definition (Yallop 1982: 27). Nevertheless, there is wide agreement that of the over 250 languages, now only around 120 languages are still spoken, and of these about thirteen can be considered strong (Marmion, Obata, and Troy 2014). With over 2,000 speakers, it would be expected that Pintupi-Luritja is among this group.⁷

The introduction of new concepts can affect change on a range of levels, including ontological, as new ideas are inserted into local contexts. In the initial drafting of the Declaration, before the expertise of Lutheran linguist Ken Hansen, I suspected that Anangu were maintaining a “relative autonomy” (per Morphy and Morphy 2013) in a form of diglossia. As Spolsky and Irvine (1982) argued, in a now classic essay, the extent to which literacy in the local vernacular becomes embedded in daily life, as opposed to literacy in the standard language (in this case English), may also be reflective of readiness to culturally assimilate. Alternatively, code switching, word borrowing (such as using Aboriginal English), and acceptance of literacy in the standard or dominant language rather than the vernacular may suggest resistance to assimilation in an attempt to maintain cultural integrity (Spolsky and Irvine 1982: 77). Although I am not investigating the local functions of literacy, the ways in which literacy has been utilized have implications for the translation process of the human rights language. Similarly to the Ngaanyatjarra (another Western Desert language group), literacy tends to be associated with early exposure to Christian literacy practices, so that literate adults also tend to identify as Christian (Kral 2012: 58). The ramifications of this set of associations, English = literacy = Christianity, cannot be elaborated here; suffice it to realize that this history of literacy has been dominated by Christian missionary work. As Nampitjinpa, in her mid-forties, stated, when she was growing up in Papunya the only reading matter in their house was the Bible, first in English form and then the translated version.

Englund’s Prisoners of Freedom: Human Rights and the African Poor details how the local language of Malawi, Chichewa, was regarded by human rights activists, just as it was by government and transnational NGOs, to be “a language of deprivation, rather than the language of opportunity” (2006). The human rights discourse as a translation into the national language became a one-way relation of power. If the particular rights concept did not find a local resonance or meaningful translation, it was not because the local sociopolitical context found it irrelevant; rather, they were understood as lacking in sophistication. The parallels with Australian Indigenous languages may not be so stark, but, as indicated, bilingual education is not supported in the NT and very few non-Aboriginal staff who work in remote communities have a speaking knowledge, or in some cases any knowledge, of the local language. Indeed, several police officers who were posted to Papunya in 2013–2014—though they undertook “cross-cultural training for an afternoon”—told me that they were not informed of the name of the local language group. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS 2011), however, more than 85 percent of the population of Papunya speak an Aboriginal language (as their first language). Many speak more than one Aboriginal language. And although I undertook Pintupi-Luritja language courses in the mid-1990s through the Institute of Aboriginal Development (IAD) in Alice Springs, they have not offered such courses for some years. So in this political context, any formal or informal engagement with Aboriginal languages constitutes both political and practical recognition.

Thus, although I am deeply conscious of the larger political and social context of the ongoing colonial project, there is no denying the agency of the Anangu translators as they effectively rendered the Declaration into a social artifact. This concept of “documents as social artefacts [as they] gather new meanings [when] they are read and used by diverse subjects” is a hopeful element in this translation as both product and also as process (Riles 2001, in Englund 2006: 63). Macdonald, as a regionally renowned translator, was constantly alert to the fact that th...