Autonomous Selves in a Bureaucratised World: Challenges for Mardu and Wiradjuri

ISSN： 1469-2902

Source： Anthropological Forum, Vol.23, Iss.4, 2013-12, pp. : 399-413

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Abstract

Different histories and ecologies separate the Mardu of the Western Desert from the Wiradjuri of rural New South Wales, yet both evidence a desire for a social autonomy grounded in the value both place on personal autonomy. This claim flies in the face of assumptions that distinctive intra-Aboriginal values and practices collapse in the undermining of the cosmological framework of the Dreaming. The Wiradjuri, although they stayed in country, could not sustain their cosmological understandings in the face of huge transformations in the interests of pastoralism. Yet Wiradjuri historical experiences reproduced socio-economic conditions within which understandings of personhood and sociality could be maintained. They have lived within a dual economy: their allocative economy articulating with capitalism in ways that continued to inform Wiradjuri persons. These conditions have been severely constrained by welfare dependency and bureaucratic control—for Mardu as well as Wiradjuri.