Intervention or Inversion: Australian Indigenous Justice and the Politics of Cultural Incompatibility

摘要

Australian Indigenous affairs are underscored by a central tension between the rights of Indigenous peoples to self-determination, and assimilation policy premised on cultural homogeneity. This tension is most evident between the Northern Territory Government-commissioned Anderson and Wild (2007) report, entitled Ampe akelyernemane meke mekarle: Little children are sacred, which recommends the continuation of community-led programs in response to childhood sexual abuse in Indigenous communities, and the Commonwealth's Northern Territory National Emergency Response Act 2007 (NTNER), commonly known as 'the intervention', which Altman and Hinkson (2007) claim represents a 'coercive' attempt to dismantle Indigenous rights to manage their affairs. In her critique of cultural incompatibility (culturalism), McConaghy (2000) observes that radicalism, or cultural difference policy in oppositional histories of power and control, seeks to invert colonial power relations. Instead, argues McConaghy, radicalism (much like assimilation) reinstitutes colonial relations of dominance. I draw on culturalism to explore the tension between Indigenous self-determination (a form of inversion), represented within the Little children are sacred report, and intervention, as a model not for coercive assimilation but for cultural integration (Sutton 2001a; Pearson 2007). I propose that cultural inversion, as a justificatory model for addressing dysfunction within Indigenous communities, displaces the needs and rights of individuals for mainstream intervention.