Customer Reviews

Bad Aboriginal Art : Tradition, Media, and Technological Horizons (Theory Out of Bounds, Vol 3)

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Eric Michaels, a social scientist from Texas who was a lecturer on media studies at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia, documents the development of aboriginal media in the book "Bad Aboriginal Art - Tradition, Media, and Technological Horizons." Published posthumously after his death in 1988 from AIDS, this rich volume contains Michaels' field essays and research papers exploring the impact of communications technology has had on the Aborigines in central Australia outside the margins of the "electronic grid."

When the Australian government launched the new AUSSAT satellite in the early eighties to broadcast network television to remote communities across the outback, Michaels, who spent three years living with the Warlpiri people at Yuendumu in central western Australia, witnessed the transition the new communications technology brought to the region. Like the early effort broadcast network television to Inuit communities, Michaels reports that the Australian Broadcasting Corporation had initially disregarded cultural sensitivities of Aborigines through the communications downlink.

Again, disparate interests between the Aborigines, the government and the ABC raised questions over cultural assimilation and sparked conflict over technological institutionalization. Michaels, who passionately supports the interests of the Aborigines, analytically details the situation throughout, including his 1987 essay "Hundreds Shot at Aboriginal Community: ABC Makes TV Documentary at Yuendumu."

He writes: "If the goal is to be cultural maintenance, not deterioration and assimilation, the only solution for traditional people will be developed at the local community level, where these comparatively small cultural and linguistic groups can buck the bias of mass media by filtering incoming signals through local stations and inserting local material." Motivated ot this end, Aborigines on their own seized the opportunity to produce their own pirate -- and legit -- television, broadcast locally produced material, and form their own broadcasting organizations such as the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association and its television subsidiary Imparja.

Rather than positioning his focus as a voyeur, Michaels approaches this insightful study with a participatory stance, rather than an interpretive one. As a result, he intimately relates his experience with the Warlpiri, their struggles for empowerment, providing a cultural context of aboriginal tradition and outlining their ethical parameters of image representation. For instance, he describes aboriginal taboos associated with deceased community members, and the nuances of community ownership in creative expression and dissemination.

Considering that aboriginal people have been defined through images from an outside European perspective for nearly 500 years, the role aboriginal people have in creating media is not merely about access. . . . In the long run, the importance of aboriginal television and video production to serve the needs of localized communities is a significant step towards self-determination and cultural preservation.

The above review is appropriately complementary to Michaels, thorough and fascinating work. Aboriginal Australians from all over the contient have been represented as Others by european settlers for just over 200 years. The story of colonisation is still very much a contmeporary issue for many Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. Accordingly, Michaels work is a fine contribution to an understanding of the need for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander self-determination and the ability to produce their own media and communications services.

Everything Michaels wrote was extremely interesting.