Page 206 - Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere

the same, but different. I expect that in the highly active interpretative sessions
that these attendances have become, there will be much negotiation necessary to
resolve apparent contradictions evoked by the recorded history. (ibid., 74)
As it turns out, he wrote with great prescience. In this case, clearly, mechanical
reproduction, contrary to Benjamin’s predictions, in no way diminished the
aura of these representations of Warlpiri ritual. If anything, the ¤lm seemed
to have the effect of “re-enchanting” the ceremony through its objecti¤cation
of it.

Revelation, Secrecy, and National Television

The concept of the “Indigenous public sphere” is intended to describe the
highly mediated public “space” for developing notions of Indigeneity, and
putting them to work in organizing and governing the unpredictable imme-
diacy of everyday events. Thus far, the Indigenous public sphere has hardly
been under the control of Indigenous people. Indeed, it is a peculiar example
of a public sphere, since it precedes any “nation” that a public sphere nor-
mally “expresses” as it were; it is the “civil society” of a nation without
borders, without state institutions, and without citizens.
—John Hartley and Alan McKee, The Indigenous Public Sphere:
The Reporting and Reception of Aboriginal Issues in the Australian Media

By 1989 the Warlpiri senior men at Yuendumu were concerned that with the
death of many older members of the community it was increasingly important
that they have a more complete and high-quality record of the Jardiwarnpa ver-
sion of the Fire Ceremony, so that what they regarded as proper versions of
religious and cultural traditions could be safeguarded for future generations.
The earlier two versions—of the Ngatjakula shot by Sandall in 1966 and of the
Jardiwarnrpa made by the Warlpiri Media Association in 1986—could not yet
be shown at Yuendumu because of the recent deaths of participants in the ¤lms.
The Warlpiri men also wanted to make two versions: one for initiated men
and one that could be shown to the public by editing out some of the more
restricted elements of the ceremony. For central desert people, the circulation
of ceremonies and ritual media (such as painting) that are not restricted is seen
as enhancing their cultural and cosmological power; the revelation of ancestral
truths is seen as a performative, accomplishing in its very display a strengthen-
ing of the connection to Aboriginal cosmological knowledge and law. Although
the ef¤cacy and signi¤cance of the latter may vary depending on the audience
and form of mediation, the circulation of knowledge augments its value (Dus-
sart 2000; Langton 1993, 79). At the same time, the level of knowledge that can
be displayed, and for whom, is constantly being negotiated, as a number of
scholars have made clear in their works discussing the impact of circulating
Aboriginal ritual performance and art into new, non-Aboriginal regimes of

Rethinking the “Voice Of God” in Indigenous Australia 195