Page 213 - Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere

tion, which is still semi-nomadic, may vary from ¤ve hundred to one thousand people
at any given time, a number that also includes white workers (Peterson 2004, personal
communication; Langton 1993, 59).
8. According to Bryson, Roger Sandall resigned from the Film Unit in 1973. Further-
more, at that time the new Whitlam Labor government ushered in a period of rapid
change in Aboriginal affairs, supporting increased political activism among Aboriginal
people and the foundations of a pan-Aboriginal movement, all of which had consider-
able impact on the Film Unit and the kind of work it undertook (Bryson 2002, 52). Beth
Povinelli (2002) has written a discouraging critique of the limits of Australia’s multicul-
tural frameworks that, she argues, rule out the recognition of nontraditional Aboriginal
subjects.
9. The Fire Ceremony, in fact, has several versions. According to Nicolas Peterson,
there are at least three at Yuendumu, and other versions in the Tanami, to the north. In
any case, each celebrates and enacts the exploits of ancestral beings such as the Jardiwanpa
(the Snake) or the Yankirri (the Emu), and is controlled by a different semi-moiety, for
different “country” (Peterson 2004, personal communication). In Aboriginal law, the
revelation of ancestral tracks through the display of this esoteric knowledge establishes
rights to land in those areas indexed by the ceremony, and re-created iconically in dances,
body designs, and sand paintings (Langton 1993, 76).
10. Concerning this point, Nicolas Peterson writes: “Just why, indeed even whether,
the Ngatjakula ceremony had not been held for ¤fteen years is more problematic. Mi-
chaels canvases a range of relevant issues but his query is predicated on the notion that
the ceremony should be held more frequently, which there is no reason to suppose is
correct. Ceremonies are held to achieve speci¤c purposes: in particular, the ¤re ceremo-
nies are held to resolve disputes, remove tabus on sexual relations for widows, and to
commemorate the dead. Further . . . there are four versions of the ceremony, one for each
semi-moiety” (n.d., 7).
11. The prohibition on viewing images of the deceased is regarded as an extension of
Warlpiri application of kumanjayi, a generalized term that replaces the name of an in-
dividual so that the person can be referred to without saying his or her actual name.
12. According to the anthropologist Françoise Dussart, who was there at the time,
the moratorium on the performance of the Jardiwanpa was the result of many of the
male ritual leaders having passed away. In 1984 senior women urged the men to stage a
Jardiwanpa in order to release widows from the taboo that prevented them from remarry-
ing (Dussart 2004, personal communication).
13. Nicolas Peterson disputes this observation, pointing out that “the ¤lm of the
Ngatjakula lasts 25 minutes whereas the ceremony is held over several weeks or months,
with singing and dancing lasting through most of the last night: through the course of
the ceremony, as many as a hundred or more different verses will be sung but less than
half a dozen are included in the ¤lm. . . . This is not to say that a ¤lm . . . cannot be part
of a cultural reproduction but it cannot be a vehicle for the reconstitution or revival of
ceremony as it was at the time of the ¤lming. Most mysteriously of all is the unwitting
suggestion that one version of the ¤re ceremony, the Jardiwanpa version, could be revived
by looking at a ¤lm of a different version, the Ngatjakula, which is associated with dif-
ferent heroic ancestors” (n.d., 8).
14. Peterson points out that Jardiwarnpa still uses a voice-over commentary, al-
though the voice is that of an Aboriginal man. He also notes that “senior owners of the
Jardiwarnpa ceremony complained that they had not been paid properly by the ¤lm-
makers, only getting $200–$300 each. . . . Making money has always been a central con-

202 Faye Ginsburg