Aboriginal Australian Cowboys and the Art of Appropriation
IN AMERICA, THE IMAGE OF THE COWBOY configures the ideals of courage, freedom, equality, and individualism.1 As close readers of the genre of the Western have argued, the cowboy fulfills a mythical role in American popular culture, as he stands between the so-called settlement of the country and its wilderness, between an idea of civilization and the depiction of savage Indians. The Western vaulted the cowboy to iconic status, as stage shows, novels, and films encoded his virtues in narratives set on the North American frontier of the nineteenth century. He became a figure of the popular national imagination just after this frontier had been conquered.2 From the beginning, the fictional cowboy was a character who played upon the nation’s idea of itself and its history. He came to assume the status of national myth and informed America’s economic, political, and social landscape over the course of the twentieth century.3 Yet this is only one nation’s history of the cowboy. As America became one of the largest exporters of culture on the planet, it exported its Western imagery, genre films, and novels. These cowboys were transformed in the hands of other cultural producers in other countries. From East German Indianerfilme to Italian spaghetti Westerns and Mexican films about caudillos (military leaders), the
Reconciliation and Conciliation: The Irreconcilable Dilemma of the 1965 'Equal' Wage Case for Aboriginal Station Workers
The Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commission in 1965 presided over a landmark case concerning the inclusion of Indigenous workers in the Cattle Industry (Northern Territory) Award 1951. The success of the Australian beef industry during the previous hundred years, especially in the Northern Territory, depended almost entirely upon the work of Indigenous cattle workers but they had rarely been paid. The Commission decided to include Indigenous people under the Award, but its characterisation as an Equal Wage Case is a misnomer. The arguments in the proceedings fuelled a decision that compromised the principle behind Award wages. First, the Commission relied on arguments regarding the lower work value of Indigenous workers to allow individuals to be categorised as 'slow workers' on below-Award wages. Second, the Commission referred to evidence on the Commonwealth's assimilation policy to advocate the removal of workers from 'tribal' camps on stations. The transcripts reveal racial biases of the Commission that undermined the granting of Award wages.
Peter Damian and 'the World' : asceticism, reform and society in eleventh-century Italy
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