In adopting a framework that privileges relative autonomy it is possible to view organisations like Laynha as sites of intercultural production, using Merlan’s term in a more restricted sense. Such sites are ‘border zones’ (Clifford 1997) where two relatively autonomous systems meet and interact to create hybrid or intercultural forms.[19] Mattingly (2006: 495) characterises such zones as places where ‘culture emerges more vividly as a space of encounter than of enclosure … This sort of cultural world is characterised by politically charged, difference-making exchanges among actors’ (emphasis added). As Merlan rightly notes (see above), in a situation where one system is the encapsulating state and the other is a localised system of a minority group, the power relationship between the systems is unequal.
Laynha’s constitution, as an organisation incorporated under the NT’s Associations Act, stipulates that the organisation must maintain an up-to-date list of members. The Act, as an instrument of settler society, assumes that membership of an association is a bounded category. Laynha does maintain such a list, but it is essentially an artefact of the intercultural space rather than a true reflection of the organisation’s Yolngu constituency.
The region serviced by Laynha is partly a construct of the colonial past, reflecting the former sphere of influence of Yirrkala Mission. It contains (parts of) the estates of the clans of three large contemporary connubia: the Djalkiripuyngu centred around Blue Mud Bay; the Laynhapuyngu, whose clan estates stretch down the east coast and its hinterland from south of the Gove Peninsula to south of Caledon Bay; and the Miyarrkapuyngu to the west of them and to the north of the Djalkiripuyngu. There is a dynamic tension in the governance of Laynha between two connubia—the Djalkiripuyngu of Blue Mud Bay and the Laynhapuyngu, which is dominated numerically (in the context of the Laynha homelands and the Association) by the senior lineages of the large Gupa Djapu clan.[20] The sources of tension are complex—Gupa Djapu at one time (still within the memory of the parents of the oldest people still now alive) were part of Djalkiripuyngu, and have moved their sphere of influence northwards, with certain lineages forging alliances through marriage with the clans of the Yirrkala area. They are now thought of principally as Laynhapuyngu, although they have strong connections to all the connubia of the area. Today’s Djalkiripuyngu, on the other hand, are the group with the least strong history of association with Yirrkala Mission. In ‘mission times’ many of their senior leaders and their families went south or to Groote Eylandt rather than to Yirrkala. Their return to the orbit of Yirrkala was prompted by the start of the homelands movement, which was initiated by the senior lineage of the Gupa Djapu. Today, many Gupa Djapu live at Yirrkala, and of the Yolngu office staff at the Laynha headquarters the majority are Gupa Djapu. Gupa Djapu is the only clan with more than one homeland settlement on its clan estate, and Gupa Djapu men are the senior leaders at two other settlements.
In geographical, organisational and political terms, Laynha fits the ‘centralised hub and spokes’ model described by Hunt and Smith (2006: 88, Fig. 7; reproduced here as Fig. 5.5), but with added complexities. The organisation is physically located in the ‘hub’ community of Yirrkala, but is not under the jurisdiction of the local council. It is in, but not institutionally part of, Yirrkala’s community of governance.
Laynha does not service a ‘community’, but rather a group of outlying homelands settlements. The people who live on these homelands are interlinked both with each other and with the people who live in the wider region (see Fig. 5.1), including Yirrkala, through the complex web of kinship, ceremonial and political interests described above. Although Yirrkala is the service ‘hub’, it is not the ‘hub’ of socio-political relationships for many Laynhapuy homelands dwellers. Many do have strong kin connections to Yirrkala, but others, particularly those who live in the southern outstations around Blue Mud Bay, are oriented as much to Groote Eylandt and/or Numbulwar, or to Gapuwiyak and its homelands. Some of the northern homelands have strong kinship and ceremonial links to the Gumatj-dominated community of Gunyangara (Ski Beach) and its homelands (one of which, Biranybirany, is physically located inside the Laynhapuy area), and/or to communities further west such as Galiwin’ku and the Marthakal homelands. This can be seen, for example, in the pattern of people’s movements to funeral ceremonies in the region. Although some people reside on a long-term basis at a particular homelands community, others shift over time—sometimes in and out of the ambit of the Laynha homelands—according to particular life circumstances and their kinship connections. Some people who are considered to be Laynha members in fact reside principally at Yirrkala. They are members because their clan identity ties them to one or other of the homelands settlements.
It is therefore not a straightforward matter to define the ‘membership’ of the association. The notions of ‘community of identity’ and ‘community of interest’ (cf. Hunt and Smith 2006: 5) have some application, but only if these ‘communities’ are understood as being somewhat unbounded in nature. The notion of ‘administrative community’ also only fits partially. In terms of health services, Laynha services homelands that are not otherwise part of the service population, and the recently declared Laynhapuy IPA covers some homelands that are outside the Laynha service area and excludes some that are inside it. Finally, the artists of the Laynha homelands are serviced by Buku-Larrnggay Mulka at Yirrkala, which is under the umbrella of the Yirrkala Dhanbul Association.[21]
The ‘community’ that Laynha services can best be conceptualised as a nodal network (a set of localities that receive the full range of Laynha services) and a penumbrum of other homelands that are connected to the organisation in particular ways but peripheral to it in others. The lack of clear boundaries around ‘membership’ constitutes a ‘problem’ for policy makers who want to deliver services to bounded entities with sedentary populations (see F. Morphy 2007d). However, it should not be assumed a priori that lack of boundedness is a problem for Yolngu themselves, or for the governance of their organisations. Indeed, in many respects the structure of the Laynha ‘community’ mirrors the networked and unbounded nature of Yolngu polities of kinship. And it shares with them another property—that of a relative stability over time which is not merely an emergent property of the system but a social fact.[22] And if Laynha is conceptualised as a set of localities—the hub and the homelands—it shares yet another property of the Yolngu system. Whereas the localities are fixed in space, the individuals in the populations associated with them are mobile to varying degrees and over varying timescales.
Laynha’s constitution currently provides for the election of a 12-person board at the Annual General Meeting (AGM). Those nominated must have a proposer and a seconder. Election is through a secret ballot of the membership, and the system is ‘first past the post’—the first 12 people with the most votes are elected.[23] Once elected, the board members then decide among themselves who the office holders will be for that year. On the surface, this appears to be a standard democratic process conducted according to settler notions of good governance.
In practice, because of distance and expense, it is impossible for the entire membership of Laynha to attend an AGM. A meeting is quorate if 24 members are present, and on average an AGM has an attendance between 30 and 50. Very often, there are no more than 12 people nominated, although this was not the case in 2007. The resulting composition of the board is remarkably similar over the years, with each of the major homelands having at least one member, and the largest usually having two. Those elected tend to be drawn from the ranks of middle-aged leaders.[24] The distribution over the three connubia also tends to reflect their relative prominence, with the Laynhapuyngu and Djalkiripuyngu usually having roughly equal numbers of board members and the Miyarrkapuyngu having fewer than either. Within the Laynhapuyngu contingent, the Gupa Djapu usually predominate. This process is democratic, but not according to the ‘one vote, one value’ model that the constitution enshrines. In the hands of the Yolngu membership, what emerges is more like a system of proportional representation that achieves a balance between the different kin networks and regional interests of the membership.
Thus, both in terms of the membership and of the leadership structure of the organisation, Laynha conforms on paper to the ‘norms’ of ‘good’ governance as laid out in the legislative framework provided by the settler state. Yet it actually operates in a way that is heavily imbued with Yolngu principles of governance.
[19] Cornell and Begay’s (2004) concept of ‘culture match’ also addresses the idea of intercultural forms, but with an important difference. True ‘culture match’, as envisaged by Cornell and Begay, can only take place in a context where actors from an encapsulated society have freedom to choose, pragmatically, between alternatives. In practice, this means that the encapsulating culture refrains from using its power to impose particular socio-cultural forms: ‘the issue of culture match is about power … what matters for governance legitimacy and effectiveness is that the process of culture match be under Indigenous control’ (Hunt and Smith 2006: 18). It could be argued that in the period of ‘self-determination’ such conditions obtained to some extent in Australia, but that this became less and less true during the neo-assimilationist regime of the Howard Government.
[20] As with connubia, there is now a certain fixing of clan identity taking place. Gupa Djapu is a very large clan of over 350 people, all descended from a single ancestor who had over 20 wives. It is unlikely that in the past such a large clan would have continued to exist as a ‘corporate’ entity. Evidence from the period around missionisation (and from the memory of the oldest people still living) suggests that fission of large groups occurred, usually along lines of marriage. In these circumstances, the existing clan estate would have become two, or one of the subgroups would have taken over the clan estate of a small or extinct märi group, first in caretaker mode, but over time becoming seen as the primary owners for that country with a separate clan identity. This tendency is visible in the Gupa Djapu case, where certain lineages are more closely associated with the Laynhapuyngu connubium and other lineages with the Djalkiripuyngu or Miyarrkapuyngu, through their marriages into clans of those connubia. However, with the advent of certain fixing processes such as the written record and the introduction of clan ‘surnames’ the further process of fission is frozen. What we are seeing is the influence of one system on the trajectory of another.
[21] At least this was the case until the Federal Government’s ‘intervention’ in the NT. Like many other community owned businesses in ‘prescribed’ communities, the future ownership of Buku-Larrnggay Mulka and its assets is currently uncertain. Art production and sale is a significant component of the local economy, with around 100 homelands artists dealing regularly with the art centre, and another 150 or so on a less regular basis (Andrew Blake, pers. comm., 21 December 2007). From time to time Laynha has contemplated starting its own art centre, but has never pursued this option. Established originally in the 1970s, Buku-Larrnggay is one of Australia’s most successful Indigenous arts centres, and in face of that, setting up in local competition would make very little sense.
[22] From time to time particular communities shift in and out of the orbit of Laynha membership, in a way that parallels shifts in the composition of connubia. During the fieldwork period, one large homeland that had once been a ‘full’ member of the Laynha constituency, but which had transferred to Marngarr following a disagreement (not with Laynha as an organisation but with the leaders of one of the clans that is central to Laynha), decided that they wanted to return to the Laynha fold. They were welcomed back, and this was a sign of the resolution of tension between the two parties. Also during this period, the Gumatj homeland of Biranybirany, which is geographically surrounded by Laynha homelands but is primarily serviced by Marngarr, decided that it would become part of the Laynhapuy IPA.
[23] This is the number under the current constitution, which was put in place in 2006. The board has replaced the 10-member council that operated under the previous constitution.
[24] Middle-aged here designates people between the ages of approximately 35 and 55. A few homelands have more elderly leaders still living, but it is rare for these people to seek nomination. Power is ostensibly delegated to the next generation.