Publications | "Two Intercultural Stagings with the Yolngu and the Kija: the representation of relations" in The Challenge of Indigenous Peoples

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"Two Intercultural Stagings with the Yolngu and the Kija: the representation of relations" in The Challenge of Indigenous Peoples | Martin Préaud - 27 October 2011

Martin Préaud is the author of a chapter of the collective book The Challenge of Indigenous Peoples: Spectacle or Politics?, edited by Barbara Glowczewski and Rosita Henry.

Presentation :

This book is concerned with the ways in which Indigenous peoples express their cultural and social identities in art and politics. Based on field research and practical initiatives with Indigenous peoples in Australia, Oceania, Asia and Siberia, it provides chapters on contemporary creative and political practices.

The authors, who include young anthropologists and artists, explore a range of performative and artistic contexts in which Indigenous people work to legitimate their singular existences through the networks they form with others. Their art, music, dance and ritual provide new and emergent forms of indigeneity, and are woven into political strategies for making their cultures travel across the world.

List of contributors :

Wayne Jowandi Barker; Jessica De Largy Healy; Barbara Glowczewski; Rosita Henry; Wolfgang Kempf; Jari Kupiainen; Stéphane Lacam-Gitareu; Géraldine Le Roux; Arnaud Morvan; Martin Préaud; Dominique Samson Normand de Chambourg; Alexandre Soucaille; Anke Tonnaer

Reference :

Barbara Glowczewski and Rosita Henry (Eds), 2011, The Challenge of Indigenous Peoples: Spectacle or Politics? Oxford, The Bardwell Press.

About chapter 5 entitled “Two Intercultural Stagings with the Yolngu and the Kija: the representation of relations” by Martin Préaud.

Abstract :

This article describes and discusses two plays stemming from Indigenous Australia Trepang and Marnem Marnem Dililib Benuwarrenji (Fire Fire Burning Bright). These were developed during the 1990s by director Andrish Saint-Clare in collaboration with Yolngu and Kija law men respectively. The first addresses the history of commercial and cultural exchange between the Yolngu of eastern Arnhem Land and Macassan people from Indonesia while the second focuses on a massacre on a Kimberley pastoral station in the 1920s. The paper describes the creative process of the plays as well as aspects of their public performance. The central concern of this article is to discuss the dialogical and intercultural processes informing the creation of both plays and to propose an anthropological framework for performance analysis. It argues that theatre and anthropology, although their means differ, share some fundamental characteristics as both disciplines seek to represent dynamic social situations and interactions and thereby affect them.

Reference :

Martin Préaud, 2011, “Two Intercultural Stagings with the Yolngu and the Kija: the representation of relations”, chapter 5, in Barbara Glowczewski and Rosita Henry (Eds), The Challenge of Indigenous Peoples: Spectacle or Politics? Oxford, The Bardwell Press, pp. 83-100.