Dave Palmer

This chapter takes the reader throughout remote Aboriginal Australia, examining the part music and song making plays in community development. It is based upon recent research carried out in the Kimberley, Pilbara, and Central Australian regions of Australia and includes a discussion of the efficacy of combining song making, music and community development. In particular, the chapter will draw out how traditional music and contemporary practices worked in tandem to help reinvigorate Aboriginal communities.

Dear Dave, I watch your work from across this great land mass and landscape of Australia with delight and interest; and I see kernels of wisdom that might inform this inductive thinking-writing project on soul, community and social change. You have spent many years journeying with, or accompanying, Aboriginal Australians, or at least several organisations that work with them, and this puts you on the cutting edge of social change work. You are engaging with people who are caught at times wanting ‘development’ and yet seem to also yearn for something other, sparked by living culture, a broader cultural archive than the Western, Modern, Development archive. Maybe I am naïve, maybe nostalgic, but I sense this is what is occurring. It certainly is among Aboriginal people of South America, parts of Africa and Asia. I have certainly seen it with my own two eyes in the Pacific nations of Vanuatu and PNG.

The colonial enterprise has been instrumental in attempting to silence and destroy Indigenous expressions of spirituality. At the same time there has been much reliance upon Indigenous forms of knowing, Indigenous men and women of high degree, and the labor and guidance of young people. Today Indigenous spiritualities have been greatly impacted on by Christianity, western epistemology, and modern expressions of spirit. However, many Indigenous young people have been shaped by a renaissance of culture, language, and expressions of identity. There is also evidence that Indigenous young people are having an influence on the spiritual lives and practices of others through their involvement in the church, the school, cultural revival, language regeneration, sport, and the arts. This chapter will focus upon spirituality and the lives of Indigenous young people. It will include a background discussion of historical influences on tradition and culture. This will include an examination of the connection between spirituality, traditional Indigenous ontology, Christianity, and modern social and cultural forms. The chapter will also show that these two broad traditions have shaped the experience of spirituality for young people. In turn it will also explore how modern expressions and reconfigurations of Indigenous young people’s spirituality are also influencing and shaping the worlds of others.

This is a story of a striking community based project that has recently reignited itself in the Wheatbelt region of WA. It is a story about people revisiting old community practices, reconfiguring relationships and finding ways to ‘hold’ each other when times are tough. The project has been facilitated by the Community Arts Network WA (CAN WA), a not-for-profit organisation that sets out to help build health and community wellbeing by using arts, performance, digital media and cultural development. It involves Noongar women coming together to make dolls, celebrate their families and rebuild their connections. This essay begins by describing the community and the country where the project is taking place. It then ‘visits’ the work, explaining how things came about and providing a background to CAN WA’s involvement. Next the essay reminds us of Aboriginal people’s longstanding use of textile, fibre and other bush products to help build and maintain family and community. Finally the paper tracks what happens between people when something as simple as doll 42 making occurs.