Autochthonous Australian Syncretism

Abstract

Most Aboriginal Australians now live in cities and towns amid the accoutrements of modernity and the cultural influences of globalization. They practise a way of life very different from that of their ancestors. Nevertheless, the dominant public representations of Aboriginal people and culture are traditional and primordial. Most autochthonous urban dwellers embrace these representations even though they bear little resemblance to their own lives. Stuart Hall and Paul Gilroy have criticized the tendency to reduce ethnicity to an essence or grounding tradition. They advocate viewing ethnic cultures as mixtures combining both residual and contemporary elements. However, many Aboriginal people embrace essentialist collective symbols in order to escape the stigma of `fringe dwelling', of being caught between autochthonous and colonial societies and belonging to neither.