Our National Cultural Plan a Trojan Horse for Orwellian Control? A companion opinion to Orwellian Assault on the past

 The plan also seeks to ‘introduce stand-alone legislation to protect First Nations knowledge and cultural expressions.’

Commentary

In Australia, the federal government’s new national cultural plan, “Revive: a Place for Every Story, a Story for Every Place,” has yielded yet another very real worry for us to explore.

At the heart of Revive is its primary “pillar,” or key tenet: “First Nations first.” That is, the federal government sees the prioritisation of Aboriginal Australian art and artists as most crucial to its new cultural agenda.

Of this pillar, the first actionable clause—arguably the single most significant arts policy to be carried out in the eyes of the prime minister and his government—is the implementation, in full, of the Uluru Statement from the Heart.

For readers who are unsure of just what the Uluru Statement is, I have authored a previous article that delves deeply into just how dangerous it is.

Revive, however, is in no short supply of dubious policy objectives.

The plan also seeks to “introduce stand-alone legislation to protect First Nations knowledge and cultural expressions, including to address the harm caused by fake art, merchandise, and souvenirs.”

Presumably, such legislation would clamp down on non-Aboriginal artists who claim to be Aboriginal, and are thus producing fake Aboriginal art. Notionally, this sounds like a totally reasonable and achievable aim.

But could there be something more sinister afoot? Permit me a brief preamble to set up my concerns.

My Concerns In a Nutshell

Today, composers of Aboriginal descent who market their Aboriginality as primary to their artistry do not compose exclusively for didgeridoo or clapping sticks, as perhaps they might have prior to colonisation. Instead, they write for orchestras, opera companies, ballet troupes, and other Western concepts.

You might ask, “What’s wrong with that?”

To which I would ordinarily reply, “Nothing at all; though Western Art derives from a distinct culture, and though the philosophy of this culture should always be accredited and protected, all peoples, irrespective of culture or race, should be able to participate within Western Art’s many mediums.”

The hypocrisy, though, is that if I, for example, want to compose a work for solo didgeridoo—a sonata for a didgeridoo, of sorts—then I have to seek permission from a myriad of Aboriginal authorities, who then determine whether or not it is culturally acceptable for me to create such a work.

If I want to write a song using Aboriginal lyrics, or simply title my work using an Aboriginal word not commonly in practice (for example, many Australian placenames are, or are derived from, Aboriginal words), I need similar permission.

If I want to write an opera that includes an Aboriginal character, or a ballet on an Aboriginal theme, I, again, need all the necessary permissions.

In effect, while Aboriginal Australians have been handed the keys to Western Art, the production of Aboriginal culture, for whatever reason, is tightly controlled. Most Australians do not know this.

Art Is Not Always About Asking for Permission

Firstly, this is all very silly.

When Stravinsky composed The Rite of Spring, he never sought the permission of any pagan Russians, let alone grovelled for their blessing.

The same can be said of innumerable works and the ancient cultures they depict: Verdi’s Nabucco, Strauss’s Elektra, Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia, Prokofiev’s Scythian Suite—the list goes on.

Great works of art, evidently, are not borne of permission.

If I were to proceed with creating an artwork inspired by Aboriginal culture without the relevant permissions, I could be deemed unsavoury and ostracised by the arts community.

This in itself is not an insignificant punishment, and it is a punishment that the ever-multiplying ideologues of the arts are capable of administering—more often than not, with delight.

Legally, however, there is nothing that criminalises the act—yet.

‘Those Who Control the Present, Control the Past’

And this is where we return to Revive.

Could it be that legislation that seeks to “protect First Nations knowledge and cultural expressions,” as well as counter “fake art,” is in fact a further attempt to control Australia’s understanding of Aboriginal history and culture?

For example, if historian Keith Windschuttle were to write a new, critical tract on Aboriginal history and radical activists (I refer to the likes of some leading Voice proponents) were to take issue with his research, then, under the legislation that Revive hopes to implement, could they launch legal proceedings against him?

A book, after all, is fundamentally a work of art; in every university I can think of, the arts faculty manages the discipline of history.

The taxpayer-funded University of Tasmania’s Centre for Historical Studies stated as early as 2006 that there is a need for Aborigines to “[take] control of history through academic research” so as to “escape the confines of historically constructed identities.”

The centre goes on to admit that “partisan research has been successful in finding a new ‘imaginable context’” for Tasmanian Aborigines.

Partisan research? Imaginable context? This is the stuff of Orwell, not academia.

All authentic artists should be able to create depictions of any culture of their choosing, and those depictions should be judged predominantly on their artistic quality, not their thematic leanings. It cannot be one rule for some and another rule for others.

In the case of historical works, the question becomes: who owns the past? The answer is, of course, the truth.

Those who move to tighten factually certified historical commentaries because they risk offence or offer unflattering portrayals are, at the very least, stupid, and at the very worst, dictatorial.

Over the coming years, we must scrutinise Revive and its associated legislation closely.