2014 Volume 79 Issue 2 Pages 124-142
This article explores the entangled relationship between two views of the indigenous perception of understanding the world and themselves by drawing on two approaches suggested by Tim Ingold [2000]: the genealogical model and the relational model. The genealogical model suggests that being indigenous is based on being a descendant of indigenous people, which can be transmitted across generations like property. That way of thinking is demonstrated by such official organs as the United Nations and International Labour Organization (ILO), and shares its roots with Western modernity. Ingold [2000 133], on the other hand, argues that such an approach fundamentally misrepresents the ways that those "we class as indigenous" actually constitute their identity, knowledgeability, and the environments in which they live [Ingold 2000: 133]. He suggests the relational model as an alternative, which posits that people are created through a continuous engagement with the land and its inhabitants, both human and nonhuman. Although that model is consonant with the views of people classed as indigenous, they often have to operate within the systems and discourses based on the genealogical model, disseminated through such various official organs as states and bureaucracies. Some authors have investigated the entangled relationships between the different thoughts based on the genealogical and relational models, where the relational way of perception has been incorporated into and survived under its influence by transforming the social system, rejecting or confronting the thinking based on the genealogical model. Among those responses, this article deals with aspects of appropriation, incorporation, and 'translation' of the genealogical way of thinking by the relational way, which has rarely been used for investigations of situations where social relations are not limited to those now classed as indigenous. The study employs data from field research on Aboriginal Australians in the southwestern suburbs of Sydney (South-western Sydney). South-western Sydney is a low-level socioeconomic area with poor infrastructure. Statistically, compared with other areas of the city, its population is less well-educated, suffering relatively high unemployment rates and tending to have low income levels. Most of the current Aboriginal Australian residents in the area are either migrants from other parts of Australia in the 1960's or later, or their descendants. Their main social relations are established via kin relationships and the activities of local organizations dealing with Aboriginal issues. Anthropological studies have argued about the Aboriginal sense of self - and thus the world - as related or relational, but have mostly been conducted in remote areas or rural towns where the self is depicted as forged in relationships with other Aboriginal people (mostly kin). Many Aboriginal people in South-western Sydney originally came from rural towns across Australia and have family connections, through which they have developed a sense of relational selves. Most of them keep that sense of relational self after having migrated to South-western Sydney, and express it in the custom of identifying each other through their knowledge of kin members. However, the diversity of the area's Aboriginal residents, as well as their geographical dispersion, makes it difficult for Aboriginal people to limit their social relations to other Aboriginal people alone. In addition to kin relationships, organizations dealing with Aboriginal issues provide another space to connect with Aboriginal people in the area through various projects. However, the genealogical understanding of indigeneity underlies those government-endorsed organizations. Through those organizations' activities, Aboriginal people from Aboriginal family backgrounds often encounter those who claim to be Aboriginal but have just
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