Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art - Essay Example

? Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Lecturer: The connection between the intellectual and cultural properties of ingenuous people of Australia and other parts of their cultural heritage and self-identity is varied and complex.1 The social economic contribution of the Torres islanders and Aboriginal people to Australia’s heritage has substantially benefited the country, in retrospect these indigenous communities and custodians of the culture have not been equitably recognized of compensated. Centuries before Australia was occupied by the English Impealialists, indigenous Australians were expressing their cultural diversity in an assortment of ways. 2 While many of these are still practiced; they have been copied, commercialized and adulterated for profits most of which never benefit the owners of the heritage. This is particularly in the many cases where parts of their cultural heritage have been used or misused for profit without the authorization or knowledge of the original owners. It is important that the rights of the indigenous people to control their intellectual property as well as be principally involved in the determination of the latitude and nature of access and reproduction are recognized. Ironically, while in the recent past many foreigners have been benefiting from selling reproducing and marketing other products through indigenous art, the first westerners in Australia did not even acknowledge the indigenous people had art. They assumed they were too backwards and primitive to conceptualize or appreciate such ostentation and all the art in Australia was treated as artifacts with only historical but not artistic or aesthetic value. From the days of initial occupation, there has been a long history of misuse and illegal exploitation of arts designs and a multiplicity of cultural expression such as oral traditions, music dances and crafts. In 1968, the government in an effort to safeguard the cultural heritage from exploitation came up with the copyright act of 1968. This law was a trendsetter for other legal frameworks that would later come to be implemented in regard to protecting the diversity of indigenous heritage is posterity.3 According to the act; copyright did not need to be registered, all one needed to have a copyright was to produce original work, as such any existing artistic expression such as music was by default the property of the community or individuals who had produced it. This law took cognizance of the fact that majority of those who owned the cultural expression being safeguarded at the time were not educated and they could not have followed convectional registration protocols. It therefore prevented unscrupulous individuals who may have desired to register such works as their own and take advantage of the ignorance of the indigenous community. The law also provided that the copyright would only expire 50 years after the death of the creator of the works in question. Successive legislation was built on this law and one of the hallmarks was the 1983 decision in favor of the aboriginal artist agency which set the precedent for modern protection of intellectual property by proving indigenous works, just like any other creative works could be legally recognized as authentic. In addition, the 1983 act implemented UNESCOs convection for protection of world cultural heritage sites which Australia had ratified 11 years previously. 4 An examination of the history of copyright law in austral would be incomplete without a mention of the 1994 carpet case. This was a landmark in the legal protection of Aboriginal art, it pitted 3 aboriginal artists as well as the relatives of five deceased ones against Beechrow; a firm based in Perth which bought carpets in Vietnam and imported them in Australia for prices as high as $4000 .5 The company reproduced the works of several Australian artists living and dead on the carpets to make them seem authentic and thus justify their high cost as well as a attract thousands of local and international clients wishing possess a piece of Austrian art. These works were however not reproduced with the consent of the artists; as matter of fact the company copied them directly from calendars and educational portfolios published by the national gallery. Ergo, although they were making millions through marketing their carpets, the owners of the art were not benefiting neither were they aware of the arrangement until it was already in practice. The court found for the artists and their families and the carpet company was forced to pay damages totaling $188 640 for infringing property rights.6 Without such protection by the government, creators and custodians of the culture will continue to be excluded in its exploitation and development and without benefiting from it; they will gradually abandon it with dire consequence to the cultural industry. Notwithstanding the small population of indigenous people in Australia, their contribution to the cultural knowledge and resources is substantial, they weigh in on several sectors of the multimillion cultural industry. For instance, the art and craft sector which is they dominate in terms of producing a variability of indigenous products generated in excess of $200 million a year in 1997, this figure went up considerably after the Sidney Olympics. The tourism industry which is one of the leading income earners for the Australian government is also heavily dependent on indigenous culture. In 1996, government statistics showed that a third of the tourists visiting Australia wanted to see or experience a part of aboriginal culture such as a dance theater show or buy souvenirs. However, according to a report by the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander strategy in 1997 only about 200 tourist operators in the multimillion businesses were indigenous people. Looking back, the Australian tourism industry has substantively benefited from indigenous culture; however, the indigenous people have been severely disenfranchised in the active participation in the industry that is driven by their cultural heritage.7 Apart from their exclusion from mainstream tourisms and other related ventures, the commercialization of certain religious artifact and rituals is viewed as extremely offensive to them. Nevertheless, most of those in the business of selling the artifacts and marketing their culture do not understand it or respect it enough to make the necessary distinctions, which is a major ramification of excluding the indigenous people. Some of the Torres islander’s peoples still worship in the traditional way and when their religion is disrespected there is a risk of destabilizing their overall way of life. For instance, among them, there are many who revere and fear traditional sorcery as well as depend on the witchdoctors and occult healers for problem solving at an individual or communal level. 8 In the long run obliteration of such religious institutions may lead to the eventual collapse of traditionalism to which most of the culture that the tourism industry relies on is etched. Many of the artifacts dances and cultural items of the indigenous people have symbolic value, when they are commercialized, they will be watered down and the new generations will no longer be inspired to create authentic because the soul of the art will be lost.9 In 1994 October, a paper was jointly released by the attorney general and minister for aboriginal and Torres Strait islander affairs; it was titled, stopping the Rip-offs: Intellectual property of the aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. It addressed the legal shortcoming that made if difficult to protect the cultural intellectual property and sought to get suggestions on how these hurdles may be handled. In a crude sense as the word suggests, rip-offs refers to “stealing” literary from the indigenous people through the use their work by outsides to enrich themselves without any compensation. This takes many forms such as pirating the arts and crafts, illegal reproduction through both traditional and electronic media especially outside national boundaries. For instance several cave paintings by the indigenous were and still are, used in t-shirt designs and then there is the photographing of religious places and monument which are considered sacred by the Torre Islanders and aboriginals.10 In 1994 another case albeit not as sensational as the carpet issue was reported, the Maruk art center complained of an influx of plastic replicas of coolamons. The fakes were being stocked alongside the authentic ones for lower prices and therefore undercutting the local producers. This is an archetypical case of exploitation at its most extreme, the coolamons were first copied by foreigners, without local consent, and then they were reproduced in plastic and used to compete unfairly with the original artists. Most of the indigenous artistes are poor and uneducated without a grasp of the commercial potential their products have in the world, as a result many of them have been thus exploited by middlemen. One example of this is a young artist Jonny Warangkula who sold a painting for $150, the same painting was resold later for $206 000. The original buyer was not obliged to share any of the profit with the painter and ended up making much more than the painter who should have been the main beneficiary. While some countries like France have laws that ensure that the middleman should share some of the profits in such a transaction, there are no such laws in Australia.11 As a result many artists sell their works for a pittance and the same are sold in the American and European markets for millions and ultimately artists remain the smallest beneficiaries of their own creations. This comes with serious economic ramifications; those pirating the culture are not only disenfranchising the artists and by extension the country, there is another dire corollary. When art is reproduced and copied, it quickly loses value and it becomes difficult to tell a part originals and fakes, these illegal reproductions threaten the very sustainability of the cultural industry. Owing to their financial clout and unscrupulous dealings with disregard for originality, the pirates could flood the market with fakes and drive many of the indigenous producers out of business. Most of the tourists visit Australia to experience the authenticity of the culture and when this is compromised, they will gradually reduce in number and the tourist driven economy stands to incur significant losses. Furthermore, driven out of business or unable to cope with the unfair competition, the indigenous artists may be forced to seek other means of self-sustenance and abandon the culture to which they have been custodians for generations. The potential damage to the cultural economic fabric of the country should the rape and plunder of the cultural heritage of the indigenous communities of Australia be allowed is devastating. Therefore, it is the onus of the government and every stakeholder to ensure that the culture is protected both for the sake of itself and the economy of the religion at large. One of the major challenges that need to be addressed is a common determination of authenticity, with so many fakes in the market, it has been suggested that the state comes up with a way of validating and endorsing real art to control the influx of fakes. With protective legislation the Torres straits islander’s people and the aboriginal communities will get their fair share of the millions minted out of their heritage, this money would serve empower them so they can emancipate themselves from the poverty and ignorance in which many of them exist. Furthermore, culture, is a dynamic concept, therefore, the indigenous peoples need to grow and develop along with the rest of the world, and their work must be regularly recreated with the times.12 Otherwise their culture, while it may be valuable in its current state, need must reflect present times otherwise it will remain static and eventually only hold historical value. Like the rest of the Australians, indigenous artists would undoubtedly like to live comfortable lives and take their children to good schools and this will only be achieved with economic empowerment. Artists deserve to enjoy the reward of their work, this will only happen if proper legislation is passed to prevent exploitation in which artist make crumbs from works which ends up selling for hundreds of thousands. Besides, the guardians of Australia’s cultural heritage will be motivated to become more productive if the realize their work is being taken seriously and protected by the state, with such attitudes everyone, but the pirates is a winner. Bibliography Acker, Tim, Stefanoff, Lisa and Woodhead, Alice. 2013. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Economies Project: Literature Review. CRC-REP Working Paper CW010. Ninti One Limited, Alice Springs. Altman, Jon. 2000. Marketing Aboriginal Art. In Oxford Companion to Aboriginal Art and Culture. Eds. S Kleinert and M Neale. Oxford University Press. Melbourne. pp. 461–466. Boer, Ben and Wiffen, Graeme.2006. Heritage Law in Australia. Oxford University Press, London. Bourke, Eleanor Bourke, Edwards. (eds), 1998, Aboriginal Australia: an introductory reader in Aboriginal studies, 2nd edition, University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia. Caruana, W. 2003 (new edition), Aboriginal Art, Thames & Hudson, London. Isaacs, Jennifer. 1984, Australia’s living heritage: arts of the Dreaming, Lansdowne Press, Sydney. Janke, Terri and Frankel, Michael. 1998. Our Culture, Our Future: Report on Australian Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property Rights. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission. Canberra McCulloch, Susan. 2001, Contemporary Aboriginal Art: a guide to the rebirth of an ancient culture, Allen & Unwin, St. Leonards, NSW. McMahon, Martin, 1996, ‘The Case of the Counterfeit Carpets’, in V Johnson (ed), Copyrights: Aboriginal art in the age of reproductive technologies. National Indigenous Arts Advocacy . Association and Macquarie University, Canberra. Miller Dancun. 1995. Collective Ownership of Copyright in Spiritually-Sensitive Works: (Deceased Applicant) vIndofurn Pty Ltd , (1995) vol 6 Australian Intellectual Property Journal p 206. Read More