ABSTRACT
The idea of tradition encompasses more than being a 'full blooded Aboriginal' living in a 'remote' region of the country. The work of anthropologists is largely responsible for the construction of traditional Aboriginal culture. Today, critical anthropology suggests the discipline is 'post-colonial' but the reification of 'tradition' and lesser, related binaries still dominate thinking. Anthropologist Ronald Murray Berndt would have accorded me as falling prey to assimilationist agendas, but not all of us have stopped hearing the land speak and not all of us have adopted a white way of knowing ruwe. The place of Barukunga in South Australia had other names imposed on it by the muldarbi: it was progressively a pastoral lease, then a mining lease, and now a township called Brukunga. Bell's 'reality' empowers itself in the process of rendering our ideas of our mob invisible, and the experts take control of the playing field.
