Mawul Rom Project: openness, obligation and reconciliation.

Abstract: Aboriginal Australian initiatives to restore balanced relationships with White Australians have recently become part of reconciliation efforts. This paper provides a contextualised report on one such initiative, the Mawul Rom cross-cultural mediation project. Viewing Mawul Rom as a diplomatic venture in the lineage of adjustment and earlier Rom rituals raises questions about receptiveness, individual responsibility and the role of Indigenous ceremony in reconciliation efforts. Yolngu ceremonial leaders successfully draw participants into relationship and personally commit them to the tasks of cross-cultural advocacy and reconciliation. But Mawul Rom must also negotiate a paradox because emphasis on the cultural difference of ceremony risks increasing the very social distance that the ritual attempts to confront. Managing this tension will be a key challenge if Mawul Rom is to become an effective diplomatic mechanism for cross-cultural conflict resolution and reconciliation.

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On the eve of the fortieth anniversary of the 1967 referendum, Mick Dodson and Fred Chaney (2007) argued that advancing reconciliation requires engaging individuals, schools, employers, private enterprises and the media. Their argument echoes Andrew Leigh's earlier (2002) call for 'adaptive leadership'. Leigh's (2002:132) prescription for undertaking the 'adaptive work of reconciliation' is straightforward: focus on changing attitudes and developing stronger interpersonal relations and understanding, rather than (predominantly) on elected politicians or high-level leadership. This work involves generating some level of social stress and discomfort among those called to participate, but not so much as to lead them to shun the process (Leigh 2002:140). Aboriginal peoples have long practised this type of leadership by engaging outsiders in efforts to establish relationships of equality and respect. Perhaps the most notable documented instance is the 1957 Arnhem Land Adjustment Movement. On that occasion senior Yolngu leaders revealed sacred objects in public in an attempt to institute an exchange with White Australia to restore a balanced relationship (Hamilton 2004:8; Berndt 1962; Morphy 1983; Keen 1994:276-80; Magowan 2004-295).

What, though, of the contemporary practice, dynamics and challenges of adaptive reconciliation work initiated by Aboriginal peoples ? In this paper we report on the Mawul Rom 2004 cross-cultural mediation workshop, an effort directly engaged in adaptive reconciliation. We reflect upon questions of receptiveness, relationship, responsibility and the use of Indigenous ceremony in efforts to build bridges between settler and Indigenous Australians. Now is an opportune time for a contextualised account of Mawul Rom and some reflection and analysis because Mawul was held again in July 2007, this time as part of a four-year program explicitly targeting mediation, conflict resolution and leadership training.

We introduce Mawul Rom by providing some background information and presenting the key Yolngu figure driving the project. Our second section notes parallels between Mawul Rom, earlier Rom rituals and the 1957 Adjustment Movement. We show that Mawul Rom is part of a lineage of Yolngu attempts to reach out to settler Australians, which both continues and reworks the trajectory of earlier efforts. This highlights ongoing Yolngu openness to outsiders and provides the context for our account of the ceremonial component of Mawul Rom 2004. The third section begins by introducing our involvement as non-Indigenous participants and shows a tension between reporting on the event in social-scientific terms and the dynamics of our participation and adaptive leadership. Our report of Mawul Rom--excerpts of our personal experiences are interspersed with short descriptions of ceremonial events--describes the event and its effects, while also meeting our obligation as participants to experience the ceremony personally rather than intellectually and to become at least partial advocates for Yolngu. Our excerpts show that Yolngu are able to have remarkable impacts upon individuals in ceremony by working to activate a sense of individual obligation to Yolngu and to the work of reconciliation.

We conclude the paper with broader reflections upon Mawul Rom's capacity to achieve its aim of bringing about positive change in contemporary Australian settler--Indigenous relations. In view of our experiences, Yolngu innovation in ceremony and the treatment of knowledge, and the capacity to draw people into relationships of responsibility and obligation through ceremony, promises to contribute much to reconciliation efforts. But a paradox also arises between affording settlers an 'exotic' ceremonial cultural experience and simultaneously striving to narrow the social distance between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.

Introducing Mawul Rom