Community Heritage Project: Wattan Report

Discussion Document

Some Issues arising:

1. Community and institutional partnerships: critical questions about practice.

Genuine community partnerships create a bond that can be developed over generations, and a short-term project mentality can make unrealistic promises. If it is possible for cultural institutions to develop long term corporate relationships – is it therefore possible to create models of long term community affiliation?

How do large institutions avoid the traps of anthropological / ethnographic pursuits, whereby the institution is “enriched” and the community is “depleted”? How do the community groups set the agendas, without having to work for “acknowledgement”, and without being made to feel they must be “grateful”?

How do independent organisations / institutions seek the broadest partnerships, which are non-sectarian and which do not claim to represent all Lebanese and Arab Australians and their experiences?

2. Arab Australian community issues: Some issues and questions arising from the experience of community consultation and discussion. Perceptions of the community vs. community self-perceptions.

• does the historical racism and “orientalism” within the dominant Australian culture affect the Arab Australian Communities’ self-perceptions and their views of their own history and heritage?
• are the terms “diversity” and “difference” negotiated in the broader Australian context? Who is making the definitions and representations?
• are the seemingly fixed “binaries” of theory and practice dismantled? (e.g. East / West, Christian / Muslim, North / South, Traditional / Contemporary, Arab / Jew, Orient / Occident, etc.) How do we move on from these constructions, as they permeate the very nature of this project work?
• is an ongoing need to challenge the popular “binaries” which structure perceptions of Arab Australians i.e. it is seen that there are always two “problematic sides” (Muslim / Christian or Arab / Jew). There is often the perception that there is no “harmony” – which assumes that there is “harmony” within Australian society. There is the fear and misunderstanding of “Islam” in the “Muslim / Christian” binary. There is the popular binary that an “Arab” representation or voice needs to be “balanced” by a “Jewish” representation or voice – whereas there is never a “need” to balance a “Jewish” representation with and “Arab” one. In the context of Arab Australian Heritage work, this paradigm is not always necessary.
• do we create representations of multiple and conflicting “voices”, and not fall into traps of polite “censorship” or “balance”?
• collections traditionally “decontextualize” their objects and materials. “Context” is not only about data and the provenance of an object. Do objects become “stolen” when they are so “decontextualized”? How do we look at collection / loans of objects and materials for exhibitions and avoid the classic traps of “orientalism”?

3. The Heritage Business: “heritage” and / or “history”?

• do we contextualize Arab Australian histories in the broader occupation of Indigenous Australian land and cultures?
• do we broaden limited concepts about “heritage” – within Arab Australian communities and within broader Australian society? How do we make heritage work a more inclusive contemporary cultural practice?
• do we avoid the inherent problematic of “comparisons” between various migrant communities’ experience in Australia? How do we avoid essentializing “difference” per se, and further contribute to the trap of “orientalism”?
• is the difference between “heritage” and “history”?
• documents history and how is it interpreted? Is there a “master narrative” / an “official discourse”, which determines how a community sees itself (i.e. through the narrative of the dominant Anglo-Australian culture)?

4. Cultural institutions: the challenge to make real shifts vs. the cool “synergy” of “buzzwords”!

• do institutions make genuine commitment to cultural diversity on all levels of infrastructure? What real mechanisms lie between the corporate policies and the community outreach projects?
• it possible for community cultural development projects to simultaneously empower communities, and encourage infrastructural flexibility and to influence institutional changes?
• do we avoid static representations of Arab Australian histories, heritage and cultures, which further marginalise these communities?
• do we encourage community collections and “keeping places”? Are collections acquisitions only relevant in a limited context? What does “cultural ownership” mean in relation to objects and materials, which are depleted of meaning away from their context?
• do we learn from the experience of Indigenous Australians? (e.g. in relation to the state’s historical collection of objects and materials, and developing practices of “return” and “repatriation”.)