Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Ethnicity and Cultural Wounding: Ethnic Conflict, Loss of Home, and the Drive to Return

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
The Palgrave Handbook of Ethnicity

  • 130 Accesses

Abstract

This chapter presents a discussion of ethnicity in relation to cultural wounding and healing. Cultural wounding is the violation of persons and their cultural lives through insult and injury, motivated by the desire to destroy or significantly harm this culture and its bearers. This is understood as a process of attacking human groups, in particular those bound by an ethnic distinction and declaration. What binds human groups and ultimately locates them in the path of “ethnic violence” is the perception of an “ethnic distinction” and a cultural orientation that is determined “other.” This chapter aims to take stock of the meanings and expressions of ethnicity available to people in a prevailingly tense world, where tensions are born of ethnic conflict and culturally prescribed violence and shaped by the dynamic ethnic configurations that survive such encounters. Committed to better understanding the experiences of cultural wounding that precipitate a need for healing, for Indigenous families in northern Australia, a case study of the Yanyuwa community experiences with legislative land rights is presented. This grounds the discussion of ethnicity and cultural wounding, revealing the ways in which groups heal and retain a sense of belonging through distinctive pathways of return and restitution.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Adgemis P (2017) We are Yanyuwa – no matter what: town life, family and change. PhD Dissertation, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

    Google Scholar 

  • Avery J (1985) The law people: History, society and initiation in the Borroloola area of the Northern Territory. PhD Dissertation, University of Sydney, New South Wales

    Google Scholar 

  • Baker R (1990) Coming in? The Yanyuwa as a case study in the geography of contact history. Aborig Hist 14(1–2):25–60

    Google Scholar 

  • Baker R (1992) ‘Gough Whitlam time’: land rights in the Borroloola area of Australia’s Northern Territory. Appl Geogr 12:162–175

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Baker R (1999) Land is life: continuity through change for the Yanyuwa from the Northern Territory of Australia. Allen & Unwin, Sydney

    Google Scholar 

  • Bauman Z (1992) Survival as a social construct. Theory, Cult Soc 9(1):1–36

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bradley J (2008) Singing through the sea: song, sea and emotion. In: Shaw S, Francis A (eds) Deep blue: critical reflections on nature, religion and water. Routledge, Abingdon, pp 17–32

    Google Scholar 

  • Bradley J (2014) We always look north: Yanyuwa identity and the maritime environment. In: Peterson N, Rigsby B (eds) Customary marine tenure in Australia, 2nd edn. Sydney University Press, Sydney, pp 201–226

    Google Scholar 

  • Bradley J, Families Y (2016) Wuka nya-nganunga li-Yanyuwa li-Anthawirriyarra-Language for us, The Yanyuwa saltwater people. ASP, Melbourne

    Google Scholar 

  • Bradley J, Yanyuwa Families (2010) Singing saltwater country. Allen & Unwin, Sydney

    Google Scholar 

  • Brennan S (2008) Wet or dry, it’s aboriginal land: the blue mud bsay decision on the intertidal zone. Indigenous Law Bulletin 6(7). Available at: http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/IndigLawB/2008/27.html. Accessed 12 May 2018

  • Cook B, Withy K, Tarallo-Jensen L (2003) Cultural trauma, Hawaiian spirituality and contemporary health status. Calif J Health 1:10–24

    Google Scholar 

  • Davis J (2005) Is it really safe? That’s what we want to know: science, stories, and dangerous places. Prof Geogr 57(2):213–221

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Erikson K (2011) The day the world turned red: a report on the people of Utrik. Yale Rev 99(1):27–47

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Falah G (1996) The 1948 Israeli–Palestinian war and its aftermath: the transformation and de- signification of Palestine’s cultural landscape. Ann Assoc Am Geogr 86(2):256–285

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fullilove MT (2004) Root shock: how tearing up city neighborhoods hurts America and what we can do about it. Ballantine Books, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Gordon A (2008) Ghostly matters: haunting and the sociological imagination. University of Minessotta Press, Minessotta

    Google Scholar 

  • Gordon A (2011) Some thoughts on haunting and futurity. Borderlands 10(2):2–21

    Google Scholar 

  • Heider F (2005) Violence and ecology. Peace Confl: J Peace Psychol. Special Issue: Military Ethics and Peace Psychology: A Dialogue 11(1):9–15

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jackson S (1995) The water is not empty: cross-cultural issues in conceptualising sea space. Aust Geogr 26(1):87–96

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Karner C (2007) Ethnicity and everyday life. Routledge, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Kearney A (2014) Cultural wounding, healing and emerging ethnicities. Palgrave Macmillan, New York

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Kearney A (2017) Violence in place, cultural and environmental wounding. Routledge, Abingdon

    Google Scholar 

  • Kearney A (2018) Intimacy and distance: indigenous relationships to country in northern Australia. Ethnos 83(1):172–191

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Marshall V (2017) Overturning aqua nullius: Securing aboriginal water rights. Australian Studies Press, Canberra

    Google Scholar 

  • McLaughlin D (1977) Submission to the joint selection committee on aboriginal land rights in the northern territory, 24 June 1977. In: Australian parliament joint selection committee on aboriginal land rights in the Northern territory, 1268–1316A. Commonwealth of Australia Publishers, Canberra

    Google Scholar 

  • O’Regan T (2014) New myths and old politics. BWB, Wellington

    Google Scholar 

  • Phillips K, Mitchell Reyes, G. (eds) (2011) Global memoryscapes: contesting remembrance in a transnational age. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa

    Google Scholar 

  • Relph E (1976) Place and placelessness. Pion, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Roberts T (2005) Frontier justice: a history of the Gulf country to 1900. University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia

    Google Scholar 

  • Rose D (1996) Land rights and deep colonising: the erasure of women. Aborig Law Bull 3(85):6

    Google Scholar 

  • Rose D (2004) Reports from a wild country: ethics for decolonisation. UNSW Press, Sydney

    Google Scholar 

  • Rose D (2014) Arts of flow: poetics of ‘fit’ in aboriginal Australia. Dialect Anthropol 38(4):431–445

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schnell I, Mishal S (2008) Place as a source of identity in colonizing societies: Israeli settlements in Gaza. Geogr Rev 98(2):242–259

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Scott T (2008) It’s all Alemannic to me! Ethnicity as an interpretive tool for cultural transformations. J Aust Early Mediev Assoc 4:175–185

    Google Scholar 

  • Seamon D (1996) A singular impact: Edward Relph’s place and placelessness. Environ Archit Phenomenol Newsl 7(3):5–8

    Google Scholar 

  • Seamon D, Sowers J (2008) Place and placelessness, Edward Relph. In: Hubbard P, Kitchen R, Vallentine G (eds) Key texts in human geography. Sage, London, pp 43–51

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Seton K, Bradley J (2005) Self-determination or ‘deep colonising’: land claims, colonial authority and Indigenous representation. In: Hocking B (ed) Unfinished constitutional business. Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra, pp 32–46

    Google Scholar 

  • Shkilnyk A (1985) A poison stronger than love: the destruction of an Ojibwa community. Yale University Press, New Haven

    Google Scholar 

  • Staub E, Pearlman L, Gubin A, Hagengimana A (2005) Healing, reconciliation, forgiving and the prevention of violence after genocide or mass killing. J Soc Clin Psychol 24(3):297–334

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Strang V (2011) Owning water in Australia. In: Strang V, Busse M (eds) Ownership and appropriation. Berg, Oxford, pp 171–196

    Google Scholar 

  • Strang V, Busse M (eds) (2011) Ownership and appropriation. Berg, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Teo T (2010) What is epistemological violence in the empirical social sciences? Soc Personal Psychol Compass 4(5):295–303

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Toussaint S, Sullivan P, Yu S (2005) Water ways in aboriginal Australia: an interconnected analysis. Anthropol Forum 15(1):61–74

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Windsor J, McVey J (2005) Annihilation of both place and sense of place: the experience of the Cheslatta T’En Canadian First Nation within the context of large-scale environmental projects. Geogr J 171(2):146–165

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Matthew Flinders Fellow, College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Flinders University, Bedford Park, SA, Australia

    Amanda Kearney

Authors
  1. Amanda Kearney
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Amanda Kearney .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept of Socio & Anthro, Rm 309, Univ of Canterbury Dept of Socio & Anthro, Rm 309, Christchurch, New Zealand

    Steven Ratuva

Section Editor information

  1. School of Government, Development & International Affairs, The University of the South Pacific, Suva, Fiji

    Paul Carnegie

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

About this entry

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this entry

Kearney, A. (2019). Ethnicity and Cultural Wounding: Ethnic Conflict, Loss of Home, and the Drive to Return. In: Ratuva, S. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Ethnicity. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0242-8_52-1

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0242-8_52-1

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore

  • Print ISBN: 978-981-13-0242-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-13-0242-8

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Political Science and International StudiesReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation