A story in and on signs: Making resistance and acquiescence legible as forms of resilience

Abstract

In 2007, the federal Australian government announced and began to implement the Northern Territory Emergency Response (NTER, locally called ‘The Intervention’), a sweeping and often-times draconian policy ostensibly addressing disadvantage in Aboriginal communities across the Northern Territory. Warlpiri people living in and around the central Australian Tanami Desert overwhelmingly oppose the Intervention and the resultant legal and political standardisations in process of being implemented in their home settlements. In this paper, I discuss Warlpiri attitudes of resistance, resilience, and acquiescence through analysing local reactions to signs – road signs erected by the NTER, billboards announcing policy, and signs erected by Warlpiri people, or in response to Warlpiri requests. My case studies include so-called ‘Intervention Signs’, erected across the Northern Territory at every location where a public road enters Aboriginal Land and announcing alcohol and pornography prohibitions; signs erected by Indigenous and non-indigenous locals as a response to ‘Intervention Signs’, and the erection of signs requested by Warlpiri people from the Aboriginal Areas Protection Authority to signal entry restrictions to sacred sites. I take signs as sites of struggle of authority and control over local lives and land, but also show how the local erection of signs is a mimetic strategy. The latter reveals aspects of an easily unnoticed kind of transformation of local socio-cultural structures and practices.