Talk:Kokatha

Requested move 25 January 2018

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Moved. There's no opposition to moving. Please when discussing move it is better if people will just stick to why the new name is better or not better instead of discussing history in broader scope which will make it harder in reading consensus in support or against the move. (non-admin closure) –Ammarpad (talk) 09:51, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

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Kokata → Kokatha – The Kokatha Mula Nations Land Council and Kokatha Aboriginal Corporation use the spelling Kokatha (eg https://www.kokatha.com.au/) and this should be preferred over Kokata, which is not attested elsewhere in contemporary official sources. Dicaeopolis (talk) 03:21, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

The revert by my colleague and major co-editor of the series, --NSH001, was obligatory of course and does not prejudice the issue as to which name we should use. The problem is far more complex than would appear at first sight since the radical disruption undergone by most if not all tribes has in large part ruptured continuity. Personally, I have focused, as did Tindale, on getting the historical facts about the tribes prior to, or contemporary with white colonization, down. There is an argument that the contemporary dislocated groups, reformed to reclaim land rights on the basis of cultural and linguistic continuities, are creatively refashioned identities (as with all groups under the stress of modernity) quite distinct from the single ancestral tribes: the breakdown of the marriage class system, intermarriage between many groups with historically separate identities, again complicates the picture. Governments keep to resist native title claims stress the dislocation, native groups intent on regaining part of their lost patrimony are critical of the historical, ethnographical and linguistic work done on their societies (See the Kokatha comments here, for example). As late as 1972 the Ooldea remnants [Some reference should be made to the use of its two tribal names spelt 'Kukata and 'Kokata. The Ooldea people call themselves Kokata or "Kukata (without making any outstanding distinction), though earlier as late as the early thirties there was a territorial distinction, dialectically attested, between Kokata or Kukata/cf. Gugada/Gugadja].

A lot of native claim titles are formulated in terms of recent self-identifiers that have no resonance with the known earlier records (Yawuru,Lama Lama to name but a few, contemporary aggregate identities which represent the conflation of remnants of historically distinct tribal realities.

I used the general old historical designation because the data I was giving referred to that reality. The sketch still lacks a section on modern developments, where the descendant group calling itself Kokatha Mula comes to the fore.

There is no hard and fast rule of the kind your edit premised, i.e. 'call them by the contemporary name' (for the reasons given above: i.e. despite continuities, they are historically different societies). I prefer Kokata, with the gloss in the lead, also known as the Kokatha Mula, . . ..Nishidani (talk) 09:43, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

I see your point but I am not sure I can agree. I am aware of the widespread changes after colonization, though as a NSW whitefella I am less familiar with the South Australian context in particular. I suggest though that given the native title claim of the Kokatha people is recognized by the government (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-09-04/kookatha-people-celebrate-native-title-win/5719422), an argument which rests on continuity, it is weird to then use a variant spelling to deliberately contradict this continuity. I note that Kokatha redirects here at present - so we already implicitly recognize this continuity in the Wiki structure. It would seem to me to be a subtle delegitimization of a legally settled matter - needless to say I am not accusing you of meaning this deliberately, but I do think this is the effect. I understand also your point about the fact that modern communities often represent the fusion of several distinct ancestral communities under the pressure of colonization and related changes, but all societies experience historical changes: the Wiki page for France, for instance, includes historical material relating to the various stages of geographically and politically distinct entities which the modern French community holds to be its antecedents (eg Francia, Gaul), and acknowledges both difference and continuity.

I feel that the best option might be to explicitly include a section about historical and contemporary territories and practices, but to have the heading of the page be Kokatha.--Dicaeopolis (talk) 19:08, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

I try to keep politics out of it: political agreements, however much based on legal evidence (much of it 'contaminated' in the government's favour by poor early ethnography), count little compared to historical anthropology. Guilt feelings and their symbolic gestures cannot assuage the fact of genocidal practice. The comparisons with modern western societies are errant, because they have written continuities going back millennia, whereas those western societies, as colonial powers, wiped out 99% of native tradition. I'll think about it overnight. But a record of devastation is far more impressive than a fiction of continuity. Nishidani (talk) 20:32, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

I see your point, but I think it's not the role of wikipedia to refuse to acknowledge the official naming by government policy. I think it's also (and I'm not referring to Kokata specifically here) an exaggeration to say that 99% of tradition is wiped out - from my experience with APY people and readings about other parts of the country, while traditions have changed, there is actually a great deal of cultural continuity. (For example, even the Eora people of the coastal Sydney region have more continuity than was until recently believed in academic discourse: see Paul Irish, Hidden in Plain View, for a history of the Eora since contact). I think a record of devastation is important, but changing the name and explicitly including pre and post contact sections and reference to the Kokatha native title decision is very important for this page. Dicaeopolis (talk) 17:06, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

99% is lost when you lose your language, which wires the poetry and the capacity to feel and think differently. That's a hard and fast rule. Analysing my preference for Kokota, I realized it's a linguistic prejudice: 'Kokota' would give the reader a bertter chance to get close to the pronunciation, than the 'th' in kokotha', which will produce a sound that language didn't have. Still, I don't much care about this one way or another, and feel free to rename this page as 'Kokotha' ( without 'Mula') if you like. Nishidani (talk) 17:44, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

I'm glad we're agreed on the move. Do I need to do anything for it to take effect? I've never done a move to an existing target page before. Dicaeopolis (talk) 19:01, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

Ask NSH001. He's like the Pope in technical matters, only less fallible.Nishidani (talk) 20:23, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

Pah! I make mistakes too, just like everyone else (most embarrassing sometimes!). Anyway, Dicaeopolis, no, you probably don't need to do anything. Someone (who should be uninvolved) will close this discussion after the 7 days is up, and if there is consensus, will perform the move. Note that only an Admin, or someone with the "Page Mover" right, is able to perform the move. --NSH001 (talk) 21:02, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.