[Anthropgrad] CAEPR Sem 3 Sept, 12.30-2pm Marisa Fogarty: Indigenous gambling

[Katarina Ferro]

CAEPR Seminar Series: Wednesday 3 September 2008; 12.30-2pm
AD Hope Bdg, Humanities Conference Room, 1 floor.
*
Dealing with cards: An anthropological perspective on remote Indigenous 
gambling*

—Marisa Fogarty (Doctoral Scholar, Charles Darwin University)

*Abstract:* In Australia, Indigenous card games fall outside mainstream 
government regulation and industry commercialisation. Consequently, 
these card games, or the act of playing these games is often referred to 
as 'unregulated', 'non-commercial' or 'community' gambling. Prior to the 
mid 1990's anthropologists interrogated certain aspects of Indigenous 
card games as small parts of broader research concerns. However, in the 
last decade anthropological research in this area has been notably 
absent. Contributing to this lack of research focus has been the 
widespread introduction of poker machines around Australia. The field of 
gambling research has adopted a decidedly psychological focus, based 
predominantly on electronic forms of gambling (i.e. poker machines). Of 
concern is that these Eurocentric, individuated, medicalised notions of 
gambling and problem gambling are becoming the dominant disciplinary 
lens of Indigenous gambling research. In this paper I will challenge 
this research approach through findings derived from an extensive 
ethnographic study of card games in a large remote Indigenous township. 
In so doing, I argue that dominant theoretical and methodological 
approaches to Indigenous gambling research are of limited relevance in 
the remote Indigenous context. Through a detailed analysis of remote 
card games, the research has revealed complex internal regulatory 
systems that structure the card games forming an Indigenous harm 
minimisation strategy. Such rules and regulations exist within the 
games, intended to protect both the individual and the community against 
the harmful effects of gambling, as well as to protect the games from 
corruption and cheating. As a result of these findings, I argue that 
both policy makers and researchers concerned with Indigenous gambling in 
remote areas must move beyond medicalized and individuated intervention 
models towards an Indigenous-centric approach to harm minimisation.

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