The Yolngu concept of inside-outside knowledge

Thoughts on the concept of "inside-outside" knowledge. Morphy writes about some Aboriginal knowledge being "inside knowledge" and other knowledge being "outside knowledge." Certain things are known to certain people at certain times and places. Such restricted knowledge is "inside knowledge." Knowledge that is more available to a variety of people and a variety of times and places is "outside knowledge." But of course, that dichotomy does not hold up. What is inside to some people will be outside to other people. It's easy to hear the phrases "inside knowledge, outside knowledge," and to think that this represents a dichotomy and an inequality. In the corporate world, inside knowledge is privileged knowledge that people in power have. "Insider trading" is when someone uses inside knowledge inappropriately to make a profit (and gets caught at it). In that world, some people are inside, and are privileged, and some people are outside, and are not privileged. But of course, that understanding of inside-outside doesn't seem to be what it means at all in an indigenous context. Two people having access to different kinds of knowledge does not necessarily mean that they have unequal power; it might just mean that they have different levels of expertise, or belong to different types of social groups.

Some knowledge is only available to people who have gone through a certain level of development, training, or initiation. Before they go through that level, they are outsiders to that knowledge. Once they have gone through that level then they are inside of that knowledge. But there will be still other aspects of knowledge that they remain outside of. Another level of training or initiation is necessary before they can be inside of that next set of knowledge. That's not elitist, that's just common sense. You need to make sure someone understands something properly before you introduce him or her to a concept that depends on understanding that thing. "Properly" can mean thorough understanding or it can mean having a proper ethical understanding. Or that's how I'm thinking about it. I can try to make sense of this by thinking of examples from my own experience. In academia, we believe that students in physics need to understand the basics of Newton’s theory of mechanics before they can properly understand how and when Einstein's theory of relativity applies. Once they're introduced to relativity, their professors say, "OK, now we know that Newton's theory wasn't true. Or it's mostly true, but it's incomplete." Students are outside of an understanding of Einstein's theory until they have mastered an understanding of Newton's theory. There are also situations in which academics want to make sure that a proper ethical understanding is in place before a student proceeds in a research program. In psychology, we want to make sure that our students and faculty members have some training in the ethical use of human participants in research before we allow them to conduct research. These are kind of clunky examples from my world. It seems that in the Aboriginal world, who should and should not have access to different kinds of knowledge is given by Law, and Law is given by elders, country, ceremony, ancestors, and other sources that I probably don't know how to imagine.

With social groups, some knowledge will always be "inside knowledge." Some knowledge will be concealed or secret because it's not appropriate to tell to other people. In my culture, we generally don't think that it's proper to tell about one's family's "dirty laundry" in public (unless, of course, you're on a reality TV show, or Dr. Phil). Uncle Joe's cheating on his wife gets discussed within the family, not to outsiders. So the idea of social boundaries around knowledge is common in many cultures; the specifics of those boundaries vary widely. They also vary over time. It's common to have things that one keeps to oneself until one knows another person better. So Aboriginal people keep things to themselves until they know a white person better. In addition, what white people think constitutes important information in "getting to know" someone is very different from what Aboriginal people think is important. White people in Australia and America don't talk about country or ancestors or kin. They talk about what they do for a living. So it makes sense that Aboriginal people might hold certain things back for a long time, simply from not feeling as if they know the person well enough to reveal something. (I'm obviously not talking about cases in which knowledge should never be revealed to an outsider.) Because many white Australians feel entitled to everything that Aboriginal people have, the idea of Aboriginal people holding something back is confronting to the colonial program.

In contrast, there are white people who feel fine about withholding information from aboriginal people. Morphy raises an interesting point about some knowledge being inside knowledge to one group when it is deceptively concealed from other groups. He gives the example of some white folks showing up on an Aboriginal reserve in the Northern Territory, and trying to convince them of all the wonderful benefits they would have if they allowed a road to be built through their country. The Aboriginal people kept saying no, because they could see clearly that the white guys had their own inside reasons why they wanted the road built, reasons that would benefit them rather than the Aborigines. Building a road through country is a serious business, and until the white guys were ready to come to the table and talk about their inside reasons for wanting the road, the Aboriginal people couldn't get down to serious business with them. The other thing that example made clear to me was the inherent racism in the white guys' approach. They thought that the Aborigines they were dealing with were simple, "primitive" people, who could easily be deceived by some lies about the benefits the road would bring. It does not seem to have occurred to them that they were dealing with clever people, who could see through an obvious sales pitch or deception. "Oh, Aboriginal people, most of them can't even read or write. It should be easy to pull the wool over their eyes." This underestimating of Aboriginal people seems to be a constant in Australian history.

Why is it so hard for some white folks to assume that people they're squashing with physical force might be clever? Thousands of slave owners in Haiti were poisoned by their house slaves within a few weeks because it never occurred to them that their slaves were clever enough to organize such a large-scale conspiracy in private. Knowledge of poisons and how to have a communication network among the slaves was inside knowledge for Haiti's African residents, and white slave owners were outside of that knowledge. In that case, it wasn't being an outsider that was fatal to the whites, it was the arrogance of assuming that they were too smart to be outsiders.

References:
Insider/outsider knowledge in Aboriginal cultures:
Morphy, H. (1991). Ancestral Connections: Art and an Aboriginal System of Knowledge, Chapter 5, Inside and Outside: The Yolngu System of Knowledge. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Slave revolution in Haiti:
Davis, W. (1985). The Serpent and Rainbow, Chapter 11, Tell My Horse. New York: Warner Books, Inc.