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Student Research submissions 2013 (2013 research options) Research Post 1 |
LITR 5831 World Literature
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Jenna Zucha
Aboriginal Australia: Finding the Spirit of Stolen Generations
My research will focus on understanding the history behind
the Stolen Generations, and how Australia has attempted to recuperate and atone
for its past mistakes along with how the Aboriginal people, who were taken from
their families in such a violent way, have attempted to mend the personal and
cultural void. My reasoning behind this inquiry comes from the idea of using
artistic mediums as a means to combat traumatic events and promote progress
within cultures that have been targeted by Imperial powers. I also will consider
the similarities that can be made between Australia’s history and United States
history concerning its Native populations.
A Stolen Generation:
Prior to this research the only
associations I could accurately make with Australia and its culture was Mad Max,
kangaroos, and the iconic Sydney Opera House. I had a vague notion of the
Aboriginal people, but like most Americans, I held the naive belief that the
Native people and the British settlers must have lived in undisturbed harmony.
As I started looking into this I quickly realized that this was not the case at
all, and I also began to note how closely the history of Australia’s
colonization resembled my own country's dark and often ignored past. Like the
United States and South America, Australia is part of the “settler” colonies.
With the settler colonies the representatives of the Imperial power never leave
and as a result the Native population is disturbed, relocated, and in many cases
taken out of their own culture to be absorbed by the dominating Imperial
culture. My misconceptions and Australia’s relation to America as a settler
colony connects to one of the Postcolonial Studies’ primary objectives:
to
account for Americans’ difficulties, denials, and ignorance towards colonial and
postcolonial discourse and through exposure creating alternative worldviews.
Jeanne Boydson explains in her article, “Locating Settler Colonies in the
Postcolonial Imaginary,” that postcolonial studies “can offer a way out of the
cul-de-sac of American exceptionalism that has long dominated and constrained
the study of early American history” (1223). In her article she reviews the work
of Malini Johar Schueller and Edward Watts who wrote
Messy Beginnings:
Postcoloniality and Early American Studies.
Boydson
nicely asserts that this book points out that
“most early American historians would now agree, to debate whether the United
States was simply a variant on European imperialism or a beacon of enlightened
self-determination is pointless. It was plainly both” (1223). Since colonized
areas like the United States and Australia are unique in the way they were
established and permanently settled by the European colonizers suggests that any
attempt to reconcile unsavory mistreatment of the native population becomes
complicated because of constant interaction, proximity, the unforced adoption of
certain cultural concepts on both sides, and cross-cultural relations.
“Americas’
settler communities, whose histories were intensely local and endlessly
contradictory, defied simple description as either ‘American’ or ‘European.’
Rather, they constituted an ‘entanglement of imperial and colonial experiences
and identities’ that postcolonial methods are particularly well suited to pick
apart (Schueller qtd. in Boydson 1223). Postcolonial studies has the ability to
present Americans with reflective history that provides parallels or
commonalities that might begin to break down the “exceptionlasim” that blocks
discourse and cultural/societal progression.
The first time I came across the
phrase, Stolen Generations, I was viewing Phillip Noyce’s film,
Rabbit-Proof Fence.
I was immediately intrigued by this and my curiosity led me to begin researching
the history behind this phrase. Many websites have been dedicated to preserving
and promoting the awareness of Australia’s Stolen Generations. One of the first
places my research brought me to was
the
website
stolengenerationstestimonies.com;
a Historical project that is dedicated to archiving as many Aboriginal
testimonies as possible since 2009 and providing a place for people to post
their stories as a means to possibly beginning the healing process. The website
also provided some introductory information and vocabulary needed to begin
further inquiries into the subject. I discovered that part of the colonial
movement in Australia was the many instances of settlers kidnapping Aboriginal
children who often became servants in their households or workers on the
frontier. Missions and reserves were established to help convert the native and
“half-caste” children to Christianity and other British customs by removing them
from the cultural influences of their families and community. Aboriginal
children across the frontier were forcefully taken from their homes and placed
in institutions and foster homes, often not knowing their parents were alive or
searching for them. They were taught to reject their Aboriginality and often
experienced abuse and deprivation at the hands of the Colonizers and
Missionaries.
As I continued to inquire into this
event, a few names and terms seemed to dominate the discussion: Removal Act,
Bringing
Them Home Report, and Sorry Day kept appearing
in my searches. Peter Read has made many notable contributions to the
documentation of these horrific events in his book,
The Stolen
Generation: (Bringing Them Home). According to
Read, most of the removals occurred in the period between 1909-1969, although in
some places children were still being taken up until 1970. The Department of
Aboriginal Affairs (New South Wales Government) has the removals dating back to
1883. The removal process was solidified by
The Aborigines
Protection Amending Act of 1915, which enabled
the Australian Federal and State governments to remove Aboriginal children from
their homes and parents without having to establish that they were in any way
neglected or mistreated (Bringing
Them Home Report, humanrights.org). The
political situation surrounding the
Bringing Them Home
Report is explained by Lester Irabinna Rigney
as a sort of “whistle blower” inquiry that publically revealed past laws and
policies carried out by the Federal Parliament in his essay, “Native Title, The
stolen Generation and Reconciliation: The Struggles Facing Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander Peoples in Australia.” Rigney states that “the Stolen Generation
Report pricks the consciousness of all Australians and those who hold power over
her shores” (125). This is a valid assumption because the year following the
report Australia held the first unofficial National “Sorry Day” in 1998, and
this National dedication of apologies continues every year on May 26th.
As
a professor of politics and an advocate for victims of genocide, Robert Manne
has become a strong voice for the Stolen Generation. In his book
In Denial: the
Stolen Generation and the Right, Manne sheds
light on what exactly Australia should continue apologizing for: the child
removal legislation resulted in the widespread confiscation of children from
their parents. An exercise of sundry guardianship powers by Aboriginal
protectors over Aborigines up to the age of 16 to 21. Policeman or other agents
of the state were given the power to locate and transfer babies and children of
mixed decent (half-caste) from their families and communities to institutions.
Unfortunately many skeptics continue to deny that anything to this extent
occurred or even lasted as long as it did. Peter Craven explains in the
introduction to Manne’s book that this is an attempt to come to terms with the
fact that “a group of right-wing commentators [have] effectively railroaded the
national awareness of how large numbers of Aboriginal children were separated
from their families in the period between 1910 and 1970. As Manne presents it,
this is a story of how failure of sympathy, hardening of the imaginative
arteries, is abetted at every point by the form of wishful thinking about the
past” (i1). This sort of denial makes the need for awareness and exposure even
more necessary.
Another advocate for awareness is
the writer Doris Pilkington Garimara; she is the author of the book
Follow the
Rabbit-Proof Fence (1996). In this book she
writes the story of her mother’s escape from Moore River Native Settlement along
with her cousins in the western region of Australia. Her mother’s story is taken
up by the film director Phillip Noyce in 2011 as the motion-picture,
Rabbit-Proof Fence.
Pilkington was born at Balfour Downs Station, near the northwestern Australian
settlement of Jigalong. At the age of four she was sent to Moore River Native
Settlement with her mother. It is during this time that she learns that her
mother, Molly Kelly, was originally sent to Moore at the age of 14 with her two
cousins. The children escaped and returned to Jigalong by following 1,000
kilometer long rabbit-proof fence. This journey took the girls several months to
complete but they eventually made it back home to their families, only to be
taken again some years later. This story and many others are key to building
back up the lost sympathy and awareness that Manne speaks of. Pilkington is able
to use her and her mother’s story of survival and persistence to maintain some
sense of identity in the face of the colonial power. Doris Pilkington was given
the Red Ochre Award (the largest Indigenous arts award) in 2008. She has also
been appointed co-patron of Australia’s state and federal “Sorry Day”
committees-Journey of Healing in 2002.
Making Strides towards Recovery through music, art, and
literature:
The website
Creative Spirits
is helping to foster and advance many contemporary Aboriginal artists in every
facet of culture. This site provides information on local musicians, artists,
photographers, poets, and political activists that are attempting to create a
powerful and substantial voice for the native Aboriginals. One of the ways their
community is making strides is by creating the Survival Day Concert which
features many Aboriginal artists that perform in Australia in rebellion of
Australian Day that is held annually on January 26. This day marks the arrival
of British colonial settlers, but for the native people it is a day of mourning
and stolen sovereignty.
·
Survival Day Concert,
http://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/history/australia-day-invasion-day#toc0
In
the article, “Aboriginal Musicians Doing it Tough,” several advocates and
musicians speak out on the many struggles faced by Aboriginal artists; ‘‘The
effect of having an almost completely white population drawn predominantly from
Britain and northern Europe meant that there was little knowledge of, or impact
of, music that was not drawn from white sources,’’ says Jon Stratton, a
professor in the school of media, culture and creative arts at Curtin University
in Western Australia. “While Aboriginal musicians feel empowered to make their
struggles known through their songs, many comments left on social media sites by
fans are racist and misogynist. There’s no shortage of straight-up boneheaded
racism in our audiences,” says hip-hop MC and producer Tim Levinson, also known
as Urthboy. Finding ways for Aboriginal music to be heard in Australia has been
difficult, but people in the industry like Gavin Jones are making great strides
in the right direction. In 1995 Gavin started publishing about Aboriginal music
with the
Deadly Vibe magazine. He then created the radio
program
Deadly Sounds, which is a weekly Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander music program dedicated to airing original music produced
and played by native Australians. “I never thought [Deadly Sounds] would go as
far as it has. It just underlines how much our own people—and the rest of
Australia—have been starved of legitimate positive images and stories about
Indigenous peoples.”
Read more:
http://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/arts/aboriginal-musicians-doing-it-tough#ixzz2iUipK8Gf
Along with music, poetry is a
substantial form of rebellion and activism among the Aboriginal people. Dan
Davis’ poem, “What Becomes of Us Now,” highlights the anxiety felt by the
Aboriginal people after the Great Apology. He wonders and hopes that his voice
will be heard; “I wanna make everyone hear my voice, make them turn around and
see, Just what’s gonna become of this Kukuyalnjii Murri.” Many other
contemporary poets are featured on the
Creative Spirits
website, and these poems have a tendency to focus on the challenges they share
with non-indigenous people, but many express the traumatic events they faced at
the hands of the colonizers. To read more poetry by Aboriginal poets visit
Creative Spirits
page on poetry.
In closing, I return to the statements made at the start of my research; art,
literature, and many other artistic mediums play a significant role in promoting
awareness, rebuilding broken cultures, and healing those who have experienced
trauma at the hands of Colonizers. I was surprised by how many similarities can
be found between the history of the Native Americans and the Australian
Aboriginals. I also observed how similar the postcolonial reactions have been
for both groups: The National Instances of denial and the holidays/celebrations
that are simultaneously days of mourning like Thanksgiving, Columbus Day, and
Australia Day. As this aspect of my research draws to an end I see the
possibilities for further research. It would be interesting to extend the
comparisons between the two “settler colonies” and look at how Native Americans
are expanding their culture and awareness of their identity through their art,
music and literature as well. I end with a statement by Lester Irabinna Rigney
that really drives home the overall theme of the research I have conducted and
highlights what can be gained by insisting on a postcolonial approach to a
Nations history: “As any good healer knows, before the healing can begin the
poisons must be identified. The South African Truth and Reconciliation
Commission sought knowledge and personal state in the direction of
reconciliation and a refusal ever to repeat the past” (126). Awareness is the
first step and then a true acknowledgment of the Native people’s place,
importance, and significance towards a Nation’s culture and history can provide
a real opportunity for reconciliation.
Works Cited
"Aboriginal Musicians Doing It Tough."
- Creative Spirits.
N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Oct. 2013.
"Australia Day - Invasion Day."
- Creative Spirits. N.p.,
n.d. Web. 24 Oct. 2013.
Boydson, Jeanne. "Locating Settler
Colonies in the Postcolonial Imaginary, Messy Beginnings: Postcoloniality and
Early American Studies by Malini Johar Schueller; Edward Watts."
American Quarterly 57.4
(2005): 1223-229. JSTOR.
Web. 22 Oct. 2013.
Haschka, Victoria. "Australian
Government." Pot of Gold at the End of the
Rabbit-Proof Fence for Doris Pilkington Garimara AM.
Australian Council, 30 May 2008. Web. 16 Oct. 2013.
Horton, David.
The Encyclopedia of Aboriginal Australia: Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander History, Society and Culture.
Canberra: Aboriginal Studies for the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander Studies, 1994. Print.
Kovacic, Leonarda, and Barbara Lemon.
"Pilkington, Doris - Woman - The Australian Women's Register."
Pilkington, Doris - Woman - The Australian Women's
Register. The Australian Women's Archives Project,
23 Sept. 2005. Web. 16 Oct. 2013.
Pendreigh, Brian. "Phillip Noyce
Interview - Phillip Noyce on Rabbit-Proof Fence."
Phillip Noyce on Rabbit-Proof Fence. Iofilm, n.d.
Web. 16 Oct. 2013.
Rigney, Lester I. "Native Title, The
Stolen Generation and Reconciliation: The Struggles Facing Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander Peoples in Australia."
Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies
(1998): 125-30. UHCL Neuman Library.
Web. 22 Oct. 2013.
"The Stolen
Generations - European Network for Indigenous Australian Rights."
The Stolen Generations - European Network for Indigenous
Australian Rights. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Oct. 2013.
