Australian indigenous literature:

From White representation to self representation

by Sunili UTHPALAWANNA GOVINNAGE and Sunil GOVINNAGE

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Aboriginal achievement

Is like the

dark side of the mood,

For it is there

But so little known.

-Ernie Dingo

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Literature is a powerful cultural artefact, which can communicate stories of a group or people to others. The process of writing and telling stories allows the creators to represent both their individual and group identity. Conversely, a dominant group can use the power of the written word to suppress another group by depicting it as the inferior and or different "other." In the area of colonial and indigenous relations, the response of the subordinate group is the domain of postcolonial studies - the questioning of the normalisation of the dominant group's power and "the social, political, economic, and cultural practices which arise in response and resistance to colonialism."

The dynamics of a group's literary representation and self-representation can be used to explore the power relations that exist within a society. In this article, we will examine the way representation and self-representation of a marginalised group between the settler and indigenous populations in Australia.

we will observe how the period of representation illustrates the balance of power relations in the direction of the Whites, who were able to present their views of Aboriginal peoples in literature. We will then present a shift in power relations as indigenous people began to assert their rights and their own identity (as opposed to an assigned identity) which coincides with the emergence of self-representative texts in Australian literary canon.

Australian indigenous creative writing cannot be studied in a vacuum, but rather needs to be examined and understood within the social and historical contexts. The changing socio-political status of indigenous people can be linked to the expansion of indigenous prose, poetry and drama and similarly, the "native literature of each country … assert[ing] cultural autonomy and sovereignty in a fascinating way."

The journey from representation to self-representation can be seen as a way in which the Aborigines were initially depicted as "inferior" and or "lower caste" group through an assigned identity of the "other." Self-representation in literature has allowed indigenous peoples to speak with their own voices, instead of being spoken about. Conversely, a dominant group can use the power of the written word to suppress another group by depicting it as the inferior and or different "other" as evident in Australia.

Communication of silence

In order to establish a framework for this paper, first, we would like to provide an insight from recent Australian history relating to the arrival of British invaders in 1770. Healy (1985:203) who has written on Australian literary canon provides fascinating observations on the early encounters between the white invaders and the Aborigines based on historical documents:

"On 23 July 1770 a straggler from one of Cook's shore parties fell in with four Aborigines sitting by a fire. He had the intelligence not to panic. They felt his body to make sure that he was a man like themselves. There could be no language between them." (Healy, 1985: 203).

Healy further elaborates this language barrier in terms of "communication of silence" between these two races: "Communication between the two races began from this silence. The Aborigines had touched the white man. Cook's journal showed the other part of the process. His vocabulary of Aboriginal words was the first attempt to understand the Aborigine. He recorded thirty-nine words reproduced the simplicity of the Aboriginal touch. Most of the words were anatomical ..." (Healy, 1985: 203)

From our perspective, Healy's words that there "could be no language between them" is crucial as the language and cultural barriers which evolved during the last two hundred years have kept the white Australians and the Aborigines in two separate compartments pulling each other in different directions.

These cultural compartments have created issues such as land rights, disempowerment, and the children of "stolen generation." In our view, this cultural compartmentalisation has contributed to develop different perspectives of the "other" in Australian literary canon, and may be interpreted as "Orientalism."

The Construction of "the Other" in Australian Edward Said (1979) writes about the practices adopted by colonial powers "to construct the colonised Other." Although Said's (1979) study limits Orientalism on how English, French, and American scholars have approached the Arab societies of North Africa and the Middle East, in this paper we use the term "Orientalism" as a representation of class of practices adopted by colonial powers "to construct the colonised Other."

One of the central themes of this theory is that "the Other cannot (be allowed to) represent themselves, cannot even be supposed to know themselves as subjects or objects of the discourse" and because of this, "they must therefore be represented by others."

Hodge and Mishra (1991) have applied this theory to Australia using the term "Aboriginalism"; a process that encodes "smugness and a sense of superiority, racist stereotypes, and assertion of rights of ownership in the intellectual and cultural sphere to match power in the political and economic spheres." What "Aboriginalism" does is prevent Aborigines from asserting the authority to be the authors of their own meanings, and it renders them unable to influence representations and perceptions of themselves.

The representation of Aboriginal people in early Australian literature is a construction of the colonised "Other" by the white Anglo-Celtic writers. For example, Katherine S. Prichard captured an Aboriginal theme in one of her short stories entitled "Marlene" (1941). Dialogue between the white protagonists and Aboriginal characters in the story embodies an interpretation of the inferior nature of so-called "half-caste" Aborigines, who are described as "fat," "barefooted," and unclean:

"Where'd we shift to?" a fat, youngish woman asked jocosely. Barefooted, she stood, a once-white dress dragged across her heavy breast..."

When representing the so-called negative qualities of Aboriginal people in literary texts, Daisy Bates' The Passing of the Aborigines is a case in point. First published in 1938, Bates presented outright myths and incorrect stereotypes such as infanticide cannibalistic practices of Aboriginal tribes in Western Australia. The text, which went through several reprints in two editions (there was a reprint as recently 1972), has been described as "the most destructive book written on Aborigines." Further negative representation of Indigenous Australians comes through in the 1841 children's story, "A Mother's Offering to Her Children," attributed to "A Lady Long Resident in New South Wales." In the process of telling her children a bedtime story, Mrs. S states:

"These poor uncivilised people, most frequently meet with some deplorable end, through giving away to unrestrained passions."

This passage illustrates not only the triviality assigned to Aboriginal people by the White settlers, but the negative and stereotypical attitudes that were felt about them.

Sympathetic and sensitive portrayals of Aboriginal people Somewhat sympathetic and sensitive portrayals of Aboriginal people are found in Prichard's Coronado: The Well in the Shadow (1929) and Xavier Herbert's Capricornia (1975). While the books gained favourable critical appraisal (particularly overseas), the negative response of the Australian public showed that the texts were ahead of their time in exploring interracial relations. As Shoemaker writes:

"The social and political conditions which prevailed between 1929 and 1945 militated against either Coonardoo or Capricornia having a significant educative impact on racial prejudice and Aboriginal stereotypes."

This was the era of segregation, force assimilation, legislative "protection" and child removal. It was the Whites who had power to control the representation of Aborigines, which was a negative one more often than not. When representation was positive, however, the prevailing values and attitudes of society rejected them in favour of encoded stereotypes.

The reason why "so little [was] known" about Aboriginal people as they saw themselves is that the period of representation assigned meanings to them, rather than letting them speak on their own. David Unaipon (1930) published several works in the first half of the twentieth century, but his work was not widely distributed or publicised-his 1929 manuscript Legendary Tales of the Australian Aborigine was published in 1930, but as Myths and Legends of the Australian Aborigines by anthropologist William Ramsay Smith without any attribution to or recognition of the actual author and no other Indigenous Australians were published until the 1960s. Davis and Shoemaker assert that the reason for this was the rudimentary and predominantly vocational education received by Aboriginal Australians at the time, and that "poverty stricken Aborigines were far more concerned with survival than with creative expression in the Western format.

Political Change and Cultural Transformation

The turning point of the movement from representation to self-representation in Australian Aboriginal literature can be seen in the 1960s. Within months, two of the most pivotal and landmark pieces of Aboriginal literature were published: Oodgeroo Noonuccal's (formerly Kath Walker) first collection of poetry, We Are Going, in 1964 and Mudrooroo's (formerly Colin Johnson) first novel, Wild Cat Falling, of 1965. These two works not only gained critical acclaim but also did well commercially; Oodgeroo's volume being reprinted seven times in seven months and Mudrooroo's novel has been continually in print.

The emerging indigenous writers displayed a response to the colonial and Other representations made of their group by analysing, judging and criticising normalised practices. Oodgeroo Noonuccal's "Aboriginal Charter of Rights" presents a manifesto for social, political, cultural and economic change:

We want hope, not racialism,

Brotherhood, not ostracism,

Black advance, not white ascendance,

Make us equals not dependants.

We need help, not exploitation,

We want freedom, not frustration;

Not control, but self-reliance,

Independence, not compliance…

(Kath Walker, We Are Going, (Brisbane: Jacaranda Press, 1964: 9)

This assertion of rights is a clear example of the way in which the Other can challenge the previous ideology of the coloniser by directly addressing the racism and subjugation encoded in the social, political and economic spheres. Mudrooroo's novel is written in a similar manner. The main character is a nameless, aimless and helpless aboriginal youth whose story begins with him being released from prison, only to be returned at the end, confirming white expectations and the circular patterns of Aboriginal experiences. (Hodge and Mishra, Dark Side of the Dream: p.109) The youth's situation can be deconstructed to illustrate the lack of hope facing Aboriginal youth caught up in alcohol, violence and crime.

The emergence of self-representative Aboriginal texts at this time is significant. The 1960's and beyond saw issues of Aboriginal social justice rising in importance, from the land rights debate - as shown by the Yirrkala people of Australia's (Northern Territory) Arnhem Land's paper bark petition to the House of Representatives (1963) - and the granting of citizenship and suffrage to Indigenous Australians (1967) to the establishment of Aboriginal Legal Services (1970) and the infamous Tent Embassy protest (1972). Further advances in Black Australian literature coincided with the 1982 Commonwealth Games and the Bicentenary in 1988, with the resulting international attention providing means for indigenous people to get their message across.

Shoemaker contends that there is a fundamental relationship between the change in the socio-political situation of Australian Aborigines and indigenous creative writing in English: "Dramatic-and overdue-changes in the legislative status of Aborigines paralleled the experiments of Black Australian literature during those years." (Shoemaker, Black Words White Page: p. 6) The pattern of major upheavals concerning the socio-political status of native people being accompanied by "an explosion in literary production" was also seen during the lead-up and the aftermath to the passage of the 1975 Treaty of Waitangi Act in New Zealand and in the environment of the Oka confrontation in Quebec, Canada in 1990.

Self-representation of indigenous peoples' literature in Australia provides the rest of the community "the opportunity to obtain a glimpse of [indigenous peoples] as they see themselves, rather than as they are seen by others." (Shoemaker, Black Words White Page: p4).

Australian Aboriginal culture is distinctively oral, and the lore and law of the peoples was communicated though stories and songs as well as art and dance. The intricacies of Indigenous communication go far beyond the scope of this short paper, but the use of the English language in self-representative texts is an interesting aspect of indigenous literature. The power of the coloniser's language initially suppressed indigenous people by disabling them from portraying their own identity. Through self-representation however, Aboriginal writers were able to tell their own stories with their own voices, and by using the coloniser's language to do this, they are able to get their stories across to the people who once marginalised them.

By adopting Western literary paradigms and then manipulating them by incorporating traditional narrative elements, indigenous authors have a powerful political tool:

"Aboriginal writers … use (White) literary genres as a political weapon with which to challenge White hegemony. They … redefine genres, explode discourses, delegitimate [sic] standard English, subvert expectations, challenge assumptions… (Hodge and Mishra, Dark Side of the Dream: 115.)

In Australian Aboriginal poetry, the use of repetition similar to traditional song cycles illustrates creative forms of the oppressed being employed to assert their independence and identity, for example in Mudrooroo's The Song Circle of Jacky, published in 1986. Australia's South West Noongar people's words and phrases are abundant in the dialogue of Jack Davis's play No Sugar (1985), which uses a White genre (drama) to present history from the point of view of the marginalised and oppressed other. Often the English language is not so much imperial as it is inadequate in conveying the complexities or native cultures and the effect of Aboriginal words within English language texts not only overcomes this problem but also subverts any colonial power language has over indigenous representation.

Conclusion

By reading texts we can read, understand and interpret cultures. Indigenous writers and their works "are one of the clearest manifestations of the process whereby native peoples have achieved so-called mainstream recognition." The development of cross-cultural communication has reflected the changes in the socio-political status of indigenous peoples. The period of representation illustrates the balance of power relations in the direction of the Whites, who were able to present their views of native peoples in literature, while the native people themselves could not do this.

The shift in power relations as indigenous people began to assert their rights and their own identity (as opposed to an assigned identity) coincides with the emergence of self-representative texts. By using their own voices, Aboriginal now able to present portrayals of themselves and transform the way they are seen by others. Literature enables indigenous cultures to showcase their achievements, and as societal changes continue, we are able to see light shed onto what Ernie Dingo calls "the dark side of the moon."

(About Authors: Sunili Uthpalawanna Govinnage is an Australian Lawyer. Sunil Govinnage is a Sri Lankan/Australian poet).