Indigenism and politics of identity

Continuing the series on postcolonial literature, I would like to explore the themes of indigenism and politics of identity. Nativism in postcolonial countries is closely fused with indigenism and emerging politics of identity.

An important branch of indigenous literature is aboriginal literature. Since indigenous literature / culture has a common history of oppression, aboriginal literature also falls into the category of ‘postcolonial’. Similarly, in postcolonial societies in Africa and Asia, Aboriginals in these regions have been conquered, ruled and forced into assimilation into ‘mainstream’ cultures. They have resisted fiercely the modes of colonising representation.

Pramod K. Nayar in Postcolonial Literature, an Introduction, observes, “Soon after the first moment of white discovery of America, Canada, and Australia, the indigenous people lost their lands. Though they were first residents, colonisation by the White drove them into interior and into their deaths. Today, they exist in ghettos, euphemistically called ‘reservations’. The total acreage of the USA is 1.9 billion acres. The BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs) claims that it holds 56 million lands ‘in trust’ for Indian nations and individuals. But, as Glenn Morris is quick to point out, there is no mention about how the other 1.85 billon acres lot to Indians. The irony is that even within the postcolonial nation-state, Aboriginal communities, tribals and ‘First People’ (or ‘fourth world’ about 4 per cent of the global population is Aboriginal) have been marginalised in favour of an urban elite”.

Nayar points out that Kath Walker (now Oodgeroo Noonuccal) who published her poems We are going in1964 which marked a major trajectory in Aboriginal writings inspired a genre of writings which provided a rich counter-tradition to the settler (White) one. Nayar observes that ‘Aboriginal writings from Australia, New Zealand, and Canada and Dalit writings from India have acquired a significant readership for their identity politics and have provided some of the most trenchant social critiques in contemporary postcolonial cultures.”

Principal features of Aboriginal writings include resistance to settler colonialism and its culture, homogenisation and battling injustices and exploitations by/from dominant races and tribes. Celebrating Aboriginal culture and tradition search for means of continuation in tradition and devising modes of survival in a globalised culture are some other dominant features of Aboriginal writings.

Globalisation

One of the dominant themes in Aboriginal writings is nature. Nature has been figured in almost all cultures in Aboriginal writings. Another major strand in Aboriginal writing is the expression of anxiety about the loss of cultural specificity particularly in the face of young men and women moving into cities and cosmopolitan cultures for economic gain. Nayar observes thought the Aboriginal youth migration into cities is inevitable in the context of global capitalism and urbanisation, ‘this relocation is almost and always permanent and more often than not, means a complete break with roots and Aboriginal ways of living’.

One of the important aspects of globalisation in the context of Aboriginal writing can be found in the elaborate description by Nayar of Aboriginal life writings. One of the principal objectives of these Aboriginal writings seeks to represent the histories of entire communities. Nayar observes, “Such accounts especially by Native American, Australian, and Canadian women, began appearing in large numbers from the 1970s (and it is no coincidence that this was conterminous with the rise of feminism, with its concomitant search for alternative cannon of texts by women). Beverley Hungry Wolf’s The Way of My Grandmother, Margaret Blackman’s During my Times and other texts were quickly taken into curricula and feminist studies courses in First World class room ( itself a mode of clonisation and appropriation). ”

Comodification of aboriginal or native culture is a seminal feature in the context of postcolonial societies. Nayar observes, “Aboriginal or Native American culture became a tourist commodity for consumption by white races from Europe and America. In a particular tragic poem, ‘Trading Post-Winslow, Arizona’ Terry Meyette writes:

Tourists with knobby knees white socks
And black leather shoes parade out
Cameras around smog-soaked necks

………………………………………..

They buy history in a blanket,
Family tradition in a squash-blossom necklace
The old lady walks home
With two bags of flour”

This comodification of culture can be seen in Sri Lanka in the form of specially –arranged traditional performances (short versions of Kohobakankariya ) and commercial display of indigenous culture such as in theme-boutique hotels and re-creation of model villages and cultural artifacts such as paddy field and thrashing floor (Kamatha).

There is an episode in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things (1997) which highlights such comodification of culture. The ‘Kathakali Man’ , hair to an illustrious tradition is on show;

“He cannot slide down the aisles of buses, continuing change and selling tickets. He cannot answer bells that summon him. He cannot stoop behind trays of tea and Marie biscuits…He hawks the only things he owns. The stories his body can tell. He becomes a Regional Flavor.”

Cultural negotiations

Nayar observes an important area of Aboriginal writing is its concern about the cultural negotiations, “The Aboriginal writing is concerned with cultural negotiations that present-day youth have to undertake. Faced with discriminatory laws, social codes, and even medical norms, Aboriginal youth are often criminalised for not conforming to mainstream cultural codes. ”

“The children are forced to join ‘mainstream’, white schools where their own culture is erased through a very different education. In fact, the Aboriginal experience has been one of forced acculturation – a dual process of erasure of their native one and an assimilation of white one. The most famous Aboriginal texts, the Canadian Jeanette Armstrong’s Slash (1985) also deals with the experiences of a young Indian boy. An Old medicine man tells Slash:

It is not [native] culture that is lost. It is you. The culture that belongs to us is handed down to us in sacred medicine ways. Our strength lies there ..That is not lost. It is around us here in the mountains and in the wild places. It is in the sounds of the drums and in the sound of the singing of the birds…We are the ones who are lost, in alcohol and drugs and in the cities in the rat-race”

It is obvious that these issues are valid even in our context. What is important to explore is whether Sri Lankan writers in English and Sinhala are aware of the issues and have ever dealt with them in contemporary Sri Lankan literature.