Conference Notes

Last updated Aug 6, 2023 Edit Source

• author and speaker
• lots of titles, + film thing
  • last daugher $\implies$ autobiographical

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-27/last-daughter-film-brenda-matthews-story-stolen-generation/102267702

• Search for family, identity? $\implies$Childhood innocence, cannot recognise their disenfranchsing/manipulation

• sad music fr

• Not white, dont fit in with “Blackfellas”, who do you fit in with?

  • othering, liminal
  • Search for identity, what one can connect with

• assimilation into white society

1973 - age 2, 6 siblings taken from parents, taken into foster system without cause

• contrast: white family was loving, not abusive.

child welfare $\implies$ separated her from her now white family, with her new Indigeous Australian parents

• literally separated twice.

on a journey to mend the wounds

• bringing sets of parents together, “bridge the gap between the cultural divide in Australia”

asked mother

• $\implies$ seking family affirmation

$\implies$ before separation, ordinary indigenous australian family, i.e. small family unit, father was a pastor

• illegally taken children away

• took 7 children, unable to say goodbye to father

  • very sad

22nd February 1973 $\implies$ neglected parents neglected children

• contrary to health check: all children were very healthy
• oldest brother had to fill the role of parenthood for the siblings

$\implies$ facadical nature of the dolls - coping with loss

• sense of identity
• stories of loss, hurt, abandonment, disconnect
  • but love :)
• stories
• institutionalised children - this is bad (and sad)
• separation of siblings, family
  • deep sense of loss, pain
  • $\implies$ alcoholism
    • motif, dehumanising
• liminal portrayal:
  • sense of unfamiliarity when returned to actual family
  • thanking white family
    • alt reading: brainwashed? into idolising white family, $\implies$ psychological impacts on impressionable youth
• sisterhood
  • transcends ethnicity??????
  • compounding loss - losing her white sister
    • idea that children develop strong emotional bonds, which can be manipulated - rebecca is not her real sister, yet she feels equivalent loss
• photos
  • hold memories
  • same clothing $\implies$ same identity?????
    • assimilation
• white v. black family alignment???
  • cannot decide which one makes up their identity
    • insert post colonial term here
  • untethered - black or white identity? neither can fully be established
• colour
  • children dont see colour, they accept reality as told
• childhood innocence
  • children don’t understand what is happening
  • confusing nature of being “stolen twice”
• learning about culture
  • connection to country
  • story is vast
• everyone should consider connection to country, regardless of identity/race
• dual identity?(j and h)
• “parenthood passes on values and attitudes, i.e. family gives one their identity/culture”
• forgiveness
  • reconciliation over violence/hatred/guilt
  • both families teach love $\implies$ love is the most important element of this story
• social change $\implies$ individual change
  • philo gaming
• disenfranchising as a societal tool $\implies$ government policy
• not black/white, there is a “grey area”, or an undescribable non-duality of Australian identity in Brenda’s context

• we shouldn’t brush bad things under the rug. we cannot ignore the past, but we should learn from it. acknowledgement and honest is important on the journey to actual change
• aboriginality in schooling? discriminatory, but progress being made
• art and storytelling’s effect on reconciliation/cultural change? $\implies$ able to share stories, display the past, expression of the individual and their personal story/identity
  • nowadays we can’t share our stories due to trauma and the pain of the past.
• we should listen to indigenous australias more, we’ve had a voice but now people should listen
• conflicts between white/black cultural elements $\implies$ two places to belong, no home in either $\implies$ self reflection with pain $\implies$ idea of home, what/where is one’s home? safe place?
• does the voice go far enough to repair the wounds of colonialism?
  • acknowledgement, taking responsibility, reconciliation is enough $\implies$ change might come about
  • gov. taking responsibility for colonisation/stolen generation
• immigration’s part in this story
  • regardless, responsibility is important
  • collective story of australia
  • gained understanding of history
• impact of making doc on life? giving to wider audience?
  • awesome impact on journey and story
  • we dont understand story in young, maturation allows us to explore and understand
  • should be a collective, human story about multiple individuals, not just one

• significant genres in aussie lit is historical fiction
• multimodal $\implies$ drama, poetry
• historical fiction tells us a lot about aussie lit and it reflects history+relationship with history
• this includes speculative fiction, since the future is informed by the past/present

This map attempts to represent the language, social or nation groups of Aboriginal Australia. it shows only the general locations of larger groupings of people which may include clans, dialects or indivdual langauges in a group. It used published resources from the eighteenths century - 1994 and is not intended to be exact, nor the boundaries fixed.

• early (spanish) idea of australia
• explorers had found many different places of the world, but could not accurately place them/visualise them (blursed australia)
• when we don’t know things, we invent things. (funny wacky serpent things)
• imagination legitimate part of world history (???)
• scientific map bad l bozo

From 1570.

Ideas of European exploration prevalent at the time.

We place ourselves on top of history $\implies$ history is our bedrock

• lots of examples

Historical fiction is a literary genre where the story takes place in the past. Historical novels capture the details of the time period as accurately as possible for authenticity, including social norms, manners, customs, and traditions. Many novels in this genre tell fictional stories that involve actual historical figures or events.

Makes an attempt at being historical accurate, despite the narrative being shaped, formed, partially imaginary. $\implies$ still want to be authentic but uses imagination

“To be deemed historical (in our sense), a novel must have been written at least fifty years after the events described ,or have been written by someone who was not alive at the time of those events (who therefore approaches them only by research)”- Historical novel society

• is this too much time? should be measured by how much perspectives has change, different perspectives should allow works to be consider historical as being seen from dif perspective - distance from subject, allowing objectivity

“We also consider the following styles of novel to be historical fiction for our purposes”:

• alternative histories
  • Fatherland Robert Harris
• pseudo-histories
  • Island of the Day Before Umberto Eco
• timeslip novels
  • Lady of Hay Barbara Erskine
• historical fantasies
  • King Arthur Trilogy Bernard Cornwell
• multiple-time novels
  • The Hours Michael Cunningham
  • Orlando Virginia Woolf

5 Common Elements of Historical Fiction (taken from masterclass.com)

• Setting:
  • The setting is the most important part of a historical fiction novel. It should take place during an authentic period in history and be set in a real historical place.
• Plot:
  • The plot in a historical fiction novel is a combination of real events and fictional events. You can invent characters, cities, and events, but they still must make sense to the time period.
• Characters:
  • The characters can be real, fictional, or both, but they should all look, speak, and act in ways that accurately reflect the era.
• Dialogue:
  • The dialogue must be authentic to the time period and should reflect the status of the characters who are speaking
  • Really important for a historical fiction piece to work
  • Use of idiom
  • Register $\implies$ reflect class, status, education
  • Vernacular
  • tldr we are trying to replicate the language patterns of the time period.
  • Tim Winton is apparently really good at this (for aussie lit)
• Conflict:
  • The problems the characters encounter should be conflicts people of that era would encounter.

For a successful historical fiction, all these things should be accurate to the period! $\implies$ we want to put ourselves in the perspective of the characters we are trying to convey - how do they see conflict for example

• History is about facts and time, while literature is about fiction and language.

• In The Order of Things, Foucault argues that the relationship between literature and history might be more complicated than this binary suggests. He explains systems of understanding, including subjects or disciplines.

  • Yet we use narrative in both history and lit
    • bias in hass,
    • objectivity/subjectivity in lit

• The work of historian Hayden White follows this line of thinking. White points out that history is intimately involved in the representation of prior events.

  • Hayden White is a postcolonialist.

• Hisory is always being made rather than something safely secured in what we might call and recall as the past. So, the practice of writing history relies on interpretation and representation, the very devices of fiction and fiction-reading.

• White concluded, not uncontroversially, that “history is no less a form of fiction than the novel is a form of historical representation” (1987: 122). The historical record is a discursive entity, a selective account of events, responses and emotions, which is not to say that is fiction or untrue or unreal but rather that it is, to a degree, made up.

• Literature, in turn, can bring into being (so the argument goes) that which the archive does not retain traces of

• Historical record is flawed $\implies$ gaps and silences

• Historical fiction supplements these gaps!

• Through knowledge of history, and goal of accuracy, we can recreate history within a fictional construction

  • Bringing to life something that was not recorded

“In the Old Testament, God asked the prophet Ezekiel, ‘Can these bones live?’ He answered yes: and so do I. The task of historical fiction is to take the past outof the archive and relocate it in a body.”

• In this version of the Old Testament, God has a skeleton.
• Through historical fiction, can bring “bones of history” back to life. We can give the skeleton flesh (meaning??? or just elements of history).

“Most historical fiction is, I like to think, in dialogue with the past.”

• Communication between past and present
• Analysing representation, we are trying to ponder how
  • dialogue is being constructed
  • how does this help us understand (history presumably)

• William Dampier wrote in 1688 that the country was waterless and ’the inhabitants […] the miserablest people in the world’, and went on to complain at length about the flies.
  • William Dampier had actually arrived at Australia at this time
• Batavia
  • Gruesome moment in Aus History
  • Shipwreck on an island
  • Trying to get to Batavia/Java/Indonesia
  • Tried to send people to get help
  • Crew and other passengers stay on island
  • Mutiny
  • People killed, rape, death very sad

1788-1901

• Two different cultures:

• Indigenous/’traditional’ and European/Modern (try not to place this categories in opposition to each other - they are different, not always in opposition - grey area)

• Different world views, different epistemologies

• Different perspectives on nature, family, wealth, country, etc.

• One recorded history.

• Trying to loot Australia for its resources (minerals etc.)

• Indigenous, Western stories kept separate, but now during Colonial Australia, these stories collide

  • Indigenous story suppressed
  • Western story officialised

• Lucky country
• Isolated country
• Egalitarian (???)
• Brave
• Brutal
• Wealthy

• Drover/Stockman
• ANZAC
• Lost child
  • Childhood innocence/ stupidity
  • Blackberries(the funny fruit poem)(blackcurrents?????)
• Bushranger
• Undergod/Battler
• Bush versus City
• Indigenous mystic

At this time, no black vs white binary

• But mystical Indigenous figure

Are there stories missing?

• 90% (apparently)

• The complications of belonging

• Importance and consequences of historical truth - dealing with cultural guilt

• Facing the limitations of the traditional Australian National identity

• The connection between violence and masculinity

• Connections between trauma of national experience

• Achieving reconciliation and atonement

• Indigenous self-determination

• Now, we are complicating what it means to belong in Australia.

• Cultural/collective guilt

• Connection between violence and masculinity. Is this good? How does this make “young men” think (men 👍)

• Referendum, we gotta think about these things

• Limitations to the identity

Genre texts essentialy ask the audience, “Do you still want to believe this?” Popularity is the audience answering, “Yes”. Change in genres occurs when theaudience says, “That’s too infantile a form of what we believe. Show us something more complicated.” Leo Braudy, The World in a Frame, 1977

• Now, historical fiction “explodes”, we want to subvert stereotypes and misconceptions on Australian identity

• Experiment within a genre
• Revise, correct, deconstruct
• Recreate or revisit
  • Look through nostalgic lens
  • Pastiche
• Parody
• Blending
• Altered representations
• Altered perspectives

• The most important part

• Are historical fictions about the past?

• Or are they about the present?

• They are about both!

  • Once again, we want something more complicated.

• Most importantly, they are a dialogue with the past.

• A dialogue with people from specific moments in Australia’s past

insert Tim Winton, p.1

• Realism through vernacular

  • We don’t actually have perfect grammar, so we get a representation of Australian culture.

• Realism mainly came out of Latin America

• Magic realism $\implies$ we take something unreal, otherworldy, infused with the construction of realism

• Although magical elements aren’t real, since they are placed next to real elements, we feel them to be more real.

• Playing with narrative construction.

“Back in time”(35-36)

• Daisy Bates is a historical figure

• Untrained anthropology

  • Focused on recording stories of Indigenous women in particular

• Magic realism creates dialogue with past $\implies$ australia is a haunted nation, through this we can talk about the past

• No Sugar

• The Secret River

• That Deadman Dance

• Placing the two cultures together, we get a dialogue

• By analysing it, we construct our own dialogue

Different way of expressing ones self from a literature perspective

• Poet, performer

Subverting social/family expectations - back then, rapping was cringe (still is today)

• dont do tafe $(\text{tafe suck(waste time(time waste(less mone(t=$(money))))))}$ Perth mod good 👍, other schools bad 👎.

My g got jumped

Eshays cant take a joke

Indigenous perspectives across literature.

What I would like you all to consider:

• In the vastness of indigenous australian history, colonisation is a drop in the ocean
• Before colonisation became an inlfuence on indigenous experience, what other thematic concerns do you think they had?
• The diversity in the indigenous experience (not solely formed by trauma)

What I would like you all to gain from this presentation:

• A more developed sense of diversity
• An understanding of the thematic conflict that exists in Indigenous perspectives and story-telling
• (Hopefully) how to embed those perspectives in writing
• A developed appreciation of Indigenous voices and how they are marginalised
• An ability to effectively analyse and engage with indigenous voices and perspectives in your writing.

• English and Hass teacher 9 years
• Aranmore Catholic Colledge 10th% indigneous student population
• Born raised in perth
• Noongar +Yamaji
• Immediate family is non-Indigenous
• All schooling and employment has been in predominantly non-Indigenous places.
• Mother - a white woman - having a black child $\implies$ what are the assumptions made of her?

1. Why do we have acknowledgements of country?
2. What is the difference between a welcome to country and an acknowledgement of country?
   • Welcome to country can only be done by an elder.
3. Why is it important to have a welcome to country?
   • Accept and acknowledge elders $\implies$ give them the right to welcome to country
   • i.e. you wouldn’t like your neighbours inviting someone random to your house.

We say Indigenous language groups (not tribes etc.)

• In comparison to New Zealand, Indigenous language is actually taught.

• Why did the stolen generation happen?

• Why did government feel the need to intervene?

• From what perspective or even emotion did these policies come from?

• "[T]hey have to be protected against themselves whether they like it or not. They cannot remain as they are. The sore spot requires the application of the surgeon’s knife for the good of the patient, and probably against the patient’s will."

  • A.O. Neville, Moseley Royal Commision, 1934.
    • Zalums, E (Elmar) and Stafford. H. (1980) A bibliography of Western Australia Royal Commissions, select commitees of parliament and boards of inquiry, 1870-1979 Blackwood, S. Aust. E. Zalums and H. Stafford. (???)

• Why did people think that the stolen generation was the right thing to do? Was this expected? Culturally? Perspective wise?

• A.O. Neville was the “Chief Protector”, meaning he was the legal guardian of Indigenous children, not their parents!

• How much of our identity, do we determine for ourselves? How much of Indigenous Australians’ identity been determined by themselves, versus by Western society.

• Lost identity, stolen identity, kids taken from parents, language groups land.

  • How do we then know about the people, the land, if we don’t know ourselves?

• History of Aboriginal Australians is full of trauma, which leads to loss of identity

The Stolen Generation (approx. 1890-1970)

“I have no identity, really.” - Cynthia Sariago (daughter of a stolen women)

“We never heard the words ‘I love you’, so we never learned to say them to our family… or feel them. We became empty vessels, out of touch with our feelings.” - Sharyn Egan

“My mother did not bond with her mother and I did not bond with mine.” - Barbara Cummings

“I was hurting and had found no way of safely healing the pain… I couldn’t see any hope in the future.” - Joy Makepeace, taken aged less than 1 yr old.

• The “Bringing them Home Report”, 1997.

• If we can’t name or learn our feelings, we cannot express them.

• Good story telling engages us because we can relate to the story, what the characters are going through. If you don’t know yourself/identity is hollow or fragmented, how can we engage with the characters?

• To make connections with Indigenous text, we must understand the contention, and the dual perspectives.

Dr. Margaret Mead (1901-1978), Cultural Anthropologist

When asked about the first sign of Human civilisation she answered: “A 15,000 year old healed femur.”

A healed femur bone showed:

• Someone cared for the injured person
• Someone did their hunting and gathering
• Someone stayed with them for companionship and protection, possibly at their own risk.

The assumption made is that the first sign of civilisation was compassion/selflessness, considering your own survival as a secondary priority.

Lake Mungo remains

• 40-42k years old
• First known example of ritual burial and cremation

This showed:

• Someone cared enough for the deceased to ensure a proper process was followed

• Someone thought that there was some aspect of a higher power/God

• The area where the deceased was found holds some significance (cnnection or importance)

• Someone thought that there was some manifestation of life after death

• Someone either stayed at or continued to return to the burial or cremation site

• Indigenous perspectives run similar to Western/established perspectives

• Yet, Indigenous storytelling is not given the same level of importance/credence

What are song lines?

• Geographical, Astronomically aligned, logistical, spiritual, narrative maps.
• Part of “Lore” training and education as well as initiation of elders.
• Part of the “adolescence of Indigenous culture”.
• Acoord to Noel Pearson they are Australia’s “Book of Genesis”.
  • Creation stories
  • https://www.commonground.org.au/learn/songlines

“The Song lines shouldn’t be just an anthropological footnote, but a part of Australian history as it is taught in schools. To tell the real story of this continent, you’ve got to have both histories. They are held in different ways, told in different ways, but are essentially complementary. To really belong to this place, you ….. (too fast)”

• Seven sisters song lines creation tracks.

  • Daughters of Atlas, sad father has to hold up the skies
  • Pursued by Orion (??? whatever interpretation)
  • Zeus lifts the daugthers into the heavens, make them into stars
  • Became the constellation

• Indigenous interpretation

  • Carrying a man across Australia
  • Pursued by a man of a different skin group - in Indigenous culture, they cannot bear children with this man
  • They realise they cannot outrun, so they place themselves in the heavens
    • The man becomes the Orion constellation whatever (i dunno stars man)

• Notice how similar the stories are

  • Yet its not like they were collaborating!

• In a Western society, we place Greek mythology on an absolute pinnacle of society/literature.

• Yet Aboriginal culture came to the same conclusions, but is placed at a lower level.

Question: why?

Why is one more important, when they are essentially the same story? Why don’t we lift Indigenous stories to the same level?

• Fanny Balbuk, 1840-1907
  • Told her story a lot

Set during the Great Depression, post-colonial Northam, WA, Moore River Native Settlement and Perth.

Follows the story of the Millimurra (an Aborigial Australian family) and their struggle for survival.

Act 2, Scene 6: The Corroboree Scene

• What have we identified from this scene?
• What language conventions, devices, styles, themes?
• What narrative conventions; conflict, characterisation, setting?
• What conventions of genre in terms of form? What do we expect from a play?

Question: How jarring is it for a white audience to watch a Corroboree? To listen to a foreign language?

No sugar extract

“Iraqi, Indonesian, Sri Lankan and one crazy Aboriginal … who lives with a typewriter but not with the brevity of a visa on my head; no, my longevity was guaranteed before I was born in the 1967 referendum the freedom to practice the voodoo of semantics”

“a haven from Saddam, Suharto, the Tamil Tigers and One Nation”

• Unity in the ’not-white’ or ‘other’ category
• Issue of citizenship/person-hood in the context of the 1967 referendum
• Themes of persecution, solidarity and camaraderie

“… I am a pencil that cannot sharpen, ink that slides off paper, outside of our time,

I am lost, a one ended boomerang.”

• Themes of ascension, going beyond ’earthly’ restrictions.
• Issues of timing, direction and therefore opportunities (loss of identity).
• Personification, extended metaphor.

• Early(ish) example Gothic Literature

• Dual personalities

• Freedom to act out hidden inhibitions (from alternate personalities)

• Public vs Private personas

• Internal conflict: Good vs Evil

• This all can relate to the Indigenous context!

• Identity: Father’s daughter rather than a husband’s wife
• Lack of fulfilment
• Unlikeable neurotic protagonist: Difficulty to build empathy (or is it just that she’s a woman?)
• Clear themes of mental instability due to the discussion of suicide

(i love personal computer theory fr)

Postcolonialism deals with effects of colonisation on cultures and societies.

• Particular theory/discourse used to discuss social/cultural/systemic effects of colonialisation.

• Differing responses/contexts to colonial incursions.

• Contemporary colonial legacies in pre/post independent countries.

Definition: Similar to cultural studies and assumes unique view on politics. Literature produced by colonial powers, and by those who were colonised. Looks at issues of power, econs, pols, religion, and culture and how these elements work in relation to colonial hegemony.

How to use:

Introduction: briefly introduce some theoretical framework.

OR Start of first body paragraph…succinct, abridged explanation, postcolonialism characteristics and use to signpost ideas & rest of response.

• Make sure know how to use relevant metalanguage, discourse.

Ideology: Set of beliefs/characteristics of a group of individuals -> broken down into values/attitudes/beliefs.

• Example. Colonial ideology: maintaining or reinforcing colonial power, silencing, othering, etc. other group.

Discourse: Describe communication, conversation and how language used in terminology used in particular field of study.

Traits become naturalised…continual reinforcement.

• Post-colonial lit critically scrutinises colonial relationship. Resists colonial perspectives. Overhauls dominant meaning.

• Post-colonial writers give expression to colonised experience, seeking to undercut thematically and formally discourses supporting colonialisation – myths of power, race classification, imagery of subordination

• Recognise that postcolonial texts devise a range of stratagems to resist colonial perspectives.

• Alert to various expressions of colonised experience, voice which have historically been silenced.

• Note clashes which often occur between two different kinds of discourses in texts, discourses of power and discoursed of colonised.

• Understanding significance of voices in texts deeply marked by experiences of social and political exclusion.

Colonial policies: Assimilation policy, undermined Indigenous identity and culture, justified dispossession of Indigenous people & removal of Indigenous children.

Assimilation policies embedded in misplaced settler notion of Australia as Terra nullius” a blank page, unpeopled, un-cultured wasteland…self-legitimising fiction.

Maintaining peaceful and friendly relations with the native inhabitants – Indigenous Australians defined to be British subjects & subject to British law.

Since 1788, colonial attitudes; punitive reprisals, expeditions, martial law – massacres and genocides, convictions and executions under British law (Tasmania), various government protection policies of assimilation & segregation, legislative controls and enforced regulation the “assimilation policy” disregard of Indigenous rights and interests, deaths in police custody.

Conventional subject-matter/themes

• Indigeneity

  • Indigenous Australian cultural identity; celebration & mourning

    • Juxtaposition…celebration of culture/identity & mourning of disempowerment, disillusion with history.

• Hybridity

  • Culture/identity between heritage and coloniser. Representation of identity. Idea of “What is it to be Australian?” Stereotypes – look from colonial origins, foundations OR

  • Should we re-write colonial narratives? Embedded systemic prejudices?

• First contact

  • 1788 onward, dispossession, historic trauma. Genocides, stolen generation -> within living memory.

• Appropriation

  • Commercialisation/capitalist exploitation of indigenous culture. Tokenistic representation and pigeonholing/stereotypes.

  • Focus on negative stereotypes which unconsciously perpetuating colonial attitudes.

  • Binary opposition of

• Race relations

• Language use

  • Dismissive attitudes/linguistic prejudice towards non-English. Cultural assimilation.

  • Dying language/culture…cultural artefacts, mythology, etc. fade away with our language

  • Can’t voice concerns to express issues from language to another.

• Land rights & ownership

  • Terra Nullius and native title.

• Belonging

  • Anxieties surrounding identity and marginalisation, perpetuation of negative/racist stereotype

• National identity

• Marginalisation

  • Exclusionary legislation, colonial cultural zeitgeist (dominant, prevailing attitude)…late 19th century (for example)

  • Those not part of hegemony being pushed to the periphery

• Resistance

  • Reforming our political and social spaces, against discriminatory practices.

• Mimicry

  • Done in a subversive way: Use the language of the coloniser to subvert, criticise and engage with discussion…mimics colonial attitudes

• Historical narratives

  • “Whitewashing” now looking in postcolonial space: revisionist history; rewriting/resisting perspectives that overlook perpetration of colonial crimes that further silence/marginalise Indigenous voice.

• National identity

  • What we think of Australia is Eurocentric? Stereotypical -> loss identity

• Marginalisation

  • Exclusionary legislation

Samuel Wagan Watson

• Indigenous country/culture: Queensland, Brisbane.

• Poet of indigenous & non-indigenous heritage.

• Many works explore through concept of cultural hybridity, mimicry in his text; people who still feel displaced, conflict with sense of self, difference of background.

• Significant themes/representations of urban & suburban Australian life/Australian general/identity/ethnicity/gender

• Some of poetry will explore things removed from Indigenous perspective…identity, gender, youth -> things separate from Indigenous context.

• Bildungsroman – coming of age.