I
have finally been able to quieten urgent demands to start or complete other
activities and write my weekly blog post. There are so many things that I need
to do. It is getting to the stage that crashing and burning seems like a viable
option, especially with my ulcerative colitis becoming active and forcing me to
take more energy sapping medication.
One good thing about not writing my blog until the last
day of the week is that I heard today’s Ockham’s Razor on Radio National. Suddenly I had an idea for a post that didn’t
suck, at least not in my mind.
Indigenous
Literacy
Ockham’s Razor had Jeannie Adams
from Black Inc Press talking about Indigenous literacy. She posed the
question: why should Indigenous Australians read fiction if there are no characters
they can identify with? Sure there are plenty of books on Indigenous culture,
but what about novels containing indigenous characters having adventures and
experiencing life’s dramas. I reckon she’s right: it’s like expecting me to
read if all that is available is chick lit.
Adams’ talk got me thinking about Indigenous characters
in books I have read. One character quickly came to mind: Norman Shillingsworth
from Xavier Herbert’s Capricornia. Norman was a half-blood
Indigenous Australian who is told by his father that he is descendent from a
Javanese prince. Consequently, Norman believed himself superior to his own race
and held them in racist contempt.
One of the minor characters in The Slap, by Christos Tsiolkas,
was an Indigenous Australian. He was a reformed alcoholic who felt much empathy
for the mother of the child who was slapped as her husband was a drunk.
After reading Patrick White’s The Tree of Man and not
finding one mention of Indigenous Australians, I began to think White might have
been racist. The novel was set in the bush outside Sydney around the beginning
of the 20th Century. It had immigrants from all over the place, but where
were the Indigenous Australians?
I then read White’s Voss,
which had an Indigenous Australian, Jackie, who is central to the story’s
resolution. Jackie is torn between
helping to guide Voss’ inland expedition and the demands of the tribes whose
lands the expedition crossed.
One novel that really generated a negative reaction in me
for its portrayal of interracial interactions was Kate Grenville’s The Secret
River. It is set along the Hawkesbury River at the turn of the 19th
Century. The novel seemed to be trying
to excuse the treatment of Aborigines by colonists. The central character was an ex-convict who
had had a very harsh life, and therefore treated the Aborigines the way he had been
treated. So the attempted genocide of
Indigenous Australians wasn’t because the colonists wanted to steel the land
from uncivilised savages, it was because they had been treated badly as convicts
and didn’t know better. Tell that to the American Indian.
The most positive portrayal of Indigenous Australians in
a novel I have read was in George Turner’s Genetic Soldiers. It is set
centuries into the future when an intergenerational fleet returns to an earth
that was abandoned to its indigenous tribes. A ship lands in what used to be
Australia, and encounters a tribe of genetically engineered telepathic Indigenous
Australians. The tribe politely refuse to be recolonised. When the colonists
insist, and use their technology to try and gain a foothold on the planet, the Indigenous
Australians use tribal telepathy to force them to leave.
I am curious what Indigenous Australians would think of
Genetic Soldiers and the other books I mentioned above. Would they think them a
good attempt by a white man or racist or patronising crap? Are books like them
part of the solution or problem to improving indigenous literacy?
Jeanne Adams’ solution to improving indigenous literacy was
to have more Indigenous Australians write books with indigenous characters in
them. But, I have to mention, that with
only 2.5% of the Australian population identifying themselves as Indigenous Australian,
any such books will need to be accessible to the non-indigenous population for them
to create a sustainable market.
