NOT JUST WARRIORS OR VICTIMS
» KIM SCOTT
It is an honour to address this Australian Honoured, and daunted too. Academy of the Humanities conference I’ve read previous lectures in this series. on Human Rights and Humanitarianism, The breadth and depth is such that I wonder any though I rarely frame my own creative work single audience could appreciate it all. in terms of ‘Human Rights’. I can’t remember I’ve decided to be led by Inga Clendinnen, the last time I approached the blank page whose work I greatly admire — and who thinking ‘Social Justice’ or ‘Social Change’ I magnanimously forgive (temporarily) for either. It’s surprising then, that a word like dismissing novelists as opportunistic entertainers ‘Decolonisation’ can be appropriate, particularly who merely ‘delight’ rather than ‘instruct or if ‘we … understand decolonisation as the reform’.4 In her own Annual Academy lecture, unravelling of assumed certainties and the Backstage at the Republic of Letters, Inga said she re-imagining and re-negotiating of common would fall back to the default position of the futures.’1 Humanities and talk about herself.5 I know at least one novelist who fancies that So I’m going to do that too. I’ll reflect on some as a job description. things I’ve read and written and — bluffing on Equally, I’m not confident of any immediately breadth if not depth — sample some pages of effective role for a novelist — or a scholar for literature, dab a little history, spatter politics that matter — in ‘fixing’ Human Rights issues. and legislation and generally attempt to provide Novelist Tony Birch sounded like family to a picture of the view from my particular me when he considered giving up writing for vantage point. activism because he didn’t want his children Firstly then, let me explain my own stumbling saying ‘he might have worked his arse off writing introduction to the Republic of Letters. The first fiction but he did fuck all for the planet.’2 book I read — the firstreal book — was Mark No, we don’t want to be remembered like that. Twain’s novel, Tom Sawyer.6 My father’s father — from whom my own father was estranged, and So, having tripped on my own diffidence so soon, from whom I get my family name — sent it to me let me begin again: in the post inscribed ‘To dear Kim with love from I’m indeed honoured to be one in a line of (above) Grandad Scott 5th September 1964’. speakers demonstrating the ‘extraordinary Detail, fig. 3, I was seven. breadth and depth of our Fellows’ contribution p. 10, Galliput’s It wasn’t Christmas. It wasn’t my birthday. sketch of a native to the Australian and international humanities encampment, 1833. community, and to enriching the cultural life of the nation’.3
Humanities Australia { 05 (right) Fig. 1. Title Page of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain, American Publishing Company, 1876.
(far right) Fig. 2. Illustration of ‘Injun Joe’ by True Williams, in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain, American Publishing Company, 1876.
BOTH IMAGES: PUBLIC DOMAIN VIA PROJECT GUTENBERG
Why did he send it now? I might have wondered. Didn’t he know I couldn’t read big books? My father’s name was ‘Tom.’ I loved him, but being fully immersed and yourself, but also he wasn’t around all that much in those days. someone else. Seeing with other eyes. The best I could easily read that word, ‘Tom’. There it stories, she said, allow ‘spaces where people was, on the cover. can meet’.7 Was this book about my father? Looking at Obviously, I missed a lot of Tom Sawyer the picture you’d think I should have known on that first reading, and I was hardly alive to better; the character there looks nothing like nuance, but I do remember being terrified when him. I was blind and innocent. Tom and Becky become lost deep in the labyrinth Tom Sawyer begins: of a cave at the same time as avoiding the book’s ‘TOM!’ baddy, the Native American — ‘Injun Joe’ — who No answer. was also down there, in the darkness and hollows ‘TOM!’ underground. They saw his candlelight and, in No answer. fear, snuffed out their own. The great mass of ‘TOM!’ darkness closed in. No answer. By the time I was that far into the book TOM TOM TOM… my reading had improved a great deal; I was It could’ve been a drumbeat. ‘dwelling’ in the story at that moment. I was a naïve, but very motivated reader. Tom and Becky escaped the caves. But ‘Injun I thought I would find out about my dad, Joe’ didn’t. The young reader I was didn’t think from when he was a kid. The details matched: he deserved his fate — what was wrong with an orphan, yes; being raised by his Aunty, yes… objecting to people digging up dead bodies, or I thought we had entered into a sort of wanting treasure? Injun Joe ended up trapped compact, my grandfather and I. Secretly, he inside a huge door that sealed the caves would tell me of when my own father was a boy. immediately after Tom and Becky found their Was that a betrayal of my dad? way out. When they found Injun Joe the broken Perhaps this shows how a story can make you knife he’d used to chip at the heavy door lay at complicit, part of a community excluding others. his side and, scattered all round, the candles he’d The noted Western Australian novelist, Elizabeth gnawed in his hunger. Jolley, used to speak of ‘dwelling’ in stories —
06 Humanities Australia I don’t remember much of Injun Joe. Never 1989: The Aboriginal and Torres Strait really met him. Islander Commission is established. Never met my father there either, despite 1991: The Council for Aboriginal the title. Reconciliation is established, and the In fact, it was rare in the first part of my life Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths to meet an Indigenous/Aboriginal character in in Custody presents its report. my reading, and certainly not an admirable one. Even in later readings I think I missed the 1992 (June): The ‘Mabo Case’ is won. sense of Injun Joe as villain. 1992 (December): The Redfern Speech.9 Poor Injun Joe; locked in, locked up, locked out, locked down, his pleas unheard. He was 1993: The Native Title Act is passed. both villain and victim. Not a comprehensive list, but I wanted to start I wonder whether he was tempted to turn that with ‘Self-determination’ if only because it is knife on himself. fundamental to Indigenous human rights,10 It could be an Australian story, and about our and because the change from ‘Assimilation’ to treatment of the ‘Other’. Tom Sawyer, the hero, ‘Self-determination’ is such a radical policy shift. is there from page one, getting others to white- The timeline shows a twenty-year trajectory wash the fence, do his work for him; the neo- toward a more equal power relationship between liberal huckster. Aboriginal people and other Australians. But, I go too far … The creation of ATSIC is noteworthy because some form of Indigenous representative My other reason for starting with Twain is governance is usually regarded as central to because of his take on Australian history. You achieving improvement in socio-economic will know the quote. Australian history, Twain outcomes and rights, and because there needs to said, is ‘always picturesque; indeed, it is so be some sort of ‘“power equalisation mechanism” curious and strange, that it is itself the chiefest capable of requiring government to negotiate novelty the country has to offer and so pushes with Indigenous people on equal terms’.11 the other novelties into second and third place. Further, any such model of representative It does not read like history, but like the most governance should be able to ‘influence Cabinet beautiful lies’.8 decisions, function as an advocacy body for I don’t know about beautiful, but there are Aboriginal aspirations, have a political focus, and certainly lies in our history. probably be responsible for some programs’.12 Lies, like Terra Nullius. My quotes aren’t from the formation of Lies, like those old departments for ‘Aboriginal ATSIC decades ago, but from discussions leading Protection and Welfare’ that were more about to the Uluru Statement from the Heart which the protection and welfare of non-Aboriginal was released — and quickly rejected — so very interests. recently, and its considered, pragmatic opinion Lies like we’re all equal before the law. Certain of constitutional change and the place of names resonate with this. In Western Australia Indigenous people in the nation some further we might say Ward, Dhu, John Pat, Elijah two decades from that peak of 1993.13 Doughty ... But there are many, many more. I include Keating’s Redfern Speech in Lies, as in betrayal. my timeline because a Human Rights approach to Self-determination begins with Here’s a timeline, of sorts: ‘acknowledgement of the impact of historically- 1972: ‘Self-determination’ replaces derived disadvantage on Indigenous peoples’.14 ‘Assimilation’ as the official approach to Singular in its responsibility and courage, and Indigenous affairs. more significant than an apology to the Stolen Generations, the Redfern speech acknowledges 1975: The Racial Discrimination Act is the impact of history, specifying that: passed. The ‘White Australia’ policy ends. … it was we who did the dispossessing.
Humanities Australia 07 We took the traditional lands and smashed If the commonwealth is genuine in the traditional way of life. its desire to secure reconciliation We brought the diseases. The alcohol. with Aboriginal people then full and We committed the murders. uncompromising respect for those legal We took the children from their mothers. rights and the historical truths established We practised discrimination and exclusion. by Mabo is not negotiable. For a people to It was our ignorance and our prejudice…15 have been denied their legal rights under the laws of the colonies for the past 200 These are rare cadences in Australian political- years, to face the prospect of further denial speak. ‘Well may we say’16 that the Mabo Case and extinguishment of rights — after the declaration and the Redfern Speech represent country’s highest institution has declared a pinnacle in Australian history, if our measure their existence — would be tantamount is justice and equality for Aboriginal people to declaring war against them. There will and Australian citizens. Things fell away never be peace and reconciliation if legal from there. rights under Mabo are denied or rendered The following timeline tracks a return to an impotent, and never again will there be an older power relationship: opportunity for a genuine accommodation 1997: Bringing Them Home report of Indigenous people within this nation.17 released. These words from the heady days of fresh Native 1998: The first ‘Sorry Day’, and Title legislation and the Redfern Speech indicate amendments to the Native Title Act. the compromise and negotiation that had already gone into the compilation of the Uluru 2004: The disbanding of ATSIC. Statement. Still not enough. 2006: ‘Close the Gap’ policy initiated. ‘The Apology’ may seem an anomaly in my second list. While recognising its importance 2007: The Northern Territory Emergency to many Aboriginal people, Noel Pearson Response — otherwise known as commented that: ‘The Intervention’ — which involved suspension of the Racial Discrimination We have been … victimized in history, but Act. we must stop the politics of victimhood. We lose power when we adopt this 2008: Australian Federal Parliament says, psychology. Whatever moral power we ‘Sorry’ to the Stolen Generations. might gain over white Australia from 2009: Australia signs the United Nations presenting ourselves as victims, we Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous lose in ourselves. My worry is that this People (adopted by UN in 2007). apology will sanction a view of history that cements a detrimental psychology of 2012: Expert Panel on Constitutional victimhood, rather than a stronger one of Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres defiance, survival and agency.18 Strait Islander Peoples is formed. Sanctioning a view of history is bad enough, 2014: ‘Indigenous Advancement Strategy’ but it may be worse. In Therapeutic Nations: announced. Healing in an Age of Indigenous Human Rights, 2017: Uluru Statement from the Heart the Indigenous (Athasbascaan) academic Dion offered, and rejected. Million argues that communities seeking redress for injustices perpetrated on them by the This second list tracks a move away from ‘Self- colonial nation-state put themselves in a position determination’, and what the Redfern speech of ‘full-victimhood’ and effectively relinquish calls ‘the basis of a new relationship’ between power. That, she says, is incompatible with Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. self-determination because to require apology Note these words from a prominent is to relinquish agency. Million points out that Aboriginal intellectual in 1993:
08 Humanities Australia healing, in a neo-liberal context, can come to importance, in many Aboriginal cultures, of mean a bio-medicalising of historical trauma, sound over sight.25 and emphasis on individual healing for ‘traumas Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu helps us rethink the that are actually outcomes of power relations notion of Aboriginal people engaging in random with states’.19 nomadic activity, and even provides evidence of ‘Close the Gap’ in this way is not about buildings and agriculture.26 empowerment, but quite the reverse. Tony Swain, in A Place for Strangers, explains Million is mostly discussing Canada, but gives a worldview that prioritises place instead of the Australian Northern Territory Emergency time. Not adequately characterised by a line, Response a special mention: ‘Australian nor even a circle (merely a line ‘eating itself’), Aboriginal people’s … violation by the Australian place-consciousness means an awareness of state, where the sexual abuse and incest that rhythms — the many rhythms of moon, sun, were diagnosed in a prior moment of trauma tides and winds, plants flowering and spilling then became a policy rationale for further their seeds, gestation birth and death… — and colonisation... .’20 how an awareness of the intersection of these The insistence on a certain power rhythms gives a, secondary, sense of time and relationship between Australia and its Aboriginal provides for both prediction and an acute sense people — this refusal of anything like Self- of ‘the now’. All these rhythms, he articulates, determination — seems a defining characteristic are held in stories embedded in landscape, in of Australian identity — some say it’s a ‘abiding stories’ for which topographical features psychosis.21 are the text.27 Why is Australia the only English speaking To return to the Republic of Letters for settler colony without even a single treaty? a moment: when Elizabeth Jolley spoke of Yet another lie in our history is the lingering ‘dwelling’ in stories, she meant print stories, perception that Aboriginal people are ‘inferior’. novels and works of printed fiction. But imagine, Recent scholarship has demonstrated the dwelling in ‘abiding stories’ for which landscape folly of this. In The Biggest Estate on Earth, is the text, and resonating with the rhythms Bill Gammage shows fire deployed across the of place. continent with a complexity and skill ‘greater Despite an oral tradition — or perhaps because than anything modern Australia has imagined’, of it — classical Noongar tradition led to the explains why colonists spoke of a land like ‘a Republic of Letters, although entry was usually gentleman’s park, an inhabited and improved barred. Penny van Toorn’s Writing Never Arrives country’ and how an organised ‘mosaic of Naked offers many examples of this propensity grass and trees’ of ‘springs, soaks, caches and for literacy, and I can offer examples from wetlands’ channelled, persuaded and lured prey in Noongar country.28 predictable ways.22 The nineteenth-century Bishop Rosendo Gammage explains that ‘a mobile people Salvado concluded his observations of how organised a continent with … precision … They easily a Noongar boy began to read and write by were active, not passive, striving for balance and asking ‘If the same experiment were conducted continuity to make all life abundant, convenient in the most highly thought-of school in Europe, and predictable’.23 He uses the example of I wonder if a boy of nine would learn forty intricate ‘installations’ consisting of tiny, many- letters in ten minutes, have them all off by heart, coloured feathers painstakingly glued to sand and be able to repeat their names backwards and with blood as evidence of how indigenous forwards?’29 cultures enabled abundance and ‘time to spend The colonial diarist Andrew Collie mentions nourishing the mind … a spiritual and creative the curiosity of Nakinah — his Noongar practice’ that was ‘voluminous and intricate’.24 guide — about the ‘expedition journal’ Collie is Ross Gibson, in 26 Views of the Starburst maintaining. Later, Collie notes how this popular World, articulates the strengths of oral culture literary form has influenced the Nakinah, who over print, the improvisation and fluidity has ‘treasured up in his memory a detailed it enables, and demonstrates again the recollection of the various incidents and scenery,
Humanities Australia 09 arranged in the form of a diary, where each day own traditions. That inclusiveness extends to was designated by some leading distinctive mark, language and colonial place-names. Daisy Bates (above) in place of numerals.’30 documented examples of a Noongar song using Fig. 3. Galliput’s sketch of a native Literary ‘form’ was not the only thing subject English language and names of a colonial 34 encampment, 1833 to ‘sampling’ and interrogation. Around the ‘camp’.
IMAGE: REPRODUCED same time, another south coast Noongar man This glimpse of a classical Noongar cultural WITH PERMISSION FROM 31 NATIONAL ARCHIVES KEW, produced a pen-and-ink drawing (fig. 3). Its frame containing colonial experience suggests UK, CO18-13 F347 author, Galliput, was one of three Noongar men what might have been, and perhaps what might who asked to be taken aboard a ship leaving what yet be. is now the town of Albany, so they could visit the You will note I have not been emphasising infant Swan River Colony and talk with people.32 warrior-hood. I want to think about these people The historian, Tiffany Shellam, says they were as more than just warriors, although that is of thus using ships ‘as vehicles for significantly course a trope of colonial histories. extending kin networks and enhancing The south coast town of Albany, Western geographic knowledge and perspectives of Australia, has a statue of Mokare, so called country’.33 While on that visit they also attended ‘Man of Peace’ near the top of its main street. a piano recital, performed a ‘kangaroo dance’ as The statue has a plaque: ‘In recognition of the their contribution to the occasion, and drank tea role Mokare played in the peaceful co-existence while sitting in armchairs. Galliput sampled the between Noongar people and the first European pen and ink, and no doubt the culinary delights settlers.’35 and society, at a tavern in the colony. Writing Not surprisingly, many Minang Noongar and ships were not the only novel cultural people in Albany would prefer greater attention products with which he and his people were to his resistance to the colonisers: ‘Mineng man, experimenting. Oscar Colbung, told me of the ambivalence felt There are many examples of the inclusiveness by some members of the Albany community of classical Noongar culture, its flexibility and about Mokare’s reconciliation statue. A peaceful readiness to bring new cultural products into its
10 Humanities Australia warrior? What did that say about Mineng writing at my university, though it is arguable resistance, he pondered.’36 whether that would have provided a better fit. There is danger in my emphasis. It can be I was studying literary theory, African literature, easily abused. The generous, confident spirit World literature. There was no Aboriginal of early Noongar like Mokare — the behaviour literature, at least not at that university. There I’ve been stressing — can be co-opted to tell was within a few years, but that’s another story … yet another lie: Aboriginal people didn’t resist It was the 1980s, the 1990s … I had begun colonisation. trying to write poetry and fiction, was beginning I reject that. to wonder about the loud, repeated stories I’d I take resistance as a given and as obvious. learned. I was wondering about myself and But the initial impulse of people like Mokare isolation. was not just resistance. Why should it be? Proud, I went to archives for the first time, the site of curious, inclusive, respectful, for them the ocean the language of our shared history (it is shameful was a means of communication, not a moat. to think of one’s ignorance). I read manuscripts As one among many possible manifestations of and local histories, the publications of experts place, one wants to understand and incorporate and authorities on my kind of Australia. There difference, to grow with it.37 They were much were some recurring and particularly ugly more than just warriors, and to my mind expressions, which in my notes I converted to an emphasis solely on (failed) military-style LFBA (Last Full Blood Aborigine), and FWMB resistance is as empty as the Gallipoli Myth, and (First White Man Born). in danger of becoming reactive and dependent I found a book which seemed firmly grounded on the ‘other’, in danger of being trapped within in these phrases: A.O. Neville’s Australia’s an ugly and brutal infrastructure of power. Coloured Minority: Its Place in the Community. As a judge of (Indigenous) writing Unintentionally, I wrote the latter part of competitions I have read too many stories that this title as ‘their place in our community’. have been ambushed by the genre of military A ‘Freudian slip’, I was marginalised in reading history. Frustration and powerlessness already it. There are many photographs in this book, but has people turning on one another. There is too one in particular caught my eye. It is of three much lateral violence. people — three generations in a line, backs to I have offered only a few examples from each other, smiling into some distant future — among the many similar manifestations of a pre- captioned: colonial, classical culture. I find them inspiring, Three Generations and the potential elaborations and futures they (Reading from Right to Left) suggest thrill me. 1. Half-blood — (Irish-Australian father, But instead of being able to build on this, we are full-blood Aboriginal mother). obliged to first deal with the lies and, in so doing, 2. Quadroon Daughter — (Father run the risk of being ambushed and trapped Australian born of Scottish parents. within a shrill and brittle structure we were Mother No. 1). trying to escape. But I have digressed. Enough of the lies and 3. Octaroon Grandson — (Father such; I was talking about me. Australian of Irish descent. Mother I was saying it was 1964 and I was reading No. 2).38 Tom Sawyer. Lured into the Republic of Letters, I had thought Then it was the 1970s and I was entering Tom Sawyer might be my dad. Stumbling in the university, a callow youth with little political archives, I thought the fellow at the end of this awareness. I might have been in one of those line could be me. nineteenth-century novels I was soon studying, Uplift, I read in this tome. Elevate a despised moving country to city … people. Breed out the black. Fill with shame. Isolate. I was studying literature, at the ‘fag-end’ of that discipline perhaps. There was no creative
Humanities Australia 11 I wrote a novel, a kind of companion piece the wind blows the smoke a little toward to Australia’s Coloured Minority, in which my you, and you hear something like a million uplifted narrator often finds himself trapped in million many-sized hearts beating, and the the ceiling corner of white rooms. Pale, scarred whispering of waves, leaves, grasses … and damaged; a freak hovering in the campfire We are still here, Benang.39 smoke surrounded by extended family, he sings the sounds indisputably of place. A metaphor for There is only so much ‘deconstruction’ and Indigenous language. ‘resisting’ that one can do. There needs to be Allow me to read an edited version of the some source to draw on. last paragraphs of that novel. Never intended as I have briefly referred to the great resource of such, I nevertheless sometimes think of these pre-colonial indigenous cultures and languages. paragraphs as some sort of manifesto: Probably many of us here — enlightened people — appreciate this and may even wish Children, becoming white, gathering to access it. But after decades of denigration at the woodheap, learned to work for and attempted destruction of this heritage, indifferent and earnest fathers. Yes, the followed by an only relatively recent move birth of even an unsuccessfully first- toward its celebration, it should be returned and white-man-born-in-the-family-line has consolidated in its home community so that required a lot of death, a lot of space, a lot members are not further disempowered when of emptiness. All of which I have had in all — tourists, strangers, others — are more abundance. familiar with it than they. And also — it must be said — some sort Noongar language is endangered. Over of luck. I mean in that I am still here, thirty thousand people identify themselves however too well disguised. as ‘Noongar’, but the language was listed as ‘extinct’ on the Summer Institute of Linguistics Yoowarl koorl, yoowarl koorl. (SIL) catalogue until 2009 when it was updated Speaking from the heart, I tell you that to ‘living’.40 Elsewhere, it is classified as I am part of a much older story, one ‘threatened’.41 In 1996, 163 people apparently of a perpetual billowing from the sea, spoke it at home; but by 2006 this number had with its rhythm of return, return and increased to 213, and by 2011 to 369.42 remain. Even now we gather, on chilly I think these figures over-state the endangered evenings, sometimes only a very few of us, case. There are more speakers and, as you can sometimes more. We gather our strength see, the number of speakers is increasing. in this way. From the heart of all of us. However, it is undeniable that Noongar Pale, burnt and shrivelled, I hover in the classical heritage is not as strong, rich and campfire smoke and sing as best I can. I am accessible as it might be; an endangered not alone. language, ancestral country integral to culture inaccessible, a people scarred by dispossession, There are many stories here, in the ashes injustice and historical trauma. Australia is below my feet — even my grandfather’s. stolen country. Only a tiny minority of the I look out across the small crowd, hoping original population survived the first fifty years it will grow, hoping to see Uncle Will’s of colonisation in most regions. Aboriginal children, and those of his sisters, and people suffered an apartheid-like regime for theirs in turn. And my father’s other most of Australia’s colonial history. Of course the children? legacy of this history is with us today. Recovery and rebuilding an Aboriginal There is smoke and ash in my skin, and community and heritage — or so my little old in my heart too. I offer these words to novel would suggest — relies on restoring and those of you I embarrass, and who turn strengthening connections between place, away from the shame of seeing me; or people and language. perhaps it is because your eyes smart as
12 Humanities Australia I wish to now talk about just such a program, and one with which I am closely involved: the Wirlomin Noongar Language and Stories Project. The Wirlomin Noongar Language and Stories Project is a community-based organisation with around one hundred members. It has been operating for over ten years and relies on volunteers and intermittent funding. The project is not primarily about teaching or learning Noongar language, though that is a component. Rather, the project tries to return and consolidate a particular region’s classical Indigenous cultural heritage (with an emphasis on language and story and song).43 The Wirlomin project flowed from a book —Kayang and Me — co-authored with Noongar elder, Hazel Brown. The workshops include language learning, There was a lot of information that didn’t fit story development, picture book illustration and (above) so well there, things like Noongar language, training in presenting to audiences. Fig. 4. Attendees at stories, songs, site knowledge and genealogical The project has published six picture-books.45 a Wirlomin Noongar Language and affiliations — the sort of material integral to Books are near its heart, though more as a Stories Workshop a sense of place and identity and to a family vehicle than an end in themselves. Developing IMAGE: KIM SCOTT faha and community of which Hazel Brown was the stories into picture-book form allows the the centre. That knowledge was in danger of core community to engage with and explore the being lost. stories in various ways; books allow multiple Hazel Brown’s personal ‘database’ has been people to be at the cross-cultural cusp as authors, complemented with material supplied by her illustrators or presenters/performers; and books siblings and other older ‘clan’ members along provide a focus and even a form of validation. with that from official archival sources. One The first workshop, for want of a better such source is the notes of the linguist Gerhardt term, was held in 2006, attended by around 60 Laves who visited Albany in 1931. The Wirlomin Noongar people, and was mostly about declaring project’s initial reference group consisted of, an intent to build language and story and a along with Hazel Brown, a number of key sense of community, and to return — if not descendants of Laves’s informants and evolved formally, then with some serious decorum — from consideration of a protocol for community copies of significant archival language material engagement with the Laves Noongar language to key individuals and also trial some ways of material.44 The Wirlomin reference group plays engaging with it. Within minutes of formally a key role in issuing invitations to the workshops gathering, everyone was crying. They were at which attendees engage with and develop sweet and sad tears. Were we weeping because, stories and songs in Noongar language. as someone said, ‘These days we only get The project is founded upon the process together for funerals? Or because we might bring these workshops allow, one of ever-expanding — something — our language, our ancient stories, and shrinking — concentric circles, with our long presence here, even our old people — members of the Cultural Elders Reference Group properly alive again?’ We were thinking to at its centre. strengthen connection to heritage, build a strong Stories and illustrations are developed, draft and grounded identity. versions distributed, presentations made to The old stories the Wirlomin Project offers schools and community events, and trips to rarely feature oppressed, marginalised figures. ‘country’ taken to reunite language, story, song Or if so, they don’t stay that way. and oral history to landscape. The stories feature protagonists with confidence and agency.
Humanities Australia 13 In Mamang, the ‘hero’ dances out onto the of positive attention for sharing their sense of back of a whale that surfaces near the rocks identity and heritage. upon which he is standing. Trusting a story and After a week of presenting to different schools song of his father’s he dives into the whale’s for the first time Connie Moses said, ‘I’m just so spout and, the words and melody resonating proud to be part of the journey. We are a team, in the cavernous whale’s interior, he sings his you know, and we’re growing together. I just father’s song in which a character does exactly can’t wait to get up and dance and sing. It’s just as he is doing now. He trusts his heritage to so wonderful to hear everyone speak, especially take this risk. When the whale surfaces he looks the elders. Uncle Russell, from earlier in the through — or it might be with, the language is week to now has just been inspiring, listening to ambiguous — its eye, and sees no sight of land. you. Fantastic.’47 Eventually, the whale is stranded on a sandy After also presenting for the first time, and beach, and two women standing there are on the same tour of regional schools, and being surprised and delighted when our hero emerges asked to reflect on the experience, Elder Russell from the whale. The women’s people welcome Nelly said that: him, and all feast upon his story and song. I want to tell you it’s a privilege to Years later, he returns to his home with the two share what we feel with the kids … I get women and children. He has trusted himself and emotional at times, but when I get his heritage to expand his — and their — world, emotional I’m listening to the old fellas. orbited home again with this knowledge. Because they’re talking to me, along with Similarly, in Noongar Maambara Baakitj the them talking to you guys … Prior to this hero follows a trail no one else can even see; I was lost. I had circumnavigated Australia weaponless, he nevertheless succeeds in the three times looking for my identity hunt. He encounters spirit creatures respectfully, and it brought me all the way back to even engages in contests with them. In this Katanning. I heard of the Wirlomin mob, journey he discovers new dimensions to his I thought no, they don’t want me. That’s abilities and identity, and also returns with the all changed now. We’ve got something story of his adventures to delight his family. tangible, I always tell you we’ve got In both these stories young people orbit away something tangible. What we’ve lost, we from and back to home, face challenges, and are resurrecting it. So my people, we go expand their sense of self and their community’s with our head up high, proudly.48 capabilities by doing so. Yirra Boornak Nyininy is a colonial story; A member of the ‘Stolen Generations’ who there is a farm, relationships with non-Noongar never knew his mother and father after he was people and sheep. Like the song I quoted earlier, a baby, Russell Nelly articulates the importance colonial experience grafted to the ancient roots of reconnection with people and country, to of Noongar culture. identity and culture, as against the experience Ngaawily Nop tells of a boy who goes looking of being subject to racism. His father was an for family. Initially rejected, he is claimed by informant for a linguist. The Wirlomin Project the place itself and transformed into a being allowed him not only to hear his father’s stories more wonderful again. At workshops, this story in language, but also to reunite a Creation Story spoke particularly to members of the Stolen of his father’s with the landscape which serves, in Generations who were in fact strengthening part, as its text.49 community bonds in joining us. The return of people to their ancestral I mentioned that the project does country appears to be beneficial beyond presentations at schools and community events, reuniting creation stories and landscape. offering stories, songs and the like.46 On such a trip in 2008, elder Roma Winmar It is still unusual for many Noongar explained that: people, accustomed to being at the margins of institutions, to find themselves the centre
14 Humanities Australia It’s very emotional. I feel full. I feel full of The formality of these occasions was in large tears, I feel full of joy. It’s hard to explain, part derived from the act of calling individuals like when somebody’s been away for from the audience by name, and presenting a very long time and they’ve returned them with the picture books in front of the on a journey and you rush out to meet little crowd. The elderly individual in question them and there’s all these hugs and tears was accorded this treatment. A photograph and … It’s a joy, but you’re shedding tears of him returning to his seat shows tears in his and it’s the same sort of thing … Being eyes. I guess he felt honoured. Perhaps forgiven. here with this mob it’s great. Before my Perhaps, that he belonged. mother died — she had a massive stroke — His reaction surprised some of us, and and before she died she said, ‘Roma, soon suggested to me the potential of the structure as I get better I’ll take you back down to of the storytelling situation to transform, where I came from and I’ll take you to all even if only temporarily, pre-existing power these places’. The project now has enabled relationships. It also suggests the latent power me to come to these places but without of regional Indigenous heritage and a paradox; my mother, and I suppose it’s feeling the empowerment through giving. loss of her not being here … But maybe It is a risky strategy, especially in the context she is here, in spirit, and that dream is of a history of lies and betrayal. being fulfilled for me I just … (indicates On one occasion, while trying to locate a story tears) … Take no notice. It’s a spiritual in its landscape by tracking a story along a trail journey, to be walking this way again, of shifting place names, memories, oral histories reinforcing that bond to country.50 and local history archives, the Wirlomin Project was invited onto a property infamous as being Research confirms Roma Winmar’s words; the place of origin of an historical massacre. improved social and personal well-being comes It was a decision to consider: accept from strong attachment to Indigenous cultural the invitation or not? Some strands of the traditions.51 Notably, such improvement is community had not visited the area for the not dependent on pleas of victimhood, or on generations since the massacre, and those many relinquishing power. Further, the benefit — and decades of legislation controlling movement and the ‘healing’ implied herein — is not limited to rights made it hard to get back and reconcile Indigenous people. oneself with what had occurred. The Wirlomin project, as already indicated, We accepted. After a barbeque lunch, the formally distributes pre-publication copies of current owners presented us with grinding stories to members of the local community at a stones they’d collected decades ago. They felt public meeting. As one of the people involved in ashamed at having done so, they said, and the project, I must confess my intention at this understood our group represented descendants stage was, as part of consolidating the stories in of the Noongar people who’d lived here. a ‘home community’, that only Noongar people They took us to what they thought may be would receive these copies. However, elders significant sites, and which proved to be, in the reference group insisted that an elderly including a dance ground, lizard traps and rock member of a pioneering family of the region be pools of spring water. given that honour also. I objected to this, arguing About twelve months after the above visit, that this individual’s family had stolen our land, I returned to a rock water hole in the area and that members of our Noongar community — eighteen months ago with a small party that in fact, some of the elders with whom I was included one of the elders who received the discussing this — had lived like slaves on the grinding stones. The elder told one of the men man’s property. The elders held their position with us to reach into the water hole, feel for because, they said, the man in question has something left there. When one of the ancient, grown up with them and knew some Noongar hand-shaped stones was lifted glistening into language. the sunlight it felt as if we recreating part of a ceremony.
Humanities Australia 15 coast of Western Australia. My sense is that programs like that which I have outlined offer an opportunity, as Nicholas Evans says in the 2017 Humanities Australia journal, to create ‘a more authentic view of who we are in this part of the world, grounded in the intricate and diverse cultural products of fifty millennia of human occupation … an opportunity to create a type of culture that so far we have failed to nourish in this country.’53
I am talking about the starting point for the possibility of anchoring a shimmering nation state to its indigenous roots being the descendants of regional pre-colonial Australia, It has been claimed that ‘language loss, and have suggested — by the example of a (above) language retention, and the possibility of small and isolated project — the potential for Fig. 5. Professor language revitalisation, then, can be emblematic a transformed, nourishing and inclusive culture Kim Scott faha of the whole history of colonial dispossession, to be built from there. Stories connect people to delivers the 48th Academy Lecture Aboriginal persistence and a self-assertive and one another and to place. They are an important in Fremantle, self-determined Aboriginal future.’52 part of the currency of identity and belonging. November 2017. Indigenous languages, stories and songs are IMAGE: GAYLENE GALARDI This is a different way of telling our history, major denominations in that currency. and of connecting the future with ancient I talk about stories being returned and traditions. But I am talking about more than just consolidated in home communities of people language revitalisation, although that is a major descended from those who created human component of story and song revitalisation. society there. I don’t suggest the stories are This helps us escape from a reactive trap, or an locked away forever. Stories grow from the impoverished narrative reduced to the binary exchange of breath, from moving to and fro, of ‘Stolen Generations’ vs ‘Native Title’. It gives from investment and exchange; that is, they us something more than violent warriors or grow from story-business. I would like them suffering victims, and offers a recovery from to be invested in and appropriate exchange invasion by rebuilding ancient stories and songs negotiated. In using such terms — currency, in regional communities. denomination, invest, negotiate — I perhaps Of course, this is a small and isolated move away from literature and story and toward project I speak of that may not be replicable something like implementation, something like elsewhere. Of course, it could easily falter legislation, something like the benefits of a new and die along with some of its key people. relationship. Something like a treaty. Of course, connecting language traditions with Let me finish with an anecdote from an older country often relies on negotiation with private Noongar man, since passed away. A man scarred landholders. But there is the possibility of by racism, who’d learned to utilise violence as the transformation of social structures and identity. only way to deal with it in small country towns. Which I think brings us back to things I was Returning to a little country town after a talking about earlier, legislation and policy and week clearing his ancestral country for farmers, ‘Treaty’ and the like; the ways and means needed he was picked up and imprisoned by the local (along, I would argue, with story and song) to policeman. The policeman took the trouble change power structures. over the weekend to tell him that he — the Aboriginal Australia is diverse. I’ve not policeman — was enjoying time with his, the been speaking about what’s usually regarded prisoner’s, wife. And then, released from prison, as remote, traditional Aboriginal Australia. my uncle was run out of town. My focus is Noongar country along the south
16 Humanities Australia He found a way to rain violence upon that KIM SCOTT faha is a multi-award policeman. winning author, Professor of That’s Human Rights some decades ago, Writing at Curtin University and of course. an Honorary Fellow of the But all that was just by way of introduction Australian Academy of the to the source of the anecdote. Let’s call the Humanities. His most recent source, Fred. novel, Taboo (2017) won the Book of the Year Award and Indigenous Uncle Fred told me about this man who Writer’s Prize in the 2018 NSW Premier’s Literary approached him in a public space, came up Awards, and was longlisted for the 2018 Miles very respectfully. An immigrant. A dark man, Franklin Literary Award. His other books include Uncle Fred told me. Indian, he thought. Uncle That Deadman Dance (2010), Lost (2006), True Fred, scarred from white Australian oppression, Country (1993), Benang: From the Heart (1999), was colour-conscious, but for all that far more and Kayang and Me (2005) — co-authored with accommodating than a great many non- Hazel Brown. He has won many prestigious Australian literary awards, among them the Miles Aboriginal people living in the towns and regions Franklin Literary Award (twice), the Western where he spent his time. Australian Premier’s Award (twice), the Kate Challiss ‘May I shake your hand?’ the stranger said, RAKA Award (twice), the Victorian Premier’s Literary offering his own. ‘Thank you for having me in Prize, the regional Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and your country.’ the Australian Literature Society’s Gold Medal. He is Nobody had ever said anything like that to also the recipient of an Australian Centenary Medal Uncle Fred before. Certainly no white man (2003) and was named the 2012 West Australian of the Year, having been nominated in both the ever had. Indigenous and Arts and Culture categories. He shook his head in amazement. He was A descendant of people living along the south coast very pleased. It mattered. He considered the of Western Australia prior to colonisation and proud possibility of an alliance between Noongars and to be one among those who call themselves such immigrants. ¶ Noongar, Kim is founder and chair of the Wirlomin Noongar Language and Story Project which, among other achievements, has resulted in the publication of two English/Noongar language picture books, Mamang and Noongar Mambara Bakitj (UWA Publishing).
1. Rob Garbutt, Soenke Biermann and Baden 7. Brian Dibble, Doing Life (Crawley, W.A.: Offord, ‘Into the Borderlands: Unruly Pedagogy, University of Western Australia Press, 2008), Tactile Theory and the Decolonising Nation’, p. 253. Critical Arts, 26:1 (2012), 62–81. 8. Mark Twain, The Wayward Tourist: Mark 2. Stephen Romei, ‘Quotes from the author’s Twain’s Adventures in Australia, with an mouth: Tony Birch, James Bradley, Alice Pung’, introduction by Don Watson (Carlton, Vic., The Australian, 19 April 2017. Melbourne University Publishing, 2006), p. 65. 3. Letter of Invitation to Kim Scott to present the 9. More than an apology, this was an 48th Annual Academy Lecture. acknowledgement of what many of us call the 4. Inga Clendinnen, The History Question: Who ‘truth’ of Australian history, and what should Owns the Past? (Quarterly Essay 23), (Melbourne, follow from the recognition of Native Title. Vic.: Black Inc, 2006). 10. Amy Maguire, ‘The UN Declaration on 5. Inga Clendinnen, ‘Backstage at the Republic the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and Self- of Letters’ (The Australian Academy of the Determination in Australia: Using a Human Humanities Annual Lecture), Proceedings Rights Approach to Promote Accountability’, of the Australian Academy of the Humanities New Zealand Yearbook of International Law, 12 (2003), 97–107: ‘I will follow the time-honoured (2014), 105–32. investigative strategy of the Humanities of 11. Noel Pearson, in Maguire, p. 125. taking myself as subject to assess grander issues’ 12. Linda Burney, in Maguire, p. 125. (p. 97). 13. ‘Uluru Statement from the Heart’, Indigenous 6. Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer (London: Thomas Law Bulletin, 8.29 (2017), 8. Nelson and Sons, 1963). 14. Maguire, p. 121.
Humanities Australia 17 15. Paul Keating, Redfern Speech (Year for the 29. Rosenda Salvado, The Salvado Memoirs: World’s Indigenous People) delivered in Historical Memoirs of Australia and Particularly Redfern Park by Prime Minister Paul Keating, of the Benedictine Mission of New Norcia and 10 December 1992. of the Habits and Customs of the Australian 16. Of course I am quoting E. G. Whitlam here, Natives, trans. and ed. by Edward James Stormon echoing the cadences and pointing to the (Nedlands, W.A.: University of Western Australia betrayal of the coup most often referred to as Press, 1977), p. 121. ‘The Dismissal’. In this instance I plucked the 30. Alexander Collie, ‘Anecdotes and Remarks quote from the Guardian newspaper
18 Humanities Australia Jinjannup (another name for Kooranup) Looking West, ed. by Anna Haebich and Julianne women dancing with averted faces, Schultz, Griffith Review, 47 (2015), 200–14; and Koorannup women dancing with averted faces, Kim Scott, ‘From Drill to Dance’, in Decolonizing Singing here on the sea shore. the Landscape: Indigenous Cultures in Australia, 35. Plaque on statue of Mokare, York St, ed. by Beate Neumier and Kay Schaffer Albany, W.A. (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2014), pp. 3–22. 36. Tiffany Shellam, ‘Tropes of Friendship, Undercurrents of Fear: Alternative Emotions 47. Connie Moses, quoted in Kim Scott, ‘Not So on the ‘Friendly Frontier’, Westerly, 57.2 (2012), Easy: Language for a Shared History’, p. 211. 16–31. 48. Russell Nelly, quoted in Kim Scott, ‘Not So Easy: 37. I use terms like ‘manifestations of place’ to allude Language for a Shared History’, p. 211. to some of the discussion in Swain. 49. See Kim Scott, ‘The not-so-Barren-Ranges’, 38. A. O. Neville, Australia’s Coloured Minority: Thesis 11, 135.1 (2016), 67–81. Its Place in the Community (Sydney, N.S.W.: 50. In Kim Scott, ‘Not So Easy’, pp. 210–11. Currawong Publishing Co., 1948), p. 133. 51. See for example Alfred Michael Dockery, Culture 39. This is an edited extract from the last two and Wellbeing: The Case of Indigenous Australians pages of Kim Scott, Benang (Fremantle, W.A.: (Bentley, W.A.: Curtin University Centre for Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1999). It was edited Labour Market Research, 2009); H. Anderson and performed for the opening of the Perth and E. Kowal, ‘Culture, History and Health: The International Arts Festival’s opening event, Case of Utopia, Northern Territory of Australia’, Home, in February 2016. Medical Anthropology: Cross Cultural Studies in 40. ‘Documentation for ISO 639 Identifier: Nys’, Health and Illness, 31.5 (2012), 438–57; Nicholas SIL (2015). Available at: http://www-01.sil.org/ Biddle and Hannah Swee, ‘The Relationship iso639-3/documentation.asp?id=nys [accessed between Wellbeing and Indigenous Land, January 25 2018]. Language and Culture in Australia’, Australian Geographer, 43 (2012), 215–32; Michael 41. ‘Nyunga’, Ethnologue
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