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The Stolen Generations, the History Wars and Polesapart by Indigenous New Media Artist R E A

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The Stolen Generations, the History Wars and Polesapart by Indigenous New Media Artist R E A View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Flinders Academic Commons 2010 14th InternationalInformation Conference Visualisation Information Visualisation Embodying Affect: the Stolen Generations, the History Wars and PolesApart by Indigenous New Media Artist r e a Christine Nicholls Flinders University, Adelaide, South Australia {[email protected]} Abstract In her 2009 new media artwork PolesApart, 1. Introduction Australian Aboriginal artist r e a, 1 of the Gamilaraay people in northern New South Wales, explores issues In her 2009 video artwork PolesApart, Australian relating to the Stolen Generations of Aboriginal Aboriginal artist r e a, of the Gamilaraay people in children. Based on the personal experiences of her northern New South Wales, explores issues relating to grandmother and great aunt as ‘stolen children’, r e a the Stolen Generations of Aboriginal children. amplifies the work’s familial dimension by enacting the R e a’s work, based on the experiences of her role of the protagonist fleeing from forced servitude. This grandmother and great aunt, has a strongly personal, paper looks at PolesApart in the broader context of the familial dimension. This paper looks at PolesApart in the interrelated phenomena of the stolen generations and the broader context of the stolen generations (the forcible so-called ‘history wars’. It is posited that the power, removal of Australian Aboriginal children from their immediacy and affective dimensions of (moving) visual families) and the so-called ‘history wars’ (continuing imagery have been instrumental in shifting Australians’ ideological disagreements about the precise nature of the 2 knowledge about the stolen generations from the margins facts about and effects of ‘contact history’). into the mainstream. The capacity of the moving image Before discussing PolesApart in greater depth, the to ‘embody affect’ [13], it is argued, has enabled many work needs to be situated within a broader historical more Australians than previously to appreciate the framework. Of great significance is the fact that, in little historical implications and continuing ramifications of more than the last decade, there has been a discernible this prolonged episode in Australian history. This has in shift in mainstream Australian thinking about the turn led to the development of a more sympathetic public veracity of the phenomenon known as the stolen understanding of the phenomenon of the stolen generations, and greater public appreciation of the generations as ‘lived experience’. In turn this broader seriousness of its flow-on effects. Underpinning this social knowledge, and its integration into our shared change was the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity cultural heritage, has contributed to Australians’ general Commission’s 1997 release of Bringing Them Home: receptiveness to the official Apology issued to members Report of the National Enquiry into the separation of of the stolen generations by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their in Federal Parliament (13th February 2008). It is also families [15]. the case that the popular reception of mainstream stolen Since the release of the report, the increasingly generation-themed movies has influenced Australians’ popular reception of mainstream stolen generation- openness to the themes and issues explored in themed Hollywood style Australian movies has contemporary non-mainstream new media work such as heightened audiences’ receptiveness to non-mainstream r e a's PolesApart. In the latter work, through the use of new media works such as r e a’s PolesApart. Key to this the vehicle of her own body, r e a demonstrates that the shift in mainstream thinking would appear to be three personal is inescapably political, and vice versa. films: the unexpectedly popular Radiance (1998), followed by Rabbit Proof Fence (2002), loosely based on Keywords---Australian Aboriginal history, stolen generations, history wars, r e a, PolesApart (hd. video). 2 ‘Contact history’ is the term widely used in Australia to refer to the historical relationships between Australian Aboriginal peoples and members of colonising migrant groups, from post- initial contact with the British in the late eighteenth century, and continuing into the 1 present. The unresolved nature of ‘contact history’ has become deeply Please note that r e a spells her name entirely in lower case, with a imbricated with the ‘history wars’, in which the actual facts of the case space between each letter, which she explains as ‘a rejection of and the legacy of colonial policies and practices remain subject to bitter imposed identity’ and does not use a surname (pers. com, r e a to the dispute. author, June 2009). 1550-6037/10 $26.00 © 2010 Crown Copyright 409415 DOI 10.1109/IV.2010.64 a true story, and more recently, the fictional Australia in what could be described as the current ‘post apology’ (2008). All experienced box office success, but era of Australian politics. This locates PolesApart along particularly the latter two. The popular culture and an historical continuum. At the same time, as a new successively populist cinematic representations of the media work shown almost exclusively in art gallery stolen generations, Rabbit Proof Fence and Australia, settings to art house audiences, PolesApart is to be attracted mass audiences nationally and internationally. understood as a new, divergent branch of an older tree. A number of documentaries about the stolen generations Notwithstanding, and while Rutherford’s argument may that were screened during the same period, including Cry not be applicable to all contemporary new media works, from the Heart (1999), and Land of the Little Kings especially those situated outside of a humanist paradigm, (2000) also elicited largely compassionate responses. insofar as r e a herself enacts the central role in It is argued that the power and immediacy of the PolesApart, thereby re-creating the experiences of a (moving) visual image have been instrumental in shifting family member, it can be validly argued that this non- Australians’ knowledge and sympathetic understanding mainstream work is equally premised on the of the historical implications of the stolen generations ‘embodiment of affect’. into the mainstream. The latter development has, it Before examining the specifics of PolesApart, it is would seem, in turn contributed to Australians’ readiness necessary to contextualise the discussion by providing for The Apology, offered to members of the stolen more background. The interconnected phenomena generation by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in Federal known in Australia as the ‘Stolen Generations’, ‘The Parliament, 13th February 2008. Apology’, and ‘The History Wars’ are all relevant here. Pertinent to this argument, but in a different context, In order to develop a fuller and deeper understanding of Anne Rutherford has argued that the “materialities of the significance of PolesApart this background cinematic experience” can be “understood as knowledge needs be mapped onto the details of r e a’s intrinsically linked with the affective power of cinema” own family history. In the sections that follow such [12]. Central to this is what she describes in another broader context is provided to equip the reader in article and in a forthcoming book as ‘embodied affect’ connecting the general with the particular as a means of [13]. illuminating r e a’s artwork. While detailed discussion about the affective power of visual representations and of cinematic identification 2. The Stolen Generations: an Overview is beyond the scope of this article, it is clear that while the Bringing Them Home...Report may have been the The practice of pastoralists, Government officials or initial catalyst for further understanding of the prolonged Church authorities in forcibly removing large numbers of chapter in Australian history known as the stolen Australian Aboriginal children began in the late 19th generations, the aforementioned films and documentaries century and was only halted in the mid-late 1970s. Often enabled the subject to be taken to a far wider audience children were removed from their families for no other than previously. In addition, there has been a flow-on reason than their Aboriginality. Racialized notions of effect from these mainstream works that has shaped the ‘genetic arithmetic’ played an important part in this reception of works such as r e a’s PolesApart. process, with the so-called ‘half-caste’ children routinely These mainstream films’ capacity to show rather removed from what substantial numbers of non- than simply to tell meant that Australians became Indigenous Australians believed to be the noxious, educated en masse about the embodied existence of corrupting influence of the children’s immediate, individual members of the stolen generations in ways biological families. Some of the children were placed in that written reports and even live dramatic performances orphanages, while others were sent out to work as cannot.3 The unique capacity of the moving image to domestic servants for wealthy whites, and others were embody and to personalise social and political adopted or fostered out to white couples. In some phenomena has led predominantly non-Aboriginal instances the latter were told lies by the authorities, and audiences to envision the phenomenon and its affective informed that the child's parents had died, or had dimensions in ways that were not possible
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