Discursive Representations of the Dingo by Aboriginal, Colonial and Contemporary Australians
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BRINGING THE DINGO HOME: DISCURSIVE REPRESENTATIONS OF THE DINGO BY ABORIGINAL, COLONIAL AND CONTEMPORARY AUSTRALIANS By MERRYL ANN PARKER B.A. (Hons) Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Tasmania April, 2006 This thesis contains no material which has been accepted for a degree or diploma by the University or any other institution, except by way of background information and duly acknowledged in the thesis, and to the best of my knowledge and belief no material previously published or written by another person except where due acknowledgement is made in the text of the thesis. Merryl Parker This thesis is not to be made available for loan or copying for two years following the date this statement was signed. Following that time the thesis may be made available for loan and limited copying in accordance with the Copyright Act 1968. Merryl Parker Submission of Abstract for Ph.D. degree BRINGING THE DINGO HOME: DISCURSIVE REPRESENTATIONS OF THE DINGO BY ABORIGINAL, COLONIAL AND CONTEMPORARY AUSTRALIANS. My thesis examines the discourse which has encoded the dingo since it arrived in Australia nearly five thousand years ago. While post-colonial theory has exposed the ideological structures and material practices which position indigenous peoples as “other” to the colonisers, most scholars have remained curiously silent when it comes to nonhumans. Animals now stand as the ultimate “other”, denied a subjective life of their own, for their behaviour is usually read, as Helen Tiffin argues, “as having primary (and exclusive) significance for humans.” The project of this thesis is to examine the narratives within which Australians have “trapped” their dingoes. My methodology takes as its starting point Foucault’s theories which connect discourse and power. The thesis is divided into three sections; Colonial Discourses, Aboriginal Dreaming and Contemporary Configurations. The colonial section asks how discourse forces the dingo to represent human fears and failings. I argue that a denigrating discourse is used to justify the ill treatment of the dingo, that discourse reveals little about the “real” dingo, and that there are similarities in the discursive treatment of dingoes and Aborigines. The thesis also acknowledges the dingo’s attempts to slip through the gaps in the discourse “fence”. The second section researches traditional Aboriginal myths of the Dreaming Dingo. By encouraging the dingo to trot back to happier times, I allow the reader to step back also and assess Aboriginal representations of the dingo, arguing that these are based on an empirical knowledge of its habits and nature. I contend that in contrast to a colonial discourse based on difference, the Aboriginal narratives assume similarities to animals and the potential for crossovers. This section argues that a pragmatic Dreaming Dingo teaches humans to live harmoniously and cautiously in an environment which is both nurturing and dangerous. Finally the dingo returns to the trail and trots into a place where practical knowledge of wilderness is negligible. The contemporary section of this thesis argues that in their longing to claim the dingo and its wildness for their emotional and spiritual needs, urban Australians generate a confused, incompatible and ignorant mix of colonial and Dreaming Discourse. The dingo in the National Park is required to carry an impossible discourse and it fails—biting the hands which feed it. “Bringing the Dingo Home” reflects an exciting time as one more “other” breaks “the deafening silence” described by Wolch and Emel, and demands a position in post- colonial discourse. At last the discourse of the dingo can be foregrounded and its misrepresentations can be redressed. Table of Contents Introduction 1 Part 1: Colonial Discourses Introduction to the Colonial Dingo 24 The Cunning Dingo 25 The Cowardly Dingo 45 The Promiscuous Dingo 67 The Killer Dingo 88 Part 2: Aboriginal Dreaming Introduction to the Dreaming Dingo 117 Myths of Human Creation 137 Myths of Environmental Creation 148 Social Dingoes in an Aboriginal Discourse 169 Hunting: Wild and Tame—A Warning Discourse 179 Resurrection 202 Part 3: Contemporary Configurations Introduction to the Contemporary Dingo 219 The Children’s Dingo 220 The Tamed Dingo 244 Lindy Chamberlain versus the Larrikin Dingo 268 A Pre-conclusion 297 Conclusions 300 Reference List 312 Acknowledgements I am grateful for the support of colleagues at the University of Tasmania who have suggested texts and shared information. Special thanks to Carol Pybus from Aboriginal Studies for the loan of texts which pointed me in the right direction and Carol Freeman from Environmental Geography whose study of the Tasmanian thylacine links in with my work and who has shared her knowledge so generously. Thank you to Narelle Shaw for introducing me to environmental studies and for her encouragement of my chosen topic. Last but not least I acknowledge the support of my supervisor Lucy Frost, whose insight and wisdom and enthusiasm have brought me back from an irrelevant path so many times and who has somehow managed to change my weaknesses into strengths. Without her the road would have been a lot steeper. Thanks to the staff past and present at the Morris Miller library, especially Robyn, Jules and Jane and to Margaret, Pam and Angela at the English office. All of them have on many occasions gone to extra trouble to make life easier for me. A special thank you to the two members of my family who are still at home—my “alpha male” partner Derek who first suggested the topic and whose quirky intelligence prevents any tendency to stay in the comfort zone, and my daughter Josephine who has obligingly shared her mother with dingoes for more than three years. Merryl Parker INTRODUCTION Each society has its own regime of truth, its “general politics” of truth; that is the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true. (Foucault, Archaeology of Knowledge 94) For the animal shall not be measured by man. [. .] They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time. (Beston 19-20) One old dingo – a victim of discourse An old dingo once lived in a crevice of the great red Ayers Rock now called Uluru. The dingo had a name; given to him by white people—Old Ding-a-Ling. He had an occupation; each day he would take a stroll through the campground to see what he could beg from the tourists; and he had a heritage; he was a descendent of the first dingoes to arrive in Australia. He was lucky to be alive and privileged to be purebred; many of his species outside National Parks were still being exterminated and a large number of the remaining dingoes had been obliged to mate with domestic dogs. He was a survivor; described by an observant reporter for the Sydney Morning Herald as 1 “well built, strong and cunning, a leader” (qtd. in Wilson 60). But finally the old dingo’s luck ran out and on a summer’s day in 1980, a few months after the death of baby Azaria Chamberlain, he was shot dead by a park ranger. Old Ding-a-Ling was a victim of yet one more of the several discourses which have been applied to his breed. He was killed because of a contemporary discourse which encouraged dingoes to beg from tourists and then punished their learned familiarity and aggression. “Bringing the Dingo Home” investigates discursive representations of the dingo and the three distinct phases of its life in Australia. In the first section “Colonial Discourse,” accounts from trappers, and stories and poems gathered mainly from the Bulletin are examined. The texts range from the 1880’s until the end of the Second World War; a time-span which begins with “The Coming Man” of nationalism and ends with “The New Man” of wartime (White 85, 126). Robert Dixon’s description of the Bulletin’s “clamour of competing discourses” in Writing the Colonial Adventure (8) is borne out by dingo representations which fluctuate between amused tolerance and rigid dislike. The entrenched belief in the priority of sheep over the dingo and indigenous animals is revealed in both types of discourse and has survived into the twenty-first century. The second section of the thesis describes the dingo which is represented in traditional Aboriginal myths. The myths describe the Dreaming Time which took place during the creation of the world, but the dingo does not perform chronologically in this thesis. Instead it trots along a haphazard path following the preferences of the colonists who 2 gave their own dingo discourse precedence over Aboriginal beliefs. The dingo doubles back from the traps and poison and denigration to a more benign time where it can rest for a while, lick its wounds and regain its pride. The Dreaming Dingo is represented by a spiritual discourse which endorses harmony and equality between human and nonhuman. The myths, including Ronald and Catherine Berndt’s collection, The Speaking Land were mostly gathered in the early twentieth century when they were still spoken by traditional Aborigines with knowledge of a particular stretch of land. The dingo picks up the trail and trots along again towards the three contemporary dingo discourses in the final section. “Contemporary Configurations” discusses urbanised Australians of the last twenty-five years and the texts which encourage them to misjudge the wilderness and the dingo. “The Larrikin Dingo” examines a subversive larrikin representation of the dingo during the Chamberlain trial. Larrikin language is found and examined in accounts of the trial, lawyer’s texts and such street talk as dingo jokes and gossip. “The Children’s Dingo” describes the romantic beliefs which encourage tourists to bring their children to Fraser Island in a search for spiritual redemption.