Prasenjit Das Research Scholar, Dept of English, Ranchi University,
India.
In my paper I propose to highlight how the essences of Aboriginal ‘Dreaming’ or Spirituality has been employed as resistive tools of appropriation, subversion and identity creation in Aboriginal Australian writings like Jack Davis’s The Dreamers and Kim Scott’s True Country. But, before I move on to do so two basic propositions need to be addressed. First, I will make a critical estimation of history, art, and culture of Aboriginal Australia for a better understanding of the socio-cultural continuum in which the fringed communities have been existing and making attempts of resistive subversion. Although the cultural makeup, artistic diversity and historical background of the various first nations of Australia differ, yet there are certain broad and generalized aspects which bind them together. Secondly, I will also make a discerning reading of the concept of ‘Dreamtime’ and ‘Dreaming’ and its gradual evolvement as a critical term in anthropology and literature. In the third section of this paper I will deal with Jack Davis’ drama The Dreamers which portray the contemporary debilitating metropolitan/multicultural experience of the Aborigines and simultaneously celebrates the old time myth of creation. My final section will highlight how ‘Dreamtime’, as used in Scott’s True Country, is not only a cultural belief of the past but such ‘Dreamtime’ experience is crucial in understanding the inherent Aboriginal truth about one’s one self and the community.
Aboriginal History, Culture, Literature and Identity: A Critical Estimation
Asked about their existence on the Australian sub-continent the usual Aboriginal
response is: “We have always been here”. Archaeological evidences too support the veracity of the statement. Sustained research brings out the fact that Aboriginal man had lived on the mainland for over 60,000 years. It becomes evidently clear that adaptation has been a key to continued Aboriginal existence. They have overcome climatic and environmental changes including those brought about by the invention and use of fire. This was thousands of years ago, prior to European arrival. The Dutch and the Spanish were the first to arrive in the Australian sub-continent. Much later took place the foundation of the British colonial settlement in the form of a penal colony in 1788.
The first things that the colonizers did were, they ignored the Aboriginal concepts of land ownership and their intimate attachment to the entire continent. The colonizers declared the sub- continent to be terra nullius—unoccupied by inhabitants. The colonizers fenced the land, restricted the Aboriginal movements, and exploited natural resources. With them the colonizers brought diseases like small pox and also fire arms. They established Christian missions and protection centers to elevate, educate and modernize the Aboriginal masses in isolation from their own community. The Aboriginal people were biologically assimilated and forcefully integrated into the mainstream White culture. The Aborigines were dispossessed of their family, culture, language, land and general freedom. They were not given the proper status of being the citizen of State and not until 1967, with the passing of the ‘Referendum’, were they allowed to caste their franchise or be included in the census and enable the commonwealth to make laws for
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. The gradual upward mobilization of the Aboriginal masses marked new protests that culminated into Aboriginal Land Rights Act (“Northern Territory Act 1976”). “The Tent Embassy” (1972) was a vociferous Aboriginal petition that addressed Aboriginal ownership of existing settlements, preservation of sacred sites, grant of six million dollars in compensation, and finally full statehood rights for the northern territory. The “Mabo” case judgment of 1992 (launched by Edward K. Mabo and fellow Mer Islander people in 1982) was a historic verdict in that it held Meriam people rights to their traditional lands and these rights to be protected by the Australia law. Equally seminal was the “Bringing Them Home Report” (1997). The Report was a shocking revelation that generations of Aboriginal children were stolen or removed from their natural parents to be fostered in institutions and church missions. It was not until the late twentieth century that reconciliation movement began with an effort by the mainstream Australians to acknowledge the wrongs inflicted on the Aboriginal people—to promise that such actions would never be repeated and to adopt ways to rectify and amiliorate the pain and loss. Kevin Rudd the erstwhile Australian Prime Minister and Brendan Nelson the leader of the opposition on 13th February 2008 offered apology to members of stolen generation that got unanimous support in the House of the Representative and seemed to release a tide of goodwill and a pledge to right earlier wrongs and overcome the social disadvantage of Aboriginal people.
Aboriginal culture is as old as their history. Their culture is steeped in their land. Despite their tradition being invaded by the cultures of people who have come to their country it still continues to evolve in defiance of a common expectation that theirs is a merged one with a dominant White culture. Despite regional differences pan-Aboriginal culture has certain basic common factors. Their art, music and dance are a loud proclamation that they are proud of their identity and their intimate bond with their land and its laws. Their songs—a vocal art form—is believed to be ‘given’ to singers by a ‘Dreaming’ totemic being. The songs narrate the stories of ‘Dreamtime’ and are passed from generations to generations orally. People who own the songs are the traditional owners of the land. Thus ownership of the songs is a proof of continuous association and an important requirement for land claims. Like music dance too is an expression of traditional Aboriginal culture. Dances commonly depict the activities of the creation beings in the ‘Dreaming’ era or tell stories about the land and community and their interrelationship. The spectacle of dance and songs performed for special events are called corroboree. Art too forms a part of their distinctive cultures. Aboriginal rock paintings have been dated back to 40,000 years ago. Aboriginal painting evidences are mainly found in rock shelters and caves. It is a common practice to paint bodies for ceremonies. They also paint on their tools, shield and musical instruments. Today Aboriginal artifacts lead the way in Australian art sales.
Aboriginal identity formation is a survival strategy that is evident in the safeguarding and maintaining of their above stated cultural essentialities even in the face of colonial ravages and neocolonial modernization. This strategic negotiation gives them a control over self- representation and identity in every cultural production, be it song, dance, art, literature etc. The Indigenous cultural performers have variously discussed their Indigenous identity and lived experience of being an Aboriginal. On could well contend with the words of Taylor who puts it thus:
This lived experience is the essential, perennial, excruciating, exhilarating, burdensome, volatile, dramatic source of prejudice and pride that sets us apart. It refers to that specialness in identity, the experiential existence of Aboriginal people accrued through the living of our daily lives, from ‘womb to tombs’ as it were, in which our individual and shared feelings, fears, desires,
initiatives, hostilities, learning, actions, reactions, behaviours and relationships exist in a unique and specific attachment to us, individually and collectively, because and only because, we are Aboriginal people(s). (139)
The first Aboriginal writer to have appropriated English and put into black and white an essentially oral mode of communication was David Unaipon1. If Unaipon’s Legendary Tales of the Aborigines was a celebratory collating of Aboriginal ‘Dreamtime’ legends, myths and customs, then Oodgeroo Noonuccal’s collection of poems We are Going (1964) was the harbinger of Aboriginal protest literature. Sally Morgan’s My Place (1987) was a trend setter in Aboriginal autobiography/life-history. Aboriginal voices became increasingly dominant through writers like Jack Davis, Kim Scott, Thomas Keneally, Donald Stuart, David Malouf, et al. The works of these writers use written words as powerful subversive tools of dissent and opposition in an otherwise socio-politico-culturally marginalized and voiceless condition. The Aboriginal writer Alexis Wright in her attempt to define the essentialities and distinctiveness of Aboriginal writing says:
We see the world differently, our experience of the world differs from the rest of the population, and our linguistic expression will differ from what is accepted as Standard English. If Aboriginal writing causes unease it is because it challenges non-Aboriginal perceptions of standard English, or white concepts, values and ways of describing events, places, people etc.
What we do as Aboriginal writers is try to second guess the world of literature, we don’t enter into the discourse because our experience does not allow it. (n.pg.)
Aboriginal ‘Dreamtime’: A Presence ‘Everywhen’
We are part of the Dreaming. We have been in the Dreaming for a long time before we are born
on this earth and we will return to this vast landscape at the end of our days. It provides for us during our time on earth, a place to heal, to restore purpose and hope, and to continue our destiny.—Helen Milroy 414
For the ‘Indigenous Australians’ land occupies a central place in their lives. It is from their land that springs out their religion, existence and being. Aboriginal religion like most other primitive religion is not institutional. Rather it is infused in their natural elements. In fact, Aboriginal religion is rooted in the spiritual philosophy of ‘Dreaming’. For them the word goes beyond the usual English connotation and stands in contrast to the commonly perceived notion. It is not what is seen in a trance or fictitious or even as Freud would put, ‘the representation of the unconscious’. ‘Dreaming’ is rather their religion, the fountain-head of their life. Broadly put in, the term ‘Dreamtime’ is a misnomer. It is rather an English term coined by F. Gillen (1896) to refer to the religious mythologies and anecdotes of the Northern Arunta people. However now it alludes to the theory of cosmology and cosmogny of the Australian Aborigines. Contrary to the Western Eurocentric notion of temporal linearity spatial rationale, Aboriginal ‘Dreamtime’ it is supra-real reality—a presence ‘everywhen’. An element and existance of past it merges seamlessly in the daily realities of Aboriginal presence—a metaphysics of past reality that concurrently merges with present reality.
The ‘Dreaming’ is a unique religious concept. Generally speaking, it alludes to the period of creation—a distant time in the past that extends beyond the conscious human memory—when ancestral beings were said to have traversed across the continent creating human society and laws and regulations governing it. These laws included Aboriginal living, language, customs and every other aspect of their existence. Magical beings created a wonderful and varied terrain from a flat featureless contour. These ancestors were believed to be shape-shifters at times human and
at other times animal, reptile, bird, fish etc. Tired by their work they eventually rested as bodies in the landscape. These myths, formative and instructional in structure, have descended down the ages through oral narratives, songs and corroboree percolating into their literature. Over the years and down the ages the ‘Dreaming’ manifested itself in the works of various Aboriginal writers. The Aboriginal writes have used ‘Dreamtime’ to revive the identity of their community that had been distorted and destabilized by colonization. ‘Dreamtime’ literature or literature with ‘Dreamtime’ elements combines in itself an assertion and a protest against the Western discourse (linearity, history, nation-making) that had ever stereotyped the Aborigines as inferior masses or sub-human with no ‘high’ cultural values. Prominent writers to have used ‘Dreamtime’ concepts in their writings are: David Unaipon, Kath Walker (Oodgeroo), Saly Morgan, Dack Davis, Kavin Gilbert, David Malouf, Alexis Wright, Anita Heiss, Kim Scott et al.
Reviving the ‘Dream’: Re-reading Davis’ The Dreamers
Jack Davis’ The Dreamers (1982) portray the contemporary debilitating
metropolitan/multicultural experience of the Noongars (a community belonging to the south west of Western Australia) and simultaneously celebrates the old time myth of creation. The drama is a resistance against marginalization of the community by both recapitulating of integral ethnic elements and appropriation of contemporary modern White culture. This is achieved through the character Uncle Worru whose occasional lapse into memories of bygone days through ‘Dreamtime’ stories consolidates Aboriginal identity. On the other hand the remaining members of Wallitch family (except Dolly) do not dream like Uncle Worru. For this old man who makes a strong evocation of a poetic, almost archaic, wish-fulfilling past, addressed in terms of his ‘Dreamtime’ stories, the young members of his community who are filled with total disregard for their tradition and culture are into the process of creating a rootless culture. Davis himself dubs his drama as ‘political’ and in earnestness the play scathes against the assimilationist and integrationist ideologies of White Australian nation-state promoted in under the garb of ‘multicultural policies’. The play is an example of ‘theatrical syncretism’ that uses ethnic Indigenous elements (body painting, music, dance, Noongar language) to subvert and appropriate the Eurocentric form of drama. Though the drama opens with summer-times but yet ends with a bleak winter and the ‘Dream’ of coming of an evil spirit. Symbolic in its proportion the drama envisages little or no hope through ‘Dreaming’ at the end. But, the protest lies in staging the contemporary condition of the Aborigines in Australia. For it is to be remembered that the drama was staged in Australian National Theatre Festival (a primarily White cultural festival) in Perth in 1982.
True ‘Dreaming’: Re-reading Kim Scott’s True Country
Kim Scott’s very acknowledgement of Salman Rushdie’s influence in his own writings makes us reconsider the former’s use of magic realism in the form of ‘Dreamtime’. Rushdie has gone to make a reassessment of history through the tool of magic realism. Similarly Scott in his attempt to initiate an insurgency against the White documented history employs magic realism. True Country in its very stylization brings into fore the ‘Resistance’ of his community to the colonizing dominance of the wadjilas (white people). Scott’s fiction is no mere direct document of socio-politico-economic rhetoric of confrontation towards the modernist agency of White Australia; but the style of the genre is in itself a cultural deconstructive challenge to the established western canonical fictional genre of novel writing. It is in True Country, Scott’s first published novel, that such magic realism was employed to give the feel of a ‘true story’, a phrase
consciously repeated in the novel to differentiate the white documented history from the cautiously preserved ancient world views of the Karnama people. The baseline of the novel is that of a social concern which calls to attention the contemporary Aboriginal issues like besetting poverty, drug-abuse, deracination, domestic violence among other concerns. The main protagonist—Bill, a ‘part-Aboriginal’ school teacher, comes to the Karnama community of Kimberly region of Western Australia in order to explore his Aboriginal heritage. A man, the main character, who for most part of his life has been brought up with a Euroaustralian cultural orientation has been light skinned enough to always have passed as a white man. If an Aboriginal cultural identity is reinstated and reinvigorated in the novel then that is accomplished through an oral narrative tradition of reclaiming the Aboriginal past; and such oral tradition is moored to a spiritual sense of being in a moral world order. Thus magic realism as used in Scott’s True Country is not only a cultural belief of the past but such ‘Dreamtime’ experience is crucial in understanding the inherent Aboriginal truth about one’s one self and the community. In an attempt to sing the land and an Aborigine’s identity as a matter of difference from White Eurocentric imaginings the use of paranormality becomes one of the essential strategies of subversion and appropriation.
Thus, I have dealt with Jack Davis’s drama The Dreamers and Kim Scott novel True Country as conscious examples to illustrate ‘Dreamtime’ as an integral element in Aboriginal writings of identity formation. I have traced the use of ‘Dreamtime’ myths and elements and provided an Indigenous angle in the analysis of these works. This helped me to look at the works as an active political site of resistive intervention to the White discourse.
Notes:
- During 1920s, David Unaipon (born David Ngunaitponi) was commissioned to collect traditional Aboriginal stories from around South Australia. However Unaipon received no credit for collecting and writing of these legendary tales. The stories were published in 1930s as Myths and Legends of Australian Aboriginals with its authorship being awarded to anthropologist and medical practitioner W. Ramsay Smith, FRS. Unaipon’s name appears in passing reference as the ‘narrator’ of the tales. In 2001 Aboriginal writers Stephen Muecke and Adam Smith restored Unaipon to his rightful place as the first Indigenous Australian author of a major book. They closely followed the manuscript of Unaipon, ruling out the changes made by Ramsey, to publish the book as Legendary Tales of Australian Aborigines. A cultural treasure trove, the book celebrates the myths, legends and stories from ancient ‘Dreamtime’ orally handed down by Ngarrindjeri Elders and mothers to younger generation and children.
Works Cited:
Davis, Jack. The Dreamers. Plays From Black Australia. Ed. Justine Saunders. Sydney: Currency Press, 1989. 4-71. Print.
Milroy, H. “Restoring Life and Spirit: Recovery from Trauma.” Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. Social Justice Report 2007. Sydney: Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, HREOC.
Scott, Kim. True Country. Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre P, 1993. Print.
Taylor, R. “About Aboriginality: Questions for the Uninitiated.” Identity and Gender in Hunting and Gathering Societies: Senri Ethnological Studies. 56 (2001): 133-50.
Wright, Alexis. “Language & Empire: The Empires of the East have Crumbled into Dust, but the English Language Remains.” A paper presented at the Brisbane Writers’ Festival, 7 September 1997.