Peter Minter

Superb although, perhaps in a very real sense, dated by its choice of focus.

This anthology accompanies the larger Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature and it is a worthy decision to give Aboriginal Literature its own volume entirely. The power of the material contained herein is at times overwhelming. Heiss and Minter collect letters and speeches given from the early 19th century through to the middle of the 20th century, with more focus on traditional "literature", i.e. poetry and fiction, in the second half of the 20th century. (Until at least WWII, Aboriginal Australians were essentially wards of the state, requiring permission to marry and get employment, often having their wages given directly to their state overseer to protect them, and routinely having children taken from their families to be raised in white households, the famous Stolen Generation. As a result, there were really only two or three "literary" Indigenous writers until late in the last century.)A

What is most poignant for me personally, as a white Australian who grew up in the 1990s, is how few of these voices were taught to me at school or in my broader social education. The manifestos that were shared back in 1938, Australia's sesquicentenary, have an awful lot in common with modern Indigenous demands - yet a lot of people today feel as if these arguments are new! There has been a blank space in Australian history, or at least a hazy one, and this anthology helps rectify that. Every writer here is of interest, with the final inclusion - Tara June Winch - being a perceptive one: at the time she had recently published a debut work; a decade later, she is widely considered one of our best novelists.

Of course, all anthologies delight and frustrate, sometimes in equal measure. It's understandable that this volume takes the "Cultural Studies" approach to literature - i.e. widening the scope to include letters, autobiography, and manifestos - because, as mentioned above, due to historic injustices it would have been hard to find enough writers otherwise. Additionally, since much of the Aboriginal experience has been one of fighting daily oppression, it makes sense that a compilation of lived experiences, many told with wit and insight, is an effective way to render this ancient, oral culture on the page. It is slightly sad, but understandable, that the editors choose to omit the many traditional songs which were collected in the first half of the 20th century by passionate white anthropologist-poets such as Roland Robinson. But as these songs were transmitted through white hands and white minds, it is fair to say many of them do not represent a true experience, in much the same way as the beautiful translations of Chinese poetry by Ezra Pound and his contemporaries are poetic wonders in their own right, but not a very useful insight into the depths of genuine Chinese art.

In terms of "canonical" Aboriginal writers, the only notable omission for me is the late Colin Johnson, aka Mudrooroo. A powerful voice between the 1960s and 1980s, Mudrooroo's legacy was shattered when questions were raised about his Aboriginality. It is now generally considered that he was mistaken in his self-identification with Aboriginal Australia, although more critical voices accuse him of outright fraud. With the author's death, this controversy has subsided, and the editors make glancing reference to him in the introduction when - without citing his name - they indicate they have omitted authors who are "in dialogue with local communities regarding ancestry and identity".

I do think, though, that this anthology perhaps does the same as many modern anthologies; it sands off the rough edges. There aren't really any voices from the more conservative side of Aboriginal life, those who do not agree with the mainstream movement. Additionally some of the most progressive, radical voices of recent years also seem to miss out, those who perhaps make white people uncomfortable rather than just acknowledging the plight. With such a groundbreaking publication, which has the ability to fall into the hands of ignorant people like myself and awaken us to the realities of the last 230 years, it is completely understandable that the editors chose to sand off the spiky edges. Here's hoping that this anthology will have many future editions, and that with time it will be allowed as much complexity and nuance as the best anthologies should.… (mer)

Australia for me has generally meant sun-baked vacations, family reunions, the coconut smell of sunblock, standing with my feet in the South Pacific, sandy-kneed, watching the sun go down. I have been here for work too, in the past, poking around two-bit mining towns in the middle of outback WA and drinking schooners of Toohey's New at makeshift bars lifted straight out of Slim Dusty songs; but even the most venerable cultural throwbacks here only point up a history of the last century or two at most. It's so, so easy to forget that human civilisation has been established here for tens of thousands of years.

In many areas, about the only visible sign of Australia's original inhabitants now are the placenames – strange, mostly incomprehensible words in forgotten languages with forgotten meanings. Near where most of my family live in Queensland there are all kinds of weird and wonderful towns which I love to say – Mooloolaba, Eumundi, Toowoomba – but usually when you ask what they mean, people just shrug. Occasionally one, better informed, might tell you that something means the place where two rivers meet – ‘in Aboriginal’. (The hundreds of Aboriginal languages can differ as much as English and Finnish.)

Round here, where I'm currently writing this, was the territory of the Gubbi Gubbi people, though I have never met or even seen one in the many years I've been coming. Indeed I've been told more than once that there are none left, which isn't actually true though it's easy to see why it could be believed. A highway near where my nephew goes to school is called Murdering Creek Road; see, there was a creek here, and all the Gubbi Gubbi nearby were murdered right along it…

The more you find out about all this, the more incredible this huge absence in Australian society seems. After a while, there is a tendency for the whole gigantic country to appear (as perhaps it should) as a vast extermination site – ‘Holocaust Island’, as the poet Graeme Dixon dubs it, a phrase that has stuck with me. The Aboriginals were poisoned, speared, shot; later, under more civilising influences, merely herded into trucks and dumped on reservations, far from white settlements, with families routinely and strategically split up in the process. Subsequent policies of ‘assimilation’ were, from a cultural point of view, just another kind of extermination, as Oodgeroo Noonuccal pointed out in the 60s:

Pour your pitcher of wine into the wide river
And where is your wine? There is only the river.

So it's understandable that Aboriginal writing basically constitutes a single-issue literature, with survival as the single issue. Originally physical survival, and subsequently cultural survival. The basic point has been eloquently expressed by generations of Aboriginal writers and is still being made.

You are the New Australians, but we are the Old Australians. We have in our arteries the blood of the Original Australians, who have lived in this land for many thousands of years. You came here only recently, and you took our land away from us by force. You have almost exterminated our people, but there are enough of us remaining to expose the humbug of your claim, as white Australians, to be a civilised, progressive, kindly and humane nation. By your cruelty and callousness towards the Aborigines you stand condemned in the eyes of the civilised world.
—William Ferguson & John Patten, 1938

The nature of this background means that a lot of what is in here stretches the definition of ‘literature’ slightly, and the early material in particular includes a lot of manifestos and legal claims of limited artistic effect or intent. Nevertheless, I found it very inspiring to have it all assembled here as a focused collection, and – by drawing attention to just how much is not talked about elsewhere – it's definitely made me rethink the way I see Australian literature.… (mer)

Too academic to be engaging, to me. Fragmented, with minimal annotations and context. Valuable resource, but not something I could manage to read thoroughly. Haunting, but not helpful.

Otoh, I did learn details about the abhorrently bad treatment of the natives by the whites. If anything, it seems worse than the akin situation in the USA. The stolen generation" was actually 100 years long. Whites actively poisoned flour and waterholes. The women were raped so regularly that there are almost no full-blood Aboriginals left. Etc.

Two pieces were easy to understand and made an impact on me - one could almost call them 'enjoyable:' The Burnum Burnum Declaration, in which "I, Burnum Burnum, being a nobleman of ancient Australia, do hereby (with this flag I'm planting at Dover) take possession of England on behalf of the Aboriginal People." and Graeme Dixon's poem "Six Feet of Land Rights.""… (mer)