SOME LITERATURE IS MADE TO BE SHOUTED THROUGH A MEGAPHONE — and necessarily so. Australian Aboriginal authors have never remained silent about the two centuries of government mistreatment that included murder, land appropriation, formal policies of assimilation and the forcible removal of children from their families. Almost all contributors to The Anthology of Australian Aboriginal Literature are political activists, and their works sing their struggle for rights and weep for their losses.
There have been few more active in the allied realms of politics and literature than the “grandmother of Aboriginal poetry”, Oodgeroo Noonuccal. A selection of Noonuccal’s poems from the mid-1960s (a period during which she held prominent positions in the Aboriginal civil rights movement) advocate a form of integration that would maintain the pride and identity of Australian Aboriginal people intact.
Do not ask of us
To be deserters, to disown our mother,
To change the unchangeable.
The gum cannot be trained into an oak.
(Assimilation-No! 1966)
Kevin Gilbert and Lionel Fogarty pick up where Noonuccal left off, with hard-hitting radical works calling for land rights and protesting deaths in custody.
Later writers speak to the inspiring potential of changes in other political regimes: Alf Taylor’s short story “The Wool Pickers” (1996) includes a character whose dearest wish is to shake Nelson Mandela’s hand. But even in the wake of “National Sorry Day” instituted by the Australian government, there is an ongoing struggle for visibility and equality. As poet Romaine Moreton writes:
it ain’t easy bein’ black
this kinda livin’ is all political
this kinda livin’
can be all up hill
(Don’t Let It Make You Over, 2004)
The theme of loss and the dream of return run throughout the anthology. Notable are Jim Everett’s eloquent blending of language and landscape in planegarrartoothenar (2006), a vivid journey through Meenamatta country where family ties are renewed beyond culture and time, and an extract from Tara June Winch’s novel in short stories, Swallow the Air (2006), which presents the vivid dreaming of a younger urban generation that has yet to visit the lands that were lost.
The Anthology of Australian Aboriginal Literature is the first of its kind. It covers a lot of ground, but thinly. At best it can only contain introductory snippets of work from writers like Bill Neidjie, whose work merits longer treatment. But anthologies, like group art shows, create awareness and build audiences. There are plenty of boomerangs, bandicoots, ruffled waves, goannas and red hot territories here, but this anthology is a rally for awareness, across the genres. Come and read, prepared to witness an ongoing struggle.
You listen my story and you will feel im
Because spirit e’ll be with you.
You cannot see but e’ll be with you and e’ll be with me.
This story just listen careful.
(Bill Neidjie, “Ahh…Bush Honey There” 1989)
Alice Petersen is a Montreal-based writer. Her stories have most recently appeared in Coming Attractions 08, (Oberon Press) edited by Mark Anthony Jarman.
