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The significance of Sally Morgan's 'My Place' in Australian literature, particularly in relation to the Stolen Generations narrative and its impact on both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal readers. The document also touches upon the role of government policies in defining Aboriginality and the importance of Aboriginal self-definition. Furthermore, it highlights the reactions of common readers, both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, to these works.
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I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. ……………………………………………..
In my Master’s Diploma Thesis, I will analyze two works by Aboriginal women writers, namely My Place (1987) by Western Australian writer and artist Sally Morgan, and Doris Pilkington Garimara’s Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence (1996). I will especially concentrate on the concept of the Stolen Generation, which applies to both books. I will look at this issue not only from the point of books’ analyses but I will also consider the historical background to the encounter of settler Australian citizens with Aboriginal people. The aim of my thesis is an insight into how Sally Morgan and Doris Pilkington perceived this dark period in Australian history and portrayed it in their works. I will base the research on reading various critical essays and articles published by cultural and literary theorists and historians who have treated either My Place or Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence. I will also take into account the reception of the works by both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal common readers. I will attempt to examine if there is any consequence regarding the books’ readership, genre and date of publishing the novels. In other words, if the cultural, political and historical situation of particular periods influenced the authors’ style of writing and ideas they decided to present in their works. As I have already mentioned, the concern of the present thesis is to show how the official Australian history and the concept of the Stolen Generation are depicted in Aboriginal literature that is represented, among others, by Morgan’s and Pilkington’s works. It has struck me that there were such cruelties practised on innocent children who were completely discouraged from the family contact, educated only on the elementary level, and severely punished for breaking the rules. Many Aboriginal memoirs tell stories of a forcible child removal from their families by government
Generation, with a different impact, but still rising from the same source―a forcible child removal from their families by government officials. My thesis starts with the chapter on the overview of Aboriginal life writing in general. I will consider Stolen Generations narratives today and their absence in earlier Australian literature. Until recently, Aboriginal people had a limited ability to influence the writing of Australian history and literature. It has not been public knowledge how Australia was invaded and how Indigenous people were treated because such facts were simply not included in Australian histories. The thesis continues with the chapter dealing with the most important issues that have appeared after the publishing of My Place and Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence. Firstly, there is a question of the readership which is divided between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. Then I will discuss the authors’ reasons for retelling such life stories and finally, I will be interested in the widespread success of both books and their influence on other Aboriginal writers. The next extensive chapter is, according to me, very important since it gives us an awareness of historical and political background of Australia. Because both works are set in the context of Western Australian history and deal with the relationship between Aboriginal Australians and European settlers, some insights into this topic should be given. In this part of the thesis, I will also examine what the term Aboriginality meant for European colonisers at the beginning of the twentieth century and for government officials from the 1930s until the 1970s, and how Aboriginality is understood today. However, the fundamental section of this chapter is devoted to the explanation of the Stolen Generation and its impacts on the population of Aboriginal origins. Both these aspects—Aboriginality and the Stolen Generation—occur widely in
the books I am analyzing and discussing. Only when we have a clear concept of these terms and have a general idea about the historical and political context can we understand their portrayal in Morgan’s and Pilkington’s books. In the following chapter, I will be engaged in the analyses of both My Place and Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence considering the content of the books. I will take into account the protagonists’ experience with the assimilation policies and the ways the concept of the Stolen Generation is depicted in them. Furthermore, I will provide a brief comparative study of these works and emphasize the most important differences and similarities between the books. In the sixth chapter, I will be occupying myself with the impacts both books had on the future debates across the whole continent. I will discuss the affirmative perception of My Place and Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence provided by common readership. However, the criticisms about the books have not always been positive. I will mention what literary, history or cultural critics have argued about the content and style of the books, and what they have condemned about the works. It is important to note that in the present thesis, I will focus my attention primarily on My Place because Morgan’s text was published earlier than Pilkington’s Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence and is regarded as a landmark in Aboriginal literature.
as Aboriginal. They denied their Aboriginality and attempted to repress their memories of painful and humiliating past events. Another reason may thus be seen in the fear of the removed people to talk about their harsh and sad life experience. Australian historian Bain Attwood cites from Peter Read’s book A Rape of the Soul : “They believed that maybe their parents had not been able to care for them properly, or worse still, didn’t want them, and felt this reflected badly on themselves or their families” (Read qtd. in Attwood 187). Many separated Aborigines later denied their background and tried to forget their past lives. Aboriginal stories were once told only in Aboriginal communities and scarcely known beyond this domain. Now they have become historical narratives so widely disseminated that the discovered history is now central to Indigenous collective memory and Australian consciousness. Bain Attwood in “‘Learning about the Truth’: The Stolen Generations Narrative” suggests: stories of the separation of Aboriginal children, which had previously been told in various ways by some Aboriginal people and largely in local or community setting, increasingly became a more homogeneous ‘stolen generations narrative’ that was produced and circulated in regional and national forums. (Attwood 195). What is also important to emphasize is that prior to the creation of the Stolen Generations narratives, “stories had focused on historically specific instances... and took the form of family or community histories” (Attwood 200). Whereas earlier Aboriginal storytelling was supported by historical research, where the removal was placed in a broader historical context, now it became treated separately as a phenomenon. Moreover, the Stolen Generations narrative which was previously only a
collective memory for Aboriginal people, has now become a symbol of the history of colonisation of Australia for non-Aboriginal Australians as well: “On the one hand it constituted for indigenous people a condensation of their experience of dispossession and displacement, on the other it provided settler Australians a focus for their sense of shame as the descendants of a white Australia responsible for this history” (Attwood 206). Awareness of the Stolen Generation began to enter the public arena in the late 1980s through the efforts of both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal activists, artists and musicians. The biggest role was, however, played by women writers of Aboriginal descent. Since the time Indigenous stories entered the consciousness of non-Indigenous people, some of them started to perceive the Aboriginal history with different eyes. After the situation in literary means of expression has changed, there appeared books in the form of autobiographies or family histories that described either government policies or the removal of children itself. Kay Schaffer and Sidonie Smith argue: “Until the 1970s... there were no published life narratives or a supportive publishing industry to enable the transmission of stories” (Schaffer and Smith 85). A wave of autobiographically based narratives by Aboriginal women began to appear in the late 1970s but has gained a more vivid impulse a decade later. The works I am analyzing in my thesis, namely My Place and Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence , are both part of the literary transformation mentioned above. Both works have received the widespread acclaim and achieved commercial publication, and not circulated only among friends and families in local areas. What is also quite interesting is the fact that most of the narrators of the Stolen Generation issue have been women and that the best known testimonies regarding removals have been autobiographical works. The first notion cannot be simply assigned
idea of united identity. Aboriginal activists had access to mainstream media and to processes of decision-making at a state level (Whitlock 155). The sense of united identity and Aboriginality “became fundamental to the development of an effective counter-discourse, which could challenge the principles of white nationalism” (Whitlock 155). Thus, autobiographical writing has become very important in the process of the resistance to colonialism and later to policies of assimilation. In the analyses of both My Place and Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence , we will see that a sense of belonging to a certain place and a search for identity play a vital role. Anne Brewster affirms that “constructions of Aboriginality have an important role in the rewriting of Australian history from an Aboriginal point of view and in the articulation of Aboriginal people’s culture and political goals” (Brewster, “Aboriginality and Sally Morgan’s My Place ” 3 ). Aboriginal identity is among the most important concepts that were gained through telling and writing Aboriginal life narratives in the second half of the previous century.
This chapter offers some information on crucial questions that have appeared in the public when considering both My Place and Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence after their publishing. Firstly, I will ask who have become interested more in the stories, whether Aboriginal people or non-Aboriginal Australians, and at what kind of readership the books were principally aimed by the authors. In the second subchapter, I will observe the most guiding motives for revealing personal experience of Sally Morgan and Doris Pilkington. Finally, I will state how successful the books have become and what spheres of life they have influenced.
Various questions and doubts arise surrounding the composing and publishing of both works. Firstly, we may ask for whom the books were written and to whom they were directed. In the case of My Place , Jackie Huggins, an Australian Aboriginal leader and activist for reconciliation in Australia, points out that the title “sold over 300,000^1 copies and there aren’t even that number of Aboriginals alive today, for heaven’s sake—so someone else’s got to be reading the book” (Huggins 61). Huggins further adds that “it cannot be denied that among those who have read My Place are (usually patronising) whites who believe that they are no longer racist because they have read it. It makes Aboriginality intelligible to non-Aboriginals” (Huggins 61). It seems to me that Huggins is right when assuming that there must certainly be many non-Aboriginal readers that have become captivated by Morgan’s story. I am not sure if reading such (^1) Kay Schaffer and Sidonie Smith mention the number of 500,000 copies sold worldwide (Schaffer and Smith 95).
My Place became part of an Aboriginal Studies programme and belongs to the compulsory literature for Australian students in public schools. The importance of the work is also proved by an article dealing with the education of Australian children called “My Place: The Remaking of Images of Country and Belonging in Australian Youth.” The authors of the text stated that “the book was exceedingly popular and was taken up by many schools around the country as required reading in the secondary
Australian population know about the concepts like the Stolen Generation: “We want it made a compulsory part of the history curriculum of all schools” (Pilkington qtd. in Betros). It is evident that My Place and Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence have gained a status as classic texts for secondary and tertiary curricula. In my opinion, both Sally Morgan and Doris Pilkington have written their works with reliability and passion, and according to the words by Anne Brewster: Indigenous literature is “pedagogic and informative for both indigenous and non-indigenous readers” (Brewster, “Aboriginal Life Writing and Globalisation: Doris Pilkington’s Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence ”). The opinion that Aboriginal stories are read by all kinds of the readership is also held by Gillian Whitlock who has made an interesting observation saying that “conventions of Western popular fiction—the detective story and quest narratives, where there is a mystery, a destiny and search for ‘truth’, all of which require resolution—ensures that My Place appeals to a wide popular readership” (Whitlock 157). Both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal readers were made to admire and pity the protagonists of My Place and Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence because such writings are able to impress the readership with their readability. We can thus assume that Aboriginal life stories and auto/biographical narratives attract both Indigenous and
non-Indigenous readers although they perceive the issues discussed in the books in different ways.
Another question emerges in connection with the reason for publishing the stories. The crucial question is why it was so challenging for both authors to retell their experience and to interpret and record what happened to their Aboriginal families. I think it is important to understand the reasons for recording such harsh personal stories. Concerning My Place , Robin Dizard suggests that “Morgan’s effort at turning secrets into a book are the means women use to get their revenge on patriarchy” (Dizard, “Native Daughters: My Place and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl ” 160). However, it seems to me, it is not a question of vengeance or feeling of resentment towards men regarded as ruling representatives of twentieth century’s society. The reason for recording Sally Morgan’s family history rather lies in the fact that the author seems to be quite angry about the fact that there was almost nothing written about Aboriginal history. Morgan once said to her great-uncle Arthur Corunna: “All our history is about the white man. No one knows what it was like for us. A lot of our history has been lost; people have been too frightened to say anything” (Morgan, My Place 163). The cultural critic and leading Aboriginal scholar, Marcia Langton, confirms in the “Foreword” to The Way We Civilise that “few Australians know the history of their nation as it is told by the colonial files and memoranda” (Langton, “Foreword” x). Sally Morgan further explains why she has begun to write the history of her family and of Aboriginal Australia in general as such:
grandmother, also bitterly remarks: “that’s the trouble with us blackfellas; we don’t know who we belong to (Morgan, My Place 325). As I have already mentioned, autobiographical narratives of that kind served to deal with the past traumatic experience and to rediscover Aboriginal identity. All these aspects are largely connected with the healing effects Aboriginal narratives had on the Aboriginal population. As regards Pilkington’s Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence , the reason for presenting such a kind of personal story could be understood from the inscription at the beginning of the book. The work was composed simply “for inspiration, encouragement and determination” (Pilkington, Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence i). This gives some hope to those who wish to identify themselves, know about their family relations, and find some facts about the Aboriginal history. We might say that this is a story of faith. It both elicits real emotions and creates a sense of realism and remembrance of Australia’s inglorious history. Anne Brewster, for example, calls the book a “history of heroism, triumph and survival against all odds” (Brewster, “Aboriginal Life Writing and Globalisation: Doris Pilkington’s Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence ”). Doris Pilkington herself, in the interview with Kelrick Martin, talks about her motives to write Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence and other biographical novels: I’m hoping that through my writings others, who have been taken away from their traditional areas, would be encouraged to go back and reconnect with their land, reclaim their language, culture and identity. It took me over 10 years to really sit down and say ‘I belong to this land, the land belongs to me’. I had to go through a lot of relearning (Pilkington, “Doris Pilkington: Reunion”). The task of both Sally Morgan and Doris Pilkington is to solve the mystery of what happened in the past and read the new-found past in terms of the politics of identity.
The third question of this chapter is why My Place and Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence have become bestsellers and the authors have earned a worldwide reputation and fame. I will concentrate especially on Sally Morgan because her work was published nine years earlier than Doris Pilkington’s book and is rightly considered one of the best literary works based on the issue of the Stolen Generation. I will begin this subchapter with Joan Newman’s words: “Although it is always difficult to predict the future critical assessment of any literary work, it seems likely that Sally Morgan’s My Place will long be regarded as a landmark text in Australian writing” (Newman 66). Marcia Langton reflects on the debates and controversies that appeared around Morgan’s My Place and Aboriginal identity in general in her essay “Aboriginal Art and Film: The Politics of Representation”. Langton speculates why Sally Morgan’s work became so important and struck such a large readership. She speculates that the reason should lie in weakening “the guilt of the whites, especially white women who were complicit in the assimilation program and the deception into which families like the Morgans felt they were forced” (Langton, “Aboriginal Art and Film: The Politics of Representation” 116 - 117). In her critique of Morgan’s text, Langton has emphasised the wrong supposition that autobiographical narratives of that kind may encourage readers to examine their past assumptions and their prejudices. However, it seems to me, that acknowledging the racist and prejudicial views might at least slightly contribute to the success of the book. Another reason (though less probable) for the successful perception of My Place is the fact that the readers “might also find, with a little sleuthing in the family tree, an Aboriginal ancestor” (Langton, “Aboriginal Art and Film: The Politics of Representation” 117). The most plausible reason My Place has become such an
