Cultural Colonisation
Indigenous Fabrication And Western Constructs Of Aboriginal Culture
Westerners are always forcing their constructs and definitions of Aboriginality upon us. This poem written "by" (for) my neice at school will shock you.
The Exotic Image
Anglo-built Aboriginality is a colonial infestation that has dispossessed and colonised us just as much as the theft of our lands. It drives us to adopt "cultural" practices that actually have nothing to do with our heritage, and to construct our own identities according to dominant culture stereotypes. After a couple of generations of living these lies, many of us actually start to believe them.
An embarrassing realisation based on self-examination reveals that this is why I play and make didgeridoos, even though I'm not descended from the Arnhem Land language groups who traditionally played the instrument. If I ever start posing on one leg and gazing mystically at the horizon, that'll be the end of me.
Teaching The Stereotypes
One day my neice came home from school with a poem that she claimed she had written in class. I was immediately suspicious, as the girl at that stage was still fairly illiterate, and spoke English with difficulty as it was her second language. I was horrified at the poem that had been written for/with her by the language support teacher. It was supposedly about my neice's identity, and I could see straight away that she had not had very much input at all, because the poem used language that was out of her realm of experience.
I also noticed the word "dreamtime" was included, which is a concept that is not part of my neice's worldview at all - it's a poor English translation of a concept from central Australia. I asked her what the word "dreamtime" meant, and she had said it meant going to bed early at night to be up and ready for school in the morning.
Bearing that in mind, take a look at some excerpts from this cringingly trite and embarrassingly naive poem.
The Poem
My Culture
My name is ********. / I belong to the Aboriginal Culture group. / To me, this make me very proud / I Want to yell it out so loud. / My culture goes back to the dreamtime / When all the earth and animals were mine. / Nuts and berries we would eat / All these things would taste so sweet. / With spear in hand, we'd walk the land / Through the desert and on hot sand / Lizards and snakes would be our tucker / Happy times around the camp fire. / Many stories would be told / Of the many days of old / Of singing songs and painting rocks / In those days there were no clocks...
There's more, but I'm sure you get the idea - images of childlike savages wandering through paradise, and all that rubbish.
Brainwashed, Colonised
A week later, I actually heard my neice say she collected "nuts and berries" at home, even though there is nothing like that where she comes from. Plenty of native fruit and vegetables, but no "nuts and berries". That phrase is part of a European "wilderness survival" construct. The line "through the desert and on hot sand" is equally ridiculous, as she is from savannah/wetlands country, and has never even seen a desert, let alone walked it "with spear in hand" (she doesn't use a spear either). She also comes from a place that has no rocks, making the rock painting in the poem impossible.
But despite the fictitious nature of this content, my neice gladly took it all on board and incorporated it into her identity. She emailed the poem to everybody she knew, and read, quoted or recited it often. She never understood why I was so mad about it, and this has damaged our relationship.
How To Resist
So as you can see, from a very early age, we are constructed by the dominant culture, and taught how to be "aboriginal" by people who have a shallow, tourist's view of our heritage. I have found that the only way I can resist this is through the kind of critical deconstruction of colonial realities that I have been writing on this website. But the irony is that my access to this tool comes from a middle-class Anglo education that is beyond the reach of the socio-economic reality of most of my countrymen.
But that may be an elitist view. We can also resist in other non-print literate contexts. For example, in the photo for this article you can see some of the boomerangs and waddis (clubs) I've been carving recently. They are not pretty. The temptation for a lot of Aboriginal craftsmen is to make symmetrical, returning boomerangs decorated with central desert dot style painting to conform with dominant cultural images of "authentic" artifacts. I refuse to do that. I make my boomerangs to fly straight and hit what I'm aiming at (duck, wallaby, etc). Making them smooth and pretty would be a waste of time, because they only last a couple of weeks before they crack or shatter with use. This practice for me is personal and organic - I don't allow dominant culture views to dictate my crafting or use of these weapons. So, in a way, this means there are many possibilities for non-print modes of cultural resistance. In this way, we may be free to construct our individual and group identities free from "mainstream" blueprints.
Such is the power of culture.
