Abstract
How Australian children perceived the image of Indigenous from their readings is highly influenced by the authors. As many Australian children’s books are written by White authors, it is important to reveal whether their past and cultural background manifest in the image they built for Indigeneity. This study aims to reveal how Jackie French, a white Australian children’s book author, portrayed Indigenous characters and environment in her novels and to find out whether French creates a shift of the images as a form of her tendency to the major culture in Australia. The data were significant textual units from Nanberry Black Brother White novel and were analyzed using Bradford's post-colonial theory of unsettling narrative. The result of this study shows that French deliver a varying degree of Eurocentric mindset in portraying indigenous characters and characterization. It implies that French, as a White-Australian writer still possibly has a colonial mentality who, deliberately or not, positions the Indigenous characters as Others through the focalization of both Non-Indigenous and Indigenous characters themselves. For instance, in Nanberry Black Brother White, it appears that French try to justify whiteness as more civilized and a better race through Nanberry’s point of view as an Indigenous child character. It implies that the process of depicting Nanberry, the representation of Aborigines, in the novel is actually a justification for establishing an Eurocentric mindset through the character’s narratives, and therefore creates unsettling narratives.
Highlights
When it comes to the existence of indigenous, issues about otherness or the other have been widely discussed in Australia for centuries
One of the most popular children's literature writers in Australia, Jackie French, proved through her writing, Nanberry Black Brother White (2011) that the Eurocentric mindset is still attached to her way of thinking, and reflected in her writing
She implied this cultural perspective in the novel through the depiction of Indigenous characters, their environment, and their interactions with nonIndigenous characters, in order to create a friendly children’s story about the life of the Indigenous
Summary
When it comes to the existence of indigenous, issues about otherness or the other have been widely discussed in Australia for centuries. Indigenous in the Perspective of White Author: Unsettling Narratives in Australian Children’s Book– Anandayu Suri Ardini (p.149-160) 150. It is this distanced viewpoint that makes it difficult for readers to understand the characteristics of Indigenous people. Children's texts produced in settler society countries such as Australia tend to contain "varying the degree of unease, a sense of being unsettled, or de-settled" or reflect anxiety and instability in the narrative (Bradford, 2007). In the children’s books produced in settler societies, there is a very important and influential concept regarding postcolonial work that constructs ideas and values about colonialism, post-colonial culture, and individual and national identity (Hunt, et al, n.d.; Stephens, n.d.). Bradford’s theory of unsettling narratives is going to be employed in this research as it is the most relevant theory which focus on postcolonial issue in children’s literature
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