Spaces to Speak: Challenging Representations of Sudanese-Australians

Abstract

In September 2007, Liep Gony, an 18-year-old Sudanese-Australian man, was assaulted in a suburb in Melbourne's outer south-east, later dying in hospital. Despite the fact that Gony was the victim and not the perpetrator of this tragedy, the subsequent media and political attention on gangs and violence focused overwhelmingly on young men with Sudanese backgrounds and became intertwined with broader claims about Sudanese communities' failure to settle in Australia. This paper considers how, in focusing on issues of violence, refugee experiences and settlement challenges, these political and media responses served to position Sudanese people as strangers to Australian society. It contrasts these representations with the audio-visual outcome of a collaborative arts-based research project with Sudanese-Australian young women and discusses how this DVD constitutes both a reply to, and a complication of, the dominant representations of people with Sudanese backgrounds in Australia.