Tall Man: The Death of Doomadgee by Chloe Hooper

Abstract

WORLD LITERATURE IN REVIEW ^ ^^^ ^^^^^H and the consistency of his finely wrought and unusual examples. The ethos producing these charac teristics is evident in his pronounce ment that "the only defense against the mindless language of day to day is the fully conscious word"; it alone keeps alive the possibil ity of "primal perception." It is the conscious word's capacity to con jure connectedness and beauty out of our muddled, edgy world that makes literature worthwhile. John K. Cox North Dakota State University Chloe Hooper. Tall Man: The Death of Doomadgee. New York. Scribner. 2009. x + 258 pages. $24. isbn978-1 4165-6159-0 A haunting snapshot of postcolo nial Australia, Tall Man meticu lously chronicles the death of an Aboriginal man in police custody and its aftermath. In taut prose and compressed form, investigative journalist Chloe Hooper uncovers the complex forces that tragically converged in 2004 on Palm Island, off Queensland's northern coast. Home to one of Australia's largest Aboriginal communities, Palm Island embodies Australia's tainted racial legacy. Early touted as a tourist Eden, between 1918 and the late 1960s the island became a "tropical gulag." Most of its current inhabitants descend from those sent there, including hundreds of Aborigines guilty of minor griev ances (e.g., performing indigenous rites) and innumerable children of the "stolen generation." Mirroring one another, both thirty-six, Cameron Doomadgee and Christopher Hurley reflected the disparate histories of indig enous and colonial white Austra lians. In Doomadgee's communi ^^B^M" ^| Ixijc il H ty, transformed by colonization, rampant child and spousal abuse, undereducation, and limited pos sibilities led to disease, alcoholism, a high suicide rate, and a short ened life span, while Australia's settler population spawned Hur ley. Tall, handsome, and hungry for success, he joined the police and sought duty in Aboriginal areas, whose greater challenges might earn him greater rewards. Organizing sports activities for Aboriginal children, dating white and Aboriginal women, he became known as a good cop. Thus, his friend, Aboriginal activist Mur randoo Yanner, denied that Hur ley was racist and supported him throughout his trial. Yet when Doomadgee and Hurley met on November 19, 2004, the drunken singing of one pro voked the other, an arrest resulted, and within an hour Doomadgee lay dead in a cell, his liver perfo rated. The death ruled accidental, Hurley fled the island, and angry Aborigines rioted, burning police barracks and raiding their homes. The community's demand for an E U R 0 P E S JACQUES R?DA / wansiatodby aaron prevots inquest set Aborigines against white authority. The lawyer who volunteered to represent the community recruited Hooper to cover the case. Having grown up isolated from Aborigines, like most suburban white Austra lians, now she traveled Australia, grew close to the Doomadgee clan, joined in Aboriginal ceremonies and community events, and attended the follow-up proceedings, includ ing the trial of Hurley, the first white policeman in Australian his tory charged with manslaughter in the death of an Aborigine in his custody (despite ninety-nine deaths in police custody over ten years?in which no foul play was found?and the fact that Aborigines, 2.4 percent of Australia's population, comprise 22 percent of its jail population). As Hooper writes, "I had wanted to know more about my country, and now I did?now I knew more than 1wanted to." Tall Man examines the effects of postcolonial Australian institutions on Aboriginal psyches and commu nities while exploring Aboriginal culture, spirituality, and the resil 1 ^8 I World Literature Today ience of Aboriginal women, early exploited by self-empowered set tlersand later abused by theirown defeated men. But Chloe Hoop er's repeated allusions to Conrad raise questions about the nature of power in colonized cultures gener ally, so that the events surround ing Doomadgee's death and Hur ley's 2007 acquittal shed lightupon the divide that still isolates white America from indigenous Ameri cans and those it enslaved to con struct its new country. Mich?le Levy North Carolina A&T University Jacques R?da. Europes. Aaron Pr?v ?ts, tr. Austin, Texas. Host. 2009. 153 pages, ill. $12. isbn978-0-924047-70-1 Any...