Aboriginal Stories Research Articles

The Manifestation of White Supremacy in The Track to Bralgu by B. Wongar (1978)

This thesis focuses on The Track to Bralgu, an anthology of Aboriginal stories written by Bozic Wongar. The novel concerns with the domination, exploitation, and discrimination of the Aborigines. The novel emphasizes on the superiority of the Whites. The aim of this study is to gain the understanding on how white supremacy is manifested in The Track to Bralgu by B. Wongar and how racial discrimination or racism is being implemented as the manifestation of white supremacy in The Track to Bralgu by B. Wongar. The objectives of the study are: first, to explain the manifestation of white supremacy in The Track to Bralgu by B. Wongar; second, to analyze racial discrimination or racism as the manifestation of white supremacy in The Track to Bralgu by B. Wongar. The method that was conducted in the study is the qualitative method. In conducting the analysis, postcolonialism approach was applied. By applying postcolonialism approach, the writer is able to understand the motive of the Whites doings over the Aborigines. The result of the study shows in The Track to Bralgu, the manifestation of white supremacy is depicted through the racial discrimination or racism of the Whites towards the Aborigines. The implementation of the manifestation of white supremacy in The Track to Bralgu is marginalization and segregation.

Writing Orality: Australian Aboriginal Voices in Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria

ABSTRACT Australian Aboriginal stories have thrived for thousands of years through oral tradition and Aboriginal author Alexis Wright invokes this tradition in the construction of her novel Carpentaria. This article investigates the orality of Carpentaria, which stages “oral” narrators who speak differently to Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal readerships. First, using Bakhtin’s notion of “speech genre”, the article explores why Wright creates these two narrative layers. Second, it investigates the language use and tone of voice in the framing narrative that addresses non-Indigenous readers. Third, it looks closely at Wright’s linguistic experimentation in the embedded narrative, creating multiple oral effects through language and mobilising the storytelling dynamics of performance, spontaneity, rhythms and mnemonics. Finally, it discusses how her creative use of orality plays off and with its Western literary conceptions and enacts cross-cultural communication between the two readerships.

Reclaiming Aboriginal Identity in the Select Novels of Kim Scott’s: True Country Using Identity Theory

Australian Aboriginal stories were presented from the traditional Aboriginal oral narratives. These narratives present the stories of Aboriginals with prior to the colonial dispute which resulted in the destruction of Aboriginal identity. These Aboriginals have necessitated the urge to reclaim their Aboriginality using oral narratives which was later transcribed into various written forms. The reclamation using traditional oral narratives has emphasized on the significance of Aboriginal identity and their cultural belonging. The current paper examines the impact of European colonization and reveals the lost Aboriginal identity of the Australian Aboriginals using the novel True Country by Kim Scott. The objective of this paper is to emphasize on the challenges evolved in reclaiming the lost Aboriginal identity, through various Aboriginal voices in the novel. The study focuses on reclaiming the lost self and cultural Aboriginal identities examined through oral narratives using the identity theory.

A history of deep time: Indigenous knowledges and deep pasts in settler-colonial presents

Over the course of the twentieth century, scholars have found diverse ways of reading ‘Aboriginal Dreaming’ stories as historical accounts of events in Australia’s ‘deep time’. This article argues that, when analysed alongside developments in Australian settler–Indigenous relations, the various readings of Aboriginal stories map onto changing views of Indigenous difference as well as the usefulness and value of Indigenous culture as a ‘deep history’ or heritage for the settler nation. This analysis reveals that merely engaging with Indigenous stories is not inherently decolonising. Rather, the interpretation of Aboriginal story is best done with great care and in partnership with Indigenous owners of this knowledge.

Black Power, Aboriginal Genocide, and the Politics of Identity

ABSTRACT In 1970, five Indigenous Australians petitioned the United Nations on behalf of the Aborigines Advancement League, charging the Australian Government with “genocide.” Rather than assessing the applicability of “genocide,” as a scholarly and legal concept, to Indigenous history, this article explores how these historical agents not only conceived of genocide, but how and why it was employed at this crucial moment in Aboriginal activist history. Taking the notion of discursive slippage as a source of generative change, it argues that the AAL’s claim to genocide was dependant on the rise of Aboriginal identity politics at the turn of the 1970s. The article suggests that this slippage between Indigenous identity politics and genocide generated notions of a collective psychological consciousness that encouraged the growth of radical Aboriginal politics. Methodologically, it treats these petitioners – and the range of activists and thinkers who are drawn into the web of our analysis – as intellectuals who conceived of genocide in a profoundly radical way to appeal to the global language of atrocity at the UN. The article draws primarily on archival material from the Office of Aboriginal Affairs, complemented by files from the Australian Security Intelligence Organization. Both archives have preserved material authored by the activists themselves, while opening a window into the state’s perception of them and the knowledge that they produced. The article also draws on concurrent writing and publishing, authored and published by Aboriginal peoples, to access their thinking in the flourishing intellectual context in which Aboriginal genocide discourse emerged. Reframing the traditional source base of intellectual history, this article positions the 1970 utterance of genocide as a profound insight into an emergent Indigenous intellectual history and global discourse around rights to demonstrate the rich Aboriginal stories and discourses held in colonial archives.

Glimpses of Meaning: Aboriginal Literature and Western Audiences

One of the most subtle and complex oral literatures, Australian Aboriginal literature, still keeps meaning covert to Western readers, despite its ever-growing popularity and prolificity. As an introduction to an ongoing research into orality in Australian Aboriginal Literature, this paper aims to focus on a number of reasons which, while make Aboriginal stories more palatable for Western culture, distil original meaning of concepts, beliefs and traditions. In other words, what are some of the elements which hinder source – reader communication when it comes to Australian Aboriginal literature? The focus of this paper is meaning transformation through layers of interpretation, starting from an original performance of a story, with its syncretism of art forms. It is well worth it to explore such development of meaning, from performance to oral translation into English, with its later written form, to ultimately broken-down fragments covert within poems or novels. It is of no wonder Western readership comes up against difficulty in grasping meaning from Australian Aboriginal literature, as our own understanding of universal concepts, such as time, space, spirituality is so fundamentally different. There are, however, valuable lessons to be learnt and any effort will yield reward.

Perceptions of a culturally responsive school-based oral language and early literacy programme

Abstract ‘Sounds, Words, Aboriginal Language and Yarning’ (SWAY) is a school-based oral language and early literacy programme based on Australian Aboriginal stories, knowledge and culture. It was developed by a multidisciplinary team in collaboration with Australian Aboriginal community members. SWAY aims to strengthen and support the communication skills of educators to facilitate language and literacy development of children in the early school years, particularly Australian Aboriginal children, within rural communities in New South Wales. Key features of SWAY include capacity building of educators and small group speech-language pathology intervention sessions, delivered remotely via telehealth. This study explored educator perceptions of SWAY training, mentoring and implementation, using a mixed methods approach. Findings revealed: use of culturally responsive strategies; positive educator perceptions of the SWAY programme, training and mentoring and positive changes to the confidence and behaviours of educators both supporting language and early literacy development, and embedding Australian Aboriginal perspectives in the classroom. Positive findings support and encourage the ongoing provision of SWAY. Findings also have implications for the future collaborative development and implementation of culturally responsive language and literacy programmes.

Образы русских в преданиях и современных рассказах коренных народов Якутии

The reflection of the image of the Russian in aboriginal legends and stories on the territory of Yakutia for a long period is considered. Data on the composition of ethnic groups are given in the percentage to the entire population of the Northern regions, where indigenous peoples live (Chukchi, Evenks, Yukagirs), as evidenced by the 2010 census. The research urgency is caused by the fact that the image of the Russian in the oral prose of the indigenous peoples of the North was not considered in the dynamics. Text records made in the region during expeditions are used. Comparison with the texts of the prose works fixed from other folklore tellers - indigenous peoples of border lands. The novelty of the study is to compare records of different years: both early legends and family stories of the Chukchi, Evenks, Evens, Yukagirs and Yakuts, which were recorded in the first years of fixing folklore, and texts recorded relatively recently. The author proves that the image of the Russian in non-fairy-tale prose of the peoples of Yakutia was changing - from the mythological image of the alien to the modern character of the autobiographical stories of the beginning of the 21 st century, intermarried with the Yakuts or being a steward of natural resources.

Intersections of History, Media, and Culture

Intersections of History, Media, and Culture

Swallowed Words: bringing up an Aboriginal past in the city

Many Aboriginal stories have not been allowed to be told historically due to the over-whelming dominance of non-Aboriginal stories. Many Aboriginal stories were once outlawed and so were forgotten, some only partially remembered, many now only told in the language of the invaders. There are other Aboriginal stories, however, especially those of particular urban Aboriginal peoples, which have lain ‘dormant’, protected by subversive family histories and embedded in objects claimed as the possessions of the Aboriginal people concerned. Some of these once ‘swallowed’ stories are now being regurgitated, re-emerging into a world that does not always recognise them as true. I am a non-Indigenous woman anthropologist and in this paper I recount some different versions of a story ‘told’ in different ways; through the signs and symbols of the Australian nation state, the movements of my Aboriginal research collaborators through what is

If you knew the end of a story would you still want to hear it? Using research poems to listen to Aboriginal stories

ABSTRACTThis paper presents a poem created whilst conducting an inquiry into one of the endings of stories told of, and by, people living with mental illness: this story ending is grouped by a word (and social movement) widely known as Recovery in mental health care. Recovery, however, is not a word commonly used in the places where this Inquiry occurred. Nor is it a category of story ending often told about Australian Aboriginal people living with a diagnosis of chronic mental illness. This inquiry was, and is, thus focussed on how the current endings of stories that surround Australian Aboriginal peoples in mental health care are being/were told and “heard”. This paper is an attempt to use poetry as a therapeutic and storytelling strategy to highlight the difference between hearing and listening, and how that difference relates to the word Recovery as a paradigm shift and story of social change.

Aboriginal Memories of Inundation of the Australian Coast Dating from More than 7000 Years Ago

ABSTRACTStories belonging to Australian Aboriginal groups tell of a time when the former coastline of mainland Australia was inundated by rising sea level. Stories are presented from 21 locations from every part of this coastline. In most instances it is plausible to assume that these stories refer to events that occurred more than about 7000 years ago, the approximate time at which the sea level reached its present level around Australia. They therefore provide empirical corroboration of postglacial sea-level rise. For each of the 21 locations, the minimum water depth (below the present sea level) needed for the details of the particular group of local-area stories to be true is calculated. This is then compared with the sea-level envelope for Australia (Lewis et al., Quaternary Science Reviews 74, 2013), and maximum and minimum ages for the most recent time that these details could have been observed are calculated. This method of dating Aboriginal stories shows that they appear to have endured since 7250–13 070 cal years bp (5300–11 120 bc). The implications of this extraordinary longevity of oral traditions are discussed, including those aspects of Aboriginal culture that ensured effective transgenerational communication and the possibility that traditions of comparable antiquity may exist in similar cultures.

THE <italic>ILGARIJIRI</italic> PROJECT: A COLLABORATION BETWEEN ABORIGINAL COMMUNITIES AND RADIO ASTRONOMERS IN THE MURCHISON REGION OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA

The international radio astronomy initiative known as the Square Kilometre Array is a cutting-edge science project, aimed at dramatically expanding our vision and understanding of the Universe. The $2billion+ international project is being shared between Southern Africa and Australia. The Australian component, centred in the Murchison region of Western Australia, is based upon collaboration with Aboriginal communities. A collaborative project called "<italic>Ilgarijiri - Things Belonging to the Sky</italic>" shared scientific and Aboriginal knowledge of the night sky. Through a series of collaborative meetings and knowledge sharing, the <italic>Ilgarijiri</italic> project developed and showcased Aboriginal knowledge of the night sky, via an international touring Aboriginal art exhibition, in Australia, South Africa, the USA and Europe. The Aboriginal art exhibition presents Aboriginal stories relating to the night sky, which prominently feature the 'Seven Sisters' and the 'Emu', as well as the collaborative experience with radio astronomers. The success of the <italic>Ilgarijiri</italic> collaborative project is based upon several principles, which can help to inform and guide future cultural collaborative projects.

Dilly Dally All Day Long by L. White

White, Leanne. Dilly Dally All Day Long. Albany, Australia: Wild Eyed Press, 2013. Print.In Australian Aboriginal origin stories, the ancestors dreamed the world into existence. The stories explain how things came to be the way that they are today and often contain morals or lessons. This “Dreamtime” is also frequently featured in Aboriginal art with the figures drawn with dotted, light-coloured outlines. While this book is about Aboriginal children in the Northern Territory and reminiscent of traditional works, it is the work of non-Aboriginal people. The whole book has a “dreamy” and idyllic feel to it. The story is a simple one. A brother and sister, Ollie and Rosie, head out towards a billabong, or water hole, and on the way they dawdle or “dilly dally”, encountering a variety of animals. They see the brolgas, bee-eaters, cranes, finches, and a lizard, all the while watching out for dangerous crocodiles. They and their friends jump into the billabong to swim, but suddenly someone spots the crocodile and everyone is frightened out. They run home and as they retreat, they revisit all of the animals, in turn, giving the book a repetitive quality that children love. Irene King’s illustrations remind the reader of Dreamtime drawings. The illustrations, she told me via e-mail, are all drawn first with white chalk outline and then filled in with colour. As a result all the figures have the characteristic white outlines. The similarity of illustration ends there, though. King’s illustration style is more complex, capturing the movement as the children dance with the brolgas and duck and dive with the bee-eaters in arcs and splashes of colour both rich and bright. The multicoloured text, which is printed over the full-page images, is simple and there are many words that appear in contrasting colours to make them stand out from the rest of the text. While one might expect those words to be in a glossary, there isn’t one. They may be part of a planned teaching package, which Wild Eyed Press sometimes creates to go along with books. The front of the book refers the reader to wildeyed press.com.au for colouring books and activities, but at the time of writing this review, the publisher had not yet made them available for this book. It is no matter, though, because the book stands on its own as a pleasant portrayal of Aboriginal children having fun in nature. For even more fun, there is a delightful bit of a twist at the end of the book as well.This would be a good book to read to a young child or an engaging work for an early reader. Highly recommended for public and school libraries. Highly recommended: 4 stars out of 4 Reviewer: Sandy CampbellSandy is a Health Sciences Librarian at the University of Alberta, who has written hundreds of book reviews across many disciplines. Sandy thinks that sharing books with children is one of the greatest gifts anyone can give.

Negotiating belonging in Australia through storytelling and encounter

From 2010 to 2012 a diverse group of young people participated in an oral history theatre project, Chronicles, which aimed to support them to claim a personally meaningful Australian identity. Oral history theatre was used to facilitate a process whereby the young people were able to reconnect with their personal family histories, encounter Aboriginal young people and stories, and together interview Aboriginal Elders. Through this process, they could develop new understandings of their own social identities, and meanings of and possibilities for belonging. ‘Centring diverse lives, decentring whiteness’ and ‘a different starting point: Aboriginal ways of knowing’, were the two key outcomes that we report on. Bringing people from diverse cultural and social backgrounds together to share stories of history, culture and identity, offers a unique vantage point from which to rupture dominant narratives about belonging/non-belonging and show up whiteness, and together forge a new Australian identity reflective of everyday multiculturalism.

The Historic Importance of the Dingo in Aboriginal Society in Victoria (Australia): A Reconsideration of the Archival Record

ABSTRACTDingoes feature prominently in Australian Aboriginal Creation stories and are also widely regarded as having an intricate relationship with Aboriginal people. A large volume of anthropological work on the complex relationship between Australian Aboriginals and dingoes has determined a considerable uniformity in the human–dingo relationship across northern Australia. Whilst there are many parallels between northern and southern Aboriginal Australia, this reconsideration of the archival record explores the hitherto rarely considered evidence of the relationship between Aboriginal people, British colonizers in Victoria (south-eastern Australia), and dingoes. The data provide an insight into the unique relationship, which indicates some striking differences between northern and southern Aboriginal Australia; especially the utilitarian and symbolic significance of dingoes for Aboriginal communities in south-eastern Australia and how dingoes were used by both Aboriginal people and the colonial usurpers in a bid to spatially dislocate each other.

“Caring for Country”: Aboriginal Stories Strong for the FutureKarlu Karlu: Devil’s Marbles. Film. Produced by the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association. Director and Sound, David Tranter; Photography, Warwick Thornton; Editor, Dena Curtis; Composer, Tim Trindle-Thomas; Postproduction Supervisor, Rishi Shukla; Production Manager, Melanie Guiney; Executive Producers, Robyn Nardoo and Ray Lillis. Distributed by Ronin Films, Canberra, Australia. 2009 (in Warumunga with

Goffman, Sahlins, Sewall, Giddens, Mbembe), one wonders where theoretical closure should be sought. But this may be a misdirected priority for a study that developed within a more applied orientation, when McGovern was West Africa Director of the International Crisis Group. McGovern’s masterful study of the structural dynamics, cultural repertoires, and quotidian routines of violence in Cote d’Ivoire exemplifies an activist anthropology that seeks to understand the world in order to improve it and for which the question “Why does war fail?” remains a matter of life and death.

Growing Up the Future: Children's Stories and Aboriginal Ecology

Growing Up the Future: Children's Stories and Aboriginal Ecology

Film festivals and beyond: Activist discourses in the reception of Samson and Delilah and The Tall Man

ABSTRACTIn the last five years, Australian films centred on Indigenous characters, such as Ten Canoes (de Heer and Djigirr, 2006), Samson and Delilah (Thornton, 2009) and The Tall Man (Krawitz, 2011) have been applauded for their sensitive engagement with traditional Aboriginal stories as well as with contemporary issues. While all three films premiered at Australian film festivals, received limited cinema releases, did the rounds of the international arthouse circuit, and have been broadcast on one of the national public service television networks, their reception, as opposed to a consideration of their textual attributes, has not received much scholarly or popular attention. This article draws on the author's experiences of attending the premiere of Samson and Delilah in Adelaide, and hosting the Q&A after the screening of The Tall Man in Brisbane to explore the Australian-based local-international film festival screening of an Indigenous film as a very specific reception framework; and the Q&A sessions, viewer voting forms and online discussions in the wake of television and/or private viewings as an important aspect of non-institutional responses to the films that are often replete with activist connotations.

Anecdote and anthropomorphism: Writing the Australian pied butcherbird

This paper surveys textual references to the Australian pied butcherbird (Cracticus nigrogularis). We begin with my initial encounter with this songbird (in re-worked excerpts from the book Post Impressions), and then expand our review to aboriginal stories, historic ornithological reports and field guides, informal stories, archival Australian periodicals, children’s literature, literary references, and composers’ texts. Many of these reveal the tension between the superlative pied butcherbird vocal abilities and their ferocious hunting prowess. The paper shuns neither anecdote nor anthropomorphism as it attempts a new mode of interspecies narrative. I argue that anecdotes can contribute to an understanding of this understudied songbird. In inventorying pied butcherbird textual references, we find that our stories about them are ultimately stories about us as well—anthropomorphism seems to be an innate human proclivity. Reflecting on the lives of animals is of psychological, intellectual, and metaphysical significance for humans.