Australian Studies Centre
Institute of Commonwealth Studies
University of London
WORKING PAPER NO 10
Black Consciousness on Stage and Screen:
the Presentation of Aboriginal Issues in
Drama by Black and by White Writers
by
Maurie Scott
University of Wollongong
Copyright Maurie Scott
June 1986
ISBN: 0 902499 56 4
Given the possibilities suggested by the title of this paper, I must start
with a disclaimer: it is not my aim to attempt a comprehensive and detailed
treatment of the manifestations and modes of presentation of aboriginal
issues in Australian stage and screen drama, though something of this sort
cries out to be written. In the time available I will concentrate on drawing
attention to a few salient examples of works by white writers and film makers
who have attempted to portray aboriginal figures, life-modes and problems. I
then examine in a little more depth a recent successful play by an aboriginal
writer (The Dreamers by Jack Davis) within the context of aboriginal writing.
Another disclaimer I was tempted to put forward concerns the difficulty one
has as a cultural outsider of coming to terms with black consciousness. Of
course, despite the corruption of the traditional culture wrought by the
various depredations of the white invaders, we can at least get a broad
general view of that complex and rich social and cultural fabric, for which
we can thank committed, empathetic anthropologists such as A P Elkin and R M
Berndt. However, the present state of aboriginal culture and the values and
attitudes underlying it is a closed book to all but a few in the dominant
white culture. Among the heinous crimes committed by European Australians
against the indigenous black race has been the neglect or downright rejection
of aboriginal culture as if it had no value apart from the primitive
quaintness of its customs and the touristic value of its artifacts. It was
assumed that the survivors of fifty thousand years of successful adaptation
to the exigencies of the continent and of two hundred years of maltreatment
by whites should adopt, however imperfectly, a Western way of life, a Western
cultural pattern and a Western way of thinking - or be cast out to the
margins of white civilization where they would be less visible, troublesome
and embarrassing.
Fortunately, things have been changing, if slowly. Apart from instances of
more enlightened social legislation in some areas benefiting aboriginals,
there have been some white writers who have engaged in treatments of
aboriginal issues that have been astute, sensitive, sympathetic and, happily,
unsentimental. These have done something to bridge the cultural gap and to
provide the beginning of an understanding of aboriginal consciousness, both
from contemporary and historical standpoints. Several examples of these will
be cited and evaluated.
1
A more interesting and valuable phenomenon! is the development of an authentic
modern aboriginal voice in the expressive arts (developing from and with the
rehabilitation of the traditional arts in aboriginal eyes) which can
communicate aboriginal attitudes to issues for both white and black
Australian society. Jack Davis's writing is at the forefront of this
development - and as much a political act as the (necessary) land-rights
demonstrations and occupations.
The precursors of these more recent developments include a number of
significant names in Australian literature. Katherine Susannah Pritchard's
play Brumby Innes (1927) and her novel Coonardoo (1929) presented in a
straightforward social realistic manner the exploitation and maltreatment of
aboriginals by white settlers and manifested a compassionate understanding of
and respect for aboriginal people and their culture - a corrective to the
kind of misapprehensions created by the idealised and paternalistic view of
blacks and black/white relationships promulgated in works like Gunn's We of
the Never-Never. An even more fierce critic of white depredations against
the aboriginals, and a writer with a profound understanding of and sympathy
with the indigenous people was Xavier Herbert, who, in Capricornia (1938) and
Poor Fellow My Country (1975), chronicled in epic form the corruption of the
land and its native people by rapacious whites, ignorant of the impact of
their cupidity and carelessness on the spiritual as well as physical
integrity of the country.
Summing up the contribution of these writers and works in this way is to do
them a disservice since I have not detailed the features that give them the
richness and power as literary works in their own right, and the ways in
which this richness and power is brought to bear on aboriginal issues.
However, such treatments of them are available and I have cited the works for
an instrumental purpose: that is, to indicate instances of white writing
that, on any close examination, may be seen to be humane, caring and
passionate about the plight of aboriginal peoples in the most sincere way but
which, perforce, reflect and embody cultural traditions, sensibilities and
ways of thinking that are essentially European. With the best will in the
world, and despite an intensity of sympathy or even empathy in the best
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cases, it is immensely difficult for the European to penetrate and become one
with aboriginal consciousness, even when that consciousness has been subject
to some degree of Europeanization.
Some of the most interesting treatments of aboriginal issues and portrayals
of aboriginal figures by whites, though, take this very problem on board as
matter for investigation. In screen drama, for example, there have been
quite a few instances of productions dealing with the clash between the two
disparate cultures and their different outlooks, with the contradistinctions
between them on a more subtle psychological level and with the battle between
the two within the psyches of more or less urbanized, detribalized blacks.
In several cases, unfortunately, these treatments involved a sloppy left-wing
sentimentalism or a "noble savage" romanticism (Chauvell's Jedda for example)
but the more successful films manifested a respect for the integrity of
aboriginal culture and values, and an appreciation of the problems they face
in contemporary Australia along with an understanding of the historical roots
of these problems, (Women of the Sun, for instance).
What is admitted by white writers and directors is a sense of mystery at the
centre of the way aboriginals understand the world they inhabit, of how the
aboriginal mentality and spirit operate to interpret phenomena in quite
different ways from the Europeans: the mythography of Australia means
something quite distinct for the aboriginal.
For example, the caste of consciousness and perceptivity that sees in a pile
of rocks or a certain juxtaposition of water and trees a configuration with a
meaning and emotional/spiritual loading to which we give the inadequate term
"sacred site". And this is consequent on a process in which intellect,
emotion and spirit conjoin to generate a signification different from our
notions of symbolic interpretation. This applies as well to the significance
of the land and, more specifically, the "homeland" to the aboriginal, as
evidenced in the frequently expressed image of the land as "Mother" to the
people, (eg "The land is our Mother. If you rape the land, you rape our
mother" - conversation with South Coast Koori, 1985). In this light we can
understand the insistence of writers such as Jack Davis on the precise detail
of location, the special qualities of places and the unique relationship of
aboriginals with their homeland, (cf Kullark, The Dreamers.)
3
In the same way, Western concepts of myth and mythology are quite different
from those of the aboriginal peoples, who retain a sense of the immediate
veracity and instrumentality of what we would see as metaphorical versions of
what is better understood rationally and evidentially. For aboriginals, the
old stories, the myths, the magical explanations of phenomena, the rituals,
inform their daily lives and give shape to past and future.
All these themes are addressed in a number of films of the 70's which were
part of the "new wave" or "renaissance" of Australian cinema - and
manifestations of a new national consciousness in the arts. Ironically,
then, the first film I wish to cite is Walkabout (1971) directed by Nicolas
Roeg and scripted by Edward Bond, both English. But I think they made an
Australian film, and one of the first really sensitive to aboriginals. On
one level the film can be seen as "a haunting metaphysical parable on the
interaction of man and his environment" (Conolly, 1980, p30) presenting "a
deeply pessimistic view of our alien insensibility towards this continent"
(Dermody, 1980, p82). These themes are developed by contrasting the empathy
of the tribal aboriginal boy with the apparently hostile outback environment.
The film shows the ways in which he embodies a belief-system which is in
harmony with nature. Put this way it sounds trite. But the impact of the
emblematic imagery requires us to attend closely and thoughtfully to both
natural and artificial landscape, as well as to the allegorical structure of
the journey through the wilderness. As the aboriginal boy on his initiation
walkabout becomes guide and mentor for the lost white children, the audience
too is taken on a journey of discovery of the outback and is presented with a
strong sense of how the aboriginal perceives and understands his world and
some appreciation of the spiritual values inevitably involved. The white
girl resists all but the practicalities he teaches and eventually re-asserts
her European values with a tragically demoralizing effect on the young man.
Although a stifling or even destructive alienation is manifested in her world
(the Sydney cityscape is shown to be more inhospitable and life-denying than
the desert - vide her father's psychosis and suicide), the contrasted
sensitivity and spirituality of the aboriginal boy's relationship to his
wilderness environment is shown to be too fragile to survive confrontation
with the rationalist, sceptical Western attitude she expresses. She brutally
rejects his ritual courtship dance and, his incipient manhood denied and
4
insulted, he commits suicide - a sad, ironic little allegory of the way the
whole race became the victims of arrogant, uncaringly cruel Europeans with
their assumption of a natural cultural and moral superiority.
While this film has its strong metaphysical subtext, Peter Weir's The Last
Wave (1977) takes the theme of the efficacy and value of aboriginal natural
wisdom and spirituality into the realm of the marvellous and the mystical.
In the film, the "Dreamtime" of aboriginal mythology becomes something much
more potent than the exotic or quaint folklore to which European
consciousness often reduces it: rather, it is seen as the central creative
principle in forces so powerful as to be identified with the supernatural.
Western rationalism cannot readily account for or accommodate such a
metaphysic and the film develops its theme through the opposition, often
violent, between instances of the two contradistinctive concepts of
causality. Its narrative progresses through the conflict between two
different cultural attitudes to law: the natural, tribal law of the
aboriginal, bound up with a deeply religious belief-system, as opposed to the
social/ethical law of the European. Weir asserts the profound sense of the
supernal order necessary to apprehend the mysterious forces evidenced: the
mythic "last wave" was to come, as psychically foreseen in dreams, as the
inevitable apocalyptic end to a cycle of human existence. European
scientific rationalism, we are shown, could not comprehend this, nor its
technology deal with it.
It's easy to criticise, even ridicule this film on the grounds of the
romantic, quasi-mystical view of aboriginal consciousness it asserts and
wishes us to accept. But the synthesis of the mystery story/fantasy genre
that verges on the visionary, and the stark power of the images and
implications of aboriginal mythology create dimensions of experience
(conceptually, emotionally, spiritually) that are inevitably critical of our
Western sense of logic and of natural order. And perhaps just as important
is that, even though the main narrative thrust of the film involves a white
protagonist, it traces the development of his understanding as his
instinctive percipience is liberated by contact with aboriginal figures who
speak, with dignity, conviction and wisdom, for themselves, in their own
natural voices. This, and the compelling sense of mystery, foreboding and
predestination which only the blacks fully comprehend, cause us to take
5
seriously the aboriginal attitudes, values and beliefs operative in the film.
While he sails close to the wind of mawkish romanticism and the idealization
of aboriginal spirituality and natural wisdom. Weir does provide an
interesting and useful corrective for the more blatantly offensive
stereotypes of black character and behaviour.
Another aspect of this principle of innate natural wisdom of the aboriginal
people is seen as a subsidiary theme in Journey among Women (1977) and Eliza
Frazer (1976). Both films are notorious for having incredibly good and
embarrassingly bad moments in their explorations of class, social and sexual
relations in penal-colonial Australia and of the lessons to be learned by
civilized whites "lost in the bush" and subject to the harsh exigencies of
the wilderness.
Eliza Frazer, despite its frequent absurdity - even risibility - does paint a
sympathetic view of the aboriginal way of life and outlook both in the images
of aboriginals as humane, hospitable human beings who nurture the European
castaways, and in that the latter survive through an accommodation with - and
in some cases an assimilation into - the aboriginal way of life. Similarly,
in Journey among Women, a group of absconding convict women progressively
take on an aboriginal tribal life style, in part taught by helpful aboriginal
women but also naturally and inevitably developed by interaction with their
bush refuge. Simultaneously (and this is the main theme of the film) they
become liberated from the sexual and social oppression of early 19th century
colonial Australia. They "find themselves and each other" and create, for an
instant, a feminist vision of freedom based on "the natural spirit of women"
in which caring sensitivity and "Amazonian militancy" (Dermody, 1980,
pp83-84) establishes a new tribal social order, one not unlike that of the
aboriginals we glimpse. As Susan Dermody goes on to say, "As they shed their
clothes, they shed the signs that locate them in 19th century history, and
the images of their bodies in the bush are framed to suggest a re-discovered
rapport with nature that is timeless" (Dermody, 1980, p83). And this process
of liberation involves also the development of a consciousness that seems to
have a sense of "aboriginality".
6
The enlightened, liberal ideology is to be seen with most telling clarity in
the quartet of telefilms under the general title: Women of the Sun (1980).
Each film dealt with an aspect of the impact of Europeans on black society
and culture from the earliest days of white settlement up to the present,
showing without condescension the state of black tribal society before
incursions by the whites and then instances of the effects at three other
stages in this disturbing history. One powerful episode dealt with events on
a church mission reserve in the late 19th century and made clear that
Christian paternalism went hand in hand with overt repression to subjugate
the aboriginal spirit and sully the cultural integrity of the dislocated
black peoples, highlighting the development of problems of black identity and
white attitudes of cultural and moral superiority - issues that came to the
fore in later episodes.
The emotional and ideological bias of the white producers and writers is
patently evident but such attitudes can be understood in the light of the
backlog of grievances that demand correctives. The mini-series is
dramatically successful, though, in that it concentrated each drama on the
character and personal story of each of four black women - the "women of the
sun" - so that audiences responded to the larger social and cultural
implications by seeing them in terms of their effects on individual human
beings who they came to know and care about. The emotional impact is
considerable, just as it is in Bill Reed's theatrical play Trugannini (1975)
which told the horrific story of the obliteration of the unique Tasmanian
race by focussing on episodes from the life of Trugannini, the last
Tasmanian. The impact is cathartic - and confrontational. White consciences
must be pricked by such tough material, powerfully presented.
Confrontation of a different type is seen in compilation documentaries such
as A Lousy Little Sixpence (1982), which amasses and presents, in powerful
images and commentary, damning evidence of the de facto genocidal effect of
the application of social policies that fragmented aboriginal family groups,
that left thousands rootless, without any sense of tribal or cultural
coherence or familial identity. A very different treatment is seen in Paul
Winkler's Dark (1979) which asserts and celebrates the energy and the
spiritual power of the land rights demonstrations of the 70's in a dynamic
collage of radically distorted almost abstract images of the actual events,
7
of aboriginal iconography and music that assaults our senses and
consciousness, and cannot be ignored.
confrontational on an emotional level.
The result is profoundly
In the kinds of treatment in films with such left-liberal sentiments we can
identify the development of new mythology in response to the growing white
consciousness of black culture and the special relationship with the
continent of the indigenous peoples. This is a factor in the final example
of white treatment of black issues - the Keneally/Schepisi film, The Chant of
Jimmy Blacksmith, but I'd suggest that this film, like its source novel, is
much more tough-minded than the other examples cited. It presents "a harsh
criticism of white injustice, its patronage and its repression of another
race" (McFarlane, 1983, pl03) and attempts to see the issues from the
aboriginal viewpoint: Jimmy Blacksmith embodies the confusion of identity of
a people who have been sullied in blood and in culture. Most suffer the
results of demoralization and degradation with subservient meekness in the
face of European power and moral superiority. Jimmy Blacksmith, however,
declares war.
It is, of course, a futile, doomed gesture. Not only is it too little and
too late to be a meaningful rebellion against white hegemony but the morality
of the act is questionable even if the causes are understandable. The
"hybrid" Jimmy's frustration at the whites' refusal to accept him and pay him
his dues after they had built up his expectations (parallelled and
intensified by a sexual frustration in his thwarted desire for white women),
is expressed in revenge against his female tormentors, an act that even his
tribal relatives cannot condone or excuse. In this light he is deprived of
the possibility of heroism at the very moment he asserts it. So the response
to him and his fate is intended by both novelist and film maker to be
ambivalent: one can understand and sympathise with the rage and frustration
Jimmy feels at the injustices to which he has been subject, but the
cold-blooded brutality of his act - the axe-murder of the four women - turns
the sympathy sour and subverts the potential for heroism. The subservient
pursuit sequences are constructed of images that diminish Jimmy's moral
stature, physical prowess and ability to wage his mean little war. They
8
show, rather, the futile flight of a desperate, wounded, hunted animal. Even
his capture is ignominious - not an heroic, last-stand in the mould of Ned
Kelly. That level of mythic stature is not available to him.
Despite all this, the film retains a strong feeling of sympathy for the
character along with a sense of the tragic in his sad, down-market demise,
partly because of the qualities of character, the innocent natural decency he
continued to display, before and after his crime, and partly because of the
injustices and brutality and hypocrisies to which he had been subject. He
comes to be seen as the battlefield in the conflict between black and white
values and the paradigm of the corruption and alienation of black
consciousness. Through Jimmy's eyes and emotions we witness scenes that show
the degraded state of a culture once dignified, ordered and moral and now far
gone into subservience and the sordid, destructive escapism of promiscuous
sex and alcohol.
There is a shock value in this treatment that provokes thought as well as
emotion and helps stimulate debate about the present state of the aboriginal
race: indeed, this quasi-fictional account of an extremely disturbing event
in the history of white/black relationships has had an impact on white
Australian attitudes to aboriginals equal to that of the best documentary
treatments (Lousy Little Sixpence, The Wrong Side of the Road, Dark), with
the added advantage of reaching a wider audience.
However, The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith, with all its sympathetic sensitivity
to black issues and black consciousness, is based on white understanding of
situations and a white Australian literary and cinematic vocabulary and
rhetoric. One or two false notes are struck as a result; these are discussed
in some detail by Brian McFarlane in Words and Images (Heineman, 1983).
Schepisi reveals a tendency to underscore his thematic "message", already
delivered clearly and powerfully by imagery and dramatic action, by having
aboriginal characters articulate attitudes that involve concepts and a
diction that sound strained and foreign in their mouths. It's Schepisi's own
left-liberal views we hear, with the luxury of hindsight built in.
9
After what's been said, one should reasonably expect more from aboriginals
themselves - an authentic black dramatic voice for the articulation of black
issues. But such has been the stifling, demeaning effect of "a two-hundred
year history of neglect, exploitation and vicious forms of discrimination"
(George Whaley, 1977, plOO), that the theatre has only recently been seen by
aboriginals as an outlet for their expression. It was often considered a
middle class white medium, despite the tradition of performance in black
culture. Brumby Innes, for instance, was not performed until 1972, forty
years after it was written because of the lack of trained black actors. The
apparently greater opportunities in film and television for black themes and
black actors stemmed from the facility of these media to compensate for or
accommodate artistic inexperience and transform it into a fresh authenticity.
But lack of technical training prevented aboriginals from using and being
used by the screen to the fullest and best effect. Poetry along with some
prose fiction and non-fiction (with Kath Walker, Kevin Gilbert, Colin Johnson
and, of course, Jack Davis being significant) carried the main burden of the
expression of black consciousness.
However, things have been changing. From the hesitant beginnings in the
early 70's and the creation of black theatre groups (the Melbourne-based
Nindethana company and the National Black theatre of Sydney), black writers
and performers are starting to flex their artistic muscles - and using drama
to explore contemporary issues in aboriginal life. Out of this have come so
far only a few plays that have bridged the cultural gap - Kevin Gilbert's The
Cherry Pickers, Jack Charles and Bob Maza's Jack Charles is Up and Fighting
and Bob Merr ill's The Cake Man - but they have broken new ground in showing
the aboriginal view and speaking of issues with an aboriginal voice.
It is with the mature work of Jack Davis (now nearly 70) that this project
gets into gear and points a way forward, for in Kullark (1979) and then The
Dreamers (1981) Davis found the theatrical means to show and define the
contemporary aboriginal experience, both to and for aboriginals themselves and to and for white Australians, to raise consciousness and possibly make
social change more likely. For social change in respect of the aboriginal
people is still sorely needed, even twenty years after the nation, somewhat
belatedly, recognised them as citizens in their own country. Squalor and
deprivation is still the lot of many of them. As Davis has said:
10
The story of The Dreamers could be happening to any
socio-economically deprived group anywhere. The fact that it is
happening to Aboriginal Australians, in one of the most affluent
countries in the world hit audiences hard .... As a race of people
we have one of the highest mortality rates in the world, due to
alcohol and alcoholic induced diseases. In Western Australia alone,
one in twenty-eight dies through alcoholism, before the age of
forty-five. (Davis, 1984, p45)
Along with the horrifying statistics of mortality and deprivation have been
the demoralization, the spiritual destruction of the race and the erosion of
its culture. The conquered remnants are the subject of The Dreamers, while
Kullark shows the catastrophe in action from an historical perspective.
Together they make the most powerful case for social justice - and
compassionate understanding - as well as one of the strongest political
indictments of the depredations of European colonialism. Davis comments "I
didn't set out to write an overtly political play" but "to confront white and
black audiences with a truthful, uncompromised picture of urban Aboriginal
life is in itself political" (Davis, 1984, p46).
The Dreamers tells of the last twenty-four hours of the life of Uncle Worru,
an elderly Nyoongah aboriginal who "does not go gently into that good night".
It examines him and his family through this crucial time and so reveals the
nature of the lives of the detribalized aboriginal living on the fringes of
white towns, white civilization and culture, and also on the fringes of white
values. This fringe dwelling leads to a confusion of beliefs. Their
Christianity is mixed up with the spirit life of the blacks. They have an
ambivalent attitude to white notions of work for reward. With some precision
Davis delineates the squalid domestic conditions and the day to day lives of
the family both in this physical context and in relation to the wider world
and the forces that impinge upon their lives.
The detail is very rich. In two or three pages of text, for instance, we hear
or see bits of social information that give us a deep sense of the way these
lives have to be lived - references to "milking the bowser" for petrol,
picking up cigarette butts to roll into second hand fags, the penchant for
cheap wine, the "flaps and bread" and other unappetising food items,
references to Social Security cheques, their only legal income, and to
Fremantle prison where many friends and relatives sojourn sometimes - all of
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these build up a strong sense of actuality, with the detail providing an
understanding of the fabric of this marginal sub-society and the conditions
that govern it. This is carried through to Davis's approach to
characterization (based, as he says, on syntheses of aspects and traits of
people he knew well) and, to the dialogue, which is vigorous, racy, with its
note of authenticity being compounded by the frequent and natural recourse by
characters to the Nyoongah dialect.
In these ways, the play builds up well-realised portrayals of particular lives
in particular settings (social as well as in place) and, to the extent that
these may be considered representative or typical, of the condition of
aboriginal people living on the urban fringe anywhere in Australia. Davis
develops a theatrical treatment (which could well be described as
social-realist) that serves to foreground the narrative and thematic line
which concentrates on the attempts of the detribalised Nyoongah people to
accommodate or at least survive in an alien culture. These issues are
presented clearly, precisely and with controlled emotional power in a number
of well written and apposite set pieces that illustrate how the characters
live their lives - the family meals, the squabbles, the squalid drinking
sessions, the endless card games to alleviate boredom and hopelessness building up a sense of what it is like to be black and at the bottom of the
social and economic ladder in "the Lucky Country".
Some aboriginals responded negatively to these very features of the play,
however, suspecting that the picture of "squalor and meaninglessness" shown
might "reinforce the stereotype Europeans have of urban Aborigines" (Berndt
1982, pXIV). To this, Jack Davis answers, "we cannot afford to hide skeletons
in our cupboards. Once the truth is revealed forcefully enough, the
bureaucrats, representatives of white society, will no longer be able to deny
us our birthright" (Davis, 1984, p47).
From a theatrical point of view, it is interesting that the realist/naturalist
mode he employs is derived from the very culture that has subjugated the black
peoples and put them in their present sorry plight. It is, of course, the
appropriate mode if the issues are to be readily apprehended, as he intends by
white Australians. But Davis doesn't rely entirely on this classic European
method, for he punctuates the naturalistic narrative with dramatic tableaux,
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music, songs, chants, poems and dances that direct our attention to - indeed
insist on - the historical and cultural roots of the modern aboriginals - the
Nyoongah tribal past. These are powerful, telling dramatic moments that, in
counterpoint with the main narrative thrust, forge connections between the
pathetic, dislocated life of the present day, and their proud but also tragic
heritage. The images of the tribal family, the figure of the Dancer, the
sound of the didgeridoo and clap-sticks, the unreal, magical image of
landscape and sky say these things to us and sharpen awareness of the
significance of the past, of their almost totally lost tribal culture - and
the terrible irony of their present condition. But in using these elements of
the aboriginal artistic and dramatic heritage, Davis is also using a
theatrical language that European writers have only this century rediscovered;
that is the language of imagistic metaphor and symbol, of ritual and
theatrical "magic", all of which cause us to be aware of and which emphasise
mythology and mythography as major elements of meaning in the play. We are
drawn to attend to a world above and beyond the here and now of the squalid
life of the urban black, to a world of the spirit and of supernature on one
hand and on the other the timeless history that, at this point, might seem
like the Garden of Eden to the aboriginals - a paradise lost not by their sins
but as a result of the white invasion and the consequent destruction of the
old tribal ways.
So, as a result of the juxtaposition or counterpoint of these two major
dramatic modes, a tension is built up between the sordid, hopeless present and
a perhaps idealised but certainly more satisfactory past that can only vaguely
be remembered, and is fated to fade and die as the impact of the borrowed
European ways of life and values takes their toll. It's a sad but telling
irony (and an effective dramatic device) that at one point the song asked for
on a radio request programme was "Me and Bobbie McGee" which has the refrain,
"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose".
The profound sense of loss and cultural dislocation which is the emotional
spine of the play is embodied in the character, Uncle Worru. As he totters
towards a messy, undignified death, a victim of these forces, he assumes
greater and greater symbolic status, a sign of the lost past and lost cultural
roots. As he approaches death, the more he yearns for the good times of his
youth and the tribal past of his people - and the more he lives in the past.
13
Memories crowd back, however imperfectly, to become his present realities. He
calls to people, now long dead, who were important in his youth; he
apostrophises to and conjures up the spirit world of Nyoongah mythology; he
tells, but only sketchily, some of the old stories, reminding us of the
powerful oral tradition of the race now forgotten. Most significantly, he
reverts progressively to the old tribal language as he recedes from the wan
hopelessness of the present to the fantasy world of his past and his tribal
myths. Only the boy Shane and the woman Dolly show him the affection and
veneration once the due, by tradition and sentiment, of the old people of the
tribe. To most of the others he is a pathetic, senile nuisance, even to the
men, themselves shown as weak, drink-sodden wastrels.
He is a burden to Dolly but at least she nurtures him with the duty and love
he deserves. It is, indeed, left to her to provide a stable moral centre in
the midst of the chaos of demoralization, a force for cohesion when the
structure of tribal law and custom have broken down. The advent of this new
kind of matriarchy is a common feature of societies in which the old stable
social order has decayed or been destroyed. It seems that the men have not
the moral fortitude or capacity for practical caring to be able to cope once
the supports of their social status have been eroded. A bitter but apt joke
went the rounds in Australia several years ago. "Question: What is the
composition of an aboriginal nuclear family? Answer: A mother, six children,
a dog and an anthropologist".
This is but one example of the impact of the erosion and corruption of
traditional values, but there are many others in the play. For example, there
is the grotesque ending to Act I, Scene 4, in which the half-remembered tribal
dance becomes a drunken disco dance, then ironically counterpoised with the
magical image of the traditional tribal dances (The Dreamers, p86). Then we
see many instances of the effect on aboriginal children: Worru teases a white
boy visiting them with Nyoongah words, but Shane and his sister Meena have to
admit they too don't understand more than a few words themselves, rejecting
their native language as quaint or even degrading in their Europeanized world
(p96) Their homework at night consists of British geography and, a final
irony, they are engaged on a project about aboriginal history and culture,
discovering basic information about their own race that is news to them
(p99-102). Again, in one hilarious sequence, a strange form of Christian
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Grace is being said, interrupted by a theological debate on whether the white
man's God provided the kangaroos and if Grace is only necessary for "white
man's tucker" (ppl02-103).
And in scene after scene, the ubiquity of cheap alcohol, which becomes a
metaphor for the slide into degradation and the corruption of aboriginal
tribal life - a symptom rather than the cause of the existential malaise of
the race.
But, perhaps more poignantly, Davis directly asserts the fundamental issues of
the play in a number of Nyoongah songs and poems, which operate chronically
throughout, from Worru's initial expression of regret for his lost tribal life
(p74) to the traditional singer's assertions of joy in the natural life of the
bush aboriginal (pl06), to the poem Worru speaks at the end of Act One as an
indictment of the Europeans for the psychic and physical destruction of his
people (pl09).
SCENE NINE
A narrow beam of light reveals WORRU alone downstage.
WORRU:
You have turned our land into a desolate place.
We stumble along with a half white mind.
Where are we?
What are we?
Not a recognised race.
There is a desert ahead and a desert behind.
(The soft distant sound of children singing a tribal song is
heard. The tribal family of Scene One walk slowly back across
the escarpment against a night sky. They are in chains.)
The tribes are all gone,
The boundaries are broken;
Once we had bread here,
You gave us stone.
We are tired of the benches,
Our beds in the park;
We welcome the sundown
That heralds the dark.
White lady me thy late
Keep us warm and from crying,
Hold back the hate
And hasten the dying.
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The tribes are all gone,
The spears are all broken;
Once we had bread here
You gave us stone.
(The light on WORRU fades out. The singing becomes louder
as the family disappears and the sky fades to black as the song
finishes.)
Worru's death is readily and properly identified as symbolic of the death of
the Aboriginal culture and the spirit that vivified it. Dolly's eloquent,
touching lament for him is also for all that has been lost to them (ppl38-39).
SCENE SIX
A few hours later the first light of dawn silhouettes the house.
SHANE and MEENA are asleep. ROY is dozing in a chair and ELI
stares blankly out the window.
Eventually a car is heard pulling up outside. Two doors close.
ROY wakes. A distant didjeridoo drone begins as DOLLY, followed by
ROBERT, walks slowly across the stage. DOLLY is carrying WORRU's
clothes. The didjeridoo builds as they enter the house. They
stand in silence. ROY and ELI stare at DOLLY hopelessly. DOLLY
puts the clothes on the table, walks across to the couch and wakes
MEENA. ROY goes to MEENA. SHANE stirs, wakes and looks about.
SHANE: Where's Popeye?
(DOLLY kneels beside him, whispers in his ear and holds him
in her arms. He cries out, the didjeridoo builds to a climax
and cuts. Blackout.)
SCENE SEVEN
A single shaft of light reveals DOLLY alone centre stage. She
speaks slowly with restrained emotion.
DOLLY:
Stark and white the hospital ward
In the morning sunlight gleaming,
But you are back in the moodgah now
Back on the path of your Dreaming.
I looked at him, then back through the years,
Then knew what I had to remember:
A young man, straight as wattle spears
And a kangaroo hunt in September.
We caught the scent of the 'roos on the rise
Where the gums grew on the Moore.
They leapt away in loud surprise
But Worru was fast and as sure.
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He threw me the fire-stick, oh what a thrill!
With a leap he sprang to a run.
He met the doe on the top of the hill
And he looked like a king in the sun.
The wattle spear flashed in the evening light,
The kangaroo fell at his feet.
How I danced and I yelled with all my might
As I thought of the warm red meat.
We camped that night on a bed of reeds
With a million stars a-gleaming.
He told me the tales of Nyoongah deeds
When the world first woke from dreaming.
He sang me a song, I clapped my hands,
He fashioned a needle of bone.
He drew designs in the river sands,
He sharpened his spear on a stone.
I will let you dream - dream on old friend
Of a child and a man in September,
Of hills and stars and the river's bend;
Alas, that is all to remember.
(Blackout.)
THE END
No matter how beautiful this sounds, how luxuriously sad the mood created,
this is pessimistic, even existentially nihilistic stuff. It raises the
significance and emotional impact above mere pathos to a level approaching
tragedy - that of Worru figuring the immense tragedy of the whole race.
Against this, Berndt asserts
an interplay between two themes .... One is hope for the future
through continuing involvement in the wider Australian society. The
other is a dream ... that underlines the significance of an
Aboriginality which cannot and should not be cast aside (pXIV)
Berndt goes on to say
Jack Davis's dream is of an Aboriginal heritage - not in terms of
the past as such, but as a symbolic anchorage for the present, a
sure refuge within which people can be positively identified,
providing emotional security, a sense of belonging, and a meaning to
life. Pride in being Aboriginal is indelibly inscribed in his
writing, indicating firm roots which go deeply within the total
Australian scene, far beyond the recent past, into its very
beginnings (pXXI).
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So, against the hopelessness, despair and squalor is set affection.
supportiveness, humour, courage - and therefore hope. From plays and other
such expressions of aboriginal consciousness by aboriginals may come the
proper rehabilitation of their material lives and a culture which, even if it
has to accommodate present realities, is authentically aboriginal and is
respected as such by other Australians.
REFERENCES
Jack Davis
Kullark/The Dreamers, Currency Press, Sydney, 1982.
Jack Davis
"The Dreamers" in Performing Arts in Australia, (Meanjin 1/1984)
R M Berndt
"The Aboriginal Heritage" in Kullark/The Dreamers
Keith Conolly
"Social Realism"
Susan Dermody "Action and Adventure"
Both in The New Australian Cinema, Ed. Scott Murray,
Nelson/Cinema Papers, Melbourne, 1981
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