Storytelling as Action

Posted on June 15, 2010 by lisafindley

I don’t have much time today to expound on this, but here’s a fascinating excerpt from the book Telling Stories: Indigenous history and memory in Australia and New Zealand, edited by Bain Attwood and Fiona Magowan (Allen & Unwin, 2001). In the entry “The saga of Captain Cook: Remembrance and morality,” Deborah Bird Rose relates the story of Captain Cook as told by Hobbles Danaiyarri, who is an Aborigine living in Yarralin in the Northern Territory of Australia. His story is told in a mix of past and present tenses, and relates the injustices his people suffered at the hands of Captain Cook and other Europeans. After reprinting Danaiyarri’s remembrance, Rose explains how history and morality are tied up in Aboriginal thinking, explaining that this remembrance is a saga as opposed to a Dreaming myth:

…the saga is set in a time frame that is conceptualised as part of the present (ordinary time), whereas Dreaming myths are set in a time frame conceptualised both as the past and as a concurrent present. The latter are source of moral principles, and moral action is judged by reference to these principles, which are deemed to be permanent rather than subject to change and negotiation. Captain Cook’s law, by contrast, is seen as immoral, and this presents Danaiyarri and others with a problem: how to account for immoral action that is reproduced through time and thus appears to endure, just as Dreaming law endures. I contend that Yarralin people’s logic requires that the Captain Cook saga be kept in ordinary time — that it not be allowed to become part of the Dreaming past. (p. 70)

Moral action is seen to endure, and actions that do not fit the moral frame of reference cannot be part of the same timeline as moral actions. So these immoral actions are framed in the present, in ordinary time, as a current problem, even if they happened hundreds of years ago. By viewing morality and history as intertwined in this way, wrongs can be addressed in the present day, even if a linear timeframe would see those wrongs as too far in the past to warrant redressing. The very act of telling these stories is a move for social justice, keeping history literally alive in the general consciousness and demanding recognition and action. As Rose concludes, “far from being the consolation of the powerless, remembrance is an active force for social change” (p. 79).

What a powerful way of viewing history, storytelling, and collective action! What do you think? What stories should we be telling in “ordinary time”?

Film Club: Rabbit-Proof Fence

Posted on June 8, 2010 by lisafindley

Damn, another movie that made me cry. Ask my family and they’ll tell you how rare that is — I’m the only one out of all five of us who is more likely, while watching sentimental schlock and genuinely moving fare alike, to roll my eyes than to have tears in them. Make no mistake, the director of Rabbit-Proof Fence fully intended to make me cry, and tugged my heartstrings all sorts of ways to make sure I did. But the story itself, plus three forlorn children onscreen, was enough to have me welling up at the end.

Rabbit-Proof Fence is an adaptation of Doris Pilkington Garimara’s book about her mother, Molly Craig. When Molly was 14, she, her sister and her cousin were forcibly removed from their home in Jigalong, in western Australia, and placed in the “re-education facility” Moore River Native Settlement. Under the White Australia plan of government, “protectors” of Aborigines were assigned to each state and territory in the country. They were supposedly meant to make sure Aborigines’ rights were looked out for, but in reality, they said who could and could not marry, where they were allowed to live, and whether they could keep their own children. It was established policy by 1931, when this movie is set, that mixed-race Aboriginal children were stolen from their families and placed in boarding schools that trained them for a life of working in white women’s houses (for the girls) or in white men’s fields (for the boys). The reasoning, like similar policies in the United States with Native Americans, was that it was best to assimilate the native population into the colonizing society, for their own benefit. Clearly it was better to be white, so whites were doing a public service by erasing Aborigines’ cultural heritage, never mind that grossly erroneous premise or the deep and lasting trauma to the parents and children.

The movie has a clear agenda, but for once I didn’t mind. The girls missed their family deeply, they couldn’t trust any whites they encountered because they would probably report the girls to the authorities and send them back to the settlement, and they walked 1500 miles to be reunited with the life and loved ones they knew. The movie didn’t have to try very hard to show that this was a really bad policy and a horrible affront to human rights — in fact, the movie tried a little too hard to show that the protector, A. O. Neville, truly believed that he was helping the Aborigines and couldn’t understand why they would possibly run away from the settlement. I mean, I guess that perspective is important, to show people that there was a majority of voting opinion that held this belief, because otherwise you’d just assume it was made-up, that it’s too obvious that you shouldn’t separate families based on racial prejudice. Because that is pretty damn obvious, but it wasn’t obvious enough to enough people until the 1970s, when the last children were ripped from their homes with official sanction before the government ended the program.

The most upsetting part about the movie was the very end. The last scene shows 2 of the 3 girls reunited with their mother and grandmother, the music swells, and we all feel relieved that they made it home. But then the voiceover comes up and says that Molly was sent back to Moore River with her own two children nine years later. She escaped with one of her two daughters and once again walked 1500 miles to get home, but that daughter was stolen from her and it was many years before she met the daughter she’d had to leave behind at Moore River. So Molly lost one of her children forever and reunited with her other child only after over 20 years of separation. This is why it’s called the Stolen Generations, plural; family after family was ripped apart in the name of racial purity and superiority.

Molly was torn from her mother, and then her children were torn from her. She was time and again denied her own family, her own choices, her own life. Despite this, she worked alongside her husband and became a mainstay in the desert community she knew and loved; in other words, she carved out her own life in spite of her country telling her she shouldn’t. I admire her immensely for that, and also her daughter for writing down her story and getting it published. Now, because of the movie, it’s a story that millions of people know, and that part of Australian history has been added back into the public consciousness. There are Stolen Generations deniers and former prime minister John Howard refused to apologize to Aborigines for the government’s actions, yes, but they know. People know. And that is the first step to action, right?

History is Not Inevitable — and That Matters for Today

Posted on May 31, 2010 by lisafindley

History is not inevitable. Perhaps this is something they go over with history majors (although I will say I never encountered the idea in the several history courses I took in college), but for me and I think for the general populace, it’s an unusual idea. After all, events unfolded the way they did and now we are here, so how could it have been otherwise? It’s like a kind of Q.E.D. — it happened, therefore it is proven; it happened, therefore it must have been meant to happen. I know that this shows up in several religious schools of thought, like determinism in Christianity, and also in general ideas about fate. But it’s a poor approach to history.

This way of thinking sees history as static, and usually consisting of political, military, and economic events rather than a synthesis of these with social, religious, artistic, and scientific events and movements. But history is a living, breathing thing that we are creating right now. If we view ourselves as not only part of the history we know but also the part of the history future generations will learn about, it becomes easier to see past historical events as not inevitable or fated, but part of a series of individual and communal decisions made in constantly shifting circumstances. That’s not to say that I can quite wrap my linear-focused brain around the Australian Aboriginal concept of Dreamtime (in which you are here now but also in the past and the future, all at once) or the physics concept of nonlinear time. All that fluid space and time is nifty but makes me dizzy. But I can grasp the interlocking moments, motivations, and actions that make up our history, as opposed to the clear-cut line from Cause A to Effect B.

Understanding history as more complex than a straight series of inevitable events is crucial to understanding the ways we interact now — legally, socially, personally. For example, the colonization of New Zealand by the British is often seen as something that was bound to happen. The British had more efficient killing machines and more of them, they had thousands more people to populate the land, and they had the backing of an entire empire. But even if colonization were inevitable, the way it happened was drastically different from, say, the colonization of Australia. The British imported convicts to Australia and swept aside the Aborigines as if they were only a small obstacle to populating a continent, rather than the original inhabitants of that continent. In New Zealand, however, they found the Maori not only ready to fight for their land (as many Australian Aborigines were), but organized in a way the British could better understand, with recognizable leaders and specific land boundaries. So the British decided the Maori were more advanced than the Aborigines, and much more likely to respond well to being “civilized.”

Because the British saw the Maori as more civilized and basically more human than the Aborigines, they gave the Maori more consideration when taking their land, and that different historical approach has repercussions today. Unlike Australia, which was declared terra nullius (“empty land”) despite the very obvious presence of Aborigines, the British negotiated for land sales with the Maori of New Zealand. The Treaty of Waitangi was signed by the Pakeha Lieutenant-Governor and most Maori chiefs on February 6, 1840. The document was written in English and immediately translated so the Maori could know what they were signing, but the translation has some key differences from the English version. Notably, the treaty states that New Zealand is part of the British Crown, and only the Crown has the right to purchase land from Maori – or at least, one version states that. Another states that the Crown does not have this right of pre-emption. All versions were introduced with Lieutenant-Governor William Hobson stating, “We are one people.” As Philippa Mein Smith says in A Concise History of New Zealand,

Did ‘one people’ mean all the same, including one law, which in British thought meant civilising and assimilating Maori? Or did it endorse the idea of a new community of Maori and Pakeha, two ethnic groups henceforth defined in relation to each other? (p. 47)

Did the treaty mean Maori chiefs were giving up their sovereignty, or did it mean they were ruling alongside the British monarch and Pakeha governor?

These questions reverberated through the next century and a half, as first the Pakeha poured into New Zealand and bought up Maori land at ridiculously cheap prices (after the Crown bought them at even cheaper prices; an insulting way to get around that provision of the treaty) and later Maori asserted their land rights and citizenship rights. The Waitangi Tribunal in the latter half of the twentieth century resulted not only in recognition of Maori as an official language of the nation and the recognition of the importance of environmental considerations in indigenous rights, but in actual money settlements for breach of treaty (p. 231-236). Central to the arguments for money settlements and land renegotiations in the 1980s and 1990s were questions of not just what had taken place in 1840 but what kind of future both Pakeha and Maori were envisioning when they signed that treaty.

I find it fascinating that the New Zealand national government actually had a public discourse about what its intentions had been 150 years previous, and what effect those intentions and actions had on its citizens subsequently. The government recognized a breach of treaty and redressed that breach to the descendants of the wrong party. It’s all very proper Western legal action, but it’s also a bold step in acknowledging history as a living thing with no inevitable outcome and no fixed endpoint. Just because New Zealand is now a part of the British Commonwealth and overwhelmingly run by people of European descent doesn’t mean that that’s how it has to stay. Maori have regained some fishing and land rights, and they have also gained seats in parliament due to proportional representation measures, so they have more of a voice in the shaping of history going forward and not just looking back. Asians, instead of being legally shut out of the country and considered a threat to New Zealanders, are now being welcomed and encouraged to settle in New Zealand.

Certainly New Zealand has its share of bigots and racist policies, but I do find it heartening that a country that had a strong “White New Zealand” movement for decades (much like the “White Australia” movement that has unfortunately not died out as quickly it should) has made conscious efforts to not erase that history but to repudiate it and build a better one. Of course, it took the tireless efforts of thousands of ordinary citizens, activists, and politicians to bring about these changes, and I find that even more encouraging. The more people recognize history as living and evolving, the more we can build a just and peaceful history for ourselves and those who come after us.

Use It or Lose It

Posted on May 19, 2010 by lisafindley

I’m about a third of the way through Philippa Mein Smith’s A Concise History of New Zealand, and I’m starting to get the hang of some of the words she’s using. Mein Smith carefully uses Maori words for Maori objects and concepts throughout the book. She includes a glossary in the back, but once she’s explained it once in the actual text, that’s it, you have to remember what it means or constantly flip back to see what she’s talking about. This shouldn’t be hard, of course; many books introduce unfamiliar English terms and don’t re-explain them later, and I’m pretty easily able to file that new vocabulary word away in my brain and apply it to the reading at hand. But non-English phrases always stump me. My brain takes extra time to process them, even after a clear definition, so that I really am constantly flipping back to the glossary to see what she’s talking about. I find it frustrating to have to do this, but it is actually getting less frequent. I can remember now that “waka” means “large, ocean-going canoe” and “Pakeha” is the word for “white people of European descent” in the Maori language. I know that the more I think of these words themselves instead of their translations, the more I’m actually understanding the text and the culture it’s describing.

Language is hugely important in understanding anything about ourselves or others (and to some, it’s the only thing that matters at all, depending on how committed to language as sole meaning you are, but that’s a discussion for philosophers and English majors). To use the language of the people you’re learning about is to get a better sense of the nuances of words and the layers of meaning in each phrase. For example, as Mein Smith points out, the Maori weren’t Maori until the Pakeha arrived. It took the arrival of a whole new set of people to necessitate the construction of identity in opposition to (that doesn’t mean conflict with) the newcomers. So we get Maori and Pakeha, and Pakeha is different from Europeans. “Pakeha” implies intrusion, late arrival, strange new customs. “Europeans” implies Old World, civilization, explorers. “Europeans” may be the appropriate word in certain portions of histories, or in histories that don’t involve the Maori at all. But for Maori-Pakeha relations, “Pakeha” is the appropriate word to use. This repositions us, the American readers and travelers, from an outsider’s perspective so that we’re in New Zealand, with the Maori. This isn’t to say we suddenly become insiders and get to talk about the Maori as our brothers and sisters — that is just appropriation. But it does mean we get closer to understanding this point of view, this way of seeing and discussing the world, and that is a key part of travel.

I’m pretty bad at learning languages, but I’ve always wanted to be fluent in more than one. I want to be able to communicate with people in their language, to get their jokes and idioms, to see the world without translation. I don’t see myself becoming fluent in anything any time soon (although I do keep trying French), but I can learn a few words of the language everywhere I go. Saying “please” and “thank you” can seem like the lazy American’s concession to culture, but it doesn’t have to be. It can be a very real way to show respect for those you can’t understand, and a simple attempt to show appreciation for the communication you are having — be it through a translator, with gestures and pantomimes, or with their own knowledge of English.

Whether in a book or in a real life conversation, if you can use a word from the relevant language and use it with a good understanding of its many meanings and not just a word-for-word translation, chances are you’ll gain a better understanding of the culture that uses that language. Use it enough times til you’re comfortable with it, and then there’s no need to get lost in translation.

Film Club: Whale Rider

Posted on May 13, 2010 by lisafindley

Dearest fellow travelers, come with me to the beautiful coastline of New Zealand, where we’ll cover some Film Club and some A Country a Month at the same time. Whale Rider is a 2002 film directed by Niki Caro, from a screenplay by Caro and Witi Ihimaera (who authored the book it’s based off of). Several people recommended this film to me, telling me how much I would enjoy the story of a young girl overcoming a thousand years of patriarchal rule to become the next leader of her tribe. This was an accurate prediction on your part. Whale Rider is a lovely movie.

Whale Rider movie poster

Paikea is named after the legendary Maori figure who rode on the back of a whale from the homeland of Hawaiki to reach Aotearoa (the islands of New Zealand). Pai is a delightful 11-year-old who adores her crotchety old grandfather, Koro, the chief of the tribe. Yes, there is some of that well-worn gruff old man with a soft spot for a precocious young child — a tiresome cliché that flattens out both characters in many films — but it’s kept from getting too sentimental because Koro really does resent Pai for being a girl instead of a boy and thus unable to assume leadership of the tribe. Throughout the movie, he has many opportunities to relent and acknowledge her as his heir, but he refuses right up until the end. He does love Pai but says several cruel things about her and actively keeps her from learning the rites of chieftainship. She loves Koro but consistently disobeys his orders to keep her place as a girl. It’s more painful to watch a film like this, because the characters are acting more like real people than characters in other movies, and real people can be pretty awful to each other, but that’s what makes it so great, and also what makes the eventual reconciliation much more meaningful.

Another thing I liked about the movie is the film’s and Pai’s refusal to make her a saint or ideal. Koro is searching for a prophet to lead his people out of the troubled times they find themselves in (encroaching crime and drug use). Pai knows she is the next leader of the tribe, but she also knows she is no prophet. She is a gifted, sensitive girl, with a strong link to her ancestors and the natural world that her community lives in, but she is not superhuman. She doesn’t want to be a savior; she wants her whole community to come together and bring themselves out of the bad times and into a brighter future. How rarely do films, books, or even real life leaders express this wish? We are so accustomed to looking for saviors (and that’s not even counting religious figures) who will make everything right that we miss countless opportunities to fix our own problems and improve our own communities. Pai knows that the only way to be a strong group is to work as a group, and we see a beautiful illustration of that communal effort at the end of the film, when she leads a giant waka (Maori canoe) full of her neighbors into the sea as part of a celebratory ceremony. We need leaders who know how to bring out the best in us, not saviors who bring the best to us.

And yes, that happens to be my political philosophy. Heroes and saviors make great action figures and film stars, but they rarely make great history without a strong community to build on their vision. Whale Rider shows that truly humble people can also be compelling on the screen, and the numerous regular people in our lives working for a better world show how compelling they are in making history.

Book Report: Australia, Part 2

Posted on April 20, 2010 by lisafindley

Oh my goodness, an actual post about travel! What’s more, it’s a post about the A Country a Month challenge, which at this point should be named the Country Maybe Every Six Months, Seriously It’s Been Years Since College and I’m Out of Practice on All This Nonfiction Reading challenge.

But now — Australia! Last time, I mentioned the national narrative. Now, most of my historical information is coming from Macintyre’s Concise History, so whatever basic narrative arc he’s giving the country is going to influence how I see it. Also I’m thinking of the various ideas, stereotypes, jokes, random facts, and anecdotes about Australia I’ve heard and read over the years. And maybe I’m not reading enough or thinking critically enough, but my original understanding of the Australian story remains much the same: the white narrative is one of hardships overcome, an unforgiving land tamed, and a hardy people always down for a drink or a trek or both. To be clear, this is not how all Australians actually are, but it is the carefully cultivated national story and image.

There’s a lot to admire in that story — pursuing your dreams, making your own way, and doing it with a cheerfulness and willingness that makes the whole endeavor worthwhile. There’s also a whole lot that needs reexamining or outright condemnation. The narrative doesn’t just forget women and non-whites, it forcibly keeps them out of the history of their own country. The fragile ecosystem of this huge, dry continent has been almost entirely destroyed, and obtaining water is a real concern in an increasing number of communities. Not only did whites steal the land of the people who lived here for 40,000 years before Cook showed up, but they also stole thousands of children in an attempt to steal and destroy Aboriginal culture entirely — The Stolen Generations (for which the federal government has expressed regret, but not apologized). Those same friendly blokes willing to share a pint or five with you at the bar are also pretty likely to go home and hurt their partners — an IVAWS survey in 2003 found that 57% of women surveyed had been physically and/or sexually assaulted in their lifetimes, and 34% of those incidents were in the home (this survey also underreported the experiences of indigenous and non-English speaking women, who statistically experience a higher percentage of assaults than white women).

One of the things I was most surprised to learn about was the White Australia movement. Almost all of the early colonizers were whites, both the convicts and shortly thereafter, the gentry and entrepreneurs who bought up huge tracts of land for sheep grazing and mining (including gold). Clearly, the Aborigines were not white, and many of them did fight for their land or take a small plot to work when shut off into reservations, but from the beginning, they were not granted the rights of citizenship that Britain extended to whites. Other workers were also shut out of not just the national story, but the practical benefits of equal rights and freedom as well, especially the Chinese miners. When times got hard, as they always do, the whites blamed the non-whites, as they always do (the world over). Main publications like the Bulletin and eventually official government policy touted the importance of keeping Australia white and safe from foreign invaders. This was devastating on so many fronts — white women were explicitly referred to as breeders of the correct race, non-white women were forcibly sterilized to keep from reproducing, non-white men were denied jobs, and it’s not like this policy actually created more jobs for white men or made it easier to live on the Australian frontier. The White Australia policy had a huge impact on immigration, severely limiting or even outright denying the attempts of non-whites to enter the country. You can imagine how well this played with the Asian Pacific nations that surround the island country. It wasn’t until after World War II that restrictions were eased so the labor pool could be increased, and it wasn’t until freaking 1966 that the policy was mostly dismantled, and 1973 when immigration laws were changed in a meaningful way. No Statue of Liberty here; this was a country founded as a prison, and the bars keep people out as well as in.*

White Australia still holds sway in Australian politics, although of course it goes by different names — the One Nation party, mandatory detention, and an English language and “Australian values” citizenship test. As Kristin mentioned in a comment several months ago, a lot of people want to move to a rich, industrialized nation like Australia, but when they get there, they find seriously racist policies and everyday behaviors. It looks like the conservative Liberal/National parties held power for 11 damaging years, until the 2007 elections. Now the Labor party is in power, although I’m not sure what effect this has had on legislation relating to progressive issues concerning race, gender, class, etc.

White Australia policy today

One last thing that surprised me about Australia’s history — and pleasantly, too. The labor unions fought bitter, violent battles for years with the business owners, pastoral companies, and mining firms. According to Macintyre, the latter half of the 19th century was really rough, and the unions made some advances only to lose them a short time later. However, in 1907 the Australian Settlement was reached, which established a living wage for working men. It was specifically designed for men supporting families, which of course left out women, who weren’t guaranteed such a decent amount. I’m not sure if it left out non-white men as well, although it wouldn’t surprise me. The basic wage was guaranteed to every working man in the country, and was raised as necessary to keep up with inflation. At first, I was surprised at the long history of wage guarantees in Australia (the earliest minimum wage was introduced in 1824 in Victoria), since it’s a country so proud of hard work and individualism. But this law, combined with the efforts by the Labor Party pre-WWII to create jobs for every man in the country, fits in that picture of hard work and individualism. If you could be pretty sure of getting a job, and certain of a decent wage once you got it, you could work hard at it and really earn that wage. It wasn’t hand-outs, it was earned, was the thinking. Again, things have changed in the last 50 years, but there’s still a decent minimum wage in Australia and an expectation of available jobs. (I don’t know how this expectation squares with immigration, more women in the workplace, etc.)

There’s so much more to learn about Australia, of course, but the point of the A Country a Month challenge is to get a general idea of the country itself, both its history and its current events. I’ve tried to do that in this post, and there may be future posts on Australia. I’m especially interested in learning more about dreamwalking and how Australia’s past intersects with the current trend of Australians abroad.

Finally, please don’t think that all I want to do is find the flaws in a country. Far from it! I learned a lot about Australia that makes me even more excited to go there — the countryside, the cultural aspects, etc. But as I’ve mentioned before, I don’t believe neutralized/neutered travel writing does anyone any favors. I don’t intend this post as pointing fingers and laying blame, or an un-self-aware criticism, but please advise me if it reads like that. I’m still figuring out how to write about other cultures, places, and people without Otherizing them to oblivion or choking on my own sanctimony, but I hope this is a start.

Apologies for the imperfect coherence of this long post, but thanks for reading, and as always, please leave comments and help me keep the conversation going.

*I am perfectly aware that US immigration policies have generally been much more severely restrictive than Lady Liberty would have us remember, and of course we currently have some fucked-up approaches to the whole issue, with Arizona leading the way.

Book Report: Australia

Posted on February 9, 2010 by lisafindley

Greetings, dearest fellow travelers! How’s your winter wanderlust? Mine usually gets extra-itchy when it’s icy and cold outside, so it’s a good thing I have a big trip planned at the end of this month. In the meantime, I can get my fix by researching future travels.

Today: thoughts on Stuart Macintyre’s A Concise History of Australia, through the first few chapters.

I’m really enjoying the Macintyre history, although his discussion of the “females” is a bit grating. Still, it’s early days yet. What I am finding interesting though, and what I hope to write more about in the future, is what the national narrative is for Australia. What stories do Australians tell about themselves? Who are their heroes, their folktales and popular myths, their national qualities and values? I’m especially interested in the ways the Australian narrative intersects with and diverges from the American narrative.

We have a really strong story of brave pioneers setting up a new country of religious freedom and self-governing independence; we gloss over some messy relations with the people who were already quite comfortable living here, thankyouverymuch, and now they get to be our friends in grade school Thanksgiving plays; and we have a big war full of homegrown heroes who thought up a new way to run a country that no one had ever tried before. In reality, of course, the Puritans who came over here were religious zealots who wanted to use this new land to make their religion the only way to live (and make money while doing it), and anyone who didn’t agree was literally cast out into the wilderness; there were many nations of Native Americans living here who responded to the invaders in various ways, including with violent resistance, treaties, assimilation, and appeasement, and the colonial settlements were by no means an inevitable or righteous undertaking; and the Founding Fathers (oof, loaded term!), who were vocal in their callbacks to Greek democracy when declaring independence from Britain, were slaveowners who needed the French to bail them out.

So that’s the American origins narrative; what’s the Australian narrative? I’m getting a sense of it from this Macintyre book, but it’s a very different thing when the invaders are convicts explicitly exiled from their homeland and ordered to work off their sentence for the good of the country they wronged. (Imagine my surprise when I found out that there was actually quite a bit of this going on in New England, and the American Revolution is what put an end to that and forced the British government to consider Australia as a dumping ground for convicts!) Here, the hardy pioneer is just as important as he (yes, always he) was in the American story, but there are two extra elements — the Australian landscape was wholly, harshly different from the English one, and the Australian pioneers were mainly made up of subjects of the British crown who had been deemed unworthy of being full citizens of that crown. They were expected to settle this new continent for the benefit of a government and upper class citizenry that took their free labor and gave them tiny amounts of unfarmable land in return. I imagine that involves some bitterness and resentment, and I wonder how that works in the Australian story.

Which doesn’t even touch on the bitterness and resentment of Aborigines, who were of course on the continent for over 40,000 years before the British showed up and said, “This looks like a nice vacation spot.” I know there’s a lot of similarities between the British treatment of Aborigines and the British/American treatment of Native Americans — land theft, broken treaties, raped women, stolen children, forced resettlements. It’s interesting, and depressing, to see what those similarities are. Despite the fairly rapid British takeover of the Eastern part of the continent, the Aborigines didn’t just give up their land and way of life, as seen in the story of Pemulwuy, an Aboriginal man known as the Rainbow Warrior for his work uniting various Aboriginal peoples. He organized various groups of Aborigines (the term “tribe” is no longer in use, I’ve learned) to resist the British settlements, and was the first to show the British that the Aborigines weren’t going to take the invasion without a fight. He was killed in battle and his son carried on the fight. His name is left out of the definitive Australian Dictionary of Biography, since as late as the 1960s, Aborigines were considered by the dominant white class to only get in the way of the progress of the country and thus didn’t merit mention in the history books. Happily, he is now recognized as a rebel hero, and his name is getting more recognition in mainstream (yes, white) Australia.

Research update: I’m barely into the 1800s in this Macintyre book, and I have yet to read some fiction or Aborigine dreamwalking tales, but those are next. Also, the food and music, yes. I’m fairly up to date on films; I’ve seen The Piano, Muriel’s Wedding, Mad Max, The Road Warrior, Strictly Ballroom, and now Love Serenade.

My schedule for the next few weeks involves hosting a couchsurfer, hosting my sisters, and going to England for 12 days. Let’s just say Australia is a freakin’ continent and not just a country, and therefore gets two months. I’ll try to finish up what I can before my England trip, and then when I’m back in March we can talk New Zealand.

A Biblio’s Struggle

Posted on January 28, 2010 by lisafindley

I am currently fighting with the Chicago Public Library, since I can’t get to several books I have on hold, including a history of Australia that I’m anxious to start on. Which is not to say I’ve been slacking, dearest fellow travelers. I’m reading Art in Australia and listening to The Rough Guide to Australian Aboriginal Music, and Love Serenade just showed up from Netflix. But since the Logan Square branch, which is holding some materials hostage, has apparently changed their operating hours, I haven’t had a chance to get some other things. Never fear, I’m on it. My lovely roommate D. may get a chance to retrieve them tonight, which’d be great.

Updates on my Australian research to come!

P.S. Did you know that Tuesday was Australia Day? January 26 is like a combination of July 4th and Columbus Day — it’s the national celebration of Captain Cook’s arrival in Botany Bay. The Columbus Day angle comes into play as this is, of course, a European-based celebration of the English settlement of an already-occupied land. Some people refer to January 26 as the Aboriginal Day of Mourning, Invasion Day, and even Survival Day.

ETA: Lies! It’s the national celebration of the arrival of the First Fleet, the convicts sent over from England as punishment. Cook showed up many years before. Shoddy research; my apologies.

Research: Australia

Posted on January 12, 2010 by lisafindley

I am busily collecting various resources on the nation of Australia, as I imagine a queen bee gathers her various worker bees to her to construct a single grand colony (before mating with many of them and depositing the eggs of the next generation, but that doesn’t really work in the metaphor). My research skills are poor, as I may have mentioned, and they mostly involve Google, Wikipedia, Lonely Planet, and the Chicago Public Library’s website. Still, I’ve found some materials that I’m actually able to get my hands on in the next week or so, and these will be the basis for my research in the first country to come up in the Country a Month challenge I’ve set myself. FEEL FREE to add more suggestions in the comments; I can use any help you have to offer.

Books (nonfiction): I’m hoping this will provide historical perspective on various peoples in the country, before, during, and after colonization.

A traveller’s history of Australia by John H. Chambers
Telling stories: indigenous history and memory in Australia and New Zealand edited by Bain Attwood and Fiona Magowan
Art in Australia : from colonization to postmodernism by Christopher Allen
In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson

Books (fiction): I won’t have time to read all of these, so I’ll pick one and go with that. Suggestions?

Eucalyptus by Murray Bail
The Tree of Man by Patrick White (Nobel Prize winner)
My Brother Jack by George Johnston
Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey
Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence by Doris Pilkington Garimara

Movies: These are quite the mix, and I’ve seen quite a few already, but I think it’s a good cross-section of the historical, the comedic, the present, the tragic, and even the future that Australia has seen and envisions for itself. I’ll watch at least one of these by the end of the month and report back.

The Piano
Australia
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
Crocodile Dundee
Jindabyne
Mad Max
Muriel’s Wedding
Rabbit-Proof Fence
Ned Kelly
The Man Who Sued God
The Proposition
Strictly Ballroom

Music: The Rough Guide to Australian Aboriginal Music (compilation)

There’s so much more! Australia has obviously been a major player in the English-speaking pop/rock world, and I intend to form a playlist of some of the bands I might want to know about before visiting the country. But it’s also good to see what doesn’t make the Top 40 charts, the kind of music that sustained communities for generations before iPods were even dreamed about.

What else am I missing? Other than the Vegemite sandwich K. mentioned in my last post (eek).

Have another moment of adorableness, courtesy of a baby kangaroo:

sometimes cute is necessary

Have a great week!

Ready, Set, Challenge!

Posted on January 4, 2010 by lisafindley

Happy new year and welcome back! The decorations are packed away and the champagne is drained to the last drop, so now what? We’re back in a full week of work, it’s bitterly cold outside, and right about now is when people start making grand resolutions for vast personal makeovers in an effort to transcend the gloomy post-holiday feeling and regain a sense of specialness about themselves and the lives they’ve chosen. I’m plenty special already and very content with the life I’ve made for myself, so you won’t see me setting huge, unattainable goals this year. (I’m going to wear a bikini by Memorial Day! I’m going to have my first novel published by Flag Day! I’m going to be CEO of my company by Halloween! I’m going to be committed for maniacal overreaching by Thanksgiving!)

However, I do have this one huge goal that I’ve been working toward financially for years now (you are all well aware of the Giant Personal Voyage That Shall Never Be Called a Personal Voyage to which I refer). Financially, but not really in any other tangible way. I’m shockingly ignorant about most of the places I’m so excited to visit, and three years out is about time to remedy that.

So, dearest fellow travelers, please join me as I embark on the Country a Month Challenge. (It’s either totally passe or way trendy to be setting blog challenges, I don’t even know which, but whatevs, go with me here.) I’m going to research one country a month from here until you tell me to stop or I take off on my trip, whichever comes first. Of course I won’t attempt to become an expert on anything, but I will try to get a bit more knowledge than the small amount that constitutes danger. I’ll read up on the history, culture, and current events of the country. I’ll also watch a movie and read a work of fiction from artists of that country. Finally, I’ll make a dish native to the country (or seek out a tasty restaurant that specializes in such a dish) and enjoy it with friends (I’ll need the help of T and K, gourmands, for this part).

Oh and one last note: I’ll approach each country in approximately the order I intend to visit, so we’re starting with Australia for the month of January. February is New Zealand, March is Indonesia, and so on.

I’ll report back here with what I find out. I’m not sure what form all this will take, exactly; I don’t want to write up book reports for you to use as sleep aids, but I also don’t want to pass through each country too quickly or superficially with guidebook-style wit. I’ll probably post a little more often than the once a week I’ve been doing, especially as I’ll want to occasionally alternate to posts on other topics, but we’ll see how that goes.

Any ideas on what you’d like to see in this space for this project? Any ideas on ways to approach it? Any ideas on media I should look to for researching Australia?