I have had a lovely day today.
It’s always a privilege for me to be in the company of writers, and it was especially so for me today because I got to meet Michelle Scott-Tucker in person (and I am so excited about her forthcoming biography of Elizabeth Macarthur)! We had this opportunity to meet today because we were at the first day of workshops organised by Writers Victoria, as part of a program called Indigenous Language Intensive. I wasn’t expecting to be able to go because the program was fully booked, but I had asked to be waitlisted and lo! I got a phone call at 4:00pm yesterday because somebody had cancelled. The Spouse and I shuffled responsibility for the dog and the electrician and away I went for a most enjoyable event…
It was just coincidence but as I listened to an audio book today, I heard the expressions ‘stepped into the taxi’ and ‘picked him up and piled him onto the floor’ of the taxi. You don’t need to think twice to know that this is a reference to a London taxi, they’re the only ones you can ‘step into’ or have a floor that a human being (having been ‘pacified’) could be piled onto. This is a cultural reference that signifies a distinctive place, and it gives us great pleasure when we recognise such signifiers about our own place, Australia, in the books we read. Well, our place is home to the oldest living culture in the world, and while that’s not something that’s going to feature in everything we write, it is an aspect of our culture that ought to be acknowledged more often than it is. This is as true for contemporary fiction and memoir as it is for historical fiction…
This first day was about writers building cultural competency so that they can address indigenous issues with respect and in an appropriate way. These are some of the reasons people gave for wanting to learn more about Aboriginal history and culture:
- uncertainty about what a writer can claim as indigenous knowledge or as a place of connection without giving offence;
- hesitancy about talking to or about indigenous people because of fear or shame;
- as a newcomer to Australia, feeling a sense of responsibility to learn and know about indigenous people;
- feeling a sense of responsibility to teach responsibly and with sensitivity;
- wanting to write ethically, accurately and sensitively;
- as an editor, wanting to be able to recognise issues that she as editor needed to research when dealing with writers who are writing about indigenous people ;
- feeling a need to have permission to tell the story of an indigenous ancestor, and needing guidance about a genre that would be suitable to use;
- juggling the need to have permission to write about indigenous issues with the need to have permission to be able to imagine, because if people feel inhibited then the story may never be told;
- wanting to address the silence about indigenous language and culture, feeling shame and guilt and not knowing what to do about it;
- wanting more stories to be told, by both indigenous and non-indigenous people because it’s our (white) story too;
- wanting to fill in the blanks, understand the concerns and to be able to write about our places in our country with respect, because omitting these issues is the same as acting as if they don’t exist;
- wanting to overcome the awkwardness and to help students of writing to handle these issues; wanting to be a better teacher; and
- (my favourite) believing that it’s a matter of personal education – as a writer, as a person, as an Australian.
Our facilitator, Tim, was excellent. Immensely knowledgeable, patient and understanding, and with a ‘deadly’* sense of humour, he guided the group through issues of identity; stereotyping; cultural protocols, flags and icons. He mapped Victorian and Australian indigenous languages for us and showed us massacre maps of Australia. We learned about assimilation practices and the offensiveness of being labelled by blood quantum (half bloods, quadroons and octoroons). He talked about indigenous service during WW1 and Ww2 and the way in which memorialisation of wars is a political issue. (If you don’t memorialise Aboriginals who died in the frontier wars, then the way they died must have been murder. Neither is properly acknowledged in our history).
Sometimes it was confronting: through Aboriginal eyes our post-settlement history raises issues of Terra Nullius, Invasion, massacres, disease and dispossession; of cultural clash, reduction of cultural activities and loss of identity. In the first session, each of us had spent some time listing features of our own identity on slips of paper: name, family, community, and something about ourselves that we were proud of… I suppose most of us thought that at some stage we would share these identity portraits with each other but when we came back after lunch Tim tore them up and scattered them on the floor, to symbolise how the destruction of identity is so painful and how difficult it is to restore fractured selves.
Tim showed us in many ways that it’s not so hard to get it right. We need to know and respect Aboriginal family and community values, to understand the role of traditional and community elders, to be aware of communities in the places we go or write about, and to be alert to some key Aboriginal issues: health; education, employment and income; law and justice; Stolen Generations; deaths in custody, Native Title and Constitutional and Treaty issues. How can we do this? By taking the initiative to learn, by engaging with Aboriginal communities, by having organisations seek guidance to develop policy and protocols, by reading indigenous authors and by asking indigenous people if we’re not sure of what to do or say. Writers need to do their research about this as they any other issue.
Tomorrow is Day Two, and our facilitator is Bruce Pascoe, whose books I have reviewed on this blog. I bought another one of his today, it’s called The Convincing Game and I got it downstairs at the Koorie Heritage Centre shop. This Koorie Heritage Centre is a great place to visit because the exhibitions of authentic traditional artefacts and contemporary art works are stunning. If you’re anywhere near Federation Square, the Centre is on Levels 1 and 3 of the Yarra building, and the exhibitions are free. There is also a good collection of children’s books too, a great resource for teachers
*’deadly’ in Aboriginal parlance means ‘great, fantastic, wonderful’. Each year Deadly Awards are given to indigenous people who are excellent in the arts, sport, leadership and so on.
ANZ LitLovers LitBlog 
Impressive summary Lisa. I haven’t even made it home from the class yet! So lovely to finally meet you face to face. To anyone wondering – Lisa is just as interesting and informed in person as she is online.
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By: MST on November 24, 2016
at 7:07 pm
*blush*
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By: Lisa Hill on November 24, 2016
at 8:31 pm
Sounds fantastic! Shame I couldn’t go
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By: megdunley on November 24, 2016
at 7:08 pm
I think they run it every year:)
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By: Lisa Hill on November 24, 2016
at 8:31 pm
So jealous. It sounds wonderful.
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By: Sylvia Johnson on November 24, 2016
at 7:16 pm
Will do my best to report on what I learn:)
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By: Lisa Hill on November 24, 2016
at 8:28 pm
Unfortunately the “deadly’s” are no more. The funding was withdrawn by Tony Abbott, within weeks of that news the founder of the Awards was found dead – tragic circumstances indeed.
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By: tonymess12 on November 24, 2016
at 7:35 pm
No, surely not…I didn’t know… that’s terrible.
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By: Lisa Hill on November 24, 2016
at 8:28 pm
In June 2014, the Deadly Awards’ funding was cut under coalition budget measures designed to reallocate funding to indigenous education programs with 2014 Deadly funding phased back to $1 million and no funding provided for future years.
On 12 July Gavin Jones was found dead: it is not clear whether his death as related to the cuts. (From Wiki)
As we now know reallocation of indigenous funding did not eventuate. A very tragic situation.
Don’t want to be the “downer” on your magnificent experience though. Sounds like an amazing opportunity and time, hope it turns out to exceed your expectations.
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By: tonymess12 on November 24, 2016
at 8:42 pm
That Hockey budget has a lot to answer for…
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By: Lisa Hill on November 24, 2016
at 9:00 pm
Yes it’s an awful situation for our indigenous peoples. Here in WA it’s impossible to deny the effects of colonisation and all who have the privilege to live on this land must be constantly vigilant that we have a responsibility not to perpetuate the devastation that has already been done.
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By: Fay Kennedy on November 24, 2016
at 8:11 pm
Yes, I agree, it is a shared responsibility of us all.
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By: Lisa Hill on November 24, 2016
at 8:30 pm
Sounds excellent, sometimes I regret not being retired.
It’s going to take a very long time before we are sharing this country rather than just saying to the original inhabitants “we’re here now, put up with it”
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By: wadholloway on November 24, 2016
at 10:57 pm
Well, I liked what Bruce said today: (paraphrasing a bit) The Blacks aren’t going anywhere, and the Whites aren’t going anywhere, and how Australia deals with those two facts is going to determine what kind of country we become.
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By: Lisa Hill on November 25, 2016
at 5:13 pm
Sounds like an intriguing day, Lisa. Funnily enough “deadly” means the same in Ireland!
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By: kimbofo on November 25, 2016
at 1:15 am
How interesting! I wonder if the influence of Irish Catholic missionaries has anything to do with this word acquiring the meaning it has for our indigenous people.
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By: Lisa Hill on November 25, 2016
at 5:14 pm
Wow! What a fantastic opportunity. Thanks for sharing.
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By: Kate W on November 25, 2016
at 1:40 pm
I’m a bit tired tonight, but I will try to write up Day 2 in due course…
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By: Lisa Hill on November 25, 2016
at 5:15 pm
I didn’t know that about the Deadly Awards either. That’s embarrassing because it shows that we have not been as on top of things as we thought.
I agree with you re personal education and it’s related to my favourite which is “wanting to fill in the blanks, understand the concerns and to be able to write about our places in our country with respect, because omitting these issues is the same as acting as if they don’t exist” because those blanks and gaps are dangerous.
Oh and how lovely you have meet to Michelle too. It’s special being able to meet our blogging peers face to face isn’t it.
How many do they take for this course?
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By: whisperinggums on November 25, 2016
at 11:54 pm
I think it was about 20… but your question makes me think that something similar could be run by writers organisations all over the country. The first day is basically learning about your own place, in this case, Melbourne, and how to learn more about it properly (as in doing those Melbourne Dreaming walks that I’ve blogged about before, for example). The second day was about unpacking writing – of authors that participants chose and our own writing, and identifying what the blanks and concerns were. So with indigenous facilitators and presenters, the format could be followed anywhere.
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By: Lisa Hill on November 26, 2016
at 7:45 am
Yes, sounds like it could. Twenty is a good number, too.
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By: whisperinggums on November 26, 2016
at 8:58 am
Fantastic post as usual Lisa – so informative – and like the others, I will say I’m envious too. No doubt workshops like this will be run again (if there was a waiting list I hope so) and if I can I’ll attend because I totally agree with Bruce Pascoe, we’re all sharing this country and the more knowledge we have the richer our future will be.
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By: mairineilcreative writer on November 26, 2016
at 1:09 am
Hi Mairia, it’s run by Writers Victoria, but it books out quickly, I think. Best to follow them on Twitter? @Writers_Vic
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By: Lisa Hill on November 26, 2016
at 7:40 am
[…] Trust, at Federation Square in Melbourne (well worth a visit). Lisa at ANZLitlovers has provided a terrific summary of the day. The most powerful message for me was about Aboriginal identity. The participants, about twenty of […]
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By: Indigenous Immersion | Adventures in Biography on November 27, 2016
at 9:39 pm