ANZ LitLovers LitBlog

Cultural warning to Indigenous readers: This post contains the names of people who have passed away, and uses some terminology which may offend.

This time last year, for Indigenous Literature Week 2021,  I was pleased to host a guest review by Margaret (Meg) Broughton, of Margaret Tucker’s If Everyone Cared (1977).  This year, I read it myself, and share Meg’s opinion that it’s a fascinating story of an outstanding woman who was one of Australia’s earliest female Aboriginal activists in the 20th century.  It’s not just an important life story—a significant first-hand account of Stolen Generations policy—it’s also interesting to explore how this book published nearly half a century ago, fits into the literary history of First Nations in Australia.  This is what I have focussed on, so I recommend reading Meg’s review first, for her insights into Margaret Tucker’s life story.

Please note that I am not a scholar, I am a reader of First Nations literature on a learning journey. I am open to correction if I have made errors, but this post is intended for a general readership and not for academic or political discourse.

Margaret Liliarda Tucker (1904-1996) was born in NSW, of Wiradjuri and Yorta Yorta descent.  She moved to Melbourne in 1925 and was inducted into the Aboriginal Victoria Honour Roll in 2013, where her life and achievements are outlined. There we read that…

If everyone cared, is seen as an important account of the early policies of child removal. Margaret also featured in the acclaimed documentary Lousy Little Sixpence, broadcast by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

Her story was also featured in the TV mini-series ‘Women of the Sun’. 

Consulting my copy of the PEN Macquarie Anthology of Aboriginal Literature (2008, edited by Anita Heiss and Peter Minter) I find that Tucker’s autobiography is not included.  So, within the limitations of my own personal library and what I could find online, I’ve had to do a bit of research to confirm my belief that she was part of the first wave of Indigenous writers to write her own personal story, and may indeed have been the first Aboriginal woman to publish an autobiography.

The PEN Anthology comprises all kinds of texts from speeches, letters, newspaper articles and petitions, to poetry, story and song.  As the Introduction makes clear, while many of the texts in the Anthology shine a light on the lives of their authors, life writing as we know it is not represented until the second half of the 20th century.  Until the Sixties and Seventies, the anthology’s excerpts are examples of of Indigenous writing in texts specifically requesting or demanding improved conditions and resources, or political rights such as citizenship, self-determination and land rights.  These texts became more radical as the century progressed.  Though life writing can be, and often is political in intent, from my reading of what’s included in the Anthology, First Nations authors in this era exercised their agency through other forms of writing, directly addressed to those who could respond to it.

(For example, the very first text in the PEN Anthology is a letter from Bennelong (c1764-1813) to Mr Phillips, Lord Sydney’s Steward, dated August 29th, 1896.  He conveys his decision never to travel overseas again, he thanks Mrs Phillips for nursing him when he was unwell, and he requests the provision of some articles of European dress: two pairs of stockings, some pocket handkerchiefs and two pairs of shoes.  The introductory note explains that he had returned from his diplomatic voyage to England in poor health, unable to rebuild relations with his people and out of favour in the colony.)

Between the 1967 Referendum and the mid-1970s, however, the Anthology’s Introduction notes that there was a sudden growth in Aboriginal authorship across a broad range of genres.  As far as I can make out, it was in this era that life writing and autobiographical fiction began to be published in book form for a general readership, and in 1977, Tucker’s autobiography If Everyone Cared was published.  Among her contemporaries who are included in the PEN Anthology were Monica Clare (1924-1973) whose autobiographical novel Karobran: the story of an Aboriginal Girl was published posthumously a year after Tucker’s in 1978, and (almost a decade later) Ida West (1919-2003) who in 1987 published her autobiography Pride Against Prejudice: Reminiscences of a Tasmanian Aborigine.  (See Jennifer’s review at Tasmanian Bibliophile at Large.) Through my current reading of Black, White and Exempt, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Lives Under Exemption (2021) edited by Lucinda Aberdeen and Jennifer Jones, (see my review), I stumbled on another early autobiography called Through My Eyes by Biripi woman Ella Simon (1902-1981). It was published a year after Tucker’s.

But were there other First Nations authors emerging in this era?

Also not included in the anthology and published long before there were any protocols about copyright ownership of a story dictated to a scribe, I, the Aboriginal was published in 1962) by Waipuldanya, a.k.a. Philip Roberts, of the Alawa people from Arnhem Land. He told his story to the journalist Douglas Lockwood, whose name is on the front cover. (See Bill’s review at The Australian Legend). Should we distinguish between a storyteller who told his story to another, and one who wrote it herself?  I’ve read some publications which follow careful co-authoring and collaboration protocols, but this practice is comparatively recent.  For examples, see

• Two Sisters (2016) by Ngarta (Ngarta Jinny Bent); and Jukuna (Jukuna Mona Chuguna) of the the Walmajarri people; with Pat Lowe and Eirlys Richards, see my review;
• Old Man’s Story, the last thoughts of Kakadu Elder Bill Neidjie, (2015) by Bill Neidjie as told to Mark Lang, see my review); and
• The Town Grew Up Dancing, The Life and Art of Wenten Rubuntja, (2002) by Wenten Rubuntja, with Jenny Green , see my review.

Late in my explorations into the emergence of Indigenous life writing, I discovered the Indigenous Australia website.  On their (work-in-progress) project page for the Australian Indigenous Autobiography Archive page, 46 Indigenous authors are listed along with summaries of the content of their autobiographies.  However, Margaret Tucker, Ella Simon, and Monica Clare aren’t listed so it doesn’t confirm or refute my proposition that Tucker may have been the first Indigenous woman to publish her autobiography.

OTOH There I found three more women life writers emerging in this period, listed below in chronological order of publication:

• Smith, Shirley Coleen (Mum Shirl): Mum Shirl: An Autobiography, with the assistance of Bobbi Sykes, Heinemann Publishers Australia Pty Ltd, 1981
• Kennedy, Margaret (Marnie):  Born a Half Caste, Aboriginal Studies Press, 1985
• Morgan, Sally:  My Place, Fremantle Arts Centre Press 1987, see my review;

and three male writers whose autobiographies predate Margaret Tucker’s, and one publishing in the same year:

• Rose, Lionel Edmund: Australian, The Life Story of a Champion, as Told to Rod Humphries, Angus and Robertson, 1969.
• Roughsey, Dick (Goobalathaldin): Moon and Rainbow, The Autobiography of an Aboriginal, Dick Roughsey, Rigby International, 1971
• Perkins, Charles Nelson (Charlie): A Bastard Like Me, Ure Smith, 1975, Sydney
• Barker, James (Jimmie): The Two Worlds of Jimmie Barker, The Life of an Australian Aboriginal 1900-1972, as told to Janet Mathews in 1977.
  

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Somebody somewhere, I hope, is writing a history of Indigenous women’s writing that covers their entry into the world of published books.

*pause, search online*

Someone has.  It’s called Reading Aboriginal Women’s Life Stories, it’s by Anne Brewster and it’s published by Sydney University Press (2016).  I can buy a copy when my new credit card arrives.  (#Trials&TribulationsOfLifeOnline This week someone in the US tried to buy a rather expensive item with my credit card, but #phew my card provider blocked the transaction and is sending me  a new card.)

Relevant to my reading of Margaret Tucker’s If Everyone Cared, which was the catalyst for this article — a new book on my TBR suggests that the audience for Indigenous women’s life writing can influence its tone and content.  Writing Never Arrives Naked, Early Aboriginal cultures of writing in Australia by Penny Van Toorn (2006) includes a chapter titled ‘Early writings by Aboriginal women’ where she notes that…

… economic imperatives of commercial publishing mean they must attract as large a readership as possible, which means, in effect, that they are writing for white eyes. ( (Writing Never Arrives Naked by Penny Van Toorn, Aboriginal Studies Press, 2006, p.218)

She goes on to note, however, that the academic Alison Ravenscroft has suggested that in the work she did with Rita Huggins and Jackie Huggins on Auntie Rita (1994), she found that…

… unlike most Western authors who address a readership of strangers, Rita Huggins was writing in large measure for an existing community of family members and friends.  (ibid, p.219)

She goes on to make an important point that IMO anyone reading Indigenous life stories needs to be aware of.  (And I wish I’d known it earlier).

Rita Huggins’ sense of the people she was writing for, and the kind of work her book would do in their world, shaped both the form and content of Auntie Rita.  As Alison Ravenscroft has noted, Rita addressed her readers in quiet, intimate tones, as a known, familiar ‘you’, ‘as someone whom she knows and loves… someone who is standing close by.’  Because she wanted her book to entertain and give enjoyment to this readership, she left out some of her most disturbing experiences.  ‘Her Aboriginal readership already knew the painful and unexpurgated life.  It was their own.’  (ibid, pp.219-220)

By contrast, her daughter Jackie Huggins had a print-based sense of the reader as a white stranger:

Jackie Huggins saw the book as a political document that could open the eyes of white readers to unknown or misunderstood aspects of Australia’s black history.  For this reason, she wanted to include painful incidents that Rita herself wished to omit. While Jackie used a gentle, loving voice, and departed from Standard English when addressing her mother in the book, she addressed the reader-as-stranger in a more academic, public voice, providing background information that places her mother’s life in its historical context.  (ibid, p.220)

This aspect of intended audience helps to explain some aspects of Margaret Tucker’s ground-breaking If Everyone Cared?  My thoughts about that book will be published separately to this article.

Books & websites consulted:

• The PEN Macquarie Anthology of Aboriginal Literature (2008, edited by Anita Heiss and Peter Minter, Allen & Unwin, 2008, ISBN: 9781741754384, see my review
• Black, White and Exempt, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Lives Under Exemption (2021) edited by Lucinda Aberdeen and Jennifer Jones, Aboriginal Studies Press, 2021, ISBN: 9781925302332, see my review
• Writing Never Arrives Naked, Early Aboriginal cultures of writing in Australia, by Peggy van Toorn, Aboriginal Studies Press, 2015 (first published 2006), ISBN: 9780855755447
• If Everyone Cared, by Margaret Tucker, Grosvenor Books, 1983, first published in 1977 by Ure Smith in Sydney. ISBN 0959262202, review forthcoming.
• Indigenous Australia website.
• Aboriginal Victoria Honour Roll

I read these books for First Nations Reading Week 2022.

This post was written on the traditional land of the Ngaruk-Willam clan, one of the six clans of the Bunerong (Boonwurrung or Boon wurrung) saltwater people of the Kulin nation.