My Place, by Sally
Morgan is an Australian Classic. My Place is an autobiography written by artist Sally Morgan in 1987. It is about Morgan's quest for knowledge of
her family's past and the fact that she has grown
up under false pretences. The book is a milestone in Aboriginal literature and
is one of the earlier works in indigenous writing.
Born in Perth, Western
Australia, she and her siblings were brought up to answer questions about their
color by saying that they were of Indian origin, a strategy her mother and
grandmother hoped would shield them from the racism of the
schoolyard. They believed that they were protecting the children
by denying their Aboriginal descent, from the Palku/Baligu people of
the Pilbara, and keeping the children in ignorance of it.
But Sally’s adolescence
brought rebellion and stubborn questioning, and she embarked on a relentless
quest to find out who she really was. Despite the equally stubborn
resistance of her grandmother Daisy, and the deep reluctance of her mother
Gladdie, she began unearthing the truth. Her grandmother, Daisy, had been
born at Corunna Downs, a pastoral property owned by the
Drake-Brockman family. Under the auspices of the notorious
A.O.Neville, Protector of Aborigines in W.A., she had been taken
from her mother Annie, a full-blood Aborigine who lived and worked at
Corunna. Daisy ended up working for most of her life, unpaid
except in kind, at Ivanhoe, another pastoral property owned by the Drake-Brockman
family. She never married, and she never saw her mother again, though she
was able to have some contact with her brother Arthur who came looking for her.
Daisy’s child, Gladdie, was sent away from Ivanhoe to Sister Kate’s,
a ‘home’ for children:
“They
took you away when I was twenty. The man from the Aborigines Protection Board
said it was the best thing. He said that black mothers like me weren’t allowed
to keep babies like you. He didn’t want you brought up as one of our people. I
didn’t want to let you go, but I didn’t have any choice. That was the law. That
was the law.”
Gladdie stayed at
Sister Kate’s until she was 15. Both she and her mother expected
that she would then be allowed to live at Ivanhoe but it was not to
be. Gladdie had to leave to board with a religious family
who asked her to leave, because she had gone to the ‘sinful’
movies. She married Bill, a war veteran obviously suffering
Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder, with whom she had five children, but he made
their lives a misery with his drinking and violence. When he died,
Gladdie was left to bring up the children on her own because his parents had no
time for Bill’s part-Aboriginal family.
This brief summary of
these damaged lives is gradually revealed as Sally records her indefatigable
attempts to give these women a voice. She refuses to be ashamed of her
heritage; she wants to know it and to be proud of it, but Daisy and Sally have
had their whole lives disrupted by government policies, by exploitation and by
racist assumptions so their reluctance to reveal their secrets is
well-founded. When finally Gladdie tells her story, beginning with
the bleak days at Sister Kate’s when occasional visits from her mother were
cherished memories, it is poignant indeed. Separating kids
from their families was perhaps not so unusual for Australian
pastoral families who routinely sent their kids off to boarding-school, but
Gladdie was only three.
When Daisy finally
agrees to tell some (but definitely not all) of her secrets, she amplifies
Gladdie’s memories of this time. As an unpaid servant at the station, and
subject to laws requiring her to work, Daisy had no say about the future
of her child. She had been separated from her own mother because she was
a ‘light-skinned one’ (meaning that her father must have been a white
man not a tribal Aborigine) and she had been sent away on the pretext of
getting an education, which turned out to be training as a domestic
servant. Ashamed of her illiteracy well into her old age, she could not read
or write so there could be no exchange of letters or correspondence about how
her child was getting on at Sister Kate’s. She had no money
either, being entirely reliant on the Drake-Brockmans to give her
leave and transport to make any visits. And knowing that her separation
from her mother had turned out to be irrevocable must have made her anxiety and
distress even harder to bear.
For Sally, the mystery
of her mother and grandmother’s parentage is a scab that must be
unpicked. Neither Daisy nor Gladdie know the identity of their
fathers, and there are conflicting stories. The
Drake-Brockmans claim that there was a ‘Maltese Sam’, but when
Sally picks up the trail from the old people in the Pilbara they
say that it couldn’t possibly have been him. For the first time
Sally suspects the reason for the women’s shame, sending her to old photos
of Howden Drake-Brockman where she saw a resemblance that
shook her identity to the core.
Sally
Morgan received the Human Rights Award for Literature
in 1987 and the Order of Australia Book Prize in 1990. My
Place was also short- listed for the New South Wales Premier’s Literary
Award in 1987.
The Historical
Background behind the Story Aboriginal people have never received their just
due in Australian history. In My Place, Sally and her mother both believe that
the history of Australia is “about the white man” (MP 161&163). This
history was greatly influenced by the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution
Act 19008) which came into force in January 1901.
The Constitution
included Sections 51 (xxvi) and 127 which discriminated against Aboriginal
people:
Section 51 The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have
power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the
Commonwealth with respect to：─
......................................................... (xxvi)
The people of any race,
other than the aboriginal race in any State, for whom it is deemed necessary to
make special laws:. . . . Section 127
In reckoning the
numbers of the people of the Commonwealth, or of a State or other part of the
Commonwealth, aboriginal natives shall not be counted.
The above two Sections
denied citizenship to Australian native tribes. It took nearly seventy years to
amend the Sections and delete the phrases which exclude indigenous people
(Disher 1993: 126; Chesterman & Galligan 1997: 58). McGrath and Markus call
this period of time “the Great Australian Silence” (1987: 118) during which
most historians largely ignored Aboriginal people. Although the Constitution
excluded indigenous people, each state enacted its own legislation to “protect”
them. According to Bain Attwood (1999: 10), Victoria passed the first
protection act in 1886, followed by Queensland in 1897, and these two acts
became models for those subsequently enacted in other states. In 1905 Western
Australia, the setting of My Place, implemented an Act to Make Provision for
the Better Protection and Care of the Aboriginal Inhabitants of Western
Australia which is often cited as the Aborigines Act 19059). Rather than
protecting Aboriginal people, the Act deprived them of freedom and caused them
great suffering (Aoyama 2008: 112−113). For example, the Act restricted their
movement. In the story, Daisy was rarely allowed to go and see her daughter in
the Home. The Act also legally separated part-Aboriginal children from their
parents and placed them in institutions such as missions and children’s homes.
Arthur was placed in the Swan Native and Half-Caste Mission, and Gladys was
sent to the Parkerville Children’s Home. Furthermore, the Act limited
indigenous job opportunities. Daisy had no choice but to become a maid. It is
generally agreed that, as Harumi Aoyama (2008: 112−113) points out, the
Protection Acts of the various states aimed at accomplishing three things:
appropriating land from
Aboriginal people; using them as a work force for white people; and converting
them to Christianity.
Towards the middle of
the 1930s, it became obvious that the Protection Acts did not function as had
been expected. Eve Mumewa D. Fesl (1993: 123) points out that the number of
indigenous converts to Christianity was low. She (1993: 123) also mentions that
part-Aboriginal children were raised to be menial labourers or domestics, but
most of them were unwilling to become simple servants for white society. Since
the Protection Acts were not designed to “protect” native tribes in the real
sense of the term, it was believed that Aboriginal people would eventually die
out (Elkin 1951: 130; Macintyre 1999: 42; Aoyama 2008: 116). Despite
expectations, however, Aboriginal mortality rate was relatively low and the
numbers of indigenous people did not decrease precipitously between 1901 and
1933 (Fesl 1993: 123). Even though there was a clear drop in the number of
native tribespeople, it was nowhere near as steep as had been predicted and
certainly nothing approaching extinction (Bell 1963: 471). Nigel Parbury (1999:
118) notes that the number of part-Aboriginal people increased during the 1920s
and 30s. Such being the case, a new policy was required. In 1937, the first
Conference of Commonwealth and State Aboriginal Authorities was held in
Canberra to discuss native welfare. It decided to adopt an assimilation policy
and passed the following three resolutions:
Destiny of the Race.
That this Conference believes that the destiny of the natives of aboriginal
origin, but not of the full blood, lies in their ultimate absorption by the
people of the Commonwealth, and it therefore recommends that all efforts be
directed to that end.
Uniformity of Legislation.
That the details of
administration, in accordance with the general principles agreed upon, be left
to the individual States, but there shall be uniformity of legislation as far
as possible.
Education and Employment.
That, subject to the previous
resolution, efforts of all State authorities should be directed towards the
education of children of mixed aboriginal blood at white standards, and their
subsequent employment under the same condition as whites with a view to their
taking their place in the white community or on an equal footing with the
whites.
(Initial Conference of Commonwealth and State Aboriginal Authorities
1937: 2)
Obviously, the assimilation policy did not widely differ from the
Protection Acts (Parbury 1999: 118), which promoted Caucasian exploitation of
indigenous labour and the cultural extinction of native tribes. It was
connected with the White Australian Policy where white people were considered
superior to any other coloured race (Parbury 1999: 118). The actual
implementation of the assimilation policy was delayed because of the Second
World War (1939−1945) (Broome 2005: 312− 313).
In 1951 the assimilation policy, which had
previously been the province of the states, was revised as a federal policy and
began to be implemented nationwide, targeting all Aboriginal people (Macintyre
1999: 42). The precise meaning of the policy of assimilation was defined more
clearly at the 1961 Native Welfare Conference of Commonwealth and State
Ministers in Canberra: The policy of assimilation means in the view of all
Australian governments that all aborigines and part-aborigines are expected
eventually to attain the same manner of living as other Australians and to live
as members of a single Australian community enjoying the same rights and
privileges, accepting the same responsibilities, observing the same customs and
influenced by the same beliefs, hopes and loyalties as other Australians. (The
Native Welfare Conference 1961: 1) However, the policy of assimilation had unexpected
repercussions and was of no practical use. One serious problem was related to
Caucasian racial prejudice against people with Aboriginal blood.
Bell (1963: 473) notes
that Caucasian townspeople in those days did not want indigenous people living
next to them or even in the immediate area. In New South Wales, opposition to
Aboriginal enrollment in public school was strong (Parbury 1999: 119). In My
Place a deacon requests Sally to stop associating with his daughter, implying
that he does not want his family members to socialise with indigenous
descendants. Thus, whites did not want to accept Aboriginal people as different
but equal members of society, which meant the eventual failure of the policy of
assimilation. By the late 1960s the policy of assimilation was repealed
together with most Aboriginal protection and welfare laws. During the 1960s
social attitudes towards indigenous people gradually changed. Native tribes
were granted “voting rights in federal elections, equal pay, and were counted
in the census” (Disher 1993: 198). They were also allowed to choose their life
styles (Aoyama 2008: 127) and to preserve Aboriginal identity and culture
(Parbury 1999: 119). In this way, members of native tribes were finally
recognised as full-fledged Australian citizens. However, they still face
various problems as a result of the treatment they received over many, many
years. One of the lingering scars of years of official discriminatory policy is
exemplified by what is called “the Stolen Generations”10) which refers to
Aboriginal children who were forcibly separated from their parents by law from
the 1920s to the 1960s (Doyle 1999: 612). These children lacked a sense of
their own background or an understanding of their indigenous identity and
cultural history. They also felt alienated in white society. As a result, they
had nowhere they considered their “place.” In My Place, Sally Morgan dramatises
the many problems faced by “the Stolen Generations.”
SOURCES:
Thank you ma'am.
ReplyDeleteIt is very helpful.
Well explained ma'am , thank you.
ReplyDelete- Punyak