Jeanine Leane 's presentation at the UNSWriting event raised crucial discussions around the importance of secrets as a literary device and how aboriginality can be shaped through writing to form an authentic voice, devoid of a colonial interpretation of Indigenous people. This review will focus on how Jeanine Leane 's poetry collection Dark Secrets is contributing to the creation of a 'local past ' (Byrne, 1996) and renegotiating the ‘racial domination contract’ (Mills, 2000), through the sharing of a more personalised history. By understanding how Leane is 'holding white women to task ' and how secrets can be seen as an enabling force to maintain aboriginality and challenge colonial interpretations of history, this will show the power of …show more content…
Thus, their ‘burden’ also involves adjusting to a foreign land and imposing all their ‘values’ onto it and the Aboriginal people they encounter. Again, the idea of the ‘contract’ comes into play, where white women take on this ‘burden’ of teaching Aboriginal people their values so that in return, they maintain …show more content…
Whilst white women have left their ‘mother’ country, a ‘mother’ for Aboriginal people has been destroyed. The impact of this is felt the strongest in Raping My Mother, an intense poem, that reveals these feelings of anger the most explicitly ‘To learn this country their way they tore it apart. / Killed Mother and Grandmother’. Despite the confrontational title, Leane also acknowledges Aboriginal women being ‘torn’ from a historical viewpoint, where the concept of transgenerational memory takes precedence
Trauma, abuse, displacement, and feelings of alienation have, and is still plaguing the Aboriginal community. Author Eden Robinson and playwright Constance Lindsay Skinner address the displacement, mistreatment, and abuse the indigenous population has faced, and still faces, in Monkey Beach and Birthright. Both Eden Robinson's novel Monkey Beach, and playwright Constance Lindsay Skinner's Birthright deals with characters who are struggling with trauma and haunted with scars from the past. The authors detail these events and bring the reader into the “shoes” of the characters through characterization, imagery, dialogue, and through revealing intimate memories of the characters. These literary techniques enable the reader to see the parallel between the cyclical, ambiguous state of nature, and the ambiguity in humans and how there is a perpetuating, intergenerational cycle of violence caused by abuse and the mistreatment of the Aboriginal.
The idea that indigenous Australian communities are underprivileged and do not receive the same justice that the white community accrues is represented through Jay Swan and his interactions with the corrupt white police officers and the indigenous locals of the town. My empathetic response to the text as a whole was influenced directly by way the text constructs these ideas as well as my knowledge of the way indigenous Australians are represented in the mainstream media and the behaviour of the police force as an institution. These contextual factors and the way Sen has constructed ideas influenced me to empathise with the indigenous
Jiwani and Young's argument also causes me to consider Audra Simpson's talk, "The Chief's Two Bodies," in which she discusses both how and why the eradication of Aboriginal women was necessary to the development of patriarchal colonialist society. In short, Simpson acknowledges that through the creation "status," an arbitrary blood relationship to one's Aboriginal lineage, marriage, and scrip colonialist were able to remove land "ownership" from Aboriginal women, by essentially making them invisible. In effect, Jiwani and Young reinforce and provide evidence to suggest that ideologically, the concept of Aboriginal women being invisible or contrarily "hypervisable" (899), in that they are the antithesis of the "good" Christian women (the mother, the sister, the wife, the virgin) creates a binary. These apposing ideological women cause a "moral and racialized economy of representation [that] works to privilege dominate societal norms" (Jiwani and Young, 904). What is interesting about these discursive modes is the fact that news reporting itself is a colonialist practice rooted in economic stability. These modes maintains the cycle of violence and marginalization and only counter media rooted in art, such as the "Red Dress Campaign," or the "Walking with Our Sister's Campaign" which, bring awareness to the Aboriginal perspective can act as a retaliation to standard media
The story depicts the injustices experienced by both women of the land owning class and the indigenous people.
“The more you know, the less you need.” The attitude from White Australians towards Indigenous Australians was extremely unfriendly, and due to the fact that Aboriginal Australians had knowledge about things the European settlers believed did not matter they treated as if they were uneducated nuisances. The aboriginal people believed that the land they had lived on for generations belonged to them; however the White Australians came and took the land. This also means that the Europeans took what the Indigenous people valued most, and that was their land. Authors and directors convey different attitudes, values and beliefs in different ways, however it still has the same impact.
In this proposal our team seeks to explore the injustices within the Indian Act. To achieve this our proposed research will examine the target population being the aboriginal woman. The paper will further explore the oppressions faced by the aboriginal women within the Indian Act. In conclusion, this proposal will sum up the negative impact that the Indian Act had on aboriginal women and how it continues to oppress this population within the Canadian National discourse.
In the poem “The White Judges” by Marilyn Dumont, the speaker is aware of how her and her Indigenous family are constantly being judged by white society. The poem juxtaposes the family with the encircling colonialists who wait to demean and assimilate the group. The family internalizes a sense of shame and guilt while being surrounded by the primarily white population. Consequently, the family faces the pressures of being judged for their cultural practices. Dumont’s use of prose and lyrical voice distinctly highlights the theme of being judged by white society. Her integration of figurative language enhances the Indigenous tradition and cultural practices throughout the poem. As well as her use of anaphora and musicality which amplifies the
Despite the decreasing inequalities between men and women in both private and public spheres, aboriginal women continue to be oppressed and discriminated against in both. Aboriginal people in Canada are the indigenous group of people that were residing in Canada prior to the European colonization. The term First Nations, Indian and indigenous are used interchangeably when referring to aboriginal people. Prior to the colonization, aboriginal communities used to be matrilineal and the power between men and women were equally balanced. When the European came in contact with the aboriginal, there came a shift in gender role and power control leading towards discrimination against the women. As a consequence of the colonization, the aboriginal women are a dominant group that are constantly subordinated and ignored by the government system of Canada. Thus today, aboriginal women experiences double jeopardy as they belong to more than one disadvantaged group i.e. being women and belonging to aboriginal group. In contemporary world, there are not much of a difference between Aboriginal people and the other minority groups as they face the similar challenges such as gender discrimination, victimization, and experiences injustice towards them. Although aboriginal people are not considered as visible minorities, this population continues to struggle for their existence like any other visible minorities group. Although both aboriginal men and women are being discriminated in our society, the women tends to experience more discrimination in public and private sphere and are constantly the targeted for violence, abuse and are victimized. In addition, many of the problems and violence faced by aborigin...
After colonization began there were countless detrimental changes to the indigenous way of life that took place. Neu (2000) discusses these detrimental changes in detail. The author accounts for the lost of their land and natural environment, the discouragement of their lifestyle focused on hunting and gathering, the separation of families via the residential school system, and the punishment received for the usage of traditional customs and language. In many ways the colonists disrespected the Aboriginal people by disregarding their fundamental needs and wants. Additionally, the process of colonization implemented some drastic gender role changes into Aboriginal culture. Colonization imposed European patriarchy, accompanied by racism and sexism, on the matriarchal Aboriginal cultures. As a result, the Aboriginal women of Canada lost their sense of purpose and responsibility, burdening them with less respect and power compared to the men. This loss contributed to many negative effects for these women and made them feel a strong sense of cultural estrangement.
The education of Aboriginal people is a challenge that has been a concern for many years and is still an issue. However, it remains the best way young people can climb out of poverty. With the colonialization and the oppression of Aboriginals, there have been many lasting side effects that continue to be affecting the Aboriginal youth today. “While retention and graduation rates have improved among urban Aboriginal population, an educational gap still remains between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal youth in urban settings” (Donovan, 127). Many suffer from a diminished self-worth, as they do not feel valued and feel inferior to their classmates. In this essay I am going to outline the reasons Aboriginals are struggling, discuss what is being done
...ttman, S. (2001). What Bigger Killed For: Rereading Violence Against Women in Native Son. Texas Studies in Literature and Language 43.2 , 169-193.
...derstand what they are and are going through. If the reader belongs to another minority or is a new emigrant to Australia will identify itself with the anger and frustration other readers might feel guilty just because they thing they belong to a privileged group. I felt the injustice of inequality that emerges form this poem collection and the uselessness. There were no suggestions how repair what was done . The author shows in the poem that the hurt and anger are part of the aboriginal identity.
Nan Dear, the matriarch of the family, is challenged and is subsequently forced to reflect on her past experience with white Australians. In the past, Nan Dear experience the Stolen generation, ‘they forced us to leave. Forced us to leave Cummeragunja. Our home.’ The inclusive pronoun ‘us’ places herself amongst other children who were taken away from their home.
Thomas King uses an oral story-telling style of writing mingled with western narrative in his article “You’re Not the Indian I Had in Mind” to explain that Indians are not on the brink of extinction. Through this article in the Racism, Colonialism, and Indigeneity in Canada textbook, King also brings some focus to the topic of what it means to be “Indian” through the eyes of an actual Aboriginal versus how Aboriginals are viewed by other races of people. With his unique style of writing, King is able to bring the reader into the situations he describes because he writes about it like a story he is telling.
In the article, “ Dwight” Newman (2015): Of aboriginals, Metis, First Nations, Inuit and Indians (status holding and otherwise)”, it depicts massive struggles for