Radiance Play Analysis

In the play ‘Radiance’ does Louis Nowra effectively subvert the dominant representations of Aboriginal people in current media reporting?
Hook – If 50% of media articles were positive about Aboriginals, you could possibly reduce suicide rates.
Background – Good morning/afternoon everybody, my name is Shelby Parry and it is my honour to be able to speak in front of you at the Links to Literature – Exploring Enduring Characters. Radiance, a play by an Australian man who goes by the name of Louis Nowra, focuses on three Aboriginal sisters who have gone their sperate ways in life, and are reunited when they arrive for their mother’s funeral. Radiance has been written both as a stage play and a screenplay. In 1998, Radiance was then an Australian

independent film, directed by Aboriginal director Rachel Perkins. The film received a numerous number of awards from the Australian Film Institute, Australian Screen Sound Guild, Canberra International Film Festival, Film Critics Circle of Australian Awards and Melbourne International Film Festival.
Explanation – Three aboriginal sisters reunite with each other in northern Australia for their mother’s funeral. Middle sister Mae is bitter over the fact that she had to remain at home to look after their mother, whose health was failing. Cressy, left to become a famous opera singer, while the youngest sister, wild child Nona, is now pregnant. Secrets, lies and long-held resentments arise as the siblings renew acquaintances.
Thesis (Thesis = judgement + reasons) –
Body 1 - Transgenerational trauma – Jim Morrison, Aboriginal co-chair of the National Stolen Generations Alliance, explains how Aboriginal people have come to suffer from transgenerational trauma.

Aboriginal men and boys were killed, imprisoned, enslaved, driven away and deprived of the ability to provide for their families. Women became single parents and many children were conceived through rape and forces prostitution. Aboriginal people were rounded up and sent to missions and reserves where they were further removed from being able to obtain work, balanced diets, housing, health care and education. Aboriginal children were removed from their fractured families and placed into non-Indigenous care environments where they suffered the horrors of forced inferiority, deprivation and abuse. Parents and other family members suffer from these transgenerational traumas, passing them on to the next generations. They can pass on trauma through parenting, for example neglection, behavior problems, violence, harmful substance use and mental health issues. Aboriginal communities are also suffering from a mix of issues, often a consequence of the trauma people have experienced, these include: lack of medical and disability services, lack of medical care, little education, high unemployment, staff exhaustion, decaying infrastructure, broken families, high crime rates, ineffective government programs and clash of

families.
Body 2 – Abuse – 34.6% of Aboriginal people per 1,000 who were abused or neglected in 2010-11.

52% of cases of abuse of neglect where the victim is a girl. 51.4% of Aboriginal people per 1,000 who were on care and protection order in 2010-11. 7% of Aboriginal children are more likely to be in care than other Australian children. Even though they are the most helpless members of Aboriginal communities, children bear a great deal of the violence and abuse from Aboriginal people. Aboriginal children are far more likely to be on a care and protection order and they are also seven times more likely to be removed from their parents and placed into out-of-home care than non-Aboriginal

children.
Body 3 – Alcoholism & Criminal Offences - Anger and frustration among the young is common, but lands many of them in jail. 24% of Aboriginal children aged 14-17 are at high risk of emotional or behavioral difficulties, compared with 15% of the non-Aboriginal population. Statistics show that if male children are neglected or physically abused, more than 50% of them are likely to commit crimes when they are older. Up to 70& of male and female Aboriginal offender have been abused as children. Young Aboriginals take their own lives because they are suffering from an identity crisis following their parents’ and grandparents’ traumatic history with governments and institutions.