10. What is the significance of Aboriginal “life writing” and oral histories and how do they challenge dominant modes of historiography? Discuss the cultural politics of memory in the context of Auntie Rita and dominant colonial histories
The aim of the paper is to evaluate the understanding of the aboriginal life writing and their oral history in order to relate it to the resistance to the dominant modes of historiography. This has been observed that the aboriginal population had unique nature of passing the flow of knowledge. Such tradition is known as the oral tradition of passing knowledge from one generation to the other, however in case of the aboriginal writing, the first serious attempt by the Jackie Huggins in the “ Writing My Mother’s Life” (1998). Unlike the previous way of orally passing the knowledge, this way of writing down the historical account of one’s own accounts in a written form. As a resistance to the claim of the “virgin lands” by the Europeans, the claim of the aboriginals were justified on the ground that these lands were not to be claimed unjustifiably. Such demand for the self-determination is the beginning of the movement of writing and challenging the dominant ideologies of Europeans. This was considered to be an attempt to draft their own histories as against unquestioning acceptance of the European version of historiography. The aim of these aboriginal writing was primarily based on the demand of land ownership. It has been argued by the scholars that the way of presenting their own narrative through the process of reconstruction of the social and cultural history. The aim of such reconstruction is to question the dominant histories of the “homeland”. It is to call into question the imperial histories and identities of the aboriginal population. The significance of the life writing and the oral histories can be derived from the following understandings.
Life Writing and its Significance:
Writing, as claimed by the researchers, is an important way to tell or share one’s story and reach to the readers. However, the indigenous aboriginal writing, since the day of its initiation, has been seen resisting the paradigms of Western knowledge and representation, which is literacy based. The life writings generally refer to the historical and cultural representation and record of the everyday lives of an individual. The life writing is the individual perceptions and experiences of an individual, and deals with the self- evaluations made by the individual. However, the life writing of the aboriginals are much more interesting and enriching. As posed against the western literature, the aboriginal life writings are not as literary enriched as the western writings are. The life writings of the aboriginals are more lucid, less literacy driven which keeps them to maintain the innocence of their language (Renders and De Haan. 2014). The life writing of the aboriginals are highlighted in their texts more properly and accurately and they account the daily chores or the daily events of their lives, which uphold the everyday life story and the everyday culture of the aboriginals. Many of the social researchers have accounted that the life writings of the aboriginals can be perceived in many ways and the sociologists have incorporated many themes and conceptions to understand the daily chores and the way of life of these aboriginals. As according to Spivak, the literary understandings as provided by these life writings of the aboriginal need the incorporation of an axiomatic assumptions to understand and look into the lives of the aboriginals. A number of critical discussions have reflected that the resistance to the colonially based structures of values and literary articulations (Grossman, 2013). Therefore, as can be understood that the significance of these texts lie in the literary contexts and the upholding of the cultural values and daily lives of these people.
Oral Histories and its Significance:
Oral histories refer to the stories that individual tell their next generations. Oral history is the preservation of the history orally. The grandparents and the great grandparents of the family or the head of the community are generally regarded as the person who are seen to be preserving the history of the community or the family. However, there is an aspect of patriarchy in the system of transmitting the history orally. The practice of preserving the history through memories and retelling and spreading the culture among generations, orally, are seen as an integral part of the aboriginal culture. It is seen that till date aboriginal communities, practice this process to spread among the tradition and teachings (Yow. 2014). This particular tradition stand as a stark opposite to the historiography, whereby, the history is written down and further transmitted through the process of teaching discourses. However, the oral tradition of retelling history and transmitting the culture.
The oral transmission of history was seen as a seasonal process, which usually takes place during the winter, when they would have stored their food to survive through the months. The oral accounts of history are significant for the aboriginals in a number of ways. It is essentially seen as the way to reach to the new generations and transmit the values of the family or the community. It is often seen that it is easier to reach to the young population through the modes of telling stories, and history is nothing but telling stories, and it is also seen that the stories can reach and affect the young generation if it’s told in the way of a story, rather it is taught at schools. The values and the teachings of the culture can be easily transmitted through and among the young peoples of a culture. The stories can impact upon the minds of the children. More importantly, the telling of the story, can sensitize the audience on the correct grounds and impact upon them correctly, so that they can understand the meaning and the significance of the story as well as the event that had taken place. The oral history are essentially kept to the particular community or a particular family. Therefore, the stories and the events are well communicated and reached to the young people of that particular community or the family (Thompson. 2017). Also, the oral histories, invoke a sense of morality among the young population and the teachings that these historical stories try to convey, are well articulated and knowledge enhanced, therefore, ate easily reached to the young people.
The modes of life writing and oral history stand in the stark opposition of other modes of historiography. These other modes of historiography refer to the recording of the past events and the data, and evaluating of the same. Now, these recorded data and the events are gathered, presented and collected from an objective perspective, and the readers are to read and understand the data and the events from the perspectives of the historian. However, in case of life writing and the oral histories, the readers or the listeners can interpret the happenings and the occurrences on their own, and this can better their understandings and their perspectives (Eskridge, 2017). Therefore, the readers or the listeners can get a better perspective and idea regarding the events or the stories, and hence, the life writings and the oral histories are preferred way of understanding the history than the regular modes and methods of historiography.
Cultural Politics and Auntie Rita:
Cultural Political Economy (CPE) is a recent analytical approach that tries to synthesize contributions from the critical political economy and the critical analysis of discourse to the field of policy studies. It focuses upon the relevance of the cultural difference and dimensions and further illustrates the interpretations and the explanations of the complications that exist within the social policies and the formations of the same. It points to the fact that some of the policies reflect the problems that re entailed within the formations of the policies and explain upon the causes and the solutions (Ahmed, 2013). The following story review relates and bases upon the aspects of Cultural Politics.
The story, Sister Girl, is the life writing of the mother of the writer, Auntie Rita. Author’s mother is a person who could not be silent in her life, and all through her life, she had been faced with many situations. During 1990, the author and her mother had faced with certain situations, which had made the author to believe that now is the time for her to write about the life journeys that her mother had faced and in order to do that she had went through the personal files that her mother had, which were held at the Department of Family Services and aboriginal and Islander Affairs. Reviewing them, the author understood that to understand the resistance that aboriginal people meet while in touch with the white bureaucrats during the colonial period and further, their experiences had continued and the modified their behaviour in the future. They had refrained from talking or even meeting the white bureaucrats and even the contemporary forms of records of the behaviour of the aboriginal had accounted the same. The author had first made enquiries about seeing the author’s mother’s files, the author was made to watch across a huge desk as two white public servants turned the pages for me, one by one. As the author tried to read, the older man and his eighteen-year-old assistant would stop at particular pages themselves, at their pace, and read the author’s mother’s file and whisper comments to each other that the author could not hear. Aboriginal people were pushed to the peripheries of white society. The files that the author had reviewed are still in the Department but the access to the files, from which the aboriginal people can get the information from, are now restricted and the community groups have now become much less rigid. The authors demand a safe-keeping place for the files, one which Aboriginal people can trust, not one imposed on us, as white structures have always been. One particular friend had been appointed supervisor over the two white bureaucrats, but even so, when she led us, the author’s mother and me, into an office where the authors could study Auntie Rita’s files, she did so secretively, shutting the doors as the authors sat down, like the authors were criminals with no rights. Whether the author’s mother’s activism around Aboriginal issues had prolonged this policing is hard to tell, but common knowledge has it that most, if not all, ex-inmates of reserves had files kept on them in this way, whether they were politically active or not. The author’s mother’s file tells of many things. If the story is closely reviewed then it can be understood that it depends upon the aspects of the cultural politics.
References:
Grossman, M., 2013. Entangled subjects: Indigenous/Australian cross-cultures of talk, text, and modernity (Vol. 158). Rodopi.
Thompson, P., 2017. The voice of the past: Oral history. Oxford university press.
Yow, V.R., 2014. Recording oral history: A guide for the humanities and social sciences. Rowman & Littlefield.
Ahmed, S., 2013. The cultural politics of emotion. Routledge.
Eskridge, W.N., 2017. Hardwick and Historiography. In Sexual Orientation and Rights (pp. 183-237). Routledge.
Renders, H. and De Haan, B. eds., 2014. Theoretical discussions of biography: Approaches from history, microhistory, and life writing. Brill.
