by Mudrooroo
I can write about my meeting with Betty and the problems she had with her identity because she has passed on and thus beyond any controversy about whether she is or is not descended from the indigenous people of Australia. After all it was up to her if she wished to declare her Aboriginality or not. In the last volume of my autobiography, Aboriginal Affairs I plan to go into the whole episode of my so-called outing and will only say here that at the time I felt that the whole Afro-American (their word) thing was a farce and thrust it away. I was really busy between 1992 and 1996 writing and doing my academic work. Working at Koori College had given me good experience at lecturing and I found that lecturing was a delight when the balls clicked and rolled hitting every point I wanted to make and then sliding in at the end, a perfect score.
Towards the end of my contract I was feeling that the vibes were turning bad and indeed they were. I was told by an Aboriginal friend how faxes had been sent around Australia declaring that I was not an Aborigine. ‘They must really hate me,’ I replied not really caring as I was planning to leave the state. I had married a Queensland woman, Janine Little in January 1996 and was ready to move there with her. On a visit I had even bought a cheap house on Macleay Island in Moreton Bay where I fantasized living at peace with the world, as a beach comber. I don’t know what Jeanine thought of this quasi-country move. The island was populated by old people; but then I was old and would fit in nicely I thought.
I was ready to leave Perth when as they say, the mud hit the fan and sprayed all over me. I had heard that someone was researching my past, but thought nothing of it. I had nothing to hide; but then I had enemies and it appeared that they had taken advantage of Betty and her desire not to be Aborigine to use her so-called proof about the Black Barrons being descended from an Afro-American. Of course as we were obviously coloured they had to trace our family back to some sort of black fellow and so my father, Thomas Patrick Johnson with very little solid evidence to go on was declared Afro-American. The Australian journalist Vicki Laurie wrote and had published a polemic which in effect gave me an Identity Crisis, the title of the article. I tried to laugh the whole thing off declaring that was no such thing as bad news, until a fellow academic actually came crying to me declaring that she had known all along that Wild Cat Falling could never have been written by an Aborigine. I asked her why and all she did was to show me the article in The Australian Magazine which was distributed nationally. ‘Why, no pictures,’ I joked, but she merely wiped her eyes and went off leaving me flabbergasted. She was seeing me as a liar and a cheat; but I shrugged and didn’t worry over much as I was ready to quit Perth.
It was then I realized the depth of the antagonism and hostility there was against me. This affected me deeply. I doubted that I had any talent to write and stopped. It was then that His Holiness the Dalai Lama appeared to me in a dream, laughed and told me to come to India. I woke up and old as I was, took to the road again. Away from Australia life turned sweet as the 21st century dawned. I ended up in Nepal under the smile of a Buddhist Monastery housing the relics of the famous Lama Zopa who had spread Buddhism in the West. I married Sangya Magar, an Indigenous Nepali on 22 May 2002 and I have a son, Saman, a bright kid who wishes to be a space engineer and terraform Mars.
Wild Cat Falling has been in print for 50 years and has been taught in schools and colleges. Once upon a time it was declared to be the first Aboriginal novel, but now since Betty and her disavowal of any Aboriginality for our family it has drifted away from being an Aboriginal work to being a book written by a coloured man who thought that he was an Aborigine. I never questioned my Aboriginal identity until my sister declared in a national newspaper that we were not Aboriginal. A long time has passed now, but the issue still remains and sometimes I am accused of identity theft. If I was a complete unknown there would be no controversy and there I think the racism lies. Still, for this old fellow it really doesn’t matter. At seventy five going on six, his life is all but over and eventually all that will remain will be his books such as Wild Cat Falling. People have read and enjoyed my work and that is enough for me.
Mudrooroo Nyoongah,
Brisbane 2015.
BOOKS:
Wild Cat Falling (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1965; Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin, 1966);
Long Live Sandawara (Melbourne: Quartet Books, 1979);
Before the Invasion: Aboriginal Life to 1788, by Mudrooroo, Colin Bourke, and Isobel White (Melbourne & London: Oxford University Press, 1980; Melbourne & New York: Oxford University Press, 1980);
Doctor Wooreddy’s Prescription for Enduring the Ending of the World (Melbourne: Hyland House, 1983 and New York: Ballantine, 1983);
The Song Circle of Jacky: And Selected Poems (Melbourne: Hyland House, 1986);
Dalwurra: The Black Bittern, A Poem Cycle, edited by Veronica Brady and Susan Miller (Nedlands: Centre for Studies in Australian Literature, University of Western Australia, 1988);
Doin Wildcat: A Novel Koori Script As Constructed by Mudrooroo (Melbourne: Hyland House, 1988);
Writing from the Fringe: A Study of Modern Aboriginal Literature in Australia (South Yarra, Vic.: Hyland House, 1990);
Master of the Ghost Dreaming: A Novel (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1991);
The Garden of Gethsemane: Poems from the Lost Decade (South Yarra, Vic.: Hyland House, 1991);
Wildcat Screaming: A Novel (Pymble, N.S.W.: Angus & Robertson, 1992);
Wild Cat Falling, Imprint Classics edition, introduction by Stephen Muecke (Pymble, N.S.W.: Angus & Robertson, 1992);
The Kwinkan (Pymble, N.S.W.: Angus & Robertson 1993);
Aboriginal Mythology: An A-Z Spanning the History of the Australian Aboriginal Peoples from the Earliest Legends to the Present Day (London: Aquarian, 1994);
Us Mob: History, Culture, Struggle: An Introduction to Indigenous Australia. (Sydney & London: Angus & Robertson, 1995);
Pacific Highway Boo-Blooz: Country Poems (St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1996);
The Indigenous Literature of Australia: Milli Milli Wangka (South Melbourne, Vic.: Hyland House, 1997);
The Undying (Pymble, N.S.W.: Angus & Robertson, 1998);
Underground (Pymble, N.S.W.: Angus & Robertson, 1999);
The Promised Land (Pymble, N.S.W.: Angus & Robertson, 2000).
Wild Cat Falling (audio read by the author, Melbourne : Bolinda Audio 2013)
Old Feller Poems (Black Swan India/Sydney ETT imprint, 2014)
An Indecent Obsession (Sydney, ETT Imprint, 2015)
A FEW SHORT PIECES:
Struggling, a novella, in Paperbark: A Collection of Black Australian Writings, edited by J. Davis, S. Muecke, Mudrooroo, and A. Shoemaker (University of Queensland Press, 1990), pp. 199–290;
The Mudrooroo/Müller Project: A Theatrical Casebook, edited by Gerhard Fischer, Paul Behrendt, and Brian Syron — comprises The Aboriginal Protestors Confront The Declaration of the Australian Republic on 26 January 2001 with the Production of The Commission by Heiner Müller (Sydney: New South Wales University Press, 1993);
‘Tell Them You’re Indian,’ An Afterword, in Race Matters: Indigenous Australians and “Our” Society, ed. By Gillian Cowlishaw & Barry Morris (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies P, 1997).
Critical Works on Mudrooroo
Mudrooroo: A Critical Study, by Adam Shoemaker (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1993);
Mudrooroo, a (Un)Likely Story, by Maureen Clark (Bruxelles-New York, Peter Lang, 2007);
Mongrel Signatures, Reflections on the Work of Mudrooroo, ed. By Annalisa Oboe (Cross Cultures 64, Amsterdam-New York, Rodopi, 2003).
Bibliographies:
The Work of Mudrooroo: thirty-one years of literary production, 1960-1991: a comprehensive listing of primary materials (including unpublished work) with secondary sources, compiled by Hugh Webb. Perth, SPAN: Journal of the South Pacific Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies , ed. By Kathryn Trees. Number 33 (1992).
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Mudrooroo, Wild Cat Falling
