to describe what it’s like for me and other Aboriginal people living in this area between black and white, it will help people to understand our situation. We were Aboriginal children who were basically powerless, and had no recognition of our paternity. We were denied our rights on our white side, who considered us nobodies. And those same people stole our Aboriginal land, our hunting grounds, to build their wealth while we remained in poverty struggling to survive.
Mum often describes herself as being ‘caught between two worlds’, a place that marks her as different and sets her apart. As a child her worldview was that of an Aboriginal person, but she says her illegitimate status and being fathered by a white man sometimes separated her from other Aboriginal people on the Mission.
In the early stages of writing Mum’s story, I spent a lot of time undertaking archival research in the State Library of South Australia, the Family History Unit of the South Australian Museum, State Records, Special Collections in the Barr Smith Library and Lutheran Archives, looking at documents and photos relating to our Kokatha ancestry. Many hours were spent in reading rooms, searching catalogues, taking notes and connecting hundreds of pieces of information. To make sense of all this data I created a massive timeline on butcher’s paper. It spanned several metres – from invasion to the mission era – listing all the government policies through to the present. I also included family members: births, deaths, marriages, dwellings, photographs, maps of grave sites, and leases of land, dating back to the 1800s, belonging to Mum’s white ancestors. Almost every detail that I uncovered and collected was recorded on this one big sheet: a visual document of the existence of both our Aboriginal and white lineage.
During this time I often broke down and cried at the reality, so clear in my visual representation, of colonial destruction and what it revealed: plummeting Aboriginal population numbers through disease; frontier conflict; diminishing Aboriginal hunting grounds and food; starvation; rape of our Aboriginal girls and women; the Elliston massacre that involved our people being rounded up and pushed off a cliff to their deaths (Aboriginal oral history places one of our grandmothers several generations ago as a child survivor of this massacre). Our people were corralled onto missions like cattle and dispossessed of our traditional territories. And, although denied our right to practise our culture and language, we continued to, out of the authorities’ sights.
There is a point, a ‘fissure’, in this timeline, where the lineages of black and white meet. It occurs when my grandmother, a twenty-two-year-old Kokatha woman meets my mother’s father, a forty-three-year-old white man. It is near this point in the timeline that Mazin Grace is set.
Some of the field notes that I read – as a Kokatha descendant three and four generations on from the Kokatha ‘subjects’ that were researched by non-Aboriginal so-called experts – include obvious inaccuracies in language and cultural data. I recognised the inaccuracies because of my family’s oral traditions, which were passed down to me from my mother, aunties and grandmothers, through ancestors, and through countless generations. It was obvious that these non-Aboriginal people had little understanding of how Kokatha culture and lore worked, and that vital information would not have been shared with or open to them – because it was closed knowledge. These same people also informed racist government policies and legislation, such as the assimilation policy that has caused much destruction in Aboriginal communities. Further damage continues to occur when inaccurate information is used to support native title claims over wrong sections of country, as we Kokatha people are currently experiencing, with others claiming areas of our country where we still perform our cultural obligations to keep country alive and strong.
Despite the restrictions that came with the government policies of the day and the strict Mission rules that limited cultural activities, some cultural knowledge was still passed on to the younger generations. Mum often speaks of the strength and resilience of the Aboriginal people she grew up with on the Mission, and much of this has been documented in Mazin Grace.
Sometimes during the research and writing of this book, I felt extremely uncomfortable that my mother had asked me to seek out her father’s story. But I honored her request, and in so doing found rich material in the archives and elsewhere. One of the main sources was a book by members of his family titled Pioneers in South Australia, published in 1988 by the Oliver and Sara Haseldine and Descendants Association. The genealogy that unfolds in this book omits my Aboriginal grandmother, and my mother and her siblings, despite the fact that other children born out of wedlock are listed in other sections of the family ancestry. I also discovered there was another daughter fathered by my grandfather, and born to an Aboriginal woman before his relationship with my grandmother, who was not included in the genealogy either. It would appear that people in this branch of the family did not want to share these ‘shameful secrets’ with their white relatives.
To me, and to Mum, it was just another cover-up of the facts of family history, another example of colonial blanketing of the truth.
From the beginning, my mother was very clear about how she wanted the story of her early years told. She did not want me to scribe her memoir. She was adamant that her life be written in a way that invited the reader into her life experiences as a child. Mum wanted readers to be able to exist in her space: to be immersed in the emotions she felt as a illegitimate Aboriginal child of mixed ancestry growing up on a Lutheran mission in South Australia in the 1940s and 1950s, but with strong links to her Aboriginal family and country.
We both faced many challenges during the writing of Mum’s story. When she spoke through the perspective of her child-self from the past, she carried the same emotional experience to the present time. In listening to her story and discerning the emerging themes of her life, I recognised feelings from my own childhood: shame, guilt, self-hate. Sometimes Mum’s story took both of us to deeply traumatic places. And at these times there did not seem to be a clear or safe way forward.
Deciding on a writing style also took some time. Mum wanted her voice to be as authentic as possible. Finally, after exploring many techniques, we decided on a first-person narrative using my mother’s voice as a child, expressed in Aboriginal English and Kokatha language.
Mum and I spoke at length to various family members about the writing of her story and these discussions helped shape this book. But Mum decided that people’s names should be changed to fictional ones. It was one thing to try to tell a story as close to the truth of her life as possible, but quite another thing to be held to each individual’s account of that reality.
I understood that even though much of Western storytelling was essentially linear in structure, Aboriginal stories were often cyclic in their telling. Although it was important for me to see this book as a work of fiction, it was also critical that, as faithfully as possible, it followed the shape, form and sequence of Mum’s narrative. I listened carefully to Mum’s stories and their patterns and recorded them as accurately as I could, following the natural flow of the Aboriginal English and Kokatha language, and the movements and perceptions of the book’s narrator – Grace.
So while the Kokatha cultural memory might be strongly represented in the story, my freedom in the writing process was somewhat limited. In this sense I was bound by my cultural responsibility to tell a communal story, not one that I myself might choose to write, drawing on techniques learnt and crafted over the years.
Mum’s academic background was an immense advantage to me when it came to unpacking her story, exploring narrative approaches and finally writing the book. My mother had studied for her honors degree in anthropology at the University of Adelaide, and therefore had knowledge of the history and dominant white discourses of that discipline. But at the same time she also had an insider’s view of her Aboriginal community and cultural experience. What a powerful position.
Many complex issues arose as Mum’s story touched on the white privilege o
f the workers on the Mission and the broader white community of the rural west coast districts, of which her father was a part. More complex was the white privilege that existed within the Aboriginal community and was played out between family groups and individuals, and racist government policies like assimilation were at the core of it: if Aboriginal people ‘acted’ white, they were rewarded. If they had a fairer complexion, they were seen by white society in both a positive and negative light. A common Western belief at the time, stemming from social Darwinism, held that the more white blood an Aboriginal person had running through their veins, the more intelligent they were, and thus the greater likelihood of successful assimilation.
But lightness could also mean that a child was at greater risk of being taken away from their family by state welfare bodies. Moreover, according to Western social mores in the 1940s and 1950s, whiteness within an Aboriginal person signified ‘shame’; it represented the ‘unholy’, ‘unnatural’ union of black and white, in most cases white men and black women who were not married but produced mixed-race children, who were often denied by their white fathers.
All of these factors would have impacted heavily on the sense of self of Aboriginal people on the Mission. What took place was an internalisation of Western value systems, which, in more recent times, has come to be called ‘lateral violence’ in the Aboriginal community.
When the assimilation policy was officially introduced by government in the 1950s, Aboriginal people were suddenly expected to act white despite the fact that racism marked them as black with all the associated stereotypes and deficit representations. The intention of the assimilationist policy was to cancel out black identity and fully immerse Aboriginal people in white Australian society. The level of confusion this created for Aboriginal people at the time was enormous, and the impacts are still felt today.
In more recent years our Kokatha family and people have faced the intellectual property theft of our Aboriginal culture, knowledge and language by what we term ‘Aboriginal cultural piracy’. This situation has largely been brought about by the ignorance of non-Aboriginal so-called experts. In our case, anthropologists and linguists have taken our Kokatha knowledges and language and have misrepresented both, and us – in some instances reframing our Kokatha culture as the lost knowledges and language of an allegedly other cultural group: Wirangu. Our strong oral traditions tell us otherwise.
In the 1990s, an academic linguist came into our Kokatha community and used my grandmother Pearl, her sister Millie and other fluent Kokatha speakers as Aboriginal informants. Nana and the others believed that the linguist was recording their language in order to produce a Kokatha dictionary, and so were happy to contribute to this research. Only later did the linguist tell them they were speaking Wirangu. Nana Pearl refuted this claim. As far as she was concerned, it was ridiculous. She and the other nanas knew their Kokatha language and culture. It had been taught to them by their Kokatha elders for many generations. Nonetheless, the linguist went away and produced a Wirangu Aboriginal dictionary on the basis of that research, which was later published.
My nana Pearl went to her grave with the belief that her Kokatha language had been stolen and ‘reclaimed’ as Wirangu. Now in their seventies and eighties, the other nanas never once heard the word Wirangu when they were growing up on the west coast of South Australia – not once. I am just grateful that Nana Pearl did not live to see the ongoing Wirangu language programs that continue to perpetuate this act of Aboriginal cultural piracy.
For me, writing Mum’s story has been an enormous privilege, an act of social justice and cultural survival, and, importantly, a journey of healing. But I’ll let Mum have the last word:
What’s important here is that I have been able to heal from this process. I have been able to reclaim a little bit of my past that has been denied me – to partially fill the emptiness. And yes, understanding is important here too. It’s always been an important reason why I’ve wanted my story told, so others, whether they be black, white, or in that space between, can better understand.
Author Dylan Coleman (centre) with her mother, Mercy Glastonbury, and father, George Mastrosavas, after her PhD graduation ceremony in 2011. (Photograph courtesy of Janette Milera)
Acknowledgments
I acknowledge my Kokatha ancestors, who are ever-present and guiding me through life.
I would like to thank my mum, Mercy Glastonbury, for sharing the laughter and tears of your childhood and for trusting me to write your story. This journey with you has been both a privilege and a wonderful gift. Also to my many family members and friends (too numerous to mention individually, but you all know who you are), especially my nanas, aunties and sisters – thank you for your input and ongoing support over the years, it has kept me going. Thanks to my dad, George Mastrosavas, for encouraging me to document your story, which set me on the path to writing.
This journey would not have possible without the love, understanding, patience and support of my partner, Aaron Williams, and my son, Wunna Coleman-Goddard. Sometimes words like ‘deep feelings of gratitude’ fall short of conveying meaning. All I can offer are the two humble words ‘thank you’, then expand them to infinity.
Thank you to the Creative Writing Program at the University of Adelaide, in particular my PhD supervisor, Dr Sue Hosking, for your exceptional academic support, and for your sensitivity and understanding during the difficult times of writing Mazin Grace. Thank you to my co-supervisors, Dr Jan Harrow, Dr Nicholas Jose and Dr Mandy Treagus. Also, thank you to Professor Thomas Shapcott and my fellow creative writing students at the University of Adelaide.
To Marg Bowman, for mentoring me during my PhD, and for your exceptional editorial support over the years, which has helped me in the development of my writing craft – a big thank you. Also thanks to ArtsSA, for the editorial mentorship funding to work with Marg to complete my first manuscript, my father’s story, which was later shortlisted for the 2011 David Unaipon Award. This mentorship helped to set the foundation for Mazin Grace.
Thank you also to staff and students within the University of Adelaide’s School of Population Health and Clinical Practice, especially Associate Professor Jenny Baker and Professor Annette Braunack-Mayer, for the time you afforded me in the last stages of my PhD, as well as the Yaitya Purruna Indigenous Health Unit, Wilto Yerlo Aboriginal Education, and the Barr Smith Library. Over the years I have received a lot of support from within the university environment, for which I am extremely grateful. A very special thank you to dearest friends Dr Olga Gostin and Susan Cole, for your support over the years within (and outside) the university and in my personal life, and most of all for believing in me from the beginning.
To my dear friends of the South Australian Indigenous Storytellers and Writers Group, who have provided fantastic support and encouragement over the years – a heartfelt thank you.
Thank you to my dear friends and colleagues in the Aboriginal Political Party Movement, who have been a lifeline and who have sustained my belief that social justice and change is possible through persistence.
Thank you to Ali Abdullah-Highfold, Aboriginal Family History Officer at the South Australian Museum, and to the Lutheran Church of Australia Archives in Adelaide, for permission to reprint our family photograph on the back cover of Mazin Grace.
And, importantly, thank you to Dr Janet Hutchinson, for your exceptional editorial support for Mazin Grace, and to UQP publishers Madonna Duffy and John Hunter, senior editor Rebecca Roberts, editorial assistant Ella Jeffery, marketing and publicity manager Meredene Hill, and rights assistant Simon Stack, who have made this experience an enjoyable and enlightening one.
Lastly, thank you to all of those who made the Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards possible. Such initiatives are enormously important in growing and maintaining authentic and vital Australian literature and should be supported. Without this award, Grace’s voice may not h
ave been heard.
About the David Unaipon Award
Established in 1988, the David Unaipon Award is an annual literary competition for unpublished manuscripts in any writing genre or Indigenous language by an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander writer.
The award is named after David Unaipon (1872–1967), who, in 1929, was the first Indigenous author to be published in Australia. He was also a political activist, a scientist, a preacher and an inventor. David Unaipon was born in Point McLeay in South Australia and is commemorated on the S|50 note.
This prize is judged and chosen by a panel of established Indigenous authors and a representative of University of Queensland Press. The author of the winning manuscript is mentored and the work published by University of Queensland Press.
Previous winners of the award include Tara June Winch, Gayle Kennedy, Sam Wagan Watson, Larissa Behrendt, and Nicole Watson. Jeanine Leane’s Purple Threads, which won the 2010 David Unaipon Award, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Book Prize in 2012.
First published 2012 by University of Queensland Press
PO Box 6042, St Lucia, Queensland 4067 Australia
www.uqp.com.au
© 2012 Dylan Coleman
This book is copyright. Except for private study, research,
criticism or reviews, as permitted under the Copyright Act,
no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior
written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher.
Cover design by Kirby Armstrong
Cover photographs © Getty Images; Shutterstock; Lutheran Church of Australia Archives: the author’s mother, Mercy (‘Grace’ in Mazin Grace), stands at the front; Mercy’s mother, Pearl (‘Ada’), holds daughter Margaret (‘Sarah’).
Mazin Grace Page 21
