"Shadow Lines" by Stephen Kinnane

"Shadow Lines" by Stephen Kinnane was a book on my compulsory reading list for Historicising the Colonial Past, so I thought I would give it a quick review.

"Shadow Lines" is a memoir written by Kinnane on his grandparents life. It is part family history, part Aboriginal history, part history of the oppression of Aboriginal people in the early twentieth century. I'll admit it sounds daunting and it is a tome of a book, but his style of writing is very easy to read, small chapters and pictures break up the text as well so you do find yourself half way through without realising you've read quite that much.
Kinnane starts with the government removal of his grandmother; Jessie Argyle. Taken from her family in 1906 as a result of the Aborigines Act of 1905, Jessie is renamed after the area she was taken from; Argyle, and sent away to a mission. His grandfather, Edward Smith, was born in 1891 and emigrated to Australia in 1909 at the age of 18. Kinnane in effect is writing the story of how these two ancestors met, married and lived together under the ever watchful eye of Aborigines Department controller A.O.Neville.
What strikes me with this text is that, although it's based on historical fact and Kinnane is sensible enough to reference all his sources at the end of the book, there is also a lot of imaginative input on his behalf. In the opening lines Kinnane talks about the shadowlines that connect us all; "inflexible boundaries that are laid down by narrow definitions of race, nationalism and religion". It's these shadowlines that inadvertently connect Jessie and Edward, Neville and Jessie (to the point where they are buried in the same graveyard), Neville to Edward and of course all of them to their daughter. These lines "shift and change, break and re-form, swell and divide" across Kinnane's charting of Edward and Jessie's lives, through historical fact or imaginative interpretation.
This book, and I call it book because I genuinely do not know whether to class it biography, fiction or history, brings to life two of Kinnane's ancestors, both of whom are exceptionally brave in their own ways, facing the Aborigines Department's constant opposition. As a reader you learn of the huge oppression of Aboriginal people that was happening right through to the 1950s. Kinnane's story seems to be an attempt at releasing the spirits of his grandparents. In textualising and writing about them however, he is also bringing them back for everyone who reads the novel. This then also works for A.O.Neville and Kinnane's revival of the man shows him as the "dictator carving out his empire". I'm not going to deny that at times this book does make you wonder how this could ever happen, ever be allowed to happen, and it is quite upsetting, but Edward and Jessie are heroic figures of this text and you find yourself inwardly cheering every time they achieve something against the Aborigines Department or Neville.
"Shadow Lines" is not a book that can be summed up or reviewed easily, it's a text that shows a small but perfect part of twentieth century history and it sheds a huge amount of documented light onto the treatment of Aborigines under the "care" of A.O.Neville. It's Kinnane's way of doing justice to his ancestors, a justice that is forceful, elegant and upsetting.

The Ian Potter Museum, Melbourne.

For my Historicising the Colonial Past class today we visited two exhibitions at the Potter Museum. "Trademarks"; a display of the indigenous items collected by Leonhard Adams and "Experimental Gentlemen" chronicling the changing vision and understanding of Australia.
Both exhibits were very impressive collections, particularly "Trademarks" which had a vast collection of Native and South American pieces. However, the talk that accompanied this part of our tour was rather conflicting. In taking these items out of the archives the curator had decided to trace their origins, contacting the museums to find out how Leonhard Adams had got a hold of them in the first place and where they were from. It was revealed that Adams had actually traded many Aboriginal artifacts in return for the artifacts in his collection. The curator then went on to tell us that although she had found the museums where the pieces had been traded or obtained it was not her "priority" to find out who they originally belonged to. It seems quite contradictory to ascertain which museums worldwide these pieces were sourced from without wanting to find out to which tribe, culture or group they belonged. She then went on to inform us on how much the pieces were worth and the standing that they had created for the museum. That's all well and good, but surely the people to which these pieces belong to, these cultural and socially significant pieces of which they may be the only ones in existence, have the right to know where their ancestral artifacts are residing? It seemed particularly condescending that the one tribe she had managed to allocate a shield to, when they visited it and critiqued it for not being the best they had ever heard of, she then produced her texts books and history books to show the tribe to which the shield in question belonged were actually wrong in her opinion. If anything, this shows the contrast between written history and oral history. This tribe stated that they had heard of tales in their past of greater, better and more artistic works, something to which the written, colonial history cannot back up so instead it takes this condescendingly defensive stance, telling the culture they are wrong because they do not have written, identifiable proof. It seemed that for a museum that originally came across as very open and understanding is just as unreceptive towards the idea of acknowledging the true owners and potential repatriation of museum items.
Another disturbing factor was the mention of the artifacts that had been traded out of Australia. There was no mention of trying to get those back or contacting remaining members of Aboriginal tribes in order to tell them where their cultural, historical and social artifacts are. I realise that money, time and effort are big questions in relation to this, but if there are records of how the value of their items has increased over the years, surely there must be one with what pieces went where and what group they may have originally belonged to.

The "Experimental Gentlemen" exhibit was very interesting, it charted the representation of indigenous cultures through books, paintings and etchings from those first settlers in Australia. It was very interesting to note that where the early settlers had, in very detailed ways, depicted Aborigines and their culture, but by the 1880s this had stopped. The reason behind this was that this representation had become undesirable to the colonisers who wanted to draw more people to Australia. It effectively creating an invisibility that some will argue is still continuing today.



"Panoramic View of King George's Sound, part of the Colony of South River" (above- detail) by Robert Havell and Robert Dale in 1834 was one of the major pieces of the exhibit. It was interesting that the detail shown here of the amicable looking hand shake is contrasted by a descriptive booklet that came connected to the image. This booklet charted the tracking down, decapitation and transportation of the head of the indigenous leader, Yagan, back to England with Robert Dale. An image of the decapitated head was inserted as the front-piece of the pamphlet. This certainly went against the Australia Britain was trying to project in an attempt to tempt new settlers. As a result this was one of the last images presenting Aborigines.
Interestingly, Yagan's skull was repatriated to representatives of the Noongar tribe on the 31st August 1997 in Liverpool. He wasn't buried in Australia until 10th July 2010 due to disagreements over his remains. This idea of museum repatriation links back to the first exhibit "Trademarks" and whether the tribes to which those pieces belong should be contacted and whether they have the right to take their pieces out of museums should they want to. I think it's something that's going to become more debated over the next few years, especially now that the British Museum has started repatriating items under the Human Tissue Act in the UK.

Pictures

Here are some pictures I snapped the other weekend, and I struck it lucky with the weather, which is a bit hit and miss here.

Makes a change from England! 

A new April resolution...

From today I am starting the applications for work experience placements at various publishers in both the UK and Australia. 

I can pretty much guess that I am not going to get anything in Australia, not because of visa status or anything like that. Mainly because over here all work experience and two week internships are done when students are ideally in year 13- 15 to 16 year olds. I only decided that I would like to get into publishing, specifically production, about a year and a half ago. Over here there seem to be a lot less students that I have discovered who don't have a plan. Even if it's just to go onto a masters, or another course, it's still a plan. I think perhaps the monetary cost of universities over here, and in America, means that most students don't seem to go unless they have a clear idea of what they are going to do with a degree. In the UK it seems more people go to university at the moment because there is nothing else on offer. In Australian terms I am exceedingly slow off the mark, not only not having done any seriously future applicable work experience/internships, but also to not specifically decided on career options which has resulted in me being given a lot of strange looks. 

Personally I don't feel that there is anything wrong with not knowing your future career. I know ideally in 20 years where I would like to be, but if I don't get there then I'm confident I will have found a different direction/employment that is just as suited. Or, perhaps it's just my loathing to make decisions. The last few months, what with picking my final year UEA modules, forming dissertation proposals and actually having to think about life post-uni I am becoming more and more stubborn when it comes to making potential permanent future decisions. Everyone I know who has finished uni/is finishing this year hates it, they are telling me awful stories of unemployment, dole, indecision and generally warning me against the impending doom that is the end of university. Surely it can't be that bad? 

As a naive first year I vowed never to leave uni, to stay in education as long as physically possible. However, it's come to the point now, that no matter how much I love education, and I'm not going to lie I am a geek and I love learning, I need to get away from university. Even if it is just to unemployment (which is looking the most likely option with the state of the UK at the moment). 

So, with the purposeful launch of work experience and internship applications I am making one of the first delves into a post-uni world. Perhaps it will be my belated New Year's resolution. A new April resolution? 

National Poetry Month

Seeing as today is the start of National Poetry Month I thought I would give you one of my favourite poems, written by Ben Johnson after the death of his son.

On My First Sonne.

Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
My sinne was too much hope of thee, lov'd boy;
Seven yeeres tho' wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
O, could I loose all father, now. For why
Will man lament the state he should envie?
To have so soon scap'd worlds of fleshes rage,
And, if no other miserie, yet age?
Rest in soft peace, and, ask'd, say here doth lye
Ben. Johnson his best piece of poetrie.
For whose sake, hence-forth, all his vowes be such,
As what he loves may never like too much.