The Stolen Generations Narrative and Aboriginality : Sally Morgan's My Place and Alexis Wright's Plains of Promise
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概要
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This paper focuses on two Australian Indigenous writings, Sally Morgan's My Place and Alexis Wright's Plains of Promise. These narratives can be read as examples of the "stolen generations narrative" that explores the systematic removal of Indigenous children from their Indigenous communities under Australian government policy carried out from the 19th century to the late 1960s. The stolen generations narrative plays a significant role in Indigenous Australians' search for and recapture of their Indigenous identity (Aboriginality) and also in making non-Indigenous Australians aware of the issue of separation in order to reconsider the nation's past and the historical relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. In this paper, I investigate how Australian Indigenous writers reconstruct their subjectivity and claim the sovereignty of Indigenous people and how the stolen generations narrative can contribute to Indigenous and non-Indigenous reconciliation. The first section introduces the stolen generations narrative while the second section examines the issues surrounding discussions on Aboriginality in relation to Indigenous literature. Placing Indigenous writing in the context of Fourth world activist texts, I explore the Indigenous epistemology employed by Indigenous writers and demonstrate that the symbolic and metaphorical concept of the blood/land/memory complex functions as a narrative tactic for them to define an enduring Aboriginality. The third and fourth sections are individual case studies of the stolen generations narrative, dealing with Sally Morgan's My Place and Alexis Wright's Plains of Promise. While My Place and Plains of Promise offer a remarkable contrast by depicting different experiences of Indigenous women, Morgan and Wright develop a similar narrative tactic to define an enduring Aboriginality through utilizing the blood/land/memory complex, In each section, I examine the way in which they represent a spiritual relationship to their specific land or landscape as the essence of Indigenous existence. By way of a conclusion, I argue that the stolen generations narrative is a spiritual journey for Indigenous people who, after being taken from their land and culture, reconcile themselves with their ancestral land and construct their Aboriginality. The definition of Aboriginality and the interpretation and representation of the spiritual relationship with the land are crucial concepts in a future reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. In this context, the stolen generations narrative plays a significant role, not only because it evokes the consciousness of non-Indigenous people towards the colonial past, but also because it provides Indigenous perspectives that do not prioritize Western systems of knowledge.
- オーストラリア学会の論文
- 2009-03-20