POLC 4470 Week 4 Assignment

POLC 4470 Week 4 Assignment | Tulane University

Introduction

Some 500 different Aboriginal peoples, each with their own language, territory, and separate clans, live throughout Australia. The home to the largest numbers is not Western Australia but New South Wales and Queensland.

The capital of Queensland, Brisbane, is founded on ancient traditional lands of the Turrbai people. While global liveability rankings have Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide in the top ten, in that order, Brisbane has a more convenient location: it's just 7,000 miles away from Los Angeles and is much much closer to Auckland in New Zealand--2,400 miles. Brisbane has three powerhouse universities: the University of Queensland, Queensland University of Technology, and Griffith University.

It goes without saying that a multitude of idyllic beaches are close to the big metropolises. The Sunshine Coast to the north and the Gold Coast just to the south are driving distance from Brisbane. From reading Thea Astley, however, whose focus is on rundown, near-deserted, insular, inland townships, we'll get a very different picture of Queensland. It's here in the drylands where small-town bullies struggle to survive, a stunning contrast to the sheer enchantment of Western Australia or the sensuous lushness of Tasmania.

Whose rights? A crucial decision welcomed by all Indigene peoples of Australia was taken in 2019. The High Court in Canberra ruled that the government of the Northern Territory (NT for short; it is a huge territory squeezed in between Queensland and Western Australia) was required to pay AUD $2.53 million in compensation to the Ngaliwurru and Nungali peoples for the loss of Native Title in the town of Timber Creek.

Let's go back on this. In 2011, the Ngaliwurru and Nungali peoples sued the NT government for the loss of Native rights. The decision to award Native Title, based on the loss of these rights, was linked to various types of government infrastructure impeding on these First Peoples. Under the Native Title Act 1993, a right of compensation is provided for the “impairment and extinguishment” of Native Title rights suffered by Indigenous communities. 

In its judgement, the High Court noted that the relationship of Aboriginal peoples to their land encompasses all of the country and not just sacred sites. The relationship of the Ngaliwurru and Nungali peoples with their lands could therefore be viewed as a spiritual and metaphysical one. Any harm done to a single part of their territory, such as a bridge built through their sacred dingo dreaming site, could thus be seen to affect the entirety of the community.

The High Court’s decision has set a precedent, therefore, that provides compensation for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples through the legal recognition of their spiritual and cultural connection to their lands.

Rituals and ceremonies are central to Indigenous culture. "Welcome to Country" ceremonies are held to launch cultural festivals and gatherings in this way acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land. From rites of passage and ceremonial gatherings to healing rituals using bush medicine, ochre anointments, and smoking rituals, such sacred traditions have evolved over tens of thousands of years.

In the NT 21 sacred sites are protected including the Darwin hinterland in the north; Alice Springs, the geographic center of Australia whose Aboriginal peoples, the Arrernte, have lived in the Central Australian desert for tens of thousands of years; and Uluru, also known as Ayers Rock, a massive sandstone rock formation in the southern part of the NT.

In 2017, members of the Uluru-Kata Tjuta region voted unanimously to end the rock climb to the top of Uluru because of the spiritual significance of the site. It has generally been accepted by tourist groups.

The gateway to the Outback, then, known affectionally as the Red Center in the NT, is the isolated town of Alice Springs. But it is Uluru, the iconic red-rock monolith, that is featured in this four-minute-long video celebrating the rock cliff as sacred space. Recorded in 2012, you can even spot Donovan, the 1960s' Scottish  counterpart to Bob Dylan, in the video:

Solid Rock (Puli Kunpungka) "Stronger Now" (Links to an external site.)

In a couple of weeks, while reading Tim Winton's novel set in the arid lands of Western Australia, we'll include a chapter by the NT's Marie Munkara from her book Of Ashes and Rivers that Run to the Sea.

What's next. The next novel we'll examine over a two-week period is by Thea Astley. Titled Drylands: A Book for the World's Last Reader, it is regarded as her best among the four she was given a prestigious national prize for--the Miles Franklin Literary Award she shared with Kim Scott for his book Benang. it was also her last since she died in 2004, aged 78.

This annual literary prize is given to "a novel which is of the highest literary merit and presents Australian life in any of its phases." Like Astley, Tim Winton, our next author in this course, has been awarded the Miles Franklin prize four times. But Aborigine novelists have won it twice in the last two years! Goorie author of Bundjalung heritage Melissa Lucashenko won it in 2019 for Too Much Lip; and Wiradjuri author Tara June Winch triumphed in 2020 for The Yield. First Peoples' authors have become the cutting edge of Australian fiction!

Astley's novel explores the rural parts of Queensland, not Brisbane or the beaches. It is a revealing narrative about townships left behind. To be sure, when next we visit Queensland we may wish to avoid these badlands and stick with Brisbane, Cairns and the nearby reefs. And the beaches.

Objectives

After this unit you should be able to:

• Make sense of the slow path to recognition of Aboriginal rights in Australia and the accompanying dismantling of the "White Australia" narrative.

• Explain the sudden emergence of First Peoples literature in the last decade or two; its recognition as sophisticated and not merely reproducing stereotypical "primitive" memes; and its international resonance.

• Identify in her novel the Australian counterpart to racist police violence in the treatment of Indigene peoples.

Instructions

The following is an article published in 2019 that engages in the decline-of-literature, and even end-of-literature, debates. Meg Brayshaw interrogates "the systemic violence of the settler colonial state, questioning literary privilege, exclusivity and complicity in ways that remain relevant to debates regarding Australian literature today."

Please read this short essay and analyze it as part of the essay submission for March 21st. The question is given below. It would be one additional page in addition to the expected three-page assignment. You can weave it into the main part of the essay or you can make it stand alone, it's your choice but do submit at the same time on March 21.

Here's the reading link: the-death-of-australian-literature-in-thea-astleys-drylands.pdf   Download the-death-of-australian-literature-in-thea-astleys-drylands.pdf 

To sum up, for this assignment write a three-page + one page essay. Stay consistently on topic. Make use of the text by selecting key passages and interpreting them. Pay attention to discussing key points and character at various stages of the novel--avoid focusing on just one. Describe a couple of the key protagonists, their ambitions, their failures, their successes.

Place is important so identify where events occur--often the true test of a writer who combines place with character. Conclude by summing up the novel's importance in presenting both settler and Indigene views about their respective histories. In Thea Astley's case, the Queensland drylands mark a sharp contrast with the beaches and estuaries so be conscious of these extremities and how she handles them.

Don't forget to submit your assignment answers by 8pm Sunday March 21st. To paraphrase the syllabus, any honest and original attempt to answer all the assignment questions clearly based on the readings earns full credit, but late work is not accepted.