Taking to my Country
Being born as an indigenous person in Australia is one of the most difficult tests. Stan Grant attempts to give deep memoir of growing up as an indigenous citizen in Australia through his book, “Talking to my Country.” The Aboriginal people have been on the receiving end of the impacts of colonization both before and after independence. Some worrying statistics have been emerging concerning the declining population of the aboriginal people and the challenges they have to go in their country. Stan argues that Australia is a great country that has failed to be accountable for reconciling its troubled past and that the relationship between blacks and whites has been poor all through history. The indigenous people have had to live in struggle several years after independence with cases of suicide reaching alarming levels and arrests remaining significantly high.
The identity of Australia as a country appears different from Grant when an aboriginal resident is mentioned. Australia is the country while Aboriginals represent a group of people who have been forced to forget their identities and branded the name Aboriginals (Coulthard, 2010). Stan Grant feels that racism has played a major role in keeping the Aboriginals down-trodden for as long as the history of Australia and colonization has been written. The indigenous people formed the majority of the Australian population before colonization by the British. The colonization by the British brought more harm to the indigenous people than good. A disaster that the indigenous people will never forget is the disease epidemic that wiped almost three-quarters of the population with the colonizers being reluctant in helping the locals, although the diseases were associated with the colonizers. Stan Grant blames the country for denying the responsibility for its previous colonization sins against the Aboriginal people and argues that the Aboriginal people should be left to control their social organizations so that they can revitalize their cultural identity from the remains of colonial destruction.
The country of Australia is the key to the recognition of aboriginal people’s culture. Australia is currently an independent nation that should be in a position to support the dreams of every community. Unfortunately, the Aboriginals have not been able to see the fruits of independence and believe that the efforts by their forefathers who fought for independence have been taken for granted. The suffering that the Aboriginals have been going through is evidenced by some alarming statistics that the government continues to give a deaf ear. For example, the Aboriginals are said to make less than three percent of the total Australian population. However, a quarter of the prisoners in Australian prisons are Aboriginals. Such statistics proves that the government is committed to silence the voices of the Aboriginals who are certainly troubled. The story does not, however, end at the prisons. The juvenile prisons are said to half-way occupied by indigenous prisoners. The rate of suicide in the prisons has been on the increase bringing out the picture of suffering that happens behind bars. The situation has, however, not been better outside the bars. The government has been blamed for stealing children from their Aboriginal parents and tried to assimilate them.
The nation of Australia has been divided along racial and class lines even after independence. The indigenous people are, however, on the suffering end. The introduction of civilization has been a subject of discussion with the elite class doing all it can to assimilate the indigenous communities. The individuals who have tried to protect their identities have been left to suffer. Only a few elites who become lucky to become successful have been kind enough to go back and speak on behalf of the indigenous communities. Stan Grant directs his blame on the Australian system that has been obsessed with white privileges at the expense of the blacks. No one has felt the fruits of independence because the white supremacy has continued to thrive in a nation that claims to obtained independence several years ago. “Talking to my Country” does not speak against the position of the whites in Australia, or the strategies to save the indigenous communities but gives a history of where the nation left the right path and lost direction. Moreover, the colonial legacies of dispossession, racism, and displaced have been left to thrive in the way land ownership rights are defined among the indigenous communities.
The indigenous communities have lost the original citizenship of the period before the 19th century. The 19th century ushered in an era of cultural erosion, which was characterized by land dispossession. The colonial government gave land ownership priority to the white settlers under the excuse of developing land and exploiting the idle resources that the indigenous people had overlooked (Evans, 2018). Land dispossession was slowly followed by family dispossession, where the government denied the indigenous families the rights to bring up their children. Children were literary stolen from the families and subjected to assimilation processes. The most challenging bit of the dispossession process was the fact that the government relied on common-wealth laws to suppress the rebellion that would come from the indigenous people. The position of the indigenous communities was important before the ideologies of dispossession, and even the settlers respected the ownership rights of the indigenous Australians. However, with the erosion of social justice and self-determination, the indigenous communities have been left as squatters in their country with privilege being accorded to the whites and the few civilized individuals who have denied their indigenous identity.
The recognition of the land ownership rights for the Aboriginal and the Torres Strait Islanders can help the communities in overcoming the impacts of colonial racism, dispossession, and displacement. The events following the declaration of independence have left many Indigenous residents wondering whether the post-colonial era is better than the pre-colonial era. However, recognizing the rights of the indigenous residents can make the communities feel acknowledged as Australians. The recognition of the indigenous communities is crucial in bringing the nation together and closing the racial gaps that have been widening day in day out.
In Sum, Australia, as a country, is facing a national crisis, although the government gives privileges to the whites and few civilized indigenous residents. The novel, “Talking to my Country” by Stan Grant gives a memoir of a past that has caused an era of the suffering of the indigenous communities in their country. The recognition of the land ownership rights of the indigenous communities could, however, help in overcoming the colonial racism, dispossession, and displacement and could unite the Australian nation.
References
Coulthard, G. (2010). Place against empire: Understanding Indigenous anti-colonialism. Affinities: A Journal of Radical Theory, Culture, and Action.
Evans, R. L. (2018). Battles for Indigenous self-determination in the neoliberal period: a comparative study of Bolivian Indigenous and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ resistance (Master’s thesis, University of Sydney).
Grant, S. (2016). Talking to my country. Scribe Publications.