Other Eyes: The half-caste in Luhrmann's Australia

 

The AIS team is heading off to Canberra in a fortnight. The National Museum of Australia is convening an interdisciplinary conference addressing Baz Luhrmann’s Australia and we’re all presenting papers.  Films like Australia can be easy targets for academics and I hope I can temper my discussion with some acknowledgement of where the film suceeds.

The expansiveness of Luhrmann's vision of Australia and his understanding of a mass-viewing audience goes without saying.  However Australia aspires to be more than popular entertainment and accordingly warrants consideration and critique.  Though set in the 1940s, in northern Australia, the film invites the Australian viewer to interpret it in a larger framework, resonant with contemporary Aboriginal-Settler concerns. From this perspective we are obliged to note some of the film’s shortcomings. For instance, the issue of sovereignty is never addressed and Lady Sarah Ashley’s tenure of Faraway Downs is unproblematised.

In my conference paper I will address another major shortcoming - the manner in which it attempts to resolve the ‘half-caste problem’ as embodied in the figure of Nullah.  At the conclusion of the film Nullah goes off with his ‘full-blood’ grandfather to be initiated and to become not only a proper Aboriginal but also a human being. Underlying this is the racialist belief that the ‘half-caste’ is a being, in a sense, without a caste. This 'romantic pessimism' is still present in some popular conceptions of the relation between Aboriginals and traditional culture.  

Co-optation or Survival?

2009 has been one of the most productive years ever for Australian Indigenous Studies in the Faculty of Arts. Last week we had the inaugural Narrm Oration and the launch of the Murrup Barak Institute for Indigenous Development. Professor Ian Anderson has been a key figure in conceiving, and guiding these initiatives to completion.

As part of the Oration there was an academic procession of Aboriginal staff. I knew immediately I received the invitation that I should accept but remained ambivalent about the academic procession and Indigenous co-optation into the resulting pomp and circumstance. Henry Louis Gates' description of ‘official marginality’ and universities still has a certain measure of truth: 

once scorned now exalted. You think of Sally Field’s [1985] address to the Motion Picture Academy when she received her Oscar, ‘You like me! You really like me!” we authorised others shriek into the microphone,  exultation momentarily breaking our dour countenances.’

Actually the Oration was a profound and satisfying event. The Oration by Professor Mason Durie, a Maori, and Deputy Vice Chancellor of Massey University, New Zealand, was wise reflection on the relationship between Indigenous peoples and universities.  Arriving a few minutes late I was struck by the gowned figures of my colleagues: Aboriginal  academic and professional staff, and Aboriginal students, waiting quietly in the order they would enter the theatre. As sometimes happens in moments of intensity I had the experience of being both participant and observer. My final thoughts?  'We're gonna shout to the top...'

Sally Field's Oscar acceptance speech

Goodwill

We had the launch of the Australian Indigenous Studies major on Tuesday - it’s important to mark achievements, otherwise the academic year is reduced to an infinite set of problems to be solved and deadlines to be met.

It was also an occasion to thank some of those who 

contribute to the success of the Australian Indigenous Studies Program. Academic staff give their time to teach into it; tutors take on the challenge of working through concepts and ideas with students; professional staff ensure that our administrative infrastructure is sound and that we are appropriately advised.

Underlying this is the less quantifiable fact of goodwill. Without it an interdisciplinary program has no future. Goodwill can be unacknowledged but its absence is immediately obvious.

At the launch: Ruby Lowe, Diane Jones, Odette Kelada and Erin LaRue

Pecan Summer

  

I had a pleasant interlude on Friday before the mid-semester break. (Sorry, I’m slipping into bloggese.) Deborah Cheetham and the Wilin Centre for Indigenous Arts and Cultural Development held their Spring Recital. The Joan Hammond Recital Room at the VCA was full to capacity; Aboriginal and Settler opera singers performed classic arias and excerpts from Ms Cheetham’s  opera Pecan Summer for an appreciative audience. Pecan Summer intertwines Deborah Cheetham’s personal history with communal history and gives meaning and profundity to that banal term ‘shared history’. The excerpts we heard were superb. Pecan Summer will premier next year and the production has auditioned for the 2010 Melbourne Festival.

http://www.deborahcheetham.com/pecan_summer

AIS Major up and running

I’ve just received news that our proposed major in Australian Indigenous Studies has been signed off on by the final university committee. The approval was a lengthy process as the proposal was vetted by ascending layers of university committees.

 

It’s the only interdisciplinary Australian Indigenous Studies major in Australia, founded on the principles of intellectual exchange, interdisciplinarity,  and social relevance.

 

The major itself was developed during 2008 - a difficult year for everyone in the Faculty of Arts, and it would have been easy to walk away, but I know from experience that its often in times of organisational turmoil, or what Dabrowski would term ‘creative disintegration’, that opportunities for innovation and rapid development arise.

 

The AIS team is now developing teaching templates for all the AIS major subjects for 2010. The challenge is to develop ways to maximise the intellectual inputs of lecturers perpetually short of time.

Foundation for the Future

Our First Year course Australia Indigenous Studies has 388 students enrolled in it this semester. When we ran it for the first time in 2008 it had 188 students. One of our goals has been to transform possible perceptions of Australian Indigenous Studies   as a minority interest field to one of mainstream relevance. It’s a privilege to have so many University of Melbourne students choosing to do this subject and it’s the foundation for the future of Australian Indigenous Studies at the University of Melbourne.