Justin Olmstead 4492529

1
Bias offensively Australian? The VCE English Study Design requires that
one text for study be Australian. To what extent is this a reasonable
requirement, and should it apply to other year levels?
I am going to tell you a story. It's not your story it's my story (David Gulpilil, Ten Canoes 2006).
Australian educators face many challenges when choosing texts for VCE English
study. Not only is it difficult to situate relevant Australian literature within the
scheme of what Arnold (1869) termed the best that has been thought and
known, exclusion of certain cultures is also an inevitable byproduct of text
selection. The cultural makeup of Australian classrooms, which grow
increasingly diverse, necessitates constant review of class texts. In defiance of
these realities, some scholars dispute the importance of national literature,
emphasizing instead the skills and practices that can be achieved regardless of
the novels, plays or films used as vehicles to obtain this knowledge (2008
p.245). In an ideal world, a texts author or country of origin would be irrelevant,
and cultural biases wouldnt affect its readership or standing within local and
world literature. However, the prevalence of these biases obliges educators to
actively foster their students distinct cultural identities, and literature can
greatly assist with this.
No single text can represent or interest all students within a culturally diverse
VCE English classroom. Its therefore important that educators help students
situate themselves within their own classrooms and their wider community, by
exposing them to texts that directly speak to their culture, and demystify the
cultures of those around them. The various religious affiliations, migrant
backgrounds, and sexual orientations of students must be considered, as well as
an ongoing effort to affirm and celebrate indigenous Australia. Historically,
indigenous Australian ideas of literacy have been neglected. Jose (2013) muses,

[i]n the past, anthropologists rather than literary scholars discussed the cultural
expression of Aboriginal Australians, often with little regard to individual
authorship(in Wheeler, p.9)

This disregard for indigenous Australians and their unique literacies fuelled a
lack of understanding and appreciation as students were spoon-fed Westernised
versions of their national story. According to Schaffer (2013),
it was not until the late 1970s . . . that Indigenous people in Australia were able to find
a public forum for their writings, and a non-Indigenous audience willing to listen (in
Wheeler p.28).
While non-indigenous students are now clearly in a better position to appreciate
Australias indigenous heritage than generations before them, there is still much
ground to be made. As Wheeler (2013) admits, it would be nave to say that
reconciliation between the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal community had been
achieved (p.26). Ceremonial acknowledgements of traditional land owners, and
token Sorry gestures from politicians dont reposition indigeneity as a worthy
and relevant state of being Australian. These gestures merely reinforce a
narrative of an exotic, lost people being wronged by the ruling class. Disgraced
national curriculum reviewer, professor Barry Spurrs recently leaked emails, in
which he labelled Prime Minister Tony Abbott an Abo Lover (The Age 2014),
highlighted the prevailing racism of some of our societys decision makers.
Spurrs sentiments echo Professor G.H. Cowling who, in 1935, declared that
[l]iterary culture is not indigenous, like the gum tree, but is from a European
Justin Olmstead 4492529
2
source, (in Doecke etc al 2011 p.3). These overt expressions of prejudice
highlight the dangers of entrusting curriculum choices to a select few scholars
who are ignorant of individual classroom cultural dynamics. Classroom English
texts should be chosen by individual educators who are able to acknowledge the
contributions Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders peoples have made to
Australias contemporary literature and its literary heritage through their
distinctive ways of representing and communicating knowledge, traditions and
experience (Ausvels English 2014). This is sometimes easier said than done, as
many non-indigenous educators have little knowledge of such representations,
or lack confidence in teaching them.
One of the barriers to indigenous awareness, according to Riddle (2014), is
cultural differences within Australia regarding what it actually means to be
literateand how it differs across cultures. This ignorance to indigenous
literacies has restricted their use in classrooms and further alienated indigenous
students who favour what have been produced in their native languages for
thousands of years (Wheeler 2013, p.24). Unfortunately, there remains a distinct
cultural divide between even the most diligent and culturally sensitive Anglo-
Saxon teachers and their indigenous students. Harrison laments that,
[w]hile there is much continuity between the middle-class Anglo home and the
classroomthe social and cultural practices which Aboriginal children learn at home do
not fit with the assumptions and expectations of the classroom teacher (2004, p.91).
A good place to start bridging this cultural gap is by offering all students with
characters and stories that they can relate to and who speak their language. This
point was poignantly made by American teacher, Michelle Kenney, who learned
the hard way that her African American students struggled to relate to
Steinbecks Of Mice and Men. Kenney (2013) noted that, when it came to the
novels sole African American character, the stable hand Crooks,
[a]n adult reader might see Crooks as a symbol of the destructive effects of racism;
most of my 10th-grade students, still struggling with the concept of metaphor, see a
pathetic, embarrassing character with few redeeming qualities and no means to fight
back.
Indigenous Australian students undoubtedly encounter similar embarrassment
and anxiety when exposed to Anglocentric representations of manipulation and
degradation of their people and way of life. If they are deprived of literature that
speaks to their culture, indigenous students will struggle to become the
confident communicators, imaginative thinkers and informed citizens that
Australian schools aim to produce (Ausvels English 2014).
Its not simply a matter of non-indigenous Australians celebrating a unanimously
approved national literature, while ignoring their indigenous counterparts own
unique Australian identities and literacies. Great insecurity exists regarding what
is, and what should be taught as Australian literature. Poems such as
Mackellars traditional favourite, My Country (1904), are no longer above
reproach. Preoccupied with the sweeping plains and jewel-sea of Australias
landscapes, My Country offers no hint of indigenous problems since European
settlement. Jack Davis Aboriginal Australia (1978), in part a eulogy to
indigenous Australian communities lost since European settlement, could be
studied for its sharp contrast to MacKellars poem. Davis fleeting mention of the
Australian landscape, while he mourns the Warrarra men and the Murray
tribe, provides both indigenous and non-indigenous English students a poignant
Justin Olmstead 4492529
3
repudiation of Mackellars traditionally popular colonial patriotism. According to
Huggan (2007), Australian literature is,
both producer and product of continuing racial tensions and anxieties, born in
part out of a legacy of settler colonialismattributable to the changing place of
a nominally postcolonial nation in an increasingly globalized world (p.vii)
This changing place is difficult for all Australians to reconcile. However, todays
increasingly steady production of texts that champion indigenous Australian
perspectives offers educators a growing arsenal of weapons to break down some
of these cultural differences. Wintons Cloudstreet (1991), Hoopers The Tall Man
(2008), and de Heers Ten Canoes (2006) offer educators three distinct
perspectives on Australian indigeneity for English classrooms.
A perennial classroom staple, Cloudstreets popularity is undeniable, inspiring
stage adaptations and a television series. However, the novels representation of
indigenous Australia has come under scrutiny. McCredden (2013) notes that
Cloudstreet may be too white and that Indigenous Australiais left in the
margins, in its ghostly absences. It seems a little harsh to denigrate Winton on
this point, when its clear that he has attempted to address the indigenous
question as it relates to his non-indigenous characters. But he certainly hasnt
provided many answers. The overt nostalgia that flows through the novel also
acts to reinforce existing stereotypes. Dixon (2005) reasons that this nostalgia is,
by its very nature conservative: it prefers the past to the future; it is at best
ambivalent about modernity; it prefers the local and traditional to the global. (p. 247)
The problem with this conservatism is that Cloudstreet doesnt challenge the
harmful stereotype of indigenous Australians on the periphery of an ever
advancing white Australia, which has dominated the Australian narrative since
colonial settlement. This limitation has been addressed in Savilles stage
adaptation of Cloudstreet, in which Wintons blackfella features more
prominently, and is designed to be read a representative of the land and
aboriginal peoples (Tiewes 2007, p.232). According to Tiewes, the play thus
significantly empowers Aboriginality, which was at best only a background voice
in Wintons text (p.232). This play, in its reimagining of Cloudstreets indigenous
perspective, would serve as an excellent companion to the original text.
Hoopers precisely crafted investigation of indigenous Cameron Doomadgees
death in police custody, The Tall Man, offers educators a more direct and literal
attempt at illuminating the inequalities still experienced by indigenous
Australians. Mahood asserts that Hooper,
gives a voice to people who are rarely heard, makes us care about people who are
usually invisible, and she makes us understand that we are all implicated in Chris
Hurleys actions and in Cameron Doomadgees death (2013).
Its interesting to note that Mahood refers to readers of her online essay as us
and we, when apportioning blame for Doomadgees death, as if we are all non-
indigenous and in the privileged position of choosing to show remorse for
something that happened to a member of them. Regardless, Hoopers text
generated widespread national and global awareness for the plight of indigenous
Australians, for which it garnered valuable cultural capital. The Tall Man also
highlights, according to Taylor (2009),
Justin Olmstead 4492529
4
how discourses of denial and concealment, maintained over the settlements 90-year
history, have supported the policies that, since the death in custody of Mulrunji
Doomadgeehave been repeatedly publicised as a tragic failure (p.36)
Hooper highlights this in the way that indigenous Australians remain under-
represented and less equipped to legally manoeuvre within the Australian
judicial system than white Australians, who still assume the role of ruling class.
Non-Indigenous Ten Canoes director, de Heers direct and painstaking
collaboration with indigenous communities while making his film about ten men
hunting goose eggs is perhaps the most ambitious attempt at imbuing a
traditionally western art form with an authentic indigenous voice. The first ever
movie to be filmed in Indigenous Australian languages, Ten Canoes seeks to,
unpack the assimilative mainstream pedagogy that markets Indigeneity as primitive,
obsolete and un-Australian both out of time and out of place (Renes 2014).
Questions remain as to the actual cohesiveness of the films production unit, and
whether or not de Heer relinquished as much power as the accompanying
documentary suggests. Renes also notes that de Heer was contractually bound
by Western producers to make a film that would appeal to international
audiences and generate a financial gain (2014). However, de Heer makes
considerable, often unprecedented efforts in attempting to reposition indigenous
Australians within the national consciousness. As Nakata notes,
all Indigenous Australianswere positioned as people from the past who were being
catapulted into the present by the presence of intruders into their previously timeless
and unchanging lives not by intruders into their present lives but intruders into
their lives from the past (Nakata in Renes, 2007, 2001).
Ten Canoes narrative seeks to challenge this position and, while rejecting major
Hollywood plot conventions, responds to immediate sociocultural needs of the
films indigenous crew. Also, de Heers negotiation and implementation of the
Ten Canoes Agreement, which decreed that the indigenous Ramingining
community hold sole rights for all of the sets, artefacts and costumes made for
the film, testified to the depth of his commitment to indigenous empowerment.
Davis (2007) asserts that David Gulpilil and other Ramingining elders
negotiated a good deal, forging new ground in the area of recognition of
Indigenous property rights (in Renes, 2014). Any text that affects this kind of
change should be considered for study in English classrooms.
The prosperity of indigenous and non-Australians are both affected by classroom
text choices. Cultural sensitivity and empathy for others are keystones for any
well-rounded individual seeking to prosper in a globalised society. Indigenous
cultures, like any of a societys minorities, benefit greatly from purposeful,
collaborative representation in the classroom. Sharing and appreciating their
literacies will go a long way to giving them the confidence to assume meaningful,
fulfilling roles in Australian society. Keeffe (1992) asserts that,

When we explore the meaning and place of Aboriginal culture in the curriculum, we
are talking about the meaning and place of Aboriginal culture in contemporary
Australia (p.3).
An empowered indigenous Australia means a more prosperous, harmonious
Australia, and educators have the ability, and obligation, to make this a reality.

Justin Olmstead 4492529
5