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50books_poc# 29 - Kevin Gilbert, Living Black: Blacks Talk to Kevin Gilbert (1977)
This collection of interviews won the 1978 National Book Council Award for Australian Literature. It must have been ground breaking at the time - a space for Aboriginal people to express their own views on the nature of community.
The interviews were collected in outback Australia, on remote communities, in small towns and in cities between 1974 and 1976. There's an assumption that the reader is conversant with Australian politics of the 1970s - the Whitlam dismissal looms large.*
But other issues are also important - issues which are political in the sense that they are about the distribution of power in society. In particular, the issue of the day was the 'return to the lands'. In the late 1970s Aboriginal people began to leave the missions. Some headed into towns and others returned to their own lands and set up small communities there. There are literally hundreds of tiny communities, ranging in size from a dozen people to a couple of thousand scattered across Western Australia alone.
In the 1970s there was enormous optimism about what could be achieved in these communities. (And indeed, a lot has been achieved there, though some communities struggle with violence and drink). It is very interesting to see what the intentions were at the beginning - and that some of the debates going on are the same as those that are now happening. What about communities too small or isolated to be economically sustainable? Who is responsible for providing services? Is it more important to change the mainstream or to preserve your own culture? None of these issues have been - or really can be - resolved, and it is fascinating to read early insights into the conundrum.
There's a lot of political energy in those interviewed - not surprising as the campaign to get the vote had only just ended a decade before. There's a great deal of bitterness about discrimination.
These interviews are very interesting - some things have changed greatly but much remains exactly as it was in 1977.
* For the benefit of non-Australian readers, in 1975 the Governor-General of Australia dismissed Gough Whitlam as Prime Minister and appointed Malcolm Fraser as a caretaker Prime Minister. The dismissal was the most dramatic event in the history of the Australian federation. For the first time, an unelected vice-regal representative had removed from office a government which commanded a majority in the House of Representatives.
This collection of interviews won the 1978 National Book Council Award for Australian Literature. It must have been ground breaking at the time - a space for Aboriginal people to express their own views on the nature of community.
The interviews were collected in outback Australia, on remote communities, in small towns and in cities between 1974 and 1976. There's an assumption that the reader is conversant with Australian politics of the 1970s - the Whitlam dismissal looms large.*
But other issues are also important - issues which are political in the sense that they are about the distribution of power in society. In particular, the issue of the day was the 'return to the lands'. In the late 1970s Aboriginal people began to leave the missions. Some headed into towns and others returned to their own lands and set up small communities there. There are literally hundreds of tiny communities, ranging in size from a dozen people to a couple of thousand scattered across Western Australia alone.
In the 1970s there was enormous optimism about what could be achieved in these communities. (And indeed, a lot has been achieved there, though some communities struggle with violence and drink). It is very interesting to see what the intentions were at the beginning - and that some of the debates going on are the same as those that are now happening. What about communities too small or isolated to be economically sustainable? Who is responsible for providing services? Is it more important to change the mainstream or to preserve your own culture? None of these issues have been - or really can be - resolved, and it is fascinating to read early insights into the conundrum.
There's a lot of political energy in those interviewed - not surprising as the campaign to get the vote had only just ended a decade before. There's a great deal of bitterness about discrimination.
These interviews are very interesting - some things have changed greatly but much remains exactly as it was in 1977.
* For the benefit of non-Australian readers, in 1975 the Governor-General of Australia dismissed Gough Whitlam as Prime Minister and appointed Malcolm Fraser as a caretaker Prime Minister. The dismissal was the most dramatic event in the history of the Australian federation. For the first time, an unelected vice-regal representative had removed from office a government which commanded a majority in the House of Representatives.
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