One of the absolute joys of teaching literature is that you get to look through other people’s eyes and see the world as they see it. I particularly love to teach the texts that challenge our views on diversity. ‘The Secret River’ by Kate Grenville is such a text. Wait a minute, I hear you say, but Grenville is a white Australian woman, and her perspective comes from the privilege of a European descendant enjoying social status and access to power. Just so. But studying ‘The Secret River’ means that I also need to start to see and understand those marginalised within London society in the 18th century, as well as those for whom the impact of transportation and colonisation has created a wound never healed.
For those concerned, have a listen to the wonderful Sydney Theatre Company’s many resources and videos, frequently by elders from First Nations People, and you will see how Grenville creates an entry point for me, as a white western woman, to hear, see and hopefully start to understand a little about what we really did.
One of the ideas that was particularly of interest to me was the idea of songlines. For Aboriginal people, this is not just a family tradition or even just cultural heritage (although it is that), but also a rootedness in identity and personal history. A song is carried and taught because it is a kind of map of the country and what can be found where. It also shows interconnectedness with other groups. Songlines are filled with important symbols and give the codes for relationship, including relationship with the earth and sky. For many Aboriginal groups, the songs themselves have been passed down from ancient spirits. The book has a number of references to the communal singing of the Dharug as they camp by the river; the same river where the newly paroled settlers want to claim land. It is clear how well they know and understand the land: Thornhill, the protagonist, has never ‘had dinner revealed… He had never so much as glimpsed the things the women got…’ and he has a jealous admiration for the kind of ease with which Aborginals live with the land. That word ‘revealed’ shows just how much he considers the provision of food as found, not hunted or worked for. The singing of the Dharug contrasts with the homesickness of Sal, Thornhill’s wife. ‘She sang them the old London songs, her voice a wavering thread in the attentive air.’ Perhaps subconsciously inspired by the land around her, she too maps out history and landmarks, for example when singing ‘Orange and Lemons’ ‘…that’s in Eastcheap, Sal was explaining, Dick, you remember what I telled you yesterday about Eastcheap?’ The trauma is not just for the Aborginals whose land is occupied, but also for those transported who have now broken their songlines with the maps they knew and the resourcing they could access. This interruption of the song is a broken identity.
The other concept that you are confronted with is the differing concept of ownership. Thornhill is used to the restrictions of London and the demarcation of boundaries. ‘There were no signs that the blacks felt the place belonged to them. They had no fences that said this is mine.’ Thornhill struggles to understand a worldview so different to the one he knows. His is a concept of individuals protecting something for themselves, which is an immediate clash with Aboriginal concepts of community and legacy. The earth is in relationship with people, not owned by people. This wilful misunderstanding of the relationship to land is why we the colonisers said it was ‘terra nullius’ – a verdict that would be overturned in 1992. It’s a difficult idea in the west to get our heads round, but imperative that we must at least try if there is to be anything like justice for First Nations people.
It may only be a start, and I admit there is a long way to go, but teaching texts that force a different concept of how life should be seems a good way to start to get some understanding of the real loses and grievances some people groups have. Whose history are we telling here? The story is centred on Will and Sal as they learn to live in such a different environment, but the other outcome I would hope, will be compassion for the others whose lives were so devasted as collateral by transportation.
