Thoughts on Comparative Aboriginal Studies

…It is vital to consider the need for material presence of the ‘local’: so the research and training we carry out in the field of post-colonialism, whatever else it does, must always find ways to address the local, if only on the order of material applications. If we overlook the local, and the political implications of the research we produce, we risk turning the work of our field into the playful operations of an academic glass-bead game, whose project will remain at best a description of global relations, and not a script for their change...at the level of the local, at the level of material applications, post-colonialism must address the material exigencies of colonialism and neocolonialism, including the neocolonialism of Western academic institutions themselves.
- Stephen Slemon


Research itself has been termed a colonizing construct by Aboriginal writers, a formation that the Maori scholar Linda Smith summarized as ‘they came, they saw, they named, they claimed.’ Smith states that ‘from the vantage point of the colonized, a position from which I write and choose to privilege, the term ‘research’ is probably one of the dirtiest words in the Indigenous world’s vocabulary’. Literary studies has not escaped its share of blame in this regard. Though the discipline deals mainly with written and performance texts, and not human subjects as in the social sciences, critical imperialism pervades the reading of texts from minority cultures such as Aboriginal cultures. The burgeoning industry of post-colonial studies, in particular, absorbs ‘new’ and ‘emergent’ literatures within its particular discourse. My research engages with this phenomenon, and questions if alternative or syncretic reading frameworks might instead be developed for these literatures. There have been numerous critical histories of Indian writing in English, or Canadian or Australian literature, where the idea of the ‘nation’ is paradigmatic. There have also been histories of minority literature, such as Penny Petrone’s Native Literature in Canada: From the Oral Tradition to the Present or Adam Shoemaker’s Black Words, White Page: Aboriginal Literature 1929 – 1988. These have generally adopted a pan-Aboriginal approach. The critical approaches have ranged from the teleological and historical (as in Petrone’s study) to the thematic and political (as in Shoemaker’s work). My aim in this work is to engage with the possibility of more culture-specific and location-specific histories of Aboriginal literatures in English, and explore theoretical frameworks that are not appropriative or homogenising, for the reading of these literatures.

On the surface of things, there are many reasons why Aboriginal literatures are too easily assumed to be part of the assortment of literatures termed ‘post-colonial.’ There are many aspects of cultural resistance and survival that are similar to patterns seen in former colonies such as India or various African states, and these parallels need to be scrutinized before moving on to the need for a separate aesthetics for Aboriginal peoples.

The preservation or revival of the mother tongue as a form of cultural self-assertiveness and an expression of a community’s nationalist ideology is a phenomenon common to most former colonies. It is also is seen in many Aboriginal communities today. In addition, postcolonial theory sees the appropriation of the colonizer’s language to make it bear the burden of one’s cultural experience as a manifestation the experience of hybridity in the wake of contact between the colonizer and the colonized. A characteristic of most formerly colonized societies is the development of hybrid or new englishes, where native grammar and vocabulary modifies the intruding language. Thus, a socially acceptable form of bilingualism develops within the (post)colonial community in which both the mother tongue and the colonizer’s tongue (if not one and the same) have an important function for the community. In Aboriginal cultures as in many African ones, the movement between orality and literacy in Aboriginal literatures is a crucial factor in the development of narratives, both fictional and ‘factual’, about the past and present of the people.

The colonial discourse entailed a clash of weltanschauungen or world views, and in all cases of colonization, linguistic imperialism involving the manipulation and dissemination of the written word was a major characteristic. The Europeans’ ‘litteral advantage’, to use the phrase of the 17th century travel writer Samuel Purchas, has been memorably analysed by Tzvetan Todorov in his book The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other. The clash of oral and literate culture is seen in the actual loss of land and territory suffered by many Aboriginal peoples, through the signing of treaties and other forms of negotiation that equated written text and territory. Among Aboriginal peoples in North America, for instance, diplomatic agreements were traditionally concluded verbally and usually in the presence of those concerned and promises thus made in public became part of the collective memory of the community.

The disruptive potential of literacy is also evident in another common feature of colonialism, the drive to alter native religious beliefs. European missionaries were quick to identify the associations that colonized peoples made between technological advances and religious prowess, and contrasted the permanence of the printed biblical word with the supposed impermanence of oral narratives. However, many Aboriginal belief systems persisted, in whole or part, developing forms of syncretism and compartmentalization that preserved their faiths or allowed the subterranean persistence of Aboriginal practices within Christianity.

One factor that distinguishes settler societies from other former colonies is the minority status of the colonized, as opposed to colonies such as India where the colonized were numerically a majority. As a result, the perceived minority status of the community within the colonial state leads to two strands within the collective consciousness of the community. There are keepers of the community’s cultural heritage, for example elders, who emphasize tradition as a barrier against uncontrolled imitation. ‘Progressive’ elements on the other hand attempt to introduce changes that might be useful for the community to adapt to new situations. In the later stages of the colonial encounter traditionalists cannot completely isolate the traditions of their community from outside influences, and so the role of individuals who cross cultures, as well as cultural production that addresses or bridges opposed ‘worlds’, becomes crucial. This pattern can be seen to have similarities with developments in the national movements of other former colonies as well.

Thus, contemporary Fourth World cultures have many features that can allow them to be too easily subsumed within the rubric of post-colonial studies. One of the ways in which Euro-American cultural imperialism is exercised in the colonial context is by the creating of separate aesthetic standards for the reading of mainstream and ‘marginal’ literatures. On one hand, literature that adheres to Western standards is seen as classical or universal, while literature that deviates from this norm is sidelined as primitive, political, or regional. While the empowerment of the marginal voice as a function of post-colonial studies has become a given, the gradual ‘colonization’ of Aboriginal literature by post-colonial theory in the last decade or so demands that the notion of decolonization be stressed. Problematizing post-colonial theory can be useful for decolonizing research on Aboriginal writing. It is also necessary to engage theoretically with my own bias as a cultural outsider and an academic located in the ‘Third World’ and specializing in ‘post-colonial’ literature. It is too easy, with this bias, to seek similarities, using familiar theoretical vocabulary, between Aboriginal literature and the nebulous amalgamation called ‘postcolonial’ literature. Post-colonial literary studies has developed certain normative features that ‘assimilate’ Aboriginal writing into a set vocabulary of analysis, thus continuing the legacy of cultural imperialism even as it aspires to the status of an ideologically emancipatory set of reading frameworks. Thus, the first chapter engages with the problems of looking at Aboriginal writing through the lenses of post-colonial theory, and with the trend in post-colonial studies of ignoring the material and politico-legal contexts of narratives. These problems, I argue, must be understood and overcome.

Much of my discussion is motivated by the need to actively de-enter the Western academy as the exclusive locus of authorizing power and to emphasize the power of the so-called ‘margins.’ Given the fact that different cultures cognitively organize experiences in different ways, different frameworks are required to understand them, and the chapter attempts to highlight Aboriginal points of view in developing aesthetic and analytical frameworks for the reading of texts.

Rather than read Aboriginal writing in the context of other postcolonial writing, I choose to deconstruct the colonial category of ‘Aboriginal’ by focusing specifically on the cultural production of two First Peoples, the Nyoongar in Australia, and the Anishnaabe in Canada. Aboriginal experiences have been significantly different from those experiences of peoples loosely described as the Third World, and postcolonial studies have focused mainly on the latter. Fourth World literary studies is not an appendage of Third World studies. Aboriginal literatures, despite obvious cultural, geographical, political and linguistic differences, share certain distinctive features. Approaches that seek to establish lateral connections among the various Aboriginal literatures can be useful academically, culturally and politically. Admittedly this assumption is similar to the one that informs the field of postcolonial studies, which places literatures from vastly different countries together under the same umbrella. However, James Clifford observes in “Indigenous Articulations,” that to see chains of equivalence, such as pan-Indigenous, Indigenous Arctic or Fourth World coalitions, which necessarily and strategically emphasize commonality as opposed to difference as articulated phenomena, is not necessarily to see them as inauthentic, or merely political, invented or opportunistic. Linda Smith, James Youngblood Henderson and other Aboriginal scholars speak of a commonality of experience that allows for the framing of decolonization theory for the Fourth World. While Aboriginal literatures have gained considerable critical attention and respect in the last decade, critics have in the main been concerned with the pan-continental traditions rather than the very specific one-to-one approach that I adopt.

I chose to focus on Nyoongar and Ojibwe writing specifically in my course, just as earlier we have focused on Marathi Dalit literature in translation, as I feel that learning in depth about one community can help develop the reading and interpretive skills necessary for exploring the diversity of work that is available under the rubric of Subaltern Literatures. Nyoongar literature has a well-defined body of writing in English, and there have already been attempts to read that literature as a collective entity, for example, Robyn McCarron’s theorizing of a Nyoongar literature in English. As many of the Nyoongar writers that I spoke with informally opined, it would be possible to see Nyoongar writing as a distinct body of writing with a territorial and people-specific focus, as opposed to Koori or Murri writing, which do not refer to a single ethnic group. Ojibwe writing, too, could be similarly seen as a body of writing in English that had strong roots in a single land-based culture, however internally diverse it was. As Gerald Vizenor has commented, ‘Anishinaabe writers have been quite distinguished in the history of published material. I think among all tribal groups in America the Anishinaabe have probably the largest number of writers, going back to George Copway and William Warren, the first historian.’ The availability of material that would allow me to go beyond the fuzzy notions of ‘Aboriginal Literature’ prevalent in Indian academia today, and enable the exploration of the idea of literary studies based on culture-specific and people-centric readings encouraged me to choose Nyoongar and Ojibwe writing in English. Of course, these literatures have a vast body of orature and literature that is not in English, and ours is only a very partial study on account of our inability to engage with this part of their literatures.