'History, Identity and Politics:
Ruby Langford Ginibi's Don't Take Your Love to Town'
Penny van Toorn

In the Shadow of "History Proper"

Until the early 1970s, Aboriginal people's experiences of history remained hidden from wider public view by the colonial myth of Britain's "peaceful settlement" of Australia. Yet vivid memories of a past that was anything but peaceful lived in the minds of many Aboriginal people. Although these recollections circulated by word of mouth in Aboriginal communities, they remained largely inaudible to the non-Aboriginal public. Like other indigenous populations, Aboriginal people were thought to be a people without history. Their stories about the past were classified as myths, legends, or folktales. These oral modes of remembrance were contrasted with "history proper," which Europeans claimed was exclusive to Western cultures. Disqualified as speakers of history, and without access to the technological means to transmit their knowledge to a wide audience, Aboriginal voices were largely excluded from historical debate. White versions of the past gained a monopoly on historical truth: White history became the only history. If Aboriginal people were included in the picture at all, it was usually as primitive savages who impeded economic and material development, or as passive victims of history's iron laws of progress.

This white version of history formed part of what all Australian children learned in the course of their primary school education. For generations, we were taught that Australia was an empty land, a silent continent whose history began in 1770 with Captain Cook's discovery of the east coast. The heroes of colonial Australian history were those plucky white explorers and settlers who braved the perils of fire, flood, drought, and "marauding blacks." These heroic white pioneers were said to have "opened up" the land, and to have spread the light of British civilisation to the furthest reaches of globe. Australia was seen as a land of opportunity and spectacular progress, the ideas of progress and prosperity being reflected in the titles of history books such as The New World in the South (1913), Australia Advances (1938), Wilderness to Wealth (1950) and Triumph in the Tropics (1959). Australian history was understood as a series of changes for the better, and countless cruelties and injustices were inflicted on the indigenous people of Australia in the name of progress.

Ruby Langford Ginibi's Don't Take Your Love to Town was first published in 1988, the year Anglo-Australia celebrated its first two hundred years. As Europeans measured history, Australia seemed a young country, a country with a very short history. This myth was overturned in 1988, when the officially organised Bicentenary Celebrations provided the most public forum ever for Aboriginal people to proclaim that they had already been here for tens of thousands of years when the first British settlement was founded in 1788.

On 26 January 1988, placards and T-shirts printed with the words "White Australia has a Black History" were televised across the nation and overseas. This slogan pointed to the shadow side of white-Australia's shining deeds, the history of violence, dispossession, exploitation, and the breaking up of Aboriginal families. When it was first published, Don't Take thus joined a chorus of Aboriginal voices speaking out publicly and powerfully against whitewashed versions of Australia's history.

History and Autobiography

The 1980s and 90s have seen a spectacular growth in Aboriginal art, film, theatre, music, dance, and writing. Through these media, Aboriginal people have been able to speak both to each other and to the wider non-Aboriginal public. In all these areas of cultural activity, one of the most consistent concerns has been to set the record straight about White Australia's Black History. The number of university trained Aboriginal historians is small, but there is a large army of Aboriginal writers, artists, film makers, dramatists, etc. who are intent upon telling the past as it was experienced by Aboriginal people. Autobiography has been a very effective means of achieving this objective.

The advantage of autobiography as a historical genre is that it brings the past "up close and personal." While an academic historical researcher might, for example, interpret historical records relating to governments' "native policies," the Aboriginal autobiographer tells us what it was like to be on the receiving end of those policies. They can tell us at first hand how decisions made by politicians, bureaucrats, and social workers affected their day to day lives. Ruby Langford Ginibi, for example, was subject to the assimilation policy, which meant splitting up Aboriginal communities and, as she explains,

putting us in among whites to see if we could live together, but because there were so few black families there in 1972 we felt very isolated from our friends and our culture.... You also weren't able to have anyone come and stay without permission from the Commission. It reminded me of the missions. The rule was useless in our culture, where survival often depended on being able to stay with friends and relatives. (174)

Unlike the traditional historian who deduces the facts from written records, the autobiographer writes history as they experienced it at first hand. Ginibi's autobiography has the truth-value of an eye-witness account. It is a little slice of Australia's history as lived by one woman, and as told to readers straight from the horse's mouth.

The autobiographical form allows readers to feel they know Ginibi personally, and to see her as an individual, rather than in terms of racial stereotypes. As Ginibi shares her life with us, she allows us to come in close, so that we care about what happens to her, and can empathise with her sufferings and joys. Ginibi's autobiography works to open up a channel of personal communication. For many white city-dwellers, this may be the only window they have ever had into an Aboriginal person's life-world; it may be the only time a Koori voice has spoken to them.

Aboriginal Unity and Diversity

Although readers of Don't Take may feel they know Ginibi as a unique individual, her life-history is not entirely unique. Ginibi has stated repeatedly that her story is typical in many ways: by writing her own life-story, she therefore also describes conditions under which many Aboriginal women of her generation lived. One individual can speak for the group in so far as their destiny was determined by the same historical forces. Aboriginal people's lives were controlled at every turn by racially discriminatory laws and policies aimed precisely at setting them apart as a people, and curtailing their freedoms and opportunities. When Ginibi recalls sitting in the segregated seats in the picture theatre, or giving birth to her babies in a room out the back of the local hospital, or carting heavy tins of water from the creek for her family to drink and wash, or taking care to show the welfare officer she is a good, responsible mother--when Ginibi recounts all these experiences, she is writing not only of her own life, but also of hundreds of other Aboriginal women whose stories would be similar in many respects to her own.

This is not to say that Aboriginal people's historical experience was absolutely uniform across all periods and places in Australia. Some experiences were common to all; some were not. Ginibi's story contributes to our understanding of Aboriginal history not only by being typical, but also by being different from, say, the life of a northern territory cattle-worker. Like pieces in a mosaic, Aboriginal people's autobiographies, taken together, form a composite picture of the Aboriginal history, in all its variety. The building of this big mosaic is part of the process through which Aboriginal people from different parts of Australia--urban, rural, and remote areas--have in recent decades been forming a sense of themselves as a national, pan-Aboriginal community. While many Aboriginal communities take great pride in their uniqueness, they also see themless as having interests in common with other communities. There is increasing recognition amongst diverse Aboriginal groups that in certain political contexts--at the 1988 Bicentenary protest, for example, or when negotiating with the Federal government over Native Title legislation--Aboriginal people's interests are best served if they unite and speak together with a single powerful voice. History, social identity, and politics are tied inseparably together.

Don't Take works to document and weave community connections. It is a book with a huge cast of characters--although to call them "characters" is to imply that they are fictitious people. Better, then, to say that Ginibi's story includes an unusually large number of individuals (Black and White) who lived in historical actuality. No matter whether these people are beloved relatives and longtime friends, or whether they pass fleetingly through her life and are never seen again, she does them all the honour of documenting their existence. (In a few cases, people's names have been changed to protect their privacy, but they and those who knew them would recognise them when they read the book.) No-one is too insignificant for Ginibi to leave out. There are literally hundreds of people included in the book. Ginibi's text works to bind people together as a community. It is a place where many people's stories intersect with Ginibi's own. What is happening here is that Ginibi is documenting her extended community, bringing them all onto the stage of her own personal history. The significance of this documentation becomes clear in the light of the fact that before the 1967 referendum, Aboriginal people were not included on the Australian census. Their existence as individuals was not officially registered. They had no place in the official historical records of population.

The Growth of Ginibi's Historical and Political Consciousness

Over the course of Ginibi's narrative in Don't Take, the scope of her own vision broadens out. When she was a child, her world was relatively small: she was aware of her immediate physical surrounds, her family and childhood friends. But as she grows up, and the scope of her vision begins to expand, she comes to realise that her own struggles are not simply her fate alone. The difficulties she faces are not just a matter of personal misfortune, but are part of a larger historical pattern of oppression. One of the central themes of Ginibi's autobiography is the development of her own historical and political awareness. Partly through the act of writing itself--getting her memories, thoughts, and feelings out into words--she comes to understand the meaning of her life in a new light.

A crucial year in the growth of Ginibi's historical awareness is 1964, a year when she establishes connections with a variety of different Aboriginal groups. In Chapter 10, "Corroboree/Phaedra," she recalls attending her first meeting of the Aboriginal Progressive Association. There she meets urban Aboriginal activists Charles Perkins and Lester Bostock, and is elected editor of the Association's newsletter, Churringa (a role her husband, Lance, forces her to give up).

Around this time, Ginibi and other members of the APA attend a traditional dance performance at the Elizabethan Theatre in Newtown by a Aboriginal group from Mornington Island. The dance speaks to her deeply, and with other APA members, she goes backstage to meet the performers. At first the dancers are shy and wary; they see Ginibi and her friends as strangers. But the dancers break into big smiles and reach out warmly to shake their hands as soon as they learn that Ginibi and her party are not strangers but are "part of them" (116).

With the APA Ginibi also attends a National Aborigines Day at Martin Place. There, for the first time in many years, she hears a man singing in her own Bundjalung language. The singer turns out to be Uncle Jim Morgan. Some time later, she receives a newspaper cutting of Jim Morgan's obituary. A link with the past has gone. But in the obituary notice she reads that Jim had made many recordings for the Richmond River Historical Society. This information excites her greatly: "This meant I could find out some more about my history. I decided to write to the RRHS for the tapes" (117).

What we see in this chapter is both a recognition of the differences between Aboriginal communities, and the formation of a sense of solidarity between them. As Ginibi connects with the urban activists, members of a traditional community from the far north, and her own Bundjalung roots, she recognises that despite their differences, there is a level at which these disparate Aboriginal groups form a single pan-Aboriginal community: they are part of the peoples who were here first, and they have all survived and in their own ways resisted the harsh historical consequences of colonialism.

Yet Aboriginal history includes not only oppression and suffering: it is also about heroism, achievement, and victory against terrible odds. Acknowledging White Australia's Black history involves recognising that Aboriginal people both resisted and assisted white explorers. They fought to defend their traditional lands, and served in the Australian armed forces in two world wars. Many Aboriginal women and men helped build the nation's (unevenly distributed) wealth by working for decades as unpaid rural labourers and domestic servants. Ginibi's own story is a success story--"the ultimate battler's tale"--and she is concerned to remind us that there are numerous other stories of outstanding achievement among Koori people. Looking at the posters and pamphlets at the Aboriginal Medical Service, she sees

the endless photos of Kooris and their achievements.... I though how this kind of information hardly ever got printed in the Herald, the Sun, the Mirror. You got historical articles with headlines like "Aboriginals Treated as Vermin." (231)

Reconciliation and equality depend on an accurate understanding of the past and a thorough appreciation of how the past affects the present. But although it is necessary that the wrongs of the past be acknowledged and redressed, it is also important not to let the stereotype of the victim overshadow the achievements of Aboriginal people.

The History of the Present

In recent years, Australian history has been corrected to acknowledge that "settlement" was neither peaceful nor entirely legal. School curricula have been revised to allow students to understand that, from an Aboriginal perspective, white "settlement" was a shocking and violent invasion. Perhaps because elements of White Australia's Black history have entered the realm of public knowledge, some non-Aboriginal people (Prime Minister John Howard, for example) want to cut the past off from the present. They want to draw a sharp line between "then" and "now," place the past at a distance from the present, and situate all wrongs and brutalities in that mythical far-away place they call the past. Today, they proclaim, we have entered the post-colonial era. They speak of the past as though it were another country. In particular, they want to avoid feeling guilty about the brutalities perpetrated by their forebears. "Those actions were in the past," they say; "they have nothing to do with us now." They then suggest that Aboriginal people should contribute to the reconciliation process by forgetting about the past, and reconciling themselves to things as they are.

By contrast, when Aboriginal people speak about the past, they often emphasise its continuity with the present. As the Oogeroo Noonuccal put it in her poem "The Past":

Let no one say the past is dead, The past is all about us and within.
(Inside Black Australia, p.99)

When Aboriginal people look at the land, their cultures, and their bodies and minds, they see many many scars--evidence of the continued effects of the past in the present. They also see the hypocrisy of those who celebrate ANZAC Day and the 1988 Bicentenary, while urging Aboriginal people to forget the past.

Don't Take spans the period from Ginibi's birth in 1934 up to late 1987: that is roughly the last quarter of the two hundred year history since the coming of the British. It is precisely here--somewhere in the middle fifty years of the twentieth century--that people try to cut the cruel colonial past off from the enlightened post-colonial present. The fifty years covered in Ginibi's story are the missing link in histories told by those who want to keep the bad old days entirely separate from the present. But Ginibi's life-story eradicates any hard and fast line between past and present. In its continuity, her story implies that time does not divide itself naturally into epochs: the most important thing about the past is that it isn't over.

Dividing the continuity of time into "past" and "present" is a strategy used by those who want no avoid making amends for wrongs from which they have benefited, wrongs whose hurtful legacies continue to be felt by Aboriginal people here and now. Ginibi was born when the killing times were hardly over in the north - (the Coniston massacre occurred in 1928) - and her life shows that the past and its effects flow forward into the present. The line between "history" and "now" is both arbitrary and artificial. Ginibi's story shows that the present is a consequence of the past. How can people be expected to let go of the past when they must struggle every day against its legacies? Ginibi's story also shows that some of the older controls and discriminatory practices, far from having been eradicated, have merely mutated and continued operating into the present.

One serious legacy of colonialism is the high rate of Aboriginal people's imprisonment and deaths in custody. This problem has its historical roots in the era when Aboriginal people were imprisoned as law breakers for defending their country and kin. But the past reaches into the present. Racial prejudice persists in sections of the police force and the wider community, as the story of Ginibi's son, Nobby, clearly illustrates. In addition, economic, educational, and social disadvantage--the factors most likely to lead to imprisonment--are for Aboriginal people a consequence of events that had their roots in the in the early colonial period. Nobby's story cannot be understood in isolation from his mother's story; her story, in turn, cannot be understood in isolation from that of her parents. So the chain of causes and effects goes back and back and back, from the present moment to 1788.

The history of the present is documented in the daily newspapers. Ginibi quotes extensively from newspapers in Don't Take, especially when recounting the time of Nobby's imprisonment and escape. The newspaper passages serve three main purposes in the text. First, they dramatise the moment to moment unfolding of events during the time of Nobby's escape from prison. Cut off from Nobby himself, Ginibi relies on the daily papers for knowledge of his whereabouts and his safety: "I realised I was reading the papers to find out about my family" (187). Second, the newspaper quotes authenticate Ginibi's story. They show that Nobby's escapades really happened: if something is recorded in the paper it must be true. But sometimes the newspapers are shown to be giving false or misleading accounts--and this leads to the third reason they are included in Ginibi's text. Ginibi reproduces a newspaper article that falsely quotes her as fearing that certain criminals will try to kill her son. She is shocked to realise the journalist "made up the last sentence, totally" (186). When the papers follow the police line and describe Nobby as "dangerous," Ginibi speaks out in defence of her son to a newspaper reporter: "He wouldn't hurt a fly," she says, "Don't shoot my son down like a mad dog" (186). She also includes some letters written to her by Nobby which show him in a much more human light than the newspaper reports. One of the purposes Ginibi tells her story is to correct the historical record. Today's newspapers, like the old history books, can present a one-sided view of events.

Penny van Toorn
Department of English, University of Sydney