Peta Stephenson's title The Outsiders Within prepares readers for the many ironies and inversions she characterises in her analysis of Indigenous, Asian and white relationships in Australia . Her central premise is that a rich history of relationships between Indigenous and Asian people has been silenced within the Australian historical record and, further, that white Australia has constructed Asian and Aboriginal people as ‘symbolic projections of white anxiety' (9), while simultaneously seeking to limit interactions between the two groups.
The Outsiders Within successfully inverts many of the stereotypes and assumptions dominant in white Australia regarding Asian and Aboriginal Australians. Subsequently portrayed as ‘new Australians' or invading hordes, Asian people have been visiting Australia since long before European contact. Stephenson comprehensively documents Makassan relationships with northern Australian Aboriginal groups extending back for centuries before white occupation, and records the sadness felt by Aboriginal people when these visits were legislated against (23). She describes how one of the most iconic emblems of Top End Aboriginal cultures, the dugout canoe, was unknown prior to contact with the Makassans (37). So, from the initial chapters, she exposes, inverts and subverts notions of belonging, ownership and identity: of who are ‘insider' and ‘outsider' Australians, and who lies ‘within' and ‘outside' certain groups.
Chapter by chapter, Stephenson gives voice to those who have been historically silenced within the dominant Australian narratives — Aboriginal and Asian people, and especially in their contact. She documents relationships between Aboriginal and Asian people in northern Australian pearling communities, paranoiac concerns from white authorities regarding Japanese and Aboriginal collaboration in World War Two, and more recent Indigenous-Asian interactions. Stephenson scrutinises the ways in which white Australia sought to classify and contain Asian and Aboriginal people, sometimes with painfully ironic results: the Aboriginal wife of a Japanese man, for example, interned separately from him in a prisoner-of-war camp (119), or the man of Chinese-Aboriginal descent whose relationship with an Aboriginal woman was illegal because he had been classified as ‘European' by white officials (83).
Stephenson transposes many of the techniques and attitudes of past white Australian historians, and privileges the voices of Asian and Aboriginal people in The Outsiders Within . Using oral histories, she allows Asian and Aboriginal people to put on record their own experiences in their own words. She focuses on Aboriginal, Asian, and Aboriginal–Asian artists whose works represent their own visions of race and identity. The Outsiders Within also deals mainly with northern Australia , rather than eastern and southern Australia . She has blended historical accounts with textual analysis and accounts of different modes of artistic production, seamlessly melding the artistic and historical as a cultural whole. Both in style, as well as in substance, Stephenson's work blends borders and challenges categories, aided by her sharp eye for the ironic.
Given this underlying theme of irony and inversion, I would like to have seen Stephenson examine other parodic constructions of Australian senses of race and identity: such as Chris Lilley's creation of the embarrassingly stereotypical Indigeridoo , performed by the Chinese Musical Theatre Group in We Can Be Heroes. Although scripted and performed by a white Australian, this series addressed many of the issues at the heart of Stephenson's book. In a similar manner to that described in Stephenson's analysis of Hung Le's Black and Tran , Lilley uses the ‘cultural cluelessness' of the Chinese Musical Theatre Group to reflect white Australians' assumptions back to them. A further layer of irony is added by the involvement of Cathy Freeman, a prominent Australian who, as Stephenson points out, is of Aboriginal and Chinese ancestry. Perhaps this programme had not been screened in the period when Stephenson was writing her work.
This is, however, a minor point. Stephenson has brought to light fascinating and disregarded experiences of people whose voices have largely remained unheard. She has condensed centuries of interactions between different groups into one, readable text. And she has largely allowed the people to speak for themselves — using oral histories and their own descriptions of their art — recognising her role, in this context, as ultimately that of ‘outsider'.
Earlier in The Outsiders Within , Stephenson asserts that:
When dealing with marginalised communities and experiences, the most reliable sources are rarely books written by outsiders (useful as these may be), they are the stories the outsiders within have to tell. But here something else emerges: story-telling is an art form, and some of the best story tellers are artists. (13)
Stephenson's statement provides a useful lens through which to view Sally Bin Demin's Once in Broome. Bin Demin's mother was a member of the stolen generation who spent over fifty years in a relationship with a Malay man, while Bin Demin herself acknowledges ‘I also have Asian blood in my veins' (preface), and that her partner is a Malay man. Her personal history provides unique insights into life for Indigenous and Asian people in Broome, the Australian nexus of Indigenous, Asian, and white cultures. Further, Bin Demin's memoir encompasses the period immediately following World War Two, a liminal period for Indigenous and Asian northern Australians.
Bin Demin is a visual artist, and this sensual appreciation is an aid to her childhood recollections. Her word portraits evoke a childhood where ‘we lived by the cycle of the moon, and the rhythm of the tides influenced much that happened in our lives' (61). This is a Broome where ‘when the sea flooded the town, it was a brilliant Ming blue' (62); where pythons sing at night, making ‘a kind of low mooing sound' (143), and where a Chinese tailor known as ‘Eggs on Legs' (150) runs the cheefah raffle. Bin Demin and her friends roam Broome and beyond, happily eating camp pie and bread, satay and rendang, and bush fruits such as gamolon and mangarr. These episodes are emblematic of her truly multicultural childhood, where:
As children we didn't know the rest of Australia was not like Broome, and we took for granted the many ethnic groups who lived together. We had the world at our doorstep. (27)
These intersecting worlds of nature and diverse cultures are perhaps best embodied in Bin Demin's image of the town's bore water, silted with red dirt, being strained through Singaporean soya sauce urns (51).
Bin Demin's account, however, is not completely idyllic. Broome is a town where ‘people were classified into racial groups and given status accordingly' (30), and ‘the more you had [Aboriginal ancestry], the less you were accepted' (31). ‘Full-blood' Aboriginal people were not allowed within the town proper without a permit (31), the Sun picture theatre was segregated (106), and mixed-race people were classified using terms such as ‘octoroon' (30). In a poignant episode, Bin Demin identifies with the racial categories applied to slaves in Gone with the Wind , because they are familiar to her (107). And all of this occurred in a town that has been represented as one of the most multicultural in Australia .
Still, in Bin Demin's account, some of the ‘outsiders' of her childhood were actually whites who had transgressed these social categories, such as the derelict Lofty, or white women who had married Asian men. Rejected by other whites, these women find acceptance within Asian and Indigenous communities. For all the hierarchical structures, the categories of ‘insider' and ‘outsider' appear rather more fluid — as of course they are for those who live and move between cultures.
Simply written, Bin Demin's memoir conveys an impression of great richness, sensuousness, and diversity. This vibrancy is enhanced by reproductions of Bin Demin's own stunning silk paintings, which appear throughout the book in sumptuous colour. This book is exquisitely formatted and presented, so it's a shame that it wasn't proofread more carefully. With such a visually oriented text, beautifully produced, these occasional errors do detract from the overall aesthetic impression.
Once in Broome is a unique evocation of an ‘old Broome' that no longer exists. It is important for giving voice to a neglected experience: that of the Asian-Indigenous northern Australian. Strikingly presented and illustrated, it will appeal to those interested in learning about the ‘cultural landscape' of Broome. And, for visitors to Broome, it is just the right size to slip into carry-on luggage.
Fiona McKean is an expatriate Territorian, currently experiencing concrete fatigue while completing a Graduate Diploma in Arts (Writing, Editing and Publishing) at the University of Queensland .