Trash and treasure

About the author

George Haddad

George Haddad is a writer, artist and academic. His two books, Populate and Perish and Losing Face, have both won awards, including The Sydney Morning Herald Best Young...

More from this edition

Home as a weapon of cultural destruction

Non-fictionIt was simply expected that Aboriginal people would accept the values and behaviour of the dominant European culture. The Welfare Board insisted that Aboriginal people not only earn an independent living but show the Board they could save money in a bank account. They had to demonstrate that they were avoiding contact with other Aboriginal people and refusing to participate in community-oriented activities, such as sharing resources with kinsfolk and travelling to visit their relatives and home Country. Over and over again, the Board’s reports criticised Aboriginal people for being among their own kind and clinging together in groups. To achieve their assimilation aims, the Welfare Board implemented a crude ‘carrot and stick’ incentive in an attempt to modify Aboriginal behaviour: if Aboriginal people could convince the Welfare Officers that they had cut themselves off entirely from their culture, family and land, they would be rewarded with an ‘Exemption Certificate’.

Interstitial

Non-fictionAmerican sociologists John and Ruth Hill Useem first coined the term ‘third culture kid’ in the 1950s to describe the experience of Americans who were raised abroad in a culture different to their birth culture. This term reflects the way children raised overseas straddle three cultures: the culture of their birth, the culture within which they are raised, and a third, nebulous culture – the culture they create through the way they learn to relate to each other. The third culture is interstitial, not an amalgam. ‘Third culture kid’ (TCK) is a term often used as shorthand. Many TCKs will have experienced more than one cultural shift too. Those with diplomatic, military or missionary families are often raised in multiple countries, and others, like me, will continue their travels overseas as adults too, exercising the global and economic mobility they know well.

Mudth

Non-fictionMy family has its roots in several parts of the world: the Lui branch in New Caledonia, the Mosby branch in Virginia in the US, and the Baragud branch in Mabudawan village and Old Mawatta in the Western Province of PNG. Growing up, I spent most of my childhood with my Lui family at my family home, Kantok, on Iama Island. Kantok is a name we identify with as a family – it’s not a clan, it’s a dynasty. It carries important family beliefs and values, passed down from generation to generation. At Kantok, I learnt the true value and meaning of family: love, unity, respect and togetherness. My cousins were like my brothers and sisters – we had heaps of sleepovers and would go reef fishing together, play on the beach and walk out to the saiup (mud flats). I am reminded of these words spoken by an Elder in my family: ‘Teachings blor piknini [for children] must first come from within the four corners of your house.’