Featured in
- Published 20250204
- ISBN: 978-1-923213-04-3
- Extent: 196 pp
- Paperback, ebook. PDF
Already a subscriber? Sign in here
If you are an educator or student wishing to access content for study purposes please contact us at griffithreview@griffith.edu.au
Share article
More from author
Psychobabble
Much of my life has been spent in search of frameworks to help me understand the trauma that was transacted in my upbringing, and the cataclysmic emotional and relational changes wrought. Moving between the psychological illiteracy of the world I was raised in and the fluency of our current era feels like time travel.
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’.
Shelf life
Non-fictionEarly in his career, Charles Dickens notably underestimated the reputational risk of library-shelf browsing when he invited the critic George Henry Lewes home for tea. Over steaming cups, Lewes eyed naff triple-decker novels and bland travel books, ‘all obviously the presentation copies from authors and publishers’. He recalled the experience in a waspish elegy published shortly after Dickens’ death: ‘A man’s library expresses much of his hidden life, I did not expect to find a bookworm, nor even a student, in the marvellous “Boz” but nevertheless this collection of books was a shock.’
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.’
