"We thought making friends was the best thing. We learned your words and songs and stories, but you didn't want to hear ours."

 

Zinc work, East Risdon Bay. August 2021.

That Deadman Dance by Kim Scott

A masterpiece. In Bobby Wabalanginy, an intelligent and optimistic soul, Scott conjures up a narrator who will live long in the memory. Bobby, whose real name remains unpronounceable to the invaders throughout the novel, means "all of us playing together", a bitter irony given the course of events.

Bobby is a marvel. Bright and eager for knowledge, he is a natural showman. These capacities allow him to shine in both his indigenous world and the newcomers to his land. Part clown, part shaman, the book does a magnificent job of naturally showing the reader the centrality of songs, music, and dance to the Noongar people of southwestern Western Australia.

Bobby learns to speak, read and write in the white man's language, but a reoccurring motif throughout is the fundamental disconnect in understanding between the two cultures. His native culture is just as complex but more physical, present and elemental. One knows the land because one can feel it under his feet. The feel and smell of the wind, the rhythms of the season, the behaviours of the wildlife. Life is a collective endeavour of sharing bountiful resources.

The new culture arrives and does things quite differently. We know how this story goes...

Oh, but the telling. The telling is lovely. The newcomers are a motley crew, a mix of dreamers, opportunists, wastrels and strays. They are not all bad, but the repercussions of their arrival are profound in ways not immediately apparent.

Few and isolated, the first colonists in the region are profoundly ignorant of local conditions and rely on Indigenous knowledge to survive. In this setting, a range of relationships ensued. While ‘equality’ of Noongar and European was most certainly not on the cards, these relationships are distinguished by forms of genuine exchange. As the story emerges and the visitors grow in strength and confidence, the cultural divergences become grimmer.

The hubris and self-assured ignorance of the Europeans is maddening to Bobby as he struggles between the two worlds. Here, That Deadman Dance serves as a fascinating companion piece to Tom Kennealy's The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith from 1972. Unlike Jimmie in that book, Bobby replies in sorrow rather than anger.

"We thought making friends was the best thing. We learned your words and songs and stories, but you didn't want to hear ours."

In his author’s note, Scott says

"I wanted to build a story from [Noongar] confidence, their inclusiveness and sense of play, and their readiness to appropriate new cultural forms - language and songs, guns and boats - as soon as they became available. Believing themselves manifestations of a spirit of place impossible to conquer, they appreciated reciprocity and the nuances of cross-cultural exchange."

Scott himself has played a critical part in the attempt to regenerate Noongar speech, and the book itself does a beautiful job in weaving it throughout the text.

Given everything, this book is incredibly generous. Despite everything that happens in the text - and the course of Australian history - it emerges from the point of view of Aboriginal confidence. It rightly serves as a pillar for a new understanding of what has gone and the potential to come.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐