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    Aboriginal Identity: Sally Morgan and My Place.: Morning Herald Said That, "As For My Place, It Deserves A Place - Among

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    shila yohannan
    Sally Morgan's autobiographical book "My Place" details the experiences of three generations of Aboriginal Australians and their struggles with identity and racism. It describes how Morgan's mother Gladys and grandmother Daisy felt shame in their Aboriginal identity due to paternalistic policies that tried to assimilate Aboriginal people into white culture. These policies, like the Stolen Generations that took Aboriginal children from their families, destroyed Indigenous culture and heritage and led to issues of identity. The book provides an Aboriginal perspective on historical events and their intergenerational impacts through storytelling, an important tradition in Aboriginal culture.

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    Aboriginal Identity: Sally Morgan and My Place.: Morning Herald Said That, "As For My Place, It Deserves A Place - Among

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    shila yohannan
    90 views5 pages
    Sally Morgan's autobiographical book "My Place" details the experiences of three generations of Aboriginal Australians and their struggles with identity and racism. It describes how Morgan's mother Gladys and grandmother Daisy felt shame in their Aboriginal identity due to paternalistic policies that tried to assimilate Aboriginal people into white culture. These policies, like the Stolen Generations that took Aboriginal children from their families, destroyed Indigenous culture and heritage and led to issues of identity. The book provides an Aboriginal perspective on historical events and their intergenerational impacts through storytelling, an important tradition in Aboriginal culture.

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    Sally Morgan's autobiographical book "My Place" details the experiences of three generations of Aboriginal Australians and their struggles with identity and racism. It describes how Morgan's mother Gladys and grandmother Daisy felt shame in their Aboriginal identity due to paternalistic policies that tried to assimilate Aboriginal people into white culture. These policies, like the Stolen Generations that took Aboriginal children from their families, destroyed Indigenous culture and heritage and led to issues of identity. The book provides an Aboriginal perspective on historical events and their intergenerational impacts through storytelling, an important tradition in Aboriginal culture.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    90 views5 pages

    Aboriginal Identity: Sally Morgan and My Place.: Morning Herald Said That, "As For My Place, It Deserves A Place - Among

    Uploaded by

    shila yohannan
    Sally Morgan's autobiographical book "My Place" details the experiences of three generations of Aboriginal Australians and their struggles with identity and racism. It describes how Morgan's mother Gladys and grandmother Daisy felt shame in their Aboriginal identity due to paternalistic policies that tried to assimilate Aboriginal people into white culture. These policies, like the Stolen Generations that took Aboriginal children from their families, destroyed Indigenous culture and heritage and led to issues of identity. The book provides an Aboriginal perspective on historical events and their intergenerational impacts through storytelling, an important tradition in Aboriginal culture.

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    Aboriginal Identity: Sally Morgan and

    My Place.
    Nov 20by bejglover

    Sally Morgan could be seen as an Aboriginal ambassador, teaching


    indigenous Australians to feel pride in their identity rather than shame. Her
    biographical book My Place presented an Indigenous perspective of history
    and the storytelling mode of the book is deeply connected with Aboriginal
    identity. This particular format, though traditional for aboriginal history, is
    not conventional of traditional historiography. My Place received great
    accolade at the time of its release in 1987 and its importance is evident
    through its inclusion in school curriculums. Due to the book’s introduction
    of the ‘stolen generations’, it was somewhat controversial and some
    historians have critiqued Morgan and her writing. Keith Windschuttle
    claims the entire book is fabricated and that Sally Morgan is not even
    Aboriginal. In a less negative fashion than Windschuttle, Bain Attwood
    questions Sally Morgan’s choice to portray herself as Aboriginal when the
    discovery of her Aboriginality was so late in life. On July, 1987, The Sydney
    Morning Herald said that, “As for My Place, it deserves a place – among
    the classics of Australian biography.”

    My Place: The Story

    My Place is a biographical chronology of the life of Sally Morgan and


    reveals her discovery of Aboriginality in her heritage. The first section of
    the book begins as a chronology of Sally’s younger years, with general facts
    about school and home. Until age 15, Sally was unaware that she was
    Aboriginal and was encouraged to tell other kids at school she was Indian.
    After the discovery of her true heritage, Sally digs deeper and decides to
    write a book about it. She interviews her mother (Gladys), her grandmother
    (Daisy) and her great Uncle (Arthur). Through this research, Sally embarks
    on an emotional journey to learn about her family history. She learns,
    however, that it is not always the most pleasant. Through interviews with
    her family members, Sally discovers that her family had been apart of
    removal process in Australia. This meant that some Indigenous children
    were removed from their families to be raised in missions run by white,
    Anglo-Saxon people teaching the Indigenous children their Christian
    values. Her grandmother Daisy lived and worked with the Drake-
    Brockmans, a white family owning the Corunna-Downs Station. Sally
    Morgan presents a story that is relatable to both Indeigenous and non-
    Indigenous Australians. She presents a book/history that forces both white
    and indigenous Australians to assess the past whether or not a correct
    Aboriginal history has been told in Australia. Morgan also confronts the
    indigenous reader with the idea of learning their past and embracing
    indigenous identity, even if it is painful. On December 20, 1987, The
    Sydney Morning Herald published an article detailing Human Rights
    Commission awards presented to Indigenous writers, in which Sally
    Morgan was one of them for My Place. :The awards were established by the
    Commission to recognise personal endeavours which have promoted the
    understanding and public discussion of human rights issues in
    Australia.” My Place had been so influential that it affected the Human
    Rights Commission and understood that Indigenous issues that were still
    prevalent in Australian society at the time of its release in 1987.

    Historiography

    My Place acts as an indigenous account of history in Australia and provides


    it in a way that is injected with emotion. Typically in historiography, the
    aim of its writing is “objective and factual, to construct a narrative that is
    rational, cool and aspires towards achieving some truth.” (Damousi, The
    Emotions of History p. 28) Morgan, though, presents her history as though
    she is telling a story, which is connected to Aboriginal identity. More than
    often, Indigenous people do not tell their history through the reproduction
    of books but through oral history. Oral history causes the person telling the
    history/story, and the person listening, to engage more closely with each
    other and create a bond. “It is clear, when meeting with Aboriginal people,
    that despite or perhaps because of increasing levels of participation in
    western post-secondary education, oral tradition and story-telling are still
    central to aboriginal personal and community identity.” (Poff, The
    Importance of Story-Telling p. 27) The oral history Indigenous Australians
    see as a culturally and emotionally important way of telling history, is
    incorrect in the academic world where historiography is concerned.

    Keith Windschuttle

    Windschuttle contests the authenticity of My Place completely and denies


    the stolen generations ever occurred. He supports the Drake-Brockmans in
    their accusations of falsity towards My Place. “Rather than a tragedy of
    white racists stealing children and exploiting Aboriginality, the real Daisy’s
    story was one of fulfilment within white society.” (Windschuttle, The
    Fabrication of Aboriginal History: Vol 3, p. 320) . Not only does
    Windschuttle critique My Place and its authenticity, he goes further to
    question whether there is an Aboriginal heritage in the Corruna family at
    all. In a photo of Sally’s Grandmother Daisy, at the Drake-Brockman’s
    station, Windschuttle exclaims that Daisy is not Aboriginal. “Daisy’s
    Melanesian heritage is clearly visible in her thick fuzzy hair, unknown
    among Aboriginal people.” Whereas Morgan has worked so hard to make
    Indigenous Australians accept the past, people like Windschuttle are still
    around to deny anything ever happened to them. He preaches that
    Indigenous people should be thankful of white influence, rather than accuse
    them of anything, creating only more confusion for some Indigenous
    Australians struggling to create an identity.
    Bain Attwood

    Unlike Windschuttle, Attwood does not critique My Place with the same
    negativity. His particular questions in regards to Sally Morgan are “why is
    it that Morgan has constructed herself in terms of being Aboriginal?… What
    is the unconscious (or conscious) problem that belief in her Aboriginality
    solves for Morgan, or what wishes or desires does this belief satisfy?”
    (Attwood, Portrait of and Aboriginal as an artist, p. 303) Whilst My
    Place has helped to construct Aboriginal identity for indigenous Australians
    other than Morgan, Attwood questions why this book has helped them do
    so. Identity is a construct and Aboriginal identity is one that Morgan has
    adopted late in life rather than being raised with it. “By comparison with
    other Aboriginal writers, then, one could argue that Morgan’s Aboriginality
    is forged through the creation of the text rather than the reverse.” (p. 303) I
    love My Place and think that it is a highly important book that presents an
    Aboriginal perspective of the past rather than just non-indigenous
    perspectives. However, I agree with Bain Atwood in saying that this book
    helped to create Sally Morgan’s identity, rather than a book being created
    as a result of her Aboriginal past. I wonder whether Morgan would hold the
    same views and identity if she had decided against writing a book of her
    family history. She does, though, embark on a journey of self-discovery,
    which can also shape a person’s identity further from what it already was.
    "My Place" by Sally Morgan: an Analysis.
    Essay by the-rebel-within, A, December 2005
    download word file, 6 pages 4.2 1 reviews

    Downloaded 98 times
    KeywordsPopulation, hardships, Daisy, Shame, Arthur
    0Like0

    Sally Morgan's 'My Place' is an autobiographical account of three generations of


    Aboriginals, which illustrate the social history of Aboriginals from the point of view
    of an Aboriginal and marks its development as society evolves. Two aboriginals,
    Gladys and Daisy Corruna, of the Stolen Generations describe the Paternalism which
    led to their shame of being Aboriginal and forced them to hide the truth of their past
    from their children. Paternalism also led to the creation of a new identity caused by
    the loss of culture and heritage experienced by the Stolen Generation and the
    unacceptance of the white population. Another of the Stolen Generation, Arthur
    Corruna, tells of the hardships involved with being a half-caste and trying to get ahead
    in life. The fourth, Sally Morgan, the author, describes what it was like to grow up
    with a false sense of identity. She records the events in her life which signify the time
    when she knew nothing of her heritage and was struggling to understand herself and
    the different mannerisms of her family.

    White society established their dominance over the indigenous people of Australia by
    exercising social and political control such as the paternalism involved with
    institutions. Half-caste children were sent to institutions in the hope that the 'white'
    part of their blood would allow them to be trained and educated as white. These
    children are often referred to as stolen, something of which Gladys, Sally's mother,
    identifies with as she was taken from her family at the age of four, to live at the
    Parkerville institution. "I always thought of myself as a stolen child," (pg. 246)
    represents the animosity with which many half-caste children felt during their stay at
    institutions like Parkerville. Gladys' mother Daisy was never institutionalized but was
    taken into Perth under the pretext of becoming...

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