Revising the Vanquished: Indigenous Perspectives on Colonial Encounters

Abstract

This essay examines how and why two works of postcolonial literature (Master of the Ghost Dreaming by the Aboriginal Australian writer Narogin Mudrooroo and Indigo: Mapping the Waters by the British writer Marina Warner) and two films (Werner Herzog's 1973 German classic Aguirre: The Wrath of God and the 1986 Australian Broadcasting Corporation film Babakiueria) invite readers to re-imagine colonial contact from the perspective of indigenous Australian and Caribbean people. The essay juxtaposes these particular texts in order to analyze different narrative techniques—cinematic and literary, fictional and somewhat documentary, serious and humorous—and different colonial textual targets—letters, reports, diaries, and ethnographies. Looking at this range of techniques and topics allows us to speculate on the intent and efficacy of these revisionary texts and to explore how they use the narrative point of view to metaphorically shift political perspective. This potentially greater understanding of imperial history and historicity can be an important catalyst of movements toward social progress in postcolonial and neocolonial states. But, as the essay shows, Babakiueria warns that reader/viewers must also be wary of this desire to know the Other, which can, if focused in the wrong direction, reinforce "orientalism" and enable a culturally paralyzing complacency.

Literary Colonization between Joseph Conrad and Edward Morgan Forster

“…Usually novels of colonization begin with thick descriptions of the personal history of the host protagonists and the narrator of such history to seem as the hero, at least in the eyes of the readers, of his production. The colonizers here may explain their actions in India, Arabia or in Africa with the following logic: "for the sake of our land, the church has always been on the side of the strong" (Hightower, 2006). The 'strong' here is automatically known as the European who has the right to colonize since the aim, so to say, is to civilize.…”

“…Therefore, if the Africans are once to revolt "it will be necessarily that of farmers who have been the most severely and cruelly exploited by the colonizers" (Philip and Gail, 1984). It has become known that early modern historical archives are overflowed "with narratives of conquest written by European conquerors" that Stephen Greenblatt in his New World Encounters (1993) calls "the vision of the victors" (Weaver-Hightower, 2006). These visions, are in the shape of archives, include volumes of books, tomes, diaries, letters and many other shapes of reports since Columbus, Cook, Cortez, Darwin, Malinowski, Burton, Doughty and hundreds of literary passages, essays and books are also still there although with little dust on them.…”

“…Warner, a British writer, shows in her book: Mapping the Water (1993) that the "indigenous islanders" or the original people of the land, the sky and the air, all welcome and cooperated with the white man in their poor land, until, according to Hightower "bludgeoned and cheated out of their good will." The latter adds that these strange islanders have nothing to resist or battle the fierce gluttonous colonizers and "marauders" except "with magic and spear" (Weaver-Hightower, 2006). This simple old-aged encounter continues between the two parties.…”

“…The film shows that a person "is filled with violence and murder in the name of religious conversion and material gain." It again "shows colonial exploration not as heroic or civilizing but as cruel, exploitative, and greed-driven" (Weaver-Hightower, 2006). The film finally shows the colonized African slaves and servants who wait on the white master in humiliation and humbleness.…”