Complexity of Australian Cultural Identity in Judith Wright's Poetry

By Zachary Whitely, High School Student

Year 12 lit essay. Question: ' A person's or a society's cultural identity is often complex and hart to define. Disctuss how one or more texts reveal end explore the problems of cultural identity. Quotes from www.liswa.wa.gov.au/plpater1.html

An essay hosted at LiteratureClassics.com

Judith Wright deals with many different themes relating to cultural identity in her poetry; a person’s cultural identity is hard to define as cultural aspects can lose relevance over time. In two of her poems: ‘For a Pastoral Family’, and ‘Two Dreamtimes’ she speaks on the Pastoralists (who were of greater importance in her early life) and examines the effect of Pastoralism on Aboriginal people. These poems combine to examine past wrongs, to deal with current problems and to show us an aspect of Australia that even urban people will identify with.

‘Any group’s literature reflects the hopes, dreams and biases of that group’s culture’ This quote from the West Australian Library represents Judith Wright’s position. Wright spent most of her life in the country and was very much biased toward country versus city life (as can be seen in her later poetry). The dreams of the Pastoralist are contained in both of these poems. These dreams stem from her ancestors’ original motivation for coming to Australia: the utopia presented in British advertising and the hope for a better life. In order to achieve this, they took land and brutally repressed the Aboriginals. The biases contained in ‘For a Pastoral Family’ are those of the Pastoralists against the Aboriginals.

The hopes and dreams of Judith Wright are shown in the dream she and the other Pastoralists had for Australia. It is this dream that Australians as a whole identify with: the pioneering spirit of the Pastoralists and the love of the land. Whether it is appropriate to still identify with this is debateable because that tradition is no longer at the forefront of society. The identification with the agricultural past reflects the social standing of the farmers at the time. However, farmers no longer hold such a place in Australia. Corporations and big cities have taken over from the farms, and the cultural centres are now in these cities.

The Pastoralist dream of Judith Wright is shattered by these corporations and is tarnished by the less than innocent past of the farmers and early settlers. This is dealt with in ‘Two Dreamtimes’, which speaks of the treatment of Aboriginals by the early settlers, right up until when the poem was written and the loss of affinity with the land: Judith Wright’s childhood dream world.

In order to understand this Pastoralist dream and the issues that tarnish it, we must refer to ‘For a Pastoralist Family’. This poem evaluates the views of the farmers and the establishment that allowed for the ownership of ‘stolen’ land. The farmers had inherited the British ideas of colonisation and carried out the anglicising of these colonies. They introduced crops and animals not of this continent, and introduced a new legal system that the unknowing natives were subject to.
‘We stepped on sure and conceded ground.
A whole society
extended a comforting cover of legality.’
The farmers were allowed land that was not theirs, it was conceded – terra nullius.
‘And after all, the previous owners put up little fight,
did not believe in ownership, and so were scarcely human.’
This attitude towards a people is reflected in their treatment – no longer having the right to visit or live on the land of their ancestors; no longer having the right to choose a partner without the approval of a white man.
‘For the good of the Old Country,
the land was taken;…
Would any convict us?
Our plea has been endorsed by every appropriate jury.’
The biases of the group’s (British-Australian) culture are reflected in this passage.
‘Every appropriate jury’. These ‘appropriate’ juries show the bias, they were made up of people on ‘our’ side - they were made up of Anglo-Australians. What jury in their right mind would stop the taking of land in the age of Pastoralist superiority – an age of victory over the land. By anglicising Australia, they imposed their cultural identity.

The theft of Aboriginal land and the destruction of their ‘inferior’ culture is shown in the death of the Dreamtime for Kath Walker. Before we look at this, we must also examine the death of Judith Wright’s Dreamtime. In this poem, the Pastoralists cling to their ‘field of reference’, their self-justification. Not only that, but the aspects of the Pastoralist dream that they still have. They have the luxuries (this poem was written when farmers were still well off), they have the pastoral silence (something city people definitely don’t have), and they have the law to protect them.
‘Some actions of those you vote for stick in your throats.
There are corruptions one cannot quite endorse;
But if they are in our interests, then of course…’
This can refer to any political party, but the situation it draws to mind is the former success of the One Nation Party – a party elected by country people. This example shows a sort of rebellion against the cultural identity we have today. We are a multicultural society (another aspect that adds complexity to defining our cultural identity). The Hanson phenomenon is a backlash against this change and is an attempt to reassert the importance of the Pastoralist identity that belonged to Judith Wright. The quote refers to the selfishness of them in voting for parties such as One Nation.

There are problems that eat away at their dream.
‘There are landslides… their field of reference is much eroded’.
‘The wickedness of cities’, the ‘shifts in the markets’, and most of all, the corporations. Great giants ‘whose bellies are never full’, destroying the earth, and the dream. The corporations bought out the farms for mines and junk food firms bought the cattle farms. The earth was tainted by the blight of the city and globalisations invasion of Australian culture. The Pastoralists found themselves in similar circumstances to the Aboriginals. As in ‘Two Dreamtimes:’
‘We the robbers, robbed in turn,
selling this land on hire-purchase;
what’s stolen once is stolen again
even before we know it.’
This is where Judith Wright’s Dreamtime fades. The morals of not necessarily the Pastoralists, but Australians at large are questioned: perhaps we aren’t as innocent as we like to think we are.’ They lived out their lives as they saw fit, creating a life for themselves away from the Motherland. And ‘As for the Dies Irae’, the hellfire, brimstones and eventual judgement, they ‘would deal with that when they came to it.’

The fading of Judith Wright’s Dreamtime is dealt with in ‘Two Dreamtimes’. The land she believed was hers for life in her childhood was gone. The land is ‘poisoned now and crumbling’, ‘the ripped length of the island beaches, the drained paperbark swamps’. She has left the ‘easy Eden-Dreamtime’. She has left the world of innocence and beauty, has entered the real world, and is met with a nasty shock. She is ‘born of the conquerors’, who, as pioneers conquering the land, also conquered a society. She recognises that Kathy is ‘of the persecuted’. This poem details the shift in society with regard to Aboriginal people. We no longer accept the past as necessary, kind, or just. We realise past wrongs and begin to understand the depth of our contemptible acts, and the extent of the eradication of Aboriginal culture. Wright, as a representative of Anglo-Australia, is revealed as guilty and must now face it. This guilt is a huge blow to her identity. All that she knew of her innocent life is whisked away, and she is left with the knowledge of past wrongs.

This is also shown in today’s society. John Howard is the man living with this shock. He is confronted with the prospect of facing up, on behalf of Australia, to past wrongs. He is faced with saying sorry; and for one reason or another can’t do it.

Judith Wright can face up to it. She responds to the knowledge of the treatment of Aboriginals by trying to repent. She can’t make it right though, no one can. Instead, she gives Kathy the upper hand,
‘The knife’s between us. I turn it round,
the handle to your side’
Along with that, she does all she can do – she dedicates the poem to her and names her as an equal: sister.

‘Two Dreamtimes’ deals with a problem of our cultural identity. Through our Pastoralist and pioneering past, we gain much of what we believe ourselves to be as Australians. However, we also ignore what was lost to gain that heritage. Cultural identity in the modern world is hard to define, ‘we were always part of a process’, that process is cultural change. The two Dreamtimes are lost now: the world of Aboriginal culture in it’s unspoilt beauty, and the spirit of the Australia Wright grew up in. Wright’s is ‘doomed by traders and stock exchanges’ – the influx of globalisation, and Kath Walker’s was lost in the inception of Wright’s Australia. All that is left now is to lament the loss of the land they love through literature and song.

Both societies have an affinity with the land that is hard for us to grasp, and both are unique from one another. That affinity is a part of the identity we have now as Australians. Although we all live in cities, there is that connection with the land in all of us. The Australian culture is hard to define because of our now multicultural society. There is a combination of many cultures that are being absorbed into us as Australians.

We are at a crossroads as to what our identity is. The Pastoralist heritage is important to us, however, since few people actually lives on farms it has less relevance today. There is a social movement toward reconciliation that is shown accurately in ‘Two Dreamtimes’. This poem is reflecting on who we once were, both in ancient Australia and at the beginning of the modern country. The movement towards reconciliation is an attempt to mend past wrongs, and will eventuate in the creation of an Aboriginal mindedness and understanding in our culture.

As Australians our cultural identity is indeed hard to define. We base much of our conception as to what we are, living in this country on our pioneering past. That past is full of horrible deeds in the name of the ‘Old Country’. It stems from our British heritage – that of colonisation and advancement (or imposition) of British culture. Through the poems ‘For a Pastoral Family’ and ‘Two Dreamtimes’, we are given insight into the past and a look forward into the present and, hopefully, the future. Our cultural identity is derived from many aspects of our past, but it is the truth about that past that will set us free.