black is the new black

Captain Cook built the harbour bridge..
previously the blackfellas only had a wooden one

The big American boss.

Usually unnamed, this personage is said to have travelled through the Victoria River district many years ago visiting cattle stations. At each place (because each place has its own story and does not have to rely on other place's/people's stories), he witnessed a series of events which taught him that all was not well with Aboriginal people. When he was taken for dinner, for example, he saw the white men sitting down at a table in a building, and he saw the Aboriginal workers take their food out to the woodheap. Having been educated, he reciprocated, offering some specifically American knowledge. He taught people how to use a western saddle and how to lasso cattle. When he left, he gave a promise. Hobbles Danayarri (now deceased), one of the most politically astute and humanitarian story tellers, described an exchange between Tommy Vincent Linjiyarri, who later became the leader of the Gurindji pastoral strike, and the American:

"You know, all these Australian people really bad men. We didn't know the Northern Territory. We only heard that Australian people took it away from you. You want it back?"
"Course!"
"You want help?"
"If you can give me help."
"All right."
They shook hands. [And the American said:]
"I'll help you. You keep going. Union strike [will be the way]."

Some people, identify President Kennedy as the American boss. Aborigines throughout the Victoria River district and the Kimberley revere him as a powerful and generous figure who worked on their behalf. His death is believed, not unreasonably, to have been caused through purposeful malevolence. According to Tommy Vincent (now deceased), President Kennedy was shot with poison bullets. He lived long enough to get out of his car, race around in circles like a dog who has eaten strychnine, and make a dying speech in which he stated that he was done for and promised that his work would not die with him. Tommy Vincent asked me to tell him the story of what happened to the man who shot Kennedy, and after I told about Oswald's death he laughed and said, "now that's more like it!"

There have been a number of recent studies of the process of 'mythologization', in particular how modern Aboriginal groups have created a variety of types of story, centred on a figure named `Captain Cook', which reinterpret -- and sometimes merge -- stories Aborigines have been told, by Europeans, as a means of describing and explaining their post-contact history. (See Rose 1984,1988; Maddock 1988; Beckett 1994; and Dixon 1983:1-3,88-9).

As Hobbles Danayari said in one of his narratives about Captain Cook and the immoral law of oppression:

You, Captain Cook...You kill my people. You been look around, see the land now. People been here, really got their own culture. All around Australia...We remember for you. I know. Why didn't you look after London and Big England? Why didn't you stop your government, Captain Cook? You're the one been bring him out now, all your government from Big England. You been bring that law. (quoted in Rose 1984:34).

For hours he told me stories of the most remarkable kind. One of these was about Ned Kelly: how Ned once visited Wave Hill station long before any whitefellows had come into the Victoria River District. There he taught people how to make tea and cook damper. Although there was only one billy of tea, and one little damper, everybody got fed.

Captain Cook been come down to Mendora [beach, in Darwin], gotta boat, from England they been come. Captain Cook come longa this land, longa Sydney Harbour. Good country him been look. Captain Cook shot and broke a leg for one fellow belonging to that country Sydney Harbour. Get a boat and going back again. Bring longa this country now horse and cattle. Captain Cook got a revolver. Photo there all around Daguragu, he's holding a revolver. Where that breed up bullock and horse, that's where the Ned Kelly going back to England, Ned Kelly by himself now, he lose his mate. Ned Kelly got his throat cut. They bury him. Leave him. Sun go down, little bit dark now, he left this world. BOOOOOOOMMMMM! Go longa top. This world shaking. All the white men been shaking. They all been frightened!

A number of characters in European mythology are here in this story--God, Noah, and Jesus are all located in the person of Ned Kelly. Ned Kelly is here located in real geographical space; he is at Crawford Knob in Karangpuru country. He goes to a centre of European colonial settlement: Wyndham. And finally he goes to England. He is here in Australia at the very beginning of the world, indeed, he is instrumental in facilitating the division between earth and water that was part of the origins of life. Ned Kelly is Dreaming; and more than that he is allocated a creative position in Dreaming. No matter how many Captain Cooks, police, and settlers came later, it is unmistakably the case that Ned was here first, actively making the Australian continent.

Furthermore, Ned Kelly encountered Aborigines, and his encounters did not result in death, dispossession, or dispersal. In that, he was quite unlike Captain Cook. European people, here located in Wyndham, recognised that Ned Kelly was different and they condemned him for it. Judging him, and his mate Angelo (sometimes referred to as a group or 'mob' of angels), to be dangerously different, they called out the police. Ned, being Ned, shot the police. In doing so, he aligned himself with the moral position of those who were being dispossessed.

The inclusion of Captain Cook in this story sets up a dynamic tension between those who come to harm people and country, and those whose coming is beneficial. Other stories make it clear that Captain Cook is the originator of an immoral process by which peoples' land was stolen, their labour appropriated, their lives extinguished, and their knowledge of the truth denied. Hobbles always states that Captain Cook is dead now; he is dead, and his immoral law ought to have died with him. In contrast, Ned Kelly was opposed to what Captain Cook and his mob were doing to Australia. He went to England--the place of origin of alien animals, alien laws, and intruders. There he was killed, and there, apparently, he rose up to the sky. The stories do not explain why Ned Kelly went to England. I suggest that this sequence is meant to indicate that England is being brought into the same universe of moral principles as Australia. England, or English people, cannot claim that Ned Kelly has nothing to do with them. He died and rose again right there in England. His morality applies to English people as much as it does to Australians.

There is more to the story than that which is shared. If Ned Kelly stories offer a bridge of understanding, they also issue a challenge. For white Australians, Ned Kelly the historical actor is dead. Yarralin people have resurrected him twice over--both in the story and by locating him in Dreaming. For them, Ned Kelly is still and always alive. In addition, they have given birth to an indigenous Ned Kelly: he belongs to the continent because he helped make it.

Aboriginal people in the Victoria River District have not found Ned Kelly to be ambiguous. They have analysed his actions and defined him as purely moral. And in indigenising him, they have declared him to be not truly other, but truly us. In fact, Yarralin people take it further. Through Ned Kelly an equitable social order is established as an enduring principle of life. Captain Cook was an invader who had no place here, and as Yarralin people assert, he is dead now. Ned Kelly is indigenous; he is resistance against invasion and injustice. In another story Hobbles Danayari asserted that it was actually Captain Cook who killed Ned Kelly (Middleton 1977:121). There is perfect symmetry in the stories, for the immoral Captain Cook is now dead, while Ned Kelly lives.

excerpts from this article