That Deadman Dance

A truly magnificent piece of myth-making. That Deadman Dance is about early contact between the Australian Aborigines (the Noongar tribe) and the white colonists in southern Western Australia, who are there to harvest the whales each season. It is flexible and fluid with time, with reality, and with nature; and hence comes across as a remarkably polished modern Dreamtime myth. Myths are constantly being retold by the people they belong to - tweaking and changing the stories to suit different situations, or just as people think of a better ending. To me, Bobby Wabalanginy's refashioning of the stories he knew was creating myths of what was actually happening to him and his people and country.

It is also a remarkably hopeful and a positive show more portrait of early contact, which is a refreshing change from most literature of this ilk. The whites and the blacks work well together, building the community, hunting the whales, sharing their knowledge. Well, at least while the whales last.

"We thought making friends was the best thing, and never knew that when we took your flour and sugar and tea and blankets that we'd lose everything of ours. We learned your words and songs and stories, and never knew you didn't want to hear ours."

And, of course, the predations of disease take their own toll, on both blacks and whites.

This was a very challenging read, jumping about in time all over the place, touches of the Dreamtime to some of it, what felt like contradictory passages (but may have just been an effect of the jumbled timeline), and beautiful and clear descriptions of the traditional dances and music of the Noongar people. It's more a patchwork of vignettes about the same characters from different viewpoints and with a random timeline than a coherent linear tale. But it was well worth the effort, giving me good insights into Aboriginal culture, especially music and dance. Which considering it's a written book, is quite an achievement.

And Bobby was a great character, well worth getting to know. He's a wonderful creation, and while not the only fascinating and multi-faceted character in the book, he definitely carried the story.

"Bobby sang one short phrase. Christine tried to repeat it, but her mouth was stone and wood, her tongue cloth. Close together, face to face like this, music continued to spill from Bobby's lips and tongue and bright teeth and then from feathers and sharp beaks, too, as the magpies joined in, their songs merging, swelling, buoying them all." show less

After I'd written my blog post about this book, at http://shawjonathan.wordpress.com/2011/08/31/the-book-group-and-that-deadman-dan..., I realised that one reason it strikes such a strong chord with me is to do with origin myths. The Australian nation has its origins in the English arriving here to establish a penal colony and a strategic outpost, but we're forever being sold other stories as our foundation myths: Anzacs at Gallipoli, the first cricket team to beat the English, the roaring 90s. It's as if the actual story is too hard to look at, including as it does the ruthless dispossession of the prior inhabitants. Yet the actual story keeps asserting itself in what Henry Reynolds calls the whispering in our hearts. Plenty of white show more writers have had a go at the subject, but none with the power and spirit of this book: maybe we've had to wait for an Indigenous writer who can grasp complexity of those early days and weld them into a what he calls 'a little story'. show less

This book brought to mind The Lieutenant by Kate Grenville because of its positive depiction of the early relationships between the aboriginal people and the colonisers. We meet Wabalanginy/ Bobby, an aboriginal child, who was educated by some of the white settlers and is able to flow between the two cultures. He has a gift for the native dance and uses this talent to record the activities of the early settlers, much to the amusement of his own people. It is not completely harmonious and as the aboriginal people watch the destruction of their own food supplies and land which they have prudently managed through the ages, they begin to help themselves to the white man's food.
Kim Scott subtly presents the aboriginal perspective and his show more use of language is stunning in its depictions of both scene and action.
My only criticism is of the changing timeline in the first hundred or so pages. I would have preferred a sequential storyline as I found this confusing. show less

It can never be said our group isn’t willing to try something different in the literature stakes. As a general rule, we love a challenging read and a chance to explore different styles of storytelling.
Unfortunately, in the case of Deadman Dance, desire was not enough. Most of us felt the story to be too disjointed with time jumps and a fragmented storyline. There were positive comments concerning the descriptive passages and depiction of aboriginal culture, but again, this was not enough to engage most of our group at the emotional level they like.
A few of us have been to Albany and the surrounding area, so enjoyed the historical backdrop and also found the interaction between white and black well done. Bobby’s cross culture show more struggle rings true with many of the stories we have read in this genre, but failed to move the majority of us enough to care.
It was suggested that, unlike other novels that we have read dealing with indigenous history, Deadman was written by an aboriginal and that the story was being told more in the style of indigenous storytelling rather than in the European style we are more accustomed to. Which could explain the perceived disorderly narrative and disjointed storyline. And let’s be honest, this would not be the only time we have misunderstood our indigenous peoples’ culture, to our own detriment. show less

I bought this because I wanted to get the jump on the Booker longlist and, since it won the 2011 Miles Franklin, I thought it might be on it. I was about ten pages in when the longlist was announced and, of course, it’s not. Oh well.

That Deadman Dance is a historical fiction novel taking place in the early and mid 19th century, following the colonisation of Albany in Western Australia and the relationship between the European settlers and the local Noongar population. One character in particular, Bobby Wabalanginy, is an Aboriginal boy who takes a lively interest in the foreigners and is half-raised by white settlers, acting throughout the novel as a bridge between the two cultures.

That Deadman Dance is a surprisingly optimistic show more novel, and it’s more surprising to learn that this was – up to a point – actually the reality of the Albany settlement. Known as the “friendly frontier,” first generation relations between the two groups were cordial, and it was only the inevitable encroachment upon Aboriginal land and the destruction of their forests and food supply that led to conflict.

This is an important novel, not so much in that it raises questions about our shared history with the “traditional custodians” of this land – every Australian learns from an early age that we came here, took their land, obliterated their way of life, and that many of them continue to live in third world conditions and a cycle of poverty and substance abuse, all because of us. Somewhere around the same age one learns to slide one’s eyes away from these facts, the same way we slide our eyes away from Aboriginals themselves. They are the invisible people of our society. No, That Deadman Dance is an important novel because it examines history without pointing a finger of guilt or blame, without expecting the white reader to feel ashamed. It focuses not on the inevitable schism between Noongar and European, but rather on the friendships and love and co-operation of early settlement. Scott does not shy away from the ugly truth, but his novel is nonetheless positive in tone and outlook, which is truly remarkable.

Reading that over, it sounds like I’m whining about ever having to care about the plight of the Aboriginals, and crediting Scott for writing a book that didn’t make me feel guilty. But it’s not like that at all. It’s more of an optimistic tone (which is often lacking in Australian literary fiction in general) which makes one feel hopeful for the future, hopeful for the idea that we can atone for past mistakes.

It is, however, a difficult book to follow – multi-linear and multi-threaded, and literary in the sense that Scott doesn’t use quotation marks for dialogue, which I’ve always felt makes prose seem like a dream or a memory. I did find it tedious at times to read. I nonetheless feel that it’s an important book, worthy of the Miles Franklin, and will probably end up on the high school curriculum in WA at the very least. show less

The style is challenging and it took me a little while to become absorbed in this recreation of what may well have taken place in the early days of colonisation round present day Albany, Western Australia. The story is told from the aboriginal perspective. Prizes bestowed on it are well deserved.

This book explores the early contact between the Aboriginal Noongar people and the first European settlers, and has been championed by many book lists and many bloggers to be THE definitive book I should read to understand Australia.

So, finally, I read it - and I admit that I wasn't as moved by this book as I expected to be. Australia has the same issues that Canada has -or perhaps any place in the world that Europeans decided to go in the age of the sailing ship.