Lecture Week 3
During this week in class, we watched a video interview of Kate Grenville explaining The Secret River and her ancestral background to the book. I was taken aback as I watched the interview and thought deeper into the bias within the book. I hadn't known before that the book was extremely controversial when it was first released. However, now it makes a lot of sense. The Aboriginal perspective is completely overlooked in this story and it gives readers only a single story into their culture. As someone living in America, Australian history isn't taught in our curriculum and isn't something that I know much about. Because of this, my view of Aboriginals is only what I've read during this book. I am grateful that we have the opportunity to do research excursions so I can learn more about what their culture is really like through different perspectives. As I've done more research, I've come to learn that the Aboriginal people were completely uprooted and mistreated by the settlers. Although there are some aspects in The Secret River that portray this, I don't think there are enough. I think Grenville should've taken more consideration into this. I wonder if she regrets not adding an Aboriginal perspective now? Or if she remains happy with her work and it is supposed to have a bias?
Hi Eloise! I kind of feel like there were some missteps in representing indigenous people considering the social context of the book meaning to reconcile those two groups. I understand why they are portrayed the way they are considering how the book is told from Thornhill's perspective and the natives don't speak the same language, but it does raise some issues. Since we never get any introspection from the natives, it sort of falls into the category of "one-sided indigenous stories told from the colonizer's point of view." I think it would have helped to somehow integrate some of the natives as real characters, since they almost feel more like plot devices to develop the main cast at times.
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