Indigenous cultural capital : postcolonial narratives in post-Mabo Australian children's literature

Abstract

This thesis examines the postcolonial narratives in Australian children’s literature with Aboriginal themes and motifs, written by Indigenous and non-Indigenous writers and published from 1992 to the present. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital, the thesis explores how Aboriginal people’s histories and cultures are deployed, represented, and transmitted as “Indigenous cultural capital” for young readers. The embodiment, operation, and circulation of Indigenous cultural capital in children’s books manifests the popularity of writing about Aboriginality and the rise of Aboriginal authorial agency in the postcolonial field of literary production. By affirming Indigenous cultural value and reorienting the instituting power of recognition, Indigenous cultural capital demonstrates a tactic of resistance within the dominant framework and signifies a transformative force to change the way in which cultural relations are reproduced in Australian settler society.

Centring on the notion of Indigenous cultural capital, the chapters discuss its representations, its formative process and modes of transmission, and its ethical deployment by Indigenous and non-Indigenous writers in children’s texts. Chapter One exemplifies Indigenous perceptions of land and country, a fundamental theme that evokes Indigenous cultural capital in books for children.

The textual and visual representations of Indigenous cultural capital present Indigenous connections to country and envision a reconciliatory space in the postcolonial context. Chapter Two considers the circulation of Indigenous cultural capital through testimonial and autobiographical narratives of the Stolen Generations, which recollect an archive of living memories of Aboriginal child removal, expose racial discrimination and injustices, and break the silence in the master narratives of Australian historiography. By unfolding the intricate relationship between the formation of Indigenous cultural capital and institutional means of literary legitimation, such as book reviews, prizes and paratexts, Chapter Three examines the risk of incorporating Indigenous cultures into cultural capital in the dominant discourse and demonstrates how Indigenous cultural capital can be accrued and mobilized by Aboriginal writers so as to intervene, limit, and even modify the institutional modes of recognition. Chapter Four traces the pedagogic shift of institutional schemes in Aboriginal education, primarily during the past two decades, and explores the effective transmission and acquisition of Indigenous cultural capital through school syllabuses and curricula. Chapter Five considers the ethics of representing Aboriginality through the lens of the gift. Given the historical indebtedness in Australian racial relations, the morality of gift exchanges sheds light on the dilemma of non-Indigenous writers in writing Aboriginal stories and enables a pragmatic approach to protect Indigenous cultural heritage.

Indigenous cultural capital provides a fresh perspective in the postcolonial readings of Australian children’s books. It suggests a relational thinking to recognise Indigenous people’s agency in their engagement with mainstream society and institutional schemes, and a critical optimism to empower Indigenous people through cultural revitalisation and to enrich both Indigenous and non-Indigenous young minds.