Tangara: A Mythologization Of "Being Australian"

Tangara is one of the best-known children's books in Australia. The Aboriginal word "tangara" means "let us set off again" in the language of the Tasmanian aborigines. The author of the book, Nan Chauncy, has attempted a more faithful portrait of Aboriginally than all of her predecessors. Besides a relatively unbiased view towards the Aboriginals, she has taken upon herself an exploration into the injustice that has been done to this tragic people in Tangara. Hence she is generally revered as an activist for aboriginal rights and culture.The author boldly confronts with the issue of immorality during white colonization, a much shunned topic, in the book. She suggests that it was the white bushrangers who were responsible for the genocide of the Australian natives, through the protagonists' fantastic journey into the past. In contrast to the tendency of demonizing and debasing the Aboriginal people once common in Australian literature, she has created a more favorite image of the native people who were extremely kind and innocent, though annihilated.However, problems arise upon a closer examination on the author's representation of the genocide and Aboriginality. The genocide of the aboriginal was more of an organized civilian act than occasional crimes committed by outlaws. Her representation of aboriginality largely falls into the category of romanticizing and enshrining, ignoring the existence of contemporary Australian Aboriginality. The Aboriginal in Tangara suffers a sort of aphasia in that they are represented as dumb over the brutality they have suffered. Contrarily, the author claims a power of knowledge that both unavailable to readers of European descent and that of the Aboriginal, in creating the image of an Aboriginal people in the by-gone ages leaving few traces of their culture and in incriminating the bushrangers, a ready scapegoat, for the genocide. Thus, the author's practice fits into the conception of an Aboriginalist, who promotes a postcolonial ideology of speaking for the Aboriginal and denying...