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Issue Details: First known date: 2018... 2018 Negotiating the “Drunken Aborigine”: Alcohol in Indigenous Autobiography
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'This article approaches the question of how Aboriginal Australians describe their own experiences of drinking alcohol, sometimes to excess, and how they recover, through a reading of seven autobiographies alongside the scholarship on Aboriginal drinking. The evidence contained in these life stories stresses personal factors and adds to the picture we glean from the scholarship, whether academic or governmental, epidemiological, anthropological or historical, which explains Aboriginal drinking habits in more social terms. Thus, the autobiographies themselves make an important intervention into the scholarship on Aboriginal drinking. Beyond this, negotiating with the stereotype of the “drunken Aborigine” is unavoidable for Aboriginal people who write about their drinking and these autobiographies represent a challenge to this popular image. This article examines a previously unexamined discourse on Aboriginal drinking that goes some way towards undermining the public representation of a drunken Aboriginal culture while simultaneously giving individual Aboriginal Australians greater voice in describing their past and current experiences.' (Publication abstract)

Notes

  • Epigraph: Now you know I started drinking to become a man. Well, now I am drinking for the pleasure of it, and I am going down to the pub every day after work. This goes on until the year 1963, this drinking for pleasure. In this year I found my first excuse to start drinking out of self-pity. -- Koorie Dhoulagarle, There’s More to Life 

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Journal of Australian Studies vol. 42 no. 1 2018 13441138 2018 periodical issue

    'The national consciousness of settler colonial societies such as Australia often blends a complex mix of local and Indigenous identities. Historically infused with a sense of inferiority—and the imperative to stamp ownership on the continent—the stories that settlers tell, and the images and propaganda they project, seek to address this feeling. Robert Frost’s poem argued that, for the United States, “the deed of gift was many deeds of war”. For Australians, by contrast, the frontier wars neither gave nor served as a foundational narrative. In their place, mythologies emerged: of Anzac, of an impoverished Indigenous population, of an industrial “golden age”, and of a free-spirited, urbane culture. We hope that you enjoy the eight articles in this issue of the Journal of Australian Studies, each of which grapples with a question of identity and clarifies and challenges these prevailing mythologies.' (Carolyn Holbrook, Julie Kimber, Maggie Nolan & Laura Rademaker : Introduction)

    2018
    pg. 51-64
Last amended 26 Mar 2018 11:47:38
51-64 Negotiating the “Drunken Aborigine”: Alcohol in Indigenous Autobiographysmall AustLit logo Journal of Australian Studies
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