AustLit

'The focus is on the representations of indigenous cultures and customs in Katharine Susannah Prichard's short fiction (1929-1959) and in Sia Figiel's short story cycle Where We Once Belonged (1996). If the white Australian writer's narratives interpret the Aboriginal perspective, Samoan Sia Figiel, instead, tells her stories from the point of view of her own people. The paper aims at investigating the different narrative modes and emotional approaches of two writers, removed in place and time, prompted by diverse, but converging, reasons to denounce the effects of white colonization on native peoples. Prichard's commitment to socialism and realist writing determined her passionate involvement in the Aboriginal cause and her dealing with the problematic issues of exploitation and power structures. On the other hand, Figiel's indigenous voice, modulated through the typically South Pacific structure of su'ifefiloi, conveys a composite oral heritage meant to contrast western cultural impositions, and to assert the natives' right to tell their own stories in their own words.' (283)