Indigenous Literature, an ambivalent question of self.

Indigenous Literature of Australia, an ambivalent question of self. by Teresa Podemska Abt © Published in Rozmowy o Komunikacji (2008). Ed. Prof. Grazyna Habrajska. Oficyna Wyd. Leksem: Łask, pg.171-184. Abstract Aiming to provide a critical insight into the Indigenous Literature and its position within the Australian Literature, History of Literature and its Australian contemporary trends and deliberations, the article embarks upon prospects for Indigenous Literature within contexts of World Literature in times of globalization. Recognising goals and functions for Indigenous Literature described by Indigenous authors, the article comments on the mainstream literary critique and observes that Indigenous Literature has an unsteady position within Literary History and Institutions; thus, it is not fully represented up to its multifarious potencies. Assuming exclusiveness, inclusiveness and matchlessness of Indigenous Literature, the article promotes a debate on possible pragmatic and theoretical approaches to the growing body of Indigenous texts. Furthermore, taking the challenge of the Indigenous Literature becoming autonomous, not situated within Australian National Literature and not within the institution of Australian Literary Studies but constituting its own faculty, the article underlines various aspects of such a shift, exploring Indigenous Literature’s characteristics that attract non-English speaking audiences in Australia and afar. Additionally, the article looks for reconfigurations of the 'Aboriginal' discourse and directs academics and authors’ attention to the issue of distance and time reductions in the era of globalization. In today’s trans-national politics of globalisation, the Indigenous Literature of Australia is challenging international readerships through literocultural and foreign language translations. In conclusion, the article underlines its overall intention of initiating a forward-thinking discussion not only within the literary and academic fields, but in the circles of educational institutions. While opening the question of Indigenous Literature within fields of trans-national, International translation and institutionalisation, the article also embarks on theoretical, interpretational and litero-historical issues. Keywords: Indigenous Literature, Critique & Translation, Globalisation, Literary Classification, Australian Literary History ***** The title of this article aspires at generating a dilemma that is generally heard, listened to, written and talked about, and often put aside in the main Australian postcolonial Indigenous discourses. These discourses, in some aspects of my argumentation, are opened for a scrutiny as the camouflage of yet another way of Anglophone mainstream in Australia. The Australian Indigenous Literature has dichotomous and contradictory qualities and character, which come from both the exterior and interior literocultural, socioliterary and sociopolitical reasons. The ambivalence of this literature is of a miscellaneous nature. It lies in the fact that most Indigenous Literature still has problems with self-representation and literocultural depiction of the crucial Indigenous issues which must be solved through English literary means and within sociocultural political systems and schemes. Additionally, within the local literary set-up, Indigenous Literature is constantly positioned as the literature of a minority, the literature which is different and dissimilar from Australian literature, thus, according to litero-historical classifications, it occupies an inferior, peripheral and secondary status. Unsurprisingly, such literary severance of Australian Literature leaves one pondering; if the Indigenous Literature is different, and it is the literature of a different culture, the culture of ‘the other’, is it really Australian? Due to historical and present sociopolitical circumstances, Indigenous Literature is a contributing and responsive part of literary discussions (in Australia and abroad) on themes of racism and discrimination. The National Australian Literature’s constitutive role in creating misrepresentations and socioliterary tensions is not disputable. The development of the Indigenous Literature of Protest and Resistance is the literary response to these deeds. Works of A. Wright, K. Scott, R. Langford, S. Morgan, H. Wharton, V. Brodie, S. Watson, L. Fogarty, P. Roe, G. Word, A. Heiss, J. Thomas and principally – by D. Unaipon, Oodgeroo, K. Gilbert or J. Davis and Mudrooroo, to name just a few, manifest attitudes and demonstrate literary currents, narratives and character creations that deconstruct cultural and social stereotypes. Consequently, producing tensions within the Australian audiences (critics amongst them), still markedly mainstreamed and shaped by Australian politics, Indigenous Literature is, in that case, classified as a subcategory, perhaps, an important counterpart of Australian literature, and even the one that weighs socio cultural literary contrasts and discrepancies between the two. Discussed within the above paradigms, Indigenous Literature produces the voice of the Australian historical suppressed truths, thus, it constitutes the base for yet further and almost constant hesitation. Even after years of viable observable recognition, Indigenous Literature in Australia today has a minimal position within the fields of Literary History and Literary Institution (e.g. university departments) and is not distinctively visible within the literary market. Therefore, it is not represented in full, to its changeable, miscellaneous, diverse, unmitigated potencies. Often, Indigenous Literature is incorporated and tightly compacted into either Australian or Indigenous Studies; both faculties forming a kind of amalgamated multipart schools. At the very best, they offer an insufficient range of Indigenous authors’ texts to be studied. Considering the sociocultural importance and beauty of different Indigenous literary expressions, the amount and literary and linguistic value of the fast growing body of Indigenous texts, Indigenous Literary Studies should already constitute a separate faculty, perhaps Indigenous Cultures Studies, or even more specifically – Indigenous Philology. Certainly, there is enough cultural and literary material to be studied as separate subjects of such a faculty, including studies of the oral tradition literatures of different Indigenous cultures. All that would form one of the world’s richest, original and exciting educative programs! Additionally, comparative studies of various Indigenous literatures could be extended to many diverse literary interpretations and lingual and foreign language translations. Disregarding litero-historical periods as exclusive for literary and cultural comparisons, such studies of Indigenous Literature of Australia could create a different path for its development. In an interview titled Telling our own stories, B. Andrew stresses the importance of cultural international exchange: “Internationalism helps us to gain new perspectives form outside Australia and specifically from those people who think outside the box. (…) International perspectives will help us challenge dominant Australian and Western ways of speaking about Aboriginal art and culture.” B. Andrew, ‘Telling Our Own Stories’. Black Times. Ed. P. Minter. Meanjin, (2006), pp. 143. Amongst themes within international communication that dispute political dominance are the notions of sociopolitical suffering and experiences. Both can form multilayered surfaces for contrasting and paralleling distant, so-called, small literatures (e.g. Polish, Czech, Rumanian, Slovenian) that are not results from colonisation but nevertheless register the human torment and distress. In fact, in terms of inclusion and exclusion such new dialogue between cultures and their literatures would bring fresh underpinning for literocultural classifications and canons; literatures, which now are left behind the canon may have a chance to be included. Tendencies and atmosphere for Indigenous Literature to be seen as a separate and critical entity already exist and have become quite dynamic within the contemporary Indigenous and Australian literary circles, especially for readers, to regard Indigenous Literature as a composite, intricate body of texts that are unique in narrative, expressive language and themes. These Indigenous texts are in clear rejection of and disagreement with anything called Australian, especially constructs pertaining to the Australian national unifying settler or landscape myths that are employed by the Anglophone Australian History of Literature. Furthermore, the Australian litero-criticism separates Indigenous titles, authors, critics, and on the whole, Indigenous literary culture, from Australian Literature by categorizing and naming Indigenous trends, movements and acts with theoretical tools generally used in World Literature’s universalistic classifications, labelling not only the authors, but also their works. This seems to be the inheritance and extension of the settler mentality and the so-called Australian invention dreams. They allow categorizations, but not the freedom of thought and meaning. The Indigenous standpoint on the subject of liberation and freedom of expression, together with issues of authenticity and representation, is far from passive. It is inventive, aggressive, reclassifying and creative. Indigenous Literature plays an important role in shaping its own sociocultural and aesthetic values and makes sure that they are delivered to Indigenous and Australian societies, as well as to the peoples of the world. Since Indigenous Literature has been constantly and progressively described and its aims, functions and themes pre-contemplated by its writers and critics in publicly presented and published programs, Reference to various socioliterary critiques and statements of C. Watego, Mudrooroo, A. Heiss, T. Birch, B. Andrew, J. Huggins, S. Watson, A. Wright. M. Langton. this literature’s sociopolitical and cultural developments and values form a base for its sovereignty within the sphere of world literatures, rather than the literature of one country or geographical area. Describing their reading audiences, Indigenous writers aim to reach the English-speaking world that may be estimated at some 400 million people. Although he did not think internationally always, adequate and distinctive are J. Davis’s words: “I’m very conscious of the fact, too, that I want make a few bob. I know most of the people who are going to buy my books are going to be white people because there is more of them. But I certainly keep my people in mind all the time, all the time. (…) Sometimes I’d like to write more strongly than I do, but I don’t think I’d really put it in for publication. I just think I write for people. People are people for me and that’s full stop.” D. Strauss. Ed. Facing Writers. (ABC Enterprises. NSW. 1990), pg. 18. The fact that Indigenous Literature is perceived and classified globally as literature of Australia is inevitable because of the geographic and sociopolitical place in which Indigenous Literature is created. Its literocultural characteristics, coming from within and interiorly shaping the literature per se, outline Indigenous literature’s Australian sociopolitical contexts and places using the English language, its literary expressions, styles and forms. From this aspect, Indigenous Literature belongs to the English-speaking world, thus it is to be categorised conventionally. There is no need to argue this point, as it concerns probably one of the strongest features of the Indigenous Literature’s ambivalence. One aspect of it is that the language within Indigenous Literature acts, performs and is used in Indigenous literocultural creation and representations as a medium of communication and is shaped by different, often very timid minds of its ‘remote’, ‘urban’, ‘collective’ Indigenous creators. The second aspect brings the issue of the language to the political oppression. Indeed, the above issues do not leave an Indigenous writer in vain. “The Aboriginal writer exists in a state of ambiguity. (…) It is a curious fate, to write for a people not one’s own, and stranger still to write for the conquerors of one’s people.” Mudrooroo, Writing from the fringe. A study of modern Aboriginal literature. (Melbourne: Hyland House, 1997). The English language in Australia, as in any other country, is a tool of communication and aesthetics. For many Indigenous people ‘the Indigenous’ (mainly ‘the Indigenous’ inscribed in poems or prose) translates itself through English and the lingual meanings and expressions in it are unlike the original (one could say – family) manner of Indigenous cultural manifestations and identities of Indigenous persons. Moreover, for most readers of Indigenous Literature, ‘the Indigenous’ within the text is received by them via their own cultural codes; codes that in Australia are often poles apart from the ones in question. Additionally, due to the complex national population of Australia, there is no such thing as ‘an Australian reader”. The cultural systems of readers are immanently different in character and nature from the ones produced by the Indigenous texts. Moreover, forms of English used by people are variable and various and so-called Aboriginal English represents only the fraction of a problem. Therefore, such distinctions and changeability situate the question of cultural and lingual, literary and intentional meaning of the text at its upmost substance. As stressed, language in the Australian sociopolitical environment occupies a hesitant position. On one hand, it must be regarded as a political tool of the colonial and postcolonial conquest of Indigenous languages and situations, and on the other hand, it must be viewed according to its pragmatic role as the literary and stylistic medium for transmission of the Indigenous cultural values and aesthetics. Evidently, there are other, exterior cultural remarks that result in Indigenous Literature being perceived by outside cultures and their audiences as Australian. Such are the ways of reading and readers’ responses and to lesser importance, Indigenous writers’ attitudes to their projected audiences, local and international readerships and Indigenous authors’ participation in literocultural and literocritical discourses. Some of these discourses are unavoidably concerned with the Indigenous fight for a personal, cultural, social and political identity. Subsequently, such may be the idea of shaping Indigenous cultures and Literature as a pan-Aboriginal (perhaps meaning - indigenously multicultural), self-governing and self-regulating disciplinary notion, with its own loci communes and its own kinds, genres and styles with their rhetoric, respective themes and motives. The idea of pan- Aboriginality seems to be unavoidable (for some, also very tempting), manifesting Indigenous Peoples’ universal resistance to cultural dominance, fight for their cultures and languages, as well as for healthy peaceful existence. Certainly, in some ways, pan-Aboriginality would reward Indigenous Peoples, their writers, critics and activists in their struggle for sovereignty, gratitude and appreciation in their own country. (Whether pan-Aboriginality would be truthful, just and representational to all Indigenous Cultures in Australia, is a different problem.) Discussions on pan-Aboriginality are complex. Evidently, it can also be seen as the critical issue of the Australian mainstream literocultural critique, which involves itself with the positions ascribed for the Indigenous writers and their works within Australian literary readership. As such, it brings different designations of Indigenous cultures and literature by which it is recognised abroad. Discussed as fringe, peripheral, minority, multicultural or Aboriginal, Indigenous Literature of Australia enriches the global and the Australian Indigenous postcolonial discourse, which is a constantly growing body of critical and literary works that addresses a range of issues such as history of invasion, Indigenous diaspora, the impasse of identity, dilemma of representation, and reconciliation. Indigenous authors are speaking from all possible angles of this discourse and they are shifting it to other Indigenous discourses, as well as already mentioned international status. Even though, the sociopolitical literary contexts of Indigenous literary works recognizes the Aboriginal literature and its authors as Australian, it is how Indigenous Literature of Australia becomes ‘a sister’ of Literatures of the World without any inferiority. Evidently, the English language and representations of Indigenuity in Australia’s Indigenous writings are not the only characteristics of the Indigenous Literature’s ambivalence. The socioliterary practice thrives on authenticity of literary creation, inscriptions of image, legitimacy of the Indigenous author and genuineness of the texts; these are instantly conversed and examined as ones distinguishing true Aboriginality. Aboriginality, as assigned to Indigenous writers not so much by themselves but constructed for them by mainstream cultural practices and institutions within which Indigenous writers and texts must, at times reluctantly, exist. G. Huggan, Ethnic autobiography and the cult of authenticity. Contemporary Issues in Australian Literature. Ed. D. Callahan. 2002. Frank Cass. London - Portland – Or. As far back as the written Indigenous Literature situated itself within Australian Literary Studies, Indigenous writers have aimed at shaking readers’ understanding and compassion and at their rethinking of the Indigenous and so called Australian past, present and future. In doing so, do they offer something totally different? Does Indigenous Literature protrude uniquely? Does it provide a reader with an alternative to the Anglo-Saxon Australian one? It is quite apparently the case that Indigenous Literature cannot be seen or/and understood as a continuation of either universal Anglophone or Anglo-Saxon Literatures. It is the opposite; Australian Indigenous authors meticulously carve bodies of cultural and sociopolitical (literary) knowledge that is to change, adjust and transform the Australian Indigenous Peoples’ status, as well as the stand and position of their literature. By doing so, Indigenous authors lead the reader through Indigenous realities - diverse, unique, and yet, universally known by socio-historical, experiences of Indigenous persons. When in its unmatched unsurpassed form, Indigenous Literature forces its audiences to look for the literary features, tropes, metaphors and expressions of the texts that are of multilayered, profound, cultural and literary connotations and implications. When Indigenous Literature fulfils its socioliterary function, it gives its audiences the taste of life that Indigenous peoples of Australia are to live. Life descriptions in the Indigenous Literature are active, resonant straightforwardly imaginable panoramas of Indigenous reality in Australia. This reality is, painfully and dynamically, a constant process of cultural transition of individual Indigenous lives. This inscribed reality is often so sensibly and prudently unreal to readers with different life experiences that such literature’s meanings and interpretations of the world are not easy to perceive and candidly understand. Who can indifferently grasp the Stolen Generation narratives or read Kath Walker’s, T. Birch’s or K. Ree-Gillbert poems without concerns? Can a comfortable, easy going Australian of contemporary times understand incarceration, or the ‘broken and sick language of L. Fogarty’s poetry?’ Anita Heiss concludes her essay: “Let’s hope that the documenting in poetry of the political Indigenous voices continues to grow, but that the trauma it can often create for individuals declines.” A. Heiss, Black Politics. Black Times. Ed. P. Minter. Meanjin. (2006), pg. 190. Not effortlessly obtainable, observable or reachable from readers’ imagination or memory storages, Australian Indigenous literary and poetic realities become the tropes of realism for sensitive and insightful readers, not for the ones who hunt for pleasurable plots. Indigenous themes and characters are not for people who take life for granted. They are for readers who observe life with a mind’s eye. Simple and moderately comfortable and existentially oriented Australians living in contemporary times, on the whole, those who ‘breath in and out stereotypes’, will not be able to ‘read’ Indigenous texts to their full potential. For example, the literary worlds, characters and situations known from Indigenous Literature are, as in Carpentaria A. Wright, Carpentaria. (Sydney: Giramondo, 2007). and in The Kadaitcha Sung S. Watson, The Kadaitcha Sung. ( Australia: Penguin Books, 1990)., subliminal, intuitive and, at the same time, very insightful, but certainly, both books can be read on multiple interpretational levels only if the readers have some pre-existing knowledge about Indigenous culture and sociopolitical and historical conditions. In this sense Indigenous Literature challenges the Australian literary canon and its reader. Indigenous literary worlds bring countless associations and peculiarities, of which Mystic Realism is one, but not the only style of narrative. The mind wonders from the real to the unreal and the unreal becomes unrealistically real: such are the literary worlds discovered, interpreted and learnt by readers of Alexis Wright and Sam Watson who make senses of meanings that filter through social boundaries, individual thinking and literary and artistic contexts. Indigenous literary heroes and characters act and tell their stories, stories that are not Australian but Indigenous: they are telling stories from the times of ‘pre-Australia’, therefore, giving the readers new and different aspects of Indigenous history in Australian sociopolitical and literocultural contexts. The (Magic) realism and drama of Indigenous texts, mystery and metaphoric usage of language and expression, cultural simplicity and social complexity of literary situations, the vast scale of sociocultural judgements and truthful uncompromising plots and characters are all fascinating aspects of various narratives, which are distinctive and typical to Indigenous Literature. Storylines that struggle to pinpoint the significance of and meaning to the Indigenous characters successfully bring up the weight of plots upon them. Always trying to win, the Indigenous characters battle for a political stance, an Indigenous cause, Culture and Land. By telling the story of a happy Indigenous person and a successful Indigenous individual, Indigenous Literature takes new happier thematic and character trajectories; Twenty pink questions of Fabienne Bayet – Charlton or Anita Heiss’ Not meeting Mr Right are good examples of such new trends. Pragmatic and programmed literary possibilities for inscribing happy Indigenous life were not existent and have been left unpenetrated for a very long time. Such a situation has been a consequence of the omnipotent form of protest and resistance to the invader, coloniser and dominant culture. At that time, what also seems to be the case in today’s postcolonial Australia, for a great deal of Indigenous creative production, social functions of literature and appropriate literary representation of Indigenous people were very important. Alexis Wright, as many Indigenous writers – critics - activists (Oodgeroo, Heiss, Watson, Fogarty amongst them) states that: “Literature is a very good tool for speaking out about the pain of humanity for Aboriginal people in this country. Literature gets to the very personal. It invites the reader to fully experience our stories - the living hell - in a way that is real. (…) I have asked for help from my own people to protect their interests in my writing. I tell them what I am capable of, and what I am not able to do because of my limitations.” A. Wright, ‘Politics of Writing’, Southerly. Vol. 62, nr 2. 2003, pp. 13-14. As Indigenous writings take the appearance of all possible genres and forms, often, in their inimitable Indigenous artistic beauty, they manifest the historical and social nature of characters to universalise their journey from traditional life memories and traumatic colonisations. These days, still very occasionally, Indigenous Literature extends its own images on a picturesque immigrant, generally relatively happy in a new country but frequently not aware of, and not bothered with, the Indigenous diaspora, Australian racism, nationalistic features of governments and/or mainstreamed culture. If, in Indigenous Literature of Australia, there is a mentioning of the “other”, so widely discussed by postcolonial criticism, this, in no doubt, is not Indigenous character but a very different, often stupid, cruel and egoistic, inhuman white fella who only sporadically is represented as moral, wise or human. Such representations are at odds with Indigenous portrayal of non-Indigenous Australian characters. The newer Indigenous Literature is less and less concerned with so-called white characters and they clearly are no longer at the centre of plots. Newer Indigenous literary prose and poetry (in all their textual literary phases and realities) signify associations with Indigenous cultures in Australia. Their thematic, expressional and stylistic similarities connect Indigenous Literature with the worldwide literary issues of human conditions by which Indigenous texts have characteristics and meanings originating from ‘the text’s within’, and not from the Australia’s Anglo–Saxon value based culture. Anglophone and Anglo-Saxon principles and ethics have become not worth mentioning, and European cultures estranged, although some pre-Christian cultures of Europe might allocate some resemblances to the Indigenous ethical, philosophical, and cultural systems of values. Transferred from Indigenous life philosophy and applied to the literary work, Indigenous cultural and literary principles and standards challenge existing sociocultural premises and themes of Australian Literature, which is no longer superior, thus has become indifferent to some of Indigenous writers and their readers who are calling for new tools of literocultural interpretation and cultural translations. Indigenous Literature and Indigenous literary criticism with its prime understanding of translational impossibilities caused by systems of diverse cultural means of communication and perceptions have become distinct from Australian Literature. Anticipating and revealing its new reader response potentials, Indigenous Literature tries to uphold its originality and make serious attempts to sustain its own merit by pushing against unnecessary and constant comparisons to its Australian Anglo-Saxon, national counterpart. This certainly, is no easy task. At least three different socioliterary positions tend to place the Indigenous Literature within the national and the Australian Literature’s contexts. First is the idea of mainstreaming and melting any cultural importance of any ethnic culture and its literature. Second is the institutional credence of placing Indigenous Literature within omnipotent Australian literary colonial and postcolonial discourses, usually without related literary comparison studies. Third, possibly the most dangerous, is labelling and classifying Indigenous Literature as the literature of the minority, which makes Aboriginal literature hardly perceived as original, thematically innovative and different in form and its structure. Instead, Aboriginal Literature is seen as inferior to Anglo–Saxon mainstream literature and discriminatorily attributed with evident stereotype connotations and cultural disadvantages. This however is not all, as Indigenous narratives offer numerous and recurrent mementos of oral history and are producing a collective legacy of social suffering and stories of life, constantly resting themselves in the centre of critical disputes that seek sociopolitical and historical truths. Mainly pigeonholed, these narratives are written about and recognised as the literature of resistance and protest. The only functions assigned to them are social, political and realistic. Their forms vary, from poetry, through plays to autobiography. They are usually deprived of other literary aesthetic, artistic, philosophical or imaginative functions. With this kind of measuring, evaluating, classifying and labelling, Indigenous Literature is not only ‘whitened’, ‘westernised’ and mainstreamed, but its readers (so predominantly Anglo–Saxon) are constructed and projected within the hegemonic tools of the Australian literary critique. By examining and placing Indigenous texts within Australian mainstream culture and within Australian literary historical and theoretical discourses, ironically, this critique locates Indigenous Literature within Australian national contexts and fields. With any but mainstream reading responses and reception, and (mainly postcolonial) usages of socially based theories for text interpretation and cultural translations, the sociocultural ambivalence of Indigenous Literature seems to be unavoidable. Will Indigenous writers and critics be able to cease the labelling and stop assimilative reconciliation trends? Will mainstreaming practices ever stop? Is there any other alternative? All the above questions reveal issues of literary lingual translations, locally - from English to Indigenous languages, internationally – possible translations to other languages, which enable transfers and fuller recognition of Indigenous Literature and cultures as inimitable and complex in their own right. In its primary instance, translation makes room for intercultural and international critical discourse and in consequence changes existing power relations between Indigenous writers and the Australian publishing market. Moreover, such new relationship could successfully influence and establish author – reader - critique relationship; one that in the present Australian socioliterary situation, so heavily depends on the mainstream cultural politics. Let us ponder on Indigenous Literature as separated and autonomous from the national Australian literary and critical fields. If such, Indigenous Literature of Australia can escape currents and influences of English cultural mainstreaming and, in the same instance, can break away from one-sided, thus constrained postcolonial discourse. Seen and analysed as an independent literary entity, Indigenous Literature and critique will shape their own discourses and debates, thus they will place themselves within the world’s literary theoretical and historical frameworks and their critical nets. Freed from the Australian literary regionalism, Indigenous Literature can stage itself within the reach of international literary audiences, within various countries’ International Indigenous readers. With their appetite for original representations, particulars of Indigenous cultures of Australia, patterns of other sociocultural and geographical regions, lingual, cultural and literary translations and their desire for new bodies of sociocultural and philosophical knowledge, these audiences will stimulate the literary production of Indigenous writers of Australia. Their expectations of literary exemplifications and realisations of Indigenous themes and novel cultural contents and contexts will inspire and arouse Indigenous writers’ quest for authenticity and in consequence will bring their projected local and international readers’ wider comprehension of the Indigenous struggle and place within the postcolonial reality of Australia. Value, in today’s globalised world, is defined as the attractiveness, popularity, exclusiveness and desirability of a thing. In our case, it is a book. Is Indigenous Literature conceptualised as such by Australian sociology of literature? Is usefulness of Indigenous Literature obvious to our systems and institutions? Does this literature refer to the value in terms of money and, predominantly, in terms of Australian mainstream politics? It does not seem to be the case in Australia. Numbers of publications grapple with the subject, amongst them: Mudrooroo’s The Indigenous Literature of Australia= Milli Milli Wangka (1997), where hegemonic systems of British thinking, terms, ways of representations, generalizations, agendas of empowerment are in question. An attempt to theorise the relationship between dominant white Australian modes of culture and those of Australian Indigenous cultures also comes from Anita Heiss’ Dhuuluu – Yala To talk straight. (2003) where the author is particularly interested in issues of equal opportunity and fair go, arguing that neither writers’ festivals nor publishing institutions provide a justified position for Indigenous authors in Australia. J.Mateer says: “For the artists of the Australian archipelago, the mistaken belief that Australia is one enormous island has the disadvantage that it constantly forces them to talk about their practices as if there were real commonalities that they all shared, as if the art forms of the various islands (meaning metropolises of Australia, TPA) could be effectively grouped under the one cultural discourse, that of the nation.” J. Mateer, ‘Australia is not an Island’. Black Times. Ed. P. Minter. Meanjin. (2006), Pg. 91 Affiliation: University of South Australia, David Unaipon College of Indigenous Education & Research Division of Education, Arts and Social Sciences & School of International Studies. The metaphor used by J. Mateer brings to light another huge aspect of the cultural ambivalence and peculiarity in which, for some reason, Indigenous Literature has itself found trapped. Instead of moving beyond existing theories, Indigenous Literature oscillates within postcolonial literocultural discourse and hardly uses other literary translation theories to its advantage. Australian theoreticians, historians and critics seem to be reluctant to re-examine approaches to this discourse, although this discourse has the potential to become yet another tool for the Indigenous Literature (and other minority literatures of Australia) to be mainstreamed and nationalised. Is this what Australian writers, citizens and readers would want? It most certainly cannot be the desire of writers who aspire for their readerships in the same way as any other writer in Australia or in the World. They simply want their books to reach audiences, and know that any enclosure or labelling of their work stands between them and their readers, participants of various English-speaking populations and only occasionally, those whom lingual translations are offered. Accordingly, critics must think of approaches suitable to such socioliterary digressions and should investigate and ponder how Indigenous Literature and critique could be successfully situated within, and compete alongside, literatures of the World. Crucially, they should acknowledge and fully appreciate the role of Australian Indigenous Literature as an internal and external force and part of World Literature and, at the same time its self-creative, developmental and discursive formative body of texts. Literatures that are able to arrive at the international literary field almost instantaneously become assets of intercultural audiences and are placed beyond national literocultural questions. Beyond the national arena and outside of the local postcolonial debates, the ambivalence of Indigenous Literature ceases to exist. As already happening, Indigenous texts can place themselves in the centre of cultural translational discourses and deliberations. Many texts have already negotiated their position within local cultural translational contexts and, as such, they have caught the attention of international literary markets. They are already attractive to some international audiences, translators and critics of translations, even though Indigenous theorists and critics of literature are still looking for appropriate tools by which the Indigenous text could be analysed, interpreted, translated and in consequence valued as a commodity for an author and publisher to sell. Looking for new ways for our human creations and thought constructs is a laudable task; the uncertainty and luck of scrutiny during such activity is not. Indigenous writers and critics fight back the ambivalence the Indigenous Literature is entangled with. Providentially, the potential buyer is always puzzled by an additional ‘why’, which in this situation, would materialise in the form of reading interests. As the primary market question for the publisher is earning money, one could not help but wonder with what subjects and themes and whom Indigenous Literature is to entertain or ultimately educate. In this case the problem of publishers’ decisions rests in the sphere of genres and themes. Benefiting for Indigenous Literature is its difference. Why then, should Indigenous Literature, which certainly is knotty, dense and controversial, occasionally joyful, sarcastic and satiric, not earn at least as much as the literature of the Australian mainstream? If this is a condition for Indigenous Literature to become an International, a separate body, some additional practices should be scrutinised. Is Indigenous Literature that well promoted, its writers famous, and its books desirable? Do local successful sales mean that Indigenous Literature is a commodity on demand for its uniqueness, divergence or familiarity with universalness? Lead by current literary discussions, this article tries to draw institutional bodies, literary critics and Indigenous writers’ attention to local and international perspectives of Indigenous Literature’s ambiguousness contemplated in its multifaceted dimensional nature. In terms of distance and time reductions achieved by globalisation, this ambiguousness is seen here a positive force. Not only is the Indigenous Literature’s place within the English Literary Market expanding with ‘the Indigenous’, becoming known in the world of literatures in English, but this ‘literary Indigenous’ reaches the non-English speaking Literary World, that makes advances for civilisations that will come. Therefore, and very importantly, placing itself in a spectrum of International cultures, overriding local discrepancies, trans-national, de-regionalised Indigenous Literature of Australia, endows itself with challenging international readerships through literocultural and foreign language translations. Assuming that translations between languages and cultures will persevere in tomorrow’s cyber-culture and cyberspace communications, Indigenous Literature will reach its audiences regardless of the present world categorisations, canonisations and classifications. In conclusion, expectantly and confidently, the Indigenous Literature of Australia, once institutionally and literocritically confident and freed of any sociopolitical insecurities, will soon be read and cultivated for its inspirational, historical, aesthetical, sociocultural, and experiential values through which it once emerged and stands at this very moment so proudly. At last acknowledged, appreciated and visible, it is still at a standstill of sociopolitical dichotomy, insecurity and ambivalence. Opening the question of its self-governing, equal and separate status within Australian Academy, the author of this article hopes for change; change that would liberate Indigenous cultures and, literature within them, from the ambivalence inscribed in them by the Anglophone hegemony. It is this article’s assertion that Indigenous literature, as it started some tens years ago, and as creative and versatile as it is, must be given a wider educational field to act upon and within. Success of any literature depends not only on the politics of publishing and publicity, but also on the literary and cultural freedom. To give local and International literary audiences the chance to hear and discover meanings of deep respect to Land and traditional transitional Knowledges in full, Indigenous writers and literature must tell its stories of land, policies of absorption, isolation, annihilation and integration without pressures from external Australian sociocultural systems. Indigenous Literature Philology is only one example of such self-governing institutional body, where Indigenous writers and critics would be given wider an academic institutional chance to research their literature; the process of regaining and retrieving (for both authors and us, readers) Indigenous Peoples’ own history and life in their own unique and appropriate way would assist the whole Australian society. In such a way, Indigenous Literature would fall comfortably within autonomous literary trends. With its rhetoric of decolonising peoples’ minds, Indigenous Literature and its authors would continue to develop their own socioliterary strategies with which they can engage present and future generations of Australian society and the societies of the outside cultures in its richness. With such prospects, Indigenous Literature can maintain its traditional cultural transferability not only for the benefit of Indigenous Literature of Australia but for other literatures and cultures so vastly and boundlessly spread around the globe. PAGE 1