Speaker 1: My earliest memories of learning Australian history at primary school
Speaker 1: are distinctly Sepia Toned. I remember classes about bush rangers
Speaker 1: and gold rushers, ANZACs and the First Fleet, Birkenwill's wandering
Speaker 1: off into the desert with those camels. Even in the
Speaker 1: mid eighties, the understanding of frontier wars, of dispossession and
Speaker 1: unseated sovereignty was limited at best. More often than not
Speaker 1: it remained completely unspoken. The colonial legal myth of Terrannalius
Speaker 1: was still pretty effectively applied to how Australia's history was taught.
Speaker 1: Silences and absences are so often key elements to the
Speaker 1: building of national myths, and so too is this pervasive
Speaker 1: impatience with nuance or complexity. Convicts transported in the First
Speaker 1: Fleet were all pale, white guys with Cockney accents who
Speaker 1: had stolen an apple in some Dikenzian backstreet of London.
Speaker 1: Bushrangers were white guys with shaggy beards and Irish names.
Speaker 1: Certainly none one of them looked like John Caesar. In
Speaker 1: the history books of my childhood. John Caesar's probably best
Speaker 1: understood as Australia's first bush ranger. He arrived in Sydney
Speaker 1: on the Alexander in seventeen eighty eight, and Caesar was black.
Speaker 1: Is one of at least fifteen convicts of African descent
Speaker 1: in those first ships. By eighteen forty there were almost
Speaker 1: five hundred of them. You can see them in the
Speaker 1: margins of portraits painted at the time, you can find
Speaker 1: glancing mentions of them in the historical record. But for
Speaker 1: the most part they remain invisible, whitewashed out of our history.
Speaker 1: And it matters for a range of reasons, not least
Speaker 1: because understanding the links between the colonial project in all
Speaker 1: its forms, between empire and the convict system and slavery
Speaker 1: allows us to better understand the truths behind our national
Speaker 1: idea of ourselves. And all of this comes to bear
Speaker 1: in a terrific new book. Santilla Chingape has been a
Speaker 1: journalist and a storyteller for years, but in the story
Speaker 1: about these absences from the historical record, she found what
Speaker 1: she had been working towards for her entire career, the
Speaker 1: story of Australia's black conflicts. I'm Michael Williams and this
Speaker 1: is read this the show about the books we love
Speaker 1: and the stories behind me. I'm a big fan of
Speaker 1: Sandy's work. She's a regular contributor to The Saturday Paper
Speaker 1: and The Monthly, and I've been lucky enough to work
Speaker 1: closely with her for a few years now. She's also
Speaker 1: a formidable filmmaker. The project that eventually became Black Convicts
Speaker 1: started its life as a critically acclaimed and award winning
Speaker 1: documentary Our African Roots. It's streaming on SBS on demand now.
Speaker 1: Santilla is a natural born storyteller, but she grew up
Speaker 1: learning stories about her life through a largely white European lens.
Speaker 1: It seemed to Santy that people like her got to
Speaker 1: read about history, but never to write about it.
Speaker 2: I'd always loved reading and writing when I was a kid,
Speaker 2: and I was obsessed with writing. I remember my family
Speaker 2: got our first computer. My brother would always play like
Speaker 2: video games and like FIFA, and I would always write
Speaker 2: plays and like that was the thing that always excited me.
Speaker 2: And I didn't really think about writing as a career.
Speaker 2: I didn't really think, but I remember being fascinated by
Speaker 2: people that told stories. And then journalism became like a
Speaker 2: very accessible entry point for me because I saw people
Speaker 2: that looked like me doing it and I was like Oh,
Speaker 2: that looks like a really interesting career, Like I think
Speaker 2: I want to do that because I get to tell
Speaker 2: stories and I get to be curious, and I get
Speaker 2: to meet people. And I remember thinking, Okay, where do
Speaker 2: you go if you want to be a journalist? And
Speaker 2: you know, growing up in the nineties and Dar and
Speaker 2: I do. She was on SBS and she had a
Speaker 2: name that most people couldn't pronounce, kind of like me,
Speaker 2: and I was like, I think that's that's where I
Speaker 2: want to go. I want to end up at SBS.
Speaker 2: And it was a bit of a detour because I
Speaker 2: had to classic sort of like migrant thing of studying
Speaker 2: to become a doctor and then realizing that that's not
Speaker 2: what I wanted to do. And I loved community radio.
Speaker 2: I did a lot of stuff with SIN and then
Speaker 2: that summer I remember having the very difficult conversation with
Speaker 2: my mum and saying, I don't I don't think I
Speaker 2: want to do this medicine thing. I think I want
Speaker 2: to pursue a career in journalism. And my mom, you know,
Speaker 2: reacted anyway that I think most parents would. I mean,
Speaker 2: she was worried because she was like, I don't know
Speaker 2: if you're going to make any money doing this. Also,
Speaker 2: she was also looking at it from a you know,
Speaker 2: you're a black woman. I don't really know if there
Speaker 2: are any opportunities for you in the world, and things
Speaker 2: like that.
Speaker 1: But you'll be unsurprised to hear Sandy made those opportunities
Speaker 1: happen on lunch breaks from r MIT you should walk
Speaker 1: to fed Square to the SBS officers and asked to
Speaker 1: do work. Experience knocked back, rebuff told they didn't offer
Speaker 1: such things. Eventually, through sheer, bloody mindedness and tenacity, she
Speaker 1: got them to give her an unpaid internship, an internship
Speaker 1: that led to her first full time job as a
Speaker 1: junior radio journalist.
Speaker 2: And I remember this one day I was assigned to
Speaker 2: a story and it was an elderly couple and had
Speaker 2: gone to their house and they were retired and the
Speaker 2: wife had health issues, and they were so excited to
Speaker 2: have visitors in their home because it's that thing of like,
Speaker 2: we don't get to talk to anyone. And this man
Speaker 2: used to be a photographer when he was younger, and
Speaker 2: he'd taken photos of all of these amazing people. And
Speaker 2: he starts to bring out the books and his wife's
Speaker 2: like making tea and bringing out the biscuits and stuff.
Speaker 2: I remember the Camo just being so irritated because he
Speaker 2: was like, you came here to ask three questions.
Speaker 3: We have to go. And I'm thinking, Blessed, isn't this love?
Speaker 3: Like you know what I just felt.
Speaker 2: It just felt so extractive, like to go in, particularly
Speaker 2: sometimes going in on the work stays of people's lives
Speaker 2: and knowing that you're only asking three questions for a
Speaker 2: story that's going to be a minute and a half
Speaker 2: that most people probably won't even pay attention to. And
Speaker 2: I sort of thought, gosh, do I want to do
Speaker 2: this for the rest of my life? What I did
Speaker 2: enjoy was the time that I got to spend with people.
Speaker 2: I was like, I like this, how do I find
Speaker 2: a way of being able to spend more time with people?
Speaker 2: And at the time, as luck would have it, I
Speaker 2: was moderating a conversation with a filmmaker at a film
Speaker 2: festival and we got off the stage and she grabs
Speaker 2: my hand and she's like, we need to talk and
Speaker 2: she says to me, you should be making documentaries.
Speaker 3: And I was like what.
Speaker 2: She was like, you should be making documentary Like I've
Speaker 2: never really thought about that because I've never seen anyone
Speaker 2: that looks like me making documentaries. And that's how I
Speaker 2: started making documentaries. And then that then exposed me to
Speaker 2: the wider narrative storytelling, and that was when I was like,
Speaker 2: I've found my groove. This is where I'm meant to be.
Speaker 2: But that thing about represent Honestly, I.
Speaker 1: Was going to say twice now you've mentioned that idea
Speaker 1: when trying to work out a path for yourself of
Speaker 1: having not seen people who look like you in those
Speaker 1: roles and the telling the story and the ways in
Speaker 1: which anywhere, but particularly acute in Australia, the idea of
Speaker 1: being a migrant voice, the idea of being a person
Speaker 1: of color, the idea of your blackness defining and potentially
Speaker 1: limiting the opportunities that are available to you. Is that
Speaker 1: a sense that you've had right through your career that
Speaker 1: this is an option for you, this is not or
Speaker 1: you have to model it before you can do it.
Speaker 2: I think it's both, to be honest, you know, we
Speaker 2: talk about representation a lot, and I think in a
Speaker 2: sense it's kind of lost some of that just because
Speaker 2: it's so used.
Speaker 3: As a term.
Speaker 2: But what I will say, when you are young, you're
Speaker 2: so impressionable, and you're looking to people around you for
Speaker 2: clues about how to do this life thing, and when
Speaker 2: your options are very limited because you're not seeing people
Speaker 2: that look like you, and then your family also want
Speaker 2: seeing people that look like you, and they're also helping
Speaker 2: to shape how you're moving through the world and the
Speaker 2: choices that you're making.
Speaker 3: What tends to be available then becomes very limited.
Speaker 2: And that's even before you enter an industry and start
Speaker 2: to sort of kind of go, Okay, I think this
Speaker 2: might not be what I want to do, and I
Speaker 2: might want to do something else. But even before you
Speaker 2: attempt to try, there isn't an option available, right, And
Speaker 2: I think what has helped me. I've just always been curious.
Speaker 2: I've always kind of gone, let me just try it,
Speaker 2: let me see what's going to happen. But I also
Speaker 2: know that not everyone is necessarily motivated by that kind
Speaker 2: of instinct, and for some people, not seeing themselves in
Speaker 2: a certain industry or in a certain role already eliminates
Speaker 2: that completely. And you don't try.
Speaker 1: You delivered the twenty twenty three ew cole lecture around
Speaker 1: the question of who gets to tell history. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: as you recount in Black Convicts and elsewhere, for you,
Speaker 1: that question about permission to be a historian is a
Speaker 1: really important one that maybe more even than journalism or
Speaker 1: documentary filmmaking or other forms of storytelling, being the kind
Speaker 1: of gatekeeper who's allowed to write and tell history was
Speaker 1: a sanctified category that you felt you had to find
Speaker 1: your way into.
Speaker 3: And accidentally did.
Speaker 2: And when that Fannie dropped, I was like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 2: why have we certainly.
Speaker 3: Is marginalized, and I say this, you know, not on
Speaker 3: behalf of other marginalized people.
Speaker 1: What do they all think?
Speaker 2: But you go through life having your narrative written on
Speaker 2: your behalf and you don't question it at all.
Speaker 3: And you get to a point and I had a
Speaker 3: moment where I went, why did.
Speaker 2: I believe ve the history that I was told in
Speaker 2: school that was written by white men? And not to
Speaker 2: say that that history isn't valid, but I thought that
Speaker 2: I couldn't write history. I just thought I couldn't write history.
Speaker 2: History was told to me. I couldn't tell history. And
Speaker 2: when I can't overstate how liberating that realization.
Speaker 1: Was for me.
Speaker 2: And it's changed how I moved through the world, because
Speaker 2: now I feel like I am in control of my
Speaker 2: life in a way that I did not think before.
Speaker 2: Before I felt like the world was shaping my life
Speaker 2: for me, and in many ways it still does. I mean,
Speaker 2: structurally and systemically, all these things still continue to dictate
Speaker 2: the outcomes of your life. But in terms of going, oh, actually,
Speaker 2: I can determine what my life looks like to a
Speaker 2: degree because it is not being written for me, you know,
Speaker 2: and history has a way of convincing you that you
Speaker 2: are a certain thing, and particularly histories around colonization and
Speaker 2: colonialism where, certainly from the African perspective, majority of the
Speaker 2: histories that I read growing up and that I was
Speaker 2: told it was almost as though Black people were passive
Speaker 2: and there was submit and they just kind of accepted that.
Speaker 3: But obviously when you think about it now, it's like, yeah.
Speaker 2: Who is just gonna be like, yeah, take take my
Speaker 2: house without any kind of resistance, right, you will get
Speaker 2: people that will fight back, But that wasn't the center
Speaker 2: of the story.
Speaker 3: The story was always.
Speaker 2: About the people that came and what they did and
Speaker 2: the so called good that they did. And then you
Speaker 2: move through the world and having that then still being reinforced, Oh,
Speaker 2: you should actually be just grateful, you know, and you
Speaker 2: don't realize how much that subconsciously shapes how you move
Speaker 2: through the world, and so you enter spaces not feeling
Speaker 2: like have a sense of ownership when you do, like
Speaker 2: this world belongs to all of us, right, And so
Speaker 2: when I had that realization and I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: my gosh, I don't have to be in the passenger's
Speaker 2: seat of the world that I want to live in.
Speaker 2: I can contribute to kind of reimagining what that looks
Speaker 2: like and my position, my viewpoint is valid, you know.
Speaker 3: For something like that to happen for me in my.
Speaker 2: Thirties, like my late thirties, I was like, gosh, it's
Speaker 2: still something that I still try to process about how
Speaker 2: it has impacted me and how I moved through the world.
Speaker 2: But it really we talk about stories and sometimes don't
Speaker 2: realize just the power of stories. And for me, the
Speaker 2: process of this really really really reinforced like words, stories,
Speaker 2: language are incredibly powerful, and it made me realize just
Speaker 2: how important it is for those of us that are
Speaker 2: creating stories to be very aware of that power the
Speaker 2: whole process of writing. So I was incredibly scared I
Speaker 2: was like, here, I am upending how white Australia has
Speaker 2: seen itself for a very long time, and the mythologies
Speaker 2: it's told itself about itself, and it's not used.
Speaker 3: To people like me telling it.
Speaker 2: We're the ones that get told right, and that triggers
Speaker 2: emotions and feelings in people. And I was aware that
Speaker 2: the work was going to be scrutinized, and I was like, well,
Speaker 2: I don't want to give them the reason to dismiss
Speaker 2: these people's stories.
Speaker 3: And so as much as I would have liked to
Speaker 3: push some things.
Speaker 2: Further, I just pulled back and I went, We're going
Speaker 2: to stay with what the Colonial Archive is saying, and
Speaker 2: within that try and move and try and make certain points.
Speaker 2: Was hard because of that, like, I don't ever want
Speaker 2: to write anything that limits me in that way again.
Speaker 1: When we come back, Sandy shares the inciting incident set
Speaker 1: her on the path to writing Black Conducts and reveals
Speaker 1: how the ghosts of the Archives lived with her during
Speaker 1: the writing of this book. We'll be back in a minute.
Speaker 1: While the idea of black convicts had been percolating in
Speaker 1: Santillaching Gabe's mind for many years, was during the summer
Speaker 1: of twenty eighteen that things shifted into focus. You might
Speaker 1: remember it was January of that year and Peter Dutton,
Speaker 1: who was Minister of Home Affairs at the time, announced
Speaker 1: that Victorians were scared to go out to restaurants because
Speaker 1: of African gang violence. It was idiotic and transparently racist,
Speaker 1: this attempt to scare white Australians into demonizing their neighbors.
Speaker 1: And it scared Santy too, but for very different reasons.
Speaker 2: I remember I was overseas at the time and I
Speaker 2: got a call to be on a panel to discuss
Speaker 2: that incident because at that point I've been writing about
Speaker 2: those narratives and how the media was also complicit in
Speaker 2: essentially perpetuating racist narratives because you know, he's saying that
Speaker 2: people of African descent are predisposed to commit crime because
Speaker 2: of the color of their skin is racist and yeah,
Speaker 2: And I remember thinking, I've been talking about this and
Speaker 2: nothing's changing, it's not cutting through, and I don't know
Speaker 2: what it was. And then I remember returning and just
Speaker 2: feeling so and I said, I can't, I don't want
Speaker 2: to be part of this panel. But I remember being
Speaker 2: very frustrated about it. And then I remember being at.
Speaker 3: An event, the Broadside Dinner.
Speaker 2: There were people there who had very strong opinions about
Speaker 2: what was happening and why the media was reporting on it,
Speaker 2: and a few commentators were saying to me, oh, well,
Speaker 2: you know, it's like an Aussie rite of passage. Basically,
Speaker 2: we do this for every wave of migration. The Greeks,
Speaker 2: the Italians, they've all copped at the Vietnamese. It's now
Speaker 2: the Africans turn. And people would say to me in
Speaker 2: a way that was very dismissive of my contribution. And
Speaker 2: when I had that conversation, I was like, this is dumb.
Speaker 2: And also I was like, there's an element of anti
Speaker 2: blackness here and why aren't we talking about this? And
Speaker 2: I just sort of thought there has to be a
Speaker 2: place of thinking, and how do we talk about this
Speaker 2: in a way that gets people to realize that people
Speaker 2: of a reckons don't have been here for a while, and
Speaker 2: if you want to talk about our place within the
Speaker 2: contemporary sense, that has to be considered, and that if
Speaker 2: you are going to sort of start talking about it
Speaker 2: in the way that the media have reported on it,
Speaker 2: that is very racist. Because people don't commit crime because
Speaker 2: of the color of their skin. A lot of factors
Speaker 2: contribute to that in any community, but most of the
Speaker 2: time it's failures and government policy. So this thing happens
Speaker 2: and I return home, and I knew because I've done
Speaker 2: a story when I was working at SPBS as a
Speaker 2: journalist about a South African convict, David Steerman, So I
Speaker 2: knew that there was a convict in colonial history. But
Speaker 2: then I just sort of thought, if I can find
Speaker 2: evidence of people on the first fleet because I'd heard
Speaker 2: about it and then I'd gone to an exhbission and
Speaker 2: seeing a label, then maybe just maybe we can stop
Speaker 2: talking about this and then start thinking about wolf people
Speaker 2: have been here at the same time as white people.
Speaker 2: What does that then mean.
Speaker 1: The book shifts very gracefully between the kind of bigger
Speaker 1: picture of the early colonial project and the various factors
Speaker 1: that led to it, the various implements of British Empire
Speaker 1: that ran through it all, and so it tells that
Speaker 1: story on the one hand, and then it also tells
Speaker 1: these individual stories of these figures who are part of it.
Speaker 1: And one of the tensions that's apparent from very early
Speaker 1: on is by placing these black convicts in that story,
Speaker 1: where we've forgotten to include them for so long, or
Speaker 1: they've been wilfully kept out of it for so long.
Speaker 1: One of the things that happens there is their involvement
Speaker 1: or complicity in the dispossession that was the early colonial project.
Speaker 1: You know that this is not a story about goodies
Speaker 1: and bad is this not a story about you know,
Speaker 1: the righteous or the damned. It's a story about what
Speaker 1: happens in a colonial context when people are trying to
Speaker 1: make a life for themselves, sometimes at the expense of
Speaker 1: one another. How tricky was that part of telling the story?
Speaker 2: Probably the hardest chapter for me, I would say, writing
Speaker 2: about encounters that these black comics had with first people's
Speaker 2: But it also did a wonderful thing, which is it
Speaker 2: reminded me that history is not the place that you
Speaker 2: go to.
Speaker 1: Be comforted or absolved. Oh yeah.
Speaker 2: And I think because we are so used to these
Speaker 2: narratives that center figures individuals in history that have done
Speaker 2: remarkable things, and we look to them as kind of like,
Speaker 2: I want to be like this person or whatever. And
Speaker 2: the problem with that flawed kind of obsession that we
Speaker 2: have with that sort of narrative is that it dismisses
Speaker 2: the fact that humans, by our nature are incredibly flawed
Speaker 2: and incredibly complex, and that on the one hand, you
Speaker 2: can do something incredibly remarkable but also make.
Speaker 3: Decisions that centuries down the line people look at and question.
Speaker 3: There's a story that.
Speaker 2: I tell of this black comed from Barbados, Robert James,
Speaker 2: and how he is involved in one of the biggest
Speaker 2: legal cases of the time during the period of slavery.
Speaker 2: And the interesting thing with him was that he was
Speaker 2: effectively found guilty and what should have happened, because this
Speaker 2: is just what happened during slavery, was he should have
Speaker 2: been executed. But at the time there was this governor
Speaker 2: who was sort of like a temp I can put
Speaker 2: it that way, And if you were governor, you were
Speaker 2: also head of the judicial system in a of these
Speaker 2: British colonies. And so he reviewed the case and he
Speaker 2: feels like there's been a miscarage of justice. He doesn't
Speaker 2: pardon Robert James, but he does send the case to
Speaker 2: London for a review because he's kind of going, I
Speaker 2: really don't think this guy got a fair trial, and
Speaker 2: that puts him in the ship because all of the
Speaker 2: white people on the island are going, what are you
Speaker 2: doing this guy should have been like executed, like what
Speaker 2: are you doing? And so he puts his own life
Speaker 2: in jeopardy.
Speaker 3: But yet he.
Speaker 2: Firmly believes that there is a rule of law here
Speaker 2: and I'm adhering to what is required of me in
Speaker 2: this capacity. But at the same time, this acting governor,
Speaker 2: he was also a slave owner. It wasn't like he
Speaker 2: was going to invite Robert James over to his house
Speaker 2: for a cup of tea, right, And both these things
Speaker 2: can be true, And I think how that helps me
Speaker 2: in thinking about even in the contemporary sense, particularly when
Speaker 2: we get obsessed with a binary way of thinking and
Speaker 2: looking at people and essentially expecting morally perfect umans, particularly
Speaker 2: when people do things that we don't like and we're
Speaker 2: very quick to put them in the bin. It's not
Speaker 2: to say that we shouldn't critique and challenge, but I
Speaker 2: do think that history does show us that there is
Speaker 2: so much complexity in how humans show up in the world,
Speaker 2: and it's neither right or wrong. It is just a
Speaker 2: very complicated experience.
Speaker 1: But it does lead in the book, and one of
Speaker 1: the great strengths of the book because it leads to
Speaker 1: that you know, you have the big questions, but to
Speaker 1: address them sufficiently requires very deliberate, narrow decisions, right down
Speaker 1: to the level of individual words. It's really interesting to
Speaker 1: me that you very consciously, when talking about slavery, resist
Speaker 1: using slave as a noun, but instead talk about it adjectivally,
Speaker 1: you know, enslaved people rather than slave, And that the
Speaker 1: deliberateness of that in this book I really appreciate and
Speaker 1: respect hugely. I think it's terrific. Can you talk about
Speaker 1: decisions like that that you made?
Speaker 2: So when I first started, like like you said, I
Speaker 2: went in looking for a couple of individuals and then
Speaker 2: decided to once bare, they just started to show up
Speaker 2: in the in the hundreds, and it was like being
Speaker 2: at a gravesite. Really it's just all of these names
Speaker 2: of these dead people. And then they all moved into
Speaker 2: my house at the same time. It sounds weird, but
Speaker 2: they all did, and so I could feel their energy
Speaker 2: and I was like, these were people, living, breathing people
Speaker 2: in all of their complexity, And what does it mean
Speaker 2: to be in a system that subjugates you your children,
Speaker 2: your future children, their children, And what does it mean
Speaker 2: to exist? What does it mean to resist? And I'm like, well,
Speaker 2: these people. Yes, they were enslaved, this is what the
Speaker 2: system was doing to them, but they want slaves. That
Speaker 2: wasn't how they would have occupied intimate spaces right within
Speaker 2: their family, they would have been mother child, whatever that
Speaker 2: dynamic was. But what the system was doing to them
Speaker 2: was what was defining their experience.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: But then again it goes back to how these narratives
Speaker 2: we have taken on, particularly around slavery, and that the
Speaker 2: experience of slavery was very different in many ways to
Speaker 2: what we're traditionally used to. But also that as slavery
Speaker 2: evolved and the mechanisms around that, people were afforded certain
Speaker 2: freedoms within that system, which also then complicates the whole
Speaker 2: how we think about slavery. Right, people could grow their
Speaker 2: own vegetables, people could gather, but there were certain things
Speaker 2: that they could do, and they were using those things
Speaker 2: to resist. And that's why for me, it's so important
Speaker 2: to remember that, yes, the experience was absolutely horrendous and
Speaker 2: one of the worst crimes against humanity in modern history,
Speaker 2: but I am sure that even in those moments, people
Speaker 2: found ways to experience joy, whatever that would have looked
Speaker 2: like within that content text. And I think remembering that
Speaker 2: and remembering that it would have looked very specific to
Speaker 2: that context is very important in centering their humanity.
Speaker 1: It's incredibly moving. At the end of the book is
Speaker 1: a table where you list the names, and in fact
Speaker 1: the design of the book, which is gorgeous, has the
Speaker 1: names across the cover. The centering of the human beings
Speaker 1: seems to be at the heart of this historical project.
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
Speaker 2: There's probably two versions of the book that I started
Speaker 2: off with, and then there was a moment in twenty twenty,
Speaker 2: particularly Black Lives Matter happening that forced me to zoom
Speaker 2: out and sort of think about Empire, think about all
Speaker 2: of the inheritance. And during that process I remember sort
Speaker 2: of thinking, whenever we think about not just who gets
Speaker 2: to write history, even when we think about historical actors
Speaker 2: that have something to tell us about history, they generally
Speaker 2: aren't people from the margins, right, And what I wanted
Speaker 2: to do was to send to these people and sort
Speaker 2: of go, they have something to teach us about Empire,
Speaker 2: about how this continent got to be colonized. My former
Speaker 2: research supervisor, Melbourne Zoe lad Law, she did this project
Speaker 2: where she found that something like two thirds of pre
Speaker 2: Federation governors in Australia were essentially governors that were working
Speaker 2: in slave colonies and former slave colonies. So you've got
Speaker 2: these colonial figures who are coming here to effectively govern,
Speaker 2: who were being shaped by everything else that's going on
Speaker 2: where they are, so of course you're going to have
Speaker 2: this stuff happening here as well. And that was very
Speaker 2: important for me because I was like, we have to
Speaker 2: be thinking about how all of that has then led
Speaker 2: to where we find ourselves in contemporary sense. Even when
Speaker 2: we think about the displacement, the genocide, dispossession of First peoples,
Speaker 2: the British were doing that in other territories before they
Speaker 2: finally got here, and thinking about those actions and thinking
Speaker 2: about how that treatment the fact that by the time
Speaker 2: that Australia is being colonized, slavery was at least one
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty year and they had refined that system
Speaker 2: of labor exploitation and they'd refined the ways in which
Speaker 2: they could control people for profit. And that started to
Speaker 2: show up, whether it was in the convict system, whether
Speaker 2: it was systems of slavery, whether it was in soldiers
Speaker 2: that were being used as labor to protect colonial interests.
Speaker 2: Later on in Indentured Servants as well. I mean, you
Speaker 2: had all these people that were being moved around to
Speaker 2: serve empire, and the way that you controlled them was
Speaker 2: to subjugate them to various degrees, And I just sort
Speaker 2: of thought it was very important that we thought about that,
Speaker 2: because once we think about that, it helps us make
Speaker 2: sense of where we now find ourselves in the contemporary self.
Speaker 1: Because the other endpoint of that subjugation, or not endpoint,
Speaker 1: but the other injustice, lies in the way the story
Speaker 1: gets told and what gets remembered. So while you're addressing
Speaker 1: the core of your subject matter, actually it's the telling
Speaker 1: of that subject over generations that cement certain ideas, that
Speaker 1: limits and constrains certain players. That is perhaps the most
Speaker 1: acute thing that you're redressing in this work. And with
Speaker 1: that in mind, tell me about epistemic injustice.
Speaker 4: Oh.
Speaker 2: I had such a big conversation about this with Ben,
Speaker 2: my publisher, because I was like, there's no way around this, bend.
Speaker 2: I have to just use this language because it's very
Speaker 2: academic y language. But when I when I came across
Speaker 2: this framework, I was like, oh my gosh, it makes sense.
Speaker 2: This philosopher miround Africa came up with this concept of
Speaker 2: epistemic injustice, which is essentially it makes an argument that
Speaker 2: because of all of the social and political factors, they
Speaker 2: contribute to who we believe and who we don't believe,
Speaker 2: and these things tend to mirror social and political things like,
Speaker 2: for example, if you're a black person who calls the
Speaker 2: police to report a crime, the likelihood of you being
Speaker 2: believed is not very like high, right, versus a white
Speaker 2: person who might automatically be believed by the police. And
Speaker 2: so the epistemic and justice kind of framework allows us
Speaker 2: to sort of understand who is considered an authority in
Speaker 2: something and why are they being believed, And you know,
Speaker 2: gender plays a part in that, race plays a part
Speaker 2: in that all sorts of things, and this then becomes
Speaker 2: the thing that starts to determine knowledge and who gets
Speaker 2: to be seen as an authority on knowledge, but also
Speaker 2: whose story gets centered. And when I realized this, it
Speaker 2: made a lot of sense because I was like, yes,
Speaker 2: part of the reason why we don't know about a
Speaker 2: lot of these black comics is racism, yes, but what
Speaker 2: is the thing? Because what I found was that over
Speaker 2: the years, people have written about them and like, you know,
Speaker 2: Marcus Clark wrote about one of the black comics started
Speaker 2: Stemon in the nineteenth century. But he's there, but he's
Speaker 2: not there in the story as in his I think
Speaker 2: of a David Steamon. But actually the whole point of
Speaker 2: the story is to talk about British humanitarianism and how
Speaker 2: wonderful Governor Burke is. Right, so the story is about him,
Speaker 2: so you get a sense of like he's there, but
Speaker 2: he's not quite there. And that was what I wanted
Speaker 2: to get to, to get people to understand that sometimes
Speaker 2: you can talk about people, but you're still erasing them.
Speaker 2: And it's a thing that continues to show up in
Speaker 2: the contemporary sense as well. And I this is very pessimistic,
Speaker 2: but I still think that even though I've written this book,
Speaker 2: I still think that these histories will continue to be erased.
Speaker 2: But what I am excited about, I will say, is
Speaker 2: just how people choose to respond to these histories. I'm
Speaker 2: excited to see how in galleries and museums, labels are
Speaker 2: updated to reflect a lot of this stuff that is
Speaker 2: now going to be fat like the fact that people
Speaker 2: will now say it from a place of like oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: this is something we already know like there's this context
Speaker 2: and that they can position Australia within broader conversations around
Speaker 2: this sort of stuff, so that when you're thinking about it,
Speaker 2: you're like, oh, yeah, they're these connections even within our
Speaker 2: own history.
Speaker 1: Santilla chingo PE's new book, Black Convicts is out now,
Speaker 1: and before we go, I just wanted to give you
Speaker 1: another plug for Sandy's writing. She's got an excellent piece
Speaker 1: in the November issue of The Monthly. It's called bro
Speaker 1: Wave and it looks at the influence of people like
Speaker 1: Joe Rogan, that kind of rise of podcasters. I'd say
Speaker 1: this knowing that I'm a white, middle aged cis man
Speaker 1: hosting a podcast, but the one Sandy's writing about are
Speaker 1: quite different. They're all toxic masculinity and none of them
Speaker 1: care about the books we love and the stories behind them.
Speaker 1: It's a terrific piece from Sandy, and while you're reading
Speaker 1: that issue of The Monthly, I also recommend the wonderful
Speaker 1: piece by Sebastians. It's on the death of Alice Munroe
Speaker 1: and how we might reread her differently in light of
Speaker 1: revelations after our death. You can find the Monthly and
Speaker 1: all the books we mentioned at your favorite independent bookstore.
Speaker 1: That's it for this week's show. If you enjoyed it,
Speaker 1: please tell your friends and rate and review us. It
Speaker 1: helps a lot. Next week, on Read This, join me
Speaker 1: for a conversation with Rachel Kushna as we discuss her
Speaker 1: new book, The Book of Price shortlisted creation Like.
Speaker 4: The more I worked on it, the longer I spent
Speaker 4: each day writing, the more hours I was there, the
Speaker 4: more vivid the world I was creating became to the
Speaker 4: point where I could really see it and feel it,
Speaker 4: and I was eager to get there every day. And
Speaker 4: it was like I was building this parallel universe that
Speaker 4: really glowed for me. And I love my life. I
Speaker 4: love this world. But during the kind of intense fourteen
Speaker 4: months I was writing the book, I started to prefer
Speaker 4: it the world of the book for the duration that
Speaker 4: I was there.
Speaker 1: Read This as a Schwarz Media production made possible by
Speaker 1: the generous support of aar group. The show is produced
Speaker 1: and edited by Clara Ames, with mixing by Travis Evans
Speaker 1: and original compositions by Zolmnfetcher. Thanks for listening, See you
Speaker 1: next week.