Lighting the Way: Reconciliation Stories

By Dianne Johnson, Annandale: The Federation Press, 2002, 203 pages, paperback, $27.50. Reviewed by Antonia Esten in the issue.

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Dianne Johnson, a [non-Indigenous Australian] anthropologist, has written 23 stories of cross-cultural [Indigenous and non-Indigenous] collaboration on reconciliation projects across Australia.

The foreword and jacket blurbs hail the stories as surprising and delightful, compelling, engaging, heartwarming and uplifting; as capturing the strength, trust and humility of the reconciliation process, stirring us to action and optimism and generally inspiring ideas of what can be done. All this is true. The accounts of coming together on a series of imaginative projects, big and small, achieve an optimistic (but not unduly sentimentalised) reflection of togetherness and cultural richness that genuinely inspires us to combat Australia's racism towards its misunderstood and misused Indigenous peoples. The stories remind us actively to seek opportunities for knowing each other and working together, to be open to a wide range of cross-cultural possibilities on many levels -- clearly the book's main purpose well achieved. Dr Johnson writes in an information-packed but accessible style that gives the contents a wide application -- a sound reconciliative project in itself.

The research is painstaking and yields some fascinating specifics about diverse Indigenous cultures; many examples of painful post-European contact including those of the stolen generation; tales of grass-roots struggles for land rights and native title; insights into the effects of mandatory sentencing and deaths in custody; together with rich cultural legacies and symbolic gestures of all kinds. The effect is certainly not one of doom and gloom. Johnson's swag of stories is delightful and heartening, and no doubt fills a gap for those of us who mean well but wonder what can actually be done by anti-racist Australians. This is, in effect, a book about doing, including the doings of writing, reading, producing art forms, communicating, thinking, talking, enacting rituals, carrying torches and raising flags.

Diane Johnson's tales of reconciliation are organised into four groups whose themes are: sharing the spirit, recovering history, saying sorry, taking sides, celebrating diversity and co-existence. There is a range of Indigenous artistic works, such as a barber's shop mural, a gorgeously embroidered Dean's cape and church banner, ceramics, glasswork and sand sculpture. We learn of a long-standing cross-cultural women's group, of imaginative co-operation between traditional and legal owners of land, the powerful memorials of the Myall Creek massacre, the effects on students of Sea of Hands experiences, and much more. All these efforts clearly work to retrieve and heal violent acts meted out to original inhabitants by a dominating 'mainstream -- historic misbehaviours that continue to affect all Australians. They work on many levels -- as processes in which the participants have worked together and influenced each others' thoughts and actions, as statements of symbolic collaboration, as examples to others of what can be achieved, as constructions of good memories to combat bad old ones and now, of course, as stories with all that storytelling achieves.

My reservations about the book come from a rather reluctant place, not wanting to act as a gatekeeper of political correctness (as a non-Indigenous academic). Because the aim of Johnson's project is reconciliation, it seems churlish to raise the question of whether, as a white anthropologist, she is the best person to write these stories or instead should have included a range of Indigenous activists' own voices, yet this point cannot be ignored. The politics of voice and representation impact profoundly on Indigenous matters and therefore on the discourse of reconciliation. Not only does this writer omit comment on why she has chosen the 'voiceover' approach but the cultural identities of the various people named in the stories is not always clear. I searched for clues in order to contextualise comments made (for example, that Indigenous people were honoured and grateful on being invited to participate). I was left wondering whether the writer is oblivious to contemporary politics of representation or, alternatively, deploying a 'let's move on' strategy (in which case a disclaimer would still help). Cultural identity is, after all, at the heart of colonial oppression. The question of 'who speaks', who is being quoted and on what, and whose actions are being discussed, does make a difference to the meaning of what is said. The book's overall message is therefore made a touch ambiguous, despite its 'simple and direct' premise that strategic collaboration between black and white Australians is a very good thing, which of course it is.

So there is an unfortunate shadow of readerly discomfort in this heartening publication. Otherwise, Lighting the Way is well worth reading by anyone who cares a fig about the reconciliation project, who is a passionate advocate, is confused or confounded, hates the whole idea, or who means well but does nothing. Read and decide for yourself what is being done and why.

Citation

• Antonia Esten. 'Review: Lighting the Way: Reconciliation Stories by Dianne Johnson' [online]. Network Review of Books (Perth, Australian Public Intellectual Network), . Availability: <please cite the web address here> ISSN 1833-0932. [accessed 24 May 2013].

Back Cover Blurb

• Reconciliation
  
  'The root meaning of the word is an exchange of equivalent values, and then, through the ideas of exchange of sympathy and mutual understanding, the notion of a thorough or radical exchange. Thus reconciliation has the significance of a new stage in personal relationships in which previous hostility of mind or estrangement has been put away in some decisive act.'
  
  Lighting the Way: Reconciliation Stories captures the spirit of reconciliation. A collection of stories about individual and community acts of reconciliation, it is honest and engaging, and shows what reconciliation means and why so many Australians wish to achieve it.
  
  Each story is personal and immediate. Some trace families and relationships over generations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. This book reveals Australia for all that it is, has been and can be.