Kick the Tin

By Doris Kartinyeri, North Melbourne: Spinifex Press, 2000, 140 pages, paperback, $22.95. Reviewed by Jo Lampert in the October 2002 issue.

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'Kick the Tin' was a game Ngarrindjeri writer Doris Kartinyeri played with the other children in her fourteen years as a child living in Colebrook Home in South Australia. Telling the all-too-common story of what it is like to have been a member of the Stolen Generations in Australia, she likens her personal journal to this game. She too has been kicked about, and has watched her friends search for direction in their attempts to find 'home'. Her autobiography extends our knowledge of what it was like for the children taken without explanation from their families, but it also tells the poignant story of a brave and finally triumphant woman struggling with bi-polar disorder.

It wasn't until she was nearly an adult that Kartinyeri discovered full details of her own family. When her mother died after giving birth to her (something she didn't find out until she was nearly an adult), she was taken from the hospital by the Protector's office without her father's knowledge. She did not know until recently how hard her family had tried to get her back. Living the only life she knew, she tells the story of how these children, taken from their families and separated from their siblings, made their own home, and created community. Kartinyeri expresses the conflict found in other memoires of this nature; a mixture of nostalgia for the happier times in the home, and a deeply felt anger at her treatment and the loss of her birth family.

Autobiographies such as this one continue to tell the stories of daily life on the missions and in these institutions. At Colebrook, at least in her early years, the author did not lack for food or shelter. But as the home changed hands, it became increasingly religious and restrictive, dominated by Bible studies and obsession with hygiene. Kartinyeri's very specific childhood memories provide us with a glimpse of what life was like: the games played, the food eaten, the complex attempts of the children to maintain their Aboriginality (for example, by developing a hybrid language made up of words from the their disparate Aboriginal backgrounds).

A non-Indigenous reader cannot help but notice what a strange childhood this was. At holidays, the children at the home were sometimes sent off to Christian families they had never met before (one couple the author briefly stayed with was blind, and she spent the holiday in the dark). They had only basic schooling and girls were treated mostly as domestics. The author remembers having been 'enticed into some ungodly behaviour with a senior staff member' (p 54). But still, when she left at fourteen, it was with some regret, and the 'outside' world proved more hostile. A turning point in the story is an incident where she is nearly raped by a lay minister. The last half of the book, where the author struggles with what her life became after Colebrook, is the most poignant. Here the tone of the book changes dramatically, the language sprinkled with curses against society, her anger vividly surfacing. A stronger first person voice emerges as she asks the reader (and presumably herself), '[c]an I show my anger as I write this? Fuck!' (p 62).

The author's journey towards adulthood becomes increasingly difficult. She tells of her struggles with relationships, the birth of her cherished children, and her attempts to find her family. Without this connection, she felt she fitted in nowhere. Most tragically, she points to the fact that many of the children she grew up with did not reach adulthood, succumbing to alcohol or dying tragically (many committing suicide) at young ages. It would be impossible to ignore the horrific effect of children being taken from their families. The book is scattered with photographs of the children, many of whom are now deceased.

In the last third of the book Kartinyeri documents her descent into mental illness. There are times, she writes, that she thought she would die (p 83). Her personal journey is an echo of Janet Frame's insights into her mental illness, and is written with similar honesty. Here this book differs from other Indigenous autobiographies, in that it gives the reader a window not only into the appalling treatment of Indigenous Australians, but also into bi-polar disorder. It's a useful book for students of either, and it would be impossible to ignore the connection between the two.

One of the remarkable things about this book is that it was written as a result of Kartinyeri having taken an adult literacy class. The book will provide inspiration for many readers, Indigenous and non-Indigenous alike, as a story of courage and survival.

Citation

• Jo Lampert. 'Review: Kick the Tin by Doris Kartinyeri' [online]. Network Review of Books (Perth, Australian Public Intellectual Network), October 2002. Availability: <please cite the web address here> ISSN 1833-0932. [accessed 18 May 2013].

Back Cover Blurb

• When Doris Kartinyeri was a month old, her mother died. The family gathered to mourn their loss and welcome the new baby home. But Doris never returned to her family - she was stolen from the hospital and placed in Colebrook Home, where she stayed for the next fourteen years.
  
  The legacy of being a member of the Stolen Generations continued for Doris as she was placed in white homes as a virtual slave, struggled through relationships and suffered with bi-polar depression.
  
  'Kick the Tin' was a game Doris Kartinyeri played in the Colebrook Home. This is a life that has been kicked around. And it is the compelling and sometimes witty story of a couragous journey into the soul of the individual to find meaning and substance after the loss of everything the rest of us take for granted.

Have You Also Read?

• Moebius Trip: Digressions from India's Highways
  
  Giti Thadani, North Melbourne: Spinifex Press, 2004, 174 Pages, Paperback, $24.95
  Reviewed by Inez Baranay in the October 2004 issue.
  
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