When Popeye Bobby walks in, everybody stands back. He\u2019s real gentle this old fulla, but no one messes with him, neither. He\u2019s real powerful\u2026 He can tell you stories that make mountains start breathing.<\/em><\/p>\n\u2014from\u00a0The Binna Binna Man<\/em>
\nby Meme McDonald and Boori Monty Pryor<\/p>\nIn 1998, at the height of a popular movement for social, political, and spiritual reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, a remarkable book was published.\u00a0Maybe Tomorrow<\/em>\u00a0is a memoir, written by Boori Monty Pryor, an Aboriginal Australian who hails from the Kunggandji and Birra-gubba nations of far north Queensland, and his partner Meme McDonald \u2014 a\u00a0migaloo jalbu<\/em>, or \u201cwhite woman,\u201d in Boori\u2019s peoples\u2019 language.\u00a0Maybe Tomorrow<\/em>\u00a0tells of Boori\u2019s life as an Aboriginal man living between two cultures; his work as a storyteller and performer in schools, prisons, and libraries; his family and the many tragedies they have faced. The memoir\u2019s perspective on the often-difficult relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australia is particularly noteworthy because it is told with dignity, humor, optimism, and a total lack of bitterness or anger. It\u2019s a book I believe every Australian ought to read.<\/p>\nMaybe Tomorrow<\/em>\u00a0also signaled the beginning of an unusual creative collaboration. Meme and Boori have since co-authored four novels for children and teenagers.\u00a0My Girragundji<\/em>,\u00a0The Binna Binna Man<\/em>, and\u00a0Njunjul the Sun<\/em>\u00a0are narrated by a young Aboriginal boy who ages from about twelve to young adulthood over the course of the novels. They tell the story of a boy caught between two worlds \u2014 the old ways of his Aboriginal culture and the contemporary\u00a0migaloo<\/em>\u00a0(white) world. The fourth novel,\u00a0Flytrap<\/em>, is based on a real event in the life of Meme\u2019s daughter Grace. All four novels are illustrated with photographs taken by Meme, using members of Boori\u2019s family to represent characters in the stories.<\/p>\nIn\u00a0My Girragundji<\/em>, the boy is frightened at home by a bad spirit, a Hairyman, and by his parents\u2019 unpredictable moods. At school he\u2019s picked on by bullies for being Aboriginal, and in turn he bullies his sisters. One night, terrified that the Hairyman is coming for him, he begs his ancestors for help, and a green tree frog \u2014 a\u00a0girragundji<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 lands on him. The frog becomes more than a pet to the boy \u2014 she\u2019s a talisman, a protector, sent by the ancestors, and she brings the boy an understanding of his own inner strength, even after her untimely death.<\/p>\nThe Binna Binna Man<\/em>\u00a0(another name for the Hairyman) takes the boy on a darker journey as he and his family travel north for the funeral of his cousin, who, the book implies, has committed suicide. It\u2019s a story that has particular, poignant resonance for anyone who has read\u00a0Maybe Tomorrow<\/em>. Similar to the losses suffered in many Aboriginal families, Boori has lost two brothers and a sister to suicide and a young nephew in a police car chase. (Their photographs appear on the cover of\u00a0Maybe Tomorrow<\/em>, forming a sort of sunburst around Boori\u2019s head.) The high rate of Aboriginal suicide \u2014 more than twice the national average \u2014 is just one of the many tragic results of a sorry history of the treatment of Indigenous Australians: physical and cultural displacement, institutionalized racism, and out-and-out attempts at genocide.\u00a0The Binna Binna<\/em>\u00a0Man also addresses, with great understanding and care, the problem of alcohol abuse among some sections of the Indigenous community.<\/p>\nNjunjul the Sun<\/em>\u00a0sees our young narrator in his later teens, sad and angry and getting into trouble. Like many young Aboriginal men, he doesn\u2019t know where his place is in either the Aboriginal or the\u00a0migaloo<\/em>\u00a0world \u2014 so he heads down from the bush to the \u201cbig smoke\u201d (the city) to stay with his Aunty and Uncle to sort himself out. There, he starts accompanying his Uncle Garth, a storyteller and performer, on school visits, and begins to find his way as an Aboriginal man.<\/p>\nIt\u2019s evident that the stories are drawn from Boori\u2019s life and family and culture; but he emphasizes that the stories aren\u2019t about him: \u201cI\u2019m part of the story, I\u2019m not the whole story.\u201d But the stories do belong to his people and his culture, and it\u2019s this essential fact that makes the collaborative process of writing and editing these books so different from the usual migaloo way of doing things.<\/p>\n
Meme had published books prior to meeting Boori and writing\u00a0Maybe Tomorrow<\/em>\u00a0with him, whereas Boori\u2019s great skill is in oral storytelling. (The Australian Aboriginal oral tradition is a powerful and ancient one, and maintaining its integrity is extremely important to Aboriginal people. Story is also in an intrinsic part of law and spirituality in Aboriginal culture: some stories can be told only at certain times of year, for example, or as part of Ceremony.) It would be a mistake, though, to assume that Meme is merely the scribe for Boori\u2019s stories, or that Boori does none of the writing. Their two sets of skills and their two different cultures come together to create something that\u2019s more than either of them separately.<\/p>\nThe personal and cultural benefits of their collaboration are enormous, and to fully appreciate them it\u2019s important to have some historical and cultural background. In 1788 the British colonized (or invaded, depending on your point of view) this continent on the principle of\u00a0terra nullius<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 a land belonging to no one, there for the taking with no regard for the sovereignty of the more than 600 Aboriginal Nations living here. (The concept of\u00a0terra nullius<\/em>\u00a0is in fact so deeply ingrained in the national psyche that Aboriginal Australians were not even considered citizens of their own country until 1967.)<\/p>\nLand, or \u201cCountry,\u201d is crucial to the identity of Aboriginal people \u2014 it\u2019s the source of their spiritual and cultural identity, and Aboriginal people have lived in a physically and culturally symbiotic relationship with Country for millennia. As the British spread across the continent, Aboriginal people everywhere were driven off Country, often into church-run missions where they were not permitted to speak their own language or to perform Ceremony. It\u2019s a dispossession that has had devastating ramifications for Aboriginal people down to the present day.<\/p>\n
Meme explains the deeper level on which the collaboration with Boori functions:<\/p>\n
It\u2019s to do with connections of spirit. I don\u2019t want to be mysterious about this. It\u2019s very practical. We both live in this land that both of us care a lot about. And both of us come from cultures that have a connection to the Land. Boori comes from a culture that has an ageless, endless pathway back into the Land and knowledge of how to work with it and the stories that teach you about it. My culture is Western Queensland sheep and cattle property, but a very strong connection to the Land in the short term. My family has been part of that landscape for ninety years as opposed to 60,000 years, but nonetheless in that time it becomes what you are, it is your identity. Boori\u2019s culture has given me a freedom to talk about the white person\u2019s connection to the Land\u2026
\nWhen you\u2019re writing something like\u00a0My Girragundji<\/em>, the spirituality of that book is neither Aboriginal nor of any culture. It is of a connection with Land and with the creatures that you share the planet with \u2014 a common spirituality to almost every particular form of worship. And if that wasn\u2019t there the books would be pleasant stories, but I don\u2019t think they would have the impact that they do.<\/p>\nAboriginal culture is also very strong on, as Meme puts it, \u201cprotocol, permission, and respect.\u201d And so, long before their books go to the publisher, Meme and Boori take the stories back to Boori\u2019s family, sharing the stories with the elders, who become in effect the books\u2019 first editors. It\u2019s a process that has opened up possibilities for their stories and for themselves as writers in ways they never dreamed possible.<\/p>\n
As a non-Indigenous writer, albeit one with a long association with Aboriginal culture and causes, Meme acknowledges that at first the idea of taking stories back to Boori\u2019s people was a challenge:<\/p>\n
Because as a writer in my culture, you come from a belief that you have the right to write whatever you bloody well want. So I wondered how this was going to work. But the beauty of this culture is that, if you\u2019re still in a continuum with your family and your ancestors, then the importance of going back to the elders as the first editors is because of what they\u2019re going to add, not what they\u2019re going to take away\u2026 In fact, it\u2019s going to make it, as an art form, more powerful, because it actually connects into a community.<\/p>\n
The Binna Binna Man<\/em>\u00a0illustrates this well. Boori and Meme had a deadline looming and five days scheduled to take the incomplete manuscript up north to Queensland from their home in Melbourne. They\u2019d planned for one of Boori\u2019s nieces to \u201cstar\u201d in the photographs as the narrator\u2019s cousin \u2014 but she was in juvenile detention, and another niece had to step in. The old Kingswood motorcar (an iconic Australian model) that was to be photographed for the book had been sold. A four-hour road trip turned into a two-day meander across Country to catch up with family and friends. The experience required Meme to \u201cshift from the rush hour culture that pre-plans\u201d everything and to appreciate this apparent chaos as \u201ca completely other way of doing things\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. achieved by getting over to the right way of doing things, which is to take your time, to respect family, to let unfold what is intended to be unfolded.\u201d<\/p>\nUp north, the elder to whom Boori and Meme take their stories is Boori\u2019s Aunty Val. It\u2019s not a case of sitting down with the manuscript and blue pencil \u2014 this first editing process mostly happens in accordance with the Aboriginal oral tradition and in the Aboriginal way of letting things \u201cunfold.\u201d Meme and Boori will mostly talk about the stories with the elders, occasionally reading sections, but mostly just talking it through. And as time goes on, responses emerge. The practical outcome in this instance was finding, with Aunty Val\u2019s help, the way to end\u00a0The Binna Binna Man<\/em>.<\/p>\nBoori explains this process that seems quite mysterious to the outsider (he\u2019s an elder himself, but still learning stories and law from his parents and Aunties and Uncles): \u201cHow I see it is that there\u2019s a space there and it will only be filled in when the time is right and when you are ready to understand why that space is being filled in. It\u2019s kind of sitting back and waiting for your headspace to open up so you\u2019re well enough in your mind to be able to accept what the elders give you.\u201d<\/p>\n
The stories themselves have a way of arriving when their time has come to be told.\u00a0My Girragundji<\/em>\u00a0had its beginnings on a wet Melbourne afternoon when Meme\u2019s daughter Grace began badgering Boori for a story \u2014 while they were watching the football, of all times! (Melbournians take their Australian Rules football very seriously.) Come halftime, Boori began to tell the story of the pet frog he\u2019d had as a child. Grace was enthralled, and Meme recognized the great potential the story had for all readers, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal alike:<\/p>\nGrace was so fascinated\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. It\u2019s got a sad ending, and most kids have sad endings with their pets. That\u2019s what started to make me think, How could you write a story about a pet that gets eaten by a snake, and yet have that as an elevating story? So, it started to come out more because of its story potential than because we\u2019re writing an Aboriginal boy\u2019s story \u2014 it was a good story, and we had proof of it.<\/p>\n
A few years later, Grace herself provided the inspiration for\u00a0Flytrap<\/em>. She had lied to her teacher, claiming she had a Venus flytrap and would bring it in to show her classmates, and the lie became unbearable. Holding true to the principles of consultation and respect for ownership of story, Meme and Boori read drafts of the novel with Grace and took into account her responses to the fictional version of her own story. Meme believes that though these principles are specific to Aboriginal culture, \u201cthey\u2019re actually great principles in terms of families living their lives.\u201d<\/p>\nFlytrap<\/em>\u00a0includes a couple of traditional stories from Boori\u2019s people, told to Nancy, the main character, by her stepfather, Gee. One tells how the echidna got its quills, another explains why there are two types of yam. Boori and Meme took an early draft of the book to Aunty Val. The echidna story was fine, but the yam story was problematic, as part of the story is only to be told to boys at a certain age. Boori says, \u201cAunty\u2019s reading through it, and she called us over for a cup of tea and she goes, Now, see those bits there, you can leave them in, but if something happens to you in the next couple of weeks \u2014 well, you\u2019re an elder now, you have to make the decision.\u201d<\/p>\nAunty Val was reminding Boori that consequences would come back to him as a result of transgressing the law associated with that story. This eventually became part of the plot ofFlytrap<\/em>, in a scene where Nancy tells the story to her classmates. \u201cThe Story of the Two Yams\u201d is about two Creator brothers, one hard-working, the other a trickster-type character:<\/p>\nNancy explains that this part of the story is only for boys to hear. Gee couldn\u2019t tell her what it was that the Creator did to make his brother\u2019s yam sour.
\n\u201cThat\u2019s secret,\u201d she says.
\nSome boys up the back of the class smother a giggle, as if they already know.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a fascinating concept of story \u2014 that what is most powerful lies in what cannot be said. The experience made Meme realize that \u201cstories are our lifeblood \u2014 they instruct us how to live and how to be and what visions to hold true. They\u2019re fundamental to the happiness of our lives, so they\u2019re very precious. So in that sense, I think if you start to regard stories as an absolute essential of life, rather than a distraction from life, then how you evolve them and in what context, what respect you have for the source of that story, becomes very important whatever culture you come from.\u201d<\/p>\n
The point of all of this, of course, is that this new \u2014 or, rather, most ancient \u2014 way of creating stories isn\u2019t just an issue for Aboriginal people. In fact, it\u2019s not even just about story \u2014 it\u2019s about life and culture and creating a society based on principles of respect and collaboration. It\u2019s just as Uncle Garth says to his nephew at the end of\u00a0Njunjul the Sun<\/em>:<\/p>\nThat culture\u2019s like medicine. It can heal you. It can heal all these other fullas living here now, not knowing where they belong. For healing, we need whitefullas to hear about our culture. We need whitefullas to heal first so that we can heal. We gotta keep these stories going if we gonna keep ourselves alive.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/misrule.com.au\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/meme-boori.jpeg\" "\\"meme")
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<\/em>Foreign Correspondence