Ladies and Gentlemen, we would like to take this opportunity to warn members of the audience that the following performance contains names and visual representations of people recently dead, which may be distressing to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. All care has been taken to acquire the appropriate permission and to show all proper respects. Thank you. Sydney Theatre Company would like to take this opportunity to warn members of the audience that this production contains names and visual representations of people recently dead, which may be distressing to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. All care has been taken to acquire the appropriate permission and show all properrespect .

Indigenous people ↓ indigenous ↑ Aboriginality Aboriginal Black

We were the only ones. We didn’t need to be identified. We had identity. The word Aboriginal means the first – a European word. Not only have we lost our people, our land, our culture, our language, we also use a title given to us by the people who took it all away and are still taking and will continue to take from our very souls if we allow it. (Carol Horne-Oates, 1993)

But what is Aboriginality. Is it being tribal. Who is an Aboriginal But what is Aboriginality? Is it being tribal? Who is an Aboriginal? Is he or she someone who feels that other Aboriginals are somehow dirty, lazy, drunken, bludging? Is an Aboriginal anyone who has some degree of aboriginal blood in his or her veins and has been demonstrably disadvantaged by that? […] an acceptance of the label ‘the most powerless people on earth’? Or is Aboriginality, when all the definitions have been exhausted , a yearning for a different way of being, a wholeness that was presumed to have existed [before 1788]? Kevin Gilbert Living Black: Blacks Talk to Kevin Gilbert, (1978), p.184.

1. Aboriginal person interacting with other Aboriginal people; 2. the stereotypes which are created by the Anglo-Australians reproducing the existing stereotypes of Aborigines; 3. the construction of Aboriginality through the actual dialogues between Aborigines and non-Aborigines. (cf. Marcia Langton, 1993)

Belonging where? Caught in an abyss Thousands of children Heartache despair.   Stolen, separated Leaving mothers behind Lost to our Culture, Music, Dance and Art. Lost to Ourselves – our Families – our Hearts. As a child – wondering What did I do wrong? Who the hell am I? A feeling so strong The taunts of a childhood All a whirl ‘Half-caste, half-caste a little black girl.’ Italiano? Greek? Maori or what? Some of the questions asked a lot Too black to be white. Too white to be black. Caught in the middle Belonging nowhere. By Lorraine McGee-Sippel (1997)

Most of us girls were thinking white in the head but were feeling black inside. We weren’t black or white. We were a lonely, lost and sad displaced group of people. We were brainwashed to think like a white person…[but] were not accepted because they were Aboriginal. When they went and mixed with Aborigines, some found they could not identify, because they had too much white ways in them. They were neither black or white. They were simply a lost generation. Bringing them home (1997) National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families (p.152)