Performances of Belonging single work   criticism  
Issue Details: First known date: 2018... 2018 Performances of Belonging
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'In the context of Australian settler colonialism, as Aileen Moreton-Robinson has eloquently argued, possessive claims in relation to Indigenous people are central to the colonial project. Supporting these claims and benefiting from them are notions of belonging in the land. Who is the stranger and who the resident and therefore who has the right to claim the physical space? Across the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, Aboriginal performance practices for entertainment were used by both Aboriginal people and white settlers as a way of asserting claims of belonging to the land in the present moment.'  (Publication abstract)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Australasian Drama Studies no. 73 October 2018 15506967 2018 periodical issue

    'The opening image of this Special Issue of the Australasian Drama Studies journal comes from The Vultures, a contemporary Indigenous satire written and directed by Tawata Productions’ Mīria George (Te Arawa; Ngati Awa; Rarotonga and Atiu, Cook Islands), and staged at Wellington’s BATS theatre as part of the Kia Mau Festival in 2017. The Vultures plays around with the politics of place; of native ecologies versus the National Economy; of the negotiation of Indigenous identities between town and country; of the rejection of the passive ‘Ecological Indigene’ trope; and of the literal ways we trace our whakapapa (lineage) to the landscapes of our ancestors. It envisions an Indigenous Aristocracy, dominated by an internally conflicted whānau (family) of exceptional Māori wāhine (women), engaged in power struggles for wealth and control of a new Empire. The central conflict in this narrative conflates the whakataukī (proverb) about the causes of war: He wāhine, he whenua, ka ngaro te tangata – often translated as ‘For women and land, men perish’ – where the battle over a contested territory is fought by resistant Indigenous women, on their own behalf. This image speaks to an intrinsic premise behind this long-awaited Special Issue: that Indigenous voices are diverse, rich and complex. There is no such thing as a typical Indigenous play.' (Hyland, Nicola; Syron, Liza-Mare and Casey, Maryrose. 'Turangawaewae': A place to stand in contemporary indigenous performance in Australasia and beyond 1-16)

    2018
    pg. 186-206
Last amended 5 Feb 2019 09:04:07
186-206 Performances of Belongingsmall AustLit logo Australasian Drama Studies
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