History and Context

Understanding the Time and Place

In order to understand what impact Grenville was making, it is important to understand the discussion that was already going on. In order to do this, we must look at the correct time and place, this being Australia in the 1990’s to 2000’s as “The Secret River” was published in 2005. This is where I would like to introduce the Reconciliation movement. This was a movement to give back to the native aboriginal people in order to attempt to do something to start to make up for the colonisation of their land and the genocide of their people.

Historic Discussion at the Time

One important point to note is that around this time there was a shift in historical writing being published about colonialism and reconciliation. “Historical contributions published in more recent years have either insisted on the genocidal nature of Australia’s political record or attempted to dismiss such a claim” (Veracini 225). This is an important distinction as it seems it was not commonly accepted that genocide was something that happened during colonialism, and in Grenville’s depiction, genocidal events are certainly included. One such time is the massacre in the clearing: “All over the clearing men fired and reloaded and swords rose and fell and came up all over blood in a din of screaming and roaring and the high panicked cries of children” (Grenville 305).

The articles being published on the colonization of Australia using words like genocide and invasion did spark up conversation in the Australian people. These conversations turned into action and there was a new found emphasis on learning about and understanding the local cultures and histories of aboriginal tribes (Veracini 227). Essentially, there were people in Australia who made large efforts to understand the aboriginal people, however, we do not ever see an aboriginal perspective in “The Secret River” which is something that I will address more in depth later.

People's Involvement around Reconciliation

Interestingly, the narrative around colonization and the dialogue around reconciliation is not just two sided. It is true that the narrative existed that white people bravely explored and settled Australia, and there were people fighting this narrative in the 1990’s who supported reconciliation. However, some thought that reconciliation itself was flawed as it would allow for non-aboriginals to still remain dominant while submitting the narrative that they were all friends and everything was good (Brennan 150).  

There was a movement called “the people’s movement” from 1991 to 2000 in which there was an incredibly high degree of “positive non-Indigenous engagement with Indigenous culture and history on the local and individual level” (Brennan 153). This seems to be where Grenville falls in as she is a non-indigenous person engaging with indigenous culture in a positive way.

Sources:

Veracini, Lorenzo. “Of a ‘contested Ground’ and an ‘Indelible Stain’: A Difficult Reconciliation between Australia and Its Aboriginal History during the 1990s and 2000s.” Aboriginal History, vol. 27, 2003, pp. 224–39. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24054269. Accessed 2 Mar. 2023.

Grenville, Kate. The Secret River . The Text Publishing Company, 2005.

Brennan, Sean. “Reconciliation in Australia: The Relationship Between Indigenous Peoples and the Wider Community.” The Brown Journal of World Affairs, vol. 11, no. 1, 2004, pp. 149–61. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24590504. Accessed 2 Mar. 2023.