Change essay

Essay by givemeboostHigh School, 12th grade July 2005

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An examination of Changing Perspective from a series of viewpoints, from historical to personal, to contemporary political perspectives reveals change in relation to the past and present lives of the Aborigines. However, on another level, by presenting these changes, composers align the responders with the Aboriginal plight, so in effect, change also occurs in the responders. Didactic example of this was seen in The Stolen Children: Their Stories (TSC) by Bird; Duttereau's painting "The Conciliation" and its transformation "The National Picture" by Parr; Jopson's article "Who's sorry now?" (SMH 30/12/00) and the novel Wild Cat Falling by Narogin.

Geoff Parr's collage "The National Picture" is a parody of Duttereau's painting "The Conciliation" which not only alerts the responders of the radical changes wrought by European settlement, but also suggests that Australians are still trying to subdue rather than understand the Indigenous culture. Colonial Australia appeases the Indigenous while modern Australia is depicted as bleaching them our of the "National Picture".

The sole indigenous person is dressed in a neat white suit as though he/she had to put on a "white skin" in order to be accepted. His/her identity is signaled by the Indigenous colours of black, red and yellow; but in a European style- a scarf. Another symbolic repression of the Indigenous perspective is Parr's placement of a row of spears carrying natives in the background. In the painting the back row natives stand as part if and in reinforcement to, the native group in the foreground. However, in the collage they look like grey statues hidden behind the corrugated iron fence that forms a barrier between the modern group and the original inhabitants of land - suggesting that white Australia is till trying to "fence off" the history of indigenous relations. However, those grey ghosts have endured for...