Negotiating belonging in Australia through storytelling and encounter

Abstract

From 2010 to 2012 a diverse group of young people participated in an oral history theatre project, Chronicles, which aimed to support them to claim a personally meaningful Australian identity. Oral history theatre was used to facilitate a process whereby the young people were able to reconnect with their personal family histories, encounter Aboriginal young people and stories, and together interview Aboriginal Elders. Through this process, they could develop new understandings of their own social identities, and meanings of and possibilities for belonging. ‘Centring diverse lives, decentring whiteness’ and ‘a different starting point: Aboriginal ways of knowing’, were the two key outcomes that we report on. Bringing people from diverse cultural and social backgrounds together to share stories of history, culture and identity, offers a unique vantage point from which to rupture dominant narratives about belonging/non-belonging and show up whiteness, and together forge a new Australian identity reflective of everyday multiculturalism.

Keywords:

• whiteness
• oral history
• theatre
• belonging
• multicultural
• racism

Acknowledgements

Data gathering for this research was supported with funding from the Victoria University Researcher Development Scheme (RDGS 28/12). We want to thank Cymbeline Buhler, the artistic director of the Chronicles project, for her generous input that helped sharpen our understanding and reflections on the project. We would like to acknowledge Lesley Pruitt’s role in the data gathering, Karina Smith for comments on an earlier draft of this paper, and Linda Chiodo for her research assistance. We also want to acknowledge the reviewers and associate editor for their feedback on an earlier version of this paper.

Notes

1. Following Moreton-Robinson (2003) we, ‘conceptualise the current condition not as postcolonial but as postcolonizing with the association of ongoing process, which that implies’ (p. 30).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Christopher C. Sonn

CHRISTOPHER C. SONN is an Associate Professor in the Psychology Discipline Group in the College of Arts at Victoria University.

Amy F. Quayle

AMY F. QUAYLE is a PhD candidate in the Psychology Discipline Group in the College of Arts at Victoria University.

Cynthia Mackenzie

CYNTHIA MACKENZIE is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in the Social Inquiry Discipline Group in the College of Arts at Victoria University.

Siew Fang Law

SIEW FANG LAW is a Senior Lecturer in the Social Inquiry Discipline Group in the College of Arts at Victoria University.