Doctrina Nullius: re-imaginging the other side of the frontier through a novel speculation on the castaway Normanby Woman

Peter Moore

doi:10.25907/00763

This Doctorate of Creative Arts Creative Writing thesis is comprised of three independent, yet interrelated components: translation glossary; exegetical manifesto; creative artefact—as an experimental, fictocritical methodological template for exploring frontier cultural contact in settler historical fiction founded on mutual recognition of cultural difference and equality, as espoused by Jörn Rüsen's criteria of historical judgement, in full positional awareness of one's own normative criteria, to posit the centrality, yet complexity, of foregrounding Indigenous Australian languages to understanding the Colonial Australian frontier. What follows is not the truth. The outcome focuses on the story of the little known castaway Normanby Woman as exemplum to respond directly to dominant 1950s White Australian reminiscent constructions of the frontier, and has been limited to all analysed data being accessible through the public domain, a specific focus on castaways, and on the Wahalumbaal Birri [Endeavour River] frontier. This limitation, intended to avoid appropriation and infringing cultural sensitivities, has ensured the outcome participates in the very act it seeks to overcome. Where available, primacy has been given to related knowledge presented in the public domain by Indigenous Australians, and broader understanding sought through the extensive body of Indigenous Australian literature, and historiographical and literary analysis, to address the deficiency Jeanine Leane identifies as informing the gap in meaning-making between Indigenous and Settler Australian narratives through the balanced symbiosis of the languages in contact. The glossary, and all translations throughout, draws on the linguistic research of John B. Haviland to collate and combine archival records from the first British mariners to the present day, into a Guugu Yimidhirr—English translation glossary. The glossary is limited to language applied throughout the novel, requires confirmation from a Guugu Yimidhirr speaker, and therefore remains incomplete; however, the format offers potential for ongoing correction and addition as a standalone dictionary. The exegetical manifesto, Dingaalbi Guuguunda and Doctrina Nullius, intends participation in the post-Uluru negotiation of our times. The discussion forefronts hegemonic scholarship's naturalised and universalised objectifying structure that informs new knowledge grounded in the unacknowledged cultural origins of itself, while asking: Is it possible to write a culturally comparative historical fiction that explores frontier cultural contact between Indigenous Australians and non-Indigenous Australians from a standpoint of cultural difference and equality—an exploration of the frontier that learns from, and responds to, Indigenous Australians—given I am the coloniser? The artefact, The Normanby Woman, is a settler historical fiction, and not an Indigenous Australian story. Such an announcement is critical to this research's outcome template. The narrative responds to popular settler castaway and captivity narratives by speculating on the life of the Normanby Woman during her time adopted by Guugu Yimidhirr speaking bama. The intentionally ambiguous narrator tells this story as one not indigenous to Country, but stitched by circumstance. Ergo, understanding weaves the narrator's indigenous and adopted languages akin to a linguistic Frankenstein's monster, revealing and concealing the machinations that construct meaning. The novel is intentionally positioned between historiography and literature to foreground a manipulation that perpetuates colonisation today, irrespective of the author's intent. To this end, the combined components—Doctrina Nullius: nostrī Promethei modernum—are offered as an experimental, settler historical fiction template that positions the author's everywhen and respectfully addresses issues of appropriation and misleading one-dimensional homogenising stereotypes.

Doctrina Nullius: re-imaginging the other side of the frontier through a novel speculation on the castaway Normanby Woman

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