The pain of crossed paths
Haunted by the Past
By Dr Ruby Langford-Ginibi
Allen & Unwin, 1999
$17.95 (pb)
Reviewed by Ray Jackson
On July 5, I had the great honour to launch Dr Ruby Langford-Ginibi's new book, her fourth, Haunted by the Past. I thanked Ruby for generously allowing me to launch the book and recognised that we were all standing on Aboriginal land — always was, always will be, land never ceded. The fact that we gathered at Tranby Aboriginal College was of special significance to us all.
Dr Ruby Langford-Ginibi was born at Box Ridge Mission at Coraki in 1934. She is a fiercely proud Bundjalung woman. She is also an author, historian and lecturer on Aboriginal history, culture and politics. I would add to that list that she is also, perhaps more importantly, a mother and a warrior.
Ruby picked up her pen on May 23, 1984, to write her life story, Don't Take Your Love to Town, which was published by Penguin in 1988. Her second book, Real Deadly, was published by Collins Imprint in 1992.
My Bundjalung People, published by Queensland University Press in 1994, tells of Ruby going back to the mission in Coraki to find her people and place, and to connect with her extended family after a 48-year absence.
Ruby is the mother of nine children, whom she raised mostly on her own, and a grandmother to 21 grandchildren. She has three great-grandchildren.
Ruby was awarded the Human Rights Award for Literature for Don't Take Your Love to Town in 1988. She received an inaugural history fellowship from the Ministry of Arts in 1990, an inaugural honorary fellowship from the Australian National Museum, Canberra, in 1995, and an inaugural doctorate of letters (Honors Causia) from La Trobe University, Victoria, on May 1, 1998.
Ruby is currently working on a book of Koori humour, Only Gammin (meaning not real), about the social, stereotypical jokes made up about us Koori people — the Jacky Jacky and Mary ones — that perpetuate the racism and marginalise our people even more. You can laugh, but you've got to know what you are laughing at!
Haunted by the Past tells the story of her son Nobby's jailing and his treatment by the racist, non-caring system of white justice. Nobby's jail experiences ring very true. Having had some experience visiting our brothers and sisters in jail over the previous six or seven years, I can assure you that Nobby's words give a clear picture of jail life.
There is so much more that Nobby could say and perhaps one day he may. I look forward to that day.
The book can be likened to a social and historical travelogue, with one white road and one black road (and I use these terms merely as a means of identification), and as long as these roads or paths are separate and do not cross — then we have peace and our own ways. We have harmony. Whenever they cross it brings nothing but pain, trouble and sorrow.
For Nobby, the crossing of the paths meant the gungibles [cops], the courts and the jails. For Ruby, the crossing of the paths meant further pain and sorrow, especially when travelling through her Bundjalung country, her land. There is pain and trouble caused by the taking of the traditional lands by the white invaders who desecrated the secret and sacred places.
Like all of Ruby's books, this one speaks to you — you do not read it, you hear it! So listen well. For there is much to learn in our oral traditions.
Ruby devotes chapter six to black deaths in custody, and we hear of the crossing of the paths for the families of Eddie Murray, John Pat, Robert Walker, Charlie Michaels, Tony King, Dixon Green and Daniel Yok.
To that infamous list of "unsolved murder" cases, there can be added many others: the husband of Letty Scott who was hung twice in Berrimah Jail in Darwin; Colleen Richman who was shot in the back by Victorian police in "self defence"; Janet Beetson who died in Mulawa jail as the consequence of medical neglect; Brett and Matthew Cross, brothers, more offerings to a deadly system. In the white sense of the word.
The list is endless because we have no real justice. There is still within the white custodial system the continuing nightmare of crossed paths leading onward to murder by neglect.
Ruby dedicates her book with these words:
"I dedicate this book to my son Nobby and to every mother's son or daughter who has fallen foul of the Westminster system of justice that came with those first squatters and settlers in 1788. Those laws are not our Koori laws — our laws were the first laws of this land.
"Since we Kooris are invaded people, we have always had to conform to other people's laws, rules and standards — we were never allowed to be ourselves as Aboriginal people."
We will never be allowed to be ourselves until the dominant culture allows us to be ourselves. The paths need to be parallel rather than criss-crossed.
That will only occur by educating non-indigenous people. Ruby's fourth book does that.
[Abridged from Djadi-Dugarang, newsletter of the Indigenous Social Justice Association. Ray Jackson is the co-coordinator of the Indigenous Social Justice Association.]