Reconstructing Aboriginal History and Cultural Identity through Self Narrative: A Study of Ruby Langford’s Autobiography Don‘t Take Your Love to Town

The last decades of previous century has witnessed the burgeoning of life narratives lending voice to the oppressed, dispossessed, and the colonized marginalities of race, class or gender across the world. A large number of autobiographical and biographical narratives that have appeared on the literary scene have started articulating their ordeals and their struggle for survival. The Aboriginals in Australia have started candidly articulating their side of story, exposing the harassment and oppression of their people in Australia. These oppressed communities find themselves sandwiched and strangled under the mainstream politics of multiculturalism, assimilation and secularism. 
The present paper seeks to analyze how life writing serves the purpose of history in celebrated Australian novelist, Aboriginal historian and social activist Ruby Langford’s autobiographical narrative, Don’t Take Your Love to Town. The Colonial historiography of Australian settlement has never accepted the fact of displacement and eviction of the Aboriginals from their land and culture. The whites systematically transplanted Anglo-Celtic culture and identity in the land of Australia which was belonged to the indigenous for centuries.  Don’t Take Your Love to Town reconstructs the debate on history of the colonial settlement and status of Aboriginals under subsequent government policies like reconciliation, assimilation and multiculturalism. The paper is an attempt to gaze the assimilation policy adopted by the state to bring the Aboriginals into the mainstream politics and society on the one hand, and the regular torture, exploitation and cultural degradation of the Aboriginals recorded in the text on the other. In this respect the paper sees how Langford encounters British history of Australian settlement and the perspectives of Australian state towards the Aboriginals. The politics of mainstream culture, religion, race and ethnicity, which is directly or indirectly responsible for the condition of the Aboriginals, is also the part of discussion in the paper.

The last decades of previous century has witnessed the burgeoning of life narratives lending voice to the oppressed, dispossessed, and the colonized marginalities of race, class or gender across the world. A large number of autobiographical and biographical narratives that have appeared on the literary scene have started articulating their ordeals and their struggle for survival. The Aboriginals in Australia have started candidly articulating their side of story, exposing the harassment and oppression of their people in Australia. These oppressed communities find themselves sandwiched and strangled under the mainstream politics of multiculturalism, assimilation and secularism. Present paper is an attempt to analyze the autobiographical narrative of Ruby Langford's Don't Take Your Love to Town that presents an alternative to the official history of Australia written by the early colonizers and explorers.
That text strongly questions the imperial settlement of Australia particularly in terms of prolonged racial dominance that not only evicted the Aboriginals from their culture and land SMART MOVES JOURNAL IJELLH e-ISSN: 2582-3574 p-ISSN: 2582-4406 VOL. 8, ISSUE 12, DECEMBER 2020 www.ijellh.com 130 rights but also prejudiced the subsequent policies of immigration, assimilation or multiculturalism etc. Since, history and racial politics has been the part and partial of her social work her, Don't Take Your Love to Town, published in 1988, on the bicentenary of Australia, recommends strong re-evaluation of the history of its 'Christian heritage' and European's behavior with the Aboriginals in general and with women in particular. The text in form of a personal account brings out a staunch critique of colonial myth of the peaceful settlement, imperial expansion of racial culture in the continent and mid twentieth century racial discrimination and struggle of Aboriginal women to survive in multiple level of (Quoted by Brewster, xi).
Before the advent of Europeans in Australia, the Aboriginals lived in approximately 500 tribes, each associated with its own language. Although these tribes had certain differences with each other in size but they had much in common. They had common myths and rituals which connected them with their ancestors, whom they regarded as the creators of the world and none of whom ever died but merged with the natural world and thus, remained a part of the present. These myths and rituals were known as dreaming or the dreamtime    (Brewster 9). In this context Anne also quotes Roberta Sykes who states "... at least three out of every four black women will sleep alone, will bring up children without the benefit of black paternal presence, and will have no black male with whom to share their lives" ( 9). In the case of Ruby consumption of alcohol by her various husbands brings disastrous change in her life. Sharing her experiences with her male partners she says that, "the men loved you for a while and then more kids came along and the men drank and gambled and disappeared" (Langford 96  Nerida for the first time, Ruby explains, "I hardly saw Nerida without black eyes and bruises. ... My existence wasn't better, and I had my share of black eyes and bruises later" (Langford 58). Ruby's first partner Sam was always very suspicious kind of person who always kept his eyes on her and "running around on" her (Langford 59). The same episode reveals the worst condition of Aboriginal women when he knocks Ruby to the ground and tried to throttle her.
He belts Ruby so much that she decides to go to Bonalbo, her home town, and that is where he left her. When she finds Lance cheating she immediately reactes and Lance in a anger hits her hard breaking her duplicate teeth. It harms her lips and blood begins pouring out profusely. Ruby gets hospitalized, and has her face remained swollen for many weeks.
However, Lance is arrested. But this incident brings a significant change in her life and she decides that she has tolerated "enough of bashings and being knocked around generally" and would tolerate it no more (Langford 144). She never forgives Lance and starts living life on her own terms and conditions. When asked by her son-in-law when she would get married again, she replies, "When I can get a man who can look after me better than I can do myself" (Langford 170).
Ruby Langford is a strong Aboriginal woman who not only daringly challenges the colonially set rules in her land but also takes part role as a responsible mother. She always cares her children and teaches them to be bold against exploitation and racism. She shares many instances when she appears as shield for her children and endorses them in personal as well as other aspects of life. She narrates an incident when she finds her daughter Aileen "doubled up in the middle of the road near the flat" (Langford 206 She hopes that Aboriginal narratives will create empathy among the whites and one day the Aboriginals will enjoy their rights and respectful life on their motherland. "I knew when I finished this book a weight would be lifted from my mind, not only because I could examine my own life from it and know who I was, but because it may help better the relationship between the Aboriginal about the white people. That it might give some idea of the difficulty we have surviving between two cultures, that we are here and will always be here. (269).