Whose home; which island?
displacement and identity in ‘My Island Home’
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/prbt.v14i1.33Keywords:
‘My Island Home’, Neil Murray, Warumpi Band, Tiddas, Christine Anu, land rightsAbstract
‘My Island Home’ has become a well-known musical assertion of Australian identity. Written in 1985 by Neil Murray, the song originally described the situation of the lead singer of the predominantly Indigenous Warumpi Band, George Burarrwanga, who had moved from Elcho Island in Arnhem Land to Papunya, a community west of Alice Springs. The song was subsequently popularized to a mainstream, settler Australian audience in two versions released by Christine Anu, who sang a revised version which identified Australia itself as the island home at the Sydney Olympics Closing Ceremony in 2000. This article tracks the history of versions of ‘My Island Home’ up to that by Tiddas which closes the film Radiance, released in 1998. The article argues that central to the growing popularity of ‘My Island Home’ among both Indigenous and settler Australians was the increasing recognition of land rights and, correspondingly, the anxieties this caused among the dominant population.
References
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——2003. ‘Island Dreaming: The Contemplation of Polynesian Paradise’. Journal of Historical Geography 39/4: 554–81. http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/jhge.2002.0461
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Turcotte, Gerry. 2003. ‘Interview with Louis Nowra and Rachel Perkins’. Metro 135: 38.
van Toorn, Penny. 1992. ‘The Terrors of Terra Nullius: Gothicising and Degothicising Aboriginality’. World Literature Written in English 32/2: 87–97.
Veracini, Lorenzo. 2007. ‘Settler Colonialism and Decolonisation’. borderlands 6/2. Online at http://www.borderlands.net.au/vol6no2_2007/veracini_settler.htm (accessed 22 June 2013).
The Wik Peoples v State of Queensland & Ors; The Thayorre People v State of Queensland & Ors (1996) 187 CLR 1.
Wilson, Janelle. 2005. Nostalgia: Sanctuary of Memory. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press.
Žižek, Slavoj. 1989. The Sublime Object of Ideology. London: Verso.
Barney, Katelyn. 2005. ‘Celebration or Cover Up: “My Island Home”, Australian National Identity and the Spectacle of Sydney 2000’. In Aesthetics and Experience in Music Performance, ed. Elizabeth MacKinley et al., 141–50. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Bergland, Renée L. 2000. The National Uncanny: Indian Ghosts and American Subjects. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England.
Blackstone, William. 1869. Commentaries on the Laws of England, vol. 1. London: W. Maxwell & Son.
‘Bobby Holcomb’. 2009. Mon Tahiti. Online at http://www.montahiti.com/bobby.php (accessed 22 June 2013).
Boym, Svetlana. 2001. The Future of Nostalgia. New York: Basic Books.
Brown, Peter. 2006. ‘Australia as an “Island Home” on Stage and Screen: Radiance as Intertextual Metaphor’. In Reading Images, Viewing Texts: Crossdisciplinary Perspectives, ed. Louise Maurer and Roger Hillman, 183–202. New York: Peter Lang.
Castricano, Jodey. 2001. Cryptomimesis: The Gothic and Jacques Derrida’s Ghost Writing. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Collins, Felicity, and Therese Davis. 2004. Australian Cinema after Mabo. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511802324
Connell, John. 1999. ‘“My Island Home”: The Politics and Poetics of the Torres Strait’. In Small Worlds, Global Lives: Islands and Migration, ed. Russell King and John Connell, 195–212. London: Pinter.
——2003. ‘Island Dreaming: The Contemplation of Polynesian Paradise’. Journal of Historical Geography 39/4: 554–81. http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/jhge.2002.0461
Craven, Allison. 2008. ‘Tropical Gothic: Radiance Revisited’. etropic: electronic journal of studies in the tropics 7. Online at http://www.jcu.edu.au/etropic (accessed 22 June 2013).
Fitzmaurice, Andrew. 2007. ‘The Genealogy of Terra Nullius’. Australian Historical Studies 38/129: 1–15. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10314610708601228
Flanagan, Martin. ‘Foreword’. In Neil Murray, My Island Home. Collingwood, Vic.: One Day Hill.
Freud, Sigmund. 1953 [1919]. ‘The Uncanny’. In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. XVII, ed. James Strachey, 219–52. London: Hogarth.
Gelder, Ken, and Jane M. Jacobs. 1998. Uncanny Australia: Sacredness and Identity in a Postcolonial Nation. Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press.
Gillett, Sue. 2008. ‘Through Song to Belonging: Music Finds its Place in Rachel Perkins’ Radiance and One Night the Moon’. Metro 159: 86–92.
Kahn, Miriam. 2011. Tahiti Beyond the Postcard: Power, Place and Everyday Life. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press.
Lim, David C. L. 2005. The Infinite Longing for Home: Desire and the Nation in Selected Writings of Ben Okri and K. S. Maniam. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Mabo v Queensland (No. 2) (1992) 175 CLR 1.
McMillan, Andrew. 1988. Strict Rules. Sydney: Hodder and Stoughton.
Mar, Phillip. 1997. ‘Island Home: Cover Versions’. Communal/Plural 5: 145–51.
Milirrpum v Nabalco Pty Ltd (1971) 17 FLR 141.
Miller, Benjamin. 2008. ‘Australians in a Vacuum: The Socio-Political “Stuff” in Rachel Perkins’ Radiance’. Studies in Australasian Cinema 2/1: 61–71. http://dx.doi.org/10.1386/sac.2.1.61_1
Mitchell, Tony. 1996. Popular Music and Local Identity: Rock, Pop, and Rap in Europe and Oceania. London: Leicester University Press.
Morley, David. 2000. Home Territories: Media, Mobility and Identity. London: Routledge.
Murray, Neil. 2010. ‘Preface’. In Murray, My Island Home. Collingwood, Vic.: One Day Hill.
——n.d. ‘A Healing Walk’. Online at http://www.eelfestival.org.au/assets/healingwalkessay.pdf (accessed 22 June 2013).
——n.d. ‘My Island Home’. Neil Murray. Online at http://www.neilmurray.com.au/pages/song_islandhome.html (accessed 22 June 2013).
‘My Island Home’. 2013. Wikipedia. Online at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Island_Home (accessed 22 June 2013).
Neuenfeldt, Karl. 2002. ‘Torres Strait Maritime Songs of Longing and Belonging’. Journal of Australian Studies 75: 111–16. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14443050209387810
O’Hanlon, Seamus. 2002. Together Apart: Boarding House, Hostel and Flat Life in Pre-War Melbourne. Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing.
Partington, Geoffrey. 2007. ‘Thoughts on Terra Nullius’. In Proceedings of the Nineteenth Conference of the Samuel Griffiths Society, vol. 19. Online at http://www.samuelgriffith.org.au/papers/html/volume19/v19chap11.html (accessed 22 June 2013).
Perera, Suvendrini. 2009. Australia and the Insular Imagination: Beaches, Borders, Boats and Bodies. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
‘QMF Returns to Thursday Island with Christine Anu and the Winds of Zenadth Cultural Festival’. 2012. Christine Anu, 5 September. Online at http://christineanu.com.au/2012/09/05/qmf-returns-to-thursday-island-with-christine-anu-the-winds-of-zenadth-cultural-festival/ (accessed 22 June 2013).
Reed, Liz. 2000. ‘The Complexities of Performance and Presence at the Olympics Closing Ceremony’. Arena. Online at http://www.thefreelibrary.com/RED+HEADBAND+HISTORY.-a068645106 (accessed 22 June 2013).
Rrurrambu, George. 2004. Nerbu Message. Skinnyfish.
Schwartz, Larry. 2010. ‘A True Fella’. The Big Issue 367. Online at http://www.neilmurray.com.au/media/true_fella.pdf (accessed 22 June 2013).
Short, Damien. 2008. Reconciliation and Colonial Power: Indigenous Rights in Australia. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Slater, Lisa. 2007. ‘My Island Home is Waiting for Me: The Dreaming Festival and Archipelago Australia’. Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 21/4: 571–81. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10304310701630019
Stratton, Jon. 2004. ‘Borderline Anxieties: Whitening the Irish and Keeping out Asylum Seekers’. In Whitening Race: Essays in Social and Cultural Criticism, ed. Aileen Moreton-Robinson, 222–38. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.
‘Tahiti Observes Internal Autonomy Day’. n.d. Holidays Around the World. Online at http://aglobalworld.com/holidays-around-the-world/tahiti-observes-internal-autonomy-day/ (accessed 22 June 2013).
Turcotte, Gerry. 2003. ‘Interview with Louis Nowra and Rachel Perkins’. Metro 135: 38.
van Toorn, Penny. 1992. ‘The Terrors of Terra Nullius: Gothicising and Degothicising Aboriginality’. World Literature Written in English 32/2: 87–97.
Veracini, Lorenzo. 2007. ‘Settler Colonialism and Decolonisation’. borderlands 6/2. Online at http://www.borderlands.net.au/vol6no2_2007/veracini_settler.htm (accessed 22 June 2013).
The Wik Peoples v State of Queensland & Ors; The Thayorre People v State of Queensland & Ors (1996) 187 CLR 1.
Wilson, Janelle. 2005. Nostalgia: Sanctuary of Memory. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press.
Žižek, Slavoj. 1989. The Sublime Object of Ideology. London: Verso.
Published
2013-10-18
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Stratton, J. (2013). Whose home; which island? displacement and identity in ‘My Island Home’. Perfect Beat, 14(1), 33-53. https://doi.org/10.1558/prbt.v14i1.33
