‘Lies Damned Lies’ by Claire G. Coleman

Kaya everyone, welcome to #DeadlyWABookClub! Over the next three months I’ll be analysing and celebrate the writing of Aboriginal authors from Western Australia. I’ll also be sharing some essays published in the journal JASAL, to raise awareness of the big thinkers of today who are discussing and critiquing Australian literature. This is all thanks to my writer’s fellowship from ASAL/Copyright Agency - thank you! Find out more at ASAL.

Claire G. Coleman’s Lies Damned Lies from Ultimo Press is a collection of biting essays speaking truth to colonial power. Coleman, a Noongar writer, shares a similar history to my own family’s’, having ancestors who hid their Aboriginal identity during the early part of the 20th century. This was a common assimilationist practice at the time, known by some as the ‘Hidden Generations’. Out of survival, shame, or something else, we might never know; but it was the discovery of her true identity, and hearing the call of her boodjar, that led Coleman on a path of truth-telling and writing.

As a writer, Coleman acknowledges that she is using a weapon that has historically been used against our people: the pen. The history of literature is fraught for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. It’s been used against us in the controlling letters of the state, in the dismissive colonial archives, in the cruel racism of newspaper articles, and the paternal misunderstandings of anthropologist reports.

In Lies Damned Lies, readers are given a series of lies or propaganda about our nation (otherwise known as Australia’s history books) that Coleman then destroys with brilliantly researched facts, rolling sarcasm and pent-up rage. This includes everything from the fake news of Australian history, the racism of being told you’re ‘not quite blak enuff’, that colonisation is far from over (why do we always talk about it like it ever ended?), and that Indigenous people’s lives have not “improved” since invasion, as some like to argue, they have worsened in most regards. This is just the surface stuff – there is no nook or cranny of the white supremacist, neoliberal construction that is ‘Australia’ that Coleman doesn’t peer into and tear down.

One of my favourite ‘deconstructions of mythologies’ Coleman makes in this novel was that Aboriginal people have been viewed as the nomads, as the drifters. But in reality, it is the other way around – it is the pioneering white settlers and adventure-seeking Englishmen, who felt no sense of ‘Country’ or spiritual connection to place, and instead believed that ‘home is where you make it’ or ‘home is where your family is’. While for Aboriginal people, to be away from your Ancestral homelands can be to live a ghostly life, disconnected and broken. I believe the aforementioned settler perspective continues on in many settler-descendants today, who don’t give a second thought to the land where they live; although this relationship to Country is shifting for some, thankfully.

As well as the fabulous politics, I particularly enjoyed Coleman’s articulate way of expressing perspective and the sensations of conflicting identity in particular – the Noongar frame through which she views the world:

‘I can feel it; I can hear it; I can see it; some of it at least; in my father’s eyes, in the Banksias, Peppermint trees, white sand and grey stone of my Country, in the heart of the land, in the voice of the wind, in the stories of Aboriginal survivors of the invasion, in the Indigenous art on gallery walls, in the Aboriginal music on my car stereo (p. 4).’

Occasionally, she also plays with form, demonstrating an adaptable, blackfella way of writing by dripping poetry throughout the book, often to clarify or emote a point:

‘They cannot steal the rain; yet

Once it hits the land they try.

Once it lands they dam it, drain it, pump it, damn us all.

It’s not their water.’    -- (p.37)

Lies Damned Lies is a must-read for anyone seeking to decolonise their mind and see the world through an Aboriginal lens. Because as Coleman points out, only by unearthing the true history of Australia and facing up to our past and present wrongs, can we begin to move forward to build a more respectful and united country. There is also a sense of urgency in Coleman’s writing when she points out that we are in a battle against colonisation every day of our life – and we risk losing Indigenous culture and pride completely if we are to let it win.

She writes: ‘If we allow the process [of colonisation] to complete there will be no Indigenous people, no Indigenous culture left to rebuild from… It’s hard to imagine a world where the colony never completes its attempt to take control of the continent but imagining that is precisely what we need to do if we want to save the people who belong here (p.78).’

If deaths in custody continue; if disparities in health, education and employment between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people continue to widen; if mob continue to feel hopeless and suicidal; if truth-telling, treaty and Voice do not occur – then we risk colonisation completing its mission in Australia. I believe this is Coleman’s strongest message, but it is one of many – and I urge everyone to go read this book.

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Question for your next book club: Discuss one of the ‘lies’ that Coleman breaks down and challenges. How did this make you feel? Why do you think this ‘lie’ came about? What does the ‘truth’ reveal about our collective understanding of the world?

Note: If you’re interested in reading more regular book reviews for books by Aboriginal writers, I highly recommend you follow @blackfulla_bookclub on Instagram, they are fantastic!