Back Where the Two Rivers Meet

Being born into a generation that saw the civil rights movement and growing up in Sydney, Behrendt, who is one-quarter Aborigine from the Eualeyai community, had a better education than her forefathers had access to; she went on to obtain a doctorate from Harvard Law School, the first Australian Aboriginal to do so. But the author, a sharp critic of the current John Howard government8217;s Aboriginal policies, says the impact of the deep seated prejudices against Aborigines and the century-long policy of segregation and racism still exists, and is reflected in most of the political and legal decisions in the country. Some of these criticisms figure in her critically acclaimed book, Achieving Social Justice: Indigenous Rights and Australia8217;s Future.

8216;8216;First, most people have a stereotypical view of Aborigines as drunkards and bad mothers. The truth is that they were never given a chance, and most of them were taken away from their families and put in orphanages where they faced physical and sexual abuse. They never knew what it is like to have a home,8217;8217; she says.

To tell the story of this Stolen Generation, Behrendt delved into her own family8217;s history. Piecing it together like a jigsaw puzzle, she spent seven years researching on her family tree. She visited 8216;8216;the land where the two rivers meet,8217;8217; a few hours from Sydney where her grandmother Lavinia Dawson was kidnapped 90 years ago and ended up working in a city hospital. Behrendt visited libraries and document offices to trace her lost uncles and aunts, some of whom appear in the book. 8216;8216;I had to use my imagination wherever there were gaps,8217;8217; she says. The book begins from when Garibooli Lavinia is whisked off by men in black suits and dumped in a rich man8217;s home to work as a maid. She gets pregnant after being raped by the master of the house, and the child that is born to her is taken away to an orphanage. Later Garibooli finds love and marries a German, Gigor Brecht, with whom she had six children. But it is the part after Garibooli8217;s death and the children8217;s traumatic story of fractured kinship and survival that is most eloquently told.

Most of them grew up in a children8217;s home and one of them was Behrendt8217;s father. Paul Bob in the book, who was court-martialed by the Navy, taught himself to read and went on to occupy a chair in a university that taught Aboriginal studies. 8216;8216;After a heart attack at 35, my father went back to trace his ancestors,8217;8217; says Behrendt , whose novel has a sprinkling of Eualeyai folk tales.

One of the reasons why Aboriginals are little understood, says Behrendt, is because of the distorted history books that tend to speak in favour of the white settlers. Attending school in Sydney, she recalls being called a 8216;8216;black spider8217;8217; and friends consoling her by saying 8216;8216;you can8217;t tell8217;8217; about her Aboriginal origins. In her book she says she realised that her skin was 8216;8216;made from dirt8217;8217; when a former boyfriend mistook her 8216;8216;exoticness8217;8217; for a Spanish. Home won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for best first book last year and the David Unaipol award in 2002.

As for her next project, she says: 8216;8216;My first novel was about brothers and sisters, my next book will be about daughters and fathers against the backdrop of the civil rights movement.8217;8217;