Seen from the perspective of Mia, a 13-year-old girl in a remote Kimberley community, ‘Black Cockatoo’ is like a prose poem about the changes that take place in young people on the threshold of adulthood. Mia observes the changing behaviour of her older brother Jy, as, influenced by other boys seeking their independence, he tests the cultural expectations of his elders.
It’s significant that the starting point for this meditation is an action that, although frowned upon, would not be out of place in an old fashioned boys’ story from white Australian literature. Jy hits a bird with a slingshot. Such an incident was common enough in 19th and early 20th century Australian life and storytelling to inspire the setting up in 1909 of the Gould League of Bird Lovers (later called just the Gould League) and some grandparents may still have in their collection the membership badges that featured native Australian birds.
But in an Aboriginal context, the action that opens ‘Black Cockatoo’ has far more severe implications and consequences. The dirrarn, the black cockatoo that Jy hits, is his sister’s totem. Cultural law forbids her from looking at the bird or even mentioning its name. Jy’s grandfather tells him he had better be planning to eat the bird he has shot, because killing for fun is against the law. But the dirrarn is not dead. Mia rescues it and places it in a cardboard box until she can find a cage for it in the morning.
Mia’s gradual journey towards an understanding of why she has rescued this bird is the main story arc of ‘Black Cockatoo’. As the bird tries to escape from the box, despite its broken wing, and later as it performs a sad dance up and down, up and down, inside the cage that becomes its temporary home, other dirrarn fly down, one by one, and beside the cage mirror in dance the grief they share with the injured bird.
Jy’s action has violated both the connectedness of all living things, and the respect that young people are expected to have for others, particularly family, and for cultural law. In doing so, he signals his desire to challenge tradition and to live in both the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal worlds. His grandfather has a bag packed by the front door, however, waiting for the moment when Jy will join the other men and boys and trek out onto Country for Law time - after which, Mia knows, some of the boys will return to the community as men. So the lawlessness of Jy’s boyhood is about to disappear forever.
As Mia watches the boys torment insects, she feels an increasing oneness with the injured bird, until in a dream she experiences the total freedom of flight. Her understanding of her totem is complete. The difference between their grandfather’s and their grandmother’s responses to change will engage young readers in lively discussions about change in their own contexts. Mia’s grandmother tells her that when she was a girl, there was only Country. But now school education is opening up a whole new world for Mia, and she must learn to live in both. The grandmother’s willingness to accept change is indicated when she refuses to allow Mia to use any cultural ritual as an excuse to stay home from school. Mia must respect family and Country, but she must respect education and the advantages it offers too. The narrative in ‘Black Cockatoo’ enacts its inhabiting of both worlds by speaking two languages at once, with a skilful use of Kriol vocabulary, not just marginalised in footnotes or in the glossary, but embedded in the narrative right alongside the apposite word in English.
The symbolic tropes of a narrative that is quite clear in its values, yet refrains from preaching, will inspire adolescents to explore their own connections with the natural environment, family, tradition, gender roles, respect, education, and indeed Aboriginal culture generally. Why is the human imagination so strongly attracted to birds? What meanings are attributed to the failure to fly? It would be interesting for young readers to compare ‘Black Cockatoo’ Cockatoo with Bob Graham’s ‘How to Heal a Broken Wing’ (2008) or Colin Thiele’s ‘Storm Boy‘ (1964). And why are humans spending billions of dollars on voyages to Mars and other points in the solar system and beyond that they will never physically reach? For a book of just a couple of thousand words and barely 64 pages, ‘Black Cockatoo’ opens up so many multilayered questions.
Carl Merrison is a Jaru and Kija man from Halls Creek. Hakea Hustler was a high school English teacher at Halls Creek District High School. Hakea, co-author and non-Indigenous collaborator on ‘Black Cockatoo’, is committed to Indigenous education with a particular focus on school engagement, English language and story as learning, understanding and empowerment. (source: Magabala Books author profile). Dub Leffler is descended from the Bigambul people of South-West Queensland.
Aboriginal and or Torres Strait Islander Resource
