No Sugar

 

Biography – Jack Davis

English Works: Strangers in “our own country”, No Sugar by Dr Jennifer Minter
Overland Literary Journal: No Sugar, no recognition
It’s doubtful that the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust Twenty would have imagined such an ongoing legacy for a play they commissioned in 1984. Thirty years have now passed since Jack Davis’ No Sugar was first performed at the Maltings in North Perth. The play, which tells the story of Northam’s Munday-Millimurra family and their forced relocation to Moore River in the 1930s, travelled briefly. It was the Australian entry at the 1986 World Theatre Festival in Canada; it went to Melbourne’s Fitzroy Town Hall, for a performance of a Davis trilogy; and, finally, to London’s Riverside Studios in 1988. Other than that, professional performances of No Sugar have been rare. Nonetheless, Davis’ semi-autobiographical tale of disenfranchisement remains worryingly relevant.
Reading Australia: No Sugar
It has seemed to me for some years that two aspects of the Aboriginal struggle have been under-valued. One is their continued will to survive, the other their continued efforts to come to terms with us … There are many, perhaps too many, theories about our troubles with the aborigines. We can spare a moment to consider their theory about their troubles with us. – W.E.H. Stanner, After the Dreaming (1968)
ANALYTICAL ESSAYS

Brennan, B. (2019). No Sugar. https://readingaustralia.com.au/essays/no-sugar/

It has seemed to me for some years that two aspects of the Aboriginal struggle have been under-valued. One is their continued will to survive, the other their continued efforts to come to terms with us … There are many, perhaps too many, theories about our troubles with the aborigines. We can spare a moment to consider their theory about their troubles with us. – W.E.H. Stanner, After the Dreaming (1968)

johnwatsonsite.com. (n.d.) Curriculum Council No Sugar Essay 4 “Spoken Language”

” Stage drama employs different types of spoken language in order to shape themes and our construction of characters. Show how this occurs in at lease one stage drama you have studied.”

Minter, J. (2019). No Sugar by Jack Davis. Retrieved from https://www.englishworks.com.au/sugar-jack-davis/

Ernie Dingo, who performed in many of Jack Davis’s plays, writes: “We are not/ Strangers/ In our own country/ Just/ Strangers/ To a European society/ And it is hard/ To be one/ When / The law/ Is the other.”

Videos

No Sugar by Jack Davis

Jack Davis

The Life and times of Jack Davis https://www.yout
ube.com/watch?v=7FvQdtXIpro

Sorry, Kevin Rudd’s Apology to “The stolen Generation” https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=7&v=b3TZOGpG6cM&feature=emb_logo

The Stolen Generation
Kaartdijin Noongar: Stolen Generations, Moore River Native Settlement
The Daily News (Perth, WA : 1882 – 1950) Saturday 24 December 1932 p 5 Article
The increasing number of escapes from the Moore River native settlement is referred to by the Chief Protector of Aborigines (Mr. A. O. Neville) as a
matter for concern. In his annual report Mr. Neville says that ten male and eighteen female aborigines decamped during the year.
Aborigines Act 1905

South West Aboriginal Land & Sea Council. (2012). Impacts of law post 1905. Retrieved from http://www.noongarculture.org.au/impacts-of-law-post-1905/

Arguably, the Aborigines 1905 Act (WA) has had the most significant impact on Noongar people, an impact that lasted well into the 1960s and 70s.

Aborigines Act 1905 (5 Edw. VII No. 14). (n.d.). Retrieved from

 

“An act to make provision for the better protection and care of the Aboriginal inhabitants of Western Australia.”

Delmege, S. (n.d.). A trans-generational effect of the Aborigines Act 1905 (WA): The making of the fringedwellers in the south-west of Western Australia. Retrieved from http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/MurUEJL/2005/6.html

For persons of mixed descent, who primarily lived in the southwest of the State, the Act had a profound impact. It enabled the removal of anyone deemed “Aboriginal native” to a Reserve and any child under 16 deemed “Aboriginal native” to a State institution.
more…

Haebich, A. (1992). Implementing the 1905 Aborigines Act: 1905-1911. In A. Haebich, For their own good: Aborigines and Government in the south west of Western Australia 1900-1940 (pp. 90-127). Nedlands, WA: UWA Publishing.

Following the successful passage of the 1905 Aborigines Act, members of the Western Australian Parliament felt that the state’s honour had been restored. Believing adequate provision
had been made for the ‘protection and care’ of Aborigines, they turned their attention to more pressing matters of state.
more…

Tomlinson, D. (2008). Too white to be regarded as Aborigines: An historical analysis of policies for the protection of Aborigines and the assimilation of Aborigines of mixed descent… Retrieved from <a href=“http://researchonline.nd.edu.au/theses/7/”>http://researchonline.nd.edu.au/theses/7/

For much of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries, public policies for Western Australia’s Indigenous peoples were guided by beliefs that they were remnants of a race in terminal decline and that a public duty existed to protect and preserve them. If their extinction was unavoidable, the public duty was to ease their passing.