"Failure to thrive"?:Imagining precarity, sensing agency, through Ivan Sen's Toomelah
Representations of Aboriginal childhood as a fraught and vulnerable existence are overdetermined by the material, affective, and psychic residues of colonisation in Australia. Ten years after the National Apology to the Stolen Generations, public discourse regularly represents Aboriginal children as...
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ftmacquarieunicr:oai:https://researchers.mq.edu.au:publications/508bcf5e-6837-4ca7-991d-1314d20da7ba 2023-05-15T16:15:59+02:00 "Failure to thrive"?:Imagining precarity, sensing agency, through Ivan Sen's Toomelah Faulkner, Joanne 2020 https://researchers.mq.edu.au/en/publications/508bcf5e-6837-4ca7-991d-1314d20da7ba https://doi.org/10.1007/s41255-020-00008-7 http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/FT170100210 eng eng info:eu-repo/semantics/closedAccess Faulkner , J 2020 , ' "Failure to thrive"? Imagining precarity, sensing agency, through Ivan Sen's Toomelah ' , Childhood Vulnerability Journal , vol. 2 (2019) , pp. 63-79 . https://doi.org/10.1007/s41255-020-00008-7 Childhood vulnerability indigeneity Ivan Sen Colonisation Stolen Generations article 2020 ftmacquarieunicr https://doi.org/10.1007/s41255-020-00008-7 2022-04-14T14:17:30Z Representations of Aboriginal childhood as a fraught and vulnerable existence are overdetermined by the material, affective, and psychic residues of colonisation in Australia. Ten years after the National Apology to the Stolen Generations, public discourse regularly represents Aboriginal children as neglected, shifting blame to Aboriginal communities whenever inequalities between Indigenous peoples and non-Indigenous Australians are raised. This paper situates such representations in the context of the racialisation of Indigeneity in Australia. Specifically, representations of Aboriginal childhood as ‘unliveable’ reinforce the colonial view that Indigeneity is in decline — children’s “failure to thrive,” so to speak, signalling the inevitable extinction of Aboriginal peoples. Government policies focused on children, in turn, have for generations severed First Nations children from the cultural systems that would nourish a sense of identity, belonging, and hope for a future lived as Aboriginal. Aboriginal Director Ivan Sen recasts images of juvenile vulnerability in his film Toomelah in order to explore its power. In Toomelah’s protagonist, Daniel, we find a burgeoning agency wrought in a space of self-conscious vulnerability, ethical ambiguity, and relationality. In contemporary Australia, government agency assessments regarding the care of Aboriginal children are guided by a limited understanding of “the child’s best interests” that fails to consider how the form of agency addressed by Sen might be nurtured. I argue that if Australia is to decolonise its systems of support and welfare, and promote conditions in which First Nations children and communities may thrive, such agency must be comprehended, supported, and encouraged to develop in situ. Article in Journal/Newspaper First Nations Macquarie University Research Portal Childhood Vulnerability Journal 2 1-3 63 79 |
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Macquarie University Research Portal |
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ftmacquarieunicr |
language |
English |
topic |
Childhood vulnerability indigeneity Ivan Sen Colonisation Stolen Generations |
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Childhood vulnerability indigeneity Ivan Sen Colonisation Stolen Generations Faulkner, Joanne "Failure to thrive"?:Imagining precarity, sensing agency, through Ivan Sen's Toomelah |
topic_facet |
Childhood vulnerability indigeneity Ivan Sen Colonisation Stolen Generations |
description |
Representations of Aboriginal childhood as a fraught and vulnerable existence are overdetermined by the material, affective, and psychic residues of colonisation in Australia. Ten years after the National Apology to the Stolen Generations, public discourse regularly represents Aboriginal children as neglected, shifting blame to Aboriginal communities whenever inequalities between Indigenous peoples and non-Indigenous Australians are raised. This paper situates such representations in the context of the racialisation of Indigeneity in Australia. Specifically, representations of Aboriginal childhood as ‘unliveable’ reinforce the colonial view that Indigeneity is in decline — children’s “failure to thrive,” so to speak, signalling the inevitable extinction of Aboriginal peoples. Government policies focused on children, in turn, have for generations severed First Nations children from the cultural systems that would nourish a sense of identity, belonging, and hope for a future lived as Aboriginal. Aboriginal Director Ivan Sen recasts images of juvenile vulnerability in his film Toomelah in order to explore its power. In Toomelah’s protagonist, Daniel, we find a burgeoning agency wrought in a space of self-conscious vulnerability, ethical ambiguity, and relationality. In contemporary Australia, government agency assessments regarding the care of Aboriginal children are guided by a limited understanding of “the child’s best interests” that fails to consider how the form of agency addressed by Sen might be nurtured. I argue that if Australia is to decolonise its systems of support and welfare, and promote conditions in which First Nations children and communities may thrive, such agency must be comprehended, supported, and encouraged to develop in situ. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Faulkner, Joanne |
author_facet |
Faulkner, Joanne |
author_sort |
Faulkner, Joanne |
title |
"Failure to thrive"?:Imagining precarity, sensing agency, through Ivan Sen's Toomelah |
title_short |
"Failure to thrive"?:Imagining precarity, sensing agency, through Ivan Sen's Toomelah |
title_full |
"Failure to thrive"?:Imagining precarity, sensing agency, through Ivan Sen's Toomelah |
title_fullStr |
"Failure to thrive"?:Imagining precarity, sensing agency, through Ivan Sen's Toomelah |
title_full_unstemmed |
"Failure to thrive"?:Imagining precarity, sensing agency, through Ivan Sen's Toomelah |
title_sort |
"failure to thrive"?:imagining precarity, sensing agency, through ivan sen's toomelah |
publishDate |
2020 |
url |
https://researchers.mq.edu.au/en/publications/508bcf5e-6837-4ca7-991d-1314d20da7ba https://doi.org/10.1007/s41255-020-00008-7 http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/FT170100210 |
genre |
First Nations |
genre_facet |
First Nations |
op_source |
Faulkner , J 2020 , ' "Failure to thrive"? Imagining precarity, sensing agency, through Ivan Sen's Toomelah ' , Childhood Vulnerability Journal , vol. 2 (2019) , pp. 63-79 . https://doi.org/10.1007/s41255-020-00008-7 |
op_rights |
info:eu-repo/semantics/closedAccess |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1007/s41255-020-00008-7 |
container_title |
Childhood Vulnerability Journal |
container_volume |
2 |
container_issue |
1-3 |
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63 |
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79 |
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1766001854059118592 |