A review by elena_lowana
Tongerlongeter: First Nations Leader and Tasmanian War Hero by Nicholas Clements, Henry Reynolds
1.0
I read this book with a red pen, and marked everything I found wrong with it – that should give you a good idea of my view of it. Tongelongeta is my ancestor (Reynolds and Clements, I would point out, spell the name incorrectly, with English phonetics – the colonial spelling if you will, that does not match how it sounds. I imagined as I picked up the book, thousands of people now saying my ancestor’s name wrong). Thousands of people now know my ancestor’s story wrong, too.
Reynolds and Clements, I should point out, never engaged with us (the Paredarerme Nation - yes, we are still here) – Tongelongeta’s people, his kin. We feature not at all in this text – and I do not think we are ever meant to. For this book to succeed, our presence must be a footnote; the past. The book was marketed on its release, and in subsequent reviews in various newspapers etc., as a part of ‘reconciliation’; of ‘truth-telling’. What reconciliation, or truth-telling is it, I ask you, if the very people who Tongelongeta fought for, are excluded entirely from the process? We have had no voice here, and the book suffers for it.
Most crucially, key pieces of information are either wholly untrue, or missing altogether. In the first few pages, the authors label us, and Tongelongeta, as Oyster Bay (a fiction), and state that there is no recorded name for us. I should inform you here, that there is – we are Paredarerme. This is the actual name for the colonial name 'Oyster Bay' nation. It comes up if you google ‘Oyster Bay’ and has been recorded in colonial texts ("Parrdarrama") and passed down in oral history, and community spaces, and known beyond any doubt. Much of this conflict is dismissed in the book by the authors' claiming there is 'no consensus' on these things - naming practices, for example, and what is or isn't known in the (Aboriginal) community. I can tell you that there most certainly is. Had the authors asked us, they would know too.
This is perhaps what I find most frustrating, and degrading, with this book. The very real facts that our communities hold become nothing; what is in fact self-evident becomes murky and confused. The authority of the book and its claims, which comes from settler historians' perceptions of us, both then and now (I include here, both Reyonolds and Clements), is no small thing.
It is important to tell these stories – but at what cost? This is not an accurate telling (I want to go more into every fault or error, but to do so would take up nearly every page of the book), and the repeated un-truths ruin the power of the book entirely for me.
Reynolds and Clements, I should point out, never engaged with us (the Paredarerme Nation - yes, we are still here) – Tongelongeta’s people, his kin. We feature not at all in this text – and I do not think we are ever meant to. For this book to succeed, our presence must be a footnote; the past. The book was marketed on its release, and in subsequent reviews in various newspapers etc., as a part of ‘reconciliation’; of ‘truth-telling’. What reconciliation, or truth-telling is it, I ask you, if the very people who Tongelongeta fought for, are excluded entirely from the process? We have had no voice here, and the book suffers for it.
Most crucially, key pieces of information are either wholly untrue, or missing altogether. In the first few pages, the authors label us, and Tongelongeta, as Oyster Bay (a fiction), and state that there is no recorded name for us. I should inform you here, that there is – we are Paredarerme. This is the actual name for the colonial name 'Oyster Bay' nation. It comes up if you google ‘Oyster Bay’ and has been recorded in colonial texts ("Parrdarrama") and passed down in oral history, and community spaces, and known beyond any doubt. Much of this conflict is dismissed in the book by the authors' claiming there is 'no consensus' on these things - naming practices, for example, and what is or isn't known in the (Aboriginal) community. I can tell you that there most certainly is. Had the authors asked us, they would know too.
This is perhaps what I find most frustrating, and degrading, with this book. The very real facts that our communities hold become nothing; what is in fact self-evident becomes murky and confused. The authority of the book and its claims, which comes from settler historians' perceptions of us, both then and now (I include here, both Reyonolds and Clements), is no small thing.
It is important to tell these stories – but at what cost? This is not an accurate telling (I want to go more into every fault or error, but to do so would take up nearly every page of the book), and the repeated un-truths ruin the power of the book entirely for me.