“The aborigine needs to be absorbed into the community” in order to belong- discuss how rainbows end portrays aboriginal treatment in the 1950’s.
The aboriginal absorption into white society is a mark of the introduction of the assimilation policy, the policy aimed to integrate aboriginals into white society. In integrating aboriginals into white society they learn how to act, live and eventually inter-marry and loose there colouring.
The concept of assimilation is enforced by the dominant culture of a society on the basis of there prejudices towards the minority, the dominant culture believing they are supreme and should therefore spread there supremacy.
White prejudices are portrayed in the playwright rainbows end, written by Jane Harrison (Harrison). Aboriginal treatment and disadvantages are explored through three aboriginal women each representing the different stages of aboriginal treatment and the effect of the treatment on the individual. The eldest nan dear, who recites white peoples belief and active racism, this is directly because she has been submitted to it for so long that she is saturated in white man’s disadvantages, and does not want her daughter and granddaughter to face the same oppression.
Gladys the daughter of nan dear and the mother of dolly is of middle age and represents the age of aboriginals who want to stand up to the white man.
Gladys wants to be accepted into white society and receive the same opportunities as them, she wants this for her daughter. Therefore when it becomes obvious that to accomplish this she needs to be pro active this is what she does.
The youngest generation is represented through dolly, who ironically is a doll between gladys and nan dear’s beliefs unsure of which to take on board and which beliefs to reject. Both nan dear and gladys try to instil dolly with there beliefs- there beliefs which reflect there treatment of white society and these differ, dolly been torn between the two.
The playwright is...