The Visitors

"I think it’s a really significant portrayal of that first moment of permanent settlement by the British on what is now called Australian soil, because it’s from the Aboriginal perspective, which is something that wasn’t written down—although it was, you know, passed down. So, yes, it is reimagining. Jane Harrison is an Aboriginal woman. The Visitors began as a play , which I happen to have seen last week. In a Q&A afterwards, she said she was having trouble getting the play off the ground, so she wrote the novel in the meantime—and then the play happened. So they coexist in a way that I find quite wonderful; they come at the same story from different ways. The book focuses on seven Elders of the Eora nation who gather on Gadigal country. They’re standing on the shore and they see the ships of the First Fleet come in. They’ve had visits in the past, but the Europeans have always left. So they take a vote: what are they going to do? Welcome them or drive them off? One votes welcome, six vote to drive off. And so the discussion begins. What Jane Harrison, the author, was saying was that this was her thought experiment, in giving these Elders agency. Her idea, as I understand it, is to ask what the Aboriginal people would have done if they had had a choice. So she portrays that, the process of them coming to a collective decision. It’s vital, because it opens discussion of ideas by presenting them in a way that feels accessible, new, and connected to our contexts today. The conceit of The Visitors is that the Elders are in corporate wear, and they have names like ‘Joseph’ and ‘Gary.’ So they have these Anglo names. The author was saying that this started with the play, because she didn’t want the actors to be ‘Othered’; she didn’t want them to appear on stage and be perceived by, probably, majority white audiences, as in her words, ‘noble savages’. And, this is just my take, but I think we often reflect on Aboriginal cultures in the past tense, as though they are static, or something that has happened. But of course, though they are ancient, they are also contemporary. They are continuous cultures. So The Visitors plays with that idea very well, and—graciously, on the part of the author—allows someone like me, not Aboriginal, access to a more immediate understanding of things like protocols. The Elders discuss their protocols, and these are sometimes perhaps perceived as quite mystical, but by moving them into a corporate setting it draws a clear line: we all have protocols, ways of doing things that are very reasonable and fitting, and that’s the same for these Elders."