Australian – Greek Self-Reflection
What is peculiar to experiences is that they are under constant transformation, and as such they transform those who have them. Consciously or not, we are what we become through our experiences. In this respect, my own experiences of Indigenous Australians seem to reflect two different aspects within the self-understanding of my identity. To be more precise, when I was in Greece I learnt about Indigenous Australians only through reading, I romanticised them, and I understood them as the Other, in opposition to which my Greek Self could be identified. However, when I came to Australia my previous knowledge started being complemented by first-hand contact with Indigenous people, my view of the latter became more realistic, and suddenly I realised that the Greek and Indigenous minorities were not totally different. It seemed thus that in regard to Indigenous Australians my identity had shifted from the Self – Other opposition to the Self – Other dialogue.
In Australia my Greek-ness has been challenged intensely. Being a Greek in Greece means trying to maintain a viable relation with the past, tradition, or pre-modernity, while at the same time becoming an active participant in the processes of the present, innovation, or post-modernity. This entails a great deal of tension since in Greece no local version of modernity had the opportunity to take root. On the other hand, my interaction with members of the Greek Australian community –mainly relatives, friends, and colleagues– has shown to me that Greek-ness in Australia has been either an element of private life or an incomprehensible ethnic legacy. In other words, Greek-ness is not really an issue of coping with the present or the potential future, but an isolated past which hangs around nostalgically, hauntingly, or just dimly. The early generations of Greeks either have lived two opposite lives –a detached, private, Greek one, and an imposed, public, Australian one– or they have suffered the frustration and guilt of assimilation. On the other hand, the later generations of Greeks, i.e., Greeks born in Australia, look on their Greek-ness as something that enables them at times to escape the homogeneity of their Australian-ness.
Furthermore, in Australia I have the feeling that terms like “dislocation”, “loss”, “powerlessness”, and “discrimination” –terms that have been associated with Indigenous Australians par excellence– seem quite appropriate to describe the past and present condition of Greek Australians that were born in Greece. They were the ones that felt dislocated and uprooted from their homelands –in order to come to a country they would never experience as their own! They were the ones that suffered the loss of their extended families, their sense of belonging, and their living relation with the past (in term of culture, language, and religion). They were the ones that for a long time –up to the late ’70s– were powerless due to their inferior education, language competence, or progress into modernity. They were the ones that were called “wogs”, treated as idle, or exploited as mere labor force.
Of course, all these “Greek” experiences –which inevitably have affected the way I think of my own self as a Greek– are more intense, prolonged, and devastating in the case of Indigenous Australians. This I found out mainly by reading their own literature and by visiting districts like Redfern. To be frank, it is by becoming more aware of the situation of Indigenous Australians that I was able to understand better and sort out what was really the problem with the early generations of Greeks in Australia. Reading about how Indigenous peoples felt about their homelands before and after colonialism provided me with a guiding idea as to how my fellow countrymen must have felt being far away from their home villages. Moreover, the stigmatisation of Indigenous Australians served as a starting point to get an idea of similar situations experienced by Greek communities in Australia. On the other hand, of course, I was compelled to see a major difference: while Greeks were not opposed in principle or in fact to assimilation or integration, Indigenous people were finally in favour of self-determination. In other words, the early Greek generations suffered the results of their “cooperation” with mainstream Australian social ideologies, whereas Indigenous generations suffered the results of their determination to remain on the “fringe” of society.
With the later generations of Greeks, that is, with Greeks that are more or less my age, the whole situation is a bit different. To illustrate this, I will take the issue of language as an example. Greek is increasingly becoming a language Greeks cannot identify with. At best they understand their parents or grandparents when they use it, but they do not really feel it. Young Greek Australians may even use a number of Greek words, set phrases or sentences, but they cannot read –at least, fluently– or experience an identity through the semiotics or semantics of Greek. Here, again, the case of Indigenous Australians was quite enlightening: the majority of them lost all living connection with their language heritage, facing thus the constant paradox of being black and thinking white. To term it differently, language is all about power, and speaking English could always keep Indigenous people away from self-determination. Similarly, young Greeks seem to be facing the irreversible situation of linguistic alienation or the incapability for a distinct cultural self-realisation. However, as Indigenous Australian literature has proved, “black” words can be written on “white” pages; or language can be used as a means to transform powerlessness into power. This suggests that young Greek generations could be those who might find in their language heritage a way to both genuine cultural diversity and enrichment of Greek identity.
Perhaps the comparisons I am drawing between Indigenous and Greek experiences in Australia are a bit far-fetched. My only justification in doing so is the way I feel about things as a person that comes from Greece and at the same time tries to reach out to others for a mutual understanding. Yet of one thing I am sure, namely, that my Greek identity is no longer self-enclosed but re-affirmed through a creative dialogue with others –and these others are the dispossessed Indigenous Australians.
