No Sugar by Jack Davis

Description

Take a sneak peek
Mr Neville’s dictated letter to Mr Neal, early in Act One, reveals the inherent contradictions embedded in the ideological thinking of the paradoxically titled “Chief Protector of Aborigines”, in his attitude to the “natives”. This ideological perspective, it appears, in so far as the conversation between Neville and Sergeant later in Act One indicates, is born out of a lack of contact with Aborigines who, in this particular scene it is observed, are “rotten with scabies”. At best, the position is derived from naïve disinterest in the welfare of Aborigines, and at worst, the attitude adopted by Neville is born out of political necessity. Mr Neville’s appearance, in Act 4, at Moore River to “celebrate the birth of this nation of Australia”, demonstrates just how incongruous his position as “Chief Protector” is; a reflection perhaps, more generally, of Davis’ observations about governmental and societal attitudes to Aborigines in the late 1920s and early 1930s.