Jindyworobak Movement
Encyclopedia
The Jindyworobak Movement was a nationalistic Australia
n literary movement whose white members sought to promote indigenous Australian ideas and customs, particularly in poetry. They were active from the 1930s to around the 1950s. The movement intended to combat the influx of "alien" culture, which was threatening local art.
The Jindyworobak movement was begun in Adelaide during 1937 by the poet Rex Ingamells
and the other members of the Jindyworobak club. The name was taken from a Woiwurrung
word meaning "to join" or "to annex", which had been used by the poet and novelist James Devaney
in his 1929 book The Vanished Tribes. "Jindyworobak" is supposedly from the phrase jindi woroback of the Woiwurrung language, formerly spoken around Melbourne
. This is said to have been sourced by Devaney from a 19th century vocabulary. Ingamells is said to have chosen the word to produce an 'aboriginal' word both 'outlandish' (arresting) and symbolic. Sometimes this name was shortened to "Jindy" or "Jindys" to describe members of the group.
Ingamells first outlined the movements aims with an address entitled, On Environmental Values (1937), expanding this to Conditional Culture and forming the club later that year. Inspiration had been found in P. R. Stephensen
's The Foundations of Culture in Australia (1936). In 1938, the first Jindyworobak Anthology (1938–1953) was published; the Jindyworobak Review (1948) collected the history of first ten years of this annual and the club. An extensive history of the movement, The Jindyworobaks (ed. Brian Elliot) was published in 1979.
, South Australia
in 1938, the Jindyworobak movement was supported by many Australian artists, poets, and writers. Many were fascinated by indigenous Australian culture and the Outback, and desired to improve the white Australian's understanding and appreciation of them. Other features came into play, among them white Australia's increasing alienation from its European origins; the Depression of the 1930s which recalled the economic troubles of the end of the 19th century; an increasingly urban or suburban Australian population alienated from the wild Australia of the Outback etc.; the First World War and the coming of World War II
and also the coming of early mass market media in the form of the radio, recordings, newspapers and magazines. Sense of place
was particularly important to the Jindyworobak movement.
Ingamells produced Colonial Culture as a prose manifesto of the movement, "in response to L. F. Giblin's urging that poets in Australia should portray Australian nature and people as they are in Australia, not with the 'European' gaze." and shortly after the first Jindyworobak Anthology came out.
In 1941, the poet and critic A. D. Hope
ridiculed the Jindyworobaks as "the Boy Scout school of poetry", a comment for which he apologised in Native Companions in 1975 saying "some amends are due, I think, to these Jindyworobaks". Others such as R. H. Morrison derided "Jindyworobackwardness". Hal Porter
wrote of meeting Rex Ingamells whom he said "buys me a porter gaff and tries to persuade me to be a Jindyworobak - that is, a poet who thinks that words from the minute vocabulary of the earth's most primitive race must be used to express Australia".
Although "Jindys" concentrated on Australian culture, not all were of Australian origin - for example, William Hart-Smith
who is sometimes connected to them, was born in England
, and spent most of his life in New Zealand
, with only a decade in Australia itself (1936–1946).
Anthologies of Jindyworobak material were produced until 1953.
painting in Australia, as well as jazz
. No native Australians were members of the movement, but it did indirectly spur the contemporary burgeoning of indigenous Australian art in the commercial market.
Judith Wright
wrote in Because I was Invited in 1975 that the movement had succeeded in bringing poetry into the public arena:
Also, many of Australian literature's elder statespeople, some still living today, got their breaks through the Jindyworobak movement.
Brian Matthews wrote during the 1980s that:
Ackland argues in The Cambridge Companion to Australian Literature that the movement "reactualised debate on Indigenous culture, and promoted local talent in its annual anthologies".
Ivor Indyk
has suggested that the Jindyworobaks were looking for a kind of pastoral poetry, harking back to an Arcadian
idyll which was removed from the early pioneer period, back to the pre-colonisation era. He claims that "they overlooked the fact that Australian novelists have been there before them", but that unlike the Greek original this Australian "Arcadia" is not full of dryad
s, faun
s and happy shepherds but is "haunted and usually overwhelmed by the spectres of death and dispossession", i.e. the atrocities, betrayal and misunderstandings of white contact with the natives. He also says of Judith Wright that she is "oppressed by feelings of 'arrogant guilt'. Guilt, as a burden of white history, is felt again in the division between the settlers and the land itself, despoiled by greed and incomprehension", in spite of her trying to inaugurate a "white dreaming
", while the landscapes of Ingamells are:
It is thus arguable in certain cases whether the poetry is aiming at an indigenous consciousness in whites or possession of the land, which the indigenous Australians are seen as being in close contact with.
The greatest indigenous influence on the Jindyworobaks was literature which had been taken down by white folklorists and anthropologists. Written, as opposed to transcribed, indigenous literature did not appear in print until the 1920s when David Unaipon
, a Christian from Point McLeay mission, South Australia, published a large body of work. Unaipon was publishing into the 1950s, by which time the Jindyworobaks were in decline. Unaipon was the sole published indigenous Australian writer during their heyday, and indeed it was not until the 1960s that a second was published - Oodgeroo Noonuccal
(Kath Walker). Unaipon, despite coming from South Australia, is not mentioned in the works of the Jindyworobaks, so it is hard to say how much of an influence, Legendary Tales of the Australian Aborigines was.
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
n literary movement whose white members sought to promote indigenous Australian ideas and customs, particularly in poetry. They were active from the 1930s to around the 1950s. The movement intended to combat the influx of "alien" culture, which was threatening local art.
The Jindyworobak movement was begun in Adelaide during 1937 by the poet Rex Ingamells
Rex Ingamells
Reginald Charles Ingamells was an Australian poet, generally credited with being the leading light of the Jindyworobak Movement....
and the other members of the Jindyworobak club. The name was taken from a Woiwurrung
Woiwurrung
Woiwurrung is an Indigenous Australian language spoken by some of the Kulin Nation clans, the Wurundjeri people, of Central Victoria, from Mount Baw Baw in the east to Mount Macedon, Sunbury and Gisborne in the west.The Woiwurrung clans inhabited the Yarra River, called Birrarung in Woiwurrung,...
word meaning "to join" or "to annex", which had been used by the poet and novelist James Devaney
James Devaney
James Martin Devaney was an Australian poet, novelist, and journalist.-Biography:Born in Bendigo, Victoria, Devaney attended St. Joseph's College, Hunters Hill, entering the Marist Brothers juniorate in 1904. He took his vows in 1915...
in his 1929 book The Vanished Tribes. "Jindyworobak" is supposedly from the phrase jindi woroback of the Woiwurrung language, formerly spoken around Melbourne
Melbourne
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...
. This is said to have been sourced by Devaney from a 19th century vocabulary. Ingamells is said to have chosen the word to produce an 'aboriginal' word both 'outlandish' (arresting) and symbolic. Sometimes this name was shortened to "Jindy" or "Jindys" to describe members of the group.
Ingamells first outlined the movements aims with an address entitled, On Environmental Values (1937), expanding this to Conditional Culture and forming the club later that year. Inspiration had been found in P. R. Stephensen
P. R. Stephensen
Percy Reginald Stephensen was an Australian writer, publisher and political activist.He was born in Maryborough, Queensland. He was nicknamed "Inky", and attended the University of Queensland...
's The Foundations of Culture in Australia (1936). In 1938, the first Jindyworobak Anthology (1938–1953) was published; the Jindyworobak Review (1948) collected the history of first ten years of this annual and the club. An extensive history of the movement, The Jindyworobaks (ed. Brian Elliot) was published in 1979.
Origins and aims
Starting off as a literary club in AdelaideAdelaide
Adelaide is the capital city of South Australia and the fifth-largest city in Australia. Adelaide has an estimated population of more than 1.2 million...
, South Australia
South Australia
South Australia is a state of Australia in the southern central part of the country. It covers some of the most arid parts of the continent; with a total land area of , it is the fourth largest of Australia's six states and two territories.South Australia shares borders with all of the mainland...
in 1938, the Jindyworobak movement was supported by many Australian artists, poets, and writers. Many were fascinated by indigenous Australian culture and the Outback, and desired to improve the white Australian's understanding and appreciation of them. Other features came into play, among them white Australia's increasing alienation from its European origins; the Depression of the 1930s which recalled the economic troubles of the end of the 19th century; an increasingly urban or suburban Australian population alienated from the wild Australia of the Outback etc.; the First World War and the coming of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
and also the coming of early mass market media in the form of the radio, recordings, newspapers and magazines. Sense of place
Sense of place
The term sense of place has been defined and used in many different ways by many different people. To some, it is a characteristic that some geographic places have and some do not, while to others it is a feeling or perception held by people...
was particularly important to the Jindyworobak movement.
Ingamells produced Colonial Culture as a prose manifesto of the movement, "in response to L. F. Giblin's urging that poets in Australia should portray Australian nature and people as they are in Australia, not with the 'European' gaze." and shortly after the first Jindyworobak Anthology came out.
In 1941, the poet and critic A. D. Hope
A. D. Hope
Alec Derwent Hope AC OBE was an Australian poet and essayist known for his satirical slant. He was also a critic, teacher and academic.-Life:...
ridiculed the Jindyworobaks as "the Boy Scout school of poetry", a comment for which he apologised in Native Companions in 1975 saying "some amends are due, I think, to these Jindyworobaks". Others such as R. H. Morrison derided "Jindyworobackwardness". Hal Porter
Hal Porter
Harold Edward Porter was an Australian novelist, playwright, poet and short-story writer.Porter was born in Albert Park, Victoria, grew up in Bairnsdale, Victoria and worked as a journalist, teacher and librarian. A car accident just before the outbreak of war prevented him from serving in World...
wrote of meeting Rex Ingamells whom he said "buys me a porter gaff and tries to persuade me to be a Jindyworobak - that is, a poet who thinks that words from the minute vocabulary of the earth's most primitive race must be used to express Australia".
Although "Jindys" concentrated on Australian culture, not all were of Australian origin - for example, William Hart-Smith
William Hart-Smith
William Hart-Smith was a New Zealand/Australian poet who was born in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England. His family moved to New Zealand in 1924. He had about "seven years of formal schooling" in England, Scotland and New Zealand before getting work at 15. His first job was as a radio mechanic...
who is sometimes connected to them, was born in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, and spent most of his life in New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
, with only a decade in Australia itself (1936–1946).
Anthologies of Jindyworobak material were produced until 1953.
Influence and aftermath
Arguably, the movement failed to make a lasting impression, and its erosion signalled the arrival of modernistModernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
painting in Australia, as well as jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
. No native Australians were members of the movement, but it did indirectly spur the contemporary burgeoning of indigenous Australian art in the commercial market.
Judith Wright
Judith Wright
Judith Arundell Wright was an Australian poet, environmentalist and campaigner for Aboriginal land rights.-Biography:...
wrote in Because I was Invited in 1975 that the movement had succeeded in bringing poetry into the public arena:
- "One thing the movement did achieve was to make verse a subject of debate and argument. Opposition movements sprang up, and brought into the quarrel most practising poets of any stature. The Jindyworobak's tenets were discussed, and their more extravagant aspects such as recourse to 'Aboriginality' was ridiculed, even in the daily newspapers (which at that time were scarcely arenas for literary debate)."
Also, many of Australian literature's elder statespeople, some still living today, got their breaks through the Jindyworobak movement.
Brian Matthews wrote during the 1980s that:
- "When Ingamells looked over the poetry scene from the standpoint of, say, 1937 – which he delivered his address On Environmental Values to the English Association in Adelaide – he saw very little poetry which satisfied the requirement of Australian inspiration, Australian content and imagery, and when Max Harris surveyed the same scene at the start of the new decade, he saw the burgeoning Jindyworobaks and not much else – nothing that seemed to have much connection with or awareness of the cultural world beyond the antipodes. And by and large, they were both right." (excerpt from Literature and Conflict)
Ackland argues in The Cambridge Companion to Australian Literature that the movement "reactualised debate on Indigenous culture, and promoted local talent in its annual anthologies".
Jindoworobaks and Aboriginality
The Australian literary historian, Brian Clunes Ross has written on one of the common criticisms of the Jindyworobaks, one that has persisted through the decades, through people of radically different political stripes, namely that of the Jindyworobaks' relationship with indigenous Australians:- "Another poet, Ian MudieIan MudieIan Mayelstone Mudie was an Australian poet and author from Adelaide closely connected with the Jindyworobak Movement, which he was associated with from 1939 onwards. In 1941 he moved to Sydney and became involved in Australia First...
in The Australian Dream (1943), revealed the delusory quality of the nationalist perception of Australia through its refusal to take into account the destruction of the natural environment and of Aboriginal culture… the Jindyworobaks… [were] often misrepresented by critics who claimed that the movement aimed to base Australian culture on Aboriginal culture. The Jindyworobaks were interested in Aborigines, and if white Australians are now able to recognise the grim impact of their civilisation on the Aboriginal inhabitants of the country, the Jindyworobaks are partly responsible…the Jindyworobaks… wanted to achieve a harmonious relationship between cuture and the environment, and realised that Aboriginal culture embodied it. This was an example from which they could learn, not by imitation, but by coming to understand and accept the conditions which the environment imposes on them." (Australian Literature and Australian Culture)
Ivor Indyk
Ivor Indyk
Ivor Indyk is an Australian literary academic, editor and publisher. He is a professor at the University of Western Sydney, and the founding editor and publisher of award-winning literary imprint Giramondo Publishing and HEAT magazine....
has suggested that the Jindyworobaks were looking for a kind of pastoral poetry, harking back to an Arcadian
Arcadia (utopia)
Arcadia refers to a vision of pastoralism and harmony with nature. The term is derived from the Greek province of the same name which dates to antiquity; the province's mountainous topography and sparse population of pastoralists later caused the word Arcadia to develop into a poetic byword for an...
idyll which was removed from the early pioneer period, back to the pre-colonisation era. He claims that "they overlooked the fact that Australian novelists have been there before them", but that unlike the Greek original this Australian "Arcadia" is not full of dryad
Dryad
Dryads are tree nymphs in Greek mythology. In Greek drys signifies 'oak,' from an Indo-European root *derew- 'tree' or 'wood'. Thus Dryads are specifically the nymphs of oak trees, though the term has come to be used for all tree nymphs in general...
s, faun
Faun
The faun is a rustic forest god or place-spirit of Roman mythology often associated with Greek satyrs and the Greek god Pan.-Origins:...
s and happy shepherds but is "haunted and usually overwhelmed by the spectres of death and dispossession", i.e. the atrocities, betrayal and misunderstandings of white contact with the natives. He also says of Judith Wright that she is "oppressed by feelings of 'arrogant guilt'. Guilt, as a burden of white history, is felt again in the division between the settlers and the land itself, despoiled by greed and incomprehension", in spite of her trying to inaugurate a "white dreaming
Dreamtime
In the animist framework of Australian Aboriginal mythology, The Dreaming is a sacred era in which ancestral Totemic Spirit Beings formed The Creation.-The Dreaming of the Aboriginal times:...
", while the landscapes of Ingamells are:
"aflame with energy, but they are also uninhabited, save for the ghostly remnants of Aboriginal tribes, and more frequently, the cockatoos and parakeets whose bright colours and raucous cries express both the power and the alien character of the land. There is little that is really social or cultural about this use of an Aboriginal perspective, and no real sense of history."
It is thus arguable in certain cases whether the poetry is aiming at an indigenous consciousness in whites or possession of the land, which the indigenous Australians are seen as being in close contact with.
The greatest indigenous influence on the Jindyworobaks was literature which had been taken down by white folklorists and anthropologists. Written, as opposed to transcribed, indigenous literature did not appear in print until the 1920s when David Unaipon
David Unaipon
David Unaipon was an Australian Aboriginal of the Ngarrindjeri people, a preacher, inventor and writer. He was the most widely known Aboriginal in Australia, and broke stereotypes of Aboriginals...
, a Christian from Point McLeay mission, South Australia, published a large body of work. Unaipon was publishing into the 1950s, by which time the Jindyworobaks were in decline. Unaipon was the sole published indigenous Australian writer during their heyday, and indeed it was not until the 1960s that a second was published - Oodgeroo Noonuccal
Oodgeroo Noonuccal
Oodgeroo Noonuccal was an Australian poet, political activist, artist and educator. She was also a campaigner for Aboriginal rights...
(Kath Walker). Unaipon, despite coming from South Australia, is not mentioned in the works of the Jindyworobaks, so it is hard to say how much of an influence, Legendary Tales of the Australian Aborigines was.
Members
- Nancy CatoNancy CatoNancy Fotheringham Cato AM was an Australian writer who published more than twenty historical novels, biographies and volumes of poetry. Cato is also known for her work campaigning on environmental and conservation issues....
- James DevaneyJames DevaneyJames Martin Devaney was an Australian poet, novelist, and journalist.-Biography:Born in Bendigo, Victoria, Devaney attended St. Joseph's College, Hunters Hill, entering the Marist Brothers juniorate in 1904. He took his vows in 1915...
- Irene Gough
- William Hart-SmithWilliam Hart-SmithWilliam Hart-Smith was a New Zealand/Australian poet who was born in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England. His family moved to New Zealand in 1924. He had about "seven years of formal schooling" in England, Scotland and New Zealand before getting work at 15. His first job was as a radio mechanic...
- W. Flexmore Hudson
- Rex IngamellsRex IngamellsReginald Charles Ingamells was an Australian poet, generally credited with being the leading light of the Jindyworobak Movement....
- Martin Victor Kennedy
- Ian MudieIan MudieIan Mayelstone Mudie was an Australian poet and author from Adelaide closely connected with the Jindyworobak Movement, which he was associated with from 1939 onwards. In 1941 he moved to Sydney and became involved in Australia First...
- Roland Robinson (poet)Roland Robinson (poet)Roland Edward Robinson OAM was an Australian poet and writer.Robinson was born in County Clare, Ireland in 1912. At the age of 9, in 1921 he was brought to Australia...
Major influences
- Norma Lochlenah Davis
- Mary GilmoreMary GilmoreDame Mary Gilmore DBE was a prominent Australian socialist poet and journalist.-Early life:Mary Jean Cameron was born on 16 August 1865 at Cotta Walla near Goulburn, New South Wales...
- D. H. LawrenceD. H. LawrenceDavid Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...
, mainly through his novel KangarooKangaroo (novel)Kangaroo is a novel by D. H. Lawrence, first published in 1923. It is set in Australia.-Description:Kangaroo is an account of a visit to New South Wales by an English writer named Richard Lovat Somers, and his German wife Harriet, in the early 1920s... - Brendan O' Dowd
- P. R. StephensenP. R. StephensenPercy Reginald Stephensen was an Australian writer, publisher and political activist.He was born in Maryborough, Queensland. He was nicknamed "Inky", and attended the University of Queensland...
through The Foundations of Culture in Australia - Xavier HerbertXavier HerbertXavier Herbert was an Australian writer best known for his Miles Franklin Award-winning novel Poor Fellow My Country . He is considered one of the elder statesmen of Australian literature...
- although not formally associated with the movement, his CapricorniaCapricornia (novel)Capricornia is a novel by Xavier Herbert. Like his later work considered by many a masterpiece, the Miles Franklin Award winning Poor Fellow My Country, it provides a fictional account of life in 'Capricornia', a place clearly modelled specifically on Australia's Northern Territory, and to a...
of 1938, describes the early pioneer movement in the contemporary Northern TerritoryNorthern TerritoryThe Northern Territory is a federal territory of Australia, occupying much of the centre of the mainland continent, as well as the central northern regions...
, Australian values, and white settler relationships positive and negative with the natives, as well as the native culture itself. - L. F. GiblinLyndhurst GiblinProfessor Lyndhurst Falkiner Giblin DSO MC was an Australian statistician and economist. He led a colourful life; he was an unsuccessful gold prospector, played rugby union for England, and fought in the First World War....
- T. G. H. Strehlow
See also
- Scottish RenaissanceScottish RenaissanceThe Scottish Renaissance was a mainly literary movement of the early to mid 20th century that can be seen as the Scottish version of modernism. It is sometimes referred to as the Scottish literary renaissance, although its influence went beyond literature into music, visual arts, and politics...
- a nationalistic movement of the same period. - Harlem RenaissanceHarlem RenaissanceThe Harlem Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned the 1920s and 1930s. At the time, it was known as the "New Negro Movement", named after the 1925 anthology by Alain Locke...
- a reassertion of black identity in the USA.
External links
Further reading (books)
- The Jindyworobaks (1979), Brian Elliot (editor), (University of Queensland press)