By Abhi Parasher
For many, Indigenous history is told through facts and figures within the confines of a school educational system. Rarely do those school history classes touch on the realities of the intergenerational trauma that goes amiss in the numbers. Understandable, given that many of our teachers themselves aren’t able to fully comprehend or convey the emotional weight of Australia’s past and the subsequent impact of it on the present.
“I think Australia is still learning what it means to be trauma-informed and what Indigenous trauma deserves in the way of support and justice,” says Mark Coles Smith, who spoke at Screen Forever 2023.
Smith began his acting career on Network 10’s Ocean Star and has since assembled an impressive resume consisting of versatile characters ranging from his acclaimed performance as Tilly in Last Cab to Darwin to filling in the puzzle of Jay Swan’s younger years in Mystery Road: Origin.
Despite his experiences as an Indigenous man and his multitude of roles playing Indigenous characters, Smith still clarifies that he has a lot to learn.
“Have you heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect?” he asks.
The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias whereby people with low ability, expertise, or experience regarding a certain type of task or area of knowledge tend to overestimate their ability or knowledge.
“Well, the more you learn, the more you realise you don’t know. The opposite is also true. The less you know, the more you think you know. I’m in a particular place on this Dunning-Kruger curve where I’m realising how much I don’t understand,” Smith explains.
What is evident from Smith’s statement is that the Indigenous experience is perhaps more complicated than any non-Indigenous person can imagine; a complication that is exacerbated for most Australians whose understanding of Indigenous trauma is learnt through indirect sources.
“There is this idea of intergenerational trauma that is becoming evident within scientific literature and peer-reviewed journals. Trauma lives within the body. So, when we say Indigenous trauma, we are talking about the intergenerational impact of the colonial process that is living inside the bodies, hearts and spirits of Indigenous people today,” he explains.
The implications and history of the colonial process, the foundation of which is saturated with violence and devastation, are rarely separated from the learnings of Indigenous culture.
“The reality is, Indigenous people are born into a political situation, where our identity and heritage are witnessed through the lens of dispossession,” says Smith. “When we talk about something like Survival Day, we are talking about surviving cultural and literal genocide despite an ongoing expectation to assimilate.”
But, how can we allow a culture to flourish when our institutions and living conditions are established to favour those that give in to a Western notion of life?
“The young mob I grew up with seem to be born in this liminal space between the old world of our ancestors and this new world, which I suspect some people quietly perceive as rubbish,” says the actor. “I had to navigate that in my own life because you start buying into all of that yourself. But once you start spending time on country, and you are open to the experiences, you start realising there is some stuff there that others don’t know about.”
There is strong relevance to storytelling in Smith’s words. We are currently in the heyday of streamers, where content is churned out in rapid succession, in accordance with what is trending statistically. In comparison, Indigenous stories are told and re-told over several generations, allowing for thousands of years of wisdom to be compacted into stories that have survived 65 thousand years of civilisation, which includes a relatively recent mass genocide. Maybe, in those stories, we may find answers to questions we have long forgotten and suppressed.
“I am thinking a lot about Indigenous wisdom at the moment,” Smith says. “About the history and failures in the translation of that wisdom into colonial culture and the modern day. We have some incredible first nations storytellers and leaders emerging with new stories, but I am wondering where the translation of the old wisdom fails, and if it is even compatible with the present day?”
The wisdom in those stories, Smith says, is different. “It is not Netflix or Gogglebox. Those stories have a different purpose. We participate in those stories and the result is different.”
For those that may want a deeper understanding behind the complexities of the intergenerational trauma that Indigenous people face and the root causes of it, Smith has a pathway that could act as a first step.
“There is literature, which is a safe way in. If you want to examine the roots of colonial history, you can look at Blood on the Wattle (Bruce Elder, 2003), which is a history of colonial genocide in Australia.”
Speaking to the future, Smith puts forward a few Indigenous stories that he would like to see on screen. “Johnny Mullagh and the first Australian cricket team would be an interesting story for our screens. Or maybe a story on the real history of Rottnest as an Indigenous prison camp.”
Smith ends on a note about history, which in and of itself is a malleable story.
“What are our stories for? What do they accomplish? The stories of Australian history can have vastly different subtitles depending on which Australian you talk to about it.”
