Securing the Future of Past in Postcolonial Writing: A Postcolonial Con-text to the Historical Pretext of Terra Nullius in Kate Grenville’s The Secret River (2005)

Abstract

This present work attempts to secure the future of past by analyzing a counter discourse of a postcolonial novelist to the historical pretext of terra nullius. The chosen corpus of this study is Kate Grenville’s The Secret River (2005). It is read from a postcolonial perspective. The reality of taking up the land from Aboriginal people is not recognized. Despite the fact that Aborigines had lived in Australia for tens of thousands of years, Australia is considered to be uninhabited land as a result of the historical pretext of terra nullius. The need of rewriting the past in the postcolonial context of Australia becomes an effective source for the Aborigines to restore their rights. Grenville’s novel re-interprets the pretext of terra nullius. Kate Grenville campaigns for Indigenous land rights in postcolonial Australia by telling the truth from her point of view. The excruciating and gloomy story of colonizing Australia still exists today and shakes the very foundation that Australia rests on. Aboriginal people were written out of history records and since they had no access to historical record, and they were historically silenced. In this study, Kate Grenville’s The Secret River(2005) states how the legal fiction of terra nullius erased the history of prior settlement by Indigenous Australians and facilitated their violent dispossession. It attempts to restore of what had conventionally been forgotten or relegated to an absolute silence from the story of founding Australia. It is the first step in deconstructing the official version of Australian history and paving the way for reconciliation. Therefore, the study attempts to go beyond the notion that those in relative positions of power can just tell the stories of those in the margins. It illegitimates white Australian belonging to the land, and dispels the doctrine of terra nullius.