Independent, 4 June 2007 13:30
A poetic condemnation of the 'genocide' of Western colonialism in Australia
By Guy Mannes-Abbott
GRANTA, £10. Order (free p&p) on 0870 079 8897
Terra Nullius, by Sven Lindqvist, trans. Sarah Death
Published: 01 May 2007
Terra Nullius is the latest instalment in Sven Lindqvist's confrontation
with the genocidal consequences of Western advancement. Previously he
has transformed momentous history into startling, poetic essays, in
books like Desert Divers and A History of Bombing. Always happiest in
extreme desert, he has now turned to Australia, the imaginary "No One's
Land" of the title, and its Aboriginal peoples. Lindqvist argues that
this land harbours a culture of songs and tracks "devastated" by British
invasion, and through to the nuclear tests of 1963. Lindqvist writes
that "you can't travel through history, but you can go to the place
where the past happened" and "goes on happening".
While the English-speaking world is condemned to repeat its errors - for
" terra nullius" think "failed state" - the Swede's conviction is "that
even the past can be changed".
Lindqvist's past begins in 1827 with the south-west coast settlement,
trade in land and massacres of inhabitants, without touching on the
18th-century penal colonies. Unbounded barbarity and its legacies run on
through the 20th century, the elemental injustice barely acknowledged.
Lindqvist's strength is the sheer heat of his passions and the boldness
with which he attacks complacency. He's quick to point to Sweden's
ongoing dispossession of the Sami people and his country's "cowardly"
accommodation with German Nazism.
Lindqvist presents Western Australia as a place littered with penal
institutions. The landscape, and his journeying, are brilliantly
rendered by a master of worldly insight and stylistic precision. He
cherishes "the stillness that only the absolute provides".
He narrates the brutality inflicted upon survivors of genocide. He
details " the 'fuck 'em white policy'", the young boys forced into
short-lived slavery as pearl divers, and the triumph of Aboriginal art.
Lindqvist believes that the price of changing the past involves costly,
sustained reparation, not hand-rinsing near-apology. He indulges a
slightly romantic, occasionally didactic tone. Ironically, his focus on
the significance of land allows for virtually no people. The closest he
gets to the people whose kinship he celebrates is a mutual aversion of
the eyes. But in a book about a failed genocide, place is key. While
"we" ignore the past's lessons, Lindqvist's attempts to change it are
irresistible. Terra Nullius is a work of urgent necessity and a
heart-warming marvel.
