Radiance Play Analysis

In the play ‘Radiance’ does Louis Nowra effectively subvert the dominant representations of Aboriginal people in current media reporting?
Hook – If 50% of media articles were positive about Aboriginals, you could possibly reduce suicide rates.
Background – Good morning/afternoon everybody, my name is Shelby Parry and it is my honour to be able to speak in front of you at the Links to Literature – Exploring Enduring Characters. Radiance, a play by an Australian man who goes by the name of Louis Nowra, focuses on three Aboriginal sisters who have gone their sperate ways in life, and are reunited when they arrive for their mother’s funeral. Radiance has been written both as a stage play and a screenplay. In 1998, Radiance was then an Australian

Aboriginal men and boys were killed, imprisoned, enslaved, driven away and deprived of the ability to provide for their families. Women became single parents and many children were conceived through rape and forces prostitution. Aboriginal people were rounded up and sent to missions and reserves where they were further removed from being able to obtain work, balanced diets, housing, health care and education. Aboriginal children were removed from their fractured families and placed into non-Indigenous care environments where they suffered the horrors of forced inferiority, deprivation and abuse. Parents and other family members suffer from these transgenerational traumas, passing them on to the next generations. They can pass on trauma through parenting, for example neglection, behavior problems, violence, harmful substance use and mental health issues. Aboriginal communities are also suffering from a mix of issues, often a consequence of the trauma people have experienced, these include: lack of medical and disability services, lack of medical care, little education, high unemployment, staff exhaustion, decaying infrastructure, broken families, high crime rates, ineffective government programs and clash of

52% of cases of abuse of neglect where the victim is a girl. 51.4% of Aboriginal people per 1,000 who were on care and protection order in 2010-11. 7% of Aboriginal children are more likely to be in care than other Australian children. Even though they are the most helpless members of Aboriginal communities, children bear a great deal of the violence and abuse from Aboriginal people. Aboriginal children are far more likely to be on a care and protection order and they are also seven times more likely to be removed from their parents and placed into out-of-home care than non-Aboriginal