| In American literature and other media, the image of the ghostly American Indian---either literal or figurative---is a trope running as far back as colonial contact. This is a feature which often seems like a natural---and perhaps appropriate---outgrowth of the American desire to possess the continent, and efforts at literal or cultural genocide of the country's Native population. However, Australia, where colonial efforts were similarly disastrous for the country's indigenous population, largely lacks the image of the ghostly indigene in its literature and cultural ideology, and instead presents its ghosts as white specters who often haunt Aboriginal figures. Lurkers on the Threshold compares patterns in how the two national literatures depict the relationship between indigenous peoples and ghosts over the course of the twentieth century, in order to explore the iterations of this trope and the potential reasons behind the difference. The literary figure of the ghost, an entity which has the ability to rewrite history through a privileged experience of it unavailable to the living, has its strongest roots in the Gothic tale, but as the needs and regrets of the living change, so too have the ghost and the genres with which it is associated changed: between nations, between communities, and between time periods. One major factor is the markedly different strategies which are available to the nations' white populations in their bid to recreate themselves as the "authentic" citizens of the countries they have created, in preference to the land's indigenous inhabitants. Another is that Native self-perception, while seemingly devalued in mainstream cultural conversations, has a detectable influence over the thematic treatment of ghosts in these conversations. Textual creators discussed include Willa Cather, Patrick White, Robert Drewe, Mudrooroo (Colin Johnson), H.P. Lovecraft, Devon Mihesuah, and Tracey Moffatt. |
