Romulus My Father Case

Through Raimond Gaita’s novel “Romulus, my father”, Oodgeroo Noonuccal’s “We are Going” and P. Migliorino’s feature article “Stand Up and Make it a Day for Us All”, the responder can clearly see that at connection to the land, the community and wider society is a key aspect of a person’s identity.

A connection to the land is an important aspect of a person’s sense of identity and belonging and this can be seen clearly through Romulus’ whole life in Australia and in “We are Going”. Romulus is unable to see the beauty in the Australian landscape, “to a European or English eye [the landscape] seems desolate”, and even after forty years of living in Australia he still “could not become reconciled with it”. This incomplete sense of belonging was aided through the presence of peppercorn trees that were “found in almost every settlement” and remained as a reminder of the county that they had once shaped part of their identity. Both Christine and Mitru were also disconnected with the land as they lacked the mental stability to belong even to themselves and as a result had several different addresses in their life. Unlike in “Romulus. My Father”, “We are Going” portrays to the responder a sense of identity that has the land as an integral part. The aboriginal people in the poem define themselves according to their land “we are nature” and the separation from this caused not only a sense of displacement within their country but also a lost sense of identity. “We are the hunts… the scrubs are gone [and] the hunting…”. By exhibiting a sense of connection and separation to the land, these texts allow the responder to see that the land can play a primary part in the shaping of a person’s identity.

A connection to the community also shapes a person’s sense of identity. The prejudice displayed by the settled Australians towards Romulus and the other migrants along with the immediate segregation, disallowed any connections to be built between the two different groups. Being moved to Baringhup is symbolic of segregation as it had been the forced residence of many aboriginals