No Sugar by Jack Davis notes, Literatures from the Margin, B.A English Literature, 3rd Year 6th Semester, Elective Paper, University of Madras

 B.A English Literature

3^rd Year 6^th Semester

Elective Paper – BEN-DSE2C

Literatures from the Margin

Unit 3 - Drama

3.1 No Sugar by Jack Davis

About Author:

            Jack Davis (1917–1999) began writing when he was fourteen years old. The fourth child in a family of eleven, he spent his childhood in the West Australian mill town of Yarloop. He worked for several years as a stockman in the north before returning to Perth and settling into fulltime writing and a long life of service to the Aboriginal cause. His book publications began in 1970 with The First Born, a volume of poetry. Jagardoo: Poems from Aboriginal Australia (1978) and John Pat and Other Poems (1988) followed. His plays include No Sugar, Burungin, Honeyspot, Kullark and The Dreamers and Our Town. In 1991 his memoir A Boy’s Life was published. He has received numerous distinctions including the British Empire Medal, the Order of Australia, honorary doctorates from the universities of Murdoch and Western Australia. An inaugural Unaipon Award judge, he served as judge on the panel from 1988 to 1996.

About Story:

            No Sugar, first performed in 1985, is part of Jack Davis’s The First Born trilogy: three plays that trace the history of Aboriginal people in Western Australia from 1829 to the present. Though it was written after The Dreamers (1982), this play moves backwards in time to 1929 to dramatise the story of the Millimurra family’s forced removal from their home in Northam to the Moore River Native Settlement during the Great Depression. No Sugar confronts boldly the harsh treatment of the Nyoongah people at the hands of white administrators, but it also celebrates with humour and pride the resilience of the Nyoongah people to survive brutality and maintain their culture.

Summary:

            No Sugar is a postcolonial play by Indigenous Australian Playwright, Jack Davis. The play takes place during Great Depression in Western Australia. It showcases the struggles of aboriginals through the Millimurra-Munday family and their dreadful life in the hands of white colonisers. The aboriginals are forced to accept the unequal treatment provided for them. People like Mr.Neal, Mr.Neville who have the authority to protect them are the ones who exploit and oppress them. They are stuck in poverty and the government cuts down their rations due to depression. They are treated as ‘other’ thus disregarding them from the society, they live in. For instance, Milly gives money to her children to buy apples for lunch but they are provided with 'shrivelled apples' where the watjela kids get 'fat apples'. The aboriginals are not allowed to walk after sunset, drink liquor or mingle with the white people. The Millimurra-Munday family is shifted from their settlement by providing false excuse of scabies infection to another settlement only to provide better living conditions for the white settlers in Northam. Aboriginal girls sent for domestic help for white settlers are sexually harassed and return home as pregnant but no one is concerned about it. Davis depicts Australia’s stolen generation through Mary’s fear when Matron comes to meet her child. The aboriginal children are taken and given away to the white settlers for adoption. They are converted to Christianity and children are forced to attend Sunday School. Also, the scene where aboriginals are shown dancing for the whites depicts the superiority and power they possess. Billy recounts the Forest River Massacre which shows that genocide gave the whites a perfect excuse to wipe out a population that lacked value in their eyes. The play portrays racism, oppression and colonial violence towards aboriginals and their struggles to survive.

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