Kim Scott's "That Dead Man Dance:" Not a Review.

Circa 1801, Matthew Flinders landed on a remote Western Australian shore to find himself surrounded by an impressive tribe of Noongar who watched with bemusement as the Wadjellas landed on their fertile shores. Aiming to impress the assembled men and women Flinders ordered his soldiers to perform military drills, there on the hard sands of a wide Australian beach. Who knows if the Noongar were impressed, but accounts tell of one young Noongar who rose to his feet smiling, then joined the end of the soldiers' line and with his spear, began to mimic their actions. He danced with them until they probably asked him to leave. Flinders left the beach that day thinking little more of this rarely peaceful interaction, but decades later, one Daisy Bates, a white settler, recorded young Noongar men performing ritual dances which looked remarkably like the drills of English militia.
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Kim Scott's Bobby Wabalingy waved and stamped his dead man dance so wholly that the audience and their very souls were drawn in. The young man led naturally and all could see the power behind his steps: Behind the mirror he held to his world. Whitefellas and blackfellas alike sensed the draw, the pull of his energy but in time all forgot that once they had seen the world less white & black.

If Bobby Wabalingy's dance had succeeded would Australia be any different now? Would settlement have occured in a kindler, gentler fashion? Whatever that likelihood it is more certain that Bobby's world would have been different had his dance succeeded, had his imagination become manifest. Other, real men have been bridges too yet this young man has been created so beautifully, so splendidly that his failure to succeed must strike one's core more deeply.

Possibly more frustrating, for the rationally inclined, is this book's uncanny ability to inspire the desire for belief. A desire to belong to this spiritual world of connectedness between the physical and the ethereal. Between mankind and the cradle of nature which gives us life. Our individual, lonely selves and those freewheeling beings who occupy our skies, the fields, the rivers and oceans. Laughing at us from trees and scorning our imagined superiority.

For whilst early man's spiritual beliefs may have lent a sense of understanding to natures chaotic moods, the spiritual tendency obviously serves other purposes. In this sense, and others, our desire to comprehend is commendable and runs deep. It has bred a depth of success in all mankind's endeavours but now that we understand so much, are we simply yearning to belong more wholly to the system which nourishes us? If this desire is nothing more than a misguided attempt to understand ourselves then so be it. However let us allow the concurrent respect for that system to influence our thoughts and our plans for the future. Because at this juncture, our ability to destroy that which gives us life marks us especially; makes us stand apart. Yet curiously it also demeans our moral position and throws us back in amongst those from whom we once drew our inspiration, our metaphors. Our fellow creatures, our peers. To take pride in our achievements means we must take responsibility. Which here in 2011, still, we are failing to do. But let us get back to the text.

There are those who contend that men of the 19th century cannot be held accountable to the highest standards of today. So what to make of Bobby Wabalingy's peers, his elders, his boss? Shall we read of these men's actions with a forgiving attitude or shall we accept the inevitable and place ourselves in their shoes. For not only is it our privilege, as readers, to judge by our own standards but it is in this way that heroes are made. And in this way we turn the mirror onto ourselves, ask the same questions we wanted the characters to ask. Until Kim Scott installs additional chapters, Bobby's song remains unsung and the marks of each dance are washed away with the tide.