Sensibly preserved: precarity and primitivism in Louis A. Allen's Time Before Morning

Abstract

The collection of folklore, folktales, and mythology is rife with colonized Western ideas. In the 1960's Louis A. Allen began collecting Australian Indigenous Art and the stories that informed their creation. Allen was a management theorist who traveled and worked in emerging economies around the world. Allen served in WWII and lost most of his European Jewish family in the Holocaust. This thesis examines Allen's collection of Australian Aboriginal Dreamtime stories and how his experiences and his ideologies influenced his tellings, in particular his concerns about the precarity of Aboriginal culture and his Western ideas of primitivism. By examining three sections of his book, Time Before Morning, this thesis will show that while Allen had altruistic motives for his work, Western ideologies infuse his tellings and provide important insight into settler scholarly work. Louis Allen's family has extensive archival materials including his library, writings, ephemera, and collected artwork. By examining these materials, conducting interviews with several of his children, alongside a close reading of his book the themes of primitivism and precarity swiftly emerge. Australian cosmology and Dreamtime stories are unique. By drawing upon the work of Margaret Jacobs, Glenda Hambly, Adrian Newstead and Bruce Elder it is possible to briefly explore some of the complexity inherent in analyzing Dreamtime stories. Jacob's work connects Australian and Native American experiences, providing a basis from which to examine Allen's work through a USian lens. Chadwick Allen and Linda Tuhiwai Smith provide further conversation about the need to look at Indigenous research through a decolonizing lens as well as a trans-Indigenous one. Precarity is inherent in folktale collections, Donald Haase's provides great understanding about the challenges inherent in these collections and the need to acknowledge the creation of a new text. Primitivism is one of the underlying colonizing ideologies in anthropological work. By examining Richard Slotkin and Ter Ellingson's work on the Noble Savage trope, this topic is further explored in Allen's work to show how ubiquitous this ideology is. The first chapter of this project explores the nature of precarity as it was perceived by Allen and others in Australia. While Allen did not practice Judaism openly, his culture and his experiences in WWII influenced his concerns about the loss of Aboriginal culture. In the 1960s myriad scholars were concerned that modernity would eradicate much of the culture. This is present in Allen's tellings of the funeral myths that he collected and told. One myth, Muryana or Happy Spirit, was only collected by Allen along with a painting named the same. While this might prove Allen's concerns valid, there is tension in the right to collect, publish, and re-tell these stories that were not his own. The second chapter explores the theme of primitivism and how it is expressed in Allen's tellings of "Everyday Myths." These myths were selected and told in a section that purportedly tells the stories of why things are. Primitivism is a valorization of Indigenous cultures and their connections with land. Allen's sense of primitivism is present in the words and stories that he chooses. This chapter closely examines Allen's characterization of women, in particular by aligning transgressive women and the Biblical Eve, and how his insertions and cultural background reflect Western ideology. The final chapter compares three tellings of the Rainbow Serpent Myth collected and retold by Allen, Catherine Berndt, and Caroline Josephs. There are three distinct themes within the variations between these collections: incestual origin of the Wagilag sisters, the nature of the pollution of the waterhole, and the guilt and transgression of the Rainbow Serpent. A close reading of all three tellings shows that each one prioritized a different aspect of Indigenous storytelling as described by Brill de Ramirez. Berndt's collection centers the storyteller, Josephs' collection centers the reader, and Allen's collection centers the story. A close reading of these different emphases highlights a few of the myriad challenges that settler scholar collections and tellings contain. Allen did not collect and tell the Dreamtime stories for his own gain. He was methodical and careful to be accurate. Yet, Western ideologies, like primitivism and precarity, are still present in his work. This thesis shows that as scholars we must always be careful to examine the basis for our decisions. Allen's desire to share these stories with a larger culture led him to infuse the Dreamtime stories he told with Western ideas of Indigeneity. As such, this study reminds us to be careful of what and how we gift "knowledge" to cultures that are not our own.