By Zuleyka Zevallos, PhD

WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are warned that the content on this page may contain images and references to deceased persons. (Why this warning?)

The Council of Australian Governments has conducted a national review of Indigenous socio-economic outcomes. Its recent report finds that while some measures are improving, there is still a large gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. This post provides a snapshot of the findings with a focus on education and responses by the state. One of the solutions being offered to improve educational outcomes amongst Indigenous youth is to send them to boarding schools. I discuss this in relation to Australia’s colonial history and the Government’s paternalistic views on Indigenous welfare.

I review other approaches to Indigenous education, which focus on working to students’ strengths in order to improve outcomes. This means making curriculum more focused on applied skills, vocational training within remote communities, and ensuring knowledge is culturally relevant. At the same time, educational efforts must avoid “pigeon holing” Indigenous students and teachers. Instead, education needs to make leadership and career pathways more accessible, and ensure that Indigenous insights are being fed back into the education system.

Finally, my post explores how sociological teaching and activism needs to change in reflection of the history of Indigenous educational practices.

Background on Remote Indigenous Communities

Indigenous people make up over 2 percent of Australia’s national population. The majority of Indigenous Australians claim an Aboriginal ancestry (90%), 6 percent are from Torres Strait Islander ancestry and the rest are a mix of both Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander heritage.

Around a third of Indigenous people live in major cities (32%), an even number live in inner and outer regional localities (21% and 22% respectively), 15 percent live in very remote areas and the rest live in remote areas (9%). The distinctions between remote and very remote regions refers to the road distance to social and health services. The map to the right shows Australia’s regions mapped against this remoteness criteria. The dark blue represents the very remote areas and the light blue are remote, while the small patches of red represent the cities where most Australians live. The geographic remoteness typifying where two-thirds of Indigenous Australians live is significant given that Australia is “one of the most urbanised countries in the world,” and 69% of our national population lives in major cities.

Professor Pat Dudgeon is a psychologist who has studied the history, education and health outcomes of Indigenous people. She is part of the National Health Commission and a member of the Bardi people of the Kimberley in Western Australia. In a review of the socio-cultural and historical context of Indigenous Australians, Dudgeon and colleagues estimate that Indigenous history in Australia can be traced back to 50,000 to 120,000 years.

At the time of European arrival in 1788, there were an estimated 300,000 Indigenous Australians living in Australia who spoke 260 distinct languages and 500 dialects. Dudgeon and colleagues note that affinity to the land and a strong and complex kinship system binds all people together and reinforces their spiritual bonds to nature. The colonialists, however, did not recognise the Indigenous custodianship of the land, declaring Australia an uninhabited land (terra nullius) and launched a violent campaign that decimated the Indigenous population and imposed a campaign of cultural genocide.

Colonial History of Paternalistic Violence

Dudgeon and colleagues chronicle that in 1883, New South Wales established the Aboriginal Protection Board. The Board later enacted the Aborigines Protection Act in 1909 which granted the state the power to confine Indigenous people in missions and reserves. Other states followed with similar Boards and legislation that imposed British culture and Christianity, stripping children of access to their land, culture and Indigenous languages. Indigenous people began to be classified under a legally imposed racial system. Using social Darwinism, the state ranked children according to whether they were “full blood,” “half-caste” and so on, using this system to remove children from their families. At its heart, this legal caste system reflected the social and scientific view that Indigenous Australians were somehow lesser in their humanity than the European invaders.

Indigenous resistance movements fought against colonialism throughout this period. Dudgeon and colleagues note several significant incidents of frontier warfare; the activism of William Cooper and the Australian Aborigines League and William Ferguson’s leadership of the Aborigines Progressive Association both in the 1920s; and a maritime strike in 1936. The latter lead to the rise of the Island Councillors meeting and the revised Aboriginal Protection Act of 1939 which provided Islanders greater authority.

While other Australians had the right to vote in 1902, Indigenous women did not get the right to vote until 1962, except enrolling to vote was still optional despite it being compulsory for other Australians. (Though some individual Indigenous people lobbied and voted in protest as far back as the 1890s.)  The 1967 Commonwealth Referendum finally granted Indigenous Australians full citizenship. The landmark native title case in 1992 led by Eddie Mabo affirmed the Meriam people ownership of their land.  Despite these advances, the legal, cultural, social, psychological, and health damage suffered under colonialism continues to the present day.

The forced removal of Indigenous children meant that families were not only separated, but children were put into institutions that had sub-standard health and educational access. This history explains the connection between socio-economics, health and institutional racism. That is, discrimination through official social policy and the practices of other social organisations.

Impact of Institutional Racism

Citing various national indicators reports from the late 2000s, Dudgeon and colleagues note that Indigenous people are “the most disadvantaged group in Australia” along every major socio-economic measure. Indigenous people have a significantly lower household income relative to non-Indigenous Australians, they are less likely to own their homes, they have a high suicide rate, and they have higher child protection notices. Some of the statistics that are of most relevance to educational outcomes include these facts:

• Indigenous people have a life expectancy that is up to 11.5 lower than the national average
• Indigenous people are six times as likely to die through homicide, with 65% of these deaths involving alcohol. This connection between homicide and alcohol rate is three times the national average
• Indigenous people are 12 times more likely to be hospitalised for assault, and four times more likely to be hospitalised for alcohol-related mental and behavioural disorders
• Indigenous child mortality rates are up to three times higher relative to other kids, and Indigenous children are twice as likely to be admitted to hospital
• Indigenous youth are 20 times more likely to be detained in custody
•  Indigenous students graduate high school at half the rate of other Australians.

Moreover, in 2012, Indigenous men were over 17 times more likely to be incarcerated relative to other Australian men (4,093 per 100,000 population versus 234 per 100,000). Indigenous women have 24 times the rate of incarceration relative to non-Indigenous women, though in smaller numbers (405 per 100,000 versus 17 per 100,000 ).

While Indigenous social welfare workers and activists have sought to address these issues in culturally relevant ways, institutional racism is both socially pervasive and impeding of progress.

A nationally representative survey by geography Professor Kevin Dunn identifies that a high proportion of Australians still see Indigenous Australians as an “out-group.” Specifically, 58 percent of respondents said that “Indigenous Australians did not fit into Australian society.” Dunn notes that various opinion polls find that many Australians hold stereotypes of Indigenous Australians as supposed welfare dependent alcoholics who have failed to “assimilate.” This stereotype fails to recognise that the historical practices that tore families and communities apart continue to impact on the poor health and socio-economic opportunities of Indigenous Australians. Stereotypes also help fuel and legitimise racist discriminations of Indigenous Australians at school, work and in public life in general.

The majority of Indigenous people that Dunn surveyed say that racism is a problem in Australia (95%) and two-thirds also noted that White people hold social privilege due to their race. The level and types of racism experienced by Indigenous people was higher than for other groups, with a third experiencing racism at work (29%) and in education (36%) and up to a quarter in housing (21%) and policing (23%). While non-English people experienced higher rates of workplace racism (36%), they reported lower incidents along the other measures, notably in education (30%).

Health and Education

The Council of Australian Governments (CoAG) released a report in June which finds a set of mixed health and socio-economic outcomes amongst Indigenous Australians. Death amongst Indigenous children has been decreasing (to 5.7 deaths per 100 000 annually), but Indigenous adults still die at twice the rate of other Australians.

Indigenous completion rates of high school (to Year 12 or equivalent) has risen from 47% in 2006 to 54% in 2011, however in the Northern Territory high school completion is lower by almost 7 percentage points. Most of the Territory is categorised as a very remote region. There are also mixed results for literacy. Reading levels have improved amongst Indigenous children in Years 3 to 7, but numeracy has decreased since 2008. The opposite trend is found amongst older Indigenous students in Year 9. While post-school qualifications have been improving for the rest of Australia, amongst Indigenous people, there has been little improvement.

Only 55 percent of Indigenous children in the Northern Territory are still in school by Year 10. This is the lowest rate of educational retention in Australia in the one area that has the highest proportion of Indigenous people (30% of the local population).

One of the Government proposals to improve literacy and school retention is sending Indigenous children to boarding schools. If this is a local facility that does not take children too far from their local communities, this may be workable, however, at its heart, this idea of removal of children has troubling undertones mired by Australia’s colonial history.

Paternalistic Education

Bruce Wilson, chair of review into Indigenous education system for the Northern Territory Government, says that educational facilities and administration of the curriculum is substandard in the Territory. Teachers are not adequately trained and children are not motivated to stay at school. The solution, to send children away to boarding schools, is seen as a means to improve student attrition. The premise, however, gives up on improving teacher training and infrastructure. Wilson says that the goal is to entice children to remain at school and to stay connected to their communities:

Young people need continuing contact with their culture, with their language, with their families and communities.

The boarding school proposal is controversial as it would take children away from their families. Australia’s colonial history makes this a problematic course of action.

In the early stages of European settlement, in 1911, the Government set up a Chief Protector who become the “legal guardian of every Aboriginal and every half-caste child up to the age of 18 years.” Seven years later, the Protector was also the legal guardian of all Indigenous women unless they were married to a white English-speaking man. In the mid-1950s, children were forcibly removed from their families and sent to live with White missionaries. They grew up dislocated from their culture and languages, and are therefore dubbed The Stolen Generation.

More recently in 2007, the so-called Northern Territory Intervention was enacted under a modified colonialist mindset – one still operating through paternalistic views about Indigenous welfare. The Government sent the military and police to ban alcohol and restrict Indigenous access to welfare. The improvement on social life has been negligible, despite the fact that Indigenous human rights were sacrificed under the guise of protection for women and children.

The educational outcomes of Indigenous youth in the Northern Territory are connected to broader systemic racism. Indigenous unemployment is high in the Territory. As Wilson argues:

It is very hard to encourage young people who live in communities with very limited job opportunities to keep coming to school to do an education that they know will not get them a job in the community.

Making Education More Inclusive of Indigenous Knowledge

Educators in the Northern Territory have long argued that Indigenous outcomes in education and work would be greatly improved with better support for teachers and students, using a non-Western framework of learning. In 2011, senior educator Chris Garner (Scottish-Australian who grew up in South Africa) gave a talk at TEDx Darwin where he outlined the success of a program that drew on Indigenous perspectives. Garner points out that the sparsely populated Northern Territory is the size of the UK. Its remoteness is a challenge and part of the disincentive to continue with school through to graduation.

Rather than starting from a Western idea of what students need, Garner’s program focuses on culturally relevant learning practices. This includes a mix of traditional activities such as basket weaving, as well as the regular curriculum.  Maths and literacy have an applied focus, with lessons based on job case studies that the students are interested in, from social work, to plumbing to construction and so on. Students also do work placements in their local communities so that they get an opportunity to build up work experience, and they are also able to join a workplace that speaks their Indigenous language.

Garner finds that the students’ confidence increases when they are judged against non-Western criteria, and more specifically, when they are graded against their local Indigenous cultures. He gives the example of students who are reticent to write because they’re afraid of being ridiculed for making mistakes. Garner encourages them to write and suspends grading their spelling at first, focusing instead on their ideas. Later, as their confidence grows, he takes the time to demonstrate why spelling is important in particular jobs.

Under this program, 96% of those learning a culturally relevant program are graduating versus only one third of other Indigenous students in other parts of Australia.  Rather than being teacher-led, the last two years of school are structured around the individual needs and cultural expectations of students. Garner says this individualised approach does not need to be viewed with apprehension by mainstream education.  He says:

It’s an evolution of the teacher, not a revolution of the system.

In July 2012, principal Judith Ketchell told SBS News (below) that there are around 180 teachers in the Northern Territory, of whom around half are Indigenous. She says that the problems these teachers face are part of the broader educational issues facing all Indigenous Australians. This includes getting stronger support so that they aren’t “pigeon holed” into teaching certain types of subjects, that they see clear career pathways, and that they have the potential to develop and enact their leadership. She says in the video below:

We need more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander teachers in Australian classrooms. Not only to close the gap for our literacy and numeracy, but to help our non-Indigenous colleagues develop more understanding about Aboriginal and Islander history and culture in schools.

http://youtu.be/UTsJequBXBs

Challenges for Indigenous Australian Sociology

Much like the challenges facing Indigenous educators, Australian sociology has many issues to address. Indigenous sociologist Kathleen Butler-McIlwraith finds that our discipline presents several problems in the way we teach, research and discuss Indigenous experiences. First, many of our key texts are written from a particular White Western perspective. For example, we continue to teach Durkheim who used Indigenous Australians as a case study of a “primitive” culture. Even when using the work of Marx and Foucault, Butler-McIlwraith must “critically” and “cautiously” approach their work as an Indigenous woman. Second, most Australian sociology deals with Indigenous issues deals via written texts that speak on behalf of Indigenous people, rather drawing on face-to-face ethnographic dialogue.

Butler-McIlwraith is acutely aware of her Otherness both in her approach to teaching and in the way in which her teaching is positioned within academia. She was reticent to introduce her own personal experience into the classroom because much of sociology focuses on the written texts of major White male figures (for further discussion, see Butler-McIlwraith’s  PhD thesis). Much of Indigenous scholarship constructs Indigenous people as Other, focusing on problems, especially on rural and remote Indigenous problems. Butler-McIlwraith grew up in urban New South Wales, and so these rural experiences are as foreign to her as they are to her predominantly White students. Furthermore, Butler-McIlwraith notes that she and her Indigenous academic colleagues are mostly teaching Indigenous subjects, which reinforces that academia primarily defines and values their knowledge and scholarship in a narrow way. She writes:

Many Indigenous academics remain peripheral to the academy, other than in the position of the ubiquitous guest lecturer – the reserve army of labour for White academics to selectively include in order to handle the contentious obligatory Indigenous inclusion.

This post has been concerned with the very issues Butler-McIlwraith identifies. First, while I identify as a woman of colour I am not an Indigenous Australian, nor have I conducted ethnographic research on Indigenous education. I have plans to produce other collaborative works (watch this space!) but my interest in Indigenous education is informed by my interest in breaking down Otherness and issues of social justice more broadly.

Second, I have focused on remote Indigenous communities, which in many ways speaks to the primary image that many Australians have of Indigenous Australians. Australian sociologists have a profound respect of Indigenous cultures, but what does this mean and how do we make a real difference?

Every sociological event I’ve ever attended, such as a conference or public lecture, includes a Welcome to Country. This involves a formal acknowledgement of the traditional landowners of the place where we are, and a brief speech by a local Indigenous elder. Indigenous issues usually feature in Australian sociology textbooks, but Indigenous knowledge remains distinct. Australian sociology still relies heavily on European theorists and White Australian scholarship. In short, Indigenous knowledge is not central to the way in which we teach sociology.

This is where Australian history, academic practice and socio-economic dynamics need to change. Sociologists are acutely aware of power and discourse, and yet Indigenous colleagues are not only a minority, but a specialised labour force. Indigenous perspectives are reserved for discussions on Indigenous problems (reproducing Indigenous Australians as “Other”), but Indigenous perspectives are not integrated into the way in which we teach sociology. Butler-McIlwraith writes:

I would suggest that those currently enfranchised in the discipline should give some consideration to what a dialogue between the centre and periphery will entail. Is the centre willing to become more inclusive, or are Indigenous knowledges to remain the appendices to White thought?

My post has shown how historical policies continue to affect institutional racism and negatively affect the outcomes of Indigenous students. The lesson from the material I present here is not simply that Indigenous education is a societal problem that requires novel, non-Western solutions that are inclusive of Indigenous ways of learning. Without doubt, this is an issue affecting not just Indigenous communities, but it undermines Australian society more generally. A significant group within our nation is dramatically disadvantaged by our educational system; this requires collective action.

Beyond this central point, the problems facing Indigenous education are partly reflected in our own unexamined sociological practices. A uniquely Australian sociology should be at the centre of educational transformation, by critically addressing our engagement with the texts we use and produce, and by making Indigenous perspectives an ongoing feature of our teaching and critical thinking. While we continue to draw on the voices of European and White theorists (mostly men as I’ll show in a later post), we silence the contribution of Indigenous perspectives. To paraphrase Garner: it’s time for evolution of the sociological teacher/ activist, and a revolution of the Australian sociological system.

Learn More

Indigenous Activists

Learn more about key figures who fought for social, educational and legal rights of Indigenous Australians:

• William Cooper, founder of the Australian Aborigines League.
• William Ferguson, unionist, founder of Aborigines Progressive Association and Australian Labor Party branch secretary.
• Eddie Mabo, native title activist.
• Poet and activist, Dr Oodgeroo Noonuccal (formerly Kath Walker), key campaigner in the reform of the Australian constitution, Queensland state secretary of the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, and recipient of the British Order in 1970 (which she returned in 1987 in protest of the bicentennial celebrations).
• Marion Scrymgour, Deputy Chief Minister of the Northern Territory, became the first Indigenous woman elected into Government, serving from 2001 to 2012 and then a Minister from 2002 to 2009. Among other roles, she was Minister for Employment, Education and Training, Minister for Child Protection, and Minister for Indigenous Policy.
• See a timeline of Indigenous rights via the National Museum of Australia and learn more about cultural meanings and approaches to leadership via Reconciliation Australia. Scroll further below for an excellent documentary on Indigenous history in Australia.

The First Australians: A documentary of Indigenous history

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcslF8yQ1Tg&feature=share&list=PLE7093A31AA1EE3FD

Notes: About the Warning to Indigenous Readers

Indigenous cultural traditions impose different rules about how Indigenous people may be represented in public after death. This can include not using their first name, and not viewing images of the deceased. Not all Indigenous people follow the same norms, but the media have been called to observe this warning. In some cases, after the passage of time Indigenous people may be spoken about publicly, or they will be given a new name. This belief has been misrepresented in popular culture as a superstition about the soul being captured on film. This is not about superstition; it is about a communal process of honouring the dead. Read more on Creative Spirits, who quote Margaret Parker from the Punjima people in north-west Western Australia:

A cultural practice of our people of great importance relates to our attitude to death in our families. Like when we have someone passed away in our families and not even our own close families, the family belongs to us all, you know. The whole community gets together and shares that sorrow within the whole community.

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By Zuleyka Zevallos

I wanted to do a follow up on my post from a couple of months a go, on Hollywood racism. I analysed George Lucas’ claim that big Hollywood studios were reticent to back his film Red Tails because there were no white leading actors in the script. I used the idea of the Magical Negro Trope to explain how mainstream Hollywood films stereotype African-Americans as either thugs or benevolent, self-sacrificing figures who exist only to teach the white character a life-affirming lesson. I showed that this trope extends to other minorities who are people of colour, through the Noble Savage Trope. Today I want to focus on the sexualisation of Noble Savage trope. The Noble Savage is a term describing the over-simplified stereotype of Indigenous people on film. I will focus on gender and sexuality issues in big-budget Hollywood films depicting Indigenous and minority cultures during early colonial and “frontier” times.

Today I will draw a comparison between Avatar and other Hollywood films that depict Indigenous and minority women as savage conquests. Women in general are rarely cast in complex roles in big-budget Hollywood releases. They are usually romantic or sexual diversions to help portray the male lead in a sympathetic light. Minority women are even more simplified, especially in stories involving Indigenous cultures. Indigenous and women of colour exist largely as Magical Pixie Conquests:  they are painted as feisty, though ultimately submissive, pawns that help white male characters to dominate the “native tribe”. The fictionalised version of the “Pocahontas” story epitomises how Hollywood both fetishes Indigenous cultures and perpetuates patronising postcolonial fantasies.

Noble Savages

In Hollywood’s most beloved incarnation of Indigenous cultures, indigenous characters exist to teach the white warrior the esoteric secrets of their tribal culture. The white protagonist then ends up being the saviour of the Indigenous group. This is also known as the Noble Savage trope. One notable film that received high accolade for faithfully reproducing the Noble Savage trope was Dances with Wolves. Kevin Costner and crew received no less than seven Oscars for the tale of a white American soldier who deflects from his post and becomes accepted as a Sioux hero. His status is partly assured by saving and then marrying a sassy tribal woman, but she was a white woman who’d been adopted by the tribe as an orphan, so it was all very romantic.

Avatar is another phenomenaly successful example of the noble savage trope. Avatar is a CGI extravaganza which was conceived as a morality tale about environmentalism. The indigenous group in the film, The Na’vi, are humanoid creatures with blue skin. Their strongest warrior and successive leader is a woman played by Afro-Dominican-American actress Zoe Saldana. Who saves the day? The outside conqueror, a white paraplegic soldier (played by Anglo-Australian Sam Worthington), whose disability is conveniently transcended through the magic of special effects. When he launches into CGI form, Worthington’s character is transformed into an athletic military hero who surpasses the skills of the indigenous group on their own turf. The film depicts that the complicated landscape in which the Na’vi live requires a lifetime of knowledge and spiritual commune with nature. Somehow, this outsider is able to transcend the intimate cultural skills that the Na’vi accumulated over years of social and physical conditioning.

Don’t get me wrong: I really enjoyed Avatar, I love the escapism of most of James Cameron’s films, and I adore watching Worthington on screen. (His debut in Somersault is one of my favourites.) Avatar has a good message about taking care of the environment. Yet why was this film, Dances with Wolves and so many others like it constructed in such a way? Why do the indigenous people need a white saviour? More importantly, why do films continue to use the noble save trope, even in films relying primarily on technologies such as CGI that provide the means to overcome the physiological constructions of race? Even blue people need to be saved by a white person!

One might well think: who cares, it’s just a film! Lighten up (no pun intended, ha ha)! The noble savage trope helps film makers and actors win awards and make huge profits. Avatar is the highest grossing film of all time. So given this prosperity, why should we care about the underlying messages communicated and whose cultures are appropriated to oversimplified oblivion? Well, in many ways, the revisionist depiction of colonialism on film, where the white people are saviours rather than colonisers, is an act of postcolonial symbolic violence. It reconfigures history and perpetuates simplistic and negative stereotypes of indigenous people and other minorities, with women bearing the brunt of the insult.

Magical Pixies

Women are rarely depicted as heroic protagonists outside of romantic comedies – and even then they usually need to be saved from the drudgery of life and fulfilled by the presence of a man. When women aren’t stuck in the stereotypical role of wife, mother, stripper, prostitute or damsel in distress – they mostly serve as pixies. Much like the magical negro trope that uses Black and other minority characters as a plot device to transform the white male protagonist, the primary existence of the manic pixie dream girl is to teach the white male hero a life changing/life affirming lesson. Examples can be found in almost every one of Cameron Crowe’s movies, almost anything starring the lovely Zooey Deschanel, and countless other examples.

Manic pixies are usually white women. In mainstream Hollywood concoctions, Indigenous and minority women from colonial periods might be seen as a blend of the manic pixie dream girl and the magical negro and noble savages  tropes. More to the point, they are a sexualised version of the magical/noble savages, which I refer to as magic pixies as a short-hand. The difference between the white manic pixie dream girl and the women of colour who make up the magic pixies is that the former has the illusion of being an equal to the male lead, while the latter is almost entirely pitched as a disposable sexual conquest. In actuality, the pixie is not constructed as having equal humanity to a man. White pixies act as a sexual diversion to help the hero triumph over their Very Important Life Obstacles. Although white pixies initially appear to be quirky and enchanting beings, they are revealed to be fragile or ill-adjusted creatures who need a man to look after them.

Sexual Conquest

The Indigenous or minority magical pixie is either a disposable sex object or a colonialist conquest. In fact, women of colour who play opposite a white man are almost uniformly constructed as exotically sexual, usually because they are feisty, head-strong “free spirits” who won’t be tamed by any man… except by our white hero. The magical pixie provides sex and a beguiling love of nature, but she needs to be taught English first and foremost and then she needs to be imbued with civilisation. The epitome of this trope is found in Westerns. Such films usually portray Mexican or Native American women as independent souls who haven’t wanted to partner with a man from their own communities. Yet after some sexy, passionate resistance, they succumb to the rogue charm of the white protagonist who waltzes into town.

If they are Mexican, the Noble Savage Pixie is “hot blooded spitfire”, who are passionate and irrational. (For example see the roles played by Lupe Veléz or Carmen Miranda). This Mexican pixie trope might work in a saloon or they might be cast prostitutes. (That’s okay folks, they have a heart of gold!) These women often need to be saved from the local baddie who is usually trying to force them into marriage. The white hero represents a better source of protection and he makes things safer in the town. He may or may not stick around to look after the savage Mexican pixie once the baddie has been eliminated – but gosh she looks great standing next to him with her ample heaving brown breasts and her wild hair. Doesn’t she?

If the woman is Native American, she is usually “the Chief’s daughter” or a “Native American princess”. Having the Noble Savage Pixie couple with the white protagonist ensures that he eventually becomes “the tribal leader”, thus surpassing the established social order and the cultural knowledge necessary of Indigenous leaders.

You can also see “Asian” variations, of a beautiful, mostly silent but strong-willed Lotus Flower Woman who eventually takes care of the wounded American man and submits to him. He is usually a decorated white American soldier and he manages to seduce her even though he came to be in her country whilst it was under American Occupation. But that’s okay, because he ends up fighting against the Americans and becoming a fearless community leader. Yes, there are many real-life examples where white American soldiers partnered with or married women under occupation. The problem is with the oversimplification of colonial history as reflected in Hollywood retelling of these couplings.  For a mind-blowing example, see The Last Samurai. As TV Tropes notes, this film portrays the Japanese samurai as civilised warriors, but film is riddled with historical inaccuracies in its depiction of a white American learning the ways of the Samurai. Part of the white protagonist’s transition into hero is acquiring a Japanese pixie dream woman to help his transformation and self-actualisation as saviour of the Japanese.

Ultimately, whether black, brown, Indigenous, Asian or otherwise (cough *blue*), the magical pixie woman character demonstrates that women of colour are a status symbol useful in moving up the local hierarchy. The white conqueror solidifies his social mobility by bedding the savage pixie conquest.

The Ultimate Magical Pixie Conquest: Pocahontas

Disney’s Pocahontas bears further exploration for this reason. The Disney film depicts a blossoming romance where Pocahontas saves John Smith’s life and teaches him the joys of nature. In reality, Chief Roy Crazy Horse of the Powhatan Renape Nation chronicles that Pocahontas was actually named Matoaka. She was captured by the British in 1612 when she was 17, forced convert to Christianity and to adopt a British name.

Matoaka married John Rolfe, a 28-year old English man as a condition of her release and she moved to England. Rolfe owned a tobacco company. He used Matoaka as a trophy to support his company and colonial expansion in America. Historical records show that she and Smith never had a romance. Chief Roy Crazy Horse writes:

“Pocahontas” was a nickname, meaning “the naughty one” or “spoiled child”. Her real name was Matoaka… Of all of Powhatan’s children, only “Pocahontas” is known, primarily because she became the hero of Euro-Americans as the “good Indian”, one who saved the life of a white man. Not only is the “good Indian/bad Indian theme” inevitably given new life by Disney, but the history, as recorded by the English themselves, is badly falsified in the name of “entertainment”.

The magical pixie trope reproduces a romanticised colonial fantasy: the savage woman who is conquered and willingly aids the white protagonist to overcome adversity. As with the discrepancy between the fictionalised tale of Pocahontas and the reality, white men who took “native” women as wives did so under highly violent and non-consensual conditions. These women were removed from their families and communities. Consequently, they lost ties to their cultures, as was the case with Matoaka. Fictional romances that utilise this trope are unwittingly reproducing a dangerously sanitised vision of history which makes invisible the rape, decimation and cultural obliteration that indigenous people experienced.

Postcolonial Symbolic Violence

Both the noble savage trope and the magical pixie trope bear the dual elements of delightful wisdom and the thrilling allure of a better and “more simple” life. These minority tropes are expert fighters; preternaturally wise; and they have a transcendental commune with nature. All of this specialist knowledge is somehow easily acquired by the white male protagonist. The women are earthy lovers. These women’s passion, as well as their cultural, spiritual and environmental knowledge serve only one purpose: to enliven the pulse of the white protagonist and to teach him how to be a better person. Since their first encounter with the white protagonist, the audience is entertained by the unfolding tale of how the white protagonist uses the Indigenous people’s knowledge to ultimately save these noble savages.

When you think about it: none of it makes any sense. Why wouldn’t the magical pixie and noble savages use their mysterious insight to save themselves? This only makes sense when we look at these minority tropes as wish-fulfilment of Hollywood bigotry. Minority characters allow the white protagonist to flirt with and taste the exotic, all the while showing how enlightened they are by befriending the fierce, barbaric Other. Due to their intellectual supremacy, cultural enlightenment and physical mastery – the white protagonist is able to take bits of “otherness” from Indigenous groups in order to become the best Other. (As I’ve noted elsewhere in my blog, bell hooks calls this eating the other.)

The depiction of the noble savage reproduces a nasty revisionist view of colonialism. The historical reality of colonialism is that white people did not save the groups they colonised. They decimated them. Why do modern-day films persist in depicting white people as being easily assimilated into an indigenous culture, drawing on and surpassing the cultural knowledge of The Other in order to save humanity? Why do Indigenous and minority characters give themselves over to the white protagonist and accept their salvation rather than use their knowledge to save themselves?

Whenever Indigenous minorities are not relegated to being noble savages/pixies, Indigenous characters are sidelined as tangential caricatures at best. Otherwise they are invisible or negatively stereotyped at worst. The films I’ve discussed may or may not be entertaining to you; they may or may not tickle your fancy as visual master pieces. The question I pose is: why are stories of Indigenous cultures told in such a singular way, where the sole purpose of Indigenous characters is to teach a white saviour how to save them?

Postcolonial theory shows how historical relations between occupying cultures and the societies they colonised continue to reverberate today. Hollywood films are one example of this process. Indigenous cultures are portrayed as mystical and exotic, but their specialist cultural knowledge is easily manipulated. Most damaging of all is that by painting the white protagonist as saviour, the Indigenous people are conversely rendered as passive, submissive and amenable to being conquered. This is why postcolonialism remains a useful way to think about mainstream productions: however well-intentioned their messages of environmentalism, it is grossly damaging for Hollywood films to continue to cast white able-bodied heterosexual men as the saviours of everyone else, especially of Indigenous people. This reflects the cultural presumption that the colonial mindset still resonates with general audiences.

Becoming aware of and deconstructing such discourses in film and popular culture is a useful step in overcoming our collective tacit acceptance of romanticised colonial fantasies. Another step is to tell other stories, where it is not only white men who get to be heroes; and where heroes don’t have to dominate Others in order to prove themselves worthy of our cinematic attention.

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Adam Serwer reports in Mother Jones that George Lucas’ latest film, Red Tails had trouble getting made, partly because the “studios weren’t willing to finance a film without a white protagonist as an anchor”.  Lucas’ claim can be put into wider historical context by examining the entrenched racist practices of big Hollywood studios. In particular, the idea of the “magical negro trope” puts things into perspective. This term refers to the way valiant Black characters in movies exist only as a narrative device to teach the white protagonist how to be a better person. This post explores variations of the “magical negro” and the gendered dimensions of these characters.

The Magical Negro Trope

Red Tails was written by John Ridley (U Turn; Three Kings) and directed by Anthony Hemingway (The Wire; Treme). It stars Cuba Gooding Jr. and Terrence Howard. Here is the plot as described in Mother Jones:

The movie is a World War II-era action flick based on the Tuskegee Airmen, the heroic and decorated pilots who were the first Black service members to fly combat missions at a time when Black Americans were not recognized as full citizens in the United States, despite their willingness to fight and die in its defence.

Christopher John Farley noted in his Time Magazine article back in 2000 that the first movie that featured spoken dialogue was a film called The Jazz Singer. It included “a white guy in blackface” (that is, minstrelsy). As Black actors started being cast in films, the magical negro became a recurring fixture of Hollywood’s imagination.

Author Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu cites the 1958 film The Defiant Ones as the first, most prominent example of the magical negro trope. In this film Noah Cullen (played by Sidney Poitier) sacrifices his freedom to help John “Joker” Jackson (played by Tony Curtis).

Okorafor-Mbachu notes that the magical negro is a narration device that seemingly subverts racism (after all, it portrays Black characters as virtuous). In fact, however, this character is centrally about maintaining historical power relations. Richard Brookhiser argues that America has long loved the idea of the numinous negro, that is, Black American politicians, preachers and movie characters that lift up the spirits of white audiences. He notes this is in contrast to the “thuggish” characterisation of Black Americans that is also prevalent in the American psyche. Brookhiser’s point is that Black Americans are only allowed to be at either extreme – criminal or saint. They cannot be complex and flawed human beings, either in fiction or in public life. The magical negro is one variation of the numinous negro.

Okorafor-Mbachu, director Spike Lee and other cultural critics have argued that while the magical negro may have been Hollywood’s first minority group stamped onto celluloid, Hollywood uses the same characteristics of the magical negro to “positively stereotype” other minority groups. This includes other people of colour, with a special fixation on Indigenous cultures (also known as the noble savage trope); disabled people (refer to the inspirationally disabled trope); socially disadvantaged individuals, primarily poor people of colour (the white man’s burden); and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) groups (see the magical queer trope) . Okorafor-Mbachu describes the gambit of magical minorities this way:

1. He or she is a person of colour, typically Black, often Native American, in a story about predominantly white characters.
2. He or she seems to have nothing better to do than help the white protagonist, who is often a stranger to the Magical Negro at first.
3. He or she disappears, dies, or sacrifices something of great value after or while helping the white protagonist.
4. He or she is uneducated, mentally handicapped, at a low position in life, or all of the above.
5. He or she is wise, patient, and spiritually in touch. Closer to the earth, one might say. He or she often literally has magical powers.

In connection to the final point above, the TV Tropes website describes that the magical negro is imbued with “deep spiritual wisdom” and sometimes even supernatural powers, but they never act as “the hero” because their sole purpose is to help the White lead become a better person/leader/warrior. Think of almost every movie plot involving a white and person of colour duo, from the optical sci-fi wizardry of The Matrix to the emotional gravitas of The Shawshank Redemption.*

Spike Lee used the “magical, mystical Negro” concept during a lecture with Yale University students in 2001. Lee cites examples such as The Family Man, What Dreams May Come and The Green Mile, but he focuses his critique on The Legend of Bagger Vance, set in the Southern USA state of Georgia during the Depression. The film sees Will Smith playing the eponymous Vance who teaches Matt Damon’s character how to golf like a pro. Lee notes incredulously: “Blacks are getting lynched left and right, and [Bagger Vance is] more concerned about improving Matt Damon’s golf swing!” Lee continues in his lecture:

How is it that Black people have these powers but they use them for the benefit of white people? ….I gotta sit down; I get mad just thinking about it…They’re still doing the same old thing … recycling the noble savage and the happy slave.

The website TV tropes has an extensive list of examples of the magical negro trope from film, television and other genres. Morgan Freeman features in many examples. An exceptionally talented actor, Freeman is often cast as a benevolent sage with mystical qualities in films such as Driving Miss Daisy, Shawshank, and Million Dollar Baby. Morgan best embodies the supernatural power of the magical negro trope in the Bruce Almighty and Evan Almighty films where he plays the personification of God. Even when playing one of the world’s best-known social activists in his role as Nelson Mandela, Freeman’s character is the second-fiddle inspiring the white South African rugby captain to victory in Invictus.

Okorafor-Mbachu also points out that Stephen King often uses the “Super-Duper Magical Negro” as a literary trope in his most famous novels: The Green Mile, The Talisman, The Stand, and The Shining.  TV Tropes writes of the magical negro:

So enlightened and selfless is he that he has no desire to gain glory for himself; he only wants to help those who need guidance…which just happens to mean those who are traditionally viewed by Hollywood as better suited for protagonist roles, not, say, his own oppressed people.

It may appear that cinema has come a long way in recent decades. After all, Marlon Brando played a Japanese man The Teahouse of the August Moon in 1956 and Mickey Rooney played a gross “yellow face” caricature of a Chinese landlord in Breakfast at Tiffany’s in 1961. Then again, people of colour are rarely central figures in widely distributed movies, TV shows, computer games or in any other mainstream cultural production.

When minorities are top billed, they are often sidekicks, best friends or “token” characters. This has been satirised in the animated series Southpark where the only Black American character is actually named “Token”. Slick horror films often have a running gag where an Black American character will point out that Black people are often the first to die. They then consequently proceed to fulfil their prophetic joke. (Black Horror Movies has done a fantastic job of chronicling this phenomenon.)

No matter the genre, with the exception of some action movies** and a couple of big-name actors such as Denzel Washington and Will Smith, movie heroes are almost uniformly white, heterosexual, able-bodied men.

War as White Man’s Territory

The War film genre is dominated by the heroism of white, heterosexual male soldiers. Women soldiers are rarely depicted as central characters in war movies, except in sci-fi (see Sigourney Weaver as Ripley in the Alien films). Outside of this genre, women are side characters, the disposable “best buddy” who is “one of the guys” and who usually dies, or they are victims of rape (brutally depicted in The General’s Daughter).

In the world of film, women are more likely to be cast as nurses and long-suffering love interests. Doesn’t this simply reflect the reality of war? Not really. Women have made extraordinary contributions during conflicts in different countries and throughout history. Here’s a couple of examples.

In 1782, American Deborah Sampson enlisted in the Continental Army disguised as a man. She was wounded in battle and later sued the military for her veteran’s pension and eventually won. This was no easy feat, as Sampson had to successfully argue she was entitled despite the fact that she lied about her identity and in spite of the fact that women were not allowed to enlist in the first place. She became a teacher and one of the first women to travel around America as a public speaker, educating people about her military experiences. Her story has yet to be made into a feature film.

Isn’t Sampson’s case exceptional and not the norm? In which case, one might argue that depicting women’s military contributions wouldn’t be true to life. After all, it is mostly men who have lost their lives in various wars. Yes, that’s true, to an extent. In most Anglo and European societies, women have not served in the military in equal numbers, but there are various precedents for their notable leadership and sacrifice. (more below.) Besides, all war movies celebrate exceptional cases of individual characters. Just not those involving women.

The well-crafted Courage Under Fire film from 1996 tells a wholly fictional story about Karen Walden, an Army Captain played by Meg Ryan. Denzel Washington plays the officer investigating whether Walden should be posthumously awarded the Medal of Honour for valour in combat. Different accounts of Walden’s story are told by the men who were under her command. Part of the conflicting narratives focus on whether or not Walden cried right before she died and whether this was because she was afraid or because she was tired. (Valiant male soldiers who cry under duress would not be awarded medals, you see.) Walden’s masculine traits are under investigation as much as her actions as a military leader.

Magical Negro at War

Black Americans have similarly made a significant but poorly depicted contribution to the American military. A good example to contrast with what Red Tails is reportedly trying to achieve is the 1989 film Glory. This is a fictionalised retelling of one of the first American Army units staffed almost entirely of Black American men. The film is told through the eyes of the white commanding officer (Matthew Broderick). In line with the racist practices of the time, the higher officers of this unit were white; however, this unit is historically distinguished because of the contribution of Black Americans. The film has a superb cast that deliver powerhouse performances. Yet rather than interweaving Broderick’s character into the broader narrative, Broderick is billed as the main star and the story is narrated through his point of view. Presumably this is because Hollywood studios feel that audiences require a white raconteur to filter the stories of minorities, even when the story is centrally about the valour of Black people.

Black Americans have served in every civil and international conflict that the USA has been engaged in, as far back as the Revolutionary War, which included African slaves and “free slaves” fighting on both sides. (See Catherine Reef and USA Department of Defence.) Given this history, why can’t the story of BLack American soldiers be told without filtering through a white cast, such as in Glory, or without surmountable pressure to include white leads, as with Red Tails? This is due to the history of the magical negro trope, a narrative device so powerful it also dominates how other minorities are depicted.

Noble Savage at War

A few war films have revolved around the contribution of minority ethnic groups. Such films tend to focus on the heroism of the white protagonist saving a minority soldier, even though the latter often had highly specialised roles during wartime. In Windtalkers, the 2002 blockbuster, Nicholas Cage’s character goes off to save a Navajo marine, whose native language was used as a security “code” to circumvent the German Army during WWII. The film does not focus on the exceptional skill and sacrifice of the Navajo soldiers – even though various historical records, including The US Naval History & Heritage Command, identify that Native Americans “have the highest record of service per capita when compared to other ethnic groups”. In WWII alone, the same source reports that 44,000 out of the total Native American population of 350,000 “served with distinction between 1941 and 1945”. Windtalkers does not focus on the endurance and tenacity of the captured Navajo soldier. The film focuses on the quest of the white character.

One could say: but that was the plot of this particular story – the plot was about Cage’s character saving his Navajo partner! The question is: why was the plot structured this way? Why wasn’t the film focused instead on the heroic contribution of the Navajo marines who went off to fight for a country that had treated their people so badly? Why didn’t that film get made with a $115 million budget?

The side-lining of Black people and other minorities sends a clear message to audiences about established social hierarchies. Lee says that his film Bamboozled attempted to address the consequences of such narrow Hollywood narratives: “It’s about the power of images and how they hurt”.

White Male Privilege

Given the diffusion of new technologies, which facilitate the transmission of new images, and given the increasing cosmopolitanism of major cities, a burning question emerges: why does the magical negro and its minority variations persist?

Okorafor-Mbachu says it’s “not easy to pinpoint the reason why Magical Negroes exist”. Okorafor-Mbachu says that when racism and segregation were institutionalised by law, the magical negro trope reflected the immediate legacy of American slavery. She sees that today the persistence of the Magical Negro is not so conscious but it still reflects unresolved issues of historical racism. Okorafor-Mbachu muses that the producers of these stories probably see themselves as anti-racism advocates.

The magical negro trope is an outcome of the white privilege of storytellers. This term reflects how societies that are dominated by white cultures come to normalise white experiences to the point where people from the dominant group do not immediately recognise how racial relations are set up to benefit them. Even when it is well-meaning, even when it does not come from a conscious desire to denigrate minorities, the magical negro and its variations reproduce unequal power relations between white and people of colour.

The consequence of white privilege as it relates to this long-suffering trope is that the film industry holds conservative attitudes about what they think audiences are willing to pay to go see. Okorafor-Mbachu writes:

I hypothesise that the Magical Negro in film continues to live because a lot of the less savoury beliefs about race are still in the American public’s psyche. And because so much of art these days is commercial, the great machine needs to ‘give ’em what they know’.

The presumption is that white audiences do not want to see people of colour as heroes.

Technicolour Future?

If the reticence to support Lucas’ latest production was ignorance about what audiences are willing to see, then this is yet another example in a long line where Hollywood is choking off possibilities due to institutional racism.

The magical negro trope has been played by titans of modern cinema (Poitier and Freeman being the exemplars). This character and its other minority variations have sometimes been conceived by well-meaning authors (King) and directors (Cameron). Isn’t it better to have some Black characters in movies written as sympathetic characters than none at all? No. Not good enough. Not in the year 2012.

The trouble is that even when they are entertaining, major films offer a narrow depiction of who and what minorities are allowed to be. Audiences shouldn’t have to grow up with the attitude that white, heterosexual able-bodied men always get to be the heroes, while women in general, Black people especially, and other minorities can only sometimes take centre stage, under certain exceptional conditions.

American film critic Roger Ebert argues that one of the main reasons film revenue is dropping in the USA is due to lack of variety in the stories being told. In short, the mainstream movie industry underestimates audiences to its detriment. Ebert notes that audiences are in fact willing to pay to watch diverse stories, as evidenced in the rise of the American Netfix subscriptions to foreign-language films.

Spike Lee argues that minorities need to get out there and create stories for themselves, so that big studios will not continue disempowering the rest of us. It’s worth remembering Lee’s words: we all need to stay vigilant about the power embedded within images. Mainstream Hollywood limits imaginations and it damages minority groups with condescending, narrow portrayals of culture.

Next time, I’ll talk more about more about the gendered dimension of the noble savage trope, particularly how women of colour are used in postcolonial Hollywood fantasies.

Learn More

* TV Tropes says the magical negro trope is inverted in Shawshank Redemption because Freeman’s character is the narrator, a murderer, and he regains the will to live through his friendship with Robbins’ character. While it is not a simplistic, clear cut example of this trope, I think it fits because Freeman’s character ultimately exists to show the goodness of Tim Robbins’ character. Brookhiser and others agree.

** I see that action movies are an acceptable deviation from the magical negro trope for big Hollywood because these films still rely on the stereotype of the Black macho man, who is a street-smart, loveable rogue. For every film starring a relatively highly paid person of colour, such as Will Smith or Denzel Washington, there are thousands of others where Black people are set up as disposable side characters.

Missing in Action: Military Women

Women have made important contributions during war in various wars around the world and throughout history. For example, refer to the Red Army and the British women who served as fighter pilots in Special Operations (BBC). Plus more American, Australian and British women have enlisted in the recent Gulf Wars (and yes, they face significant struggles in having their status, safety and knowledge officially addressed). In other countries, women have played a major role in insurgencies and armed revolutionary uprisings against the state. The Tamil Tigers are a prime example (see this video report from Al Jazeera). Plus more American, Australian and British women have enlisted in the recent Gulf Wars (and yes, they face significant struggles in having their status, safety and knowledge officially addressed). In other countries, women have played a major role in insurgencies and armed revolutionary uprisings against the state. The Tamil Tigers are a prime example (see this video report from Al Jazeera). Meryl Streep has been talking a lot about Deborah Sampson during her press interviews. I saw her on the Ellen Degeneres Show eloquently questioning why history only celebrates male figures and not women like Sampson. Streep is spokesperson for the USA National Women’s History Museum, which has a page on Sampson. Check out the museum website, it’s great.

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This is the second post in a three-part series reviewing the media and research released in commemoration of the 10-year September 11 Anniversary. Without doubt, the ongoing trauma and health issues faced by the survivors of the September 11 attacks have high ongoing social costs for American society. This article focuses on the impact that the September 11 attacks had on the lives of Australian-Muslims. I was inspired by a SBS Radio vox pop with Muslim and Sikh Australians, which I will go on to analyse.[i] The people interviewed talked about how they managed the increased racism and stigma they have faced since 2001. Ten years after the attacks, studies show that a high proportion of Australians perceive Muslims as ‘outsiders’ who do not fit in with Australian society.[ii] My analysis shows that living with racism requires a lot of ‘emotion work’, particularly because Muslims mostly deal with racist encounters on a one-on-one basis.

Australian-Muslims as ‘Others’

A couple of days ago, on the 8^th of September, SBS Radio conducted vox pop interviews with Muslim and Sikh Australians about the effects that the September 11 attacks had on their lives in Australia.[iii] The people interviewed talked about their horror over the terrorist attacks in the USA. They also said they had faced ongoing racism over the past 10 years due to their Muslim names and their appearance. The Muslim people interviewed say they face extra security monitoring when they walk through airports. One woman says although ‘things are becoming a bit better in some ways… But still you get picked up randomly at every airport. They check you to see if you have any explosives’.

Emotion work of racism

An interesting aspect of the SBS report was when the Muslim interviewees talk about having to control their anger when they encounter racism. They say they try not to show signs of anger. They try to view the situation from a different perspective: they consider that perhaps the other person might not actually mean to be racist. But these Muslims also say that they control their displays of anger when they are in public because they do not want to be seen to be playing into stereotypes of an angry, out-of-control or irrational Muslim person. One Pakistani-Muslim man says he feels pressure to always have a smile on his face, even if he feels angry: ‘I cannot afford the liberty of being angry or to be seen angry. Because there could be so many other consequences… This is one thing which I am feeling at the moment. Too much pressure to be… To be consistently proving yourself. That you are not what the other person is thinking. That you are a good person’.

The process that individuals go through in order to control their anger in the face of prejudice and racism might be usefully understood as ‘emotion work’.[iv] Everyone has to manage their emotions according to the socially acceptable norms (or ‘feeling rules’) that their society deems appropriate to a given situation.[v] Sublimating our true emotions to fit in with social decorum requires hard work. When people are interacting on more or less even ground, managing our emotions involves less conflict. In other cases, where one person has more power over another, emotion work can be damaging. The SBS report suggests that some Australian-Muslims are placed in a no-win situation. They follow the ‘feeling rules’ expected of them because they do not want to play into stereotypes. But the racist people Muslims encounter do not feel compelled to manage their emotions because they feel justified in expressing their anger, hatred and intolerance. During such racist encounters, the ‘feeling rules’ benefit non-Muslims and facilitate racism. On the one hand, Muslims should be commended for taking ‘the high road’ and not losing their temper. On the other hand, very little changes with this interpersonal approach to racism. Sociologists, including me, would advocate getting away from this individual framework of racism. Instead, I argue we should be identifying and addressing the routine behaviours that sustain racism at the everyday level.[vi]

What’s next?

The past 10 years have highlighted how racism maintains momentum when it is left to individuals to manage alone. Celebrating multicultural difference is important. ‘Othering’ and excluding groups from our national fabric because of their cultural or religious difference is counter-productive for national cohesion. The September 11 attacks, as well as other major upheavals since, demonstrate the need for nations to pull together. (This includes the Bali bombings in 2002, the London attacks in 2005, the global financial crisis that has been ongoing since 2008, the Queensland and Victorian floods of 2010, amongst other events.) Collectively addressing anti-Muslim prejudice along with other forms of social exclusion can only strengthen our national resilience, whether we are experiencing times of prosperity or disaster.

Read Part One of this series on the Health outcomes of September 11 survivors.

Read Part Three of this series: Media Coverage of the 10th Anniversary of the September 11 Attacks

Notes