Pregunta de investigación

and schooling in Melbourne and other suburban, regional or remote centres of the ‘cultural west’. Angelina, like her co-participants, makes lucid and achievable suggestions for improving the schooling conditions for former refugees. But she also discusses, by extension, the external obstacles faced by many former refugees, conditions that impact heavily upon their ability to remain engaged with schools. The film In Transit/ion comments upon the difficulties of public transportation faced by many who live far from work and home in sub/urban areas; upon the home duties and cultural obligations of Sudanese-Australian young women; and upon the extensive logistical difficulties of accessing language and curricular assistance at school for those with real ‘material conditions’ which interfere.

Angelina lives in Cranbourne, in the southeastern suburbs of Melbourne, and we became acquainted through our mutual participation in the Sudanese Australian Integrated Learning (SAIL) program. I met Angelina in

33 September 2008 and we shot her film at various locations at and around her home in Cranbourne over a two-month period. Her friend Veronica Bar also helped to shoot the film, and offered film advice during the making of the documentary. One of the first things that Angelina told me was her

schooling history: she had just recently changed schools to be closer to her home, but her new school had no ESL program, nor an ESL teacher, and she was floundering a bit in her mainstream Year 12 English class. I offered to tutor her on the days we filmed (usually a Saturday afternoon), but she did not take me up on the offer. Angelina told me in detail about her old school, which has a very highly developed ESL program and a high population of recent arrivals from refugee backgrounds. For this reason, the school caters well to these students, and there is strong and varied community among the African and other recent arrival students. She had felt comfortable there, and was doing well academically, but then her family moved from Dandenong to Cranbourne and Angelina was travelling for close to two hours each way to reach the school. Obviously, she needed to change. Her new school was still not close: she takes two buses each way.

Through my shock at these logistical hurdles, we quickly decided to focus Angelina’s film on the difficulties many new Sudanese-Australian students and families face regarding transport. As many have no choice about settling in distant regional suburbs of the city, transportation difficulties, language barriers, and financial strain contribute to an isolation for many. It is difficult to travel to the city, and expensive at times. Transportation difficulties complicate friendships, cultural outreach, services access and participation in the life of the inner city. Sometimes friendship groups and extended family are kept apart by these distances. Many (especially women) within the Sudanese-Australian community don’t drive. Cars are expensive to buy and maintain, and often young women are not let out on their own anyway. So without a male relative to drive them around, young women can be isolated at home. Angelina’s film explores some of these issues, and how this isolation impacts on schooling for young women.

34 This chapter draws on a theory of shared ‘refugeity’ and “seventh moment”7 and “eighth moment scholarship”8 (Denzin, 2003:122) to explore my developing understanding of ethnocinema as prioritising process over aesthetic product, and as a tool for “critical conversations about democracy, race, gender, class, nation-states, globalization, freedom, and community” (2005:3). It documents my frustrations with my own technical limitations and the cultural misunderstandings inherent in these filmmaking processes, thereby advancing my original premise that productive innovations in

schools can only begin through collaborating, listening, and identifying those places of vulnerability on all sides.

A note on the title of this exegesis

I struggled to find an appropriate title that encompassed all that these young women had so generously shared with me during these long and sometimes arduous processes of creating their films. I asked all co-participants for suggestions. While many of the young womens’ suggestions were

understandably bitter, or were offered to provide us welcome comic relief (for example Shut Up and Sit Down!: Refugee Students Put Teachers in Their Place; School Sucks Big Time; or – my personal favourite – Black Bitches/White Bitches), in the end I returned to the procedural politics of schools: cross-marking is a process familiar to most teachers, and symbolises an attempt at equity. While as teachers we are encouraged and sometimes required to be self-reflexive, in the marking of students’ work we must be able to demonstrate checks and balances. The process of cross-marking is meant to ensure fairness, double-checking and something approaching objectivity.

While Cross-Marked makes no claims to objectivity, it does strive toward mutual self-examination. The original distress that drove me into the arms of doctoral research in the first place – a feeling that these students’ voices were being silenced – has productively informed my approach to this work and to

7

This performative seventh moment, says Denzin, “enacts the feminist, communitarian ethic”, is “subversive” and is characterised by an “anti-aesthetic” (Denzin, 2003:122).

8

Denzin and Lincoln define this as the period from 2005 onward, or the “fractured future” (2005:3), which “confronts the methodological backlash associated with the evidence-based social movement”.

35 my continuing teaching practice. The author feels no need to qualify the claims of these co-participants. As both Butler (1990; 1993) and Foucault (1970) have pointed out, the nature of truth is ‘always partialised’ and performative. Any ‘truths’ contained in this exegesis and films are

performative and partial. None of the commentary in this exegesis or films should be taken as universalised truths, nor do the author (nor co-

participants) make any claims in this regard. It is not through one voice alone, whether that of any teacher or any student, that we will find answers, and Cross-Marked: Sudanese-Australian Young Women Talk Education seeks to model this dialogic approach by providing one conversation along the way.

36 CHAPTER 1: SLOWLY BY SLOWLY: Ethnocinema, Media and

Women of the Sudanese Diaspora.9

Because we are people who believe that the world of tomorrow, the world we are in the process of building, cannot be viable without a regard for cultural differences; the other cannot be denied as his image transforms. (Jean Rouch, 2003:45)

While there have been many films in recent times on the sufferings and resilience of the ‘Lost Boys of Sudan’, most young women who have fled the violence remain astonishingly invisible. A survey of filmic sources on

Sudanese documentaries reveals more than 22 short or feature films on the Sudanese refugee experience – and only one of these significantly features the story of a girl or woman.10 Documentary film is increasingly accessible (both to viewers and to makers), mobile and highly marketable as a means of disseminating previously unheard stories and creating social change. ‘Brand recognition’ is one reason why terms such as ‘Lost Boys’ are so hard to abandon, and why those who don’t fall into these categories sometimes struggle to be seen and heard: name recognition, with funders and public opinion, is powerful.

There are a multitude of reasons why Sudanese young women may be less visible than their male counterparts, some of which began long before the term ‘Lost Boys’ was coined by a United Nations relief worker at the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya. This chapter will examine some

possibilities why most Sudanese young women were overlooked for refugee

9

Portions of this chapter were presented at Launceston, Tasmania in August 2008 as the paper “Fair Dinka: The ‘Found Girls’ of Sudan and Performative Integration into Contemporary Australia”. 10

This list of films about Sudan in general, or Darfur specifically is not exhaustive, but is a good place to start. Some films are feature length and some are shorts, but almost all are documentaries: Benjamin and His Brother, dir. Arthur Howes, 2002; The Weight of a Nation, prod. Kevin Kindle, 2006; God Grew Tired of Us, dir. Christopher Quinn, 2006; Come Back to Sudan, dir. Patti Bonnet & Daniel Junge, 2008; 3551, a Story of Change, UNICEF, 1998; All About Darfur, dir. Taghreed Elsanhouri, 2005; Lost Boys of Sudan, dir Megan Mylan & John Shenk, 2003; On Our Watch, Refugees International, 2006; Children of Terror, prod Hannah and Damien Lewis, 2004; War Child, dir. Christian Karim Chrobog, 2008; Facing Sudan, dir. Burce David Janu, 2007; Long Journey Home of James Nguen, dir Rick Castiglione, 2007; The Promise, dir Tim Salem, 2006; Child of Hope, dir Time Salem, 2008; Darfur Now, dir Ted Braun, prod Don Cheadle, 2007; Sand and Sorrow, dir Pau Freedman, 2008; African Soul, American Heart, dir. Debra Dawson, 2008; The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins, dir. Pietra Brettkelly, 2008. The following films include the story of one female each, in a cast of several boys’ stories: A Great Wonder: Lost Children of Sudan, Dir Kim Shelton, 2004; A Long Walk Home, dir Tiffany Frances, 2005; and the 2005 documentary Finding the Lost Girls of Sudan, prod. Ashley Umbro, is the only film that features a Sudanese young woman, Aduei Riak.

37 resettlement in the United States with the first wave of ‘Lost Boys’ in 2001, and how this pattern continues to inform the unequal gender representation in media coverage of the stories of Sudanese former refugees. It will also explore more fully the emerging genre of ethnocinema, and the possibilities inherent in this form of documentary, for women of the Sudanese diaspora, and for others who still struggle within their own communities and the international community, to be heard and seen.

TWICE FORGOTTEN: The ‘Lost Girls’ Are Growing Up From their refugee experiences, to their long and arduous process of

integration into new cultures, the invisibility of Sudanese young women has been noted by advocates and some aid workers, but it fails to enter the scope of many major aid organisations. According to journalists, although an “estimated 3,000 [females] arrived in Kakuma in 1992, most have simply vanished from official records” (Matheson, 2002:par.13). The blindness of aid organisations cannot be attributed to ignorance of the situation:

UNHCR officials knew about the girls. In December 2000, Julianne Duncan, an anthropologist specializing in refugee children filed a report explaining in heartbreaking detail how the girls were being shafted. (McKelvey, 2003:par.8)

In selection processes for resettlement in the United States, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) officials used lists of boys who had been counselled through a “psycho-social program”, but neither they nor the US Government seem to have looked further for children in need.

The US has received 3,276 Sudanese boys from this group since 2000. In this same time period, the US received only 89 girls.11 (Refugees International, 2002:par.3)

The absence of girls on the UNHCR list for humanitarian relocation to the US was best explained to Refugees International by a young ‘lost girl’: “We girls were not put into groups like the boys. If we had been put into groups, we might have been attacked. We are now in the community, and no one

11

I have cited American statistics because Australian statistics on Sudanese girls and young women are not available. I recognise that while intake processes are different for the USA and Australia, the general problem of visibility remains comparable, despite greater numbers of female refugees in resettlement in Australia. And the very lack of figures provides further confirmation of their invisibility.

38 knows where we are” (Refugees International, 2002:par.3). The girls endured many of the same traumatic experiences as the boys, but culturally could not be grouped to live by themselves. Like the boys, these girls had also lost family members and homes.

The reality is that these lost girls have been forgotten twice: upon arrival in Kakuma Refugee Camp, and again when the US refugee resettlement

program was started.(Edgerton, 2002:par.5)

Placement of manygirls with foster families inside Kakuma refugee camp lent the appearance that these girls were cared for, a claim disputed by some aid workers and former ‘lost girls’ like Aduei Riak:

“In Sudanese culture, a young woman is not allowed to stay alone, but for the guy it's okay,” says Aduei Riak. “So what really happened was the young girls were placed in foster homes, and while they were in foster homes they became mothers and housekeepers and got lost along the way.” (Beshkin, 2004:par.7)

As a result of these multiple factors, says journalist Tara McKelvey, “the girls simply disappeared” (McKelvey, 2003:par.6).

While the Lost Girls have begun to organise themselves in the United States, the Lost Boys remain the ‘superstars’ of refugee spokespersons in most countries. Even at a national Lost Boys and Girls conference in Arizona (2004), the girls were allocated only a single session at of the two-day event, and that at seven-thirty in the morning, where few Lost Boys (or anyone else) were present to hear their stories. In Australia, where the numbers of female refugees far outweigh males, there is still no women’s or girls’ organisation comparable to the Lost Boys Association, so political activism often

relegates females to subordinate roles. The Australian Lost Boys Association is focussed on issues mainly pertaining to male resettlement, and Sudanese- Australian young women (like Nyadol and Grace) who wish to advance feminist concerns must continue to agitate for more active roles within this male-dominated organisation.

While most former refugees who identify as ‘Lost Girls and Lost Boys’ are no longer either children or lost, the term is familiar worldwide, and carries with it the kind of brand-recognition that can often assist fundraising, and

39 initiate promotion of the Sudanese diasporic community. Although I am aware that many within the Sudanese diaspora use the title with pride and comfort, it is considered by some to be inaccurate or infantilising. As Laura de Luca notes,

The label overlooks the resilience of these young people and is not accurate for those who are now adults, but the Sudanese refugees themselves use the term because of its popular recognition. (DeLuca, 2008:para.2)

Grace Mabor, in her film Slowly By Slowly, recognises the power of the tales of the Lost Boys, which have had wide circulation in the popular media. She respects the suffering of those young men, but questions why these are the only stories Westerners seem to appreciate hearing of the Sudanese

experience.

Those Lost Boys I would tell you that they’re not moving on because they keep being reminded of the same thing over and over again, and it’s no good. They need to move on, they need to make a life out of themselves. Not with the Lost Boys name, but with their own name, and with their own ability to do something. So I don’t agree with it…The past is the past, the future is the future. You already told your story, it’s over and done with, now you go to a new chapter…a nicer story, “Yeah, I have kids, they’re big now and I’m not a Lost Boy any more”…that’s what they should do. It’s much more interesting instead of sad stuff all the time. I just think these people don’t want us to go ahead, they just want us to stay like this. And it’s no good.

Grace’s commentary recognises the role played by the media, and

acknowledges the fact that often these films and books about the Lost Boys are not being made by the Lost Boys themselves, but by outside Others. Her commentary exposes the insider/outsider dichotomy of those who are

experiencing flight from Sudan’s civil war versus those who are framing and commenting upon them (including myself). When Grace identifies “these people” who are clearly not Sudanese, and ascribes an intention that doesn’t “want us to go ahead”, she does not extend the analysis to our shared project. The gap is intriguing, especially considering that she identifies Americans as the worst perpetrators, but does not include me (as an American) in her critique.

…All these American people…who are going back there taking over and making all these funny funny movies or documentaries. Well (we) should take control and make (our) own documentaries and give (them) to the world. Because it’s not fair, like even if we do have poor people …we have wealthy people too, and we do have very nice places for you to relax and have fun. So when they show all these things it makes me angry.

40 Because I feel like it’s not fair. Why do we have to be shown like that? Do

I look like I’m suffering now? No. So why are they doing that? I think it’s the media. They don’t actually see that there are other interesting things to tell.

Over the period of filming together, Grace and I talked more about the construction of African identities in western contexts (particularly through the media), and less about education. She came to question why films about Africa were always tragic and violent, when films about Western nations like the United States and Australia so often showed positive images, despite the tragedy and violence present in these cultures. I felt largely ill-equipped to offer adequate explanations for these questions. We discussed the traditional documentary roles of ‘filmmaker’ and ‘subject’, and the possibilities for ethnocinematic collaboration. As the filming reached completion, Grace’s commentary focussed on the power of the media which sometimes outweighs the influence of classrooms and curricula. Her commentary became more impassioned as she focussed on these multiple forms of creating and knowing, versus the more traditional methods she has found in schools and universities.

How come, when they show Africa, it’s more like they show the poor places, they don’t actually show the exciting places of Africa? ...I used to wonder why but you kinda told me it’s for us to go out there, to go back there and do it for ourselves and show them the best parts of living in Africa. But when they go there they actually look for the worst parts, they go and look for the poor people and all this tragedy. Everywhere there’s tragedy and everywhere there’s wars, but you don’t see people showing America like, “Oh my god this is the poor place,” they always show these