INTRODUCTION

Jimmy Chi's musical Bran Nue Dae, based on his youth in Broome and in a Catholic boarding school in Perth, opens with the musings of the adolescent Aboriginal hero and prodigal son, Willy. He is reflecting resignedly on the futility of striving to meet white expectations, and on the contradictions of their values, realising that Aborigines are, regardless of effort, relegated by those defining and imposing the standards, to marginal status — at best he could be an ‘acceptable coon’. Having rejected, or fled, the rigours of an authoritarian Catholic school system, Willy returns home to Broome with his ‘uncle’, Tadpole, a wily drifter who had lived on the fringes of white society. Both are travelling north to renew connections, to become whole.