A story that needs to be told

February 18, 1998
Issue 

Snake Cradle
By Roberta Sykes
Allen and Unwin, 1997. 330 pp.

Review by Maureen Sexton

Snake Cradle is the first volume of Roberta Sykes' three-volume autobiography Snake Dreaming. Sykes leads us through the story of her life until 18 years of age. We experience through her writing the pain, disappointment, inequality and outrage of growing up as an Aboriginal person amid racism in Queensland.

Sykes was born in the 1940s. Racism was manifest in many ways. Her Murri friends were not allowed to swim in the local pool. She was forced to leave school at 14. She was continually sexually harassed. She was regularly picked up, interrogated, harassed and threatened by police.

She suffered an extremely violent rape, by a gang of white men, which nearly ended her life. It led to deep depression, pregnancy and a harrowing court case after which four of the men received prison sentences. The graphic accounts of these experiences are horrifying but necessary. The stories of indigenous people need to be told.

Sykes' love-hate relationship with her white mother is another interesting aspect of this book. Her mother refused to tell Sykes who her father was and lied to her about where she was born. Her efforts to "protect" Sykes from the consequences of her Aboriginality were pathetic and misdirected.

Sykes also describes her life-threatening childhood illness, and growing into womanhood with no information about menstruation or sex.

Sykes takes us through her discovery of her Aboriginality and her relationship with the snake. She meets an old black man who tells her about her people. "I know your people ... Snake people from north." This is the first time she has heard this, and it has a powerful impact on her.

Towards the end of the book, she tells us: "I returned to my totem, the snake, and learned 'the silence of the serpent'. Without vocal chords, in pain the snake rears back and opens its mouth to cry in complete silence, and its agony is only apparent to those who know it well.

"I engrossed myself in everything I could learn about snakes and formed my own opinions about how they had become maligned, like myself, and been made symbols of sin in European theology. This was also very much like the situation I found myself in, through circumstances and actions not of my own making. Their innocence in the face of the way society thought about them and struck out against them mirrored my own, and my identification with their situation was both profound and emotionally rewarding."

Dr Roberta Sykes is one of Australia's best known black rights activists. She is the author of seven books and has written, contributed to and co-authored many publications, journal articles and conference papers. She is guest lecturer at universities and tertiary institutions throughout Australia and is in demand as an international speaker. She was awarded the Australian Human Rights Medal in 1994.

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