Mudrooroo

Colin Thomas Johnson (21 August 1938 – 20 January 2019), better known by his nom de plume Mudrooroo, was an Australian novelist, poet, essayist and playwright.

His many works are centred on Aboriginal Australian characters and topics; however, there was some doubt cast upon his claims to have Aboriginal ancestry.

Born Colin Johnson in 1938, he was separated from his mother (his father had died before he was born) shortly before his ninth birthday.

After spending seven years at Clontarf Boys' Town, he was turned out of the institution at the age of sixteen.

He turned to burglary and served two stints in Fremantle Prison, where he began writing literature.

After leaving prison, he travelled to India and London, before settling in Melbourne.

Johnson's first novel, Wild Cat Falling was a coming-of-age story set in Western Australia, and became a bestseller when it was published in 1965.

He then spent periods living in India and the United States, where he finished his novel Long Live Sandawara (published 1979) about the Bunuba resistance hero Jandamarra.

With Jack Davis, he co-founded the National Aboriginal and Islander Writers, Oral Literature, and Dramatists Association.

He was also head of Aboriginal Studies at Murdoch University in Perth.

Mudrooroo won the FAW Patricia Weickhardt Award to an Aboriginal Writer in 1979.

Johnson changed his name to Mudrooroo around the time of the Australian Bicentenary (1988).

He was also known as Mudrooroo Narogin and Mudrooroo Nyoongah, as well as Narogin, after the Indigenous spelling for his place of birth, and Nyoongah, after the name of the people from whom he claimed descent.

Mudrooroo means paperbark in the Bibbulmun language group spoken by the Noongar.

Informed that Mudrooroo's oldest sister, Betty Polglaze, had conducted genealogical research in 1992 that traced some (although not all) of her family back five generations, Laurie contacted Polglaze.

Polglaze, who identified as a white person, told Laurie that she could find no trace of Aboriginal ancestry in the family.

In early 1996, a member of the Nyoongah community questioning Mudrooroo's Aboriginality approached journalist Victoria Laurie.

Laurie subsequently wrote an article for her newspaper, The Australian, titled Identity Crisis sparking a scandal that received nationwide media coverage in 1996/97.

A request by the Nyoongah community to substantiate his claimed kinship to the Kickett family was not acknowledged because he was overseas and then in the process of relocating interstate.

On 27 July 1996 the Nyoongah elders released a public statement: "The Kickett family rejects Colin Johnson's claim to his Aboriginality and any kinship ties to the family".

Mudrooroo's prior statements about Indigenous writers such as Sally Morgan, whom he excluded from his definition of Aboriginality, did not assist his cause.

He had said of Morgan's book My Place that it made Aboriginality acceptable so long as you were "young, gifted and not very black".

In addition, Mudrooroo's writings had placed emphasis on kinship and family links as key features of Aboriginal identity, and his rejection of his biological family deeply offended some in the Aboriginal community.

The resulting scandal and public debate over issues of authenticity and what constitutes Aboriginal identity led to some subject coordinators removing Mudrooroo's books from academic courses and he later said he was unable to find a publisher for a sequel to his previous novel.

Initially, many people came to Mudrooroo's defence, some claiming it was a "white conspiracy" or a racist attack on Aboriginality, with some claiming Polglaze's "amateur sleuthing" was being exploited.

Award-winning Indigenous author Graeme Dixon called on Mudrooroo to come forward and tell the truth, stressing that it was important to "out" pretenders and reclaim Aboriginal culture.

Several authors see evidence in his writings that Mudrooroo deliberately assumed an Aboriginal identity to legitimise his work when in his early 20s, although it remains possible he was unaware.

Editor Gerhard Fischer believes that it was Dame Mary Durack, though not Aboriginal herself, who "defined and determined" his Aboriginal identity.

After the 1996 controversy surrounding his Aboriginal identity, Mudrooroo spent 15 years living in India and Nepal, where he married (possibly for the third time ) and had a son.

In an article published in 1997, Mudrooroo described Durack's foreword to his first novel as the origin of the "re-writing of his body" as Aboriginal.

Mudrooroo later replied to his critics, stating that his dark skin meant he was always treated as Aboriginal by society, therefore his life experience was that of an Aborigine.

In 2011 he and his family returned to Australia, where he published Balga Boy Jackson (2017) and began work on an (unfinished) autobiography.

He died in Brisbane in 2019.