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Book review: 'The N Word' by Stephen Hagan

By Aden Ridgeway - posted Wednesday, 8 June 2005


The first thing that struck me on reading this book is that Stephen Hagan comes from a long line of troublemakers. And I mean that in the most complimentary way!

In Steve's book, The N Word I read with pleasure of his resourceful great-grandmother who successfully managed to negotiate a life between two cultures, and to both hold on to her kids and get them to school; his grandparents who moved around working different pastoral properties (and also avoiding the authorities who were after their children); and his father, Jim, who made trouble for governments through his membership of the national Indigenous advisory body - the NACC.

Stephen Hagan obviously has trouble in his veins!

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But I think for most people with a passing interest in news and current affairs, he is that guy who never seemed to be out of the news with his seemingly never-ending fight to remove the word “nigger” from a football stand in Toowoomba. But The N Word is not just a story of one person and his fight about an outdated, racist word in a Queensland town - it is a journey through contemporary Indigenous politics.

He and his family are products of their time - and his family's journey can be traced alongside the history of this country. His father and mother, like the majority of Aboriginal families of the time, ended up in a blacks' camp on the fringes of town - in this case, the camp was called the Yumba and was on the edge of Cunnamulla.

It was the usual historical route of forced relocation and frontier violence on their traditional lands that saw his family end up there. His grandfather worked for squatters and, along with all other Aboriginal workers of the time, suffered the indignity of losing about three quarters of his wages to the Queensland Government. Steve's grandfather, however, eventually acquired an exemption from the repressive Queensland Act - this exemption was referred to as getting his dog tags.

It almost required an Aboriginal person to renounce their Aboriginality - to be accepted as an honorary white, and has been condemned by many in retrospect as selling out on culture.

I think we need to look at it in this way - young Albert Hagan's dog tags enabled him to keep all his wages; allowed him independence to move about the State as he wished; and gave him a certain amount of control over his life. This sense of choice and control - not to mention some financial stability and what that brings to quality of life - he was able to pass on to his family.

Steve's father became politically involved at a time when white Australia was slowly becoming aware of the realities of our Indigenous lives. As a result of the Hagan family moving from the Yumba into town, and the broader community connections that grew from that, Steve's father, Jim Hagan, was elected to the NACC - the National Aboriginal Consultative Committee - the first elected advisory body to an Australian Government.

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I do think this part of the book provides a point of reflection on why it is important that Indigenous people run our own affairs and make our own decisions, and why it is not good enough that white bureaucrats do it for us.

Jim Hagan's involvement in national Aboriginal politics then flowed through his family and got them all active in their own lives, helping them see that you can make a difference, that you are as good as the person next to you regardless of the colour of your skin. It is only through such leadership, education and the experience of empowerment that real change eventuates and nowhere is this more obvious than in this story.

But to look at the other side, this is also a litany of the dangers an individual who decides to take on the authorities or to get involved in politics and to fight for their ideals, can expose themselves to.

In The N Word you can read more than you want to know about state politics, national politics, Indigenous community politics, local government, dealing with our glorious mainstream media, the police, prisons, bureaucracies, and just generally being Indigenous. Hagan's account of doing deals during the Mundingburra by-election is a hair-raising one and a cautionary tale for all who contemplate entering into deals on politically expedient grounds.

His tortuous re-telling of his battle against the use of the "N" word - "Nigger" that is - on the football ground in Toowoomba is a tough read. Each page painfully peels back layer after layer of legal action and reaction until we are finally presented with a glimmer of light from the UN decision.

However, we are still left to ponder the "R" word - Racism that is - and how deeply ingrained it is in our national psyche. In Indigenous affairs, we regularly need to look to international human rights standards. If not, all we have left is the "Australian tradition" and we know that tradition is an unfair one; a racist one; and a politically expedient one.

Stephen Hagan's father used to say to him, "A quitter is not a winner and a winner is not a quitter". And maybe I would add that a winner is not always a winner as this book shows. But I don't want to make it sound all bad. This is a story of a resilient man that has to be told, and as such, it will enrich our national story bank and hopefully our history.

There are many sobering lessons in this book as well a few laughs. However, here is the product warning:

  • if you want to know when enough is enough - don’t read this book;
  • if you want to feel warm and fuzzy about our justice system and about the state of race relations in this country - don’t read this book;
  • if you want to know how to win friends and influence people … don’t' read this book; and
  • if you're after happy endings, this book is not for you!

But if you want to read about what it takes to uncompromisingly stand up for what you believe in - then I recommend you read The N Word.

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About the Author

Senator Aden Ridgeway is the Australian Democrats' Spokesperson on Indigenous Affairs and a Senator for New South Wales.

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