Sally Morgan | the-aborigines-site

Sally Morgan's Viewpoint

Sally Morgan was born in Perth (Australia) in 1951. Her paintings and books illustrate her aboriginal heritage. She discovered her roots at the age of 15. She painted Citizen ship in 1988. It represents a dog wearing a collar with "Australian citizen" written on it. The message conveyed seems to be that aborigines felt they were treated worse than dogs and they couldn't have the citizen ship in their own country. So we think that Sally Morgan wanted to denounce the power of the settlers on the abos. She wrote My Place which sold over half a million copies in Australia, it has also been published in Europe, Asia and the United States.In this book she explains when she discovered her roots. She seems proud of her aboriginal origins whereas her sister Jill often lies about it because the mothers of her friends have prejudicies on Aborigines.

In My Place, Sally Morgan describes her childhood.
One day, when she came home from school, she found her grandmother Nan weeping. Nan thought her grand children Jill wanted a white grandma and she thought they were ashamed of her. Sally was too astonished to remove her schoolbag. She became aware of her roots at 15 ! It proves that she lived in her own world and nobody had ever told her about her skin color. Jill, Sally's sister, got angry at Sally and scorned her by calling her "dumb". She was fed up with her questions and upset by her naive attitude. To sum up, Jill feels ashamed of her origins because she has suffered from racism while Sally accepts and seems somewhat proud of being Aboriginal. Jill and Sally have opposite viewpoints.

This painting depicts Sally Morgan when she was a little girl. Indeed, it's a little dark-skinned girl who seems close to nature. Unlike British settlers, the Aborigines respect nature.

She had the Human Rights Literature and Other Writing for My Place in 1987 and for Wanamurraganya, the story of Jack McPhee in 1989.