Ruby is the aboriginal girl who is both physically and sexually abused by white people and ends up in a mental institute. All her life she longs for her family, yet when they finally come and visit her, she has already descended into madness and no longer able to recognize them. In the scene “cleaning routine 2”, Ruby asked sarcastically what the aboriginal children can be when they grown up. In unison the children sing to the tune of “We are happy little vegemites” --- “we love to work like slaves, we all adore to work like slaves”. Through the lively tune and laughing faces, Harrison actually mocks at the discrimination of career choices for the aboriginal children. The song itself is about healthy children life, yet the stolen generation was not given equal chances of education, they can only take up jobs which were not wanted by educated white people. Throughout the play, Ruby also raises a similar question, “where are you?” Here, Harrison wants to cry out for justice and humanity, strongly condemning the Australian government for the suffering brought to her people.
Another character who had also been treated unfairly is Sandy. When he gets out of the children home, he has never spent Christmas in the same place twice. He works on a boat for eight years and twice as hard as any other white man, yet he is still underpaid. Therefore he cannot afford a stable house of his own. Whenever he settles down, the police come and chase him away. Hence, he often uses the phrase “always on the run”. Through this, Harrison criticizes the situation her people are in, they are totally under the mercy of the white government and have nearly no freedom of their own, being “kept out” of the society. Sandy also narrates the story of the Mungee in the play, which tells of how the black monster Mungee cannot steal and eat children anymore at night after its skin turned white. However, this is a contrary to Harrison’s younger days, when white people were stealing the aboriginal children in broad daylight. At the end of the story, Sandy leaves the comment “it is not the black that you should be afraid of”, portraying Harrison’s assertion that under the assimilation policy, the white government has provoked fear amongst the aboriginal society.
The last character I want to talk about is Jimmy. The “welfare” lied to him that his mother has been dead, even though they have putting his mother’s letters away all along. A disheartened Jimmy found out that only after twenty-six years that his mother has been alive all the time. However, before he gets to reunite with her again, his mother died. It can e inferred here Harrison’s disapproval of the whole unyielding bureaucracy of that time, which not only kept mother and son part for over two decades, but also inundated the victim with disheartening lies. In the end, Jimmy committed suicide, saying he has “been a thug and a thief, but (he has) never stolen anyone’s soul. Harrison wants to express her deep anger towards the government at that time, which was not only a thief in stealing aboriginal children, but also shattered their hearts in the process.
All in all, Harrison criticizes the assimilation policy on the whole in many ways through the lines in the play, revealing the personal and cultural devastation it had brought to her people, an emotionally taxing punch that had brought a wound in the hearts of the aboriginal people that can never be healed.
