On his return from an inter-State lecture tour of Australia, Professor Henry Frendo recounts what have been the successes and what are the challenges ahead for thousands of Maltese-Australians and their progeny

The first part of this article appeared in last Sunday’s ‘Gallarija’

Maltese language retention or otherwise remains a consideration throughout Australia. The language has ceased being taught in Western Australia, where even Maltese language broadcasting seems to have succumbed to its fate after a long dedicated stint by Carmen Morris, followed by Roger Vella Bonavita and others. In South Australia, where the Malta-born population is not much higher, language teaching survives. The honorary consul,

Dr Frank Scicluna, told me that the recent Gonzi visit might have induced some further interest in such classes, where a new teaching addition is Anna Farrugia, a ganutell expert. Dr Scicluna was behind an all-Australia conference on Maltese language teaching and educational resources, hosted in Canberra last October, which a representative even from the WA Maltese Club, their librarian Gerry Pule’, attended.

Traditionally these classes have been strongest in Melbourne and Sydney, although the longest-established concentrated Maltese migrant settlement, dating back to the 1880s, was of course in Queensland. It is perhaps for that reason that language retention there would have waned, although there certainly continues to be more than a flicker of interest in ancestry, roots and migrant history, as Carmel Berretta’s and Laraine Schembri’s family histories of Mackay’s Maltese show. While Maltese in the diaspora often complain of being abandoned by the Malta authorities, frequently enough they themselves do not take care to keep supportive contact points in Malta such as the university abreast of their own activities, such as books and booklets published; or exhibitions held, hardly reported upon or transferred on tour. Like Melbourne and Sydney, Perth too has its Maltese “professional and business” association (led by Louise Vink, Paul Calleja and others).

Between utility and

self-esteem

A university located in the western suburbs of Melbourne, where thousands of Maltese live, and which has scores of students of Maltese descent, is Victoria University, whose inter-university cooperation agreement which our university has had since the early 1990s is being renewed. At VU, I was invited to address A seminar on Understanding Diasporas: The Maltese Case, which I conducted, was chaired by Professor Danny Ben-Moshe, who directs VU’s Institute for Community, Ethnicity and Policy Alternatives (ICEPA); it was attended by senior VU academics as well as Maltese community leaders.

Language retention was one of the problem areas addressed, as Maltese ranks among the lowest: Greek and Italian for example have much higher retention rates; their speakers are more numerous, and they have more mother-country supports. Broadcasting was another. Discourse would have to be uplifted if succeeding Maltese generations were to feel that their ethnicity did them proud, or at any rate seemed worthwhile to “invest” time in. The seminar overviewed the Maltese diaspora worldwide, noting its different phases and genres, but then drew attention to points which applied specifically to Australia. One of the telling points raised in the ensuing discussion by Professor Hurriyet Babacan, was whether migrants cared more for their country of origin than their country of origin cared about them.

As Ben-Moshe says, it would be a shame if the Maltese were left out of the VU project on Diaspora and Homelands: Linkages, Identity and Political Representation, for which the federal funding is insufficient. Perhaps as a gesture of solidarity the OPM or one of the Malta-based banks could sponsor this segment? During a dinner hosted after the seminar by the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Elizabeth Harman, a number of areas where inter-university cooperation could flourish, resources permitting, were brought up.

Even in Perth, in the vastness of Western Australia between a desert and an ocean, I was pleased to attend a social activity on the occasion of the Otto Settembre. I had not seen the community’s new club which, in addition to a very large hall, comprises meeting rooms, a bar and a small library; Malta also has an honorary consul in the person of Dr Anthony Sciberras, a popular GP.

Some of those present, including a few of the “child orphans” in the scheme which has been the subject of much comment, could not speak Maltese so well. But there they were, on 8 September, Il-Vitorja, listening to Il-Bajja tal-Mellieha, dancing away, and planning to extend the club’s library of Maltese books.

The monument to child migrants in Freemantle

specifically mentions the Maltese. There are also a few mementoes of Strickland’s governorship in both Perth and Freemantle, its port, where the governor had an island vileggjatura off the coast, and as elsewhere some recorded World War II mementoes.

On sameness and difference

Assimilation (as in the American “melting pot” variety) was more difficult than integration. Integration demands specific emotional responses and attitudes towards a way of life. Assimilation necessitates, according to Peterson Kent, “harmonising with new ways of doing, thinking and feeling.” A tall order.

Multiculturalism is not at all an easy task either. As Zubrzycki has noted: “The culture of a group cannot be seen as static, a fossilized entity which remains unchanged from the time a particular group sets foot on Australian soil but rather as a living, dynamic, changing and interacting set of life patterns.”

With their Christian-Caucasian and European-Commonwealth backgrounds, such insertion for Maltese in a continent like Australia has not been too difficult over time. For inter-

generational “survivance” to materialise, however, there has to be a worthy, instructed cultural dynamic, one which attracts, motivates and inspires, in touch with the evolving matrix “back home” in the “old country” as much as with the countries of permanent settlement. Some could simply dismiss such a cultural-ethnic continuum on the ground that “when in Rome do as the Romans do” – period.

Others however would regard such inter-culturality in an accepted context as an enrichment, and a right, not least in a fast-changing Australia, where “whites only” (including Greeks, Italians and Maltese) was a policy until some decades ago.

While cultural supports and feedback are desirable, equally it is false for Maltese in Malta to think that migrants depend on them for sustenance; there is so much that can be learned from and exchanged with Maltese from the diaspora, some of whom have truly excelled in a wide variety of fields.

This could become easier to do now with dual citizenship across generations, but some serious planning and budgeting is required.

Professor Frendo is director of the Institute of Maltese Studies