Identity In The Play 'No Sugar' By Jack Davis

Jack Davis’ 1986 play No Sugar is a realist drama which examines the trials, tribulations and eventual survival of Millimurra-Munday family through the Great Depression as they are forcibly removed from their homeland in Northam to Moore River Native Settlement. The survival of their culture is dependant on the way that individuals shape their identity and in this play Davis shows how family is the cornerstone on which identity can be maintained even in the most traumatic of circumstances.

Jimmy Munday survives and thrives as an individual because he has the support of his extended family. He finds his identity within his family and this security allows him to critically assess and comment on the motives behind government decisions such
It is dramatically ironic that he is a ‘successful’ prototype of assimilation yet is rejected by both ‘white’ and Indigenous societies. The children even mock him and call him a traitor or ‘black crow’ (p.90) Ultimately, Jimmy’s line will die out with him and thus not only will he not survive and the culture, traditions and line of his family will die with him also. It is this fact which also seems to await Mary Dargurru whe we first meet her in the
He learns from his family that he must stand up for what he believes in and this shapes his identity and survival. At the end of the play, Joe, Mary and their new born baby Jimmy go off with supplies and an empty sugar bag, not filled with the short term sweet platitudes of ‘white’ handouts, violence and condescension but with a supplies, a homemade knife and a sense of family, culture and identity that is hopefully enough to help them forge a new future in an old