Fear the bitch who sheds no tears: the persistence of the female scapegoat in cultural representations of frontier violence and stolen generations

A powerful and resonant drama, the reassessment of our history that Holy Day offers tells us more about our contemporary cultural preoccupations than about our past. Set as a mystery, encompassing today's two great contested aspects of Aboriginal history-frontier massacres and the stolen generations, the play is quite explicitly, concerned with apportioning blame. In proffering up one female (Aboriginal) as the unjustly accused perpetrator, then another, white, as the real (and unpunished) perpetrator, the play provides an ending that is as thought provoking as it is, ultimately, unsatisfying.