The Life of Kamilaroi man Barry Keegan : a Professional Aboriginal Ballroom Dancer

Abstract

In Australia, if you asked people who was a famous Aboriginal person you are likely to be told the names of a number of different sports people or maybe an artist or two. You don’t hear about many other famous Aboriginal people. You certainly wouldn’t heat about a successful Aboriginal ballroom dancer. I decided to undertake this Master’s thesis to document the life of my cousin Barry Keegan who after having a very traumatic childhood rose up to be a national and international professional ballroom dancer and successful entrepreneur. He married three times but didn’t have any children, I feel that it is up to me to carry on his legacy. This is a detailed story of Barry’s life including has time in several institutions, including Boystown, Yasmar and Mt Penang, however it also is the story of myself and my journey through academia and that of how Barry fitted into my family. I gathered my research mainly from Barry who sadly died before I could complete this work. I also was able to retrieve several documents giving accounts of his life and had access to family documents and photos. I come to this thesis with a lived experience of being an Aboriginal person, my interviews with Barry highlight the importance of Oral History in documenting Aboriginal people’s lives. I visited him a number of times and stayed overnight writing notes on the stories he had to tell. Sometimes I could tell that it was very painful him so I just let it go. There is a larger story there to tell but not for me if he did not choose to open up. Being in his eighties and suffering from terminal cancer it is amazing and fortuitus that I got as much information that I did.