NAIDOC Week 2024 finished yesterday, but, as I often do, I am bookending the week with Monday Musings posts. Last week, I posted on First Nations Australian Stella listees. This week I’d like to highlight some recent (meaning 21st century) short story collections. In my admittedly limited experience, First Nations people can be wonderful storytellers. Lest this sound like a stereotype or generalisation, see Tara June Winch’s quote below!
As I shared last week, NAIDOC Week’s theme this year was Keep the Fire Burning! Blak, Loud and Proud. It encompasses a number of ideas but one, the website says, relates to forging “a future where the stories, traditions, and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities are cherished and celebrated, enriching the fabric of the nation with the oldest living culture in the world.” Short stories make a perfect contribution to this goal, and contemporary First Nations writing is richly served in this form. My aim here is to share a selection in order to provide a resource for anyone interested in reading more First Nations stories.
“we are a culture that has survived by storytelling” (Tara June Winch)*
The first First Nations stories I read were the “myths and legends” which comprised a significant component of the first works of First Nations literature to find its way into the mainstream. Not all of these, I admit, were written by First Nations people, though some were, such as those published in the 1970s and 80s by Dick Roughsey. Some others claimed (and I hope this was honest) to have shared the stories with the agreement of the relevant owners of those stories. I then jump a few decades to journals like The Griffith Review which has, from its start, included writings – fiction and nonfiction – by First Nations writers. Indeed, they write on their website that
One of the things that makes Australia truly unique is being home to the oldest continuous civilisation. What this really means is undervalued and little understood in this country. It is part of the reason Griffith Review has featured Indigenous writing in every edition.
So, we find articles, poetry and fiction by Tony Birch, Melissa Lucashenko, Ellen van Neerven, Alexis Wright, and others. One of the first First Nations short stories I reviewed on my blog was one by Melissa Lucashenko from The Griffith Review.
Selected short story collections and anthologies
- Tony Birch, Common people (UQP, 2017) (Lisa’s review)
- Tony Birch, Dark as last night (UQP, 2021)
- Tony Birch, Father’s day (Hunter Publications, 2009)
- Tony Birch, The promise (UQP, 2014)
- John Morrissey, Firelight stories (Text Publishing, 2023)
- Mykaela Saunders (ed), This all come back now: An anthology of First Nations speculative fiction (UQP, 2022)
- Adam Thompson, Born into this (UQP, 2021) (my review)
- Ellen van Neerven (ed.), Flock: First Nations stories then and now (UQP, 2021) (on my TBR)
- Ellen van Neerven, Heat and light (UQP, 2014) (my review)
- Archie Weller, The window seat (UQP, 2009)
- Tara June Winch, After the carnage (UQP, 2016)
As with the Stella listees, UQP leads the pack here too, with such a strong commitment not only to First Nations writing but to that dreaded form, the short story! And, many of these collections have been listed for (or won) some of Australia’s top literary awards. The stories cover all genres – contemporary fiction, speculative, dystopian, historical fiction, satire, ghost stories, and so on.
I would like to add here a title from Fremantle Press, though its ambit is a little wider. Published in 2022 and edited by Ellen van Neerven and Rafeif Ismail, it is Unlimited futures: Speculative, visionary Blak+Black fiction, and it comprises “speculative, visionary fiction from 21 emerging and established First Nations writers and Black writers” (Fremantle website). I’ve reviewed a few pieces from it, including Ambelin Kwaymullina’s Fifteen days on Mars (my review).
I didn’t plan for this to be a treatise, but a taster – or, is it, tempter? I will close on another quote that speaks to me …
We are your original storytellers. Our culture has survived through story and we are the civilisation with songlines etched in the land you inhabit. (Tara June Winch)*
* Tara June Winch, “Decolonising the shelf”, Griffith Review 66 (Nov 2019)
Click here for my previous NAIDOC Week-related Monday Musings.
Have you read any First Nations short stories – Australian or otherwise? And if so, care to recommend any?
Whispering Gums 
Guess what I’m in the middle of doing so as not able to read posts …?
Oh my, I fear this is a test I’m going to fail, MR. Cataract surgery? Crocheting? Please don’t say moving again!! Is there something I’ve forgotten?
I’ll email you soon.
Oh … I hope you are ok. I’ll remain patient.
That’s an interesting idea, that Aboriginal stories should be part of our culture. I think of traditional stories as part of ‘their’ culture and none of my business. But if they are willing to share them, particularly at children’s level, and they seem to be, I buy them for my grandchildren, then that is how that might happen.
Interesting Bill. I think my feeling (understanding) is that when cultures live together they all become part of each other’s – to some degree. They will never completely align – and nor should they, because some things are particular to a culture and none of our business – but cultures do enrich each other through sharing (not imposing, though that happens too) and I think this is what is being said here? That “they” are willing to and want to share their culture with the rest of us, and for that shared culture to become part of who we are and how we live.
I understand “culture” broadly so not just traditional stories, but a whole way of living and thinking that changes over time as it accommodates the changes of time and impacts of other cultures. I’m probably saying this clumsily as there are a lot of nuances in all this, not to mention negative and well as positive influences, but I hope I’ve made some sense?
I didn’t know that Australia had the oldest continuous population anywhere on the globe. I’d be interested to know more about how they measure such a thing. I remember taking a class in college called adolescent development, and in that class I learned that because I live in the United States, that we cannot depend on the generations before us to teach us how to raise children. It’s not that they aren’t smart people, it’s that the culture and technology in America grows so rapidly that we aren’t preserving the old ways of doing things that work, and our information is outdated. In places that are more isolated from outside influence, generations, raise children together, and quite successfully, too.
I think it’s based on anthropological evidence which shows that First Nations Australians have had a continuing presence on the continent for 60,000 years (the number of years varies though on location, and increasing evidence with improved technologies and research methodology). I presume that no other group in the world has this continuing presence, but this is what we are being told and I haven’t seen it refuted in serious media but I haven’t checked the science.
I think we’ve discussed this issue – that you cannot depend on the generations before us to teach us how to raise children – before. I don’t completely agree, because most of raising children is about love, care and wisdom. They don’t change. The challenge for parents and grandparents is how to apply care and wisdom in the world their children are growing up in. It’s a challenge, yes, because technology in particular is making applying some wisdoms difficult, but to say you can’t depend on grandparents, say, to offer good and usual advice is, in my opinion, incorrect!! That said, I’m glad I’m not raising children today!!
I’ve even heard different opinions on what it means to love and care for children. To hold a lot or not, to have them sleep near your they are comforted or not, to tell them you love or if that will spoil them, etc. You’d think it would be simpler, but each generation has been influenced by its own pop psychology, too. Even today, my nieces a nephew cannot get on or off the school bus without someone over a certain age present with them. We used to run around like hethans all summer with zero adults around starting when we were ages 8 and 10.
I suspect some of this is a case of “it was ever thus”? Each generation is as you say affected by pop psychology and also by the guru of the day (think Dr Spock). Every generation, I think, thinks they were freer than the current one, just like every traveller thinks they saw places at a better time than now! This is my experience!
Quite likely I’ve already mentioned Thomas King’s The Truth about Stories, one of the earlier Massey Lectures (a phenomemon likely only recognised by CBC devotees). Here’s a link to the first one, if you’re interested (there’s also a book): https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/audio/1.1465105
I think you did Marcie … but thank you for the link!