First Nations Australians

Monday musings on Australian literature: Blak and Bright, 2024

/ whisperinggums / 32 Comments

Eight years ago, I wrote a post about a new festival called Blak and Bright, which was described at the time as “the debut event of the Victorian Indigenous Literary Festival”. I am thrilled to find that eight years later, this festival is still going strong. So often festivals, and literary initiatives in general, appear on the scene, but soon falter. Not this one. Now formally named the Blak and Bright First Nations Literary Festival, it is held annually in Naarm (Melbourne). This year’s dates are March 14 to 17, making it a four-day event.

Their “mission statement”, to use my terminology, is simple and to the point:

We believe that Blak stories are for everyone.

The Festival, they say, is unique, “with over sixty First Nations artists front and centre”. It celebrates “the diverse expressions of First Nations writers and covers all genres from oral stories to epic novels and plays to poetry”. In 2024, they are offering new events, alongside favourite events from past Festivals. Most sessions are free and some will be live-streamed, so you can register to receive the link. This is why I am posting on it now – there is still time to register!

The theme for 2024 is Blak Futures Now, with the tagline reading “Stories, epics, poems, monologues, history, activism. Embrace the diversity of expression, paving the way for Blak futures now.” This year’s keynote address, State of the Nations, will be delivered on opening night by Goa-Gunggari-Wakka Wakka Murri woman from Queensland, Leah Purcell (whose versions of The drover’s wife I posted on in 2022). This session does have an admission fee, as do a few, mostly performance-oriented, sessions.

To whet your appetite, here are some of the sessions (all of them free, but bookings are essential):

  • Yung, Blak and Bold: a festival regular, this year’s session is promoted as “get a glimpse into the minds of young writers who are shaping the future of Blak literature. With John Morrissey, Stone Motherless Cold, Susie Anderson and moderated by Neika Lehman”.
  • Blak Book Club: another regular, with this year’s club discussing Melissa Lucashenko’s Edenglassie and Jane Harrison’s The visitors, moderated by Daniel Browning.
  • YA Awesome: this session is just what its name implies, that is, it’s about writing “compelling narratives that young adult readers love to read”. It will feature some writers I don’t know, which is probably not surprising given my reading interests – Gary Lonesborough, Graham Akhurst, and Melanie Saward.
  • Sistas Are Doin’ It: another regular, with this year’s women being Deborah Cheetham Fraillon, Helen Milroy, and Debra Dank (see my review of her book We come with this place). They will talk about how they write “while juggling the many roles Aboriginal women fulfil in their communities”,

These next sessions are also free but I want to list them separately because their topics cross over all the others! They are:

  • Language Lives: the program describes it as follows, “What role do First Nations languages play in Australia’s creative outputs? You might be surprised. With Kim Scott, Kirli Saunders, and moderated by Philip Morrissey”. (I have written about a lecture Kim Scott gave on recovering languages.)
  • Blak Imprints: I don’t know which imprints the participants will be discussing, but we all know how critical supportive publishers are for getting diverse/minority writers out there. In this session, Rachel Bin Salleh, Tisha Carter, and Yasmin Smith will “discuss the importance of First Nations imprints in publishing. What else is needed in the publishing ecology?”
  • Who Can Critique Blak Work: I’d especially love to be at this one. We talk a lot about “own” story-writing, but I have raised a few times here the issue of critiquing the work of cultures very different from my own. How can I do it, or, in fact should I do it? What would it mean if I didn’t? The session is described as follows, “Should only Blak critics critique Blak work? What does the Blak lens bring to the process? With Bryan Andy, Daniel Browning, Declan Fry, Tristen Harwood and moderated by Davey Thompson”.

These are just a few of many sessions being offered. There are sessions on poetry and songwriting, there are readings, and more. Check out the program at this link if you are interested. You can see the names of all the artists, and the sessions they are appearing in, at this link.

Are you likely to attend – in person, or online?

Ian Terry, Uninnocent landscapes (#BookReview)

/ whisperinggums / 17 Comments

This is my third post on my brother’s beautiful book, Uninnocent landscapes: Following George Augustus Robinson’s Big River Mission. My first post announced its publication, and my second was on the book’s launch and the opening of the accompanying exhibition. Finally, I come to my review post. Yes, you could call me biased, but this project has had so many accolades that I don’t feel my bias contradicts the general run of opinion. However, you must decide for yourselves.

Uninnocent landscapes, as I wrote in those previous posts, is the culmination of an idea Ian started thinking about around a decade ago, but that he actively worked on over the last two to three years. It involved his following the journey taken by George Augustus Robinson on his 1831/32 Big River Mission (brief description), which was a poorly conceived attempt to conciliate between settler and Aboriginal Tasmanians. As those versed in Tasmanian history know, it was a disaster, and effectively ended First People’s resistance in lutruwita/Tasmania (back then, anyhow!) For Ian, who has come to call lutruwita home, there is discomfort in reconciling his privileged life as a middle-class white man with the devastating impact of colonialism on Tasmania’s First Peoples. This is his truth-telling project – his questioning, as he describes it, of how non-Indigenous Tasmanians (and, by extension, all non-indigenous Australians) “come to terms with our privilege and its Janus face, the violent and continuing dispossession of palawa” (and, by extension, all First Nations people). And he found a unique way to do it, by combining the three big passions of his life (besides family) – history, photography and the bush – to produce this book. 

Uninnocent landscapes, then, contains a selection of Ian’s photographs accompanied by excerpts from Robinson’s text. It also contains an introduction by Tasmanian art historian, curator, essayist and commentator on identity and place, Greg Lehman (a descendant of the Trawulwuy people of north-east Tasmania), and five essays, the first and last by Ian, and three he commissioned from:

  • Rebecca Digney (manager, Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania and proud pakana woman)
  • Nunami Sculthorpe-Green (activist/artist and proud palawa and Warlpiri woman)  
  • Roderic O’Connor (sixth-generation woolgrower and Connorville custodian)

These essays provide different perspectives on country and on colonialism’s impact on it. Together they work as a dialogue which encourages us to test our own thinking about what has happened in the past and how we might progress into the future.

“battered but still recognisable” (Nunami Sculthorpe-Green)

Ian explains in his first essay that the photographs were taken in a sprit of enquiry:

What memories do the landscapes of lutruwita/Tasmania hold? What stories are embedded in the rocks, the trees and grasses, the waters of rivers and lagoons? What could the landscape tell us about invasion, colonisation and the destruction of First People’s life and culture? What could it tell me about my own life here on this island?

The juxtaposition of Robinson’s text to Ian’s images offers literal, historical, symbolic and/or emotional readings of the photographs. They confront us with a colonial way of thinking about country that we haven’t fully shaken. Robinson’s reflection that “the whole of this country is peculiarly adapted for natives” is jolting, when you think about what this is really saying. Some excerpts reveal a man tired of his mission, while others show a sincere wish to be humane, but most of course are also overlaid with the arrogant confidence of the colonist. There is, though, also some humour, such as this:

I cautioned my natives and said if the whites saw them they would shoot them. They replied that they could see the whites first, and that they could not always shoot straight.

The image accompanying this text depicts a road passing through a fence on which is appended a security notice advising the area is under surveillance. It returns us to the reality that despite their knowledge, skills and confidence, the “natives” lost.

I’d love to share other examples of text and image, not to mention the thoughts of all the essayists, but instead, I’ll just say that this book provides a reading experience that is enlightening, provoking, and sobering.

When Ian first told me the title of the book, I thought it was inspired. He explains its origins in his opening essay. It comes from a conversation between two nature/landscape writers, the British Robert Macfarlane and the American Barry Lopez. Referencing the impact on the Slovenian landscape of war and atrocity, Macfarlane spoke of “a sense of the uninnocence of landscapes”. Nunami Sculthorpe-Green, however, expresses a different idea in her essay. She writes that “it is not the landscape that is uninnocent. It was not a party to the atrocities committed here, but a witness to them, and truly a victim itself”. Just reading these two opposing but sincerely felt ideas shows how important open and honest dialogue is if we are to understand each other. In some ways, the actual words are less important than the conversations they generate and what we learn through them.

It’s a big call, perhaps, to say Ian found a unique way to truth-tell, but I’m not the only one to see this project as original. One of those is Sculthorpe-Green who writes in her essay:

I do see this project as something different from the norm, in that it finally takes this story off the paper and re-centres our land as the storyteller and story keeper.

So yes, I’m hugely proud of what Ian has done. It’s a beautiful book that works aesthetically, intellectually and emotionally – and, more importantly, that moves the conversation forward. It’s a book that explores the depredations of the past, but that also contains hope. As Digney says at the end of her essay, “History resonates. We continue.”

Ian Terry
Uninnocent landscapes
Mt Nelson: OUTSIDE THE BOX / Earth Arts Rights, 2023
136pp.
ISBN: 9780646881058
Price $65, with all proceeds going to the Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania’s Giving Land Back fund. You can order here (but supplies are dwindling).

 

Monday musings on Australian literature: Uninnocent Landscapes opened and launched

/ whisperinggums / 53 Comments

Those of you who know me on other social media will already have seen some of this, but I am keen to spread the message wherever I can about my brother’s wonderful, and significant, project. I introduced it back in September – and later in Nonfiction November I will review the book. That, however, will be after the exhibition has closed, and I want to encourage anyone who is in Tasmania to see it.

Uninnocent Landscapes – the exhibition and book – is the culmination of an idea Ian started thinking about a decade ago, but that he actively worked on over the last two to three years. It involved his following the journey taken by George Augustus Robinson on his 1831/32 Big River Mission, which was a poorly conceived attempt to conciliate between settler and Aboriginal Tasmanians. Needless to say it was a disaster, that effectively ended First People’s resistance in lutruwita/Tasmania (at the time anyhow!) For Ian, who has come to call lutruwita home, there is discomfort in reconciling his privileged life as a middle-class white man with the devastating impact of colonialism on Tasmania’s First Peoples. This is his truthtelling project, and he found a unique way to do it by combining the three big passions of his life (besides family) – history, photography and the bush.

I will write more about this when I review the book because what Ian has done feels original and exciting. Essentially, though, the book and the exhibition comprise photographs accompanied by excerpts from Robinson’s journal, resulting in an experience that is enlightening, engrossing, and sobering. The exhibition contains a selection of 11 from the book’s over 50 photographs.

The venue, Sidespace Gallery, is in a heritage building that dates back to the mid-1800s. This means two things – there are some restrictions on how items can be affixed, and the walls and floors are not what you would call square. However, Ian and his “crack instal team” did the research and, by the time I got there, were ready to go. The photographs – large-scale archival prints – were “hung” through a clever system of special Japanese tape (that doesn’t mark walls), double-sided tape, and magnets. I enjoyed being a little part of it all on the first day of installation, and loved meeting Ian’s delightful, hardworking team, Erica and Nikki, who made me feel so very welcome.

The opening (and book launch) went very well, with 50 or 60 in attendance. The MC was writer and researcher Steph Cahalan, and the exhibition was formally opened by Tony Brown, a First Nations man and museum colleague of my now-retired brother. Ian of course then spoke to his project, explaining, among other things, that he had discussed his project with many in the local Aboriginal community, and had made clear that he was not trying to tell their story, but his own. His good relationships with the community suggest that they accept this.

It was a warm-hearted event attended by historians, artists, museum professionals, bushies, activists, not to mention family and friends. I met and talked with so many interesting, thoughtful people who support Ian’s project and believe in what he is doing. I can’t name them all, but before it all started I had a great chat with the two women who designed and published the book. Our conversation ranged from technical issues like fonts to more personal ones like downsizing and philanthropy. It was truly a privilege to be there.

Ian calls Uninnocent Landscapes a photographic conversation. By this he means, I think – though I didn’t ask him while we were together – that he is using photography to reflect on (to interrogate, in fact) his relationship with the Tasmanian landscape he loves so much but which has been indelibly affected by over two centuries of colonialism. The idea of conversation, however, also encompasses something ongoing and inclusive, something inviting us all to join in as we engage with his photos and, for those of us living in colonised places, as we engage with “our” places. I will discuss this more, and talk about the title, in my review!

Uninnocent landscapes, the book, is published and distributed by OUTSIDE THE BOX / Earth Arts Rights under their imprint An Artist’s Own Book. It costs $65, and all proceeds are going to the Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania’s Giving Land Back fund. You can order it here.

Ian Terry
Uninnocent Landscapes
Sidespace Galley, Salamanca Arts Centre
3 – 13 November, 2023
Admission is free

 

Melissa Lucashenko in conversation with Alex Sloan

/ whisperinggums / 20 Comments

I can’t believe it’s been a year since I attended an ANU/The Canberra Times Meet the Author event, but this year has been packed. Finally, though, we were free on at the right time – and the event happened to be one of high interest for me, Melissa Lucashenko being interviewed about her latest book, Edenglassie. The interviewer was popular ex-radio journalist and well-known Canberra booklover, Alex Sloan.

I have posted on Lucashenko several times before, including on her Miles Franklin award winning novel, Too much lip. I don’t always hang around for book signings these days – do authors really like doing them? – but we thought we’d see how long the line was. It wasn’t too long, so I decided to hang around. When it got to my turn I told her that I loved that she could write with humour about serious things. It’s a skill. Quick as a flash, she signed my book “For Sue / Keep laughing/ Melissa Lucashenko”. It was worth lining up for.

The conversation

The event started as always with MC Colin Steele, acknowledging country and introducing the speakers. He explained that the title of Lucashenko’s latest book Edenglassie, comes from the name, combining Edinburgh and Glasgow, that was nearly given to Brisbane in early colonial times. He summarised the book as being about the “impact of loss of country” but also being a “novel of strength and love”.

Before getting into the conversation, Alex Sloan referred to the elders at Uluru and their request of us, the Voice, that we are now voting on in this weekend’s referendum – and asked us all “to do the right thing”. Problem is she was probably preaching to the converted.

I’m going to use first names, mostly, in the rest of the report where the alternative would feel too formal.

Alex started the conversation by referring to a review in The Guardian which described the novel in terms of its “flair, humour, generosity” and as being a novel about ongoing resistance. She then asked Melissa to share the origins of her novel.

Melissa commenced with “hello friends” and said she’d like to “extend good feelings to anyone touched by events in the Middle East”. There’s nothing much else she can say, she said, but “war crimes are never ok”.

She then introduced her novel, describing it as a historical novel, with a contemporary thread to add some humour. She said it had grown out of the memoir she’d read of the Queensland “pioneer” Tom Petrie. She told an amusing story about being in London at the same time as Alexis Wright, then working on Carpentaria (my post), and as Peter Carey, who had won the Booker Prize with True history of the Kelly Gang. We are talking around 2001, I guess. Apparently, after they’d had a brief moment with Carey, Wright, who liked Carey’s book, also said that the problem was that Australians “write too many historical novels”.

Melissa took this to heart, and so her first three novels were contemporary novels. But, on catching up with Alexis Wright several years later, she reminded Wright of her comment. Wright looked at her, and clarified that she meant “white people write too many historical novels, not us”. Lucashenko went back to her historical novel interest!

Alex then moved the discussion on to place, noting the epigraph from Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea. It comes from when the now locked-up Antoinette is told she is in England, and responds “I don’t believe it…and I will never believe it”. Lucashenko explained its application to her novel, to the fact that Australia is “aways Aboriginal land”. All her books are about place she said.

Alex asked about the novel’s first line, which describes Granny Eddie “falling, falling, falling”. Lucashenko said that besides Granny’s literal fall, it also alludes to an old woman “falling, falling, falling” in a Thea Astley* novel, and to the biblical fall.

Next, Alex turned to the novel’s love theme. Lucashenko said it has two love stories, one in each time period. Blackfellas are human too, she said, and deserve “love, joy and peace” like anyone else. I hate that she feels she has to say this. What sort of world do we live in? Anyhow, Alex described the historical lover Mulanyin as “hot, move over Mr Darcy”, she said. She asked Melissa to do a reading, which she did, from Chapter 8, when the historical section lovers meet. “Love at first sight,” said Alex.

The conversation moved from Mulanyin and his love interest Nita to the modern storyline and the character of Winona, who, Lucashenko said, is around 27 or 28, and “likes to tell it straight”. Alex asked her why she interlinked this modern story with the historical one, and the answer was clear and to the point. She wanted to counteract the trope of the dying race. It has been slowly changing since Mabo, but is still evident. Because of it, she never kills off her Aboriginal characters. She also wanted to balance feisty characters still here in 2024, who are talking back, with her historical figures.

From here, Alex asked Melissa about Edenglassie being a work of fiction. Lucashenko responded that although it was a work of fiction, she’d done a lot of research. She’d agonised on getting facts right, because she had Keith Windschuttle on one shoulder and Andrew Bolt on the other (an image that tickled Alex.) She knew her novel would be attacked because she was telling the story from a non-conservative position. Her historian friend reassured her, though, that “it’s all fiction” – a position I don’t disagree with. Melissa also shared Barry Lopez’s point that everything in life is “story and compassion”.

At this point we returned to the title. Lucashenko elaborated on Colin Steele’s intro, saying it had come from the Scottish Chief Justice Forbes who had established a property in NSW called Edenglassie, and had liked it so much that he tried to later give this name to Brisbane. It’s a great find for a writer. Lucashenko loved it with its “Eden” and “lassie” (for a feminist like her) references. 

In terms of the novel’s perspective, she said that at the time the historical part of the novel is set, the Aboriginal people, who were in the majority at that point, felt the whites would go away. This brought us back to discussing Mulanyin, whom Lucashenko described as brave, and a fisherman. She did another wonderful reading from early in the book, when he is taught some lessons by his elders, but taught in the way First Nations culture does it, which, as Lucashenko describes it, is “you go work it out”. In this case, the lesson involved honouring old ones and not being destructive out of greed. 

Lucashenko also explained that her idea for the novel had its origins in the fact that next year will be the bicentenary of white Queensland. She wanted to provide an Aboriginal perspective on the story but it developed into something more complex, that included love, and also encompassed the idea of “what could have been”. 

She talked quite a bit about Tom Petrie who had established a pastoral station with the permission of the local Aboriginal headman – in a location that was strategically chosen by that headman. The central question of the novel concerns “what was going through these people’s minds”. Things could have been different then, she said, and could still be now. There’s the paradoxical idea of British pluck and courage versus the facts involving murder, mayhem, theft. The conversation teased out several complex ideas about colonisation – attitudes to law, and to beliefs, for example. Lucashenko talked about pastoral workers being branded, and how that can be seen in two ways – it marks a person as a slave, but it can also work as protection (as in “don’t shoot me, I belong to Petrie”.)

Her story explores how colonisation could have been done differently. In Petrie’s case, for example, it was still colonisation, but the way he did it saved Aboriginal lives and partly at least protected their culture. I’m intrigued. Without having read it yet, I can see why she felt the need to prepare herself for attacks. (She’s been attacked before for her “non-conservative”, confronting exploration of difficult subjects.)

Alex talked about the section in the book where Mulanyin asks for permission to marry Nita. She felt it explained things about Aboriginal practices and beliefs that she had not known (which is how Debra Dank’s We come with this place impacted me, so I look forward to continuing that journey here.) Lucashenko then talked about the novel’s modern thread, about Winona confronting the wanna-be (my term) Aboriginal, and her upfront message to him. About this, Lucashenko said that “being harsh is not blackfella law” but there is also a “right way”.

Q & A

On what she learnt about herself through writing each novel: That she has stamina for writing, though not for much else. So, the lesson is, “Do what you are good at”! 

On not providing a glossary for words in language: Meaning can be understood with a little work; knowledge is best earned not given. (Love this.) 

On the novel taking four years: She has been writing this novel her own life, but serious research for it started in 2019, just before the fires, floods and pestilence!

On how Brisbane is affected by its history: All Australia is affected by colonisation, but in Brisbane’s case it was a brutal penal settlement, giving meaning to that phrase, ”Another day in the colony”, which still has meaning today. Melissa talked about the question “Are you a monkey or an ape” experienced by an Aboriginal woman prisoner in Logan in 2014.

Vote of thanks

Lucy Neave (whose novel Believe in me I’ve reviewed), gave a sincere vote of thanks, which included thanking Melissa for the special readings from her book (there were three.) She described Edenglassie as a generous book, that’s “compelling, accessible, and meticulously researched”. It encompasses diverse values, she said, and shows what enormous value we can get “if we listen”. 

I would add thanks to Lucashenko for her gracious handling of occasional clumsiness from her questioners, because we whitefellas can be hamfisted at times.

* First Chris Flynn (Here be Leviathans) and now Lucashenko admit to the influence of Thea Astley. Love it

ANU/The Canberra Times Meet the Author
MC: Colin Steele
Australian National University
12 October 2023

Monday musings on Australian literature: Introducing Uninnocent landscapes

/ whisperinggums / 34 Comments

You heard it here first – or, first(ish) anyhow, as the webpage is up and orders are already coming in for a new, beautiful book, Uninnocent landscapes: Following George Augustus Robinson’s Big River Mission. Yes, I admit it isn’t out yet so I haven’t actually seen it, but I know it is beautiful because I’ve seen some of the content over the years, and I’ve seen the cover on the website. It looks stunning.

Of course, I’m biased because the creator is my brother, Ian Terry. However, it goes without saying that I wouldn’t be writing this if I didn’t feel his project was worthwhile.

So, the project … Ian introduces his motivation on the publisher’s website:

Without invasion, colonisation and the near destruction of lutruwita’s First People, without Robinson’s ‘Friendly Mission’, I would not have had the opportunity to feel so much at home on this island. This is a reality that, as much as we might try to ignore it, non-Indigenous Tasmanians cannot escape. How do we come to terms with our privilege and its Janus face, the violent and continuing dispossession of palawa/pakana?

Now, Ian’s last job before retirement was a senior curator of history at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, during which time, among other things, he mounted exhibitions on First Nations history. He has, for nearly three decades, been an active and contributing member of THRA, the Tasmanian Historical Research Association. History was his undergraduate major, and in the early 1990s he complemented these studies with a Graduate Diploma in Cultural Heritage Management, after which he began working as a freelance history consultant – in lutruwita/Tasmania. History, you could say, is in his blood – and was not going to stop flowing after he retired. Enter the project …

But first, I need to add that in addition to his love of history, Ian has been a photographer since early adulthood. Way back in the the fall of 1983, he joined Mr Gums and me on a road trip through New England and Eastern Canada. We all took photos, but Ian was the one who would climb the hill behind the gorgeous white-spired church, or run across the bridge to the other side of a pretty river, to get the best shot. That interest has never waned and he has honed his skills to the point that he is now achieving recognition in photographic competitions.

This project, which involved his following the steps of George Augustus Robinson’s 1831 Big River Mission (brief description), combines these two passions. It has required historical research to identify Robinson’s movements and actions. It also called on Ian’s negotiating skills when, for example, he needed to enter private property to take the desired photos. It used his well-developed bush skills when he needed to explore more difficult landscapes. And, it depended on his photographic skills because photographs form the core of the book.

Of course, Ian’s tracing of Robinson’s path was not aimless. As the above-linked publisher’s website says, he had various questions in his head as he worked through his project, questions like

What memories do the landscapes of lutruwita/Tasmania hold? What stories are embedded in the rocks, the trees and grasses, the waters of rivers and lagoons? What could the landscape tell us about invasion, colonisation and the destruction of First People’s life and culture? What could it tell us about our own lives here on this island?

Uninnocent landscapes, the book, comprises a selection of Ian’s photographs documenting the landscape in a way that also expresses his ideas about it. It also contains an introduction by Tasmanian art historian, curator, essayist and commentator on identity and place Greg Lehman (a descendant of the Trawulwuy people of north-east Tasmania), and four essays, one by him and three he commissioned from:

  • Rebecca Digney (manager, Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania)
  • Roderic O’Connor (woolgrower and Connorville custodian)
  • Nunami Sculthorpe-Green (activist/artist and proud palawa and Warlpiri woman)  

I can’t wait to see and read it – and, isn’t it a great title?

Ian with our mother, 2017

But wait, there’s more … there is also Uninnocent landscapes, the exhibition. It will feature large-scale archival prints from the book, and will be held in the Sidespace Gallery at Salamanca Arts Centre in nipaluna/Hobart from 2–14 November 2023. I will be there at the opening.

Uninnocent landscapes is published and distributed by OUTSIDE THE BOX / Earth Arts Rights under their imprint An Artist’s Own Book, and will be available from early November. It costs $65, and all proceeds will go to the Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania’s Giving Land Back fund. You can preorder here.

To fully disclose: Ian did not pay (or even ask) for this announcement, but he is accommodating me (I hope) on my trip to lutruwita to attend the exhibition opening!

 

Monday musings on Australian literature: First Nations Australian non-fiction

/ whisperinggums / 23 Comments

Since 2013, I have devoted the Monday Musings that occurs in NAIDOC Week to a First Nations topic. This year I’ve chosen First Nations Australian non-fiction. I have previously written Monday Musings on biographies, autobiographies and memoirs by First Nations writers, but what about other sorts of non-fiction?

Before I get to that though, a bit about this year’s NAIDOC Week theme, which is “For our elders”. The website says that

Across every generation, our Elders have played, and continue to play, an important role and hold a prominent place in our communities and families. 
They are cultural knowledge holders, trailblazers, nurturers, advocates, teachers, survivors, leaders, hard workers and our loved ones. 

And they say more, but you can read that at the website. I will just add that it was thrilling to watch the 2023 NAIDOC Week Awards on television on Saturday night and see Aunty Dr Matilda House-Williams win the Female Elder of the Year award. She has been an absolute force for her people – and for reconciliation – in my city for as long as I can remember. She was our city’s go-to Welcome-to-Country person way back when that practice started. She was involved in the creation of the historic (and still existing) Aboriginal Tent Embassy. And so much more. These days it is often her son, Paul, who does Welcome to Country, as he did last month at the 2023 ANU Reconciliation Lecture. However, accompanying him on stage was mum, Aunty Dr Matilda, and his son. It was truly special, as they performed a song for us as part of the Welcome. Anyhow, you can read more about her on the NAIDOC Awards site.

Now, today’s topic. There’s a wealth of literature to choose from so my aim here is to give some sense of the breadth of recent non-fiction writing by First Nations Australian writers.

Bruce Pasco, Dark emu

Probably the best known non-fiction book, today, by a First Nations writer is Dark emu (my review) by Bruce Pascoe. It argues for us to rethink our understanding of First Nations culture, specifically to appreciate that pre-colonial Aboriginal Australians were more than hunter-gatherers as they had been traditionally described. The book won several awards, has a younger people’s version, and was adapted into a ballet by Bangarra Dance Theatre. It has also had its share of controversy, but overall it has played a significant role in changing people’s attitudes to First Nations history and culture.

Pascoe’s book, however, is not the only First Nations book to address First Nations knowledge. Indeed, this seems to be a growing area of interest. Some of these books aim primarily to explain First Nations culture to others but most also share knowledge in the belief that it will help all Australians to better understand and thus more fully engage with our country. I’ll list a few of these, in alphabetical order by author:

  • Paul Callaghan and Uncle Paul Gordon (2022). The Dreaming path: Indigenous thinking to change your life
  • Gay’wu Group of Women (2019). Song spirals: Sharing women’s wisdom of country through songlines (Denise’s review)
  • Duane Hamacher with Elders and Knowledge Holders (2022). The first astronomers: How Indigenous elders read the stars
  • Terri Janke (2021). True tracks: Respecting Indigenous cultural knowledge and culture (Lisa’s review)
  • Marcia Langton and Aaron Corn (2023). Law: The way of the ancestors (in the First Knowledges series (on my TBR)
  • Katie Noon and Krystal de Napoli (2022). Astronomy: Sky country (in the First Knowledges series)

As you can imagine, it is difficult to categorise the non-fiction books I’ve selected into subject areas, because there’s so much overlap, but here are a couple books that are primarily history:

  • Larissa Behrendt (2016). Finding Eliza: Power and colonial storytelling (Lisa’s review; still on my TBR)
  • Rachel Perkins and Marcia Langton (2008). First Australians: An illustrated history

First Nations historians are working in academia, and producing important texts, but I want to focus here on books that are accessible to the general reader.

Many First Nations writers have written what I would call hybrid memoirs, books which in their case combine memoir with sociopolitical commentary. By definition, memoirs tend to have a specific focus, like Biff Ward’s Third chopstick (my review) in which she, as a Vietnam War protester, later talks to those who fought to understand their experience, and Carmel Bird’s bibliomemoir Telltale (my review) which examines her life through the books she’s read. However, with many First Nations hybrid memoirs, memoir elements are used to illustrate their exploration of issues like colonialism, racism, social injustice, dispossession and reconciliation. One of the best known writers in this area is Stan Grant whose Talking to my country (my review) and, most recently, The Queen is dead (kimbofo’s review), explore contemporary Australia with reference to his own experiences along with his extensive knowledge of history and philosophy.

But, he’s not the only one. Some others include:

Anita Heiss, Am I black enough for you?
  • Claire G Coleman (2022). Lies, Damned Lies: A personal exploration of the impact of colonisation (Bill’s review)
  • Inala Cooper (2022) Marrul: Aboriginal identity and the fight for rights
  • Anita Heiss (2012). Am I black enough for you? (my review)
  • Chelsea Watego (2021). Another day in the colony (Bill’s review; on my TBR)

For a good list – with reviews by some of your favourite litbloggers – of First Nations Australian nonfiction, check out Lisa’s page dedicated to this topic.

Are there any First Nations non-fiction books that you’d like to recommend?

Tuesday Atzinger, The River (#Review)

/ whisperinggums / 11 Comments

Back in January I reviewed two stories from Ellen van Neerven and Rafeif Ismail’s anthology Unlimited futures: Speculative, visionary Blak+Black fiction for Bill’s (The Australian Legend) Australian Women Writers Gen 5 Week. The stories I reviewed were the second and third in the anthology because they were the first two by Australians in it. The anthology’s first story, however, is African in origin. Titled “The River”, it is by Tuesday Atzinger, who is described in the book’s Biographical Notes as “a poet and emerging writer … [who] … explores and celebrates Afro-blackness, queerness, disability and feminism. They peddle in discomfort and their primary goal is to fling words together to make you squirm”. Atzinger currently lives in Melbourne “on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri People of the Kulin Nations”.

“The River” is worth discussing for several reasons, but specifically because it’s the first piece in the anthology, so was, presumably, chosen for a reason. Some of that reason is explained in the anthology’s introduction, which, by the by, takes the form of a conversation between the two editors. One of the topics they discuss is the cover, which was designed by Larrakia woman, Jenna Lee. Ismail describes it as looking at “the interaction of separate cultures in the most respectful and wonderful way”, and also sees it as suggesting “infinity”. It does, doesn’t it. Van Neerven adds that it also reflects “the movements of water” in the anthology. She says:

We were going to begin the anthology with water to allow those kinds of threads of connection and continuation to flow into each other. For me the cover really kind of feels like rivers connecting and the light that is created through water, but it’s also water that we protect and have a relationship and a responsibility to.

Water! Such a complex element in our lives. Most of my friends adore the sea, but for me it’s the rivers that draw me most. They can be young, direct, and fast, or slow, meandering, and somehow wise, or anything inbetween. They can be critical to creation stories, and this role is part of Atzinger’s opening story, making it particularly appropriate as the opening piece.

The first thing to say about “The River” is its form – it is a short story in verse. The River is not named, but we know it’s in Africa, partly because an African word, Ubuntu, is repeated throughout the story: “Ubuntu/Together”. According to the New World Encyclopedia ‘Ubuntu pronounced [ùbúntú], is a traditional African concept. The word ubuntu comes from the Zulu and Xhola languages, and can be roughly translated as “humanity towards others”.’ It has been adopted more widely around the world for its humanistic concepts – and is also, would you believe, “used by the Linux computer operating system” to convey the sense of bringing “the spirit of Ubuntu to the software world”. Valid appropriation? I didn’t find much concern about this use on the ‘net.

Anyhow, to the story itself. We are immediately introduced to the River, and a village that lies near it. The word “prosperous” is used, but we are warned that things aren’t so simple:

Shallow water so clear that the stones beneath it glistened brightly
Depths dark and mysterious, hiding all that lay below
The River, ever a source of sustenance
                                                                      And of danger

The story starts with creation: “Eons ago/The River had rippled in welcome as the people first arrived”. It provided refuge and sustenance; it saw “passion, grief, joy and courage”; it saw, in other words, the life of the community, of “the people who slept under the sun”. It had also seen “a lineage of Chiefs/Some wise, some brave, some imperious” until the present one “Mehluli – the Warrior Chief”. He is described in words like “proud”, “arrogant”, “dominating” and “greedy”. He desires a woman, Thandeka, but she already has a “perfect love” with Amandla, a hunter. Amandla fears the River, fears the aformentioned danger, and while she’s away hunting her fears are justified when the Warrior Chief makes his move on Thandeka.

The problem is that you “cannot refuse the chief”. Violence ensues. The River acts in an unusual way, and a dramatic story follows as Thandeka fights back, as does the River, to right the balance that has been disturbed. It is, ultimately, a story with a moral, a story to teach proper behaviour, right values.

The story is told in a beautiful, poetic style. The changing rhythms and strong use of repetition convey elemental and opposing tones – prosperity and togetherness versus power and greed. “The River” is a thoroughly enjoyable read. It is founded in the sorts of lesson-giving stories that are part of most belief systems, but its queer-love narrative brings the story and its traditional message into modern thinking and times. A worthy first story for the anthology, I think.

Tuesday Atzinger
“The river”
in Ellen van Neerven and Rafeif Ismail (ed.), Unlimited futures: Speculative, visionary Blak+Black fiction
North Fremantle: Fremantle Press in association with Djed Press, 2022
pp. 23-41
ISBN: 9781760991463 (eBook)

Monday musings on Australian literature: Reconciliation Day musings

/ whisperinggums / 29 Comments

Since 2018 in the Australian Capital Territory, the first Monday after (or on) 27 May (the anniversary of the 1967 referendum) is a public holiday called Reconciliation Day. It is part of Reconciliation Week which, says Wikipedia, aims “to celebrate Indigenous history and culture in Australia and foster reconciliation discussion and activities”. Because Mr Gums and I have reached crunch time in our downsizing project, we did not engage in any of the focused activities around town. However, quite coincidentally, my decluttering task today included the books that set me off down my own reconciliation path, not that we called it that then. So, I thought to share them with you – and some of my own journey, from the keen but naive teenager to the better-educated person I hope I am today.

It all started at high school in Sydney, although there were beginnings in my early high school years in the outback town of Mt Isa. In Sydney, though, it was two women – the school librarian, Miss (Ellen) Reeve, and my modern history teacher, Mrs (Mary) Reynolds – who encouraged my interest in civil rights and to whom I am eternally grateful. When I was 15, I wrote my first piece on the need for fair treatment of “Australian Aborigines”* – for the school magazine. I intended well, but looking at it now I can see that it was naive and simplistic.

The books I read in those days included:

  • Brian Hodge and Allen Whitehurst, Nation and people: An introduction to Australia in a changing world, 1967: its progress-focused tone was typical of the times. It did recognise, albeit in passing, “the first black owners of our continent” but it also conveyed that lie that they didn’t offer much opposition. It briefly discussed paternalism, assimilation, and integration, which, it says, “most thoughtful people are now favouring”.
  • Douglas Lockwood, I, the Aboriginal (1960 Bill’s post) and We, the Aborigines (1963, my ed. 1970): written by a white man in the voice of his Aboriginal subjects, these were some of my first introductions to Indigenous lives – at least outback ones. Such an approach is politically incorrect now but, in its favour, the table of contents lists every person by name and “tribe”.

Then we move to my university years, and although my major was English literature, I also studied some anthropology. This included traditional ethnographic studies, using AP Elkin’s classic The Australian Aborigines (with its uncomfortable subtitle, How to understand them), but also involved more political reading, like CD Rowley’s The destruction of Aboriginal society (1970). It was my first serious literary introduction to the truths we are still learning now. Here is what the back cover of my 1972 Pelican edition says:

The destruction of Aboriginal society is a powerful and detailed study of the history and tragedy of the interaction between black and white Australians. Most white Australians today are unaware of the part the Aboriginal played in the history of settlement. Even if he only stood to be shot, he influenced profoundly the kind of man who made a successful settler.

The Aboriginal has been “written out” of Australian history; the tragic significance of conflicts have long been bowdlerised and forgotten. Yet, even if vicariously, our guilt remains, as does our responsibility. Aboriginal attitudes take on a new dimension in the light of history, and no policies should be formulated except in that light. This is a book to stir the sleeping white Australian conscience.

That was over 50 years ago! What have we been doing? Anyhow, it’s the book that informed my understanding, by which I mean it kickstarted my thinking from simple ideas about fairness and equality to comprehending the sociological complexity. It is also the book that, in 1982, the academic Peter Biskup said had begun, twelve years previously, “the process of rewriting the history of contact of Australian Aboriginals”.

These writers were all white, however. The first work I read by a First Nations writer would have to be, as it was for many of my generation, Sally Morgan’s My place (1987). Sally Morgan conveyed the fear and shame that attended being Indigenous in modern Australia, how this caused her family members to try to hide their heritage if at all possible, and the devastating intergenerational (though we didn’t use that term then) impact this can have.

Since then, and particularly since 2000, my reading of First Nations writers has increased dramatically, much of it documented on this blog, so I’m not going to repeat all that now.

My main point is, really, how horrifyingly slow all this is. We have had, among other things, the 1967 Referendum; Mabo and Wik, and the related Native Title legislations in the 1990s; the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody tabled in 1991; the Bringing Them Home report tabled in 1997; the National Apology in 2008; and most recently, the Uluru Statement from the Heart in 2017. Having come of age in the 1960s with all its idealistic fervour, I would never have believed that here I would be in the 2020s with so little real progress having been achieved, with relationships fraught and a referendum on constitutional recognition struggling to gain forward momentum.

But, it’s not about me, so I will share the theme of this year’s National Reconciliation Week, which is, appropraitely,

Be a Voice for Generations.

The theme  encourages all Australians to be a voice for reconciliation in tangible ways in our everyday lives – where we live, work and socialise.

For the work of generations past, and the benefit of generations future, act today for a more just, equitable and reconciled country for all.

And will leave you with CD Rowley’s conclusion. The words are of his time but the meaning is still valid, wouldn’t you say?

The future status and role of the Aboriginal will be a significant indicator of the kind of society which eventually takes shape in Australia.

* Nomenclature has changed over time, but in this article I have used different terms as appropriate to the subject and time.

Claire G. Coleman, Night bird (#Review)

/ whisperinggums / 15 Comments

Wirlomin-Noongar woman Claire G. Coleman’s short story “Night bird” is the second First Nations Australia story in Ellen van Neerven and Rafeif Ismail’s anthology Unlimited futures: Speculative, visionary Blak+Black fiction, the book I chose for Bill’s (The Australian Legend) Australian Women Writers Gen 5 Week. The week finished officially a week ago, but I’m hoping Bill won’t mind my still referencing it. Coleman is not new to my blog. I reviewed her debut novel, Terra nullius, the year after it came out. She has written more fiction and some non-fiction since then, with a clear focus on the devastating impact of colonisation on First Nations culture and people.

“Night bird” continues this focus. It follows Ambelin Kwaymullina’s story in the anthology, “Fifteen days on Mars” (my review), which works well, because both draw on the importance and role of Ancestors in First Nations culture. Coleman’s story is told first person by an artist who is “too afraid to sleep, too tired to be awake”, who drinks to drown her sorrows, who fears she may be “going mad again [my emph]”. She tells us

I am haunted by the ghost of my Ancestors’ Country like a phantom limb …

[…]

I have been cut off from my Country, my ancestors cut up, the land drilled and dug and eaten by machines … my wounded homeland won’t let me rest.

This is not a subtle story. The narrator (whom I think is female, so I’ll go with that) grieves for a life she “could never have” because Country has been “severed”. She has “returned to Country” but, finding it “dead”, “could feel nothing and none” of her Ancestors. She feels haunted, but by what or whom?

I can hear a voice but I can’t make it out. I can hear a song but I can’t catch the words. I can hear the wind and it’s stealing my breath. I can hear nothing and it is screaming.

Country is part of her, but she wants to be free of the haunting, the “wordless voice”, the “phantom presence” that won’t go away. There is a wind, but it is “coming from the wrong direction – away from Country”. Then,

The wind changes, it caresses my back, and suddenly it’s coming from Country.

However, at the same time, a man appears and threatens her. There are now two voices – his and the Ancestors. This is a story about a battle between disempowerment (represented by the man) and empowerment (represented by the Ancestors). Is she, and are they, strong enough to prevail?

I suspect this story was inspired by an experience Coleman describes in her article in Writing the Country (The Griffith Review 63). She describes the life-changing experience of going to Country in 2015, her family’s Country that had been taboo due to a massacre that had occurred there in the nineteenth century. She writes:

I didn’t go there until 2015, that place changed my life forever, my world, my life, even the way I breathed. I took the taboo air into my lungs and I did not die or maybe I did. The bones of my feet landed on the sand and returned to life, I was born again on Country. The story of that place made me a storyteller; story is in my veins.

She says an old man told her that “no matter where we go Country calls out to us” and she writes of the bird, the Wirlo (or curlew), that “to me and mine are family”. Its cry, its scream, “calls me home” – as does the night bird in this story. She describes how Country cares for people as they care for Country. She writes:

I wept when I realised Country had not forgotten me even when I did not know Country. My old-people, my ancestors, would care for me.

All of this is seems embedded in “Night bird”, so now, back to it. It is another example of “Indigenous futurism”. It is ground very much in the real world. The voices that our narrator hears are mysterious, sometimes coming from her phone, sometimes from the air around her, but they are not magical, not fantastical, they are the Ancestors – and the story envisions a healthy relationship with them and thus Country.

On her website, Coleman includes a link to an interview she did with VerityLa after Terra Nullius came out. Among the questions was that one we readers love, which is whether any authors or novels influenced her. The first one she named was HG Wells’ War of the worlds, because it “is great in giving an understanding of how to show an overwhelming powerful enemy destroying a less well-armed defender”.  “In fact,” she says, “War of the Worlds is a powerful text for the examination of invasion and colonisation”. You can certainly see its influence in Terra Nullius, and it is evident here too.

Claire G. Coleman
“Night bird”
in Ellen van Neerven and Rafeif Ismail (ed.), Unlimited futures: Speculative, visionary Blak+Black fiction
North Fremantle: Fremantle Press in association with Djed Press, 2022
pp. 66-73
ISBN: 9781760991463 (eBook)

Ambelin Kwaymullina, Fifteen days on Mars (#Review)

/ whisperinggums / 8 Comments

In 2014, Ambelin Kwaymullina, whose people are the Palyku of the Pilbara region of Western Australia, described herself in a Kill Your Darlings essay as writing “speculative fiction for young adults”. Three years later, in the 2017 Twelfth Planet Press anthology, Mother of invention, she said that she was “a Palyku author of Indigenous Futurisms”, citing Grace Dillon (as did I in this week’s Monday Musings) as the term’s originator. I share this progression in her thinking because it’s indicative of the energy and intellectual engagement among First Nations people with literature and the politics of what they are doing. Kwaymullina is an example of a First Nations Australian writer who is actively engaged in First Nations culture and thinking, as well as in the craft of writing.

I first came across Kwaymullina early in my volunteer work for the original Australian Women Writers Challenge, because many reviews for her young adult novels were posted to our database. But, I had not read her because YA literature is not my thing. However, I decided to read Ellen van Neerven and Rafeif Ismail’s anthology Unlimited futures: Speculative, visionary Blak+Black fiction for Bill’s (The Australian Legend) Australian Women Writers Gen 5 Week 15-22 January, and the first work in the anthology by an Australian woman was “Fifteen days on Mars” by Kwaymullina. Woo hoo… here was my chance to finally read her. I will post on more in this fascinating book, which I’ve not yet finished, later.

“Fifteen days on Mars” is an accessible short story, told chronologically from Day One to Day Fifteen. The politics is made clear in the opening paragraph, by beautifully skewering colonial settler behaviour concerning the naming of places:

It had been almost a year since we came to Mars. That was what I called this place although it had another name. It was Kensington Park or Windsor Estate or something like that but I couldn’t have said what because I could never remember it.

Our first person narrator Billie and her mum have come to Settler suburbia, where they are “the only Aboriginal people”, for some reason that is not immediately clear though we sense there’s a specific purpose. Billie hadn’t wanted to come but, as her mother’s only offspring without children, she’d drawn the short straw. The story starts with her pulling weeds from their garden, the very plants that the rest of the neighbourhood love, plants (I mean “weeds”) like roses. In this metaphorical way the colonial setting is established. This is a world we know. Very soon a new couple moves in across the road. Billie, at her Mum’s insistence, does the neighbourly thing, and makes contact. She quickly realises that their new neighbour, Sarah, is being abused by her husband, whom Billie calls The Suit. What to do?

To this point, notwithstanding the hint at the start that there’s something unusual about the situation, the story reads like a typical piece of contemporary fiction – that is, set in the known present world. But slowly, we become aware that something else is going on. Billie refers to “the rules”. Does she just mean the normal “rules” of social behaviour? Nope, our suspicion is right, there is something else. There’s reference to Sarah needing to “ask”, and to whether what or how she asks is “good enough for them upstairs”, aka “the Blue”, as Billie’s mum calls them. Billie says:

the truth was we knew very little about them, except they were some kind of intergalactic healers. But we knew why they’d come. It was because of the Fracture.

So now it’s clear we are in speculative fiction/Indigenous Futurism/Visionary Fiction/SFF territory. This is the sort of speculative fiction I can enjoy, something that doesn’t require me to learn a whole new world but that injects something new into the world I know, something that upends it a little.

The Fracture is not fully explained, but “something had smashed into the relationships that were space-time and cracks had spread out from the point of impact” resulting in, says Billie, “bubbles of the past floating across my reality”. The Blue, we are told, are trying to repair this Fracture, leaving humans “to do something about the bubbles” – but to the Blue’s rules. Billie’s mum had signed up “for the job of changing the bubble-world, or at least, of changing some of the people enough so they could exist in our reality”. Hmm, this makes them sound a bit like missionaries. An ironic twist?

Anyhow, the story continues, with a strong reference to the Stolen Generations, as Billie and her Mum, recognising these are “strange times”, try a different tack to save Sarah, and call on the ancestors. They hope the Blue won’t mind.

I will leave it there. I enjoyed the story – because it tells a First Nations story truthfully but generously; because the characters of Mum and Billie, while being somewhat stereotypical (the wise Mum and the reluctant Billie), are warm and engaging; and because the ideas and the story itself are intriguing to watch being played out.

In her 2017 piece cited above, Kwaymullina describes Indigenous Futurisms as “a form of storytelling whereby Indigenous peoples use the speculative fiction genre to challenge colonialism and imagine Indigenous futures”. This is exactly what she does in “Fifteen days on Mars”. The colonial legacy is unmistakeable, with most inhabitants of Settler suburbia remaining “unbelievably ignorant”, but she also offers glimmers of hope. I don’t eschew bleakness, but as an optimist I also appreciate it when writers can see paths to a better future. It’s energising.

Ambelin Kwaymullina
“Fifteen days on Mars”
in Ellen van Neerven and Rafeif Ismail (ed.), Unlimited futures: Speculative, visionary Blak+Black fiction
North Fremantle: Fremantle Press in association with Djed Press, 2022
pp. 42-64
ISBN: 9781760991463 (eBook)