Monday musings on Australian literature: Collaborative story-telling between First Nations Australian and white writers

July 7, 2025November 28, 2025 / Whispering Gums / 9 Comments

NAIDOC Week 2025 started yesterday, and as I have done for many years now, I am devoting my NAIDOC Week Monday Musings to celebrating First Nations writers in some way.

This year is a particularly special year because it marks NAIDOC Week’s 50th anniversary, 50 years it says, “of honoring and elevating Indigenous voices, culture, and resilience”. The 2025 theme is “The Next Generation: Strength, Vision & Legacy,” and is intended to celebrate not only past achievements achievements, “but the bright future ahead, empowered by the strength of our young leaders, the vision of our communities, and the legacy of our ancestors”.

.Now, over the years, I have written posts on a wide range of First Nations writing and storytelling, was wondering what to write about this year, when a couple of weeks ago this idea of collaborative writing projects popped into my head because I’ve come across a few in the last few years. Then, at the ACT Literary Awards last Thursday night, another such collaboration was not only shortlisted but won the Nonfiction award. The book is Warra Warra Wai: How Indigenous Australians discovered Captain Cook & what they tell about the coming of the Ghost People, and is by Darren Rix and Craig Cormick. That sealed the deal!

In the introduction to this book, Darren and Craig, the names they use to sign off the Introduction, say that:

This book has been a blackfella-whitefella collaboration, because too much of our history has been written by one voice only, and we need to find more collaborative ways to tell our past, present and future.

I would love to discuss all the collaborations I’m going to share in this post – including researching how the collaborations worked, who did what, and how differences (if any) were resolved – but that would be a big project. I have, however, met some of the writers involved, and have followed some of the projects on social media, so I am aware of some of the processes the writers followed. For now, though, I will share what Darren and Craig say in their Introduction:

In this collaboration, we each worked to our strengths. Craig did most of the work in the archives, and Darren did most of the oral interviews – and the people we talked to got the final say on the text. The stories we gathered belong to the individuals and communities we visited. This is their book.

Selected list of collaborative books

This list is presented in alphabetical order by the name of the first author listed on the title. I did think about dividing it into two lists – one fiction, one nonfiction – but decided that all these books aim to share truths about our society and culture, whether told within a factual or imaginative framework, so one list it is. (Links on authors’ names are to my posts on that author.)

There has been a lot collaborative publishing in the children’s literature sphere, over a significant period of time, but I’ve been less aware, until relatively recently, of similar activity in the adult sphere.

Wayne Bergmann and Madelaine Dickie, Some people want to shoot me (memoir, Fremantle Press, 2024, on my TBR): shortlisted for Nonfiction Book of the Year in the Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards.

Craig Cormick and Harold Ludwick, On a barbarous coast (historical fiction, Allen & Unwin, 2020, my review): a re-imagining of what happened when Captain Cook’s Endeavour was wrecked off the coast of Far North Queensland.

Aaron Fa’Aoso with Michelle Scott Tucker, So far, so good: On connection, loss, laughter and the Torres Strait (memoir, Pantera Press, 2022, Bill’s review): apparently the first memoir by a Torres Strait Islander to be commercially published, which means it addresses “the under-representation of Torres Strait Islander perspectives in Australian life”. You can read more about it on Tucker’s website.

Aaron Fa’Aoso and Michelle Scott Tucker with Lyn White, Spirit of the crocodile (YA fiction, Allen & Unwin, 2025, on my TBR, Bill’s review): a coming-of-age novel set against the challenges to the Saibai island community of climate change.

Carl Merrison and Hakea Hustler, with Dub Leffler (illus.), Black cockatoo (YA fiction, Magabala Books, 2018, my review): pleasingly, this book was in my Top 10 visited posts last year, and is in the Top 20 this year to date.

Boori Monty Pryor and Meme McDonald, Maybe tomorrow (memoir, 1998, my review): one of the first books I reviewed on this blog. Pryor has focused much of his life’s work on helping young people feel strong in their culture.

Boori Monty Pryor and Jan Ormerod, Shake a leg (Children’s picture book, Allen & Unwin, 2010): one of several children’s book collaborations involving Boori Monty Pryor.

Darren Rix and Craig Cormick, Warra Warra Wai: How Indigenous Australians discovered Captain Cook & what they tell about the coming of the Ghost People (history, Scribner, 2024, on my TBR): follows Cook’s journey up “Australia’s” east coast, visiting the places he renamed and gathering the local people’s stories.

Nicolas Rothwell and Alison Nampitjinpa Anderson, Yilkari: A desert suite (“unclassifiable” but fiction, Text Publishing, July 2025, on my TBR)

As the word “selected” conveys, this is not intended to be a comprehensive list, but an introduction to the range of collaborative writing that’s been happening. However, I (and readers of this blog I’m sure) would love to hear of other First Nations-settler collaborations, including from other parts of the world.

Click here for my previous NAIDOC Week-related Monday Musings.

Have you read any First Nations-white writer collaborations? And if so, care to recommend any?

Monday musings on Australian literature: First Nations Australian short story collections

July 15, 2024July 16, 2024 / Whispering Gums / 12 Comments

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?

Monday musings on Australian literature: First Nations Australian Stella listees

July 8, 2024July 8, 2024 / Whispering Gums / 17 Comments

Yesterday was the start of NAIDOC Week 2024. As has been my practice since 2013, I’m devoting this week’s Monday Musings to the cause.

NAIDOC Week’s theme this year is Keep the Fire Burning! Blak, Loud and Proud. Without specifically stating it, this theme responds, I’m sure, to the devastating loss of the Voice referendum last year. As the website says, it “celebrates the unyielding spirit of our communities and invites all to stand in solidarity, amplifying the voices that have long been silenced”. They say more, but I’ll just share two other points. One is that “the fire represents the enduring strength and vitality of Indigenous cultures, passed down through generations despite the challenges faced”, and the other is that

Through our collective efforts, we can forge 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.

For this year’s NAIDOC Week Monday Musings, I thought I’d pick up the point about cherishing and celebrating the stories of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. This is simplistic, I know, but one way in which stories are celebrated is through awards – particularly through being short- or long-listed, or winning them. One award which has actively sought to embrace diversity in its foundational purpose is the Stella. Yes, that diversity is limited to “women and non-binary writers”. Nonetheless, the achievements have been significant in encouraging and raising the profile of many writers who may not have been seen otherwise.

So, with 17 years of the prize now in the bag and in the spirit of celebrating their achievement, I am listing all those works by First Nations writers which have featured in the Stellas over that time. This might also give them another little time in the air.

The Stella listees

Evelyn Araluen, Dropbear (Poetry and prose, UQP) : Winner 2022 (my review)
Claire G. Coleman, Terra nullius (Fiction, Hachette Australia) : Shortlisted 2018 (my review)
Dylan Coleman, Mazin Grace (Fiction, UQP) : Longlisted 2013 (Lisa’s review)
Debra Dank, We come with this place (Nonfiction, Echo) : Shortlisted 2023 (my review)
Ali Cobby Eckermann, She is the earth (Poetry/Verse novel, Magabala Books) : Longlisted 2024 (on my TBR, kimbofo’s review)
Gay’wu Group of Women, Songspirals (Nonfiction, Allen & Unwin) : Longlisted 2020 (Denise’s review)
Anita Heiss, Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray (Fiction, Simon & Schuster) : Longlisted 2022 (my review)
Ngaire Jarro & Jackie Huggins, Jack of Hearts: QX11594 (Nonfiction, Magabala Books) : Longlisted 2023 (kimbofo’s review)
Melissa Lucashenko, Edenglassie (Fiction, UQP) : Longlisted 2024 (on my TBR, Brona’s review)
Melissa Lucashenko, Mullumbimby (Fiction, UQP) : Longlisted 2014 (Lisa’s review)
Melissa Lucashenko, Too much lip (Fiction, UQP) : Shortlisted 2019 (my review)
SJ Norman, Permafrost (Fiction, UQP) : Longlisted 2022
Elfie Shiosaki, Homecoming (Poetry, Magabala Books) : Longlisted 2022 (Lisa’s review)
Nardi Simpson, Song of the crocodile (Fiction, Hachette) : Longlisted 2021 (my review)
Ellen van Neerven, Heat and light (Fiction/short stories: UQP) : Shortlisted 2015 (my review)
Chelsea Watego, Another day in the colony (Nonfiction, UQP) : Longlisted 2022 (on my TBR, Bill’s review)
Tara June Winch, The yield (Fiction, Penguin Random House) : Shortlisted 2020 (my review)
Alexis Wright, Praiseworthy (Fiction, Giramondo Publishing) : Shortlisted 2024 (Bill’s second post with a link to his first)
Alexis Wright, The swan book (Fiction, Giramondo Publishing) : Shortlisted 2014 (on my TBR, Bill’s review)
Alexis Wright, Tracker (Nonfiction, Giramondo Publishing) : Winner 2018 (Bill’s review)

Some comments. There are 20 listed books (if I’ve got them all) out of 204. Of these there have been two winners – Alexis Wright’s Tracker and Evelyn Araluen’s Dropbear – seven shortlists, and 11 longlists. Alexis Wright and Melissa Lucashenko are the most listed authors – out of all authors – through the history of the prize to date. The listed books include novels, poetry and nonfiction.

Certain publishers appear frequently, particularly UQP which has an excellent – and long record – for supporting and publishing First Nations Writers. Eight of the listed books come from them. First Nations publisher, Magabala, has three, and Giramondo which publishes Alexis Wright also has three. Hachette has published two, with Simon & Schuster (which is behind the new First Nations imprint Bundyi I wrote about last week), Allen & Unwin, Penguin Random House and Echo, each having one. It’s healthy to see a spread, but it’s also great to see serious support being reflected here.

You will also see that almost every book has been reviewed by a litblogger. Some have been reviewed more than once, but I’ve just chosen one to share here. I hope that my posting this list will remind us all of some good books out there, and whet our appetites to check out First Nations writing.

Click here for my previous NAIDOC Week-related Monday Musings.

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

July 3, 2023July 6, 2024 / Whispering Gums / 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.

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:

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?

Larissa Behrendt, After story (#BookReview)

July 28, 2022July 28, 2022 / Whispering Gums / 20 Comments

Larissa Behrendt’s latest novel After story has been on my wishlist since it came out last year, so I was thrilled when my reading group chose it as our 2022 NAIDOC-Week read. What self-respecting reader, after all, doesn’t like a literary tour?

After story, for those who haven’t caught up with it yet, is framed around a ten-day literary tour of England that is undertaken by a First Nations Australian mother and daughter, Della and Jasmine, whose relationship is fraught. Through this plot device, Behrendt marries her two storytelling loves – English literature and Indigenous Australian storytelling. In doing so, she draws comparisons between them, and explores ways in which both can reflect on and enhance our lives. She also shows how travel can be an engine of change for people.

Although it contains some very dark matter concerning grief and abuse, After story is a gentle and generous read – for two reasons. First, there’s the characters. Della and Jasmine, are strong, thoughtful and, importantly, real. Both have made mistakes in managing the challenges in their lives, but both genuinely want to have better relationships with those they love. Della, the less educated and more naive of the two, is particularly engaging for her honesty and lack of pretension, for her open-mindedness, and for the rawness of her pain. The other reason is the novel’s tone. It is clear and passionate about the wrongs done to Australia’s First Nations peoples but it is not angry. This is not to say that anger doesn’t have its place – it certainly does – but it’s not the only approach to telling the story of dispossession and dislocation.

What is particularly striking about this book is its structure and voice. After a prologue in Della’s voice telling of the disappearance twenty-five years ago of her 7-year-old daughter Brittany, the novel is structured by the tour, with each day being told, in first person, by Della and then Jasmine, until Day 8, when Della’s built-up grief overcomes her. After that, the order changes and Jasmine goes first. This change marks a turning point in their relationship – albeit not an immediate, epiphanic one. It also jolts the narrative out of a pattern that had risked becoming a little too rigorous. Like a coda, it makes the reader sit up and wonder what will happen next?

What does happen, however, as I’ve already implied, is not particularly dramatic. Rather, this book emulates something Virginia Woolf said, as Jasmine shares:

The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead, there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark.

Like life.

But, back to the structure. After story is one of those books in which the structure mirrors or supports its intention – and Jasmine, again, explains it well. Talking about Jane Eyre and Jean Rhys’ response to it in Wide Sargasso Sea, she says, “it’s compelling, the uncovering of the other side of the story”. “Uncovering the other side of the story” is the nub of this novel – personally, in terms of Della, Jasmine, and their relationship with each other and the rest of their family, and politically, in terms of the conflicting views and experiences of the colonisers and colonised. What Behrendt aims for in this novel, I believe, is to bring people together through improved mutual understanding.

Lest this sound too earnest, though, let me reiterate my earlier comment that this novel has a light touch. To balance the heavy material, which includes a number of losses including those related to abandoned and lost children, Behrendt creates a cast of typical tour participants. There’s the white male know-it-all professor and his seemingly mouse-like wife; the feminist young lesbian couple willing to take him on at every turn; the recently retired, educated middle-class couple; the bossy woman and her down-trodden sister; Della and Jasmine; and of course Lionel, the long-suffering tour guide, and bus-driver Brett. Behrendt handles these almost-stereotypical characters well, so that, by the end, even the arrogant Professor Finn is softened for us.

There is much humour in the telling, such as this, for example, from Della as she enters the British Museum, which, she has just discovered, still holds Aboriginal remains:

As we walked into the imposing white building there was a big glass bowl with money in it and a sign asking for donations.
“We already gave,” I said to the guard who was standing next to it.

Comments and asides like this are used throughout the novel to draw our attention to the truths we may not otherwise see. Truth, in fact, is a recurring idea in the novel – the withholding and the sharing. Della, reflecting on Thomas Hardy’s first wife being written out of history, remembers stories of erasure told by her community’s elder Aunty Elaine, and thinks “Sometimes the truth matters and you shouldn’t try to hide the facts”. A little later, Jasmine is also reminded of Aunty Elaine’s wisdom:

Aunty Elaine would remind me that there is more than one way to tell a story; there can sometimes be more than one truth. ‘The silences are as important as the words,’ she’d often say. There is what’s not in the archive, not in the history books – those things that have been excluded hidden overlooked.

Throughout the novel, Aunty Elaine’s stories and wisdom, shared through the memories of Della and Jasmine, provide the First Nations’ foil to the literary tour, sometimes enhancing, sometimes counteracting the messages and lessons of English literature.

I did, however, have one issue with the novel, one shared by a few in my reading group. This concerned its occasional didactic tone. Frequently, for example, the characters tell us what they’d learnt at various sites, such as about Jane Austen’s life or Virginia Woolf’s death. While we could see the point, the way the information was imparted did feel teachy at times. Fortunately, this tone did not extend to the novel’s underpinning ideas which are conveyed through the narrative rather than “told”.

In a Sydney Writers’ Festival panel, Behrendt said something that appeals to me, which is that the goal of being a great writer is to say something important. In After story, she has written an engaging, accessible novel, that also says important things – some subtle, some more overt, but all stemming, ultimately, from the traumas First Nations people have suffered, and continue to suffer, at the hands of the settlers.

Jasmine comes to a significant realisation near the end:

Suddenly I found the museum stuffy. When Aunty Elaine would talk about it, our culture felt alive – the sewing of possum cloaks … the gift of telling stories. They were living and breathing, not relics of the past, frozen in time. Looking at the artefacts surrounding me, I couldn’t help but feel I missed an opportunity with Aunty Elaine to capture her knowledge.

She had, she continues, “rightly valued education” but she had also “taken Aunty Elaine and her knowledge for granted”.

This is the call Behrendt makes in her novel. She wants both cultures given equal respect for what they can offer us. She knows the value of stories in bringing people together. Wouldn’t it be great if her story here achieved just that?

Larissa Behrendt is a Eualeyai/Kamillaroi woman

This book has been reviewed by several bloggers including Lisa, Brona and Kimbofo.

Larissa Behrendt
After story
St Lucia: UQP, 2021
307pp.
ISBN: 9780702263316

Monday musings on Australian literature: Magabala Books

July 11, 2022July 11, 2022 / Whispering Gums / 14 Comments

Lisa’s (ANZLitLovers) 2022 First Nations Reading Week and this year’s NAIDOC Week officially ended yesterday. However, as I’ve done before, I’m bookending those events with Monday Musings posts – with this week’s topic being the pioneering publisher, Magabala Books.

Magabala Books have been operating for over 40 years – as they share on their website. (I do love it when organisations make space for telling their history on their websites, and am really frustrated when they don’t. Do you feel the same?)

Origins

I’ve linked to their About us page above, but in a nutshell, their origin can be found in 1984 when “more than 500 Aboriginal Elders and leaders met at a cultural festival in Ngumpan” in Western Australia’s Kimberley region, to discuss how they could keep culture strong and protect cultural and intellectual property”. The result was the establishment of the Kimberley Aboriginal Law and Culture Centre (KALACC), which laid the ground for Magabala Books.

“Magabala’s beginnings”, they say, “were part of the wider movement of Aboriginal self-determination occurring in the 80s”, a time when Australia was “just beginning to reveal its interest in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture”.

Magabala’s first book, Mayi: Some Bush Fruits of the West Kimberley by Merrilee Lands, was published in 1987, and this was soon followed by Glenyse Ward’s highly-acclaimed autobiography, Wandering girl. In March 1990, Magabala Books became an independent registered Indigenous Corporation. It is governed by a Board comprising Kimberley Aboriginal educators, business professionals and creative practitioners.

Their Vision and Purpose is:

To inspire and empower Indigenous people to share their stories. To celebrate the talent and diversity of Australian Indigenous voices through the publication of quality literature. (website)

They achieve this not only by publishing books on and by First Nations Australians, but they also create and deliver a wide range of cultural projects geared at ensuring stories of value continue to be available into the future, and they offer a number of awards and scholarships which support their commitment to nurturing and celebrating First Nations talent.

Recognition

On their website, they describe themselves as “Australia’s leading Indigenous publisher”, and they list some of their achievements. Here’s a selection, from that and my own search of Trove and the web:

1993: Magabala Books publication Tjarany Roughtail won the Children’s Book Council of Australia’s inaugural Eve Pownall Award for Information Books (and other awards including the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Book of the Year)
2017 and 2019: shortlisted for Small Publisher of the Year (Australian Book Industry Awards)
2019: the fastest growing independent small publisher in Australia
2020: awarded the Small Publisher of the Year (Australian Book Industry Awards)
2020 and 2021: listed as a candidate for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, a prestigious international children’s literary award

I’m not sure whether Tjarany Roughtail, by Gracie Greene, Joe Tramacchi and Lucille Gill, is their first award-winner, but it will have been one of the first. Since then many of their books have been shortlisted for or won significant Australian literary awards, proving that Magabala truly is a force in Australian publishing. If you’d like to check out some of the books that have been recognised by the literary awards circuit, click on their Award Winning and Notable page.

Their books

On their About Us page, they say that since beginning they have published “more than 250 titles by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander authors, artists and illustrators from across Australia”, of which I’ve read several. Their authors include Bruce Pascoe, Alexis Wright, Ali Cobby-Eckermann and Alison Whittaker. Currently, they publish around “15 new titles annually across a range of genres: children’s picture books, memoir, fiction (junior, YA and adult), non-fiction, graphic novels, social history and poetry” and I’ve read several over the years. They are also committed to maintaining “a substantial backlist in print” which is great to see. (And, it’s clearly true because that 1993 award-winning book, Tjarany Roughtail is still listed on their inventory).

Anyhow, I thought I’d delve a little into Trove to see what I could find about early responses to them and their work – recognising of course that the post-1987 period is still in copyright so most newspapers have not yet been digitised.

I was interested to find their existence was noted early on. Moya Costello started her review in Sydney’s Tribune wrote in 1988 with:

Some books turn your head around. For me, two such books have been by Aborigines. Only two because I am just beginning to read Aboriginal writing, and because we’re just at the beginning of a great swell of Aboriginal writing being published in Australia.

And then, she writes, comes a third book, Glenyse Ward’s Wandering girl. She wishes “books like this had been around when I was at school. I have missed this history of my own country. (My own country?)” She is not the only reviewer to recognise the history we have missed. Anyhow, she then identifies the publisher:

You haven’t heard of Magabala Books? Let me introduce you. Based in Broome, WA, Magabala books publishes writings by Aboriginal people. It’s been funded by Bicentennial money — but if you’ve heard the publishers speak, and if you’ve read Magabala publications, would you quibble?

In 1989, Canberra-based author Marian Eldridge reviewed in The Canberra Times two First Nations books, one being Magabala’s Raparapa: Stories from the Fitzroy River drovers by Eric Lawford, Jock Shandley, Jimmy Bird, Ivan Watson, Peter Clancy, John Watson, Lochy Green, Harry Watson and Barney Barnes. They are important, she writes, because both are “told by Aborigines from an Aboriginal point of view” and “what they have to say is part of Australia’s history that has been far too long neglected”. Again, we we see in a mainstream newspaper, recognition of history we’ve missed. Interestingly, a new edition of Raparapa was published by Magabala in 2011.

Eldridge goes on to say about Raparapa that:

Until now, books about the cattle industry in northern Australia have been written by white people. Raparapa, instigated by John Watson, formerly Fitzroy River stockman and later chairman of the Kimberley Land Council, helps to right the balance.

Jess Walker also reviewed this book in 1989 in Tribune, and concurs, saying the book

is much more than just a collection of interesting anecdotes. It’s a very rich and stimulating book which fulfills the objectives John Watson set for it – to communicate to other Australians the full extent of Aboriginal involvement in one of Australia’s most important primary industries, and to help explain Aborigines’ relationship to land. Raparapa also preserves the stories of an older generation of men for the benefit of the younger Aboriginal people.

I found quite a bit more, but I will close with a report by Robert Hefner in The Canberra Times in 1990. He quotes Pat Torres, a First Nations writer and artist (among other things), who was on Magabala’s management committee. She described their basic aim as being

to foster the oral history and stories of the Kimberley and put it into a form which is accessible to a lot of people. We encourage the training of Aboriginal people in the area of publishing, and we encourage local artists to contribute their drawings to illustrate the stories. But basically our aim is to foster and maintain Aboriginal culture and history .

As Magabala Books say on their current website, they want “to ensure Indigenous people control their own stories [my emph], and that the benefits flow back to the right people”. It seems that they are not only achieving that, but are also getting those stories out to the wider Australian public. Finally, we are learning the history so many of us missed.

For Lisa’s 2022 First Nations Reading Week

Click here here for previous ILW/FNRW/NAIDOC Week-related Monday Musings.

Monday musings on Australian literature: First Nations Australian poets

July 4, 2022August 31, 2022 / Whispering Gums / 20 Comments

Yesterday was the start of Lisa’s (ANZLitLovers) 2022 First Nations Reading Week which coincides of course with NAIDOC Week. As has become my practice, I’m devoting this week’s Monday Musings to the cause.

NAIDOC Week’s theme this year is Get Up! Stand Up! Show Up! Its focus is encouraging First Nations people to continue “getting up, standing up, and showing up” to achieve “systemic change” and to “narrow the gap between aspiration and reality, good intent and outcome”. They also say,

The relationship between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and non‑Indigenous Australians needs to be based on justice, equity, and the proper recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ rights.

I would like to think that our blogs help in some way by sharing our engagement with First Nations Australian writing, and hopefully inspiring others to engage too. There is a lot of truth-telling in First Nations writing and I greatly appreciate what I am learning. Although it can be confronting at times, it is exciting to feel my understanding expanding and deepening.

And this brings me to this post, because my introduction to First Nations Australians’ experience and thinking came through poetry. It was in my teens in the late 1960s. I had become interested in racial inequality, and discovered the work of Kath Walker, as she was known then.

Kath Walker was, of course, Oodgeroo Noonuccal (1920-1993). According to the Macquarie Pen anthology of Aboriginal literature, edited by Anita Heiss and Peter Minter, Walker “readopted her tribal name” in 1988 “as a protest against Australia’s Bicentenary celebrations and a symbol of her Aboriginal pride”. Heiss and Minter say that her 1964-published collection, We are going, “was the first book of poetry by an Aboriginal writer and the first book by an Aboriginal woman”.

For Poetry Month last year, you may remember that I asked people to share their favourite poem (or poems). One of mine was Oodgeroo Noonuccal’s “We are going”, and I see that it is one of the eight that Heiss and Minter selected for their anthology. As they say in their introduction to her, “Oodgeroo was politically active from the late 1940s and became one of the most prominent Aboriginal voices”. Her poetry reflected her politics, as is common among poets from marginalised, disempowered people. Poetry, after all, is a powerful tool. It can make points succinctly, and do so in ways that you want to repeat. Listen to the end of “We are going” – the repetition, the rhythm and tone it creates, and the final line. Wham!

We are nature and the past, all the old ways
Gone now and scattered.
The scrubs are gone, the hunting and the laughter.
The eagle is gone, the emu and the kangaroo are gone from this place.
The bora ring is gone.
The corroboree is gone.
And we are going.

Oodgeroo varied her style, and often used rhyme, but here she uses free verse to such rhetorical effect.

I’m embarrassed to say that I didn’t read much First Nations poetry again for a few decades, until I read contemporary poets like Ellen Van Neerven, Ali Cobby Eckermann and, right now, Evelyn Araluen. However, First Nations people were writing poetry right through, and Heiss and Minter include many in their anthology. These writers include Jack Davis (1917-2000), who wrote a poem titled “Walker (For Kath)”. It starts, “Fight on, Sister, fight on/Stir them with your ice”.

Then, there’s Kevin Gilbert (1933-1993) and his daughter Kerry Reed-Gilbert (1956-2019), and Lionel Fogarty (b. 1958), who also wrote a poem for Oodgeroo titled “Kath Walker”. It starts, allusively, with “We are coming, even going”. There’s Tony Birch (b. 1957), some of whose prose I’ve reviewed, and Sam Wagan Watson (b. 1972), son of novelist Sam Watson (1952-2019).

There are writers I don’t know so well, like Lisa Bellear (1961-2006), who, say Heiss and Minter, was a “notably political poet”. (But, then, how many weren’t and aren’t.) Her poem, “Women’s liberation”, speaks to that issue of the movement being largely for and by white middle-class women. It’s witty and pointed. You can read it at Poetry International.

“got something for you to swallow”

(from “Gather”, by Evelyn Araluen)

I have, though, written on First Nations poetry in this blog. My post on the digital publication, Writing black, that was edited by Ellen Van Neerven, includes references to several of the poets I’ve named above, including Kerry Reed-Gilbert and Lionel Fogarty. I enjoyed Writing black especially because it introduced me to some of these voices I’d heard of but had not yet read.

Ellen van Neerven is a well-recognised First Nations poet. Indeed, she was caught up in a controversy when her poem, “Mango”, unbeknownst to her I believe, was included in an HSC exam a few years ago. You know you have arrived on the Australian literary scene when you’ve been embroiled in a controversy. Anyhow, her second poetry collection, Throat, was shortlisted for several literary awards. Jonathan Shaw (Me fail? I fly) has reviewed it, describing it as “a rich, accessible, many-faceted collection from a strong, challenging and self-questioning voice”.

Another collection I haven’t read is Alison Whittaker’s BlakWork, which won the 2019 Judith Wright Calanthe Award. Bill (The Australian Legend) and Brona (Brona’s Books) have both reviewed it. Brona, in particular, connected with it.

However, I have read some contemporary First Nations poetry, including Ali Cobby Eckermann’s historical fiction verse novel Ruby Moonlight (my review) and her collection Inside my mother (my review). I’m currently reading Evelyn Araluen’s 2022 Stella Prize winning Drop Bear, which Brona has reviewed. Like much First Nations poetry it’s political and powerful, but is also witty.

This has been a brief and selective survey. There are many First Nations poets I haven’t mentioned, but if you are interested to hear what First Nations people are thinking, you won’t go wrong if you check out some of their poetry. I hope this post offers those interested some ways in.

Do you have any favourite First Nations poets – or, even, poems?

Written for Lisa’s First Nations Reading Week

Click here here for my previous ILW/FNRW/NAIDOC Week-related Monday Musings.

Monday musings on Australian literature: Recovering Australia’s Indigenous languages (2)

July 5, 2021July 5, 2021 / Whispering Gums / 24 Comments

Yesterday was the start of Lisa’s (ANZLitLovers) 2021 Indigenous Literature Week which coincides of course with NAIDOC Week, and, again, I’ve decided to contribute this week’s Monday Musings to the cause. The topic I’ve chosen, the reclamation of First Nations languages, was partly inspired by last week’s Monday Musings on Eliza Hamilton Duncan, but also follows up a post I wrote early last year on the topic.

According to academic Elizabeth Webby, Dunlop was the “first Australian poet to transcribe and translate Indigenous songs, and [w]as among the earliest to try to increase white readers’ awareness of Indigenous culture”. Dunlop also created vocabularies of the local language. Consequently, her work, like that of other colonials, is helping language reclamation projects around Australia. Of course, if settlers hadn’t stolen land and destroyed culture, and hadn’t actively suppressed language, in the first place, this arduous work would not be needed.

Each year NAIDOC week has a theme, and 2021’s is “Heal country, heal our nation” which, the website says, “calls for all of us to continue to seek greater protections for our lands, our waters, our sacred sites and our cultural heritage from exploitation, desecration, and destruction.” Given the significant role played by language in maintaining culture, a post on language reclamation is, I think, relevant to this theme.

‘The living voices of our past giving strength to our future’

This heading is the goal of a 2013-established organisation, First Languages Australia. They are working, they say, to “a future where Aboriginal language communities and Torres Strait Islander language communities have full command of their languages and can use them as much as they wish to.” This is just one organisation working on the goal.

Another is Living Languages, founded in 2004 under another name. They describe their purpose as “to support the sustainability of Indigenous languages and Indigenous peoples’ ownership of their language documentation and revitalisation.”

It is difficult to assess the magnitude of the challenge because so much is lost, but Living Languages says that some 250-400 languages were spoken across Australia, or up to 700 and 800 if you include language varieties and dialects. However, they say, Australia has been “identified as one of five language endangerment hotspots worldwide, with only around 13 languages being passed on to children today”.

As I wrote in my previous post, First Nations communities vary in their attitude to sharing language outside their communities. This statement by the Kaurna people on the University of Adelaide’s language courses webpage clearly states their position:

Kaurna language and culture is the property of the Kaurna community. Users of this site are urged to use the language with respect. This means making every effort to get the pronunciation, spelling and grammar right.
Kaurna people reserve the right to monitor the use of the language in public. Users of this site should consult with Kaurna people about use of the language in the public domain.

Random projects and activities

There’s no way I could document all the projects – big and small – that are happening around Australia, so I’m going to share three (adding to those I mentioned in last year’s post) which exemplify the sorts of things that are happening.

Eidsvold State School Wakka Wakka program

Located in Queensland’s North Burnett Region, this school has developed, says the Teach Queensland website, a “unique language program” that engages the whole school with the local community and in learning the local Aboriginal language, Wakka Wakka. The local First Nations people support this program:

After several years of planning and consultation with Traditional Owner groups, the Wakka Wakka Corporation and the community, Eidsvold State School encourages all students and staff to speak to each other in Wakka Wakka using short phrases.

Mawng Ngaralk language website

Mawng is spoken in the western part of Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory. The site tells us that Warruwi School runs a Mawng language program and supports the 2014-established Warruwi Language Centre which runs other Mawng language activities. Do check out this website, because it contains a dictionary and many, many videos in which local speakers share their knowledge in ways that both document vocabulary and pronunciation, and show how the language is used in song and dance.

Paper and Talk workshop

This was a two-week workshop held in 2019, led by Monash University, in collaboration with Living Languages and AIATSIS. Its aim was “to help revive languages from five Aboriginal communities”: Anaiwan (NSW), Wakka Wakka (QLD), Yorta Yorta (VIC), Ngunnawal (ACT) and Wergaia (VIC). The workshop gave language researchers from these communities “the opportunity and skills to access archives and transform them into usable language resources”. They were, for example, introduced to resources, like an 1800s surveyors’ notebook, in which language were documented by early settlers (like Dunlop).

What about irretrievably lost languages?

Maïa Ponsonnet, who researches Aboriginal languages, though is not Indigenous herself, makes the point that “while there are very good reasons to deplore the loss of small languages, assuming this loss condemns cultural identity may be unhelpful and reductive to those who have already shifted away from their heritage language”. In her article in The Conversation she argues that reclaiming languages is important, but that over-focus on it can be hurtful and, in some circumstances, politically damaging for those whose languages are lost. Language, her research is showing, is “plastic”. Post-colonial languages like Kriol can be “shaped by culture”, she writes. “Even when language is replaced, culture can continue”.

Thoughts, anyone?

Click here here to see all my previous ILW/NAIDOC Week-related Monday Musings.

Monday musings on Australian literature: “You don’t walk away until the work is done”

November 9, 2020July 12, 2022 / Whispering Gums / 18 Comments

This is a different type of Monday Musings, but its relevance will become apparent, I promise you! It’s inspired by Julia Baird’s Phosphorescence which I read a couple of weeks ago. In my review, I mentioned that one of the book’s four main sections is devoted to failure and imperfection, but I didn’t share much about this section, which is titled “We are all wiggly”.

Its opening chapter, after her usual intro, is called “The activist’s attic”. In it she tells of 9 boxes of papers she’s carried around with her for decades. They relate to her “spectacularly unsuccessful endeavour”, when a young woman, to win ordination for women in Sydney’s Anglican church. It’s a failure that has hung heavily on her, and that brought her to ask, in this book, “how to think of these years of effort?”

She shares the stories of other activists, like William Wilberforce who fought against the slave trade for forty-six years, and Nelson Mandela “who spent much of his life, including twenty-seven years in prison, fighting apartheid … “

And then she talks about climate change:

… think of all the scientists who have been warning of the dangers of extreme climate change since the 1960s, and of all the criticism of their work and the dismissal of anything resembling agitation and or activism as the lunatic alarmism of the left. The public burying – or attempts to discredit – the crucial findings of thousands of our finest climate scholars will prove to be one of the greatest (if not the greatest) acts of political and intellectual corruptions of our age.

But then comes the paragraph that is the focus of this post, because this week is NAIDOC Week, and in her book – in this Activist chapter – Baird also writes about Indigenous Australians’ long fight for recognition:

And what of the Indigenous people of Australia seeking constitutional recognition, truth-telling and a voice to parliament, those people who have been mistreated, stymied, rejected, ignored and discriminated against and who continue to ask non-indigenous Australians to walk with them in a makarrata, a Yolngu word meaning peace-making, a coming together after a struggle? The grace of this approach after more than two hundred years of suffering racism, along with their patience, strength and resilience, is astonishing.
The lesson is: you don’t walk away until the work is done.

I should explain here that NAIDOC Week is usually held in July, but it was deferred this year to protect, wrote the Committee, “our elders and those in our communities with chronic health issues from the disastrous impacts of COVID19. I post most years for this Week, and did write two posts back in July, anyhow, to align with Lisa’s ANZLitLovers’ Indigenous Literature Week. But, I wanted to also honour this year’s actual week, so decided to let Baird be my inspiration.

Finally, this year’s theme is “Always was, always will be”, which recognises that “First Nations people have occupied and cared for this continent for over 65,000 years”. It also asks

all Australians to celebrate that we have the oldest continuing cultures on the planet and to recognise that our sovereignty was never ceded.

C’mon, Aussies … let’s get this thing done!

Monday musings on Australian literature: Indigenous Australian biographies

July 6, 2020July 2, 2021 / Whispering Gums / 35 Comments

Yesterday was the start of Lisa’s (ANZLitLovers) 2020 Indigenous Literature Week, and, as I have done for a few years now, I’ve decided to devote my Monday Musings to an Indigenous Australian literature topic. This year’s topic is Indigenous Australian biography.

I have previously written Monday Musings on Indigenous Australian autobiographies and memoirs. These have flourished in the last decade or so, particularly, it seems, memoirs from Indigenous Australian women. I’ve reviewed several on this blog. However, biographies are a different form altogether, and in researching for this post, I’ve struggled to find many. Readings bookshop, for example, provides a list of Australian First Nations Memoir and Biography but I struggled to find many biographies in their list. It is a positive thing that publishers and readers have embraced memoirs, but I can’t help feeling that the paucity of biography tells us something about the place of Indigenous Australians in Australian culture.

The Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB), self-described as “Australia’s pre-eminent dictionary of national biography”, aims to provide “informative and fascinating descriptions of the lives of significant and representative persons in Australian history.” This suggests that biography has a formal role in telling the story of a nation. Consequently, the dearth of Indigenous Australian biographies – if my research is right – is surely a measure of the continuing marginalisation or exclusion of Indigenous Australian culture and lives from our national story.

Not surprisingly, I’m not the only one to have noticed this problem. In 2017, the National Centre of Biography launched a new project “to develop an Indigenous Australian Dictionary of Biography“. It’s being led by Shino Konishi who is of Indiengous descent from Broome. She is on the ADB’s Indigenous Working Party which was established in 2015, and which includes “leading Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander scholars from each state and the territory”. The main aim of the project is to add 190 new Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander biographies to the ADB which, they say, has published nearly 13,000 biographies since 1966, but “has tended to under-recognise the contribution of Indigenous people to the Australian story”. The end-result of the project will be a dedicated Indigenous ADB.

Alongside this, the National Centre of Biography, which publishes the Australian Dictionary of Biography, also hosts a site called Indigenous Australia which “brings together all entries on Indigenous Australians found in the NCB’s biographical websites–Australian Dictionary of Biography, Obituaries Australia, Labour Australia and Women Australia.” It also supports the Australian Indigenous Autobiography Archive, which is an initiative of the University of Western Sydney. (However, it moves us away from my focus here on biography.)

Of course, the above is all very important, but the ADB is about biographical essays in a dictionary of biography. I’m also interested in full-length biographies. I didn’t find many, but, as always, I’m hoping you will tell me (or remind me of) others?

Indigenous Australian biography – a small selection

Max Bonnell’s How many more are coming?: the short life of Jack Marsh (2003): on athlete and first class cricketer, Jack Marsh, who died in 1916.
Kathie Cochrane’s Oodgeroo (1994): on poet and activist Oodgeroo Noonuccal.
Ruby Langford Ginibi’s Haunted by the past (1999): on Ginibi’s son, Nobby, who spent significant time in prison, and the systemic failures in handling Indigenous young.
Kevin Keeffe’s Paddy’s road: Life stories of Patrick Dodson (2003): on activist Patrick Dodson, and his family, and their commitment to reconciliation.
Marlene J. Norst’s Burnum Burnum: A warrior for peace (1999): on Burnum, Stolen Generations survivor, sportsperson and activist.
John Ramsland’s The rainbow beach man (2009): on Les Ridgeway, Worimi elder, who was a farm labourer, station manager and was eventually recruited by Charles Perkins to work in the Commonwealth Department of Aboriginal Affairs.
Peter Read’s Charles Perkins: A biography (2001): on activist, Freedom Ride participant and administrator, Charlie Perkins.
Banjo Woorunmurra and Howard Pedersen’s Janadamarra and the Bunuba Resistance (1995): on Aboriginal resistance fighter, Jandamarra, and his resistance against invasion in the Kimberleys.
Alexis Wright’s Tracker (2017): on the charismatic ‘Tracker’ Tilmouth, activist, a book which is described by some as a “collective memoir” but which I’ve included here as an example of new forms of “biography”, particularly for Indigenous life-writing.