As Australians would know, this week – July 7-14 – is NAIDOC week. NAIDOC originally stood for an organisation – ‘National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee’ – but the acronym has now become the name of the week itself. Fascinating how acronyms can take on lives of their own, isn’t it? Anyhow, the theme for this year’s celebrations is We value vision: Yirrkala Bark Petitions 1963.

This theme commemorates the 50th anniversary of two bark petitions which were sent by the Yolngu people of Yirrkala in northeast Arnhem Land to the Australian Parliament. The petitions concerned the Commonwealth Government’s granting of mining rights on land excised from Arnhem Land. They asked the Government to recognise the Yolngu peoples’ traditional rights and ownership of their lands. These petitions were the first indigenous Australian documents recognised by the Government and helped, the NAIDOC website says, to “set into motion a long process of legislative and constitutional reforms for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people”. Many Australians know of Eddie Mabo and the Native Title Act of 1993, but I wonder how many know of actions like this which occurred decades earlier?

In this spirit of commemorating the past, I thought today’s Monday Musings could focus on indigenous Australian memoirs/autobiographies. I’ve written on this topic before, and so will try to avoid repeating myself too much. Interestingly, all of the books I mention below are by women. The Cambridge companion to Australian literature says, in fact, that since the 1970s, Aboriginal women have dominated indigenous autobiography.

A number of themes run through indigenous memoirs/autobiographies and, of course, identity is a big one. One of the best known examples of a memoir about identity is Sally Morgan‘s My place which was published in 1988, Australia’s bicentenary year – the bicentenary, that is, of white settlement in Australia. It was not a year that was universally celebrated by indigenous Australians, for good reason. My place was, possibly, the first book by an indigenous Australian that many non-indigenous Australians had read – and it became a best-seller. Morgan, also an artist, told the story of her family – and of their shame that was so strong that she had not been told she was indigenous. She’d been let think she was of Indian (that is, from the subcontinent) extraction, until she was well into her teens. I haven’t read My place since 1988, but I expect it would still stand up well today. Morgan is a great story-teller.

Anita Heiss‘s Am I black enough for you, which was published in 2012, is also about identity, but in a different more confident way. I’m reading this one now. In it, Heiss aims to educate Australians about the breadth of indigenous life and experience in Australia, to show us that people do not have to be living a traditional indigenous life in the desert to identify as indigenous.

A big topic for indigenous memoirs is the experience of the Stolen Generation. Many of these also deal with identity, but from a specific point of view. I mentioned one – Doris Pilkington‘s Following the Rabbit Proof Fence – in my previous post. While I’ve read a couple of novels dealing with this issue since that post, I haven’t read more memoirs. There are many out there, though, including Rosalie Fraser’s Shadow Child: A Memoir of the Stolen Generation (1998), Doris Kartinyeri’s Kick the tin (2000), Donna Meehan’s It is no secret: The story of a stolen child (2000).

As Australians would know, the most comprehensive study of the Stolen Generation appeared in the government report Bringing them home (1997). This 700-page report contains excerpts from the testimonies of over 500 indigenous people about their or their families’ experiences of being stolen.

A common style of memoir – for indigenous and non-indigenous people alike – is what I’d call the “success memoir”. You know, those chronicling major success or high achievement. Sydney 2000 Olympic Games gold medallist Cathy Freeman wrote Cathy: Her own story in 2003. As often happens with memoirs written by non-writers, she had a co-author, the sportswriter Scott Gullan.

Last but not least is the simple story-of-my-life memoir, though most memoirists wouldn’t be writing their stories if they really were simple! Ruby Langford Ginibi would fall into this category – I think, as I haven’t read her yet. Ginibi published her first book, the gorgeously titled Don’t take your love to town, in 1988 when she was 54. She won a Human Rights Literary Award for it. Ginibi was a lecturer in and historian of Aboriginal history, but her start was way different. She married young, had nine children, lived and worked in the bush, and also worked as a clothing machinist. One of the obituaries written after her death says:

Through her numerous books, short stories, poetry, interviews and public appearances and her commitment to ‘edu-ma-cating’ non-Aboriginal people about Indigenous peoples’ circumstances and struggle she made a distinctive and substantial contribution to Australian history and literature.

 “‘Edu-ma-cating’ non-Aboriginal people”. That’s what all these writers are doing in their different ways … I’m glad they are, and will continue to read a few each year.

Unfortunately, many of these books are likely to be out of print but most should be available in libraries – in Australia at least. If you’d like to read one, I suggest you do so now and join ANZLitLovers Indigenous Literature Week. Lisa will, I understand, accept reviews after the week has finished.