Welcome to GR Online, a series of short-form articles that take aim at the moving target of contemporary culture as it’s whisked along the guide rails of innovations in digital media, globalisation and late-stage capitalism.
Decolonising the shelf
I want to look at our writing, our languages and our wider story to try to understand it all myself. To celebrate that great canon so many people never knew or still don’t know, the books that us contemporary First Nations writers carry on our backs – just as we carry the past, and our ancestors’ stories too.
Cancelled on the overground railroad
When we call someone out, we do it with the full knowledge that all previous attempts to remedy harm have been shot down, avoided or negated, and the trial of public opinion is the final card to play. If anything, a call-out is an indictment on any given community regarding its inability to act on the issue in private.
Reassessing the reoffending question
To reduce Indigenous incarceration will require significant change in the rates of criminalising Indigenous people, and for rates of criminalisation to decline will require changes to criminal laws and procedures, along with a sustained policy focus on reducing social and economic disadvantage of Indigenous people.
Turning things inside out
The Darwin Correctional Centre houses around 1,100 prisoners, about eighty of whom are women. Like a slice of pie, the female sector, also known as Sector Four, sits between industries, where the men do jobs like woodworking and food prep, and the men’s maximum security sector. A tall cyclone fence, clad in black plastic, separates the men from the women.
Five years is too long
As Tony’s case drags on, your family’s conversations about it are less frequent. Every time an Australian Consulate official visits Tony at the detention centre, you receive a report, and every time, there is the same final note on his current legal status: …sentenced to a suspended death penalty and seizure of all personal property. The verdict hearing will be held at a later date.
Love virtually
The shift we’ve made to finding lovers online is nothing short of profound, and it’s a trend observable across every age group in Australia. Even the oldies appear to have taken to it with zeal. As the digitisation of our lives proceeds unabated, the use of digital platforms as a legitimate way to find a prospective mate has embedded itself in our culture.
Me, we and them
The roots of the digital change movement lie in ideas about audience persuasion that date back to Aristotle: that a combination of pathos, ethos and logos – the mixture of a credible hero, an emotive, empathetic story and a logical argument – is what’s needed to convince an audience to take action.
I, cyborg
Cyborg is a scary word. It is associated with science fiction, but despite the condescension with which some mainstream authors view the genre, it provides a useful way to explore the unintended consequences of how our paths into the future interact with human character and frailties
Cows come home
In this creative representation of the chatter that is social media, Annie Zaidi illuminates both the shortcomings and the insights that make up the underlying discourse of Indian political conversation…
Outlier
The animals come. Reminding you to be present, respectful, alert, not lost in the pointlessness of past or future failures. And, as in geography we know we are always and everywhere ‘in the field’, country is also everywhere, not just the bush.
Pulling down fences
The son of an activist, Munro Jr traces his ‘goolie’ – the fire in his belly – to his childhood on the New Moree Mission and his unfaltering awareness of the racial undertones that infiltrate a town such as Moree. It was indeed the only local government area in Australia that had enshrined racial segregation in its local by-laws…
One true note?
Language, like the wind, is hard to pin down. It relies on movement for its existence, as we rely on breath for life. The sound of language also often reminds me of water. It forms, runs, braids, pools, knocks, rustles, rushes, flows… Like a river it is always moving, even when it appears to be still.
