Journal
Articles
Can you hear me now?: 2008–2018
In particular, there was a great recognition of female Aboriginal writing – we had this possibility of being able to imagine ourselves as Alexis Wright, for our work to be read widely and for our stories to have a global impact. A major anthology of our literature was available in bookshops and featured in curriculums throughout the country.
Speaking for ourselves: 1997–2007
In 1994, one in every ten Aboriginal people aged over twenty-five reported to the Australian Bureau of Statistics that they had been removed from their families in childhood, a figure confirmed by research conducted since the Bringing Them Home report. Australia-wide, those directly affected by these removal policies number in the tens of thousands.
In the small hours
Click here to listen to Editor Ashley Hay read ‘In the small hours: Stories from madrugada’. THIS MORNING, I was up at 5...
The books we carry on our backs: 1796–1996
During the period of colonisation, Aboriginal customs and languages were prohibited from being used and spoken, which meant that many languages and their stories disappeared from circulation. A great linguistic dispossession occurred, hand in hand with a great dispossession of homelands and family structures.
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.
Aleksandrinke
SHE IS WRITTEN deep in Slovenian folklore, stuttering into existence in ballads, songs, myths, legends. A woman repeated, kept...
Ingredients for preservation
Wear calico dress with Blueboard shoes, Corflute wings, Mylar glasses, dangling Ethafoam earrings. Create houses for each object. Know what is inside without a reference image. Bundle up...
The morning fog (A Golden Shovel after Kate Bush)
is sweetest at the Tropic of Capricorn, the colour of lemon chiffon cake, and just as light. It might begin with...
Cape York
When you arrive at the tip of the Cape, the coast opens its arms and you’re split into the rivulets left...
Pursuit music
We drove for years past Super 8s & motor inns, blue neon swimming like luminol across the windscreen, cruised by phone...
Spectrums
Elsie THERE IS LIGHTNESS and darkness. Everyone knows that. There is a name for the shade that is neither light...
Cleave
Arrival THEY ARRIVE AT the town just after nightfall. Stand at the town sign looking up at it: Population 2,500,...
