Indigenous Picture Books

Lisa @ANZLitLover is hosting her annual Indigenous Literature Week. Normally this week is also NAIDOC week, but due to Covid it has been postponed until 8th -15th November. The 2020 theme is 

Always Was, Always Will Be. 

Always Was, Always Will Be. recognises that First Nations people have occupied and cared for this continent for over 65,000 years. 

The picture books below honour this theme with their focus on country, family, success past and present, dreaming, songlines and sharing language & culture. They share a pride in Aboriginal heritage, acknowledging the wrongs and the suffering but looking forward to a more hopeful, inclusive future.

Respect | Aunty Fay Muir & Sue Lawson | Magabala Books | 1st May 2020

You have to respect this book.

It's heart is in the right place. Every page reflects love of country and family.

Respect combines a deep concern for taking care of each other, with acknowledging cultural heritage and traditions. It generously shares a part of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture with the wider community.

Magabala Books are planning a series of such books:

Respect is the first title in the ‘Our Place’ series of four children’s picture books which welcome and introduce children to important elements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture.

Lisa Kennedy's illustrations are stunning. Full of warmth and colour and a pleasing simple design that engages and draws the reader in.

I can't wait to see the other three books in this series.

Aunty Fay Muir is a Boonwurrung Elder.

Lawson's first book with Aunty Fay was Nganga: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Words and Phrases.
Lisa Kennedy is a descendant of the coastal Trawlwoolway people of north-east Tasmania.

Family | Aunty Fay Muir & Sue Lawson | Magabala Books | 1st July 2020

Family is book two in the Our Place series of picture books from Magabala Books. It's an Indigenous picture book about heart and home.

These books are designed for a preschool aged audience. Simple, clear language is used to show how caring and sharing for country and mob is an integral philosophy of Aboriginal life. This book focuses on how daily rituals and traditions create belonging and connection.

The earthy tones and palate used by Seymour throughout the book, feature family groups interacting together with country.

Respect and Family are both gentle, positive introductions for younger readers to Indigenous family and culture.

Aunty Fay Muir is a Boonwurrung Elder.
This is the third book that Sue Lawson has written with Aunty Fay.
Jasmine Seymour a Darug writer and artist.


Cooee Mittigar | Jasmine Seymour | Magabala Books | 1st November 2019

The full title for this book is Cooee Mittigar: A Story of Darug Songlines.
Cooee mittigar means come here friend. Seymour & Watson, two Darug women, invite us inside to share their story and to pay respect to country.

Darug country encompasses the greater Sydney Basin and Hawkesbury River.

Seymour & Watson have created a story that celebrates the Darug language by embedding it naturally within the text.

A glossary at the back provides simple meanings for each new word, but each word is also explained on the page where it is used, separate to the main text.

Mulgo, Black Swan takes us on a history lesson through Dreamtime and songlines, before moving onto a seasonal journey through Darug country.

Cooee mittigar. Tread softly on our lands.

Know that this dreaming was here. Is still here.

Will be forever.

Beautifully illustrated with native animals and local plants.
This is my pick of the crop (so far) for Indigenous picture books published in the past year.

Shortlisted – 2020 CBCA Award for New Illustrator
Notable – 2020 CBCA Book of the Year Awards: Eve Pownall Award

Coming Home to Country | Bronwyn Bancroft | Little Hare Books | 1st February 2020

Bancroft's illustrations feel very personal. They feature the rivers of her childhood in northern NSW that flow from page to page. Love of country and nature jump off each page in bold colours as Bronwyn takes us on a journey through her home, past and present.

A sense of where her home is grounds her. Knowing where she belongs allows her to go out into the world to make her own way. 

Over the years, her way, has included time as a textile and fashion designer, artist, activist and children's picture book writer and illustrator.

In 2016 Bancroft was the Australian Finalist for the Hans Christian Andersen Award (Illustrator).

She is now a finalist for the 2020 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award.

Born in Tenterfield, in northern NSW, Bronwyn Bancroft is a descendant of the Djanbun clan of the Bundjalung nation.

Our Home, Our Heartbeat | Adam Briggs | Little Hare Books | 1st May 2020

Yorta Yorta rapper Adam Briggs' energetic, enthusiastic personality oozes from every page and lyric in this book.

In 2014 Briggs released a song during Naidoc week called The Children Came Back. The song celebrates successful, well-known Indigenous athletes and artists, past and present. It was written on the 25th anniversary of Archie Roach's song Took the Children Away to continue the conversation originally started by Roach. His aim is to normalise Indigenous success.

Briggs claims his song is a "history lesson, a monologue, a celebration and an education." 

I've included the lyrics from the song below but urge you to search out the various youtube videos of the song, including the live versions done with Paul Kelly and Dan Sultan.

I'm Fitzroy where the stars be
I'm Wanganeen in '93
I'm Mundine, I'm Cathy Free-
Man, that fire inside a me
I'm Adam Goodes, and Adam should
Be applauded when he stand up
You can look to us when that time stop
I'm Patty Mills with the last shot

I'm Gurrumul, I'm Archie
I'm everything that you ask me
I'm everything that you can't be
I'm the dead hearts, heart beat

The children came back
The children came back
Back where their hearts grow strong
Back where they all belong
The children came back

I'm Doug Nicholls, I'm jimmy little
With a royal telephone
I'm the world champ in '68
Boy I'm Lionel Rose
I'm William Cooper, I take a stand
When no one even knows
I'm the walk off, I'm the sound of
The children coming home

I'm Gurrumul, I'm Archie
I'm everything you ask me
I'm everything you can't be
I'm the dead hearts, heart beat

The children came back
The children came back
Back where their hearts grow strong
Back where they all belong
The children came back

Let me take it home, I'm Rumba
I'm the sand hills on Cummera
I'm Les Briggs, I'm Paul Briggs
I'm Uncle Ringo with all them kids
I'm Uncle Buddy - everybody love me
Ain't none below, ain't none above me
I'm the carvings outta every scar tree
I'm those flats that birthed Archie

Now Mr abbott, think about it - me and you we feel the same
That might sound strange, I'm just saying,
We both unsettled when the boats came

I'm Gurrumul, I'm Archie
I'm everything you ask me
I'm everything you can’t be
I'm the dead hearts, heart beat

The children came back
The children came back
Back where their hearts grow strong
Back where they all belong
The children came back.

Our Home, Our Heartbeat is a younger readers version of this song. Briggs then made a very deliberate decision to have non-traditional illustrations, choosing a contemporary, almost cartoon style with bold, bright colours and lots of action.

From Lunch Lady interview |  21st May 2020

the Dreamtime stories, which are all fantastic, and all the artwork is amazing and fantastic. But cool, we have that. Let’s not do that, because people who are really good at that are already doing it. Here’s my contribution. It’s not here to take away. It’s here to add....I wanted it to be really super vibrant. I wanted everything to be bright and colourful and not like earthy ochre tones. I wanted it to really pop.

Kate Moon is a Melbourne based designer and 3D artist.

Rachael Sarra is a contemporary Aboriginal artist from Goreng Goreng country.

Sand Talk | Tyson Yunkaporta #NonFiction

Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World by Tyson Yunkaporta is a book almost designed to be provocative and contentious. I only say that because I know that there will always be people who feel the need to pull down or dismiss any point of view that diverges from the dominant, mainstream view.

Whereas I'm LOVING how the publishing world is currently embracing a wide variety of views from within our Indigenous community. There is no longer the expectation that all Indigenous thinking should be the same, and that all Indigenous people should speak with the one voice and the one purpose. It is also useful (if not challenging) for the dominant culture to have it ways of life reflected back via a completely different lens.

Our knowledge is only valued if it is fossilised, while our evolving customs and thought patterns are viewed with distaste and scepticism.

I'm not convinced that any one way of thinking, Indigenous or otherwise, will save our world but books like Sand Talk can open our minds and hearts to seeing the world through another's eyes. They may even give us a new way of seeing and thinking about our world that expands and enriches our current position. 

Apocalypses have proven to be survivable in the past, although on the downside it usually means that your culture will never be the same again.

I'm all for having your mind expanded by other possibilities and other perspectives. Yunkaporta has very definite opinions and beliefs, but he doesn't expect you to follow him and he doesn't harangue you. He acknowledges there are other ways, even within his own community.

The invisible privilege of your technocratic, one-sided peacefulness is an act of violence.

It's obvious that he is on a life-long search for meaning and understanding, he is simply sharing where he is on this journey at this moment. Evolving, emerging, reflecting, bringing together his thoughts so he can move onto the next phase, whatever that may be.

Living cultures and languages evolve and transform.

This is a book that deserves to be revisited.
It was a lot to take in with one sitting. And I'm not sure, I was ready to hear some of what Yunkaporta had to say. Or more accurately, the use of yarning to convey information was one that I struggled to fully connect with. It was a bit like those long, long poems in The Lord of the Rings, that I usually skim over to get to the next bit of the story.

Sand Talk is definitely a book you should read for yourself to make up your own mind, though. The writing style is accessible and engaging. Yunkaporta clearly states his aims and addresses his own biases. He doesn't expect his readers, black or white, to embrace everything he has to say. He simply feels that it is important to put his ideas out there to be part of the ongoing discussion about Indigenous life in Australia.

A DRAWING FROM SAND TALK (TEXT PUBLISHING)

The Yield by Tara June Winch

I've been trying to write a review for The Yield by Tara June Winch for the past week that would do it justice and adequately describe my reading experience. But I'm so tired and under the weather with a foggy brain and raspy throat that nothing is coming out right.

So, let me just simply say how much I enjoyed this story. From the beautiful cover to the endearing protagonist, August and her amazing Poppy Albert, the dictionary maker. It's not often that I tell you to read a book, but this is the one. The Yield is not just a highly recommended, but a must read.

The main themes centre around grief, loss, missing and belonging. We have a missing child, a missing book and all of our characters miss the recently deceased Poppy.

We have lost language, lost country and that sense of loss for those no longer with us as well as times gone by.

Three different perspectives are explored by Winch in this multi-generational story. We have August's contemporary story. A young Indigenous woman, living abroad, running away from her losses, trying to work out who she is and how she fits into this modern world. Poppy's death is the catalyst for bringing her home to Prosperous House.

Poppy Albert is the heart and soul of the story. His first person story is told via a dictionary of Wiradjuri words. Like the Oxford English Dictionary, we get a definition of the word with an example of the word in use. But it's not just any old example. Albert uses the dictionary to relate family stories, pass on culture, myths and legends to be 'proud of our culture again'. These sections of the book are inspired and revealing.

The third perspective turns up later in the story when we get a few letters written by the Rev Ferdinand Greenleaf, the minister who established and ran Prosperous Mission in the early part of the twentieth century. His letters cover the period around 1915. As a German national, he is now under suspicion thanks to the war. He is trying to get funding and government guarantees to protect everyone staying at Prosperous. He documents some of the violence and mistreatment of the local Aboriginal tribes.

Winch's moving story reminds me once again that Indigenous culture is not a unified whole. And that's okay. Like every other culture, different groups within that culture want different things. Poppy Albert's family, faced with the sadness of his death and the tragedy of dispossession as a tin mine tries to take over their property, all react differently - some want the money, some want to stay on the land, some want to remember the past, some want to forget, some want to fight, some want to give in.

I will leave you to discover for yourself the beauty of the brolga's, but for now I will leave you with a few key passages that spoke to me.

August:

Her mouth ached for something more, wanted some unknown balm, not a kiss, or a meal, or a drink, but something long denied....The feeling that nothing was properly said, that she'd existed in a foreign land of herself. How she saw home through the eyes of everyone else but her.

How she was scared to leave, even more scared to stay. 

But in every mobile-library book, she could never find herself or her sister. Never a girl like August and Jedda Gondiwindi, not ever.

Poppy Albert:

'Just tell the truth and someone will hear it eventually'.

searching, looking around - ngaa-bun-gaa-nha When I turned fifteen and was too old for the Boys' Home I was a ward of the state still, working the local properties. At nineteen I was issued my dog tag. With it I could travel in a certain distance to work for meat and salt on the field or out mustering. I moved around far and wide looking for work, but I was looking mostly ngaa-bun-gaa-nha for home.

So much to unpack in just this one definition. Why was Albert a ward of the state in a Boys' Home?  Dog tags! Lack of freedom, working for food not wages, loss of family and home and belonging. Every one of Poppy's definitions has this same sense of the universal wrapped up in the personal.

ashamed, have shame - giyal-dhuray I'm done with this word. I'd leave it out completely but I can't. It's become part of the dictionary we think we carry. We mustn't anymore. See, pain travels through our family tree like a songline. We've been singing our pain into a solid thing. the old ones, the young ones, are ready to heal. We don't have to be giyal-dhuray anymore, we don't have to pass that down anymore.

I was also taken with this very simple, but clearly prescribed view of Indigenous religion:

Biyaami is the creator, but we don't worship him or his son. We worship the things He made, the earth.

Favourite Quote:

After I met my beautiful wife, although beauty was the least of her, strong and fearless was the most of her - well she taught me lots of things.

Favourite or Forget: Not only a firm favourite but possibly a reread as well. I will certainly be reading more by Winch in the future.

Book 12 of 20 Books of Summer Winter
Sydney 17℃
Dublin  23℃

Taboo by Kim Scott

I'm not sure I will be able to adequately sum up my thoughts and impressions about Taboo by Kim Scott, but I'll give it a shot.

Scott has been shortlisted for this year's Miles Franklin Award; he has already won it twice. In 2000 for Benang: From the Heart and again in 2011 for That Deadman Dance.

Benang is on my TBR pile, but I have yet to read either. My understanding is that they are both historical fiction in nature, with an Indigenous perspective of our shared history. Taboo is contemporary fiction, with not only an Indigenous perspective of our shared history but also with an eye towards our possible shared future. I found it to be an extraordinary feat of compassion, revelation and hope. 

After stumbling through the first 50 pages or so, lost and unsure how to proceed, I found a kind of rhythm and sense to the disjointed passages. The jumps and starts started to feel symbolic and purposeful. I then began to see the poetry in the chaos. 

Scott described this style in the Afterword as, 

a trippy, stumbling sort of genre-hop that I think features a trace of Fairy Tale, a touch of Gothic, a sufficiency of the ubiquitous Social Realism and perhaps a tease of Creation Story.

The story at the heart of Taboo is the memory of an 18th century massacre and the work that a small country town in W.A. does to heal this wound. From this brutal past, with all its miscommunication, misinterpretation & denial as well as the stark realities of modern life for many Aboriginal Australians, Scott encourages us to find connection and shared meaning.

And country.

Like, Scott, I believe that the hope for our future lies in our shared sense of country. It is thanks to our Aboriginal heritage that many Anglo-Australians have changed the way they/we/me use the word 'country' to describe our sense of belonging and attachment to this place we call home. It's an important shift in thinking and feeling that gives all of us a common sense of belonging, well-being and pride. 

The power of words and the importance of language is another central idea explored by Scott in Taboo,

Story like this really about coming together, healing and making ourselves strong with language.

He reminds us that many place names as well as the names for native plants and animals have been derived from their Aboriginal names. Aboriginal history is all around us; in country and in words.

We'll take the language back, the stories that belong here and tell us who to be, what we can do.

Mangart - Jam tree - Acacia acuminata

'Words hold everything together.'

One of the trees endemic to the Noongar region of W.A., that Scott's characters regularly referred to, was a jam tree. The stone curlew was important too. I didn't know either by sight, so I did a quick search to help me with imagining the environment accurately. 

Bush stone curlew

As you might expect from a story about a massacre, spirits, ghosts, presences and apparitions haunt as well as welcome our characters - the Aboriginal characters as well as the Anglo ones - to place and time. They are,

'something both new and old, something recreated and invigorated.' 

Scott doesn't shy away from the complexities inherent in modern Australian life. His characters were not stereotypes or caricatures. They were flawed, idealistic, weak, contrary human beings trying to be the best they could.

Or as Scott says in his Afterword, 'a little band of survivors following a retreating tide of history, and returning with language and story...provides the connection with a story of place deeper than colonisation, and for transformation and healing.'

Bill @The Australian Legend has written an informative post about the Cocanarup massacres that are central to this story.

If you'd like to learn more about Noongar language and culture visit their website here.

Scott has also been engaged in the Stories Project that produces illustrated picture books in Noongar language.

The Garma Festival is currently on in Gove, Northern Territory. An awareness and appreciation for our Indigenous past is slowing, oh so slowly, gaining momentum, although our politicians response to the Uluru Statement from last year is sadly lagging behind the thinking of many other Australians.

Book 14 of #20BooksofSummer (winter)
24℃ in Sydney
21℃ in Northern Ireland

A Rightful Place: A Road Map to Recognition edited by Shireen Morris

A Rightful Place: A Road Map to Recognition evolved out of last year's Uluru Statement from the Heart. It includes a foreward by Galarrwuy Yunupingu, a long essay by Noel Pearson which gives the book its title, as well as pieces by Megan Davis, Jackie Huggins & Rod Little, Damien Freeman & Nolan Hunter, Warren Mundine, Shireen Morris, and Stan Grant.

I learnt a lot and have much to mull over thanks to the ideas presented in this book. The written response below is MY journey to understand these important ideas.

I will be quoting and noting stuff that struck me, linking to the places it took me - a book journaling experience more than a critique or review. A resource post more than a response at this point.

Galarrwuy Yunupingu - Foreward

• 1978 Australian of the Year. His younger brother Mandawuy, his younger brother and founding member of Yothu Yindi, was named Australian of the Year in 1992. Helped his father, Mungurrawuy Yunupingu draft the Bark Petition of 1963.
• Discusses the background ideas behind the Uluru Statement - how it is seen in the 'spirit of makarrata' - a way for 'disputing parties' to come together, 'led by their elders', to speak 'carefully and calmly about the dispute', to 'seek a full understanding' about what has happened, where responsibility lies and how to achieve a peaceful settlement. 
• This settlement then leads to a 'symbolic reckoning' that shows that the 'dispute no longer exists; it is finished'. 
• He stresses 'unity and togetherness' 'peace and harmony' and our 'shared future'.
• 'The essays in this book also form part of the process - these words are a gift to us all'.

The Uluru Statement from the Heart

• 26th May 2017
• Called for the 'establishment of a First Nations Voice' in the Constitution as well as a Makarrata Commission 'to supervise a process of agreement-making between governments and First Nations and truth-telling about our history.'
• 'In 1967 we were counted, in 2017 we seek to be heard.'

Uluru Statement - Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair 2017: Photo by Lea McInerney

Noel Pearson - A Rightful Place

• Refers to Yunupingu's essay in The Monthly December 2008, Tradition, Truth and Tomorrow. He calls it a powerful, personal 'existential prayer'.  I was intrigued & found an online copy (link above).
• I learnt a lot and urge you to read a copy when you get a chance. 
• There were beautiful things like:

My parents gave me the name Galarrwuy, which means ‘the area on the horizon where the sea merges with the sky'.

• A succinct, clearly defined statement about Indigenous culture:

The clans of east Arnhem Land join me in acknowledging no king, no queen, no church and no state. Our allegiance is to each other, to our land and to the ceremonies that define us. It is through the ceremonies that our lives are created. These ceremonies record and pass on the laws that give us ownership of the land and of the seas, and the rules by which we live. Our ceremonial grounds are our universities, where we gain the knowledge that we need.

• Local knowledge:

My inner life is that of the Yolngu song cycles, the ceremonies, the knowledge, the law and the land. This is yothu yindi. Balance. Wholeness. Completeness.

• A cry from the heart:

I have maintained the traditions, kept the law, performed my role - yet the Yolngu world is in crisis; we have stood still. I look around me and I feel the powerlessness of all our leaders. All around me are do-gooders and no-hopers - can I say this? Whitefellas. Balanda. They all seem to be one and the same sometimes: talking, talking, talking - smothering us - but with no vision to guide them; holding all the power, all the money, all the knowledge for what to do and how to work the white world. Only on the ceremonial ground do our leaders still lead - everywhere else we are simply paid lip service. Or bound up in red tape.

• Back to Noel Pearson:

Is there a proper and rightful place for the original peoples of Australia in the nation created from their ancestral lands?

• H.G. Wells' idea for The War of the Worlds came from a conversation with his brother about the invasion of Tasmania by European settlers. Considered them an 'inferior race'.
• Anthony Trollope in his 2 volume memoir, Australia and New Zealand wrote,

of the Australian black man we may say certainly that he has to go. That he should perish without unnecessary suffering should be the aim of all who are concerned in this matter.

• 2014 article about Trollope's time in Australia & the impression he made on Australians (not good!) & a link to Starck's book about this time called The First Celebrity.
• Charles Darwin in The Descent of Man:

when civilised nations come into contact with barbarians the struggle is short. 

•  Charles Dickens wrote in June 1853:

if we have anything to learn from the Noble Savage, it is what to avoid. His virtues are a fable; his happiness is a delusion; his nobility nonsense....the world will be all the better when his place knows him no more.

• Truganini - watch First Australians - Her Will to Survive (2008). 
• Review of Tom Lawson's The Last Man: A British Genocide in Tasmania is on pg 225 of link (plus reviews of loads of other books about Aboriginal Australia & Indigenous issues).

the destruction of the Tasmanians occurred in a British colony governed by the British Crown....frontier destruction and protection served the same colonial logic. A logic that envisioned no future for the native peoples.

• The History Wars (wikipedia entry) 

the progressives reinforced victimhood of the indigenes while their opponents denied their victimisation.

• Multiculturalism - 'the illusion of culture as a singular identity'.
• Identity fundamentalism vs layered identities
• Biculturalism:

We see our future as living in two worlds and moving between each: the Aboriginal world and the wider world.

• The democratic problem - the question of race, indigeneity, minority (3% of population).

more recently we have seen a proliferation of well-intentioned positive discrimination - benign in intent, but still harmful to our individual liberty and thus to our personal responsibility.

• integration and/or assimilation
• development, social & economic success and/or the Noble Savage preserving culture

In Australia, Indigenous peoples have not been allowed to make their own choices about how to reconcile their cultures with the demands of development.

• Race:

Today we understand there are no distinctions to be made among peoples on the basis of race. We are a human race. While we do not share a uniform culture, language, religion and ethnicity, we do share one characteristic: we are members of a single race. 

• 'our ancient heritage, our British inheritance and our multicultural triumph' pg 91 
• oikophilia - love of home - Roger Scruton - 'nations are defined not by kinship or religion but by a homeland'.

Megan Davis - Self-Determination & the Right to be Heard

• a Cobble Cobble woman from Queensland, a pro vice chancellor & professor of law at Uni NSW.
• discussion about international law & self-determination.
• Voice, Treaty & Truth.
• failure of politicians to 'pause and reflect' and do the 'slow work of listening' after the Uluru Statement from the Heart - it 'illustrated the institutional failure to hear'.
• another example of the 'history of Aboriginal Australia' being 'silenced'.

Jackie Huggins & Rod Little - A Rightful Place at the Table

• Fred Maynard NSW 1927 wrote to the premier to end the era of protection & control
• King Burraga 1933 called for representation in national parliament
• William Cooper 1937 petitioned King George V
• Pastor Sir Doug Nicholls 1949 wrote to PM Ben Chifley for reserved seats in parliament
• Yirrkala bark petitions 1963 called for better consultation
• Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines & Torres Strait Islanders (FCAATSI) 1957 pushed for constitutional change & national advocacy
• referendum 1967
• Larrakia people 1972 petitioned Queen Elizabeth II for treaties, land rights & political representation
• Aboriginal Tent Embassy
• National Aboriginal Consultative Committee (NACC) 1973 established by PM Gough Whitlam  as an advisory body
• NACC abolished 1977 when government changed & National Aboriginal Conference (NAC) created to enable broader representation
• NAC dismantled 1985 by PM Bob Hawke
• Barunga Statement 1988 presented to Hawke
• Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) 1989
• ATSIC abolished by PM John Howard 'should have been improved rather than abolished'.

There has been no treaty, though our people have repeatedly asked for one. Mutual goals have never been articualted. A shared vision for our country and the place of Indigenous peoples within it has never been agreed.

• National Apology to the Stolen Generation 2008 by PM Kevin Rudd
• Congress 2009
• Redfern Statement 2016 delivered by Congress

We don't seek to harm Australia: we seek to make a better country for all of us.

Damien Freeman & Nolan Hunter - When Two Rivers Become One 

• Discusses Treaty of Waitangi - 'a powerful symbol of how we might do things better'.
• SMH 2017 article about why NZ Maori's got a treaty & Australian Aboriginals didn't.
• 3 components to the treaty - 

Historical: agreed historical account, acknowledgements, and a Crown apology;

Cultural redress: site vesting, co-governance, protocols, dual place names, statutory recognition; and

Financial redress; cash and Crown assets.

• June 2015 Colin Barnett, premier of W.A. formally reached six agreements with the South West Aboriginal Land & Sea Council - the Noongar Native Title Agreement Groups.
• Noongar (Koorah, Nitja, Boordahwan) (Past, Present, Future) Recognition Act 2016.
• 'emotional resolution as much as a legal or political resolution.'
• 'unresolved anxiety is carried by non-Indigenous Australians, as well as by Indigenous.'

Warren Mundine - Recognising the First Nations

• Rachel Perkins - RECOGNISE Gala Dinner 2014 - link to her Quarterly Essay response to Noel Pearson's QE essay, A Rightful Place.

It's a two-way mirror, we acknowledge you, you acknowledge us, we become one.

• Bill Shorten's speech for the 2015 RECOGNISE Gala Dinner.
• conservative opposition is not about indifference or injustice, but more about concern about the 'consequences of the proposed changes'.
• Uphold and Recognise proposal - 'complement the operation of the Constitution, not direct it.'
• The Forgotten People: Liberal and Conservative Approaches to Recognising Indigenous Peoples edited by Damien Freeman and Shireen Morris with a chapter by Tim Wilson, proposing An Australian Declaration of Unity. 

With this pledge we recognise we are all Australians,
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples,
Whose heritage, culture and language we cherish
and enduring connection to land and waters we respect,
The first European settlers that followed
Whose institutions and traditions we preserve,
The generations of migrants from across the seas
Who come to contribute to our shared future,
Built on a liberal democracy that binds us as equals,
With mutual respect and responsibility for each other
For a free, fair, just and united Australia for all.
We pledge our loyalty to Australia.

• A FULLER DECLARATION of AUSTRALIA’S NATIONHOOD: Options for Discussion is available as a PDF to read online.
• shared nationhood - common national story

Shireen Morris - False Equality

• objections to the Uluru Statement fall under four main objections:

1. equality politics (Institute of Public Affairs) - any reforms would 'create division, disunity and inequality' but is based on the assumption that 'all Australians are equal' and that it is a constitutional fact. It is not, it is in the US constitution, but not ours. We have the Racial Discrimination Act 1975.
2. identity politics (IPA, Greg Sheridan, Andrew Bolt, Rowan Dean) - negative nationalism (racism) - positive nationalism (patriotism 'the shared love of citizens for their country.') 'Australia is a nation of three parts: its ancient pre-colonial heritage, its inherited British institutions and its multicultural achievement.'
3. personal responsibility (Greg Sheridan, Andrew Bolt) - or 'irresponsibility'. Disadvantage and disempowerment. Responsibility requires 2 things 'that people are willing to take charge of their problems, and that government structures allow and empower them to take charge.'
4. all heart and no head (Rowan Dean) - emotional not practical
5. secret, separatist sovereignty (Keith Windschuttle). There IS a public separatist movement, but they are a 'minority and they don't support constitutional recognition.'

Stan Grant - A Makarrata Declaration: A Declaration of Our Country

• the power of story

While story grapples with timelessness, with ambivalence and ambiguity, we live in a land of laws, and the law demands certainty. If the First Peoples are to have justice, it must truly be acknowledged at law....But I would argue that we seek something more, that we write a declaration of our nation...that speaks beyond race or history....A nation is not just a set of laws. Above all, it is a story: a never-ending story of us....It should speak to our sense of place: our home. It should be a work of poets. It should stand alone, apart from the Constitution....should speak to who we have been and allow for who we may become....should be a song to our country.

I read this book for Lisa @ANZLitLovers Indigenous Literature Week.

Book 12 of #20BooksofSummer (Winter)
I finished reading this book last Thursday when it was
20℃ in Sydney
19℃ in Northern Ireland

barrangal dyara (skin and bones) Jonathan Jones

I had a rather unexpected, almost obsessive response to Jonathan Jones' installation at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney last year. 

It touched me in ways that I'm still finding hard to catch and define.

My fascination kicked in at several levels:

the fire

the architecture

the history

the cultural aspect

the loss

the healing

the blending of histories

the time & place....

In 1879 Sydney hosted the International Exhibition. 

A specially designed building was erected on the edges of the Botanic Gardens to house the exhibition. It was grandly called the Garden Palace.

Tragically the Garden Palace and everything inside was destroyed by fire in 1882.

Stored inside was a huge collection of Gadigal artefacts of cultural and historical significance.

Over a hundred years later, Jones went searching for some of the cultural material from where his family came from. He discovered that most of it was destroyed in the Palace Garden fire.

The sense of loss and forgetting around this event spurred Jones on to find a way to reconnect and understand what happened here.

" Perhaps the fire was a kind of cultural burn, regenerating the site for future generations."

The outline of the Garden Palace depicted in white shields.

The project put together an information booklet for visitors.

In it Jones said,

"as I've worked on the project, the garden palace has become a symbol for the repercussions of forgetting. So many people I've spoken to about the project hadn't known the history of this enormous building that once dominated Sydney's skyline both physically and conceptually. I've begun to question what else we can forget as a community, if something so grand and visible and spoken about has disappeared from our vision. Aboriginal communities have often been the victims of Australia's ability to forget. In this way the Garden Palace became a fault line in the nation's memory, which has enabled the project to bring to the fore other forgotten histories."

Barrangal dyara means 'skin and bones'.

The project consisted of three components - a native meadow of kangaroo grass, thousands of white shields and several soundscapes.

The four different types of shields marked the boundary of the original building.

They also "echo the expansive rubble that remained after the fire."

These shields are "void of unique markings or personal designs, speaking to the erasure of cultural complexities through collection."

The exhibition ran from 17th Sept - 3rd Oct 2016.

I visited it three times, as well as the concurrent exhibition at The State Library.

Shortly afterwards I spotted this lovely cloth bound book commemorating the exhibition.

I knew that I had to have it!

It combines photographs and archival information from the Botanic Gardens site and the Library exhibition as well as essays from various people involved in the project, Aboriginal elders, architects, artists and historians.

It was utterly fascinating and absorbing.

The exhibition felt like an important moment in our Australian consciousness as well as a personal journey that I'm still exploring.

#AusReadingMonth

#NonFictionNovember

Dark Emu Black Seeds: Agriculture or Accident? by Bruce Pascoe

Dark Emu Black Seeds challenges the orthodoxy of how Australia was settled and what the settlers actually saw when they arrived.

To the victor goes the spoils...as well as the right to write history their way.

Reading E.H. Carr's What is History? during my first year at Uni was the first time I had cause to think about the nature of history, facts and evidence. I was amazed, at the tender age of 18, to think that facts where selected by historians to suit the story they wanted to tell. They decided which facts were important and which ones weren't. Personal bias and agenda abounded.

The belief in a hard core of historical facts existing objectively and independently of the interpretation of the historian is a preposterous fallacy, but one which it is very hard to eradicate.

It was also the first time that I considered the role of revisionism in history and how modern thinking could colour how we viewed the 'historical facts' at different times throughout history. Carr also went on a bit about the progress of man towards some kind of better, more evolved state which was an idea that even at the tender age of 18 I struggled to swallow!

The progression of man towards some better end was definitely in the minds of many of the early white explorers and settlers to Australia. To that end, they saw everything about the Aboriginal way of life as backward and evidence of their lesser standing. This belief made it easier for them to dismiss and ignore any signs of civilisation or community. And to deny Aboriginals many basic human rights, including the most basic of all, life itself.

Pascoe writes with a barely contained anger. By the end of this slim volume it's hard not to acknowledge that this anger is justified. Through his anger, Pascoe explores the writings and texts of many of the early explorers, settlers and historians. He pulls out all the documentation showing examples of large, established Aboriginal settlements, farming and fishing industries, food storage as well as the finely tuned water and fire management that many people may already be familiar with.

It's fascinating stuff and I urge you to read this book to see all the evidence for yourself.

I've just started reading Shashi Tharoor's Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India which addresses many similar issues. In his Introduction, Tharoor discusses the idea of reparation, but personally feels that atonement is probably a more do-able option. He also discusses the idea of
teaching alternate histories or histories told from the other side of colonisation in schools throughout the former Empire.

Books like Tharoor's and Pascoe's are a good start.

It seems improbable that a country can continue to hide from the actuality of its history in order to validate the fact that having said sorry we refuse to say thanks.