Indigenous

Edenglassie is the seventh novel by acclaimed Bunjalung novelist Melissa Lucashenko. Set in a brief historical window – a little-known interim of time and place after transportation of convicts had ended but before Queensland became an independent colony in 1859 – this narrative moves seamlessly between what whitefellas might call past, present, and near future. In this interface, Lucashenko creates characters that cause the reader to not only ask – what if? but also where to now?

There is no denying the power of poetry as thoughtful story-telling, a form of expression free from rules, conventions. It allows a safe environment for experimentation, free from the confines of traditionalism. Portraits in words, detailing the ride of life and thoughts of the mind are painted onto the canvas, where the placement of verses on a page can matter as much as the choices of words themselves.

In Hoodie Economics, Jack Manning Bancroft, the founder of the Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience (AIME), offers an outline of the organisation’s next chapter. AIME, established in 2005, paired Indigenous secondary school students with university mentors. Since 2015, AIME has begun to transition, in collaboration with PwC’s Indigenous Consulting and alliance partner Salesforce, into a learning and mentoring resource network. As the organisation’s website puts it, AIME’s latest incarnation, the IMAGI-NATION [University], is a ‘global community of problem-solvers and change-makers’ earmarked to end – intentionally – in 2033, leaving behind ‘a legacy of tools, case studies, and a healthier system for all species on earth’. In the meantime, the ‘innovative platform is set to revolutionize how we solve global challenges, fostering a community of thinkers, dreamers, and doers’. In other words, AIME has entered the economies of algorithmic data, decentralisation, and gamification.

Reaching Through Time: Finding my family’s stories is the epitome of Indigenous family life writing. Predominantly set in New South Wales, on the east coast of Australia, Reaching Through Time is a journey through more than 200 years of Australian history, from early invasion and colonisation to the present day, through the lens of Indigenous family lived experience. This collection of life stories – skilfully located in the archives, family memory, and secondary sources – traces five generations of the authors’ family. Reaching Through Time is a rich, engaging contribution to Australian history. Bostock is writing against Australian historiography, which has excluded the voices of Indigenous families. As Shauna Bostock says: ‘This book is written for people who want to know our history from an Aboriginal perspective.’

Family photographs add so much to Aboriginal autobiography. Aboriginal people will scan them to see who they know and what the buildings, clothes, and area looked like then. Photographs are an open invitation to connect with your people, no matter where they are from. 

The vibrant state of Aboriginal intellectual life is immediately evident upon reading Melissa Lucashenko’s foreword and Daniel Browning’s introduction to his Close to the Subject: Selected works. Lucashenko combines insight with an engaging, colloquial style; Browning, without apology or artifice, weighs up the successes, failures, and resentments of almost three decades as a journalist.