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  • The BlackWords essays trails

    The following trail is linked to the The BlackWords Essays by Dr Anita Heiss, published by AustLit in 2015. They bring together the works, authors and organisations that are mentioned in the essays and support the teaching and incorporation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander texts in teaching and general reading.

  • BlackWords: Writers on Country

  • This image has been sourced from online.

    'When non-Aboriginal Australians talk of “stories of place” with an Aboriginal context in mind, many immediately think of traditional stories, stories used by our old people to pass on cultural information and knowledge, or the history of a specific geographic region, and the significant sites of such areas.'

    'For Aboriginal writers, stories of place include those where families in the past were removed to, once their traditional lands were taken. These ‘created spaces’ (for example missions and reserves) became places of significant meaning for many, while at the same time they were physically disconnecting them from their own country.' (Heiss, Anita, BlackWords: Writers on Country. 2015)

  • Big City Dreaming Stories

  • Life in Gadigal Country edited by Anita Heiss

    Cover image by Khi-Lee Thorpe (image courtesy the editor).

    'Life In Gadigal Country is the first anthology of writing published by Gadigal Information Service, and a tribute to the Gadigal peoples of Sydney.'

    'The book is a collection of writings of some of the strongest political voices, by some of the most promising cotemporary writers, about some of the most significant issues that have faced the first peoples of the country known as Gadigal Country, since the process of colonisation began in 1788.' (Source: Anita Heiss website)

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  • Smoke Encrypted Whispers poems by Sam Wagan Watson

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    'These poems pulse with the language and images of a mangrove-lined river city, the beckoning highway, the just-glimpsed muse, the tug of childhood and restless ancestors. For the first time Samuel Wagan Watson's poetry has been collected into this stunning volume, which includes a final section of all new work.' (Source: UQP website: www.uqp.uq.edu.au)

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    This work contains the poems, Jaded Olympic Moments, Abandoned factories, Deo Optimo Maximo and Recipe for Metropolis Brisbane, about the city of Brisbane by Sam Wagan Watson, he 'separates out the layers of the city landscape and the reader treks with him mentally and physically, searching for the perfect creative inspirational space for him as a writer.' ((Heiss, Anita, BlackWords: Writers on Country. 2015)

  • Jaded Olympic Moments by Sam Wagan Watson

  • Abandoned factories by Sam Wagan Watson

  • Deo Optimo Maximo by Sam Wagan Watson

  • Recipe for Metropolis Brisbane by Sam Wagan Watson

  • Modern-day Fringe-dwellers

    'In writing about the significance of space, sense of place and connection to country, many writers are also penning stories of life on the fringe. Aboriginal people in Australia live in a particular space, it is called the fringe – and it exists geographically, psychologically and socially - and it is from this very space that many often find the motivation to create.' (Heiss, Anita, BlackWords: Writers on Country. 2015)

  • My Past - Their Future: Stories from Cape Barren Island by Molly Mallett

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    This image has been sourced from online.
    'Story of Molly Mallett, full name Mary Frances Maynard (Auntie Molly Mallett) daughter of James Henry Paul Maynard and Augusta Lavinia Mansel and a descendant of Manalargenna, leader of the Cape Portland tribe; she was one of twelve children in her family and grew up [during the] 1930s on Cape Barren Island; describes her childhood experiences of school and family life, dancing competition and sport events, traditions.' (Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Library catalogue) (...more)
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  • Wybalenna by Krystal Anne Lynch

  • Writing the Kimberley and Pilbara

    'The Kimberley and Pilbara regions of Western Australia provide a rich foundation for literature being produced by Indigenous writers and storytellers.' (Heiss, Anita, BlackWords: Writers on Country. 2015)

    See below poetry, biographies and life stories from the Kimberley and Pilbara regions.

  • Important Places by Magdalene Williams

  • Rain-making at beagle bay by Pat Torres

  • Kimberley by Alf Taylor

  • Yamitji Rich by Charmaine Papertalk-Green

  • First line of poem: Uncle often said - Yamatjis are rich people

    Note: A Yamatji or Yamitji is an Aboriginal person from the north-west of Western Australia (ie the Pilbara, the Gascoyne and the Murchison areas).

  • Ngay Janijirr Ngank: This Is My Word by Magdalene Williams and edited by Pat Torres

    Image courtesy of Magabala Books

    'A beautifully illustrated account of the life of Magdalene Williams of the Nyul Nyul people. Raised in the confines of Beagle Bay mission in the Kimberley, she was nevertheless exposed to her traditional culture through her Elders. Magdalene's account of the coming of the missionaries, and the destruction of Law and culture is interwoven with the richness and diversity of her Nyul Nyul stories.' (Source: Publisher's website)

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  • Emerarra: a Man of Merarra by Morndi Munro and edited by Mary Anne Jebb

    Image courtesy of Magabala Books
    Morndi Munro provides a compelling insight into not only his life experiences as an Aboriginal person working on several cattle stations, but also of his admiration for his wife and the many other women who worked alongside him doing the same mustering jobs as the men. His story is about traditional ways and also about his culture, welfare pensions, missionaries, citizenship rights and his respect for the people with whom he worked. (...more)
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  • Jandamarra and the Bunuba Resistance by Banjo Worrumarra and Howard Pedersen

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    This image has been sourced from Web.
    'The thrilling story of the great warrior, Jandamarra, who turned from police assistant to resistance fighter, leading his people against the white forces invading their land.' Source: www.magabala.com/ (Sighted 13/05/2011). (...more)
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  • The Man from the Sunrise Side by Ambrose Mungala Chalarimeri and edited by Rosemary van den Berg

    Image courtesy of Magabala Books

    'A fascinating account of a people from the far north Kimberley of Western Australia who have experienced upheaval on a monumental scale. Chalarimeri tells of the customs of his ‘people from the sunrise side’ and what he calls ‘the clash of two cultures’. His views on contemporary issues that are impacting on his beloved country—native title, appropriation of rock art, Aboriginal health and the effects of tourism on the pristine Kimberley wilderness are compelling.' (Source: publishers website)

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  • When You Grow Up by Commie McDonald and Jill Finnane

    Image courtesy of Magabala Books
    'Brought up an orphan at Forest River Mission, Connie McDonald became a teacher, a missionary in the Church Army and a welfare worker. Her stories recall an era of matrons and missionaries, strict regulations and clothes made out of flour bags. Confronting and suffering racism, Connie kept searching for her place in the world and her family.' (Source: Libraries Australia). (...more)
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  • Wyndham Yella Fella by Reginald Birch

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    Cover image from Google Books
    'Reginald Birch remembers his years growing up in the town of Wyndham on the far north-western coast of Australia. Brilliantly captured are the many bittersweet experiences of his family, such as fleeing the Forrest River Mission to escape the threat of a WWII Japanese invasion, and travelling the vast Kimberley landscape in search of work and a place to settle.' Source: Publisher's blurb (...more)
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  • Yorro Yorro: Everything Standing up Alive by David Mowaljarlai and Jutta Malnic

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    This image has been sourced from Booktopia
    Stories about the Wandjina creation spirits compiled by Aboriginal elder Mowaljarlai and photographer Jutta Malnic; four other Aboriginal elders assist in elaboration upon Wandjina ancestry to beginning of human existence; creation and renewal of nature; journey to Lejmorro rock paintings; family story of Mowaljarlai and the life of the Wandjina people; mission education; traditional bush existence; Bradshaw rock paintings. - Mura (AIATSIS Collections Catalogue) (...more)
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  • Listen to the Old People: Oral Histories of the Pilbara Region of Western Australia edited by Kevin Costenoble

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    This image has been sourced from front cover

    'The aim of this project was to use oral histories collected by Wangka Maya from elderly Aboriginal people of the region...to tell the Indigenous history of Port Hedland and the Pilbara region...' (Source: Listen to the Old People, 2000:3)

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  • From Our Hearts: An Anthology of New Aboriginal Writing from Southwest Western Australia edited by Jan Teagle Kapetas, Ivy Dodd, Valmae Dalgetty Whalley, Fiona Stafford and Kay Walley .

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    This anthology features the works of 19 authors and four contributing artists who bring together 'personal histories, poetry, biographies, autobiographies and social commentary, all from the heart. Words about love, family, pain, memories and hope, with a common thread of family hardship but survival amongst strong family ties. ...Many of the works in this anthology are tributes to family members, mothers, fathers, grandparents, children, brothers and sisters, talking about what they lessons they taught and their life experiences. (...more)
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  • I'm the One That Know This Country!: The Story of Jessie Lennon and Coober Pedy by Jessie Lennon

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    This image has been sourced from online.
    'Matutjara woman, Jessie Lennon, was born on a sheep station near Kingoonya in the 1920s. Aged six, she accompanied her father on a ceremonial journey with the Old People, as far west as Ooldea, in the time of Daisy Bates, and north to Coober Pedy, then a fledgling opal-mining settlement. Here, Jesse's stories are juxtaposed with historical photographs and information of the times, places and people in her life.' (Source: LibrariesAustralia) (...more)
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    Kupa Piti is an Anangu phrase for white man's hole in the ground.

  • Created Spaces That Become Important Country

    'In terms of those ‘other’ spaces written by Aboriginal peoples in Australia, there are church run missions and government run reserves, and the institutions used as holding areas for Aboriginal people rounded up like cattle under policies of ‘protection’, creating fringe camps for fringe dwellers, and removing people from what they defined as home.' (Heiss, Anita, BlackWords: Writers on Country~. 2015)

    See Biographies, life stories and poems below:

  • Forcibly Removed by Albert Holt

    Image courtesy of Magabala Books
    '... Forcibly Removed is a personal story told with humour and a confidence that comes from experience and achievement. It reveals the journey of a spirited family who maintained their dignity and fought to survive while living on Cherbourg Mission, Queensland, in the mid-20th century.' (Backcover). (...more)
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  • Auntie Rita by Rita Cynthia Huggins and Jackie Huggins

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    Cover image courtesy the publisher.

    "Most people call me Auntie Rita, whites as well as Aboriginal people. Auntie is a term of respect of our older women folk. You don't have to be blood-related or anything. Everyone is kin. That's a beautiful thing because in this way no one is ever truly alone, they always have someone they can turn to."

    Rita Huggins told her memories to her daughter Jackie, and some of their conversation is in this book. We witness their intimacy, their similarities and their differences, the '"fighting with their tongues".

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  • Fantome Island by Kathy Gibson

    Image courtesy of Black Ink Press
    'Kathy Gibson and Jack Bell were residents of Palm Island at the time and have brought together the memories of the neighbouring island, Fantome. A mix of artist's impressions and historical black and white photographs honour the memory of Indigenous Australians who lived out their lives as lepers on Fantome Island'. (Source: Black Ink Press website) (...more)
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  • Flag of unity by Cec Fisher

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    This image has been sourced from Front cover

    This work contains a collection of poems in which Cec Fisher, observed and recorded events as they happen, and events that happened in the past.

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  • Yumba by Lionel Fogarty

  • Life in the bush by Dorothy Kemp

  • FURTHER READINGS

  • A Handful of Sand: Words to the Frontline edited by Ali Cobby Eckermann and Lionel Fogarty

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    'It is estimated now that nearly five thousand Aboriginal authors have been published in Australia since the cultural impact of colonisation occurred. However this seems rare or vague knowledge to the outskirts of Australian literature. It seems this contribution by Aboriginal writers is somewhat limited to access or obtain for the general public who enjoy a good read, or seek an historical view point...' (Source: Cobby Eckermann Ali, and Fogarty Lionel, Southerly Vol. 71 No. 2 2011:8-11)

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  • Untreated: Poems by Black Writers edited by Josie Douglas

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    Image courtesy of publisher's website.

    'This anthology of poetry brings together all the big names in Aboriginal writing and features a wide array of styles and topics. With a foreword by Kim Scott – joint winner of the Miles Franklin Literary Award, 2000, for his novel Benang.  (Publication summary)

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  • Whispers of this Wik Woman by Fiona Doyle

    Image courtesy of UQP

    'This absorbing and personal account of Wik activist Jean George Awumpun offers a rare understanding of Aboriginal identity and traditional land. To illustrate her proud Alngith Wikwaya beginnings, Awumpun's early history is told through family member and Alngith descendant Fiona Doyle. This ancestral history combines with the story of Awumpun's struggle in the Wik native title claims, which advanced the earlier Mabo Decision onto mainland Australia.

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  • Jagera by Lionel Fogarty

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    This image has been sourced from Front cover

    'Jagera is Lionel Fogarty's sixth volume of poetry.' (Source: Back cover)

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  • Southerly: Stories without End Vol 62 No. 2002 editored by Anita Heiss and Penny Van Toorn

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    This image has been sourced from online.

    'Stories Without End includes writing that is complex, innovative, and polished, and writing that is raw, rugged, and passionate. In their different ways, all the pieces are powerful...' (Source: editorial, Southerly Vol. 62 No. 2 2002: 5-6)

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  • And I Always Been Moving!: The Early Life of Jessie Lennon by Jessie Lennon

    'A marvellous celebration of the life of Jessie Lennon. Jessie was born in the 1920's in central Australia where she has spent all her life living a way of life that has almost disappeared.' (Source: Online)

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  • The Mish by Robert Lowe

    Image courtesy of UQP

    'Robert Lowe's affection and regard for "The Mish", a property in Victoria's southwest, originally an Aboriginal mission, is warmly conveyed in this candid memoir. In the 1950s and 60s when Robert was growing up, "The Mish" was a close knit community made up of the Aboriginal descendants of Framlingham Aboriginal Mission Station, founded in 1865. Robert's adventurous boyhood was a secured and unfettered time spent with his siblings and cousins enjoying hunting, fishing and eel trapping.

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  • Mullumbimby by Melissa Lucashenko

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    Cover image courtesy of publisher.
    'When Jo Breen uses her divorce settlement to buy a neglected property in the Byron Bay hinterland, she is hoping for a tree change, and a blossoming connection to the land of her Aboriginal ancestors. What she discovers instead is sharp dissent from her teenage daughter, trouble brewing from unimpressed white neighbours and a looming Native Title war between the local Bundjalung families. When Jo unexpectedly finds love on one side of the Native Title divide she quickly learns that living on country is only part of the recipe for the Good Life. (...more)
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  • Sweet Water, Stolen Land by Philip McLaren

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    'The destinies of two families, black and white, are fatally interwoven... in this frontier novel. Racial brutality and the tragic account of the Myall Creek massacre underscore the story of Ginny and Wollumbuy, Kamilaroi people of Warrumbungle Range. Mysterious killings follow the arrival Karl and Gundrun Maresch, a German couple who establish a Lutheran mission near the young settlement of Coonabarabran.' (Source: Publisher's blurb) (...more)
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  • Just Like That and Other Poems by Charmaine Papertalk-Green

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    This image has been sourced from Publisher's website

    'Charmaine Papertalk-Green’s poetry is intense and direct. She says what she means and is willing to take on issues that affect her community from outside and from within. She writes of Indigenous loss, but also about tensions and conflicts among her own people. For Papertalk-Green, culture isn’t in the past, it’s all around in the here and now.' (Source: Publisher's website)

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  • Dark Emu: Black Seeds, Agriculture of Accident by Bruce Pascoe

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    Image courtesy of publisher's website.

    'Dark Emu argues for a reconsideration of the 'hunter-gatherer' tag for pre-colonial Aboriginal Australians and attempts to rebut the colonial myths that have worked to justify dispossession. Accomplished author Bruce Pascoe provides compelling evidence from the diaries of early explorers that suggests that systems of food production and land management have been blatantly understated in modern retellings of early Aboriginal history, and that a new look at Australia’s past is required.

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  • Location and Segregation: the Distribution of the Indigenous Population across Australia's Urban Centres by Nicholas Biddle

    'According to the 2006 Census, around three-quarters of Indigenous Australians live in regional areas or major cities. This represents a small, but noticeable increase from previous census years, especially in large regional towns. While most measured socioeconomic outcomes are advantageous relative to remote parts of the country, there are still substantial gaps between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians in regional and urban Australia. This paper focuses on which cities and large towns Indigenous Australians live in, how the Indigenous population is distributed by neighbourhood within these cities and towns, and what the characteristics of the neighbourhoods are in which Indigenous Australians are concentrated.

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