'During the original 2016 production of 'The Drover's Wife', her adaptation for the stage of Henry Lawson's famous short story, Leah Purcell reports that her costume designer found a quotation from Lawson that seemed the perfect summary of the shared drive powering their creative work: "It is quite time that our children were taught a little more about their country for shame's sake." This opinion, sourced rather ironically from a nationalist piece Lawson wrote for 'Republican' in April 1888 called "A Neglected History," was pinned up and presided over both rehearsal and production, and later became the epigraph of the playtext in all its subsequent editions. Purcell already knew she had her grandmother's blessing for the theatre she wanted to create, delivered in a dream during the early process of playwriting itself: "I asked her, am I doing all right? And she bowed to me. The ancestors are happy, you know?" (Purcell, 'SMH' 2016). she also recognised the positive force of Lawson's statement: "a sign that Henry's going, 'you go, girl' " (Purcell, 'The Guardian' 2017). Lawson's 1888 statement and his short story of 1892 are both profoundly renovated by intertextual repurposing in an indigenous context and by an indigenous writer.'  (Publication abstract)

'The creator of The Drover’s Wife on reimagining Henry Lawson’s classic short story from an Indigenous female perspective. By Michael Adams.' 

'Here you will find an introduction to settler colonial theory and contemporary settler colonial literature. This exhibition is intended to survey the major and minor authors, works, and ideas involved with settler colonial writing in Australia, and, to a lesser extent, the United States, since the 1990s.

'In addition to the overview statements on this page, you can click on other tabs to see timeline of publication dates in historical context, a glossary of common terms, an annotated bibliography of primary and secondary sources, brief discussions of themes and motifs useful for student researchers and teachers interested in including settler colonialism in their curricula, and information about comparative settler colonial studies between Australia and the US.'

Source: Abstract.