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Essie Coffey--black activist, musician, and resident of 'Dodge City' in north-west New South Wales--demonstrates the conflicts and tensions of living as an Aboriginal under white domination. Encouraging the black community to be proud of their identity and their culture in the face of such domination, Coffey shows how she is passing on knowledge of traditional bush ways to a generation of young Aboriginal children who have only ever known white education.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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Six Groundings for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Story in the Australian Creative Writing Classroom : Part 1
2017
single work
criticism
— Appears in: TEXT : Journal of Writing and Writing Courses , October vol. 21 no. 2 2017;'‘All Australian children deserve to know the country that they share through the stories that Aboriginal people can tell them,’ write Gladys Idjirrimoonra Milroy and Jill Milroy (2008: 42). If country and story, place and voice are intertwined, it is vital that we make space in Australian creative writing classrooms for the reading and writing of Australian Indigenous story. What principles and questions can allow us to begin? We propose six groundings for this work:
- Indigenous story is literary history, literary history is creative power.
- We do culture together: culture becomes in collaboration, conscious or unconscious.
- There is no such thing as Indigenous story, and yet it can be performed and known.
- Country speaks, to our conceptions of voice and point of view.
- History and memory are written in the land and on the body in bodies of practice.
- Story transmits narrative responsibility. Narrative responsibility requires fierce listening.
This two-part paper will discuss each of these groundings as orienting and motivating principles for work we do as teachers of introductory creative writing units at the University of Canberra.' (Publication abstract)
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Collaborations and Renegotiations : Re-examining the ‘Sacred’ in the Film-Making of David Gulpilil and Rolf de Heer
2017
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Literature and Theology , June vol. 31 no. 2 2017; (p. 187–199)'This article discusses the term ‘sacred’ in relation to the work of nineteenth-century sociologist Émile Durkheim, for whom the word denoted the objects, practices and assumptions that sustained communal solidarity and fostered dynamic energies, whether or not they were conventionally described as ‘religious’. I then turn to the work of more recent scholars of ‘critical religion’ suggesting that the terms ‘religion’ and ‘the sacred’ derive from a predominantly western, patriarchal and colonial context, forming part of a complex network of interconnected categories that represent a distinctive and dominant discourse of power constructing a privileged identity through hostile Othering or exclusions. Arguably, in the Australian mainstream, a discourse of ‘religion’ imported largely by Christian settlers from the west over the last two hundred years has been employed to exclude Aboriginal ways of understanding the world, for example by promoting the category of ‘land’ as an exploitable, God-given human possession. Nevertheless, drawing on the work of Julia Kristeva, I understand that an encounter with the Other—whether the Aboriginal or the balanda—can be viewed differently: as a zone of properly disturbing but also creative possibility. It remains very important, however, to acknowledge the power imbalances that are still embedded within such encounters, and the consequent risks to indigenous Australians, of further dislocation and dispossession. This idea is explored through a consideration of the collaborative film-making of David Gulpilil and Rolf de Heer and, in particular, of two films: Ten Canoes (2006) and Charlie’s Country (2013).' (Publication abstract)
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Collaborations and Renegotiations : Re-examining the ‘Sacred’ in the Film-Making of David Gulpilil and Rolf de Heer
2017
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Literature and Theology , June vol. 31 no. 2 2017; (p. 187–199)'This article discusses the term ‘sacred’ in relation to the work of nineteenth-century sociologist Émile Durkheim, for whom the word denoted the objects, practices and assumptions that sustained communal solidarity and fostered dynamic energies, whether or not they were conventionally described as ‘religious’. I then turn to the work of more recent scholars of ‘critical religion’ suggesting that the terms ‘religion’ and ‘the sacred’ derive from a predominantly western, patriarchal and colonial context, forming part of a complex network of interconnected categories that represent a distinctive and dominant discourse of power constructing a privileged identity through hostile Othering or exclusions. Arguably, in the Australian mainstream, a discourse of ‘religion’ imported largely by Christian settlers from the west over the last two hundred years has been employed to exclude Aboriginal ways of understanding the world, for example by promoting the category of ‘land’ as an exploitable, God-given human possession. Nevertheless, drawing on the work of Julia Kristeva, I understand that an encounter with the Other—whether the Aboriginal or the balanda—can be viewed differently: as a zone of properly disturbing but also creative possibility. It remains very important, however, to acknowledge the power imbalances that are still embedded within such encounters, and the consequent risks to indigenous Australians, of further dislocation and dispossession. This idea is explored through a consideration of the collaborative film-making of David Gulpilil and Rolf de Heer and, in particular, of two films: Ten Canoes (2006) and Charlie’s Country (2013).' (Publication abstract)
-
Six Groundings for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Story in the Australian Creative Writing Classroom : Part 1
2017
single work
criticism
— Appears in: TEXT : Journal of Writing and Writing Courses , October vol. 21 no. 2 2017;'‘All Australian children deserve to know the country that they share through the stories that Aboriginal people can tell them,’ write Gladys Idjirrimoonra Milroy and Jill Milroy (2008: 42). If country and story, place and voice are intertwined, it is vital that we make space in Australian creative writing classrooms for the reading and writing of Australian Indigenous story. What principles and questions can allow us to begin? We propose six groundings for this work:
- Indigenous story is literary history, literary history is creative power.
- We do culture together: culture becomes in collaboration, conscious or unconscious.
- There is no such thing as Indigenous story, and yet it can be performed and known.
- Country speaks, to our conceptions of voice and point of view.
- History and memory are written in the land and on the body in bodies of practice.
- Story transmits narrative responsibility. Narrative responsibility requires fierce listening.
This two-part paper will discuss each of these groundings as orienting and motivating principles for work we do as teachers of introductory creative writing units at the University of Canberra.' (Publication abstract)
- Brewarrina, Bourke - Brewarrina area, Far West NSW, New South Wales,
