We’re halfway through NAIDOC Week 2022, the time when we celebrate the history, culture, and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
Another Day in the Colony by Chelsea Watego
In this powerful collection of essays, Watego examines the ongoing racism faced by First Nations people. Rather than just detail the struggles of Indigenous Australians, she instead offers a strategy for living in a society that has only ever imagined Indigenous peoples as destined to die out.
Narrated by Shakira Clanton, Legacy follows Simone Harlowe, a young Indigenous lawyer, struggling between two worlds and two cultures while studying at Harvard. Back in Sydney, her daily life is defined by the complex relationship she shares with her father Tony, a prominent figure in the Aboriginal community.
Narrated by Tuuli Narkle, this book focuses on twins Stacey and Laney, who couldn’t be more different: the former is a hardworking student, desperate to escape their small town, while the latter skips school and sneaks out of the house to meet her boyfriend. When Laney disappears one night, Stacey struggles to understand why her twin would run off without telling her.
Mullumbimby by Melissa Lucashenko
Narrated by Tasma Walton, Jo Been buys a neglected property in the Byron Bay hinterland, hoping to improve her connection to the land of her Aboriginal ancestors. What she gets instead is angry dissent from her teenage daughter, trouble from unimpressed white neighbours, and a looming Native Title war between the local Bundjalung families.
Narrated by Sandy Greenwood, Justice Bruce Brosnan is brutally murdered in his home, mere hours after rejecting the Corrowa People’s Native Title claim on Brisbane’s Meston Park. Several days later, lawyers against the claim are also discovered dead. Ethel Cobb, the Corrowa People’s matriarch is convinced the murders are the work of an ancient assassin who has returned to destroy the boundary, but Aboriginal lawyer Miranda Eversely isn’t so sure.
