Articles

From little towns, big writers' festivals grow

Submitted by Paul Daley on

An antidote to glitzy city events, literary festivals are springing up in regional centres and towns across Australia, mixing big names and local talent

On the eve of one of the world’s biggest literary awards a few years ago, a famous Australian finalist bemoaned the increasingly public side of his writing life.

Jacky Green: 'Nothing has really changed since whitefellas came. First it was horses now bulldozers'

Submitted by Paul Daley on

The Garrwa artist and activist talks about the politics of his art, big mining on his ancestral lands, and how history consistently conspires to dispossess Indigenous peoples

Garrwa artist Jacky Green tests me the moment we meet.

We shake hands, he looks at me, first quizzically, next with a glower, and demands: “Hey – you look like another one of them bastard mining execs come to wreck my land? Is that who you are?”

Black Anzac: the life and death of an Aboriginal man who fought for king and country

Submitted by Paul Daley on

The experience of black Australians is slowly being allowed to seep into the official Anzac story, writes novelist and journalist Paul Daley. Here he charts the life of one extraordinary Indigenous soldier, Douglas Grant

With a little over a month to go until the centenary of the failed Gallipoli landings, Australia is already in the Titan’s Grip of Anzac commemoration.

Or perhaps it is better described as a celebration.

'Lifestyle choices' is Abbott's third and final strike on Indigenous affairs | Paul Daley

Submitted by Paul Daley on

Our putative ‘prime minister for Aboriginal affairs’ has made so many mistakes that it’s hard to come to any other conclusion: he does not respect Indigenous culture

Tony Abbott can declare himself the “prime minister for Aboriginal affairs” all he likes, but his absurd, provocative and naive claim that Indigenous Australians living in remote communities were exercising a “lifestyle choice” is the third rhetorical strike against his credibility on the issue.

Gargoyles depicting Indigenous man and woman are no statues of liberty

Submitted by Paul Daley on

After 74 years, the cultural debate over the stone faces of an Indigenous man and woman at the Australian War Memorial will be a public one

The Australian War Memorial is about to start a long overdue public conversation about the cultural sensitivity of two of its original architectural features: the stone faces of an Indigenous man and woman that are set amid gargoyles of native Australian birds, reptiles, mammals and marsupials.

For the Yolngu, cyclone Lam is part of the ancient rhythm of Arnhem Land

Submitted by Anonymous on

Few buildings in the largely Indigenous town of Yirrkala are built to withstand heavy cyclones, but residents await its approach with caution rather than fear

Towns in the path of gathering cyclones are routinely reported to “brace” for their arrival.

In north-east Arnhem Land, on the estimated route of tropical cyclone Lam, some people are certainly readying themselves in anticipation. Not least, those communities in Lam’s immediate path at Cape Wessel and Elcho Island are preparing for the worst damage that could be wrought by a category four storm.

Indigenous leaders fight for return of relics featuring in major new exhibition

Submitted by Paul Daley on

Three precious examples of bark art taken from the Dja Dja Wurrung people in central Victoria in the 1850s were sold to the British Museum. Now these and other treasures could return to Australia – on loan only – as part of an exhibition

When Gary Murray contemplates the thousands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander objects held in the vaults of the British Museum in London, he strikes a simple analogy.

“All of these things that belong to our people in Australia – they don’t tell a story about the Queen of England, do they?” he asks.

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