WEBVTT - Read This: Clare Wright Is Shutting Up and Listening 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:02.680 Hi there, It's Daniel James and I'm here to introduce 0:00:02.759 --> 0:00:06.600 another episode of Read This Schwartz Meeting His Book podcast, 0:00:07.200 --> 0:00:09.879 hosted by editor of The Monthly and self confessed book 0:00:09.920 --> 0:00:13.320 nerd Michael Williams. It features conversations with some of the 0:00:13.320 --> 0:00:17.040 most talented writers from Australia and around the world. In 0:00:17.040 --> 0:00:19.640 this episode, we're going to hear from historian and author 0:00:19.680 --> 0:00:23.840 Professor Claire Wright. She has just released Knuckle Darruk the 0:00:23.880 --> 0:00:27.640 Bark Petition, which is the final installment of her Democracy trilogy. 0:00:28.280 --> 0:00:30.280 I'm joined by host Michael Williams to tell me a 0:00:30.320 --> 0:00:31.960 little bit more about the episode. 0:00:33.920 --> 0:00:37.320 Hello Michael, Daniel James, Hello, so, Michael. 0:00:37.320 --> 0:00:39.680 Claire Wright is an award winning writer whose books tend 0:00:39.680 --> 0:00:43.320 to focus on the often untold or misrepresented histories of 0:00:43.320 --> 0:00:46.239 our nation. For those listeners who might not be familiar 0:00:46.240 --> 0:00:47.600 with her work, could you tell me a little bit 0:00:47.640 --> 0:00:48.159 more about it? 0:00:48.600 --> 0:00:51.360 Yeah. People may be most familiar with Claire right through 0:00:51.600 --> 0:00:54.720 her Stellar prize winning book The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka. 0:00:55.120 --> 0:00:57.000 It was the book that really put her on the 0:00:57.040 --> 0:01:00.320 scene as a major historian, and the idea behind it 0:01:00.400 --> 0:01:02.240 was to focus on the role that women had played 0:01:02.240 --> 0:01:05.679 in the Eureka Stockade that to a certain extent, they 0:01:05.680 --> 0:01:07.560 were a voice that we never heard when we thought 0:01:07.560 --> 0:01:09.920 about that kind of history. She followed it up with 0:01:09.959 --> 0:01:12.360 another book called You Daughters of Freedom, and that one 0:01:12.400 --> 0:01:15.440 told the story of Australia's suffrage campaigners and how they 0:01:15.480 --> 0:01:17.880 won the vote for women, for white women, to be 0:01:17.959 --> 0:01:22.440 more precise, And so she's again and again really interested 0:01:22.480 --> 0:01:24.880 in the ways in which certain voices are missing from 0:01:24.880 --> 0:01:29.240 the official history that we tell. She takes these historical artifacts, 0:01:29.240 --> 0:01:32.360 whether it's the Eureka flag or the suffrage banner, and 0:01:32.840 --> 0:01:35.280 uses them to say that here's part of the story 0:01:35.319 --> 0:01:37.080 that you're missing. Here are some of the people that 0:01:37.120 --> 0:01:40.520 you haven't heard from. And in this third book, marko Daruk, 0:01:40.800 --> 0:01:43.480 she takes the bark Petitions. 0:01:43.240 --> 0:01:46.320 And so Knuckldaruk. The Barque Petitions is the final installment 0:01:46.319 --> 0:01:49.880 of what Claire is now calling her Democracy Trilogy. It's 0:01:50.000 --> 0:01:52.760 really important yet often overlooked part of Australian history that 0:01:52.840 --> 0:01:55.840 really centers on a year nineteen sixty three. That's the 0:01:55.920 --> 0:01:58.520 year that's usually more associated with American civil rights. 0:01:58.560 --> 0:02:00.280 Yeah, yeah, exactly. 0:02:00.520 --> 0:02:02.800 That's the year that Martin Luther King Junior gave his 0:02:02.880 --> 0:02:06.080 eye have a dream speech. There was the Children's Crusade 0:02:06.080 --> 0:02:09.880 in Birmingham, Alabama that saw thousands of students march against segregation. 0:02:10.560 --> 0:02:13.720 Claire's telling a story much closer to home, but still 0:02:14.040 --> 0:02:17.640 primarily concerned with civil rights. It was August of nineteen 0:02:17.720 --> 0:02:21.160 sixty three when the Yongul people of northeast Arnham Land 0:02:21.200 --> 0:02:25.880 created the Yokala Bak petitions otherwise known as Naku Daruk. 0:02:26.280 --> 0:02:28.960 The petition said that the land in question has been 0:02:29.040 --> 0:02:32.480 hunting and food gathering land for the Yukola tribes from 0:02:32.560 --> 0:02:36.120 time immemorial, and it argues that places sacred to the 0:02:36.200 --> 0:02:39.359 Yeklar people as well as vital to their livelihood, are 0:02:39.400 --> 0:02:43.079 part of the excised land the kind of proposed mining area. 0:02:43.480 --> 0:02:45.480 It was a petition that called on the House of 0:02:45.520 --> 0:02:49.320 Representatives to appoint a committee accompanied by and the language 0:02:49.360 --> 0:02:53.320 is really amazing. It's competent interpreters to hear the views 0:02:53.400 --> 0:02:56.639 of the people of Yukola before permitting the excision of 0:02:56.720 --> 0:03:00.160 land for the mine. No arrangements should be entered into 0:03:00.200 --> 0:03:04.320 with any company which will destroy the livelihood and independence 0:03:04.400 --> 0:03:07.560 of the Yerkola people. It's hard not to read this 0:03:07.720 --> 0:03:10.400 and think about this history in the context of the 0:03:10.480 --> 0:03:14.720 referendum into the voice to Parliament that obviously failed last year. 0:03:15.200 --> 0:03:17.760 And there's this incredible through lane from the history of 0:03:17.760 --> 0:03:20.360 that Claire's telling to the present moment, and it's what 0:03:20.440 --> 0:03:23.200 makes this book and hopefully the conversation we had on 0:03:23.320 --> 0:03:25.360 read this so irresistible. 0:03:27.520 --> 0:03:30.079 Coming up in a moment Claire Riot is shutting up 0:03:30.160 --> 0:03:37.760 and listening. Tell me about your first memory of learning 0:03:37.800 --> 0:03:38.840 Australian history. 0:03:39.680 --> 0:03:43.800 Oh my, that's going back some way now, ancient history. 0:03:44.040 --> 0:03:47.800 One would say, Look, that's a high school experience and 0:03:47.920 --> 0:03:52.040 the first time a sense of Australian history, what it 0:03:52.080 --> 0:03:54.120 meant to study it, what I could get out of 0:03:54.160 --> 0:03:59.279 it landed with me was in year twelve and I 0:03:59.320 --> 0:04:06.560 had a teacher in year twelve who was the most bland, 0:04:07.200 --> 0:04:13.560 ordinary potato of a woman who absolutely lit up from 0:04:13.560 --> 0:04:18.560 inside when she talked about Australian history. And it was 0:04:18.640 --> 0:04:25.279 something about both that kind of alchemy, the transmogrification that 0:04:25.400 --> 0:04:28.119 happened in her as a human being when she talked 0:04:28.120 --> 0:04:30.960 about it, that made me sit up straight and really listen. 0:04:31.839 --> 0:04:35.040 And the thing that I most remember about that year 0:04:36.000 --> 0:04:41.920 was we had to do our own research project and 0:04:42.920 --> 0:04:47.280 while most young people, seventeen year olds in the September 0:04:47.279 --> 0:04:51.320 school holidays were sitting out in the sun a bit, 0:04:52.200 --> 0:04:54.720 you know, maybe seeing their friends. You know, exams are 0:04:54.720 --> 0:04:57.040 coming up, but still not the pointy end of the year. 0:04:57.160 --> 0:04:59.800 Yet I spent two weeks in the bowels of this 0:05:00.080 --> 0:05:03.800 Date Library of Victoria. This is when I fell in 0:05:03.800 --> 0:05:07.599 love with history, and Australian history in particular, because we 0:05:07.720 --> 0:05:12.680 had to use original archival research to do the essay, 0:05:12.760 --> 0:05:15.200 and we had to set our own essay topic. And 0:05:15.279 --> 0:05:19.000 I remember that I wrote on how the Yarrow River 0:05:19.640 --> 0:05:25.400 went from being a babbling brook in quotation marks to 0:05:26.800 --> 0:05:31.719 sordid cesspool quotation marks, So those were both archival quotes. 0:05:32.279 --> 0:05:35.560 And then I traced that and Michael, I was just 0:05:36.080 --> 0:05:39.040 in love. It was like getting the first hit of 0:05:39.080 --> 0:05:43.479 a drug. It was something about the search for the answers, 0:05:44.320 --> 0:05:48.760 about the hit of the find, and then about living 0:05:49.040 --> 0:05:53.280 in the place that you were immersed in. So I 0:05:53.320 --> 0:05:58.400 was immersed in a decade of Melbourne's history from in 0:05:58.440 --> 0:06:02.520 the eighteen forties. And I'd come out of the State 0:06:02.600 --> 0:06:06.280 Library blinking into the light like a mole that had 0:06:06.279 --> 0:06:12.039 come out from underground. Because I was so transported into 0:06:12.080 --> 0:06:16.360 that place, and for me that was it was. 0:06:16.320 --> 0:06:20.160 That the first time you had that rush from history, 0:06:20.440 --> 0:06:23.080 or had you had it with history from elsewhere, and 0:06:23.120 --> 0:06:24.800 it was the first time you had it about Australian 0:06:24.920 --> 0:06:27.200 history or did it start in Australia for you. 0:06:27.680 --> 0:06:31.640 Look, I think it started in Australia for me. And 0:06:32.040 --> 0:06:35.719 part of that is that I'm not Australian born. I'm 0:06:35.720 --> 0:06:38.560 a first generation immigrant to the country. I came to 0:06:38.600 --> 0:06:42.680 Australia from the United States when I was five, and 0:06:43.120 --> 0:06:46.680 I think that I always had a sense of being 0:06:46.720 --> 0:06:50.320 an outsider. I'm also Jewish, but I didn't go to 0:06:50.360 --> 0:06:52.640 a Jewish school or grow up in a Jewish community, 0:06:53.480 --> 0:06:56.560 so there was that about me. I was living with 0:06:56.600 --> 0:06:59.840 my mother and my stepfather, and they had very different 0:07:00.200 --> 0:07:03.599 kind of lifestyle than the kids that I knew in 0:07:03.720 --> 0:07:06.560 Mount Waverley growing up. They weren't very suburban, they were 0:07:06.600 --> 0:07:13.200 quite bohemian. What studying Australian history did for me was 0:07:13.240 --> 0:07:17.880 to give me a sense of groundedness, I think in 0:07:17.960 --> 0:07:22.800 the place and in the culture that I didn't have 0:07:23.120 --> 0:07:26.640 prior to that. I spent my entire childhood flying over 0:07:26.640 --> 0:07:29.480 the Pacific backwards and forwards between my mother and my 0:07:29.560 --> 0:07:33.640 father who my dad lived in Canada. So that sense 0:07:33.720 --> 0:07:40.760 of being very transient physically and I guess emotionally intellectually 0:07:41.200 --> 0:07:46.960 Australian history anchored me. I also think that that is 0:07:47.320 --> 0:07:50.480 why I come at Australian history once I was a 0:07:50.520 --> 0:07:52.640 fully fledged scholar of my own, so I did an 0:07:52.640 --> 0:07:56.080 honors in history, a Masters in history, a PhD in history. 0:07:56.120 --> 0:08:00.600 Of postdoctor research in history, I mean consistent, nothing if 0:08:00.640 --> 0:08:04.280 not consistent. But it was that postdoctor or research that 0:08:04.360 --> 0:08:07.760 became the Eureka Book. And it wasn't until then that 0:08:07.840 --> 0:08:10.800 I actually sort of linked some of these things that 0:08:11.320 --> 0:08:14.040 we've been talking about here and realized that that sense 0:08:14.080 --> 0:08:17.680 of being outside the house looking in actually had informed 0:08:17.680 --> 0:08:21.120 the way I do history, So that those myths and 0:08:21.240 --> 0:08:26.880 legends of Australian history that settler Australians may have grown 0:08:26.960 --> 0:08:33.120 up with didn't feel as embodied to me. I didn't 0:08:33.160 --> 0:08:36.240 take them for granted, and so I think that's what's 0:08:36.240 --> 0:08:38.680 allowed me to have a little bit more of that 0:08:38.760 --> 0:08:42.360 outsiders kind of perspective and be able to read against 0:08:42.400 --> 0:08:45.120 the grain of the myth or the legend. 0:08:45.760 --> 0:08:48.120 I'm glad you point towards the myths and legends, because 0:08:48.400 --> 0:08:51.520 amongst the many functions of history, amongst the many ways 0:08:51.520 --> 0:08:57.240 in which history manifests, one of the most pervasive iterations 0:08:57.240 --> 0:09:01.040 of history, I think lies in the nation state, and 0:09:01.120 --> 0:09:04.319 lies in national myth building. Our idea of who we are, 0:09:04.440 --> 0:09:09.360 our identity legitimacy as a nation is absolutely pinned on 0:09:09.480 --> 0:09:12.000 the reading of these events and the retelling of these 0:09:12.040 --> 0:09:15.840 stories in ways that reinforce our idea of ourselves. And 0:09:15.920 --> 0:09:20.600 so the historian as nation builder seems to me to 0:09:20.600 --> 0:09:21.840 be a pretty tight lockup. 0:09:22.480 --> 0:09:26.960 Absolutely, historians have been implicated in the settler colonial project 0:09:27.080 --> 0:09:30.839 right from the beginning. There's no doubt about that. And 0:09:31.720 --> 0:09:34.360 you know, you read somebody like Anna Clark's book Making 0:09:34.400 --> 0:09:38.520 Australian History and delving into the historiography in the ways 0:09:38.600 --> 0:09:41.760 that history has been written, Because as I often say 0:09:41.760 --> 0:09:45.040 when I go and speak to students in schools, the 0:09:45.160 --> 0:09:50.440 past is a time concept, but history is a social construct, 0:09:51.200 --> 0:09:55.160 and they're two very different things. And so human beings 0:09:55.240 --> 0:09:59.800 make history and they write history and they construct history. 0:10:00.080 --> 0:10:03.439 Those are narratives. Those are stories, and some of them 0:10:03.640 --> 0:10:08.240 we have grown up with as bedtime stories. They're comforting narratives. 0:10:08.320 --> 0:10:12.280 They're narratives that are intended to make you feel what 0:10:12.920 --> 0:10:18.240 John Howard might have called relaxed and comfortable, and nobody 0:10:18.280 --> 0:10:20.440 really wants to let go of those in the same 0:10:20.480 --> 0:10:24.160 way that probably in some ways we're always trying to 0:10:24.160 --> 0:10:27.080 get back to that state where our parents still, if 0:10:27.080 --> 0:10:29.000 we were lucky, sat up in bed and read to us, 0:10:29.520 --> 0:10:33.480 and we fell asleep to the soft droning of their voice. 0:10:33.520 --> 0:10:39.240 I meant that sort of certainty gives security, and so 0:10:39.360 --> 0:10:42.000 those myths and legends have a real place. They give 0:10:42.080 --> 0:10:48.760 people a sense of security. And it's not surprising that 0:10:50.120 --> 0:10:55.959 conservative politicians go after historians and start history wars as 0:10:56.000 --> 0:11:00.440 part of larger culture wars, because what historians do often 0:11:00.559 --> 0:11:07.120 ask uncomfortable questions, and they go back to the archives 0:11:07.160 --> 0:11:10.280 and back to the sources with those uncomfortable questions and 0:11:10.400 --> 0:11:20.559 find answers there that unsettle those narratives, that fracture those narratives. 0:11:21.160 --> 0:11:23.880 I was luck enough to interview Mary Beard earlier this year. 0:11:24.200 --> 0:11:28.160 Luck's just talking about, you know, the classicists as opposed 0:11:28.160 --> 0:11:30.800 to their historian. But one of the things that she 0:11:30.960 --> 0:11:33.439 was very big on was not knowing, you know that 0:11:33.760 --> 0:11:35.959 there is this embedded kind of not knowing, and to 0:11:35.960 --> 0:11:39.120 a certain extent, for classicists, their job is to read 0:11:39.280 --> 0:11:43.240 and reread the same historical records that everyone's been reading 0:11:43.280 --> 0:11:47.200 for hundreds of years, but find a way to interpret 0:11:47.200 --> 0:11:50.680 them differently, find a way to approach them and discover 0:11:50.800 --> 0:11:54.040 things in them. And that that act requires a kind 0:11:54.080 --> 0:11:57.520 of imaginative leap. It requires an act of empathy where 0:11:57.760 --> 0:12:01.200 you might recognize the subjectivity of the readings that have 0:12:01.200 --> 0:12:04.040 happened before and approach it differently. 0:12:04.200 --> 0:12:09.320 Absolutely, and what Mary does is imagine things from the 0:12:09.360 --> 0:12:13.440 point of view of the slave, not the emperor. Imagine 0:12:13.480 --> 0:12:15.959 things from the point of view of the women who 0:12:15.960 --> 0:12:21.520 were living in ancient Rome. And those were questions that 0:12:21.600 --> 0:12:25.120 hadn't really been asked before. Mary and I were at 0:12:25.120 --> 0:12:28.960 the Jaipo Literature Festival together earlier this year and we 0:12:29.040 --> 0:12:34.600 had great fun talking about sources. And one of the 0:12:34.640 --> 0:12:38.160 things that I have with Australian history that Mary doesn't 0:12:38.200 --> 0:12:41.880 have with the classical sources she goes back to, is 0:12:41.920 --> 0:12:45.400 so many of her sources are actually the narratives that 0:12:45.480 --> 0:12:51.959 have already been written, whereas I have diaries, letters, newspaper reports, 0:12:52.600 --> 0:12:58.360 government documents, the things that historians of an earlier period 0:12:58.520 --> 0:13:01.680 have much more access to and I can now find 0:13:01.720 --> 0:13:04.800 them online much better if you can actually get into 0:13:04.840 --> 0:13:09.440 the archives yourself and sift through those boxes or volumes, 0:13:09.960 --> 0:13:13.200 because a lot of the time it's just what you said, 0:13:13.240 --> 0:13:16.000 you don't know what, you don't know until there it 0:13:16.080 --> 0:13:19.240 is staring you in the face. And then the job 0:13:19.280 --> 0:13:23.280 of the historian is to weave what you have found 0:13:23.559 --> 0:13:28.120 into a cohesive narrative that is going to communicate to 0:13:28.240 --> 0:13:33.720 your audience. For me, something of the experience of being 0:13:33.760 --> 0:13:37.880 in that archive, what it feels like to be in 0:13:37.960 --> 0:13:41.280 Ballarat in eighteen fifty four, or to be in London 0:13:41.360 --> 0:13:44.640 during the great Suffragette rallies of nineteen eleven, or with 0:13:44.760 --> 0:13:46.880 this latest book, what it was like to be in 0:13:47.040 --> 0:13:51.480 Urdkala in nineteen sixty three. Because that is the great 0:13:51.600 --> 0:13:54.880 thrill of the historian, is to feel that because you're 0:13:54.880 --> 0:13:59.160 so immersed. The great challenge is then to communicate that 0:13:59.320 --> 0:13:59.880 to the reader. 0:14:02.679 --> 0:14:05.600 When we return, we dive into the genesis of Claire 0:14:05.679 --> 0:14:09.920 Right's final installment of the Democracy Trilogy, and she describes 0:14:09.960 --> 0:14:12.960 what it meant to her to document history while it 0:14:13.040 --> 0:14:17.400 was continuing to swirl all around her. 0:14:25.800 --> 0:14:28.560 I first went to Northeast darnham Land with my family 0:14:28.600 --> 0:14:34.440 in twenty ten and was adopted into community after a 0:14:34.480 --> 0:14:36.280 month or so of my kids going to school with 0:14:36.320 --> 0:14:41.880 young or kids and I was adopted into the Unipingu family. 0:14:42.280 --> 0:14:48.360 Was actually adopted by doctor G's Unipingu's fourth wife, who 0:14:48.400 --> 0:14:50.640 was not a good much woman, She's a doctaway woman. 0:14:51.480 --> 0:14:54.720 But that put me in the household of the Unipingus 0:14:54.920 --> 0:14:59.440 and it was years of going backwards and forwards between 0:14:59.480 --> 0:15:03.080 Melbourne and Northeast darnham Land before it occurred to me 0:15:03.720 --> 0:15:10.000 that that experience, that the massive learning curve that I 0:15:10.120 --> 0:15:14.280 was on, that the great hospitality and warmth and generosity 0:15:14.400 --> 0:15:18.200 that the young people had showed me might become part 0:15:18.240 --> 0:15:21.440 of my work in any way. And that was when 0:15:21.440 --> 0:15:26.320 I started talking more about history with people up there, 0:15:26.800 --> 0:15:32.720 and that's when essentially the invitation to write this book came. 0:15:33.840 --> 0:15:38.560 One of the things that is at first uncomfortable and 0:15:38.600 --> 0:15:42.680 then just becomes magical is to be in your own 0:15:42.720 --> 0:15:47.680 country and to be totally immersed in a people who 0:15:47.760 --> 0:15:51.640 are not speaking the language that you speak. You might 0:15:51.720 --> 0:15:54.960 expect that if you go overseas. In fact, you do 0:15:55.080 --> 0:15:59.960 expect that, and Australians are so privileged in their mind 0:16:00.120 --> 0:16:06.200 no lingualism, that we understand that if we go to 0:16:06.240 --> 0:16:09.080 another country, we were likely not going to speak its language, 0:16:09.120 --> 0:16:12.640 whereas you know Europeans are familiar with many European languages. 0:16:13.480 --> 0:16:17.760 It was expounding to me and still is that in 0:16:17.920 --> 0:16:21.840 arnum Land, English is the fifth language that a young 0:16:21.920 --> 0:16:24.840 or person will speak. They'll speak four different versions of 0:16:24.920 --> 0:16:29.040 yong or mutter and then English. So what I had 0:16:29.080 --> 0:16:32.560 to learn to do really quickly was shut up and listen. 0:16:33.320 --> 0:16:35.480 And oh my god, that's a good skill for a 0:16:35.560 --> 0:16:42.120 Nestorian to learn, Michael. And that humility that is created 0:16:42.160 --> 0:16:46.800 through that process is I think something that is different 0:16:46.840 --> 0:16:52.120 about this book from my previous works. I've always been 0:16:52.320 --> 0:16:55.640 very respectful of the archive. You know, I've always said 0:16:56.400 --> 0:17:01.720 I write narrative nonfiction. They're written to be read. I 0:17:01.800 --> 0:17:04.040 want people to race through them. I want people to 0:17:04.040 --> 0:17:05.520 get to the end of a chapter and want to 0:17:05.560 --> 0:17:08.280 know what happens next. I want people to be invested 0:17:08.320 --> 0:17:13.919 in character development, and the archive is what gives you that. 0:17:14.359 --> 0:17:17.720 I have never made anything up. You know, doctors make 0:17:17.760 --> 0:17:20.560 a pact to do no harm. Historians, I think, make 0:17:20.600 --> 0:17:23.000 a pact with their reader to not make shit up. 0:17:25.119 --> 0:17:29.119 And yet this book is the one in which I 0:17:29.400 --> 0:17:34.960 felt going into it the most amount of responsibility to 0:17:35.040 --> 0:17:39.080 get things right, to get the tone right, to get 0:17:39.119 --> 0:17:42.200 the balance and the weight of voices right, to get 0:17:42.200 --> 0:17:46.520 the sense of bilingualism that is essential to the bark 0:17:46.600 --> 0:17:51.000 petitions themselves, but also the experience of living on country 0:17:51.400 --> 0:17:54.840 now and certainly in nineteen sixty three, the Methodist missionaries 0:17:54.880 --> 0:17:58.680 who went there all had to learn yongomata, so they 0:17:58.760 --> 0:18:03.560 became bilingual. I wanted that to inflect the book. I 0:18:03.600 --> 0:18:09.560 want it also country itself to be archive. What I 0:18:09.600 --> 0:18:13.440 mean by that is youngal people know how to read 0:18:13.480 --> 0:18:17.600 the land. When a certain flower is out, it means 0:18:17.600 --> 0:18:21.480 that something's going to be happening in the ocean. Now, 0:18:21.480 --> 0:18:24.000 when a breeze starts to come from a different direction, 0:18:24.440 --> 0:18:28.679 it means it's time to harvest something. And what I 0:18:28.760 --> 0:18:31.639 wanted was for the reader to be really imbued with 0:18:31.720 --> 0:18:37.760 that sense of the way in which the climate affects 0:18:38.119 --> 0:18:41.760 the mood of the people, the wet, the dry, the 0:18:41.840 --> 0:18:44.879 build up, But then also to have the six Yngal 0:18:44.960 --> 0:18:49.320 seasons inflected in there as well, so that there's a 0:18:49.440 --> 0:18:53.920 sense of the shoulder to shoulderness of what people would 0:18:53.960 --> 0:18:59.520 call baala gullily, which means two ways learning. It's what 0:18:59.560 --> 0:19:02.320 the ull Statement from the Heart asked us all very 0:19:02.359 --> 0:19:05.639 generously to do, which is walk together on this journey. 0:19:08.920 --> 0:19:12.080 As to think from certain practices of history where it's, 0:19:12.320 --> 0:19:16.080 if not an abstract thing, the endpoint is still about 0:19:16.080 --> 0:19:19.280 telling a story about something, and it's at arm's length. Yes, 0:19:19.320 --> 0:19:22.280 but you are completing the end of an over a 0:19:22.320 --> 0:19:27.439 decade long project in writing histories of Australian democracy, an 0:19:27.480 --> 0:19:32.840 alternative two decades, a trilogy that kind of unpicks the 0:19:32.920 --> 0:19:37.120 project of Australian democracy in different ways. That's an incredibly 0:19:37.240 --> 0:19:41.359 live conversation. You know, that's not an abstract thing. The 0:19:41.440 --> 0:19:45.800 stuff you write about in Nakudaruk has very serious present 0:19:45.880 --> 0:19:50.880 day implications. So I'm just curious about whether that places 0:19:50.920 --> 0:19:53.640 a different pressure on the kind of history that you write. 0:19:54.160 --> 0:19:59.119 When I started researching and writing Nakudaruk ten years ago, 0:20:00.800 --> 0:20:04.240 Ulurus Statement from the Heart hadn't been written. The idea 0:20:04.280 --> 0:20:10.800 of a voice referendum wasn't in anybody's consciousness. I set 0:20:10.800 --> 0:20:15.359 out to write the story that one I was more 0:20:15.480 --> 0:20:18.320 or less asked by the or community to work on 0:20:19.800 --> 0:20:25.640 and two the story that I felt had not been 0:20:25.640 --> 0:20:29.199 written in Australian history yet. And the combination of the 0:20:29.240 --> 0:20:32.520 fact that I had not only the consent but the 0:20:32.600 --> 0:20:37.280 encouragement of senior members of the community, and I had 0:20:37.320 --> 0:20:40.600 the skills and resources to be able to go about 0:20:40.600 --> 0:20:44.760 this history because I had an ARC grant. Those were 0:20:44.800 --> 0:20:47.600 the things that drove me forward in this project. I 0:20:47.640 --> 0:20:50.160 didn't actually realize I had a trilogy on my hands 0:20:50.320 --> 0:20:55.440 until I started researching Naku Dharuk, and what I actually 0:20:55.600 --> 0:20:59.280 was doing was not casting forward to an open ended 0:20:59.320 --> 0:21:03.719 political moment. What I was doing was casting back and 0:21:03.840 --> 0:21:07.800 joining the dots between Eureka and northeast Arnham Land in 0:21:07.880 --> 0:21:11.920 nineteen sixty three, joining the dots between the Eureka flag 0:21:12.720 --> 0:21:17.000 that had been hand sewn by women to express what 0:21:17.119 --> 0:21:22.159 the diggers of Ballarat were protesting about, which was essentially 0:21:22.800 --> 0:21:26.520 needing and wanting to have their voices heard in the 0:21:26.560 --> 0:21:31.560 halls of Victorian Parliament because they were disenfranchised. I realized 0:21:31.600 --> 0:21:37.880 that the Bark petitions, handmade by young people, signed by 0:21:37.920 --> 0:21:45.400 men and women, expressed that same sentiment and ambition which 0:21:45.520 --> 0:21:47.760 was to be heard to have a voice in the 0:21:47.800 --> 0:21:51.680 halls of power to be able to express grievances about 0:21:51.720 --> 0:21:54.640 what was going on on the ground to people who 0:21:55.119 --> 0:22:05.200 were similarly disenfranchised structurally as well as culturally. And I thought, ooh, 0:22:06.320 --> 0:22:08.760 I can compare these. I can say that the Eureka 0:22:08.800 --> 0:22:11.520 flag was to the nineteenth century what the Bark petitions 0:22:11.560 --> 0:22:15.040 were to the twentieth century. And then realized that there 0:22:15.119 --> 0:22:17.879 was a dot in the middle to join, which was 0:22:18.160 --> 0:22:22.080 the Women's Suffrage Banner which hangs in Parliament House, which 0:22:22.119 --> 0:22:26.520 did the same thing, a material object painted by a 0:22:26.560 --> 0:22:30.240 woman that was carried in the Great Suffragette Rallies of 0:22:30.320 --> 0:22:35.480 London that proclaimed the rights that Australian women had already won, 0:22:35.880 --> 0:22:38.919 were first in the world to win the right to 0:22:38.960 --> 0:22:42.280 stand for Parliament and the right to vote white women, 0:22:42.359 --> 0:22:47.760 that is, and that they were claiming a voice as 0:22:47.760 --> 0:22:51.520 well in the body politic in the nation state. And 0:22:51.600 --> 0:22:53.879 so there was a trilogy. So I went back and 0:22:53.920 --> 0:22:58.600 wrote you'd Orders of Freedom, and then came back to Nakudharuk. 0:23:01.240 --> 0:23:04.960 When I started researching and writing it, I had no 0:23:05.119 --> 0:23:07.199 sense that it was going to make any kind of 0:23:08.520 --> 0:23:15.880 political intervention. Yes, of course, it makes an intervention into 0:23:16.280 --> 0:23:20.600 the narrative of Australian history in that it writes First 0:23:20.680 --> 0:23:27.639 Nations people into mainstream Australian political history. The young or 0:23:27.680 --> 0:23:33.480 people are as important in this book as the men'sis 0:23:33.480 --> 0:23:37.920 government and the Methodist Church and the mining interests. It's 0:23:37.920 --> 0:23:40.800 a four cornered contest for this piece of land in 0:23:41.000 --> 0:23:47.840 northeast Arnham Land. In that sense, it's not quarantined Aboriginal history, 0:23:48.440 --> 0:23:50.720 just as I would say that Eureka and Your Daughters 0:23:50.720 --> 0:23:56.399 of Freedom were not quarantined women's history. They were revisionists 0:23:56.440 --> 0:23:59.920 to the extent that certain comfortable myths about the Gold 0:24:00.160 --> 0:24:04.919 Ros and comfortable myths about the Federation era were turned 0:24:04.920 --> 0:24:08.720 on their head by realizing that women were so deeply implicated, 0:24:09.560 --> 0:24:12.720 that women had been the agents, the historical agents of 0:24:12.800 --> 0:24:16.080 the changes that were made that we then later came 0:24:16.119 --> 0:24:24.400 to celebrate as being masculine achievements to masculine aspirations, and 0:24:24.440 --> 0:24:31.000 that reflected masculine virtues like unity or collectivity or standing 0:24:31.080 --> 0:24:33.200 up for your rights and your freedoms and your liberties, 0:24:33.720 --> 0:24:42.639 which are then gendered male. Nakudaruk certainly is interventionist, but 0:24:42.760 --> 0:24:45.760 I didn't realize that it had the potential to be 0:24:45.880 --> 0:24:51.520 read as activist until I got to the conclusion, and 0:24:51.560 --> 0:24:54.520 the conclusion is the part where I take the reader 0:24:54.560 --> 0:24:58.520 from nineteen sixty four to twenty twenty four. Essentially the 0:24:58.560 --> 0:25:03.280 rest of the book is nineteen sixty three. And within 0:25:03.400 --> 0:25:05.600 that time, by the time I was up to writing 0:25:05.640 --> 0:25:10.040 that we'd had the Ulurus Statement from the Heart, we'd 0:25:10.080 --> 0:25:15.960 had the Voice Referendum, we had the challenge that doctor 0:25:16.000 --> 0:25:20.879 g Unipingu had made to the Commonwealth Government for reparations 0:25:21.440 --> 0:25:24.240 for the loss of land and culture that had happened 0:25:24.240 --> 0:25:28.360 in nineteen sixty three, and the finding in his favor. 0:25:30.160 --> 0:25:33.120 It was impossible not to include all of those things 0:25:33.160 --> 0:25:36.200 in a reckoning of what had happened over the last 0:25:36.280 --> 0:25:38.760 sixty years to bring us to the point that we 0:25:38.800 --> 0:25:43.040 are today, Because the same thing that the people were 0:25:43.080 --> 0:25:46.920 asking for through the Bark petitions in nineteen sixty three 0:25:47.480 --> 0:25:52.359 was the very thing that the Voice Referendum was essentially 0:25:52.480 --> 0:25:56.800 in big picture talking about, which is a voice. Obviously 0:25:57.040 --> 0:26:00.240 on the small scale, it was asking for or a 0:26:00.320 --> 0:26:04.439 change to the Australian Constitution. And that's the part that 0:26:04.480 --> 0:26:07.360 Australian said no to. And I think it's really important 0:26:07.400 --> 0:26:11.400 to remember that. In Meghan Davis who was so such 0:26:11.440 --> 0:26:13.720 a leader in the Ulary's statement from the Heart and 0:26:13.760 --> 0:26:17.439 the Voice referendum has made this point now, which is 0:26:17.480 --> 0:26:22.359 that Australians in twenty twenty three said no to a 0:26:22.400 --> 0:26:26.320 particular word changing to a particular line in the Constitution. 0:26:27.240 --> 0:26:30.800 They didn't say no to everything that has to do 0:26:31.119 --> 0:26:34.760 with aboriginal tyrest Rate Islander writes. 0:26:36.080 --> 0:26:38.800 I mean that's I think it's an important thing to remember. 0:26:38.800 --> 0:26:41.080 It's a fascinating way to think about it, though, because 0:26:41.160 --> 0:26:44.800 part of what that's suggesting is that the sticking point 0:26:44.840 --> 0:26:49.720 for people was a mistaken belief that a historical document 0:26:49.920 --> 0:26:54.480 or artifact should somehow be unchanging or sacrisanct, that it's 0:26:54.560 --> 0:26:58.439 not something that can be fluid as times changes, needs change. 0:26:58.480 --> 0:27:03.000 But the Constitution's a fixed point, and people are uncomfortable 0:27:03.000 --> 0:27:06.000 with the idea of interrogating that fixed point. You know, 0:27:06.040 --> 0:27:09.520