First Nations Resources

Set within the explosive cultural shifts of the 1960s and 1980s, Becoming Kirrali Lewis chronicles the journeyof a young First Nations Australian teenager as she leaves her home town in rural Victoria to take on a law degree in the city of Melbourne in 1985. Adopted at birth by a white family, Kirrali doesn't question her cultural roots until a series of life-changing events force her to face up to her true identity. Her decision to search for her biological parents sparks off a political awakening that no one sees coming, least of all Kirrali herself as she discovers her mother is white and her father is a radical black activist. Narrative flashbacks to the 1960s, where Kirrali's biological mother, Cherie, is rebelling against her parent's strict conservatism sees her fall into a clandestine relationship with a black man. Unmarried and pregnant, Cherie's traumatic story of an unforgiving Australian society give meaning to Kirrali's own rites of passage nearly twenty years later. The generational threads of human experience are the very things that will complete her. If only she can let go.

Two extraordinary Indigenous stories set five generations apart. When Mulanyin meets the beautiful Nita in Edenglassie, their saltwater people still outnumber the British. As colonial unrest peaks, Mulanyin dreams of taking his bride home to Yugambeh Country, but his plans for independence collide with white justice. Two centuries later, fiery activist Winona meets Dr Johnny. Together they care for obstinate centenarian Grannie Eddie, and sparks fly, but not always in the right direction. What nobody knows is how far the legacies of the past will reach into their modern lives. In this brilliant epic, Melissa Lucashenko torches Queensland's colonial myths, while reimagining an Australian future.

Two extraordinary Indigenous stories set five generations apart. When Mulanyin meets the beautiful Nita in Edenglassie, their saltwater people still outnumber the British. As colonial unrest peaks, Mulanyin dreams of taking his bride home to Yugambeh Country, but his plans for independence collide with white justice. Two centuries later, fiery activist Winona meets Dr Johnny. Together they care for obstinate centenarian Grannie Eddie, and sparks fly, but not always in the right direction. What nobody knows is how far the legacies of the past will reach into their modern lives. In this brilliant epic, Melissa Lucashenko torches Queensland's colonial myths, while reimagining an Australian future.

Every Secret Thing is a nothing-is-sacred misadventure that crackles with Marie Munkara's famous acerbic humour. Set in the early days of missionary activity in far northern Australia, Every Secret Thing follows the Bush Mob as they try to evade the Mission Mob, who, along with everyone else are trying to avoid having their souls saved by the Roman Catholic Missionaries. In these hilariously irreverent vignettes of mission life, everyone and everything is fair game.

Rosie and Nona are sisters. They are also best friends. It doesn't matter that Rosie is white and Nona is Aboriginal: their family connections tie them together for life. Born just five days apart in a remote corner of the Northern Territory, the girls are inseperable, until Nona moves away at the age of nine. By the time she returns, they're in Year 10 and things have changed. Rosie has lost interest in the community, preferring to hang out in the nearby mining town, where she goes to school with the glamorous Selena, and Selena's gorgeous older brother Nick. When a political announcement highlights divisions between the Aboriginal community and the mining town, Rosie is put in a difficult position: will she be forced to choose between her first love and her oldest friend?

Returning is a stunning work - a poetic and visual feast that takes you on Kirli's journey of rediscovering self, Country and Connection. Kirli's heartfelt experiences address large contemporary themes of decolonisation, self-determination, Identity, First Nations matriarchy, queerness, justice, love, liberation, and truth-telling. The backdrop to Returning is a time of huge upheaval with natural disasters, COVID and the Black Lives Matter Movement.Each poem is accompanied by evocative and poignant artwork that was created in response to its poem and vitalises its meaning. The artworks, visual poems, were originally shown at SHAC Gallery, Gundungurra land, in 2021 in the exhibition named Returning. Kirli's multi-disciplinary artworks span across a range of mediums and displays, including but not limited to water colour, ink on hand-dyed silk, synthesising digital imagery with text, and installations of hand-crafted possum skin cloaks and weavings. Returning was developed with consultation and guidance from First Nations Elders, Custodians, academics and artists.

In 2006, Tara June Winch's startling debut Swallow the Air was published to acclaim. Its poetic yet visceral style announced the arrival a fresh and exciting new talent. This 10th anniversary edition celebrates its important contribution to Australian literature. When May's mother dies suddenly, she and her brother Billy are taken in by Aunty. However, their loss leaves them both searching for their place in a world that doesn't seem to want them. While Billy takes his own destructive path, May sets out to find her father and her Aboriginal identity. Her journey leads her from the Australian east coast to the far north, but it is the people she meets, not the destinations, that teach her what it is to belong. Swallow the Air is an unforgettable story of living in a torn world and finding the thread to help sew it back together.

A dark and funny new novel from the multi-award-winning author of Mullumbimby.Too much lip, her old problem from way back. And the older she got, the harder it seemed to get to swallow her opinions. The avalanche of bullshit in the world would drown her if she let it; the least she could do was raise her voice in anger.Wise-cracking Kerry Salter has spent a lifetime avoiding two things - her hometown and prison. But now her Pop is dying and she's an inch away from the lockup, so she heads south on a stolen Harley.Kerry plans to spend twenty-four hours, tops, over the border. She quickly discovers, though, that Bundjalung country has a funny way of grabbing on to people. Old family wounds open as the Salters fight to stop the development of their beloved river. And the unexpected arrival on the scene of a good-looking dugai fella intent on loving her up only adds more trouble - but then trouble is Kerry's middle name.Gritty and darkly hilarious, Too Much Lip offers redemption and forgiveness where none seems possible.

The yield in English is the reaping, the things that man can take from the land. In the language of the Wiradjuri yield is the things you give to, the movement, the space between things: baayanha. Knowing that he will soon die, Albert 'Poppy' Gondiwindi takes pen to paper. His life has been spent on the banks of the Murrumby River at Prosperous House, on Massacre Plains. Albert is determined to pass on the language of his people and everything that was ever remembered. He finds the words on the wind. August Gondiwindi has been living on the other side of the world for ten years when she learns of her grandfather's death. She returns home for his burial, wracked with grief and burdened with all she tried to leave behind. Her homecoming is bittersweet as she confronts the love of her kin and news that Prosperous is to be repossessed by a mining company. Determined to make amends she endeavours to save their land -- a quest that leads her to the voice of her grandfather and into the past, the stories of her people, the secrets of the river. Profoundly moving and exquisitely written, Tara June Winch's The Yield is the story of a people and a culture dispossessed. But it is as much a celebration of what was and what endures, and a powerful reclaiming of Indigenous language, storytelling and identity.