Culture

Why We Need To Be Reading And Sharing Indigenous Stories

"Sharing the power of Indigenous voices with others is an important aspect of combating bias".

by Jie Eccles  24 August 2020
Indigenous stories

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A few weeks ago I published a piece discussing the critical importance of sharing books about Tasmanian Aboriginals. I’d launched a grassroots initiative in Hobart giving away books on this nature, in the hope of encouraging more people to engage with Indigenous stories and voices, and also to just leave little bookish gems around the place for people to find and have their day brightened.

I just really wanted to spread some kindness, and hoped people might not only amplify, but also remember the vitality needed in respecting pakana storytellers and history in the right way. In response, I received plenty of hatred, vilifying my person, a public confrontation on the street, and even some racist neighbourly correspondence slotted into my private residential mailbox.

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I even had to edit personal details out my original article, because people were taking screenshots of my family’s historical documents and photos, defacing them and making threats that just became a bit too psychotic.

This is how Indigenous voices are silenced, de-platformed, and twisted — but also precisely why it is crucial to share them.

The other upsetting consequence of my article was that brilliant, prominent groups and bookclubs such as Blackfulla Book Club simply couldn’t share my work, because in it I recommended four books on pakana people which were authored by non-Indigenous historians.

Those were titles I had given away that week, so it was on a technicality, but it percolates an important subject: Indigenous stories should be Indigenous-lead, owned and told. And they need to be shared.

How We Read Indigenous Stories

In that spirit I’ve asked esteemed novelist and academic from The University of Western Australia, Ambelin Kyawmullina, from the only Indigenous-lead and owned publishing house in Australia, Magabala Books, a few questions about her new work Living on Stolen Land, which explores this topic of reading and sharing Indigenous stories, so beautifully.

It appears so much of the literature market seems to focus on Indigenous voices telling their stories without making room for those same voices telling people how they need to make reforms. It still feels like on a commercial scale Indigenous books are being churned through a coloniser-settler filter. How do you think readers should engage with Indigenous works?”

I think our stories should be read on their own terms. That means non-Indigenous readers need to be aware of all the baggage they bring with them to Indigenous stories, including the false expectations born of distorted visions of Indigenous realities, perpetuated by stories told about us, but not by us. Since a lot of these false expectations exist at subconscious levels, people need to start checking their own reactions. As a starting point I think it’s useful to engage in reflective reading which means asking yourself three questions:

1. what did I learn from this story that I didn’t know before?

2. how does that learning relate to my prior knowledge, eg does it confirm or challenge that knowledge?

3. how will I apply this learning in the future?

Everyone engaging with Indigenous stories should also be promoting those stories.

Sharing the power of Indigenous voices with others is an important aspect of combating bias. Not everyone wants to read Indigenous stories, and perhaps the one-in-five Australians who hold explicit bias towards Indigenous peoples won’t do so. But maybe they will, and as an educator, I believe in the transformational power of learning.

Learning from Indigenous voices will also help people to unravel their own unconscious bias and to identify and challenge systemic bias.

Why is it important for Indigenous storytellers and writers to have autonomy over their words?

We belong to the oldest living culture in the world. We are the holders of cultural, scientific, and environmental literacies that have much to offer the planet especially in an age when the human species is facing existential environmental threats.

We have a lived experience of multi-generational discrimination that makes us experts in the multiple insidious ways in which exclusion flourishes. And our stories are powerful agents of healing. It is our sovereign right as Indigenous peoples to tell our stories in ways that are meaningful to us. When that right is respected our words and spirits soar, and pathways are opened to just futures.

Decolonised Futures Are What We Create Together

There is a powerful moment in the book when Ambelin says “decolonised futures are what we create together”, and after I fan-out over it with her, she said “the world of literature is largely a culturally unsafe world. In a just future it would be culturally safe and we could speak our stories without fear of our words — and lives — being misappropriated or our realities being diminished or denied.”

And that’s how you let us tell our stories.

Here are the new titles authored by Indigenous voices that I highly recommend you read and share:

Living on Stolen Land by Ambelin Kwaymullina

Growing up Aboriginal in Australia anthology of Indigenous voices compiled by Anita Heiss

Kindred by Kirli Saunders

Fire Country by Victor Steffensen

The pakana Voice: Tales from a War Correspondent from lutruwita (Tasmania) 1814-1856 by Ian Broinowski and Jim Everett is a notable mention because although it is authored by a non-Indigenous writer it is written with cultural advice by Jim Everett, a prominent pakana poet — an example of how these sorts of books should be executed.

Jie Eccles is a pakana writer from lutruwita. He writes about Aboriginality, mental health, queerness and pop culture. He also spams Instagram with photos of his pet cow, Charlie.