Cirrus@Austlit

'What to do as a white middle class writer attempting to write with anti-racist and decolonialist intent? Who to use as models in the classroom and how to teach the complexity of ethics and responsibility of telling stories that challenge and undermine the accepted narratives of this nation to a predominantly white middle class cohort? This paper argues that the examples exist, authors such as Kim Scott, Bruce Pascoe, Melissa Lucaschenko, Alexis Wright and Natalie Harkin amongst many others. It is a challenging process though, ethically and creatively, to use Indigenous writers as models of approaches to story when I am not Indigenous. How to discuss these challenges in a classroom? Through an examination of my semester long subject‘Writing across borders’, a subject with Kim Scott’s novel That Deadman Dance set as the spine of the course, this paper will highlight that one of the significant challenges lies in presenting this material as already in relationship to non-Indigenous students, who up until this class had seen a division between themselves and the literature they read, and Indigenous Australian writing, declaring: ‘They aren’t writing for me’ and ‘Their stories are not mine – I can’t relate.’ With the focus on Scott’s novel came the focus on race and on Indigenous and non-Indigenous relationships in Australia and the stories told of these relationships. To support me, I drew on Fiona Nicoll’s 2004 essay ‘Are you calling me racist’ throughout the semester as guide, mentor and backstop.'

Source: Abstract.