Cirrus@Austlit

'Matteo Dutto’s Legacies of Indigenous Resistance, which was recently shortlisted for the 2021 ASAL Alvie Egan Award, is a remarkable book. It is the first book that examines comparatively the legacies of three Indigenous Australian resistance leaders, Pemulwuy, Yagan, and Jandamarra, and provides close analysis of works by Indigenous Australian writers, filmmakers, performers, and communities, who have retold their stories. Pemulwuy, a Bidjigal/Eora man (from the area spreading west from what is now called Botany Bay to Salt Pan Creek) was born around 1750 and fought against the British between 1790 and 1802; a Bunuba (from the Kimberley region of Western Australia), Jandamarra was born around 1873 and killed in 1897; a Noongar (from the Perth area), Yagan was born around 1795 and killed in 1833. Interested in “the social power of storytelling” (3), Dutto, an Italian scholar, focuses on these historical figures because their stories “have produced since their death the largest corpus of incarnations across different media” (12), and “forc[e] us to acknowledge the unceded sovereignty of First Nations across Australia and to question the legitimacy of settler colonial authority” (11).' (Introduction)