Issue Details: First known date: 2023... 2023 On Undoing : Community + Belonging + Tea + Cake
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'WE SCAMPER INTO a warm room full of returned relics and donated artwork. Outside, the temperature hovers around 12 degrees – freezing for a Meanjin girl. The sky is low and grey, a fog shrouds the silhouetted gums. Sheets of rain come and go. Local Elder David King welcomes us into the space, welcomes us warmly to Gundungurra Country. We sit together and he shares stories of his mother and his aunties and uncles. His words are gentle. He tells truth about dispossession and homecomings. He talks about forming a strategy – after the government returned the gully to the rightful custodians in the early 2000s. Of sitting with family to formulate answers to bureaucratic questions. His description of the aunties’ refusal to corral these answers into settler language stirs me. Over a period of years, they formulated four key performance headings: community + belonging + cups of tea + cake.' (Introduction) 

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Griffith Review Creation Stories no. 80 2023 26159840 2023 periodical issue

    'The capacity to tell stories – along with language and the ability to create art – is seen as both intrinsic and unique to the human species. Over thousands of years, we’ve forged narratives of our origins, our journeys and our dreams as a means of accounting for who we are and to define our place in the world. 

    'In the twenty-first century, as our existential and environmental crises mount, humanity’s place feels distinctly tenuous. What lessons from the past can inform, even shape, our increasingly uncertain future? And are the stories we’re telling ourselves about what comes next – environmental downfall or technological salvation – helping or hindering what we might do and where we might go? 

    'In celebration of Griffith Review’s eightieth edition and twentieth anniversary, Creation Stories looks to the stars above and the earth below to map our ever-evolving relationships with the world around us. From archaeology and astronomy to AI and transhumanism, the preservation of traditional knowledge to the intricacies of postmodern identity, this edition travels through time and space to explore the many tales of who we are and where we might be headed.'  (Publication summary)

    2023
    pg. 17-24
Last amended 6 Jun 2023 14:03:32
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