'‘in ember and ash / the heart of the Noongar Nation beats buried...’
'Refugia is an unparalleled work of vision and political fury from Noongar and Yawuru poet and scholar Elfie Shiosaki. Inspired by the beeliar (Swan River) and the NASA James Webb Space Telescope’s first year of science, this collection draws on colonial archives to contest the occupation of Noongar Country.
'As the bicentennial year of the colony of Western Australia approaches, Shiosaki looks to the stars and back to the earth to make sense of memory and the afterlife of imperial violence.' (Publication summary)
'As I began reading Elfie Shiosaki’s Refugia, shocking reports were emerging from the Western Australian coronial inquest into the death of sixteen-year-old Cleveland Dodd in Unit 18, the youth wing of Casuarina Prison, a maximum security adult prison. Before I had finished the book, the news came through of the death of another Indigenous teenager in custody. Decades after the devastating report of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, with its clear and urgent recommendations, little has been done to keep First Nations people out of custody and safe when in custody.' (Introduction)
'As I began reading Elfie Shiosaki’s Refugia, shocking reports were emerging from the Western Australian coronial inquest into the death of sixteen-year-old Cleveland Dodd in Unit 18, the youth wing of Casuarina Prison, a maximum security adult prison. Before I had finished the book, the news came through of the death of another Indigenous teenager in custody. Decades after the devastating report of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, with its clear and urgent recommendations, little has been done to keep First Nations people out of custody and safe when in custody.' (Introduction)
