Cirrus@Austlit

'The Australian literary community engaged heavily in the national debate leading up to the Indigenous Voice referendum held on 14 October 2023, which sought to enshrine in the Constitution a representative body of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders to advise parliament on issues affecting their people. Literary journals foregrounded Aboriginal voices and campaigned directly for a “yes” vote. In Meanjin, Noongar novelist Claire Coleman wrote, “I fight for the Voice … because the Voice is what is on offer: an opportunity to begin dialogues that will lead to treaty and truth” (Meanjin 19 September). After the strong rejection of the Voice in the referendum, the editors of the literary journal Overland cited “the collective fiction [which] WEH Stanner diagnosed as settlement’s constitutive occlusion of Aboriginal reality”, concluding that “watching the majority of the settlers on stolen land reject even such minimal terms has starkly clarified the failed project of reconciliation that has already demanded so much from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and communities” (Evelyn Araluen and Jonathan Dunk Overland 252). Australian literature in 2023 determinedly continued to explore the perspectives of Indigenous people and the socially marginalised, as well as reflecting concerns about the environment, and issues pertinent to women; there was also a surge of interest in what might be called matters of intergenerational connection, together with a continuing readiness to experiment with form and structure.' (Introduction)