Cirrus@Austlit

'The Marina du Château room was the perfect location for the 2021 international conference "Indigenous Environmental Practices as Responses to Pollution," directly following the 2021 conference on Alexis Wright's Carpentaria in Brest. On October 21 and 22, 2021, the sunlit room lined with high windows opening on a large, oval balcony directly looked out on the Brest Harbour, such that the sky and ocean became integral parts of the conference venue. The ocean's mesmerizing power added an ethereal touch to the intriguing conversations of all participants, including Alexis Wright and Tara June Winch. Brest was the perfect point of convergence between the Americas and Oceania, with participants from all over the world, virtually and on-site, reflecting on contemporary environmental challenges and the different ways Indigenous artistic practices tackle them.' (Introduction)

'Focusing on The Swan Book (2013) by Alexis Wright and Terra Nullius (2018) by Claire Coleman, this article demonstrates how Aboriginal science-fiction rests on a creative temporal continuum as the logical sequel to Australia’s history of colonization and its present Indigenous people’s struggle, whether it be cultural or political. Both novels claim desert and swamp should not be understood as permanent and stable or never-changing places but rather as vibrant places where new connections are woven to eventually form a global network of relationships relying on transculturalism.' (Publication abstract)

'Starting from Edward Said’s The World, the Text and the Critic, in which he theorizes the cultural movements of filiation and affiliation, this article questions the epistemological links Alan Duff’s and Mudrooroo’s novels weave with European constructs of the Indigenous subject. This theoretical framework can be helpful in understanding the relations between the individual and the collective, mostly concerning their drive toward self-definition and emancipation.' (Publication abstract)

'In the first half of the 19th century, George Augustus Robinson’s journals, which he had written after being officially appointed Protector of the Aborigines, show the growing interest in Indigenous populations, from the very first voyages of discovery to the beginning of the 18th century. Those first accounts were informed by Victorian attitudes and contributed to forging the stereotypes which can be found either in novels by early Australian (i.e. white) writers or, later, in those by Aboriginal writers. Wavering between the “noble savage,” who may benefit from education, and the “ignoble savage,” violent and dangerous, those stereotypes feed on these attitudes and fuel them with new anecdotes and experiences.

'This article explores how Aboriginal writer Mudrooroo engages with the relation between fiction and History in his novels, which are set at the time of the first contacts between settlers and Aborigines, Doctor Wooreddy’s Prescription for Enduring the Ending of the World (1983) and the Master of the Ghost Dreaming tetralogy (1991). Indeed, this rewriting of historical events starts either a conversation or a confrontation with the depositaries of the first historical accounts about those encounters between whites and Aborigines—that is to say the whites themselves.' (Publication abstract)