Cirrus@Austlit

'The roads were empty because of the virus and sailing by at 60 all I caught was a glimpse of the wall and it was difficult to say for certain, but I thought the flag was gone. I’d only just figured out what it was. Months before, when I’d first noticed it, I was stumped. I had been walking the Villain, walking all over the suburb for hours on end trying to tire him out. Even then, plodding up the hill on foot, I’d almost missed it, clocked it late, had to haul back hard on the lead and retrace some steps.' (Introduction)

'Film star and TV host on why it matters that Kiya will become a regular feature of the toy cast in the Australian children’s TV institution.' 

'In the last two decades some community-driven memorials to Aboriginal resistance leaders have appeared.'

'In mid 1996, a series of six short films was broadcast on SBS television that were revealatory to Aboriginal artists aspiring to the creative industries at the time.'  

Jack Latimore reviews Wrong Type of Black. 

'Largely set in the inner-city north of 1970s Melbourne, and co-written by Pryor himself with Nick Musgrove, Wrong Kind of Black concisely portrays the racial tensions and Aboriginal rights issues that were waging amid the exuberant popular trends of the era.

'Twenty-something Monty – played by Wolf Creek’s Clarence Ryan – has relocated from north Queensland to Melbourne, where as a former male model and now DJ at the vibrant Albion Charles hotel in north Fitzroy, he is cruising in style, replete with deadly ’fro, flares and funky chunky-soled leather boots. He is one superfly Aborigine, going by the stage name of “the Black Superman”. His mission: to deploy his decks to transform angry patrons into happy, drunk ones.' (Excerpt). 

'Last night, following the tenth anniversary of the national Apology to Australia’s Indigenous peoples, a former host of online rotational curation account IndigenousX made a personal post on Facebook. The former IndigenousX host resides in what is considered a remote part of Australia. It was a late hour, and it appeared in my newsfeed later still, a well-populated comment thread already trailing below it.' (Introduction)

'There is a scene about an hour into Naina Sen’s documentary The Song Keepers in which a woman in her 60s ascends a ridge. The surrounding terrain is harsh desert, the red-hued country synonymous with the Australian outback. Below, nestled among the green blooms of towering eucalypts, is a patchwork of corrugated tin roofing that is the small, remote township of Areyonga. Visually the shot is sumptuous: a striking, sun-drenched panorama that alludes to the extent of isolation experienced by the Aboriginal communities that feature in the film. But that’s not all it is.' (Introduction)

'My father enlisted in the army as an engineer about a year after I was born. He would have liked to remain on the coast, surfing and knocking around with is mates, but he did what was expected of a new husband and father back in that era, and no doubt felt the pressure all the more for having hitched up with a seventeen-year-old Aboriginal girl. We moved down south into a fibro-board house in the western Sydney suburb of Holesworthy. Reportedly, it was a rough and peculiar place at the time. Dad was often away, either at barracks or out bush on exercise, leaving my barely eighteen-year-old mother to care for me and my younger brother alone. Perhaps because of this situation, my paternal grandfather, Jack, used to drive the seven or eight hours it then took to travel from the mid-north coast down to Sydney to collect me and take me back to my grandparents' home in Kendall.'  (Introduction)

'Having started life as a tweet, IndigenousX helped reorient the constitutional recognition debate'

'Award-winning writer Alexis Wright launched her latest book in Melbourne recently at an event where it was also announced that she would be the new Boisbouvier Chair in Australian Literature.'

'The 1967 referendum remains a watershed moment in Australia’s civil rights history. On the 50th anniversary of the result, that saw over ninety per cent of Australians vote in favour of including First Nations people in the Commonwealth constitution, a special performance will pay homage to the era and its activists at the Sydney Festival.' (Publication abstract)